Claudio Ferlan. Dentro e fuori le aule

Claudio Ferlan has delivered both more and less than his title promises. He sets out to deliver the results of his archival investigation into the operations of the Society of Jesus in Gorizia (or Görz) and in Austria during the early modern period. He identifies noted works by John O'Malley (Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era, 2000) and by Paolo Prodi (Il paradigma tridentino: Un epoca della storica della chiesa, 2010) as the impetus for his plan to recover part of what Prodi, a latecomer to the conviction that early modern Catholicism was not monolithic, called the great diversity in Tridentine religiosity. Ferlan worked diligently and successfully, but those reading the title and expecting a developed analysis of what happened in Jesuit college classrooms in Austria will be disappointed. Ferlan provides information on Jesuit college life, mainly in Gorizia itself, but overall he has produced a study that is better reflected in the subtitle: a history of the Jesuits in the southeastern portion of Austria, the lands abutting the Republic of Venice. Ferlan has composed an institutional history. He first describes the political and religious context in the duchies of Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola, in addition to the counties of Gorizia, Gradisca, Trieste, Austrian Friuli, and Austrian Istria that made up “inner Austria.” This story, including the arrival of Protestantism in 1520, is a prelude to the two main portions of the book. The first of these is devoted to the process of college formation in Gorizia and the arrival of Jesuits there (1588–1618), and the second to the formal foundation of the college and the effect of Jesuit communities on the region (1619–1650). Ferlan relies on state and provincial archives in Gorizia as well as secondary works to tell the first tale, including the spread of Protestantism and the beginnings of the application of the decrees of Trent in this area, which became a frontier zone in the contemporary religious contest. The Jesuits became active here, but as usual not without some controversy. It was Ferdinand II—the famous alumnus of the Jesuit colleges at Graz and Ingolstadt and future emperor—whose intervention made the foundation at Gorizia possible. To secure the establishment of the college, the traditional Jesuit commitment to providing free education and the excellent preparation known to be delivered by Jesuit educators were important factors. Ferlan then emphasizes the actual institutional foundation in his second chapter. This included choice of location, arrangements for housing, and choice of college leadership, with all negotiations conducted against the backdrop of the beginning of the Thirty Years' War. Here, Ferlan utilizes the truly massive documentation of the Archivum Historicum Societatus Iesu, the archive of the college at Gorizia, the above-mentioned collections, and documents such as the letters of Paolo Sarpi, to continue the institutional history.

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