| Summary: | Before the Council of Trent (1545-1563), in Italy as in the most of Europe godparenthood connected social groups in a complex way, with a mix of horizontal and vertical ties. The Council, forbidding social customs based on the selection of many godfathers per baptism, caused an unvoluntary verticalization. At the beginning of 17th Century godparenthood acquired a clientelar character which did not disappear until when a second crucial transformation began. If, until the Early Modern Age, selection of godparents was systematically made outside the kinsmen group, during 18th and 19th Century relatives began to become the most chosen godfathers so that today in most of Catholic Europe it is common to select an uncle, a cousin or a grandfather. This double movement of transformation involved all of Catholic Europe but, if in the case of the first transformation the chronology of the change shows just small variations, for the second we find significant differences whose causes and effects have still to be explained. Beginning with the case of Ivrea in Northern Italy and making use of information found in historiography, the article formulates hypothesis about grand transformations of godparenthood as a social institution, from the Middle Ages up until today.
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