Tra rito e performance: la «regolata devozione» milanese nel Settecento

Abstract

Starting from the analysis of documentary sources, the study covers some historical joints to the delicate relationship between popular devotions - analyzed from the standpoint of performance - and the Austrian Government, in Milan. The ambiguous relationship between ecclesiastical power and civil power in the town of Lombardy, since 1950, will tend to limit the baroque magnificence of external worship, without being able to eliminate entirely some emotional events; the result will survive the reforms of Giuseppe II, albeit in a more intimate form of “regulated devotion”, re-emerging also in the Jacobean three-year period.