Who would be a bishop in the brave new world forged at Trent? Celeste McNamara's first monograph, a revision of her doctoral thesis at Northwestern University, explains the trials and tribulations endured by Gregorio Barbarigo, one of the more celebrated occupants of episcopal office during the Counter-Reformation's long period of reform. Barbarigo (1625–1697), bishop of Padua on Venice's terrafirma from 1657 until his death, hailed from one of the Serenissima's nobler lineages and was well-connected in Rome—in particular, with the generation of like-minded prelates surrounding Pope Innocent XI (r. 1676–1689). He played an important role in what historians have come to see as Trent's “second wave”: a serious and occasionally coordinated attempt by the pope and various prominent members of the Italian episcopate to translate the Council's ideals into better practice on the ground. These venerable prelates targeted parishioners, who needed pastoral care, but also priests, who needed educating and disciplining. More than this, their objective was to enhance ecclesiastical authority in the localities. In Barbarigo's case, his own authority as bishop was paramount—and yet he constantly found his ability to assert it limited. The Venetian state jealously guarded its supervision of a de facto autonomous but subordinate Church. And popes too pressed for more central involvement in diocesan affairs, not least through rulings made by the Congregation of the Council (a body intended to put Trent's decrees into practice). In the midst of this Erastian struggle, Barbarigo, a good and pious man and conscientious administrator, in McNamara's telling, did his best to improve clerical quality with his model veering between the sternness of a neo-Borromeo and the lenience of a latter-day Francis de Sales (in general, he was closer to emulating the latter). The imperative to reform and the range of cases that required reforming were nonetheless so great that Barbarigo found his task ever-taxing. Approaching it with humility, he asked his priests for pardon: “so heavy is the burden, so great the obligation, so rigorous the reckoning that the eternal Judge asks of me for all of this diocese to the point of my death” (27).
Thus, we meet the “bishop's burden” of McNamara's title. McNamara structures her book around five prime chapters that separate out and narrate Barbarigo's efforts in the key spheres of reform in which it was manifest. Chapter 1 describes Barbarigo himself and the characteristics of his diocese; chapter 2 lays out his efforts to advance episcopal authority within it; chapter 3, what he did to ensure priests provided pastoral care; chapter 4, his reform of clerical education; and chapter 5, his missionary and conversionary activities involving (among others) Protestants, Muslims, and Jews. McNamara's evidence base is, essentially, the vast treasure trove of documentation Barbarigo and his subordinates collated in diocesan archives and thus preserved for posterity: it includes his instructions, correspondence, and administrative records, but also the testimonies of priests and their parishioners. McNamara is eager to assert that this archive, though compiled “from above,” allows us to paste together something of a history “from below.” It can show us, in the petitions and complaints, a true, lived, and authentic early modern Catholicism in all its local variety and concerns, mundane and transcendental. A useful introductory chapter also sets the entire case study in the context of the Catholic Reformation's latest and ongoing debates. This is rich and engaging material. The case studies and examples are full of color, and McNamara's guiding authorial hand is an engaging one as we are led through its frustrations and foibles.
Much of McNamara's scholarship is dedicated, in essence, to putting the specifics of her local case in context: she aims to show how Barbarigo and his world stack up against those of other contemporary dioceses and their bishops. In doing this, McNamara subscribes to the prevailing paradigm of the late John O'Malley and of Simon Ditchfield, and her work can be said to substantially, and elegantly, increase our knowledge of its subject matter. My only concern in response to the text is what is not here, what is not known—what, perhaps, remains unsayable (or at least hard to articulate) in the context of current historiographical debate. Barbarigo's personality, for instance, is not heavily scrutinized in this telling: he remains, essentially, the man of his hagiographical tradition. Yet questions could be asked. Was he a forgiving, self-styled “fraternal” bishop because he really felt that rhetoric emphatically or because it provided cover to disguise his inability to undertake another more muscular course of action? How much should we see diocesan reform of the kind Barbarigo spearheaded depend on a single forceful personality anyway? Placing the prelate at the center of the narrative also risks perpetuating the sort of “great man” approach to this history, which was a mark of an earlier generation of Catholic apologists. And McNamara is pretty obviously on Barbarigo's side: his reform was a good thing, and clerics who fell short of his ideals let the Church down. This is a legitimate perspective, but I wonder how far a sense that the Church exists for its pastoral and salvific mission must predicate it? As a historian, I think the presumption that reformers defined what the Church was should be open to question. The Catholic Church's longevity would seem to me to be largely a function of the fact that it has been able to be many things to many people—including those who wished it to be something very different to what Barbarigo wanted it to be. Those who opposed—or just disregarded—him in his own diocese would doubtless have thought the “bishop's burden” to be something very different.
