Engineering the Sacred; Administrating the Soul: the Plurality and Pluralization of Early Modern Catholicism in Roman Censorship of Sacramental and Devotional Writings 1643-1713
Final Report Abstract
This research project develops tools to de-centralise scholarly accounts of the past, notably in the field of the history of early modern Catholicism and its most iconic bulwark of uniform confessional orthodoxy: the Roman Congregation of the Inquisition and its diligent censors in their dealings with an emerging Catholic Puritanism in the Habsburg Low Countries in the second half of the 17th Century. Focussing on the “laboratories of salvation” in the confessional as they unfold in censorship reports on books, theses and pamphlets published in seemingly endless polemics, this research project adopts, inspired by Science and Technology Studies, a radically historicist and praxeological take on the question of how multitudes of actors who were engaged in a bewildering variety of practices, cosmologies, and localities across the globe managed to act “as one” and forge a workable semblance of transcendental order: the Church Militant as the gateway to collective salvation of the justified in between the Church Triumphant in heaven and the Church Penitent in Purgatory. It sheds light on the trajectories or “cycles of credibility” between practices and interactions on one hand and modes of existence of (religious) “-isms” on the other hand (Jansenism, rigorism, laxism, etcetera) within early modern Catholicism(s) as a loosely regulated, precarious and fluid community of conflict. The relationship of Roman censorship with catholic plurality proves to be more layered than traditional scholarly accounts would suggest. Pluralisation – in the sense of a dynamic plurality within and beyond an emerging public stage – proves to be the worm in the apple of the quest for doctrinal uniformity pursued by Catholic Tribunals of the Faith and the feeble Habsburg State in the Low Countries.
Publications
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‘Gigliola Fragnito/Alain Tallon (eds.), Hétérodoxies croisées. Catholicismes pluriels entre France et Italie, XVIe-XVIIe siècles, Roma (Ecole française de Rome) 2017 (Collection de l’Ecole française de Rome 508) ISBN 978-2-7283-1143-9’, in Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken 98 (2018), 647-649
Bruno Boute
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‘The Pope’s Men. Transnational Clerical Elites, Papal Universalism, and Bureaucratic Practice.’ In: Cabibbo, S. and Serra, A. (eds.), Venire a Roma, restare a Rome: forastieri e stranieri fra Quattro e Settecento (Rome: RomaTre-Press 2018), 169-178
Bruno Boute
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“Rotuli und Suppliken”, in: De Boer, J.-H.; Füssel, M., and Schuh, M. (eds.), Universitäre Gelehrtenkultur vom 13.-16. Jahrhundert. Ein interdisziplinäres Quellen- und Methodenhandbuch (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag 2018), 139-152
Bruno Boute and Daniels, T.
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“Universitätsreform und Konfessionalisierungspolitik: das Beispiel der Habsburgischen Niederlande und Burgund (Löwen, Douai, Dole) (1590-1620), in: Kintzinger, M.; Wagner, W. and Crispin, J. (eds.), Universität – Reform: Ein Spannungsverhältnis von langer Dauer (12.-21. Jahrhundert) (Veröffentlichungen der Gesellschaft für Universitäts- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte) (Basel: Schwabe Verlag 2018), 87-129
Bruno Boute
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‘Inquisitori romani e Ingegneri della Salvezza nelle Fiandre: la “Guerra dei confessionali” nel Secondo Seicento alla luce della censura libraria.’ In: Cifres, A. (ed.), Memoria Fidei IV. L’Inquisizione Romana e i suoi archivi a vent’anni dall’apertura dell’ACDF. Atti del Convegno Roma, 15-17 maggio 2018. (Rome: Gangemi Editore 2019), 255-267
Bruno Boute
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Systematisches Repertorium zur Buchzensur 1542-1700: Inquisition, with the collaboration of D’Errico, G., Ottens, A.K. and Warnsloh, F. (Wolf, H. ed, Römische Inquisition und Indexkongregation. Grundlagenforschung II: 1542-1700). Paderborn/München/Wenen/Zürich: Ferdinand Schöningh 2020
Bruno Boute
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‘Liturgy and Bureaucracy–Bureaucracy as Liturgy’, in: Corswarem, E. (ed.), Music and the Identity Process: the National Churches in Rome in the Early Modern Period (Turnhout: Brepols 2020), 254-256
Bruno Boute
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‘Lombard, Peter’, in: Hasecker, J. and Schepers, J., Personen und Profile 1542-1700 (Wolf, H. ed., Römische Inquisition und Indexkongregation) (Schöningh: Paderborn 2020)
Bruno Boute
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‘Stefania Tutino, Uncertainty in Post-Reformation Catholicism. A History of Probabilism, New York, NY (Oxford University Press) 2017, 576 pp., ISBN 978-0-19-069409-8, GBP 155’ in Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken 100 (2020), 758-760
Bruno Boute
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‘A Product’s Glamour. Crediblity, or the Manufacture and Administration of Truth in Early Modern Catholicism’, in: Badea A., Boute, B., Cavarzere, M., and Vanden Broecke, S. (eds.), Making Truth in Early Modern Catholicism (Scientiae Studies 1) (Amsterdam: AUP 2021), 7-38
Bruno Boute, Badea, A., Cavarzere, M. and Vanden Broecke, S.
