Visioni del conforto in Ercole Tasso

Il confortatore (The Comforter) by Ercole Tasso was published in 1595 as a readaptation and translation into the Italian vernacular of a successful work by the Jesuit Juan de Polanco. Tasso's book was conceived as a manual intended for members of Bergamo's elite, enrolled in the city's largest confraternity, with the aim of teaching them how to console the dying and how to assist those condemned to death. This essay reconstructs the genesis of the text and compares it with Polanco’s, attempting to identify the differences between the two works, to list the sources used by Tasso, and to focus on the author's idiosyncratic religious culture