Comments by
vhorw on...
Pescetti’s attacks, however petty and quixotic, against the educational presence of the Jesuits in Verona and his alternative suggestions for an ambitious program of compulsory and universal schooling organized by the city fathers highlight an important area of tension that I’m surprised did not surface more frequently and virulently in counter-reformation Italy. Even given the relative stalling of the process of state consolidation in the peninsula during this time, why did municipal and territorial rulers not try to establish a monopoly on education over competing claims of religious entities more frequently? In the German states, the unequivocal settlement of the Peace of Augsburg did not stop wrangling over education between state entities and competing claims even when everyone was in the same confessional camp. Were these battles less relevant in Italy because schooling remained comparatively more limited to upper social strata rather than becoming a tool for religious mobilization?