Tra Stato e papato: Concilî provinciali post-tridentini (1564-1648) by Pietro Caiazza

Abstract

Tra Stato e papato: Concili provinciali post-tridentini (1564-1648). By Pietro Caiazza. [Italia Sacra, Studi e documenti di storia ecclesiastica, Vol. 49.] (Rome: Herder Editrice e Libreria. 1992. Pp. xx, 332. Lire 85.000 paperback.) In this book Pietro Caiazza deals with a subject that has not been studied in sufficient depth until now even though it represents a crucial theme for the history of the post-Tridentine Church, namely, that of the post-Tridentine provincial councils. As is well known, provincial councils represented an ancient institute, the origins of which date back to the first centuries of the Christian era. After falling into desuetude in the course of the Middle Ages, they were revived by the Council of Trent. At the end of Session XXIV the conciliar fathers approved a canon in which it was decreed that within one year of the conclusion of the council all the metropolitan archbishops would be obliged to assemble in council the bishops belonging to their respective ecclesiastical provinces. After this first assembly, provincial councils were to be regularly convoked every three years. In this institute the fathers gathered in Trent had decided to single out an instrument suitable for obtaining a general reception of the Tridentine decrees and a more detailed application of them; these were traditionally two of the principal purposes of provincial councils. But in spite of the central role assigned to them with a view to the execution of the post-Tridentine reform, such councils were almost never held with the prescribed triennial frequency, not even in the years immediately following the conclusion of the ecumenical assembly. Indeed, it can be shown that in spite of an initial, significant resumption, already around the end of the sixteenth century the institution was heading toward a slow decline that could not be stopped. Pietro Caiazza resolved to trace the parabola, first ascending and then descending, of the local conciliar activity within the post-Tridentine Church. In carrying out this intention, he limited the subject on the basis of a conscious and explicit choice (pp. 2-8,103). On the one hand, he decided on a synchronic treatment of the principal problems, eschewing a diachronic exposition of the events; on the other hand, he stressed the external (so to speak) history of the conciliar institute (that is, its relations with the Holy See and the state political power) at the sacrifice of its internal dynamic (convocation, conduct of its work, debates, and nature and contents of the final decisions). The book is divided into four chapters.The first takes up the theme of the development of conciliar activity in which were felt both the weight of Roman centralism and the secular authorities' will to control, in particular, that of the Spanish Crown. In the second chapter the functioning of the conciliar institute is studied in a well circumscribed geographical and chronological range, namely, that of the ecclesiastical province of Salerno, in reference to the provincial councils of 1566 and 1573, although the proceedings of the latter have not been preserved. The third chapter is devoted to intra-ecclesial relations, with particular attention to the recurrent conflicts inside the provincial ecclesiastical structure (as the frequent tensions between metropolitans and suffragans witness) and to relations with the Roman central authorities.These authorities claimed, already in the period immediately following the conclusion of the Council of Trent, the prerogatives of examining and, if necessary, of correcting the decisions of the provincial councils (recognitio and emendatio), as well as of giving definitive approval to them (confirmatio), although up to 1588 these prerogatives were not envisioned in any explicit papal disposition. In the last chapter the author outlines the process of progressive decline in conciliar activity, which was noticeable especially from the beginning of the seventeenth century on, as he endeavors to place the phenomenon in the framework of the broadest ecclesiological context of the relations between the local churches and the post-Tridentine Papacy. …