The Inquisitor in the Hat Shop: Inquisition, Forbidden Books and Unbelief in Early Modern Venice by Federico Barbierato (review)

This is a study of unbelief in Venice from the 1640s to the 1740s. It is an account of various kinds of skepticism, libertinism, atheism, and irreligion expressed by Venetians and others in so far as they came to the attention of ecclesiastical and civil authorities. The book is based on extensive reading of the trials found in the archives of the Venetian Holy Office, including a limited number of trials from Veneto inquisitions referred to Venice, and, secondarily, the archives of the Inquisitori dello Stato, the civil magistracy that investigated crimes involving nobles.

Barbierato sees Venice as an open city in which people spoke freely despite Church and state. Many persons came to Venice from the rest of Italy and beyond, sometimes fleeing local ecclesiastical and civil authorities. It was not difficult to obtain prohibited books, as previous scholars have documented. Venice was an excellent news center, because authors, ambassadors, and Christian and Jewish merchants came to Venice to exchange and gather information. Those who sought news and ideas did not worry about whether their sources believed in God. People expressed heterodox ideas in craft shops, barbershops, bookstores, Piazza San Marco, and family gatherings. Barbierato emphasizes the “virtuoso,” the man who dominates a free-wheeling discussion.

Several forms of unbelief circulated, beginning with denial of the immortality of the soul. Barbierato offers evidence about the circulation of the views of Cesare Cremonini (d. 1631), professor of philosophy at the University of Padua for many years. He describes a Father Antonio Rocca (d. 1653), who denied the immortality of the soul in the philosophy lessons that he delivered to noblemen, doctors, lawyers, and chemists in his house in Venice. The idea that religion was invented to control the people circulated; according to a famous version, Moses, Christ, and Mohammed were three great imposters invented by rulers. A version of skepticism held that sex between unmarried people was not a sin. A bastardized form of quietism became unbelief: if a person was close to God, he possessed enlightenment and could ignore the commandments of the Church. In the scholarly debate concerning whether original popular incredulity existed, or learned incredulity trickled down, the author cautiously takes the side of original popular incredulity. Nevertheless, much of what he has uncovered looks like popular versions of learned incredulity. The book concludes with the trials of a circle of men who met in the house of a hatter to discuss free masonry and much else in the 1730s. When it convicted, the Venetian Inquisition levied light penalties, the heaviest of which were a few years in prison, usually later shortened. Because it had to keep in mind the constraints imposed by the state’s jurisdictional claims, the Inquisition sought to limit unbelief. It did not try to stamp it out.

The book is based on much archival material and wide reading in secondary sources. The prose is clear, vigorous, and sometimes verbose. Barbierato provides numerous colorful quotations of people appearing before the Inquisition in lively English translations. Unfortunately, he does not include the original Italian in the notes. The bibliography is very extensive, although the citations do not give pagination for articles in collective volumes or list translators. This is a good book about unbelief in Venice.