Carlo Borromeo, Archbishop of Milan, in the Midst of Religious Disciplining, Pastoral Renewal and Christian Education (1564-1584)

Abstract

toral action and the renovation of the customs and the religious life that he carried out in the archdiocese of Milan in the second half of the Sixteenth century, have recently been object of renovated attention not only by Church historians, but also by scholars who are intent on clarifying one of the most favourite issues of recent religious and social historiography, that is social disciplining1, as a basic component of the Reform, the evolution of the Catholic Tridentine Church, the building of the modern State and the transformation of the cultural and educational structures of the modern society. With its complex forms of control over individual and collective habits, the work of Borromeo makes a substantial contribution to the building of a confessional society in the Early modern age; it surely represents, in fact, the “con-