The post–Tridentine regulation of the devotional impact of charismatic phenomena, which had a great influence on devout communities between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, offers an opportunity to reflect on the semanticization of mystical experiences by the ecclesiastical hierarchy. This paper aims to analyze the intense confrontation between Roman directives and the strength of territorial roots, based on documentation from the Archives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in order to propose a hypothesis of systemic trends, but also episodes that had a strong impact on the urban system of some cities on the Italian peninsula. From the analysis of the language used in the policy of loyalty and, therefore, of strengthening regular orders, especially those of post–conciliar formation engaged in the processes of rooting and identity definition, it seems possible to hypothesize a periodizing turning point in the internalization of devotional ties and in the procedures for strengthening the religious and political networks that supported the construction of the system of transmission of religious models. This is a mechanism in which the construction of knowledge has intertwined the transformation and orientation of behaviors with a progressive and profound sedimentation in the social fabric. The effort of normalization, on which historiography has insisted more than on practices of control, will be analyzed here in terms of its impact on the dynamics between forms and meanings that ran through hagiographic narratives, graphic representations, and pious practices throughout the seventeenth century.
Keywords: History of devotion; Gender History; Social and Religious History; Emotions; Charisma