14 - Faith's boundaries: ritual and territory in rural Piedmont in the early modern period

Summary

Local religion has often been analysed largely as expressions of mentalités or as a set of spiritual attitudes. This seriously distorts the sources on this subject which have come down to us; it abstracts beliefs from the context in which they were recorded and separates them from the institutions which have inventoried and classified them. Such a selective approach reflects a conviction that the religious behavior of rural and urban populations under the Ancien Régime can be analysed without reference to other forms of activity. The actual practices of particular individuals or of groups are subsumed under their religious aspirations, without considering the fact that these practices are only known to us through the mediation of the ecclesiastics and professionals who have recorded them. The approach presupposes that daily life was able to find full expression in religious idealism: it assumes a seamless continuum between practices and beliefs.

This essay proposes to analyse local religion as a group of practices which interact systematically with local cultural, political and social life. On such a reading, ritual kinship groups should not be analysed through some abstract institutional identity, but must be approached through the rituals by which their members stake out power and territory in the community. This article considers four groups through which social kinship was expressed in early modern rural Piedmont: confrarie, disciplinati, societates, and consortie.