Federico Barbierato – författare

This book investigates the circulation, regulation, and interpretation of magical texts, focusing on the Clavicula Salomonis (Key of Solomon), one of the most sought-after and feared books of the time. Drawing on inquisitorial records, trial proceedings, and archival sources, Federico Barbierato uncovers how these texts were read, copied, and exchanged, illuminating the blurred boundaries between religious orthodoxy, scientific inquiry, and the occult.The Early Modern period was marked by a deep ambivalence toward books of magic, which were revered as sources of hidden knowledge yet condemned as dangerous and subversive. Nowhere was this tension more evident than in Venice, a city where inquisitorial censorship clashed with a vibrant book culture. At the heart of this volume lies a detailed exploration of the people who interacted with magical writings—monks, exorcists, book dealers, artisans, and even suspected heretics—revealing how these texts served multiple purposes, from spiritual protection to financial speculation. By examining how authorities sought to suppress, reinterpret, and sometimes co-opt magical knowledge, the book provides fresh insights into the dynamics of censorship, literacy, and power. Barbierato moves beyond the history of forbidden books to reconstruct a network of exchanges that shaped Early Modern attitudes toward magic and heterodox knowledge.In the Room of the Circles will appeal to scholars and students of Early Modern history, book history, religious studies, and intellectual history, as well as readers interested in the history of censorship and the relationship between knowledge and power.

Early modern Venice was an exceptional city. Located at the intersection of trade routes and cultural borders, it teemed with visitors, traders, refugees and intellectuals. It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that such a city should foster groups and individuals of unorthodox beliefs, whose views and life styles would bring them into conflict with the secular and religious authorities. Drawing on a vast store of primary sources - particularly those of the Inquisition - this book recreates the social fabric of Venice between 1640 and 1740. It brings back to life a wealth of minor figures who inhabited the city, and fostered ideas of dissent, unbelief and atheism in the teeth of the Counter-Reformation. The book vividly paints a scene filled with craftsmen, friars and priests, booksellers, apothecaries and barbers, bustling about the city spaces of sociability, between coffee-houses and workshops, apothecaries' and barbers' shops, from the pulpit and drawing rooms, or simply publicly speaking about their ideas. To give depth to the cases identified, the author overlays a number of contextual themes, such as the survival of Protestant (or crypto-Protestant) doctrines, the political situation at any given time, and the networks of dissenting groups that flourished within the city, such as the 'free metaphysicists' who gathered in the premises of the hatter Bortolo Zorzi. In so doing this rich and thought provoking book provides a systematic overview of how Venetian ecclesiastical institutions dealt with the sheer diffusion of heterodox and atheistical ideas at different social levels. It will be of interest not only to scholars of Venice, but all those with an interest in the intellectual, cultural and religious history of early-modern Europe.