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The Materiality of Salvation: Confessional Booths and Ecclesiastical Governance in Verona, c. 1750–1800

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 June 2026

Giovanni Zampieri
Giovanni Zampieri*
Affiliation:
Independent Researcher
*
Email: giovanni.zampieri.3@phd.unipd.it
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Abstract

While contemporary historiography has comprehensively surveyed the doctrinal and disciplinary dimensions of sacramental penance in early modern Catholicism, the material culture of confessionals has received comparatively little attention. Focusing on the administration and regulation of confessional booths in the diocese of Verona, Northeastern Italy, during the late eighteenth century, this article argues that the administration of confessionals constituted a crucial intersection between sacred materiality and ecclesiastical governance. Through close examination of synodal constitutions, reports of pastoral visitations, and episcopal correspondence concerning the relocation, renovation, and installation of confessionals, it reconstructs the composite yet hitherto understudied social and cultural networks surrounding these objects. Besides helping us to better understand the vital role of sacred materiality in the experience and practice of early modern Catholicism, the article shows how the administration of confessionals emerged as a site of negotiation among diocesan authorities, parish clergy, and lay communities, revealing how the management of religious infrastructure served as a decisive interface between local pastoral practice and the expanding bureaucratic structures of eighteenth-century Catholic governance.

Keywords

confessional boothsmaterial culturereligious infrastructurediocesan administrative practiceseighteenth-century Verona

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Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , First View , pp. 1 - 21
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of American Society of Church History

I. Introduction

In March 1768, the archpriest of San Floriano, Don Tommaso Arrigazzi, sent a letter to the Veronese diocesan chancery on behalf of the regents of Valgatara, a hamlet located about fifteen kilometers north of the city walls. Four years earlier, Bishop Nicolò Antonio Giustiniani (r. 1759–1772) had visited its church, placed under the jurisdiction of San Floriano.Footnote 1 The decrees issued after the pastoral visitation commanded “the removal of an indecent portable confessional,” ordering its replacement with a “decent” one – specifically, one whose design “allowed the display of the list of reserved cases.”Footnote 2 According to the letter, after the visitation, the regents of Valgatara had gathered to deliberate; eventually, they succeeded in purchasing a second-hand confessional. However, the design of the wooden booth was substantially different from that which Giustiniani had deemed unfitting four years earlier: the confessional they procured was not portable.Footnote 3 “Knowing, therefore, that they are prohibited from using the confessional without the express permission and license of your most reverend excellency,” the letter continued, the regents of Valgatara asked Arrigazzi to intercede with the curia to “implore your excellency’s kindness to grant permission for the use of said confessional in that church.”Footnote 4 The archpriest of San Floriano agreed to this task. In the letter, he explained that he did not object to the use of that confessional, provided that it was treated as if it were portable, as he stipulated in listing the conditions for its use:

First, never, at any time or in any way, may said confessional be attached to the wall to make it fixed and stable, but it should always remain outside the wall, loose, free, and removable.

Second. In the case of restoring or refurbishing said confessional or manufacturing another in its place, it should be fabricated in the manner of a portable confessional as is commanded, permitted, and expressed in the abovementioned decree. And all of this is for the effect of not only the punctual obedient execution of the visitation decree of your most reverend excellency, but also for upholding the parochial rights of myself and my successors.Footnote 5

Two days later, the episcopal chancellor Francesco Filippi authorized the parishioners of Valgatara to use that confessional, while restating that the parochial rights held by the curates of San Floriano over the church of that contrada had to be “always preserved.”Footnote 6 The requirements articulated by Arrigazzi reflected concerns of a jurisdictional nature: as Valgatara was subordinate to the parish church of San Floriano, the confessionals placed in its church had to be treated as portable, regardless of their mechanical design. By negotiating with the pastor charged with their cura animarum, the regents of the community managed to reinstall two confessionals, thus sidestepping the need to go back and forth from the parish church to obtain absolution for their sins. The presence of two booths allowed people in Valgatara to confess their sins to the chaplain they remunerated, while remaining separated by gender.Footnote 7 With this arrangement, the archpriest safeguarded his parochial privileges while attending to the spiritual needs of the community residing in that hamlet.

Rather than representing a one-off case, this epistolary exchange exemplifies how the administration of confessionals in the late eighteenth century emerged as a composite process encompassing material, social, and cultural aspects. Multiple dimensions concurred to determine whether confessional booths could be labeled appropriate for administering penance: the design and conditions of wooden boxes and iron grilles, the presence of printed lists and sacred images, the availability of appropriate locations within churches, as well as the needs of lay communities and notable parishioners, and the jurisdictional prerogatives of clerical authorities. These decisions emerged through several intersecting processes: during pastoral visitations, bishops and their aides enforced standards outlined in episcopal decrees and synodal constitutions; parish priests, patrons, and communities secured financial resources to purchase or renovate confessionals; and laypeople and clergymen negotiated their use and position within churches through correspondence that, securely preserved in episcopal archives, served as evidence for future deliberations.Footnote 8

Contemporary historiography has extensively examined the role of sacramental penance in early modern and modern Catholicism. Scholarship has emphasized its key role as a device for social discipline and a source of spiritual control, as well as a means of propagating the post-Tridentine religious message both within Europe and across the globalizing Catholic world.Footnote 9 An established historiographical tradition has investigated the burgeoning genre of manuals for confessors, the control of sexuality in confessionals, and the procedures used to select and evaluate the clergy licensed to impart absolutions.Footnote 10 All of these texts and practices centered on confessional booths. From the early modern period onward, these pieces of furniture came to denote the sacrament of penance as a whole. In a well-known essay, John Bossy claimed that their introduction was “symbolic of some general shift of values” that signified the passage of sacramental penance “from the social to the personal.”Footnote 11 He later developed this argument in Christianity in the West, where Bossy portrayed the confessional as a “sleepwalking innovation” that prefigured the gradual individualization of Western religious practices.Footnote 12 However, with the notable exception of Wietse de Boer, whose work focuses on Borromean strategies of reform in Counter-Reformation Milan, few scholars have investigated the history of the confessional booth and reconstructed its trajectory as a key component among the many spaces and objects that gave physical form to early modern Catholic life.Footnote 13

This article examines the practices of vigilance, maintenance, and repair of confessionals in late eighteenth-century Verona, Northeastern Italy – the diocese where this furniture first originated.Footnote 14 To investigate how confessionals were administered during this period, I analyze three bodies of evidence: the printed decrees from the synod held in 1782 by Bishop Giovanni Morosini (r. 1772–1789),Footnote 15 the reports for pastoral visitations throughout the second half of the eighteenth century,Footnote 16 and the requests to renovate or relocate confessionals collected in the archival series Facoltà e licenze [Faculties and licenses].Footnote 17 The analysis of these records enables an appraisal of the normative expectations of the aesthetic and mechanical features of confessionals, provides insights into how these cultural standards were practically enforced through episcopal vigilance, and allows us to glimpse into how the administration of this religious infrastructure formed a site of negotiation between parish priests, curial functionaries, and lay communities. Besides contributing to the scholarship on confession in post-Tridentine Catholicism and its material culture, the article proposes that the management and oversight of confessionals offer a strategic site to investigate the negotiated character of interactions between diocesan authorities, parochial clergy, and the laity, providing a novel perspective on the bureaucratization of ecclesiastical governance in eighteenth-century Italy.Footnote 18

The article is organized into three key sections. The first provides an exploration of the material dimensions of confessionals in early modern Catholicism, their vigilance, and contention. The second section reconstructs the ecclesiastical standards and expectations associated with this furniture by examining the 1783 Veronese synodal constitutions. The article finally turns to an examination of how these standards were enforced in practice, through an analysis of pastoral visitation records and manuscript requests to install, renew, or relocate confessionals. The inspection of these previously overlooked sources uncovers the practices and discourses surrounding confessionals in the late eighteenth century. Rather than being taken for granted, inconspicuous elements within the architectural scenery of churches, confessionals operated as “palimpsests, objects formed by layers of physical modifications and historical meaning,” on which pleas, negotiations, and compromises were iteratively inscribed over time.Footnote 19 Instead of simply acting as passive enforcers of social control in the diocese where this piece of furniture originated more than 200 years earlier, confessionals continued to serve as a moving target for vigilance, negotiation, and bureaucracy.

II. The Material Dimensions of the Confessional in Early Modern Catholicism

Confessionals were first observed in 1576 in the Archdiocese of Milan, during a jubilee. The following year, expectations concerning their design were formalized in the Borromean Instructiones , through which they “gained wide notoriety in the Catholic world at large.”Footnote 20 While this element of Catholic material culture was neither discussed nor conceived by the prelates gathered at the Council of Trent (1545–1563), it became essential for hearing confessions within fifty years of its conception, being referenced in the 1584 and 1614 editions of the Rituale Romanum .Footnote 21 Why did Carlo Borromeo introduce this piece of furniture, and how was it adopted so promptly? Wietse de Boer has determined that the introduction of confessionals was not motivated by a desire to regulate the celebrative space of penance or underscore its judicial character – let alone to increase the secrecy of the interaction. Confessionals were primarily intended as devices meant to “minimize the risk of transgression and scandal” fueled by problematic relations between confessors and penitents, which led to the manipulation of “the material conditions under which confessions were heard.”Footnote 22 Borromeo and his episcopal aides achieved this by separating confessors from penitents, reducing direct perceptibility between them while providing a prominent space for the administration of the sacrament that magnified the liturgy’s conspicuousness.

The origins of the confessional do not, however, lie in Milanese Catholic culture. The earliest traces of an artifact envisioned for the hearing of confessions are found in the 1542 Constitutiones authored by Gian Matteo Giberti (r. 1524–1543). There, the Veronese bishop codified the confessorium: a wooden panel designed to prevent confessors and penitents from looking at each other. In this simple form, the confessional lacked a chair for confessors and a kneeling space for penitents and simply constrained the sight of the interlocutors.Footnote 23 The Gibertian strategy was quickly embraced across the Italian peninsula: in the second half of the sixteenth century, the confessorium was mentioned in synodal constitutions published in Brescia, Fiesole, Bologna, Salerno, Syracuse, and Naples.Footnote 24 And yet, this elementary material arrangement did not reach Counter-Reformation Milan by sheer chance or imitation: de Boer has revealed how Nicolò Ormaneto – close collaborator of Giberti, and later Borromeo’s vicar general – embodied the connection between the two dioceses.Footnote 25 In 1565, Ormaneto held the First Provincial Council, which mandated that confessions in Borromean Milan be heard with the penitent and the confessor separated by a board. This architectural setup was later developed by amateur carpenter Ludovico Moneta, who drew the sketch published in the Instructiones (1577). The Borromean guidelines described the piece of furniture as

a wooden structure consisting of a chair (the confessor’s seat) and a kneeling bench (for the penitent) mounted against one of its sides […]. Vertical panels enclosed the seat from behind and on two sides, while leaving it open at the front. The whole structure sat on a large, low base and was topped by a roof. Particular attention was given to the panel separating the seat and the bench: it had a small ‘window’ closed off by a metal sheet with tiny holes and covered on the inside with a piece of cloth – in other words, the grille. At the front of the confessional, a narrow, vertical plank was constructed against the same dividing panel, extending partly to the side of the penitent, partly to that of the confessor. Finally, the confessor’s space had a door made of bars or a large grille within a frame.Footnote 26

Inside confessionals, the clergymen’s side had to display the list of reserved cases, the text of the papal bull In Coena Domini , the penitential canons, a printed prayer, the formula of absolution, and an image of Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary; the penitents’ side had to be adorned with a representation of the crucifixion.Footnote 27

Keeping with the desire for increased visibility, confessionals had to be positioned in a noticeable place, “preferably the nave, or else a sufficiently spacious side chapel.”Footnote 28 Indeed, two years before the publication of the Instructiones , through the Congregations of Bishops and Regulars, Pope Gregorius XIII had decreed that ecclesiastics stop hearing confessions in dimly lit monastery cells, “wishing that from now on confessionals should be located in churches and in places conspicuous to the people, so that both the confessor and the penitent can be seen by all.”Footnote 29 While the booths might have had doors to keep out beggars, during confession they had to remain wide open. If passers-by got too close and risked eavesdropping on the conversations, confessors should step out of the confessional, ask those waiting for their turn to move farther away, and disperse the bystanders. More importantly, the Instructiones specified that each parish church should be furnished with two confessionals, to prevent men and women from mingling and chattering while lining up.Footnote 30 Thus, rather than symbolizing a shift from the social to the personal – and from exteriority to interiority – the confessional functioned as “an enforcer of sensorial discipline” that prescribed an individualized administration of the sacrament, allowing confessors and penitents to speak and hear but not see, and onlookers to glance but not hear.Footnote 31 Thanks to their sumptuous design, this piece of furniture rapidly became a conspicuous sign of confession, “a permanent reminder both of God’s mercy and ecclesiastical discipline,” and a recipient of ecclesiastical and laical attention.Footnote 32

As with other elements of early modern Catholic material culture, confessionals became targets of a culture of vigilance aimed at upholding standards of pastoral care.Footnote 33 Pastoral visitations enabled Catholic bishops and their aides to observe ecclesiastical architecture, inspect seminary conditions, verify clerical adherence to liturgical norms, and measure lay devotional life – particularly regarding the compliance with the Easter Duty of annual confession and communion.Footnote 34 For instance, when traveling through the outskirts of the Paduan diocese, Gregorio Barbarigo (r. 1664–1697) checked whether the church had been properly apportioned by gender, reminding parish priests to display sacred images and the list of reserved cases inside confessionals, as many apostolic visitors did across the Italian peninsula.Footnote 35 As Celeste McNamara has revealed, in seventeenth-century Padua, “many villages had confessionals that lacked some or all of the necessary accoutrements” enumerated in the Borromean Instructiones .Footnote 36 When a confessional was found lacking some or all of these features, it was typically labeled unsuitable for administering sacramental penance, prompting a temporary halt in its use and urging parish priests to either refurbish it with the missing items or replace it entirely. As seen in the case of Valgatara, the outcome of these procedures was far from straightforward: directives to repair or substitute wooden booths were met with indifference or defiance by parish priests and their flocks, and could occasionally lead to economic difficulties within communities.Footnote 37

For reforming prelates, encouraging secular and regular confessors to administer penance inside confessionals was not an easy task. In Golden Age Spain, “whether out of nefarious intentions or sincere pastoral motives, missionaries continued to confess peasants in the fields as they worked, curas confessed women at night and in dark corners of churches, without partitions, and mendicants shrove laypeople of all sorts in their cells.”Footnote 38 Moreover, even when parish priests, chaplains, and missionaries compliantly met penitents in confessionals, the process was not necessarily free of conflict: the infrastructure of confession could become a battleground over the monopoly on administering the sacrament. For instance, Giovanni Romeo has found that in the Neapolitan parish of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, Barnabites fathers and secular priests repeatedly quarreled over the use of the eight confessionals distributed along the nave of the church to the point that, on Easter Sunday 1659, one of the disputed booths was “broken into,” stirring “scandal among the people” who had already witnessed members of the two factions insulting each other.Footnote 39 This was not an exceptional case. In seventeenth-century Naples, ordinary and extraordinary confessors of cloistered nuns repeatedly clashed over possession of the keys to access the confessional windows installed in monasteries.Footnote 40

Romeo has shown how, as in other dioceses, early modern Neapolitan bishops and their aides regularly inspected that curates posted lists of reserved cases and sacred images decorously inside confessional booths, ordering the substitution of grates with perforated tin foils whose holes were too large. However, Romeo claims that, once the diocesan ordinaries confirmed that each church had two confessionals aligned with post-Tridentine standards, bishops handed over their governance to those entrusted with parochial jurisdiction, who enjoyed substantial autonomy over their installation, alteration, or removal. At that point, the episcopal curia could not interfere with the use rights of confessionals, whose administration securely rested in the hands of parish priests. Accordingly, Romeo contends, the vigilance over confession and its material culture decreased from the end of the seventeenth century onward.Footnote 41 Yet the archival records concerning the monitoring, maintenance, and restoration of confessionals in the diocese where Gian Matteo Giberti first introduced the confessorium tell a significantly different story. Not only did the material configuration of confessionals persist as a target of sustained episcopal scrutiny, but the administrative procedures governing their use indicate that they remained subject to a centralized, bureaucratic logic that permeated diocesan practices.

III. “As To Adorn Churches Rather Than Mar Them”: Expectations Regarding Confessionals and Their Use

An entire subsection of the 1783 Veronese constitutions, published one year after the synod officiated by Bishop Morosini, detailed the design and placement of confessionals in the diocese’s churches. In codifying the standards for the infrastructure required to administer sacramental penance, the normative text first specified the design of booths and their proper placement within sacred spaces: “Confessionals should have a decorous structure and should be located in a visible place, and should have equal shape and dimension, and be orderly disposed to adorn churches rather than mar them. The grille should be minutely perforated. And if the holes are too big, they should be covered with a fine silk cloth so that the penitent may be heard but not seen.”Footnote 42 While aesthetic criteria were incorporated among the standards with which to evaluate confessionals, the risks that clergymen faced when hearing the confessions of women seemed to remain the predominant concern troubling the minds of diocesan legislators: “Confessions, especially those of women, with the exception of cases involving illness, should be heard in churches or chapels, in open spaces, and kept in view of all so that the listener and the confessor alike may be seen openly; and let no one dare to hear women’s confessions outside the confessional, which should be built according to the rules.”Footnote 43 Echoing the Borromean Avvertenze , the synodal laws also identified the clothing expected of women, the appropriate time of the day for them to approach confessionals, and the instructions for administering penance in their homes if they were sick.Footnote 44

Additionally, the 1783 synodal constitutions enumerated the printed documents and pictures that those responsible for the cura animarum should have affixed within confessionals. The walls of wooden booths were not to remain bare: “In the part of the confessional where the penitent sits, a devout image of our Lord, Jesus Christ, crucified, should be affixed, and where the sacred minister sits, the list of reserved cases, it should be affixed.”Footnote 45 Seeing the scenes of the crucifixion while kneeling in confessionals, penitents were to be constantly reminded of Christ’s sacrifice, stirring the remorse that was to pervade their acknowledgment of guilt and nourish their repentance.Footnote 46 For their part, sitting behind the grates with the list of reserved cases within sight (Fig. 1), confessors were to be always warned of the precincts of the juridical and spiritual authority they had been entrusted to administer.Footnote 47

Figure 1.

List of reserved cases (1773). Archivio storico della diocesi di Verona, Clero, Status confessariorum, b. 2. Reproduced with kind permission of the Archivio storico della diocesi di Verona.

Aged, stained Latin document with an episcopal coat of arms. Titled “CASUS… JOANNES MOROSINI,” it features a numbered list of 11 items and a two-column section of rules. Includes handwritten notes and underlined text.

As far as the administration of sacramental penance was concerned, the 1783 synodal constitutions essentially reiterated what had been outlined in the Borromean Instructiones , reflecting the concerns that had troubled ecclesiastics like Giberti and Borromeo two centuries earlier. Just as in mid-sixteenth-century Verona and Milan, late eighteenth-century church authorities sought to create a space that kept the hearing of confessions secretive while making it visible enough for inspection. Although the challenges faced by the late eighteenth-century Church – such as attacks by enlightened literati and the dissolution of the Society of Jesus – differed considerably from those of the Counter-Reformation period, the material conditions for the administration of sacramental penance remained largely publicly codified, particularly for the confessions of women.Footnote 48 Besides confirming that the Borromean disciplinary initiative “came to function in the midst of Enlightenment culture,” the unswerving vigilance over confessionals indicates that this religious infrastructure remained a focal target of episcopal oversight, chiefly exerted through pastoral visitations.Footnote 49

IV. Supervising the Materiality of Salvation

Post-Tridentine pastoral visitations followed a highly codified script: bishops announced their impending visit via a printed circular that instructed pastors on how to prepare and provide a template for reporting on their parish, its churches, and oratories.Footnote 50 In late eighteenth-century Verona, compliance with the Easter Duty of annual confession and communion, and the infrastructure of confession, remained a key focus of episcopal vigilance. Visiting bishops routinely inquired with priests about the presence of public sinners, inspected their licenses to hear confessions, or granted them directly.Footnote 51 In turn, the presence of the episcopal delegation provided an occasion for parish priests to support their chaplains in obtaining licenses: for instance, in forwarding to the curial offices the information requested by the circular announcing the pastoral visitation, the archpriest of Villabona seized the opportunity and asked that the license of one of his curates be extended “until the visitation” itself.Footnote 52 But the forthcoming arrival of a bishop and his aides could also be configured as an opportunity to warn them that some of the oldest chaplains had become too deaf to administer penance, as in the case of a priest who noted that one of his vicars was “very hard of hearing,” while hoping that the report would remain confidential so as “to avoid reprimands.”Footnote 53 Furthermore, pastoral visitations formed decisive openings for disciplining clergymen, proscribing them from frequenting hostelries and taverns, and reminding them to wear their talar robes. Thus, on the occasion of the 1770 visit in Lonato, an anonymous letter asked Giustiniani to command the local clergy to “wear a cassock in church and during sacred functions, and always dress in black, with due modesty.”Footnote 54 Critically, visitations also provided bishops with a chance to admonish those Veronese ecclesiastics who, two centuries after the codification of the confessorium, continued to administer penance outside wooden booths: the ordinata that followed Bishop Giustiniani’s 1765 visit admonished the confessors of Badia Calavena to cease hearing women’s confessions without the grates of confessionals separating them.Footnote 55

Besides checking compliance with the liturgical standards outlined in the printed license to hear confessions, late eighteenth-century Veronese bishops regularly examined the material condition of confessional booths, ensuring that the required lists and sacred images were in place and that their location within the churches was satisfactory. In several instances, confessionals in Veronese parish churches and oratories lacked either the depiction of the crucifixion or the up-to-date list of reserved cases. For instance, in the oratory of Velo, Giustiniani prescribed affixing the list of reserved cases and the sacred images in both confessionals.Footnote 56 Sometimes, ecclesiastics directly identified – and communicated – the presence of defecting artifacts, as in the case of the archpriest of Lonato, who reported that, while conforming to the synodal standards, a confessional in an oratory placed under his jurisdiction lacked the list of reserved cases.Footnote 57 The issue of sexual solicitation in the confessional remained a critical matter of episcopal oversight: the absence of the apostolic constitution Universi Dominici gregis on the walls of sacristies was consistently noted and addressed. Hence, after visiting the parish church of Cavajon, whose confessionals were reported to be “well kept,” Giustiniani ordered the exposure of the papal bull.Footnote 58

Along with the sacred images and printed lists to be affixed inside confessionals and on the walls of sacristies, Veronese bishops and their aides focused on the condition and presence of grilles designed to constrain the sight of confessors and penitents. Sometimes, the double grid allowing two penitents to kneel on both sides of confessionals had to be provided with a wooden door that could be temporarily closed to ensure secrecy.Footnote 59 At the end of the eighteenth century, some grates were still “too clear” and therefore identified as substandard, as those installed in the confessionals of the parish church of Sant’Eufemia, visited in 1792.Footnote 60 In other cases, grilles with holes deemed too large had to be replaced or covered with a veil, as prescribed for the grate of a confessional placed in the parish church of Santa Maria in Stelle.Footnote 61 More rarely, confessionals lacked grates entirely: for instance, a wooden booth in the church of Prada di Brentonico, at the slopes of Monte Baldo, had to be “fitted with an iron grate with small holes.”Footnote 62 Significantly, the need for infrastructural maintenance was not limited to remote oratories and minor churches in far-flung alpine villages: in 1774, Bishop Morosini requested that one of the five confessionals in the Veronese cathedral be equipped with two grates; in the meantime, he suspended its use.Footnote 63

Reports of pastoral visits rarely praised the material fabric of confessionals. And yet, sometimes they described them as “optimal,” as the five confessionals that furnished the church building in Rivoltella, or “elegantly crafted,” such as the two nutwood confessionals that adorned the church of Cavalcaselle.Footnote 64 More often, however, the episcopal aides noted the furniture’s defects and ordered their use suspended until repairs were made, such as replacing a grate or installing a door. In Valeggio sul Mincio, for instance, one of six confessionals was declared suspended until the grate was replaced.Footnote 65 Similarly, the confessionals in the church of the monastery of San Salvar in Corte Regia were required to have their own doors to prevent anyone from entering them freely.Footnote 66 Beyond material flaws, the location of confessionals also prompted intervention. In Engazzà, two confessionals had to be moved from the presbytery, where they impeded proper attendance at the Eucharist, and mounted in the place of some pews.Footnote 67 Similarly, Giustiniani ordered the closing of two sides around the altar of an oratory to preclude people from hiding behind a confessional, which still needed to be renewed,Footnote 68 and the partitioning of a wooden booth whose design allowed communication with the church’s organ.Footnote 69 Three decades later, Avogadro ordered that movable confessionals – such as the one that the regents of Valgatara were looking for in their attempt to fulfill the episcopal orders – be permanently bolted to the church’s sidewalls.Footnote 70

The picture that emerges from reports of pastoral visitations is one in which confessionals were assiduously monitored for their suitability and placement, as well as for the lists and images devised to remind confessors about the scope of their jurisdiction, encourage repentance in the hearts of penitents, and instruct clergymen and laypeople alike about the consequences of sexual solicitation during confession. That the administration of confessionals in the late eighteenth century persisted as a public matter also emerges from the rules governing their use and their relation to other artifacts furnishing Veronese churches, such as seats and pews installed by confraternities.Footnote 71 As exemplified by the case of Valgatara, jurisdictional priorities were decisive in shaping the material culture of confession and determining the possibilities for its use. To administer penance in oratories, chaplains first had to secure their parish priest’s permission.Footnote 72 This constraint also affected the management and use of portable confessionals: a case in point is a confessional in the oratory of Bonavigo, which, according to Morosini’s ordinata, could remain in place only as long as the parish priest’s permit to hear confessions there remained valid.Footnote 73 But the priorities and interests of lay communities and eminent patrons also came into play. For instance, in 1765, parish priest Giovanni Battista Maria Venerio lamented that numerous pews positioned by members of the local confraternity prevented the installation of much-needed confessionals.Footnote 74 Similarly, in Pacengo, Giustiniani ordered that the confraternity’s pews be relocated so as not to obstruct access to altars, the baptistery, and confessionals.Footnote 75 These matters were not resolved on the ground: late eighteenth-century Veronese curial functionaries retained and centralized decision-making, arbitrating between parish priests, confraternities, and lay patrons over the installation, relocation, and usage rights of confessionals.

V. “Because in our Church, there is no Tabernacle or Confessional”: Adapting the Infrastructure of Confession

Before his 1765 pastoral visitation to Selva di Progno, a town perched in the hilly valleys northeast of Verona, the episcopal curia received a letter addressed to Bishop Giustiniani:

At the feet of your most reverend excellency, we, the poor inhabitants of Colonel della Giazza, prostrate ourselves, so that with your fatherly love and spiritual guidance of our souls, you may deign to hear our pleas, which we humbly present, compelled by necessity and by love for our eternal salvation. We are parishioners of Progno, and we are about half of the souls of that parish, and our expenses are equal to those of Progno, but then in terms of spiritual assistance and because of the distance of three miles or more, not counting the mountains in summer, where the cowherds live, and because of the torrents and the snow, we do not enjoy the spiritual benefits of Progno’s sacraments. Our chaplain is paid only to celebrate Mass on feast days, teach doctrine, and sing vespers, but, when we are sick, if it were not for his charity, we would be deprived of confession and spiritual assistance at the time of death, since we have no tabernacle or confessional in our church, and the distance, the streams, and the snow deprive the infirm and the elderly of the most holy sacraments….Footnote 76

Being subordinated to the parochial jurisdiction of Progno, the church of Giazza lacked the material accouterments needed to celebrate the Eucharist and administer penance. While the community economically subsidized the parish church of Progno for half of the total costs, it did not enjoy equal access to the sacraments due to the natural layout of its territory. This had critical consequences. The community’s distance from its parish church, the travel difficulties during winter, and the large area covered in the cura made the journey challenging, primarily for the eldest parishioners in the flock. Because of this state, the letter concluded, many had died without receiving the Last Rites: some did not receive a proper burial for “two or three days.”Footnote 77 Hence, the community forwarded the letter to the Veronese chancery, asking Giustiniani to authorize the installation of a confessional in its church; the approval was granted and recorded in the letter, which was enclosed in the report of the pastoral visitation.Footnote 78

In late eighteenth-century Verona, clergymen and parishioners who wished to have the infrastructure of sacramental penance tailored to their spiritual needs had to equip themselves with quill and ink and make their case persuasively. Requests to alter the material culture of churches and oratories were not just typical of communities in dire need of spiritual sustenance but could also originate with affluent individuals. In 1780, the nobleman Bortolo Fioravanti Zuanelli had to wait for the episcopal delegation to reach Portese, on the shores of Lake Garda, so that his parish priest could ask permission to install a confessional destined “for his family and servants” in the oratory he had built: high-ranking parishioners endowed with sufficient resources to erect oratories were not allowed to freely place confessionals inside them, even if the holder of that parochial benefice had already agreed, establishing that this would not have caused any “prejudice to parochial rights.”Footnote 79 The Veronese curia retained the prerogative to grant special permission to set up confessionals – including those designed for private devotion.

Pastoral visitations were not the only occasions on which ministers and their flocks asked episcopal authorities to intervene in the material infrastructure of confession: petitions reached the Veronese curial offices throughout the liturgical year. Requests explored the possibility of relocating confessionals; for instance, in 1776, the priest of Fagnano lamented that, because of where the confessional was positioned within the parish church, he risked getting sick each and every time he administered penance, particularly on days when the weather was “dreadful.”Footnote 80 Thus, he wrote to the Veronese chancery, asking for permission to swap two pews – whose patrons had already been notified and had agreed to the substitution – with the confessional.Footnote 81 Priests also sought authorization to alter the structure of church buildings: in 1771, the rectors of Borghetto and Piovezzano both requested permission to demolish a wall in order to install a confessional.Footnote 82 Similarly, in December 1783, the parish priest of Cavaion lamented that in his church there was “the dismay of seeing tribunals of penance in the sancta sanctorum,” the zone of the tabernacle where the Eucharist was preserved under lock and key; hence, he enquired about the possibility of transferring the baptismal font to “place a confessional in that emptied space.”Footnote 83 Besides making room for confessionals, interventions in the structure and material culture of churches could have had an economic rationale, as in the case of the parish church in Porto di Legnago. According to its rector, who wrote to the diocesan curia in 1764, the church needed two confessionals, which he hoped to build by demolishing two “indecent” wooden altars erected fifty years earlier, dedicated to St. Francis Xavier and St. Ignatius of Loyola, that lacked gold decorations and had no congregations to organize their worship. Besides, the priest remarked, five other altars remained available for worshippers. Thus, he solicited approval to demolish the altars, sell the items ornamenting them to secure the resources needed to build the confessionals, and place them in their stead.Footnote 84

As in seventeenth-century Naples, the Veronese curia also intervened on the issue of privileges over confessionals and their rightful use. In 1785, during his visitation to the monastery of Santa Lucia, Bishop Morosini received a letter from the archpriest of Ognissanti. In it, the archpriest Liberale Cunego – titular of the benefice of the church comprised in the monastery – formalized a request concerning the use of the confessional placed in that church, asking

that on the occasion of the visit, which is to be made by your most reverend excellency…it be decreed that the aforementioned confessional remain at the disposal of the parish priest alone…or of another confessor who replaces him in his absence; and this only for the feast day of St. Lucy and for certain other holidays, on which there is great devotion to the said saint, prohibiting the use of other confessors, and on other days to remove any past misconduct and prejudice.Footnote 85

On the back of the request, the functionary of the episcopal chancery Antonio Betteloni transcribed the records of two previous pastoral visitations by Gianfrancesco Barbarigo (r. 1698–1714) and Giovanni Bragadin (r. 1733–1758), documenting the longstanding presence of a confessional in that church, which had been placed with the authorization of the parish priest to meet the needs of the flocks crowding the church on the occasion of St. Lucy’s Day.Footnote 86 While the documents produced for the 1785 pastoral visitation to the monastery and its church do not suggest that the confessional was improperly used, Cunego’s request suggests that the infrastructure of confession remained a potentially contested terrain for clergymen seeking to defend their jurisdictional rights. Pastoral visitations and their records were seen as opportunities to safeguard parochial privileges and to document them in writing. Contrary to the Neapolitan case, Veronese curial officers retained a central role in authorizing the installation of new confessionals and the relocation of poorly placed ones, determining whether movable confessionals placed in oratories could be used to hear the wrongdoings of prosperous patrons, and safeguarding parochial rights when jurisdictional precincts appeared unstable. In governing these processes, files and records proved decisive as tools of adjudication and as a documentary basis for further decisions.

VI. Conclusion

By reconstructing the practices of vigilance, administration, and maintenance of confessional booths in late eighteenth-century Verona, this article has revealed how multiple aspects concurred in determining whether a wooden booth could legitimately be used to hear confessions. These included their placement and mechanical conditions, the characteristics of iron grilles, printed lists, and sacred images, as well as the worship practices of congregations, the financial resources of lay communities, and the priorities of clergymen as they reconciled their parochial rights with the spiritual needs of their flocks. Bishops and functionaries of the Veronese curia played a critical role in establishing and enforcing standards for this furniture, overseeing its maintenance, and adjudicating disputes over its use. Far from being inconspicuous artifacts absorbed into the architectural scenery of churches, confessionals were deeply embedded in social networks, making them prominent – and sometimes contested – elements of everyday parish life. These findings enrich our understanding of confession in the early modern and eighteenth-century Italian peninsula, complementing existing scholarship on the adoption of confessionals in post-Tridentine Catholicism. While in seventeenth-century Naples the administration of confessional booths appears to have been a predominantly local matter, in Verona it remained subject to centralized bureaucratic oversight well into the late eighteenth century. The governance of this piece of religious material culture thus offers a window into how diocesan authorities exerted control over the negotiated processes of “parish formation.”Footnote 87

The prominence of confessionals in late eighteenth-century episcopal oversight seems consistent with the “Tridentine revival” that followed the setback of reform processes in the seventeenth century, partly motivated by the strengthening of regular orders at the expense of episcopal authority.Footnote 88 In facing the challenges posed by Jansenism, Enlightenment ideals, and the strengthening of secular statal formations, bishops positioned themselves not only as good shepherds of their flock but as “champions of the faith” called to battle a mounting irreligiousness.Footnote 89 At the close of the ancien régime , the practice of confession proved essential in circulating the Catholic message, particularly among the lower strata of the population, as a counterweight to the intellectual currents that were eroding religious observance among European urban elites. From this perspective, the governance of confessional illuminates, more broadly, the increasingly bureaucratic character of diocesan administration in this period. Through synodal legislation, minutes of pastoral visitations, and the systematic preservation of correspondence, bishops and curial functionaries monitored adherence to liturgical standards and regulated devotional practices across localities far removed from the diocesan center. The administration of confessionals – and of religious material culture more broadly – thus promises to be a promising terrain for exploring how the centralized governance of Catholic institutions in the decades preceding the Napoleonic disruption anticipated features typically associated with the emergence of modern bureaucratic organizations. This is all the more significant when considering that, just a few years after the events recounted in these pages, the establishment of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy transformed the Veronese parochial clergy into full-fledged bureaucrats: expected to deliver lists of newborns and deceased to civic offices, quantify the cereals stacked in farmhouses, and educate farmers about bovine epidemics, priests became indispensable agents of municipal administration, contributing to the maintenance of public order by compiling, collecting, and circulating files.Footnote 90

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Fernanda Alfieri, Lucio Biasiori, Wietse de Boer, Miles Pattenden, Joshua Rushton, Miriam Campopiano, Roberto Mussinatto, and the journal’s anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this article. Special thanks are due to Luigi Pizzini and Alberto Savoia for their help with archival research in Verona.

References

1 On pastoral visitations in early modern Italy, see Cecilia Nubola, Conoscere per governare . La diocesi di Trento nella visita pastorale di Ludovico Madruzzo (1579–1581) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1993); on the duties of bishops after the Council of Trent, see Vincenzo Lavenia, “Bishops,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Council of Trent, ed. Nelson H. Minnich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), 180–208.

2 “di rimuovere il confessionale portatile indecente…e ponerci un altro confessionale nuovo nell’istessa maniera, ma in forma più decente fabricato, così che possa esporsi la carta dei casi riservati” Archivio storico diocesano di Verona (hereafter: AsdVr), Facoltà e licenze (hereafter: Facoltà), b. 2, fold. Valgatara (unnumbered). The church of Valgatara was furnished with two confessionals: AsdVr, Visite pastorali (hereafter: Visite), Atti di visita (hereafter: Atti), reg. 76, 36–37. On reserved cases (i.e., sins that can be forgiven only by diocesan ordinaries, apostolic penitentiaries, or the pope), see Elena Brambilla, “Casi riservati,” in Dizionario Storico dell’ Inquisizione , vol. 1, dir. Adriano Prosperi, with Vincenzo Lavenia and John A. Tedeschi (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2010), 290–291.

3 The visitation decrees explicitly mandated that the new confessional had to be of the same type as the one which had been suspended: “Confessionale portatile tamquam indecens removeatur, et in jus loco ponatur aliud novum modo eodem, sed forma decentiori…ita set in eo exponi possit pagella casuum reservatorum,” AsdVr, Visite, Atti, reg. 76, 36–37. Likely, a lack of financial resources motivated the regents to seek a second-hand booth rather than commission a new one.

4 “Conoscendo perciò essi regenti per tal motivo di non potersi far uso di detto confessionale senza una espressa permissione e licenza di vostra eccellenza reverendissima…con la presente supplica implorano dalla benignità di vostra eccellenza reverendissima la grazia di permettere in quella chiesa l’uso di detto confessionale” AsdVr, Facoltà, b. 2, fold. Valgatara (unnumbered).

5 “Primo, che mai in alcun tempo, né in alcun modo possa essere il detto confessionale annichiato nel muro per renderlo fisso, e stabile, ma abbia sempre da restare fuori del muro sciolto, libero, ed amovibile. Secondo, che venendo il caso di restaurare o rinovare il detto confessionale, o fabricarne qualche altro invece di questo, abbia da esser ridotto, o fabricato a modo di confessionale portatile come viene comandato, permesso, ed espresso nel suriferito decreto. E tutto ciò ad effetto non solo di pontuale ubbidiente esecuzione al decreto di visita di vostra eccellenza reverendissima, ma ancora a preservazione delli diritti parrocchiali di me, e dei miei successori” Ibid.

6 “et salvis…semper iuribus parochialibus” Ibid.

7 In 1764, the population of San Floriano amounted to 1441 individuals: AsdVr, Visite, Atti, reg. 76, 7. The parish church of San Floriano, located approximately two kilometers south of Valgatara, hosted two confessionals, one of which was “de novo aedificatum”; among the ten clergymen assisting Arrigazzi, the records of the visitation listed Gaspare Pieretti as chaplain of Valgatara: ibid., 29, 32.

8 Some fifty years earlier, Pope Benedictus XIII (r. 1724–1730) had emphasized the importance of ecclesiastical archives in the Apostolic Constitution Maxima vigilantia (1727), which underscored the need for bureaucratic control by diocesan offices, enabling them to defend the rights of the Catholic Church against challenges from secular authorities: Claudio Donati, “Vescovi e diocesi d’Italia dall’età post-tridentina alla caduta dell’antico regime,” in Clero e società nell’Italia moderna, ed. Mario Rosa (Rome: Laterza, 1992), 321–389, at 367. Though ecclesiastical record keeping has received less scholarly attention than other archival practices, recent work has begun to address this gap: see Alexandra Walsham, Kate Peters, and Liesbeth Corens, “Introduction: archives and information in the early modern world,” in Archives and Information in the Early Modern World, eds. Corens, Peters, and Walsham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 1–26, at 9; Markus Friedrich, “Archives as networks: the geography of record-keeping in the Society of Jesus (1540–1773),” Archival Science, 10, no. 3 (2010): 285–298; Marie Lezowski, “Conflitti di precedenza, uso degli archivi e storiografia locale alla fine del cinquecento (Pavia 1592),” Quaderni Storici, 45, no. 1 (2010): 7–40; Madeline C. McMahon, “Shepherding a Church in Crisis: Religious Life, Governance, and Knowledge in Early Modern Italy,” PhD diss., Princeton University, 2021.

9 On confession in early modern Italy, see Adriano Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza: Inquisitori, confessori, missionari (Turin: Einaudi, 1996); Wietse de Boer, The Conquest of the Soul: Confession, Discipline and Public Order in Counter-Reformation Milan (Leiden: Brill, 2001); Oscar Di Simplicio, Peccato, penitenza, perdono (Siena, 1575–1800). La formazione della coscienza nell’Italia moderna (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 1994); Giovanni Romeo, Ricerche su confessione dei peccati e inquisizione nell’Italia del Cinquecento (Reggio Calabria: La Città del Sole, 1997); on confession in the globalizing Catholic world, see David W. Myers, “Poor Sinning Folk”: Confession and Conscience in Counter-Reformation Germany (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996); Patrick J. O’Banion, The Sacrament of Penance and Religious Life in Golden Age Spain (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012); Ad Dudink, Nikolas Standaert, Forgive Us Our Sins: Confession in Late Ming and Early Qing China (Sankt Augustin: Monumenta Serica, 2006); Giuseppe Marcocci, Pentirsi ai Tropici: Casi di coscienza e sacramenti nelle missioni portoghesi del ‘500 (Bologna: EDB, 2014); Oriol A. Gali, Indigenous Sacraments: Christian Rituals and Local Responses at the Fringes of Spanish America, 1529–1800 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2024), chap. 4.

10 On manuals for confession and early modern moral theology, see Miriam Turrini, La coscienza e le leggi. Morale e diritto nei testi per la confessione della prima età moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino 1991); Vincenzo Lavenia, L’infamia e il perdono. Tributi, pene e confessione nella teologia morale della prima età moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2004); Stefania Tutino, Uncertainty in Post-Reformation Catholicism: A History of Probabilism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); on the relationship between confession and sexuality, see Stephen Haliczer, Sexuality in the Confessional: a Sacrament Profaned (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Giovanni Romeo, Esorcisti, confessori e sessualità femminile nell’Italia della Controriforma (Florence: Le Lettere, 1998); Fernanda Alfieri, “Urge without Desire? Confession Manuals, Moral Casuistry, and the Features of Concupiscentia between the Fifteenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Bodies, Sex and Desire from the Renaissance to the Present, ed. Kate Fisher and Sarah Toulalan (London: Palgrave, 2011), 151–167; John Christopoulos, Abortion in Early Modern Italy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2020), chap. 2; on the selection and evaluation of confessors, see Michele Mancino, Licentia confitendi. Selezione e controllo dei confessori a Napoli in età moderna (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2000).

11 John Bossy, “The Social History of Confession in the Age of the Reformation,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 25 (1975), 21–38, at 31, 21.

12 John Bossy, Christianity in the West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 143.

13 Wietse de Boer, “Ad audiendi non videndi commoditatem. Note sull’introduzione del confessionale soprattutto in Italia,” Quaderni Storici, 26, no. 77 (1991): 543–572; de Boer, Conquest of the Soul; see also Giovanni Romeo, “Controriforma e confessionali: il caso della parrocchia napoletana di S. Maria in Cosmedin,” in Ricerche sulla confessione dei peccati a Napoli tra ‘500 e ‘600, ed. Boris Ulianich (Reggio Calabria: La Città del Sole, 1997), 177–262. For two studies that examine the introduction of confessionals from an architectural perspective, see Roberto Cobianchi, “The practice of confession and Franciscan Observant churches: new architectural arrangements in Early Renaissance Italy,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte , 69, no. 3 (2006): 289–304; Fulvio Lenzo, “Il nostro solito uso. Prassi, modelli e significati nell’architettura teatina,” Lexicon: Storie e Architettura in Sicilia , no. 6 (2024): 27–41.

14 The article builds on research conducted for my dissertation, which reconstructs the social and cultural infrastructures of confession in late eighteenth-century Verona. The choice of this period and case is motivated by the availability and richness of the sources relating to the licensing to secular confessors (e.g., registers, examination reports, correspondence) which constitute the core of the research: see Giovanni Zampieri, “Bureaucrats of the Soul. The Infrastructures of Sacramental Penance in 18th-century Verona (circa 1750–1800),” PhD diss., Università degli Studi di Padova, 2025. On the concepts of infrastructural maintenance and repair, see Jérôme Denis, David Pontille, The Care of Things: Ethics and Politics of Maintenance (London: Polity, 2025); Cristopher R. Henke, Benjamin Sims, Repairing Infrastructures: The Maintenance of Materiality and Power (Boston: MIT Press, 2020); on the notion of culture of vigilance, see Paola Molino and Arndt Brendecke, “The Cultures of Vigilance,” Storia della storiografia , 74 no. 2 (2018): 11–16.

15 Giovanni Morosini, Synodus Dioecesana Habita . Ab illustriss . et reverendiss. D. D. Joanne Morosini (Verona: Haeredes Augustini Carattoni, 1783). On diocesan synods in the early modern Veneto region, see Christopher F. Black, Church, Religion, and Society in Early Modern Italy (London: Palgrave, 2004), 74–77; Claudio Centa, “I sinodi diocesani nell’età del Disciplinamento. Appunti sulla situazione delle diocese venete,” Studia Patavina , 68, no. 2 (2021): 237–257.

16 These include eleven manuscript registers and three boxes for the visitation of Giustiniani, nine boxes for the visitation of Morosini, and three boxes for the visitation of Giovanni Andrea Avogadro (r. 1790–1805). I have surveyed these documents in their entirety, recording information such as licenses to hear confessions granted during visitations, parishioners who failed to comply with the Easter Duty, and the condition of confessional booths. As far as confessionals were concerned, the most troublesome item was the grille (in twenty-seven cases it was found to be missing or unsuitable and had therefore to be installed or replaced), followed by the absence of the list of reserved cases, sacred images, or the papal constitution contra solicitantes (seventeen cases) and the problematic condition or placement of confessionals (sixteen cases).

17 Established in the first decade of the eighteenth century, this archival series collects requests for licenses issued by the curial chancellery. I examined and coded all the documents produced in the second half of the eighteenth century (AsdVr, Facoltà, boxes 1–4); the first box (1711–1759) includes 104 files, the second (1760–1770) 158, the third (1771–1780) 144, and the fourth (1781–1799) 147, for a total of 553 requests. The most typical requests concerned breaking the church floor for burial purposes (145), followed by applications for permission to alter the structure of churches and oratories (116), bless statues and votive images (54), and celebrate Masses or change their schedule (45). Requests concerning confessionals amounted to nine. Interestingly, throughout the eighteenth century, the Veronese curia received an increasing number of inquiries about the possibility of wearing a wig during the celebration of the Mass (43); on the debate surrounding this accessory, see Miles Pattenden, “Priests and their Wigs in Eighteenth-Century Rome,” Church History 93, no. 2 (2024): 272–291.

18 On the material culture of post-Tridentine Catholicism, see Silvia Evangelisti, “Material Culture,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to the Counter-Reformation, ed. Alexandra Bamji, Geert H. Jannsen, and Mary Laven (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), 395–418; Andrew Spicer, “The material culture of early modern churches,” in The Routledge Handbook of Material Culture in Early Modern Europe, ed. Catherine Richardson, Tara Hamling, and David Gaimster (London: Routledge, 2016), 102–117; Maureen C. Miller, “Introduction: Material Culture and Catholic History,” The Catholic Historical Review 101, no. 1 (2015): 1–17. On the interplay between religious, political, and economic networks, see Angelo Torre, “Politics cloaked in worship: State, church, and local power in Piedmont, 1570–1770,” Past & Present 134, no. 1 (1992), 42–92; Emanuele Colombo, “The Ritual Economy: Charity and Worship in Early Modern Lombardy,” in Social Support Systems in Rural Italy: The Modern Age Regional States of the Northern Peninsula, ed. Giovanni Gregorini, Luciano Maffi, and Marco Rochini (Cham: Springer, 2023), 125–150. On the bureaucratization of episcopal curias, see Maria Clara Rossi, “I notai di curia e la nascita di una burocrazia vescovile. Il caso veronese,” in Vescovi medievali , ed. Giovanni Grado Merlo and Rossi (Biblioteca Francescana: Milano, 2003), pp. 73–164; Claudio Donati, “Curie, tribunali, cancellerie episcopali in Italia durante i secoli dell’età moderna: percorsi di ricerca,” in Fonti ecclesiastiche per la storia sociale e religiosa d’ Europa : XV– XVII secolo , ed. Cecilia Nubola and Angelo Turchini (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999), 213–229. For a recent study of how the preservation and circulation of documents reorganized epistemic practices in a secular context, see Nicholas Popper, The Specter of the Archive: Political Practice and the Information State in Early Modern Britain (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2024).

19 Jaap Geraerts, “Competing Sacred Spaces in the Dutch Republic: Confessional Integration and Segregation,” European History Quarterly 51, no. 1 (2021): 7–44, at 43.

20 de Boer, Conquest of the Soul, 84. On the decisive role of the Instructiones in setting post-Tridentine architectural standards, see Evangelisti, “Material Culture,” 396–398.

21 de Boer, “Ad audiendi,” 554. Prior to the introduction of confessionals, penance was administered in sacristies, closed rooms, or cells excavated in the walls of churches and monasteries: Ibid., 570n64; Lenzo, “Il nostro solito uso,” 28–29. For instance, “camerotti confessorii” (confessional chambers) are mentioned in the mid-sixteenth-century inquisitorial interrogatory of an alleged heretic: see Lucio Biasiori, “Nos sumus chaos: un profilo religioso di Giacomo Broccardo,” in Iddio è informatissimo del caso mio . Il processo del Sant’Uffizio di Venezia contro Giacomo Broccardo, ed. Federica Ambrosini (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2017), lv–lxxxii, at lxii.

22 de Boer, Conquest of the Soul, 85. On sexual solicitation in confession, see Wietse de Boer, “Sollecitazione in confessionale,” in Dizionario storico dell’Inquisizione , vol. 3, dir. by Adriano Prosperi, with Vincenzo Lavenia and John Tedeschi (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2010), 1451–1455; Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza , 508–519; Haliczer, Sexuality in the Confessional; on the problematic reputation of post-Tridentine clergy, see Celeste McNamara, “Priest behaving badly: The problem of scandal in the early modern Catholic Church,” The Journal of Modern History 96, no. 1 (2024): 47–77.

23 de Boer, “Ad audiendi,” 547. This element highlights the significance attributed to sight within a sensory theory that, in casting the senses as interfaces between interiority and environments, transformed them into loci of moral danger: see de Boer, Conquest of the Soul, 112; de Boer, “The Counter-Reformation of the senses,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to the Counter-Reformation, ed. Alexandra Bamji, Geert H. Janssen, and Mary Leven (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), 243–260. A manuscript passage of the Constitutiones makes this understanding clear: Giberti explained that the confessorium was meant to hear the confessions of women, whose faces were perilous like a “blistering wind,” de Boer, Conquest of the Soul, 104.

24 de Boer, Conquest of the Soul, 94; Black, Church, Religion, and Society, 104.

25 de Boer, Conquest of the Soul, 94; see also Antonio Filipazzi, “L’influsso di Gian Matteo Giberti attraverso l’azione di Nicolò Ormaneto,” in Gian Matteo Giberti (1495–1543). Atti del Convegno di Studi, ed. Marco Agostini and Giovanna Baldissin Molli (Verona: Biblos, 2012), 73–87.

26 de Boer, Conquest of the Soul, 91; on further improvements of this design, see ibid., 121.

27 de Boer, “«Ad audiendi»,” 563n12. The latter element interestingly counterparts the predominant emphasis on the auditory dimension of confession. While penitents could not see their confessors, during the administration of penance they were exposed to images designed to elicit penitential suffering and sorrow; see Ottavia Niccoli, Vedere con gli occhi del cuore. Alle origini del potere delle immagini (Rome: Laterza, 2011), 50–52.

28 de Boer, Conquest of the Soul, 95.

29 “volendo che da hora innanzi li confessionali siano nelle chiese et in luochi conspicui al populo, talmente che da tutti possano esser veduti et il confessore et il penitente,” quoted in Romeo, “Controriforma e confessionali,” 199; on the activities of the Congregation, see Simone Maghenzani, “Hypocrisy, ‘Prudence’, ‘Conscience’ in Administration: The Congregation of Bishops and Regulars in Seventeenth-Century Italy,” Studies in Church History 60 (2024): 216–237.

30 de Boer, Conquest of the Soul, 110.

31 Black, Church, Religion, and Society, 110.

32 Myers, “Poor, Sinning Folk,” 133; see also Spicer, “The Material Culture,” 88.

33 Molino, Brendecke, “The cultures of vigilance”; Celeste McNamara, “Pastoral care,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Council of Trent, ed. Nelson H. Minnich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), 225–241.

34 Nubola, Conoscere per governare; on reports of pastoral visitations as a source for investigating material culture, see Angelo Turchini, “Una fonte per la storia della cultura materiale nel XV e XVI secolo: le visite pastorali,” Quaderni Storici, 11 no. 31 (1976): 299–309.

35 Celeste McNamara, The Bishop’s Burden. Reforming the Catholic Church in Early Modern Italy (Washington, Catholic University of America Press, 2020), 152–156; Romeo, “Controriforma e confessionali,” 202.

36 McNamara, The Bishop’s Burden, 152.

37 Ibid., 154.

38 O’Banion, Sacrament of Penance, 51.

39 “il giorno di Pascha scassò il confessionario e di nuovo si intruse in quello con scandalo del popolo,” quoted in Romeo, “Controriforma e confessionali,” 259.

40 Ibid., 217; Mario Sanseverino, Un pericoloso ministero. Confessare le monache nella Napoli della Controriforma (Avellino: Terebinto Edizioni, 2019), 34–36.

41 Romeo, “Controriforma e confessionali,” 211–216.

42 “Confessionalia decenti structura sint, et aperto loco reponantur aequalis formae inter se, et magnitudinis, eoque ordine disposita, ut ecclesias exornent potius, quam deturpent. Crates habeant in fenestrella minutatim perforatas. Quod si forte paulo ampliora sint foramina, velo serico subtilissimo cooperiantur, ita ut poenitens audiri possit, non videri” Morosini, Synodus, lxxii.

43 “Confessiones praesertim mulierum except aegrotantium casu, in ecclesiis, vel oratoriis in loco aperto, et in oculis omnium posito excipiantur, ita ut audiens pariter, et confitens palam videantur; atque nemo audeat confessiones mulierum audire extra confessionale ad ordinariam formam constructum” Ibid., lxxii–lxxiii.

44 “Sacramentum Poenitentiae non administretur foeminis, nisi velato capite ad Tribunal Poenitentiae accedentibus, nec administretur nisi a dimidia hora ante solis ortum, usque ad dimidiam horam post solis occasum. Cum autem infirmarum mulierum confessiones audiendae sint, apertis ianuis id fiat, ut confessarius, et poenitens foris videri possint, non tamen audiri” Morosini, Synodus, lxxii–lxxiii; cf. Carlo Borromeo, Avvertenze di San Carlo Borromeo per i confessori (Rome: Bernabò, 1725), 17. These requirements were also listed in the printed license handed to Veronese confessors: “Te in Domino admonentes ut mulieres nonnisi velato capite, et semper in confessionali, nec ante solis ortum, nec post ejus occasum audire praesumas sub poena suspensionis ab audiendis confessionibus, nisi forte mulier esset vetula, sed surdastra, et cum hoc ut quotiescumque aegrotantium confessiones audieris, quam primum ea rede parochum certiorem reddas. Sub eademque poena mulierum non infirmarum, confessiones audire extra sedem confessionalem, et non interposita crate tibi omnino vetamus” AsdVr, Clero, Status confessariorum, b. 1.

45 “In ea parte confessionalis, qua sistitur poenitens, devota imago Iesu Christi crucifixi Domini Nostri affixa sit, et in ea parte, qua sacer minister sedet, notula casuum reservatorum affigatur” (Morosini, Synodus, lxxiii).

46 Niccoli, Vedere con gli occhi del cuore, 79–80.

47 In eighteenth-century Venice, the requirement to affix the list of reserved cases inside confessionals was also reported on the license to hear confessions: “Mandamus autem, ut casuum reservatorum paginam in confessionali affixam semper habeas”; Archivio Storico del Patriarcato di Venezia, Archivio Segreto, Processi presbiterorum, b. 9, fold. 26. On the juridification of sacramental penance from the late Middle Ages to the early modern period, see Paolo Prodi, Una storia della giustizia. Dal pluralismo dei fori al moderno dualismo tra coscienza e diritto (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2000); Roberto Rusconi, L’ordine dei peccati. La confessione tra Medioevo ed età moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2002).

48 Among the reasons for the increased attention to confession in the eighteenth century was undoubtedly the growing concern of both inquisitors and the laity for sexual solicitation during confession: see Matteo Al Kalak, “Investigating the Inquisition: Controlling Sexuality and Social Control in Eighteenth-Century Italy,” Church History, 85, no. 3 (2016): 529–551; Karen E. Carter, Scandal in the Parish: Priests and Parishioners Behaving Badly in Eighteenth-Century France (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019), chap. 5.

49 Wietse de Boer, “At Heresy’s Door: Borromeo, Penance, And Confessional Boundaries in Early Modern Europe,” in A New History of Penance, ed. Abigail Firey (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 343–375, at 373; see also Angelo Turchini, “Tradizione borromaica, istituzioni ecclesiastiche, indirizzi pastorali nel Settecento Milanese,” in Ricerche sulla Chiesa di Milano nel Settecento, ed. Antonio Acerbi and Massimo Marcocchi (Milan: Vita e Pensiero), 3–33.

50 Nubola, Conoscere per governare, chap. 2.

51 AsdVr, Visite, Atti, reg. 71, 15v, 36r; b. 89, fold. Sanguinetto 1776; b. 96, fold. Padenghe; b. 96, fold. S. Felice del Benaco; b. 97, fold. Erbezzo 3/17; b. 97, fold. Pastrengo (unnumbered). In registers of secular confessors, licenses granted during pastoral visitations were typically reported with the wording “in visitatio[nis].”

52 “che scadendo nel prossimo marzo il mandato di confessione…ad un mio religioso, li fosse prolungata la facoltà fino alla visita” Ibid., b. 88, fold. Villabona (unnumbered).

53 “circa l’oltrescritto signor don Domenico Pagani, il quale è assai duro d’udito per le confessioni…Di questo avviso poi io vorrei essere occulto, e per non aver poscia a portar qualche rimbrotto” Ibid., reg. 78, 355.

54 “Veste talare in chiesa e nelle sacre funzioni, e sempre vestiti di nero, e colla dovuta decenza” Ibid., b. 85, fold. Lonato (unnumbered).

55 “Nullus tantum ex confessariis audeat mulieribus confessiones sacramentales facie ad faciem audire, sed semper ad crates confessionalium” Ibid., reg. 78, 27r.

56 “Provideantur confessionalia huius oratorii de pagellis casuum reservatorum et de sacr[is] imaginibus” Ibid., reg. 75, 36v.

57 “Il confessionale è secondo le costituzioni ecclesiastiche, ma è mancante della tabella dei casi riservati” Ibid. b. 86, fold. Lonati (unnumbered).

58 “Confessionalia bene tenuta…In sacristia exponatur bulla contra sollicitantes” Ibid., reg. 81, 57v–58r; absence of the constitution contra sollicitantes was noted also in Ossenigo, Borghetto d’Avio, Bussolengo, Val di Porro, Sona, and Calmasin. While the 1783 synodal decrees of Morosini did not mention the document, the 1675 synod held by Bishop Sebastiano Pisani (r. 1669–1690) stipulated that a printed version of the constitution had to be exposed in all sacristies as to avert its ignorance: “Et quia ignoratione Bullae Sanctissimi D. N. Papae Gregorii XV contra confessarios in confessione solicitantes, maxima scandala, et delicta oriri non semel audivimus; propterea, ut tam gravi periculo, et malo, quantum cum Domino possumus, occurramus, volumus, et districte mandamus, ut omne ecclesiarum parochialum archipresbyteri, rectores, et curati in sacristiis eorum bullam ipsam Typis Merulanis Veronae etiam nuper impressam affixam omnino habeant, et teneant.” Sebastiano Pisani, Constitutiones et Decreta Illustriss. et Reverendiss. D. D. Sebastiani Pisani (Veronae: Ex Typographia Io. Baptistae Meruli, 1675), 31.

59 As indicated in the ordinata for the church of Brenzone: “Renovetur crates ferreae ad confessionale existentis sub suggestu…et in aliis mittantur portella qua cooperiant crates ipsorum” AsdVr, Visite, Atti, reg. 77, 29r.

60 “Si abbiano a cambiare le grade di qualche confessionale perché troppo chiare” Ibid., b. 96, fold. S. Eufemia (unnumbered).

61 “crates unius confessionalis, vel mutentur, vel cooperiantur velo” Ibid., b. 94, fold. S. Maria in Stelle (unnumbered).

62 “Confessionale muniatur crate ferrea cum foraminibus parvis” Ibid., reg. 73, 50v. The presence of the grilles was also regularly checked in the confessionals intended for men, as was the case in the parish church of Monzambano: “crates apponatur confessionalibus etiam a parte hominum” Ibid., b. 88, fold. Visitatio parochialis ecclesiae s. Michaelis Arcangeli de Montiambano (unnumbered).

63 “Ad confessionales penes ad altare s. Andrea existens apponatur due crates…cum foraminibus minutioribus et interim suspensum” Ibid., b. 86, fold. Visitatio Cathedralis (unnumbered).

64 “optime” Ibid., b. 87, fold. Rivoltella (unnumbered); “confessionalia n° 2 nuceam et eleganter confecta” Ibid., b. 94, fold. Cavalcaselle (unnumbered).

65 “In confessionali sub pulpito nova provideant crates, et interim suspensum” Ibid., b. 86, fold. Vallegio (unnumbered).

66 “…che i confessionali abbiano almeno la sua portina davanti” Ibid., b. 96, fold. S. Salvar di C. Regia (unnumbered).

67 “Statim amoveantur confessionalia a presbytero utpote a loco non apto ad audiendas sacramentales confessiones, imoque impedimento sanctis accedentibus ad sacram comunionem” Ibid., reg. 72, 32v–33r.

68 “Confessionale, quod est retro Sancti Valentini Altari omnino renovetur, et claudantur saltem rastris ligneis latera dicti altaris, ad impediendum retro quis se abscondat” Ibid., reg. 75, 40v.

69 “Sesto. Che sia chiusa la comunicatione del confessionario esteriore con l’organo. Settimo, che il luogo del confessionario si divida in due camerini” Ibid., b. 83, fold. S. Tomaso Cantuariense (unnumbered).

70 For instance, the ordinata for Bonavigo read: “Confessionale amovibile firmetur in muro” Ibid., b. 96, fold. Bonavigo (unnumbered).

71 See Spicer, “The material,” 90.

72 While the 1783 synodal constitutions are silent on this matter, the 1675 constitutions by Pisani include a chapter titled “Circa le giurisdizioni parochiali” [On parish jurisdictions], which prescribed “that no chaplain of the oratories or confraternity may celebrate Mass before the parish without the parish priest’s permission…nor collect offerings, administer sacraments,” under penalty of suspension a divinis: “che niun capellano de gli oratorii, o confraternita possa celebrar messa inanzi la parochiale senza licenza del paroco…né raccoglier offerte, amministrar sagramenti,” Pisani, Constitutiones , 33. Licenses of parish priests were usually marked with the wording “de licentia”; hence, a report of Giustiniani’s visit to an oratory placed under the jurisdiction of San Floriano read: “Visitavit confessionale portatile in quo adiuntur confessiones de licentia reverendi domini archipreti Sancti Floriani” AsdVr, Visite, Atti, reg. 77, 65r.

73 “Confessionale amovibile persistat quousque durat licentia parochi” Ibid., b. 86, fold. Bonavigo (unnumbered).

74 “A causa delle occupazioni de siti fatte dalla compagnia non si possono piantar confessionali, necessari ali concorrenti in moltitudine” Ibid., reg. 77, 204.

75 “Che li banchi debbano esser fatti tutti eguali, e posti in chiesa a norma del dissegno…perché non impediscano gli altari, i confessionali, ed il battesimo” Ibid., reg. 81, 64v.

76 “A piedi di vostra eccellenza reverendissima ecco prostrati noi poveri abitanti del Colonel della Giazza, acciò con l’amor suo di padre, e spiritual pastore dell’anime nostre si degni esaudir le nostre supliche, le quali umilmente presentiamo dalla necessità costretti e dall’amore dell’eterna nostra salute. Siamo parochiani di Progno, e siamo la metà circa dell’anime d’essa parrocchia, e che nelle spese siamo eguali a quelli di Progno, ma poi in quanto agli aiuti spirituali e per la distanza di ben tre miglia, e più, non computando le montagne nel tempo estivo, ove abitano li vaccari, e per li torrenti, e per le nevi non godiamo la felicità di Progno delli sacramenti, mentre il nostro capellano quantunque da noi stipendiato solo per celebrar la messa festiva, far dottrina, e cantar vespero, ma quando siamo infermi, se non fosse la sua carità, saremmo privi della confessione, ed assistenza spirituale al tempo di morte, mentre non avendo tabernacolo, e confessionario nella nostra chiesa la distanza, li torrenti e le nevi privano gl’invalidi e gli vecchi de santissimi sagramenti” Ibid., reg. 78, 333.

77 “molti per mancanza de sacerdoti, e per le vie lunghe e disastrose sono morti senza sagramenti…ed alcuna volta li cadaveri sono stati sopra terra due, e tre giorni per la difficoltà del tragitto” Ibid. Nowadays, to get from Giazza to Progno, one must walk one hour and a half.

78 “Erigere possint etiam in hac simplici ecclesia confessionale cratibus ferreis munitum, cum pagella casuum reservatorum adnexa a parte confessarii, et cum imaginibus devotis a parte poenitentis” Ibid., 335.

79 “Avendo il co[lendissi]mo Bortolo Fioravanti Zuanelli…eretto un pubblico oratorio fra i limiti della parrocchia di Porteza a comodo della sua famiglia e desiderando il medesimo di tenere in detto oratorio un confessionale per uso soltanto della sua famiglia, e servitù, senza pregiudizio de parrocchiali diritti, ne avanza però umilissima istanza…atteso anche l’assenso prestato dal molto reverendo curato” Ibid., b. 88, fold. S. Jo. Bap.ta de Portesio (unnumbered). As indicated by a note scribbled on the letter, the curial functionaries approved the request. Thanks to its ownership of several paper mills, the Fioravanti Zuanelli family was part of the “ruling aristocracy” of the Garda Riviera: Giovanni Zalin, “Origini e sviluppo dell’industria cartaria nella Riviera bresciana del Garda,” Archivio Storico Italiano 143, no. 4 (1985): 595–610, at 608; on how the material culture of churches provided the early modern laity with a canvas to project their social status, see Giulia Zanon, Cittadini of Venice. Shaping Identities between Networks and Patronage (c. 1530–1690) (Leiden: Brill, 2024), chap. 4.

80 “Il grave pregiudizio, che cagionato viene alla salute di me sottoscritto paroco di Fagnano nel sentire le confessioni de parochiani a motivo del luogo, ove di presente situato trovassi il mio confessionale…per cui ne giorni massime stravaganti, non posso reggere senza notabile detrimento di mia salute” AsdVr, Facoltà, b. 2, fold. Fagnano (unnumbered).

81 “…supplicationi eidem benigni annuentes, ut confessionale, de quo in supplicatione, ad locum duorum dictorum scamnorum, et scamna ipsa ad locum dicti confessionalis transferri possint, licentiam in domino concessimus” Ibid. Attached to the request was a handwritten letter from one of the two patrons, Giacomo Tosi, in which he gave his consent to the relocation of his pew.

82 “…ut murus tuae parochialis ecclesiae rumpatur, ad effectum collocandi ibi confessionalia” Ibid., b. 3, fold. Borghetto di Avio (unnumbered); “…ut murus istius tuae parochialis ecclesiae a parte envangelii rumpatur ad efformandum locum in quo reponatur novum alterum confessionale” Ibid., fold. Piovezzano (unnumbered).

83 “Trovandosi nella mia chiesa parrocchiale di Cavaggion il disordine di vedere affissi tribunali di penitenza nel Sancta Sanctorum; ed altro modo non essendovi onde toglierlo, che quello di levare il fonte battesimale…e in quel luogo reso vacuo porvi un confessionale: resta da me infrascritto umilmente suplicata la bontà di vostra eccellenza…a volermi donare la facoltà di un tale trasporto” Ibid., b. 4, fold. Cavaion (unnumbered).

84 “Ritrovandosi in bisogno estremo la veneranda chiesa parochiale di S. Pietro in Porto di Legnago d’essere proveduta di due confessionali, ed essendovi nella medesima due altari di legno indecentissimi…senza indorazione alcuna, uno sotto il titolo di San Francesco Saverio, e l’altro di S. Ignazio, alla divozione de quali non vi si scuopre concorso alcuno, e rimanendo la detta chiesa…con cinque altri bastevolmente proveduta, supplico…a volermi concedere la permissione di demolire i suddetti due altari, affinchè nella situazione di quelli costruire io possa li due tanto necessari confessi[onali]. E perché per una tal costruzione è necessaria una summa di dannaro non indiferente imploro osequiosamente ancora che del danaro mi sii permesso benignamente di potermi valere di que pochi mobili, che servono per adornamentare gl’altari stessi” Ibid., b. 2, fold. Porto di Legnago (unnumbered). The altars dedicated to the most prominent Jesuit saints were dismantled just as the Society of Jesus was on the verge of suppression; see Sabina Pavone, I gesuiti dalle origini alla soppressione: 1540–1773 (Rome, Laterza: 2021); Franco Motta and Eleonora Rai, “Jesuit Sanctity: Hypothesizing the Continuity of a Hagiographic Narrative of the Modern Age,” Journal of Jesuit Studies, 9, no. 1 (2022): 1–14.

85 “che nell’occasione della visita, che è per farsi da vostra eccellenza reverendissima…sia decretato, che resti il suddetto confessionale a comodo di esso solo parroco…o di altro confessore da lui sostituito in sua mancanza; e ciò solamente per il giorno di S. Lucia, e per alcune altre feste, nelle quali vi è concorso grande per divozione di detta santa, proibendone l’uso di altri confessori, ed in altri giorni per togliere ogni trascorso e pregiudizio” AsdVr, Visite, Atti, b. 90, fold. Monastero S. Lucia V. e M. (unnumbered).

86 “Nella chiesa delle Monache di S. Lucia vi è un confesionale postovi di licenza dell’arciprete o sia priore d’Ognissanti, come consta dalle visite di monsignor vescovo Giovanni Barbarigo dell’anno 1704 e di monsignor vescovo Giovanni Bragadino dell’anno 1737 che si rassegnano”. On the back of the letter, the functionary transcribed two passages from the visitation records of Barbarigo and Bragadino: “Fit fides per offitium cancellaria episcopatus veron[ensi]s…confessionale in ecclesia existens…de licentia parochi, attenta gentum multitudine in die festo s. Lucia, et etiam in aliis diebus, quis pro divotione communicantur…. Vidit quouque confessionale de licentia…archipreti pro excipiendi sacramentalibus confessionibus fidelium hic cum magno concursu die festo S. Lucia accedentium, aliisque diebus” Ibid.

87 Torre, “Politics Cloaked in Worship,” 44, 54; Black, Church, Religion, and Society, 83, 87, 91–93. However, because of the time gap, the differing size of the two dioceses, and the varying relationships with the Roman Curia and local secular governments, a comparison between the two experiences of diocesan administration can only be impressionistic.

88 Mario Rosa, Settecento religioso: politica della ragione e religione del cuore (Venice: Marsilio, 1999), 187; Claudio Donati, “Chiesa italiana e vescovi d’Italia dal XVI al XVIII secolo: tra interpretazioni storiografiche e prospettive di ricerca,” Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento, 30 (2004): 375–389, at 388.

89 Ibid., 389; see also Daniele Menozzi, “Tra riforma e restaurazione. Dalla crisi della società cristiana al mito della cristianità medievale (1578–1848),” in Storia d’Italia. La Chiesa e il potere politico dal medioevo all’età contemporanea, ed. Giorgio Chittolini and Giovanni Miccoli (Turin: Einaudi, 1986), 769–807; Turchini, “Tradizione borromaica,” 32.

90 Filiberto Agostini, Istituzioni ecclesiastiche e potere politico in area veneta (Venice: Marsilio, 2002), 274–275; Stefano Poggi, Cultures of Identification in Napoleonic Italy, c. 1800–1814 (London: Routledge, 2024), chap. 4. On the priest as the “prototype” of bureaucrat and civil functionary, see Carlo Fantappiè, “Problemi della formazione del clero nell’età moderna,” in Istituzioni e società in Toscana nell’età moderna. Atti delle giornate di studio dedicate a Giuseppe Pansini, Firenze 4–5 dicembre 1992, ed. Claudio Lamioni (Florence: Edifir, 1994), 729–747, at 731; Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza , 541.

Figure 0

Figure 1. List of reserved cases (1773). , , b. 2. Reproduced with kind permission of the .