L'orazione proibita: Censura ecclesiastica e letteratura devozionale nella prima età moderna (review)
efficient way of having troublesome priests removed, but it did not succeed in swaying the judges. At the end of November, 1607, the court sentenced Paolo Orgiano to ten years’ incarceration in Venice, where he died in 1613. His commoner helpers suffered long banishments while the noblemen were subjected to notable fines. I am not sure that publishing the entire text was the best heuristic strategy. A persuasive microhistory could have been built from this document with more economy. I also doubt Povolo’s claim that the inquisitorial ritual reflected “republican and aristocratic” values. There is nothing in the text that leads me to concur that the magistrates were “culturally different” from the respondents in any but the most technical sense. More centralized tribunals, with greater power to isolate criminals, multiplied during the sixteenth century. Cases of lowborn people bringing charges against nobles are fairly common in the archives of the Sienese Capitano di Giustizia around the same period. Povolo evokes in footnotes Clifford Geertz, Pierre Bourdieu, and Paul Gewirtz with respect to narrative strategies, but they do not help us understand the actions of the different protagonists. The criminal behaviour, and the judicial animus it mobilized, are much better illuminated by Maurice Cusson, Martin Daly, and Margo Wilson. GREGORY HANLON Dalhousie University