Eretici esuli e indemoniati nell'età moderna ed. by Mario Rosa

Abstract

116BOOK REVIEWS Lest the reader go away with the impression that this book is only for those concerned with the history of religion, it should be noted that Gibson, through its pages, tells us a good deal about the mechanics of early modern noble family life and about the relationships between the elite and their servants, amongst whom chaplains loomed large. For example, we read that in 1632 it was noted of chaplains that "if they come single it's a thousand to one but they will either be in love or married before they go away," thus underlining the way in which chaplains used the situation in which they found themselves to improve their own future. Similarly, in an account of the application made by RogerWilliams, chaplain to Sir William Masham, to marry the niece of his former patroness, Lady Joan Barrington, and of Lady Joan's response, we gain an insight into the contrasting views of chaplain and patron regarding the appropriateness of the request. The author has achieved a good balance between treating the subject from the patron's and the recipient's points of view. Perhaps the most serious fault in the book is that it does not go far enough in exploring the colonization of the domestic chaplaincy by the gentry and the "middling sort." Gibson asserts, I think with little proof, that merchants and commercial classes did not appoint chaplains. That they were not permitted legally so to do is one thing, but there are suggestions that informal arrangements sometimes existed in such households. The author profitably could have stood back a little from his mechanistic treatment of the subject in order to ask some more imaginative questions about the implications of the surviving sources. It would have been worth discussing, for example, the extent to which various positions (for example in the episcopal households that of the bishop's secretary or, in a gentleman's household, that of a tutor) merged into or differed from that of the chaplain. As chaplains were clearly extremely important within recusant households and recusancy, rather more detail about this aspect would have been very welcome. The book is straightforward in its approach and style—a refreshing feature at a time when so many books are jargon-ridden and obscure. William Gibson's monograph, moreover, represents an extremely valuable addition to the literature , which reminds us that one of the purposes of the historical discipline is that of explaining the previously unexplained and thus enhancing our prospects of understanding the actions of our forefathers and mothers. Rosemary O'Day The Open University Milton Keynes Eretici esuli e indemoniati nell'età moderna. Edited by Mario Rosa. [Biblioteca della Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa, Studi IX.] (Florence: Leo S. Olschki. 1998. Pp. 205. Lire 38,000 paperback.) The volume contains four articles unrelated to one another. The first by SaIvatore Lo Re mostly notes references to the movements and associations in the BOOK REVIEWS117 1540's and 1550's of the Dominican theologian and controversialist Ambrogio Catarino Politi, known for his books against Italian and other heretics, found in the Ilprocesso inquisitoriale del Cardinal Giovanni Morone, edited by Massimo Firpo and Dario Marcatto (6 vols, in 7 parts; Rome, 1981-1995). Lo Re describes Politi as particularly hostile to the "spirituali" in the circles of cardinals Morone and Reginald Pole. He sees Politi as a facile persecutor of new heretical doctrines and a profound biblicist who rejected Scholastic theology and Thomism. But the article is an incomplete work in progress. The second article by Simonetta Adorni-Braccesi is a good outline of the collective lives in northern Europe of the approximately 300 Luccans who left for Geneva between 1555 and the early seventeenth century. About eighty came from the upper classes of wealthy merchants and bankers, the rest from trades and crafts, especially the silk industry. Some went on to Lyon, Paris, and La Rochelle, where they contributed to the Calvinist cause in the religious struggles . Those who remained in Geneva only slowly integrated into Calvinist society , because they maintained economic and personal contacts with Italy and other Catholic countries in the hope of return. The third article, by...