THESIS ABSTRACTS 13 particular emphasis on the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The major divisions of the study are: an historical overview; aspects of spirituality; membership procedures and statistics; administration and finances; public charitable and cultic functions. In Bologna the number of confraternities grew in four stages from the mid-thirteenth century, with peaks in the early fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries arising out of peninsular devo-tional reform movements.

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... major types emerged: large lau-desi groups oriented to praise and public charity, and smaller battuti groups oriented to personal penitence. By the mid-sixteenth century, 80 confraternities gathered up to 20% of the adults in a city of 55,000. Lay committees and officers devised collective and individual devotional exercises based on mendi-cant models, and hired priests to perform sacraments otherwise administered through the local parish. The communities controlled membership through novitiates and disciplinary procedures ; most members attended worship regularly and significant proportions retained membership until death. The largely arti-sanal membership based frequently-revised administrative forms on guild models. Expanding public roles undercut the brother-hoods' broad public base. Social stratification began in the later fifteenth century, particularly among the larger, charitable con-fraternities. The groups dominated by patricians became wealthy land-holding institutions whose resources were used to expand Bologna's control over the contado. By the mid-sixteenth century , local politics and Tridentine reforms had combined to erode the confraternities' artisanal membership, lay autonomy, and devotional purpose, particularly among brotherhoods which fulfilled public charitable and cultic functions.