Sul libro e la letteratura religiosa nell’Italia del Seicento

Studies on religious culture and life of the past have always been biased by a strong ‘positivistic’ perspective, which tends to reduce their subject matter to a string of ‘speeches’ fixed on written documents. The main aspect emerging from these studies is the ruling, prescriptive and binding model conveyed through the books and the teaching of the Church of the Counter-Reformation: the Church seems to narrow more and more those spaces of experimentation and fervour which were typical of the freer and more open phase preceding the turning point of the Council of Trent. But we cannot speak of a revolutionary break: there are also strong threads of continuity and deep lines of development starting from premises which are not questioned. A clear evidence of this continuity with the past is the network of relationships between the channels of distribution of religious books and the musical arts in 17th century Italy. Here we provide documents of this network, with special consideration for the production of sacred and devotional poetry intended for musical execution and singing: the main phenomena are the modernization of the laud and the new theatrical genres of the oratorio and the cantata. Indeed, the oral and community context was essential for the expression of the religious conscience, which was at the same time fastened to individual experience. The religious landscape of the 17th century is not reducible to that wave of mysticism which would be drastically rejected by the rigoristic revival at the end of the same century.