Architectural Instructions in Italy between the 16th and 18th Centuries

Abstract

Carlo Borromeo’s Instructions represent the only practical application of the Tridentine decrees in architecture. However, historians over time have given little weight to the work, which is mostly considered a simple parish handbook due to its practical-functional nature used to treat the sacred space. New research conducted on the literary work has focused on the massive diffusion of this treatise in the undergrowth of the ecclesiastical literature of the time, testifying to how much the Instructions are linked to the historical context and the spiritual needs of the post-Tridentine Church. The great novelty of the work lies in the fact that it completely overturned the way of writing about architecture. In the writings of Carlo Borromeo, a continuous interweaving between the doctrine of the soul and the sacred building is outlined to give the Church the image of an institution organically constituted in its material and spiritual reality. The influence of this work outside the Milanese context in which Carlo Borromeo worked is still to be clarified, especially in the South of Italy, which experienced the peak of its Counter-Reformation season between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Here, Instructions will be analyzed along with the Antica Basilicografia of Pompeo Sarnelli (1686) and Il Rettore ecclesiastico of Marcello Cavalieri (1688), two writings born in the diocese of Benevento under the wing of the bishop Vincenzo Maria Orsini, a native of Gravina di Puglia.