Preaching and Inquisition in Renaissance Italy

Giorgio Caravale, Ph.D. (2000), University of Rome 'Sapienza', is Professor of Early Modern European History at the University of Roma Tre. He has recently been a member in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (2013-2014) and Lauro De Bosis Lecturer in the History of Italian Civilization at Harvard University (2010-2011). He is the author of Forbidden Prayer. Church Censorship and Devotional Literature in Renaissance Italy (Ashgate, 2011; first Italian edition 2003); George Mosse's Italy (ed. with L. Benadusi, Palgrave McMillan, 2014; It. ed. 2012); The Italian Reformation Outside Italy. Francesco Pucci's Heresy in Sixteenth Century Europe (Brill, 2015; It. ed. 2011), Beyond the Inquisition. Ambrogio Catarino Politi and the Origins of the Counter-Reformation (Notre Dame University Press, forthcoming; It. ed. 2007), and Storia di una doppia censura. Gli Stratagemmi di Satana di Giacomo Aconcio nell'Europa del Seicento (Edizioni della Normale, 2013).

“an excellent study of the Inquisition’s attempts to curb subversive preachers”.Christopher Black, University of Glasgow. In: Renaissance and Reformation, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Fall 2017), pp. 190–192.“This is a good book that advances our knowledge of the complex religious situation in the middle of the sixteenth century.”Paul F. Grendler, University of Toronto Emeritus. In: The Catholic Historical Review, Vol. 103, No. 3 (Summer 2017), pp. 584–585.“In this book, Giorgio Caravale has managed to “shed light on the darkness” of heretical preaching, to great effect [...]. This volume makes an important contribution to sixteenth-century Italian religious scholarship available to an Anglophone audience.”Jane K. Wickersham, University of Oklahoma. In: Journal of Jesuit Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1 (2018), pp. 136–138.“This volume, a very clear English translation from the original Italian by Frank Gordon, makes available to an Anglophone audience a valuable contribution to the scholarship of Catholic and Counter-Reformation Italy. It ably demonstrates the impressive rhetorical skills of heterodox preachers in the 1540s, a period when reforming ideas of questionable orthodoxy were circulating widely, particularly in Venice. It also makes clear the Inquisition’s growing concern with the spread of these ideas, and its efforts to clamp down on preachers around the middle of the century, adding to our understanding of its increasing power.”Celeste McNamara, University of Warwick. In: The English Historical Review, March 2019.

• AcknowledgementsList of FiguresAbbreviations Introduction to the English Edition 1 The Ambiguity of the Word 2 Words on Trial 3 Inquisition and Historiography 4 The History of Preaching in Renaissance Italy. Continuity and Discontinuity 5 Preaching and Heresy. A Two-sided Coin 6 Sermons, Orality and Inquisitorial Sources 7 Orality and Written Culture 8 Risks and Limits Prologue: Preaching, Heresy and Inquisition in the First Half of the Sixteenth-Century 1 Brescia, Land of Contagion 2 A Dangerous Friendship 3 A Network of Compromising Relationships 4 Pulpit on Trial: The Beginning of the Roman Inquisitorial Process5 An Erasmian Preacher 6 A Controversial Sacrament 7 Ambiguities of the Word: Dissimulation, Confession and Preaching 8 The End of the Trial 9 Rehabilitation 10 Conversion 11 Cosimo de Medici’s Roman Spy: ‘Secret Afffairs’ and ‘Insults’12 At the Service of Holy Roman Church 13 The ‘Scorpion’s Tail’: Controversy in PowerAppendix: Chizzola trial BibliographyIndex of NamesBacklist