Conceptualizing the priest: lay and episcopal expectations of clerical reform in late 17th-century Padua

Priests occupied a contested space during the post-Tridentine era. Reforming bishops like Gregorio Barbarigo of Padua (bp. 1664-1697) wanted to fashion their clergy into leaders capable of instructing and guiding their parishioners. The ideal cleric would be seminary educated, have a true vocation, and would contentedly live a contemplative and incorrupt life. Some clergy managed to fit this image, but inevitably many fell short. While this was disappointing to the reforming bishop and detrimental to his overall reform plans, on a local level a given priest’s shortcomings were not always cause for lament. The laity had developed a more forgiving understanding of the priesthood. Parishioners expected their priest to fulfill all clerical obligations but cared little if he had a calling, and most saw the priest’s personal pastimes as acceptable unless they interfered with his ability to serve the parish or transgressed community norms. For most rural laity in the seventeenth century, the priesthood was an occupation more than a status. This article examines the differences between episcopal and lay conceptions of the priesthood and argues that through the reform attempts of post-Tridentine bishops like Barbarigo, laity were introduced to the concept of the priesthood as vocation and began to internalize some of the church’s priorities with regards to clerical comportment