7 - In loco parentis: confraternities and abandoned children in Florence and Bologna

Summary

The conservatory and the orphanage were institutions largely new to the sixteenth century. These lay–directed hostels surrounded orphaned and abandoned girls and boys with the kind of protection, discipline and care associated with the convents and monasteries on which they were so obviously based and of which, some historians would argue, they were so obviously an extension. Such children had traditionally found shelter in the extended family, religious houses, and multi-purpose ospedali, but the conservatory and orphanage as specialized institutions spread only from the sixteenth century. While far more children found shelter in foundling homes and workhouse orphanages, the more restrictive conservatories and orphanages tell more about the role of class and social kinship in the construction of social order. This article will review the origins of conservatories and orphanages in Florence and Bologna, discuss entrance requirements and life in the homes, and consider whether administration of these homes by confraternities had any particular significance. On a purely practical level, confraternities provided a traditional institutional format for lay charitable administration. The Catholic Reform movement broadly promoted both confraternities and charitable institutions for marginal groups, and the new orders of the reform found the quasi-confraternal lay congregations an adaptable and more controllable vehicle for the kind of lay charitable work that extended the efforts of the regular clergy. But practical considerations alone offer insufficient explanation, particularly for a time not ruled by bottom lines, quality management strategies, or any of the other nostrums of modern business administration.