The book uncovers three key figures of early sixteenth-century Italy and their companies adding an innovative perspective to the historiographical account of sixteenth-century Italian reforming movements and offering researchers and students of early modern religion and Italy with a new narrative of the Italian reforming movements.
The companies aimed at reforming not the Church, but society at large, starting from the inner conversion of the individual (lay and religious, male and female), in order to return to the model of the first Christian communities, showing students and researchers how these reforms influenced and shaped Italian society.
The book also suggests that the companies represented a specific expression of a wider ascetic and mystic 'unconventional' current that emerged in parallel with the spiritual milieus that were open to Luther's ideas, providing researchers and postgraduate students with an innovative and nuanced analysis of 15th and 16th century Italian spirituality.
