Gli Ordini della divota Compagnia delle dimesse; che vivono sotto il nome, et la protettione della purissima Madre di Dio Maria Vergine

CONGREGATIO FILIARUM AB IMMACULATA CONCEPTIONE
COMPAGNIA DELLE DIMESSE
4to (196x150). [12], 109, [3] pp. Collation: *6 A-O4. Woodcut device with St. Catherine of Alexandria kneeling before the Virgin Mary and Child on the title page, woodcut vignette of the Virgin Mary and Child in heaven surrounded by 16 smaller vignettes of the four Evangelists and 12 events from the life of the Virgin on l. *6v, woodcut vignette of the Virgin Mary and Child in heaven with angels within a typographic frame on l. O3r, woodcut coats-of-arms of the Cardinals Michele Priuli and Agostino Valier facing each other at the bottom of their respective letters of approval of the Ordini on ll. O3v-4r, colophon on l. O4v. With a dedication by the master and sisters of the Congregation to the Bishop of Vicenza Michele Priuli (1547-1603) dated 4 April 1587, followed by another dedication addressed by Antonio Pagani (from Monte San Felice, 1 September 1584) to the sisters of the Congregation and in particular to patronesses Deianira and Angela Valmarana, and Isabetta Franceschini who helped him to found the Order. With several historiated and decorative woodcut initials. Roman and italic types. 18th-century vellum, pastedowns covered with colored floral paper. A clean, well-preserved copy.
First edition (reprinted in 1617, 1672, and 1889) of the statutes of the Congregation of the "Suore dimesse figlie di Maria Immacolata", a female religious institution founded in Vicenza in 1579 by Antonio Pagani, a friar of the local convent of the Minor Observants of San Biagio. In 1584 the Bishop of Vicenza, Michele Priuli (1547-1603) and the Apostolic Visitor in Vicenza, Agostino Valier (1531-1606) approved the congregation and its statutes (their letters of approval dated 1584 are printed at the end of the edition together with their coats-of-arms, ll. O3v-4r). The new order quickly spread to other towns of the Republic of Venice: in 1595 a new institute was founded in Murano, followed by others in Thiene, Schio, Feltre, Verona, Bergamo, Verona, Padua (1615), and Udine (1656). In 1810, only the houses of Udine and Padua survived the Napoleonic suppression of the religious orders. The Dimesse still exist today and, since 1842, have devoted themselves mainly to the education of girls (https://www.dimesse.it/about-us/).
The Dimesse were grouped together in numbers of no more than nine, initially in different houses in Vicenza. They were all widows or young women who wished to begin a life of exclusive Christian poverty, deprived of the presence of outsiders. These women were not obliged to take vows, but they did follow a rather strict rule. A "massaro" acted as an intermediary with the outside world; the "nuns" praied during the day in honour of the Virgin Mary, did works of charity, received strangers who could stay no longer than three days; they could receive visits from relatives only on the 14th of each month; any increase in income had to be given to the poor of Christ. The internal structure of the rule provided for the annual election of a female adviser, the presence of a confessor and a chaplain at masses, and the observance of chastity, poverty and humility.
Antonio Pagani was born in Venice and studied canon and civil law in Padua, graduating in 1545. Influenced by Sister Paola Antonia Negri of the Compagnia delle Angeliche, Pagani entered the Order of the Bernabites in 1546 and was ordained a priest in 1550. In 1557 he entered the Franciscan Order, first in Udine and then in 1558 in Venice at the convent of San Francesco della Vigna. Between 1559 and 1562 he visited several towns in Veneto and Istria as a much sought-after teacher and preacher. In 1562 the general of his Order sent him to the Council of Trent. In 1565 he was transferred to the monastery of San Biagio in Vicenza. The newly appointed Bishop Matteo Priuli entrusted him with the reorganisation of the diocese of Vicenza. It was in this city that Pagani founded the Compagnia dei Fratelli della Croce and, in 1579, the Congregation of the Dimesse, and a few years later he wrote and published the present Ordini. He died in January 1589 in Vicenza. During his lifetime he published two collections of poems (Rime, 1555 and Rime spirituali, 1570) and several devotional works both in Italian and Latin (cf. Sr. R. Ferraresso, Il Venerabile Antonio Pagani, in: "Quarto centenario della morte del Ven. Antonio Pagani 1589-1989. Francescano, teologo, riformatore", Le Venezie Sacre, nuova serie, anno V, 1/2, Padua, 1988, pp. 17-28; see also G. Mantese, Il Ven. Antonio Pagani nella storia religiosa del Cinquecento vicentino e veneto, in: "Op. cit.", pp. 29-55).
"Si aprì così un ventennio [1565-1585] di attività intensa volta alla riforma dell'Oratorio di san Girolamo e alla fondazione della Compagnia dei Fratelli della Croce e delle Dimesse. La fondazione di queste ultime va ricondotta ad alcune terziarie francescane che, desiderose di attendere con maggior impegno alla vita interiore, vivevano ritirate in uno stabile, che comprendeva anche una torre, presso la chiesa di san Marcello. Animatore di questo movimento di terziarie, soprannominate 'Pizzocchere della Torre', che dipendevano dai Minori Osservanti di San Biagio, era il Pagani. Fra le terziarie vi erano le nobili vicentine Deianira e Angela Valmarana, cugine, e le sorelle Caterina, Domitilla e Paola Antonia Fiorini. A queste, che gradualmente si staccano dalle 'Pinzochere della Torre', fra' Antonio dà norme e regole, costituendo così, un nuovo nucleo di terziarie aventi una propria fisionomia. In un primo periodo, Deianira e le sue compagne, vivono in una casa del borgo Pusterla e mantengono contatti con le terziarie della torre. Poi, lentamente, ma con decisione, fin dall'agosto 1579, la separazione tra i due gruppi diviene sempre più profonda, fino al distacco completo. In un atto notarile, rogato in Vicenza il 25 agosto 1579, si legge: 'Vicentiae, in Borgo Pusterle in domo habitationis reverende sor Deianire per titulo de venditione et pretio finito et determinato de ducati mille et cento correnti, messer Sebastian Bovo, spicial in Vicentia, dà, vende et aliena alla magnifica domina sor Deianira fu quondam de magnifico Cavalier Gio Alvise nobile vicentina Pizochara de Terzo Ordine di Santo Francisco una casa grande, murata et solarata con corte et horto cinto de muro nel borgo de Portanova in contrà de Santo Roccho'. Con tale sistemazione si può dire abbia inizio la nuova Compagnia. Infatti, il 25 agosto 1579, venne sempre considerato come data di fondazione della Congregazione delle Dimesse. Il 2 ottobre 1584, il cardinale Agostino Valier, visitatore apostolico a Vicenza, si reca presso la Compagnia. E questa la prima comparsa ufficiale delle Dimesse che devono aver presentato al cardinale gli 'Ordini' " (Sr. R. Ferraresso, Op. cit., pp. 25-26; on the foundation of the congregation see also Sr. D. Anolfi, La fondazione delle Dimesse, in: "Op. cit.", pp. 95-124).
"Agostino Valier firmly believed in the project of lay consecration of women carried out by the Company of Saint Ursula, which served as a prototype for other women's congregations that sprang up locally at that time for the spiritual perfection of the women admitted to them and for the service of the community. The first institute to join the Ursulines was that of the Dimesse. Founded in Vicenza in 1579 by the Franciscan and former Barnabite Antonio Pagani, and approved by Agostino Valier himself as Apostolic Visitor of Vicenza in 1584, the institute of the Dimesse was also established in Verona during the last period of Valier's episcopate. More precisely, in 1602, Valier gave Father Galese Nichesola permission to continue the foundation of the Congregation of the Dimesse in Verona, which had been founded a few years earlier in imitation of the institute in Vicenza. Some information about the birth of the foundation in Verona can also be found in a letter written by Father Galese Nichesola on the 20th of February 1617 as an introduction to the Ordini della divota Compagnia delle Dimesse, che vivono sotto il nome et la protettione della purissima Madre di Dio Maria Vergine (Verona, Angelo Tamo, 1617). The Veronese Ordini, with the exception of Nichesola's introductory letter and the final reference to the final part of the De Beguinis decree of the Council of Vienne of 1311, are essentially a new edition of the Ordini prepared by Father Antonio Pagani for the Compagnia delle Dimesse of Vicenza and first printed in 1587. It should be noted that the Veronese edition of 1617, like the princeps of 1587, ends precisely with the two documents approving the Ordini delle Dimesse of Vicenza, which bear the names of the Bishop of Vicenza, Michele Priuli, and the Apostolic Visitor, Agostino Valier. The two documents date back to 1584, the year in which the first version of the Ordini for the Dimesse -of which the autograph manuscript is preserved in the Bertoliana Library of Vicenza- was written, which was essentially taken up again in the 1587 edition, although enriched with four important chapters on the 'Capitolazione' and purged of more explicit references to Franciscan spirituality. Unlike the Company of Saint Ursula, which was mainly for young women who wished to live as consecrated women within their own families, the Congregation of the Dimesse welcomed women of all ages, virgins and widows, and offered them the possibility of living in an alternative residence to the family home. Like the Ursulines, the Dimesse followed a monastic rule, but without public vows, and played an active role in teaching Christian doctrine, caring for the sick and undertaking other pious works. These similarities were no coincidence. Behind them was the will of the ecclesiastical hierarchies, precisely at a time when the rules of the cloister were being tightened, to favour the presence of models of life for women as an alternative to the usual scenario of convent/marriage, giving them dignity and value, placing them within a well-defined organizational network under the bishop and responding to a precise pastoral and educational program, traceable to a fundamental categorical imperative: the sanctification of society. A certainly ambitious goal, but one that the post-Tridentine Church could not avoid, and to which it sought to respond with new and renewed models of spiritual perfection, ever closer to the needs and particularities of the individual, even, as in this case, of those "single women" who so alarmed society at the time. Here, then, we see that for Valier the virgins and widows of the Congregation of Saint Ursula, and later of the Congregation of the Dimesse, were certainly an attempt to offer a different paradigm of reference for those women who wished to live out their own choice of faith in the world, but they were also exceptional pastoral instruments with enormous educational potential. As models of holy life and at the same time as promoters of works of charity in the middle of the century, they were able to act in the intimacy of families, to intervene to comfort the suffering of others in hospitals and to work for the promotion of knowledge of Christian doctrine in the catechism schools of the parishes. These groups of 'pious women' were therefore another important element in Valier's program of spiritual renewal and, more generally, in that of the Tridentine Church" (E. Patrizi, Pastoralità ed educazione: l'episcopato di Agostino Valier nella Verona post-tridentina, Milan, 2015, I, pp. 367-368).
Edit16, CNCE17188, OCLC, 1342995722 (only 2 copies in US libraries); P. Lotti, Opere del Pagani, in: "Op. cit.", pp. 166-167. (Inventory #: 213)