This project investigates the 'visual pastoral' developed in the Jesuit missions in Italy, with particular attention paid to Paolo Segneri Senior, whose theatrical techniques were fundamental in the process of re-evangelisation of Early Modern Italy, during the Age of Catholic revival.
Image: Christ at the Column by Caravaggio (c. 1607). Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
This project focuses on the conduct of the Jesuit missions in Italy in the seventeenth century, with particular attention paid to the emotions and the use of visual and theatrical techniques, focusing particularly on the case of Paolo Segneri Senior SJ. The missions emerged as a specific pastoral strategy: missionaries could provide spiritual assistance and moral control. They answered to the necessity of improving the knowledge of the Catechism and bolstering the emotional attachment of the people to Catholicism and the Church. The Jesuit missions were characterised by a strong connection with rhetoric and theatrical techniques, which were the basis of the Jesuit oratorical pedagogy. They focused on the so-called religio carnalis, a piousness that could be felt with the human senses and moved sentiments. Segneri perfected the penitential mission, presenting himself as the Christ of the Passion: through the public flagellation, he shared the Passion of Christ, and pushed people to penance. In this way, he became the most important visual focus of the mission, and he moved the listeners to the internal conversion. Thanks to the use of theatrical techniques, people were not only listeners, but were absorbed in the atmosphere created by the missionaries: they were at the same time actors and spectators. This project will contribute to our understanding of the fundamental importance of visual missionary techniques in the re-evangelisation of Early Modern Italy, in the age of counter-reformation and Catholic revival.
