Michele Camaioni begins his newest book, Il Governo dei Pulpiti: Predicatori, potere e pubblico nell’Italia della prima età moderna, with a discussion of a pair of paintings created by an unknown artist likely sometime between the mid-seventeenth century and the early eighteenth century. From two different angles, the paintings depict a preacher – “probably, a Jesuit or another of those ‘reformed priests’” that emerged out of the “religious crisis of the 1500s” (vii) – delivering a sermon to a crowd of listeners in piazza Maggiore in Perugia. As Camaioni explains, although the paintings date from a slightly later period than the focus of his book – the “long Cinquecento” (xxvi) – they encapsulate the many goals of his study. For Camaioni, the paintings’ two different visual perspectives reflect his own desire to study early modern Italian preaching from a unique scholarly perspective. Rather than explore sermons’ written content, he strives to capture early modern preaching (especially that of the Capuchins and Jesuits) as a “concrete practice” in its “original dimension” as a “public collective event” (xxi) and to unpack “the sermon as a form of oral communication first then as a text; the preached word, its reception and its management [governo]” (xxiii). Importantly, Camaioni’s approach highlights the wide range of sometimes contentious relationships – with the papacy and the Inquisition, other religious superiors, civic authorities, patrons, and audiences – that preachers had to navigate. He explores all of these dimensions through the analysis of a variety of archival and printed sources. Some of these are refreshingly understudied, such as Girolamo Mautini da Narni’s work, Modo breve et facilissimo di compore le prediche, which discusses how to ideally write and perform simple, accessible sermons. Others are very well known, such as editions of inquisitorial trials which, when compared to something like Mautini’s work, highlight the much more volatile realities of the day. Indeed, as Camaioni notes, the paintings with which he begins his discussion are nothing if not an idealization of early modern preaching. The reality was far more messy, uncertain, complex, and interesting. It is this rich environment – of the interplay between the ideal and the real – that Camaioni explores throughout his book.

In addition to a substantive introduction and epilogue, the book is composed of twelve relatively brief chapters grouped around (although not formally subdivided into) a variety of themes pertaining to the lived experience of early modern preaching: “the figure of the preacher and his social function (chapters 1–2); the sermon as a performance, its concrete social effects and the diverse forms of reception, contestation and repression of the oral sermon (chapters 3–5); [preachers’] careers, the element of itinerancy, the instruments and material aspects of the profession of the spoken word (chapters 6–9), [and] the organization and financing of the sermon as a public event and an affair of the government (chapters 10–12)” (xxv).

Throughout the discussion of these many topics, the reader is reminded of the pivotal but potentially controversial role preaching and preachers played in Italy from the Late Middle Ages through the early Baroque era. Camaioni emphasizes, for instance, how preachers proclaimed Christ’s word and were sometimes likened to “living saints” (4). When preachers performed their duties without sufficient care, however, they could also fall afoul of the Inquisition. Indeed, persistent worries about heresy and the repression of the Inquisition weave their way throughout the entirety of Camaioni’s book. Additionally, Camaioni also stresses that, beyond preachers’ strictly religious duties, they often played important social and political roles within the communities through which they passed. Such observations are important, and Camaioni presents them in a highly readable and compelling manner. They will likely be familiar, however, to most scholars in the field, and this is not where Camaioni’s most original contributions lie. Arguably more significant is Camaioni’s ability to shed light on the many, but less frequently discussed, common challenges that faced early modern preachers and those within their networks. From dissatisfied listeners who smeared pulpits with excrement, to preachers who tried to soothe lost voices and sore throats only to still have to preach, to authorities – both civic and religious – who became embroiled in complex negotiations to secure preachers for important sermon cycles, arguing over who would pay for what, and fearing that last minute scheduling changes could leave them with the crisis of an empty pulpit on their hands. Camaioni deftly uncovers and explores a wide range of sources to highlight the many occasions on which such challenges emerged, convincingly proving that even into the post-Tridentine period, when the Church aimed to more strictly regulate and control the world of preaching and firmly solidify its “reestablished credibility,” (250) the work of the preacher was, indeed, still “a hard job” (109) and the “governo dei pulpiti,” still a “difficult” task (239).

Ultimately, Camaioni’s book is a welcome addition to the scholarship on preaching in early modern Italy. Graduate students who are seeking an accessible entry into the scholarship will find this book of great use, not only for the content of the main text, but also for its extensive citation of both secondary and primary sources. As Camaioni notes in his acknowledgments, this book is meant not to “furnish definitive answers,” but to propose questions and reveal bodies of sources that could ultimately be used to write an even more expansive “social and cultural history of preaching in the early modern age” (xxix). For this reason, its later chapters, especially, will also be well received by established scholars.