TY - JOUR
T1 - Group Therapy for Venetian Adolescents? Giannantonio Bernardi’s “Prudence, a didactic prolusion” (Venice, 1709) and Jesuit Moral Counselling in Verse
AU - Haskell, Yasmin
PY - 2017/3/10
Y1 - 2017/3/10
N2 - While Jesuits composed more Latin didactic poetry than any other order
or profession in the early modern period, they—perhaps
surprisingly—rarely chose moral, political, or spiritual subjects for
versification in this genre. One of the few exceptions to the rule is Prudentia, prolusio didascalica
(Prudence, a didactic prolusion) by the Paduan-born Jesuit Giannantonio
Bernardi (1670–1743), first published in Venice in 1709. Bernardi seems
to have spent his whole life as a teacher, preacher, and confessor in
northern Italy, apart from a stint accompanying his penitent, the
Venetian envoy and future Doge, Carlo Ruzzini, to Constantinople. This
paper sets Bernardi’s didactic poem in the context of some other Jesuit
didactic poems of moral or spiritual counsel, especially Pierre
Mambrun’s Psychourgicon: De cultura animi (La Flèche: ex officina
Gervasii Laboe, 1661), as well as a selection of his other moral
writings. It finds the Jesuit dimension to Bernardi’s poem more in its
literary and institutional contexts and paratexts than in the bare
philosophical doctrine it relays.
AB - While Jesuits composed more Latin didactic poetry than any other order
or profession in the early modern period, they—perhaps
surprisingly—rarely chose moral, political, or spiritual subjects for
versification in this genre. One of the few exceptions to the rule is Prudentia, prolusio didascalica
(Prudence, a didactic prolusion) by the Paduan-born Jesuit Giannantonio
Bernardi (1670–1743), first published in Venice in 1709. Bernardi seems
to have spent his whole life as a teacher, preacher, and confessor in
northern Italy, apart from a stint accompanying his penitent, the
Venetian envoy and future Doge, Carlo Ruzzini, to Constantinople. This
paper sets Bernardi’s didactic poem in the context of some other Jesuit
didactic poems of moral or spiritual counsel, especially Pierre
Mambrun’s Psychourgicon: De cultura animi (La Flèche: ex officina
Gervasii Laboe, 1661), as well as a selection of his other moral
writings. It finds the Jesuit dimension to Bernardi’s poem more in its
literary and institutional contexts and paratexts than in the bare
philosophical doctrine it relays.
U2 - 10.1163/22141332-00402003
DO - 10.1163/22141332-00402003
M3 - Article (Academic Journal)
SN - 2214-1324
VL - 4
SP - 186
EP - 208
JO - Journal of Jesuit Studies
JF - Journal of Jesuit Studies
IS - 2
ER -