religious life 387
- The Council of Trent
The work of the new religious orders in Venice was in line with a mili-
tant conception of religiosity that emerged triumphant at the Council of
Trent.18 The decrees of the council came into force in Venice with the
synod held by the patriarch giovanni Trevisan on 17 september 1564,
when they were solemnly proclaimed in the cathedral and all priests
in attendance publicly swore to respect them. The same ceremony was
repeated, shortly thereafter, by the doge and the Venetian government,
instituting the decrees as laws of the Republic.19
The decrees of Trent proclaimed, among other things, obligatory resi-
dence for bishops, the annual convocation of a synod, and the institution
of a seminary for the preparation of priests; they underlined the obligation
of annual confession; they prescribed the compilation of a baptismal and
marriage register on the part of parish priests and, as we shall see, they
assigned him an essential role in the validity of the nuptial union, which
underwent revolutionary changes both with regard to its definition and to
the rituals according to which it could (and had) to be stipulated. These
were provisions that tended to delineate an ideal-type of the parish priest,
at once pastor and civil functionary, knowledgeable of his flock but dis-
tinct from them, able to identify deviance and make possible inquisitorial
censorship by suspending absolution in case of sins stained with heresy.20
Though the patriarch Trevisan had officially introduced the disposi-
tions of the Council of Trent in the Venetian diocese, it was only with
the apostolic visit of 1581 that they truly went into effect, while certain
precepts, such as the annual convocation of a synod, would be system-
atically neglected. it would be the patriarch lorenzo Priuli (1590–1600)
who would truly confront the challenge of promoting and enforcing the
Barbara Boccazzi Mazza, “governare i ‘luoghi pii’: la casa delle Zitelle,” Studi veneziani 49
(2005), 293–300 esp. p. 298 regarding the bequests of Venetian noblewomen to the Zitelle.
see also Cecilia Cristellon, “Ritratto di una cortigiana del Cinquecento: Caterina de Medici
da Verona e le sue vicende (1518–1582),” in Robert A. Pierce and silvana seidel Menchi,
eds., Ritratti. La dimendione individuale nella storia (secoli XV–XX). Studi in onore di Anne
Jacobson Schutte (Rome, 2009), pp. 147–76.
18 see generally John W. o’Malley, Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early
Modern Era (Cambridge, Mass., 2002).
19 francesca Cavazzana Romanelli, “Matrimonio tridentino e scritture parrocchiali.
Risonanze veneziane,” in silvana seidel Menchi and Diego Quaglioni, eds., Tribunali del
matrimonio (secoli XV–XVIII) (Bologna, 2006), pp. 731–66, pp. 740–41.
20 Angelo Turchini, “la nascita del sacerdozio come professione,” in Paolo Prodi, ed.,
Disciplina dell’anima, disciplina del corpo e disciplina della società tra medioevo ed età
moderna (Bologna, 1994), pp. 225–56; elena Brambilla, Alle origini del Sant’Uffizio. Penitenza,
confessione e giustizia spirituale dal medioevo al XVI secolo (Bologna, 2000), pp. 541–71.