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Reviewed by:
  • Heresy, Culture, and Religion in Early Modern Italy: Contexts and Contestations.
  • Christopher F. Black
Ronald K. Delph, Michelle M. Fontaine, and John Jeffries Martin, eds. Heresy, Culture, and Religion in Early Modern Italy: Contexts and Contestations. Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies 76. Kirksville: Truman State University Press, 2006. xiv + 266 pp. index. illus. bibl. $49.95. ISBN: 1-931112-58-4.

This stimulating and eminently readable collection of twelve articles, dedicated to Elizabeth Gleason, aims to highlight some more recent approaches by some leading historians from Italy and North America to the study of [End Page 525] religious debate and conflict and concepts of heresy in Italy and of attempts to control the unorthodox from the 1530s to 1590s. Many contributions follow Gleason's subtle and nuanced approach to the religious debates and understanding of heresy in Italy, notably shown in her study of Gasparo Contarini. The collection should appeal equally to Italian specialists, to scholars wishing to update themselves on recent interpreters of the Italian religio-cultural scene (discarding old confessional Catholic, Protestant, and Marxist baggage), and to students without Italian, who here have important exemplars from some of the best Italian scholars of religious ideas, the early Roman Inquisition, and censorship: Massimo Firpo, Gigliola Fragnito, Silvana Seidel Menchi, and Elena Bonora.

Seidel Menchi's "The Inquisitor as Mediator" is not new (unlike the rest), but a translation of a key article published rather inaccessibly in 1984; using mainly records from Venice, Modena, and Friuli it provides an important weapon against still prevalent simplistic views of the Roman Inquisition and its procedures. Other articles here reinforce the argument that in the post-1542 Roman Inquisition ("refurbished," "revamped," as John Martin glosses), inquisitors outside Rome could initially at least be inquiring, flexible, educational, even indulgent — depending on their background; and the accused could argue back. Seidel Menchi's article, like several others, combines case studies with important general interpretations and helpful backgrounds for students. Fragnito's "The Expurgatory Policy of the Church and the Works of Gasparo Contarini" succinctly discusses the evolving versions of the Index of Prohibited Books and the problems of expurgation when the Congregation of the Index, its staff, and helpers lacked the resources (and willpower) to correct suspended books as the range of subject matter scrutinized increased especially in the 1590s. The fate of Contarini's Opera illustrates how suspension effectively became repression, as John Martin also underlines ("Introduction: Renovatio and Reform in Early Modern Italy"). Paul Grendler's "Gasparo Contarini and the University of Padua" uses his case study helpfully to indicate more broadly the Venetian controls over its university. Firpo's "Lorenzo Lotto and the Reformation in Venice" draws on his fascinating Artisti, gioiellieri, eretici: il mondo di Lorenzo Lotto tra Riforma e Controriforma (2001), emphasizing the complexity of reactions to the new religious ideas and debates and showing how social conditions could push and pull people like the enigmatic painter Lotto and his friends in different directions. Intriguingly, Lotto's retreat to sanctuary at Loreto came when the Holy House was governed by a former inquisitor. Similarly exemplifying Venetian complexity Marion Kuntz utilizes her special studies of Dionisio Gallo, a French admirer of the Serenissima, as a potential leader of true reform, arguing we should consider more the importance of Moses and the Old Testament for Venetian Justice in "Venice and Justice: Saint Mark and Moses."

Who should handle those dangerously considering new religious ideas, and how were issues in Modena seen by Rome as a hotbed of trouble? Michelle M. [End Page 526] Fontaine's "Making Heresy Marginal in Modena" is very valuable in this context, and for the debates about the early development of the Roman Inquisition and heresy control. She shows how Bishop Egidio Foscarari saw heresy issues as essentially private and an episcopal responsibility, and so sought to avoid inquisitorial intransigence and condemnations by encouraging the appointment of mild officials and by trying to reform the heterodox, especially in the Modena Academy, privately. Unfortunately revelation of his notebook became ammunition for later Inquisition intransigence. This article also reveals differing Dominican attitudes over persuasion versus repression. For excellent insights into later inquisitorial complexities, benefiting from the now-accessible central...

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