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

Unwed mothers, urban institutions and female agency in early modern Dutch, German and Italian towns

“…They fit within the broader proliferation in the Catholic world of integrated networks of semi-public charitable institutions from the sixteenth century onwards. This 'new philantropy' had a special systematic focus on women, seeking to correct, supervise and help 'problematic' women and girls by providing a safety net, often in the form of custody (Cavallo, 1998, p. 115;Terpstra, 2000). If foundling hospitals helped unwed mothers of illegitimate children salvage their honour, other institutions focused on different stages of their life, linking shorter and long-term care and control through a range of dowry investment funds, orphanages, conservatories, workhouses, prisons, and a variety of enclosed shelters for women at the fringes of society (Terpstra, 2013, p. 17).…”

Families, medical secrets and public health in early modern Venice

“…These larger families might be related by blood or marriage but frequently were not. 80 Terpstra's idea of a public family there to help when the private family could not cope complements studies of Catholic Reformation responses to poverty, which included the establishment of a number of charitable institutions modelled around notions of kinship. 81 The neglect of the idea of the family in the context of early modern Catholic welfare and medical institutions may draw from the association of care with the religious orders but in this context too the imagery of the family was pervasive.…”

Seven Hundred Years of Fraternal Orders

“…There are studies of such bodies as the convent-based Youth Confraternity of the Purification of the Virgin (which had an important economic role and spread ideas about the importance of public, political and religious duties), the confraternities of early modern Florence and Bologna (which prepared abandoned children for civic life and family roles), the German regional student fraternities, Landsmannschaften (with their duelling ritual and rules about the order of meetings and the colours to be worn on armbands and sashes) and the fraternal associations which helped men to form communities in nineteenth-century America. 1 In netting together such organizations, issues about how fraternal societies have been understood within different communities can be assessed, and comparisons of networks and effectiveness can be considered through the prism of gender.…”