Tra ragion di Stato e ragion liturgica. La riduzione delle feste religiose nell’Italia di Benedetto XIV (1742-1756)

During the first years of the pontificate of Benedict xiv, Italian Catholicism was crossed by a heated debate about the opportunity to reduce the number of religious holidays. The supporters of this reform, particularly Ludovico Antonio Muratori, believed that it was necessary in order to obtain a better sanctification of the holidays and to increase the working days for the benefit of the poor. The pope, who was cautiously in favor of this reduction, preferred not to introduce a reform of the festive calendar valid for the whole Church, but he granted it on a case-by-case basis. Using a largely unexplored archival documentation, this articles reconstructs the concrete repercussions that this debate had in mid-eighteenth-century Italy, retracing the initiatives undertaken by the governments of several Italian States (Kingdom of Naples, Grand Duchy of Tuscany, Austrian Lombardy, Duchies of Modena and Parma) and by some bishops in order to reduce the number of religious holidays, the reasons which led them and the consequences that these initiatives produced in the social and religious context of the Italian Peninsula.