Scholars have increasingly investigated the practical aspects of Tridentine reforms, exploring the local implementation of sweeping universal decrees. Comerford's study contributes to this historiographical trend with a study of seminary education in selected Tuscan dioceses that “represent a broad spectrum of economic, political, demographic, and religious issues and thus allow insight into the various factors leading to or preventing success” (xvii). Her goal is to answer two basic questions: the first about the impact of seminary education on the local level and the second about the difference between major and minor urban centers. Viewing the diocesan clergy as “regular folk,” Comerford argues that her work contributes to the study of popular religion and the effect of the Catholic Reformation on the “average” person. The author employs visitation records, foundation documents, ordination records, financial documents, and early histories to paint a picture of seminary education.
The book is divided into eight chapters. The first chapter outlines the social and political world of early modern Tuscany. Comerford provides a solid survey of Tuscan political and economic circumstances, emphasizing that demographic and social history affected the success or failure of seminary education. Notwithstanding their different economic and political histories, “all dioceses had the same expectations, despite widely different populations, wealth, existing educational infrastructure, and political stability” (24).
The second chapter outlines the major religious changes in the dioceses, including the suppression of religious orders and the establishment of new ones, namely the Society of Jesus. Comerford points out that generalizations about cold, distant bureaucratic priests are unfounded, for the cases studies demonstrate that the seminaries in Tuscany were too small and inefficient to produce a clerical elite. Comerford provides a brief overview of clerical education and service books. The rest of the chapter attempts to place seminary education within the larger education context of the Reformation, arguing that the religious orders provided much more clerical education than Italian universities.
The next four chapters provide a detailed analysis of the seminary education in Arezzo, Siena, Volterra, and Lucca, Tuscan dioceses that represent the four compass points of the region and range from powerful republican cities to small communities subject to larger neighbors. The four chapters follow a similar format: a brief outline of the founding and finances of seminaries followed by an analysis of their impact on the priesthood, measured by visitations, service books, the teaching of catechism, and those who attended the schools. The chapters vary in detail depending on the survival of archival material, but all four chapters contain detailed statistical analysis of the secular clergy, differentiating the seminarians from the non-seminarians and the urban from rural acolytes. Chapter 7 attempts “to draw larger conclusions about seminaries in north-central Italian cities” (115) by offering comparisons to three other Tuscan dioceses: Florence, Pienza, and Montepulciano.
With her statistical information in hand, Comerford concludes her study with five generalizations about diocesan seminaries in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and the Republic of Lucca. First, the seminaries had a limited effect on the clergy. Second, cultural, political, and economic centers dominated in religious matters as well. Third, most of the secular clergy were ordained in their diocese, as outlined by Tridentine regulations. Fourth, there was not a centralized educational program directed from Rome or Florence. Fifth, notwithstanding the lack of alternative religious education in Tuscany, the seminaries remained small. Comerford concludes that the lack of success of Tuscan seminaries was based on a fundamental flaw in the Tridentine regulation, namely the reliance on bishops, who were often unpopular and lacked resources, to establish seminaries. This, coupled with the lack of incentives to attend seminaries, made the Tuscan reform of priests “less than successful” (137).
Although Comerford is familiar with the most recent scholarly research and has done an extensive survey of archival material, the book has its limitations. For example, scholars looking for a detailed discussion of education in the seminaries will be disappointed. There are only brief references to curriculum and examinations based on certain texts. The relative importance of the selected dioceses to seminary education in Italy is never clearly explained. Comerford states that “the present study, while comparative, remains but a small corner of the larger picture of the role of education in the Catholic Reformation” (xix). Indeed, the reader is left wondering about this frame of reference. Was Tuscany particular or unique in its religious reform efforts? Somewhat surprisingly for a work based on statistical analysis, Comerford does not provide a list comparing the basic statistics (date of synods, foundation of seminary, etc.) of the dioceses in this study to others in Tuscany or Italy. Scholars seeking this information can consult the appendix in Christopher Black's Church, Religion, and Society in Early Modern Italy (New York: Palgrave, 2004).
The academic apparatus for the book is mixed. The maps prove very helpful and the graphs are clear, but scholars using the book will find a major irritation: the lack of concordance between the footnotes and the bibliography. The author does not include all of the works cited in the footnotes in the “works consulted” pages at the end of the book. Unfortunately, there is not only one lapsus. More than a dozen works are not included in the bibliography, rendering what could have been a convenient list of post-Tridentine studies into an unreliable reference.
Comerford is to be applauded for identifying an important topic and approaching seminary education in innovative ways. Although the bibliography of secondary sources is problematic, the author provides a very useful finding list of archival and primary sources. Scholars will profit from the book as a mine of data regarding seminary education in four dioceses in Tuscany, but much more work needs to be done before any conclusions can be made regarding the success or failure of Tridentine reforms in Italy.
