Re-Writing Trent, or What Happened to Italian Literature in the Wake ...

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A challenge to the charge of a „lack of vitality‟ in late-century Italian literature has a further aim, which chimes with the broader conference theme of „reforming reformation‟. By locating the energy and vitality of late-Cinquecento popular devotional works I hope also to be able to argue for the continuation of the kind of reformed devotional currents that shaped literary, poetic texts in the earlier century. In previous research I argued, following the lead of distinguished historians such as Tom Mayer, of course, that an Italian experience of reform extended well beyond the traditional cut-off point in the 1540s, with the establishment of the Roman Inquisition, into the late century and probably beyond. 6 The context for my own argument was the production of lyric poetry in manuscript and print, specifically the reformed spiritual sonnets of the highly acclaimed Petrarchist Vittoria Colonna (1490-1547). By examining Colonna‟s long poetic influence in the later sixteenth century and the continued circulation of her works into the 1580s, I suggested that „a new periodisation of Italian reform in the widest sense of the word offers itself, one that pushes well beyond Trent and touches, not theologians or ecclesiastics, but simply readers of vernacular poetry.‟ 7 A proper examination of late-century literary works allows for a clearer understanding of the manner in which currents of reform were transformed and transmitted to audiences reading vernacular poetry after Trent. My research into these various intriguing questions is still in its early stages, so what I have attempted to do in the following paper is take account, all too briefly, of some of the principle areas of investigation that I see as informing the project. I begin with a survey of poetic texts on sixteenth-century Indexes, to try to understand what kind of works came in for 6 See for a summary of arguments about the longevity of Italian evanglism, Elisabeth G. Gleason, ‘On the Nature of Sixteenth-Century Italian Evangelism: Scholarship, 1953-1978’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 9 (1978), 3-26. More recent contributions to this ongoing debate include Thomas F. Mayer, Reginald Pole: Prince and Prophet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp.11-26; and id., ‘What to Call the Spirituali’, in Chiesa cattolica e mondo moderno: Scritti in onore di Paolo Prodi, ed. Gianpaolo Brizzi, Adriano Prosperi and Gabriella Zarri (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2007), pp.11-26. 7 Abigail Brundin, Vittoria Colonna and the Spiritual Poetics of the Italian Reformation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), p.192. 4
condemnation, and to highlight the seeming inconsistency and partiality of censorship in this area. I then look briefly at scribal and oral cultures, as alternatives to print that flourished in the period and effectively side-stepped many of the issues posed by the Indexes, as well as the question of gender, a noted conundrum in that precisely during this period of repression women writers began to occupy a relatively major space in the literary arena, especially if we compare Italy to other European countries. Finally I ask how far „reformed‟ poetic practices, following the model established by Vittoria Colonna, thrived in the late century. This brief survey of avenues for future investigation allows me to offer some hypotheses by way of conclusion, not in any way fully substantiated, but as a means to provoke further discussion. Lyric poetry on the Index How far the various Indexes of Prohibited Books issued in the second half of the sixteenth century concerned themselves with vernacular literary texts is a question that has attracted useful attention from scholars in recent years. 8 Not very much, would seem to be the straight answer, nor in any clearly systematic way. Of the 3094 individual works by named or anonymous authors listed on the various sixteenth-century Indexes, only 215 are works in the vernacular rather than Latin, so just under 7%. 9 Of these 215 banned works, approximately forty are poetic texts by Italian authors, including collections of rime, satirical and burlesque poetry, and madrigals. 10 A large proportion of poetic texts included on the Indexes can be deemed to fall into the category of morally suspect or lascivious works (official attempts to 8 See for example Rozzo, La letteratura italiana. More generally on the mechanics of censorship on the Indexes, see Gigliola Fragnito, ‘The Central and Peripheral Organization of Censorship’, in Church, Censorship and Culture, pp.13-49. 9 Thesaurus de la littérature interdite au XVIe siècle. Auteurs, ouvrages, éditions avec Addenda et corrigenda, ed. J. M. De Bujanda (Sherbrooke-Geneva: Éditions de l’Université de Sherbrooke-Librarie Droz, 1996), p.32. 10 I say approximately, because it is not possible in every case to identify an author or a work. I have also counted once each the three anthologies of vernacular poetry (containing works by numerous authors). 5
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Re-Writing Trent, or What Happened to Italian Literature in the Wake ...

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