The conquest of the soul

Carlo and Federico Borromeo achieved fame by turning Milan into the foremost laboratory of the Italian Counter-Reformation. This monograph interprets their programme of penitential discipline as a quest to reshape Lombard society by reaching into the souls of its inhabitants. This integration of the public and private spheres had vast implications- the transformation of the clergy into a professional body, a bureaucratic-juridical turn into sacramental practice, interventions into the ritual ord