Renaissance Inquisitors: Dominican Inquisitors and Inquisitorial Districts in Northern Italy 1474–1527 (review)

Michael Tavuzzi's new book is a natural sequel to his Prierias: The Life and Works of Silvestro Mazzolini da Prierio, 1456–1527 (1997), which studies a Dominican inquisitor, a Master of the Sacred Palace, an early protagonist against Luther, and writer on witches. We move from one to the many. In this pioneering work, Tavuzzi concentrates on those named as inquisitors in this understudied period of the Inquisition. In advancing knowledge, it provides more for those studying the Dominicans than to students of the medieval Inquisition and its trials, who may be somewhat disappointed because few records of actual investigations survive other than for Modena, and Tavuzzi has found no hidden repositories. This book deals only with Dominican inquisitors in Northern Italy; Franciscans were also appointed inquisitors there, as in the Veneto, but they remain obscure. Using the Archivio Generale dell'Ordine dei Predicatori in Rome, Tavuzzi has identified nearly 100 Dominicans named as inquisitors from 1474 to 1527: they are briefly profiled in an appendix, while the main text treats seventeen of them in detail.

The Northern Italian Dominicans were initially attached to three provinces: the Conventuals in the Provinces of St. Peter Martyr and St. Dominic, and the reformed Observants in the Congregation of Lombardy (created in 1459). Inquisitors were appointed from all three, but steadily the Congregation of Lombardy, which started with few inquisitorial districts, took over convents from the other provinces and supplied more inquisitors. Inquisitors were no longer appointed from the St. Dominic Province from about 1500. The number of inquisitorial districts grew, but with constant reconfigurations, notably to fit political boundaries. Tavuzzi valuably profiles those appointed inquisitors, indicating their education (crucially in Bologna and Pavia), their movements around convents, their officeholding, teaching posts, periods as Priors and Provincials, as Master of the Sacred Palace in Rome, and their writings. For many, being named as inquisitor seems part of a career move, or a sign of recognition of other roles. Unlike post-1542 inquisitors, they were not singleminded practitioners. Some held the title for many years —notably Aimone Taparelli for Savigliano (1465–95) and Giovanni Rafanelli for Ferrara and Modena (1477–1505) —but were busy with many other duties, and little or nothing is known of their own inquisitorial activities. We can know more of persecutions under their inquisitorial vicars and other clergy, some of whom were characterized by the podestà of Brescia in 1521 as "overdressed peasants, who have devoured their shame as well as their conscience" (194–95). We learn something about tension between the Dominicans, with personal rivalries, Conventual conflicts, and genuine and false allegations of corruption.

Despite limited surviving evidence, Tavuzzi provides a useful picture of inquisitorial activity against Waldensians, Judaizers, and particularly witches. Pressures to persecute Waldensians largely came from political rulers, such as those of Saluzzo and Monferrato, and of Duchess Iolanda of Savoy in 1476, ready to deploy soldiers. Inquisitors often followed lukewarmly, as they did over Judaizers (for example, in Genoa in the 1490s). In contrast, some vehemently persecuted witches, either directly or by superintending vicars: notably Niccolò Constantini, covering Vercelli, Ivrea, and Novara (1460–83), allegedly responsible for the burning of 300 male and female witches; Lorenzo Soleri, his successor from 1483 to 1505, whose witch-hunting experiences at Bormio in the Valtellina supposedly informed the Malleus Maleficarum book; and Girolamo da Lodi, inquisitor of Brescia (1518–26), whose campaigns in the Valcamonica (1518–21) aroused the ire of secular officials in Brescia and Venice, as we know from reports in Sanudo's famous Diarii. Tavuzzi's appendix 2 provides a grim calendar of witch persecutions and burnings. Some inquisitors like Constantini, or Modesto Scrofa for Como in the 1520s, blatantly disregarded judicial procedure and constantly used torture —as did many others, if with more respect for due process. Tavuzzi argues that the earlier...