A study of diocesan seminaries in Arezzo, Siena, Volterra and Lucca, from 1563-1660s, this book considers financial, educational, and religious perspectives. Florence, Montepulciano, Pienza, and Pisa ...provide context. Most have never been treated in English, and no comparative study exists.
In 1563, the Council of Trent mandated the opening of diocesan seminaries to give low-level instruction in pastoral duties for boys aged 12 years and older who were destined for the priesthood. This ...essay considers the early history of seminaries in four Tuscan dioceses of varying size and importance: Fiesole, Lucca, Pienza, and Pisa, in terms of the economic and political issues which placed the fledgling institutions squarely in between the needs of the Catholic Church and the resources of city-states. In each case, the documentation points to limited financial and bureaucratic support for both the foundation and maintenance of the seminaries. In these dioceses we can in fact see a pattern of administrative and local action that amounted to moral support, rather than direct assistance, from either urban or church authorities.
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The research on this article was in part supported by grants from Georgia Southern University and the Renaissance Society of America/Istituto Nazionale degli Studi di Rinascimento. An earlier version was read and critiqued by Christopher Carlsmith.
This volume examines musical culture both inside and outside seventeenth-century Sienese convents. In contrast to earlier studies of Italian convent music, this book draws upon archival sources to ...reconstruct an ecclesiastical culture that celebrated music internally and shared music freely with the community outside convent walls. Colleen Reardon argues that cloistered women in Siena enjoyed a significant degree of freedom to engage in musical pursuits. The nuns produced a remarkable body of work including motets, lamentations, theatrical plays and even an opera. As a result, the convent became an important cultural centre in Siena that enjoyed the support and encouragement of its clergy and lay community.
This article examines the role of dowries and highlights the variables that affected the size of dowries in fifteenth-century Tuscany. The estimation, which matches the households found in the ...marriage contrascts with the corresponding households in the Florentine Catasto of 1427, offers support for the present net value hypothesis and for the altruism model. Results indicate a positive correlation between a bride's dowry size and her age when used as peoxy for her contribution to the marital household. Parents also provided their daughters with larger dowries when they married “down” into relatively less wealthy or socially prominent households.
