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From Cicero to lasso: Humanism and the Education of the Novarese Parish Clergy (1565-1663)*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Thomas B. Deutscher
Thomas B. Deutscher*
Affiliation:
St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan
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Abstract

This study argues that the parish clergy of the northern Italian diocese of Novara benefited from a dramatic increase in educational institutions in the decades following the Council of Trent (1545- 63) and that their formation was rooted in the humanist program of grammar, letters, poetry, history, rhetoric, and moral philosophy, inculcated through the reading of classical authors. Employing the acts of visitations conducted between 1616 and 1663, it is based on comments made by the priests themselves about their education and on an analysis of the secular books in their personal libraries. It concludes that a number of the Novarese priests developed a lifelong interest in humanist and secular works, while some of them employed their humanist training as schoolmasters in the towns and villages of the diocese.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 55 , Issue 3 , Autumn 2002 , pp. 1005 - 1027
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2002

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Footnotes

*

I wish to thank the three RQ readers whose comments have done much to improve this article. Financial support was provided by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the University of Saskatchewan, and St. Thomas More College. Abbreviations: ASDN = Archivio Storico Diocesano di Novara; BL Cat = British Library General Catalogue of Printed Books to 1975,1979-87; BN (F) = Catalogue généraldes livres imprimés de la Bibliothéque Nationale. Auteurs, 1897-1981; CE= Contemporaries of Erasmus: A Biographical Register of the Renaissance and Reformation, 1985-87; DBI = Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, 1960-; DHGE'= Dictionnaire d'histoire et de géographic ecclésiastiques, 1912-; DSB = Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 1970-79; DTC= Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, 1923- 46; EI= Enciclopedia Italiana di scienze, Uttere, edarti, 1949-50; Enc. Ren. = Encyclopedia of the Renaissance, 1999; LTK= Lexikon für Theologie und Kirke, 1957-65.

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