The Carlyle Lectures 2027 | The Art of Governing in Post-Reformation Catholicism: Post-Reformation Catholicism and Pastoral Power

Professor Stefania Tutino (UCLA)

Michel Foucault saw post-Reformation Catholicism as a laboratory of government, and the Church’s pastoral power as a precursor of modern governmentality. This lecture takes that insight seriously, then looks inside the machinery. What emerges is less orderly than Foucault imagined, and more revealing of how Catholic authority actually worked.

Location: South School, Examination Schools

Date and Time: Tuesday, 19 January 2027, from 5–6pm

About the series 

The Art of Governing in Post-Reformation Catholicism: Rethinking Questions of Authority, Conscience, and Knowledge in Early Modern Europe

How did the Catholic Church govern after the Reformation? This lecture series examines that question through a series of studies on authority, conscience, memory, and truth in early modern Europe. Moving between theology and administration, political theory and archival sources, Rome and the localities, it traces the institutions and practices through which the Church sought to guide conduct and regulate its flock. What emerges is a world of overlapping jurisdictions and competing authorities, where governing depended as much on negotiation and adaptation as on command.