UC Riverside UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Communities at a Crossroads: Augustinian Monasteries, Authority, and the Counter- Reformation in the Franco-Italian Frontier, 1550-1650 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/19v633h8 Author Rivera, Matthew Publication Date 2017 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Communities at a Crossroads: Augustinian Monasteries, Authority, and the Counter-Reformation in the Franco-Italian Frontier, 1550-1650 A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History by Matthew Thomas Rivera September 2017 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Randolph Head, Chairperson Dr. Thomas Cogswell Dr. Hilary Bernstein Copyright by Matthew Thomas Rivera 2017 The Dissertation of Matthew Thomas Rivera is approved: _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside Acknowledgements Authors of dissertations acquire many financial and personal debts. This brief acknowledgement is but a modest attempt at recognizing some of those without whose help this project would not have seen completion. My dissertation supervisor, Dr. Randolph Head, is a model scholar and advisor. His unwavering support, intellect, good humor, and wisdom have been of inestimable value both personally and professionally. I wish to thank Dr. Hilary Bernstein for her invaluable comments on two drafts of this dissertation. Dr. Thomas Cogswell, since my first visit on campus, has graciously shared his keen historical mind, from which I profited throughout my graduate student career at the University of California- Riverside. Ms. Iselda Salgado patiently and professionally assisted me with administrative matters to ensure that my physical distance from campus did not hinder me from filing this dissertation in a timely manner. Research projects of this magnitude are expensive to undertake. I wish to thank the Institute of International Education for their generous grant, which made research in the French archives possible. In addition, the Northeast Modern Language Association Fellowship financed my one-month stay in Chicago, where I worked in the Newberry Library’s Early French Political Pamphlets collection. And finally, I wish to acknowledge the financial support of the Center of Ideas and Society and the History Department, both of UC-Riverside. I received unfaltering encouragement from my family, friends, and colleagues, who are too many to list here. In particular, my parents never stopped believing in me. Nor did my colleague and friend, Professor Emerita Julia Young, who edited so many iterations of this project. !iv The staff at libraries and archives in the United States and France offered me superior professional support. In particular, I wish to acknowledge the Rivera Library at UC-Riverside, the Ames Library at Seattle Pacific University, and the Hurst Library of Northwest University (Kirkland, WA). Because I worked there most, the archivists at the Archives Départementales du Rhône in Lyon deserve a particular mention. And finally, I would be most remiss should I fail to mention the Dominicans of the convent Saint-Nom-de-Jésus of Lyon. Their generous extension of friendship and community while I labored in the archives sustained me through my long days with the manuscripts. Participating in the monastic rhythms of their community—albeit as a guest—helped me to imagine the lives of early modern monastics. All those who offered assistance in any way during the completion of this project receive my deepest thanks and gratitude. Any shortcomings in the text that follows bear no reflection on them, but solely on me. It is because of the sacrifices of my late grandparents, Salvador and Mabel Rivera, that the completion of this project is possible. This dissertation is dedicated to their memory. !v ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Communities at a Crossroads: Augustinian Monasteries, Authority, and the Counter-Reformation in the Franco-Italian Frontier, 1550-1650 by Matthew Thomas Rivera Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in History University of California, Riverside, September 2017 Dr. Randolph Head, Chairperson Examining the Augustinians of the Franco-Italian frontier, this dissertation explores the beliefs and management of Augustinian conventual communities between roughly 1550 and 1650. It establishes normative patterns of Augustinian faith and practice in this frontier zone, while also situating the order within the European intellectual and religious currents of both Renaissance Humanism and the Counter- Reformation. It also demonstrates that the Augustinian communities tended to experience the same pressures as other religious communities, namely the material losses owing to the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598), as well as the constraints imposed by the Edict of Nantes upon the preaching and printing of the regular clergy. !vi Further, it features two major case studies of convents founded in the sixteenth century. A case-study approach enables us to see the ways in which the introduction of Protestantism and state-building into the politico-religious landscape of early modern France impacted two Augustinian religious communities, and by extension, other members of the regular clergy, especially the mendicants. In the cases of the Augustinian communities at Brou and L’Osier, shifting religious and political alliances revealed the growing impact of dynasticism and internecine rivalries upon the management of Augustinian communities. Such forces diminished the historic power and presence of monastic communities in municipalities in the Franco-Italian frontier. !vii Table of Contents Chapter 1: Augustinians and Their Place in Eastern France……………………………………………1 Chapter 2: French Augustinians in Larger Worlds: Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Currents……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…43 Chapter 3: French Augustinian Spirituality in Community………………………………………….…72 Chapter 4: French Augustinian Materiality in Community……………………………………….……85 Chapter 5: Brou……………………………………………………………………………………………………….……108 Chapter 6: L’Osier…………………………………………………………………………………………………………151 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…177 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…..181 !viii CHAPTER 1: Augustinians and Their Place in Eastern France This dissertation examines the ways in which conflicts over authority and influence shaped the ministry of the regular clergy in Eastern France. The following case studies place the Augustinian order within the constellation of other regular clerical houses in Counter-Reformation Europe. In addition, this dissertation addresses the problem of authority in the houses, and how different entities—civic leadership, bishops, dukes, kings—interfered in the management of communities of the regular clergy. Further, this dissertation underscores the role of dynastic and internecine rivalries in the management of Augustinian houses. The Augustinians date from the thirteenth century as one of the four mendicant orders of the Catholic Church. In the sixteenth century, the internal structures of the Church underwent a significant evolution that impacted the Augustinians. These changes owed to the Renaissance, and the Catholic Church’s efforts both to continue to reform itself (the Catholic Reformation) and to respond to critiques raised by the Protestants (the Counter-Reformation).1 Beginning in the 1510s, religious schism increasingly pervaded the areas of Western and Central Europe. By mid-century, warfare deepened the rift. In response, the Council of Trent (1545-63) assembled in Northern Italy to articulate doctrinal and practical Catholic responses to the religious schism in Western Europe. The Council lay the foundation for the Counter- Reformation. 1 John O’Malley, Trent and All That, (London: Harvard University Press, 2000), 127. As O’Malley argues, the Counter-Reformation was the ensemble of policies and actions taken both to thwart the advance of Protestantism and to keep the Catholic faithful in the fold in the wake of the ongoing defections during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. See also Michael A. Mullett, The Catholic Reformation, (London: Routledge, 1999); R. Po-Chia Hsia, The World of Catholic Renewal, 1540-1770, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). !1 In addition to this dissertation’s principle aim of demonstrating the various influences on the management of the Augustinian monasteries, I also argue that the regular clergy played an integral role in advancing the objectives of the Counter- Reformation. Although more work remains in order to forge a stronger link between the early modern French Augustinians and the objectives of the Counter-Reformation, correlative evidence from other religious orders in the region, coupled with intermittent evidence from some Augustinian theologians and manuscript devotional literature, suggests that the Augustinians served as agents of Counter-Reformation ideals.2 2 Because documents related to spiritual matters tended not to survive the Revolution, piecing together the spirituality of a French religious order is a harder task than understanding the material possessions of the same community. This lacuna notwithstanding, Augustinian writers in Western Europe who