The Protestant Reformation in Counter

Transcript

Church History 83:3 (September 2014), 571–589.
© American Society of Church History, 2014
doi:10.1017/S0009640714000560
The Protestant Reformation
in Counter-Reformation Italy, c. 1550–1660:
An Overview of New Evidence
SIMONE MAGHENZANI
This article aims to open up and overview some key questions surrounding the Italian
Reformation. It argues that the Italian Reformation cannot be viewed as a closed
book after the conclusion of the Council of Trent; instead there emerged new forms of
engagement between Italy and Protestantism, both within and outside the peninsula.
In particular, this article considers Protestant propaganda: the efforts by
communities of exiles, especially the Genevan Italian congregation, in printing
materials to send into Italy, and also sending personnel at critical junctures, all
extremely sensitive to political and religious contexts. The French Wars of Religion
provided an immediate model for what could be attempted in Italy, and so addressed
sometimes delicate issues such as nicodemism and martyrdom, while also providing
practical advice and support to Protestants in Italy. As such, this article shows that
Italy was not partitioned by some religious “Iron Curtain” from the rest of Europe,
but rather was still viewed as a potential battleground for international Calvinism.
O
N January 26, 1607, Sir Henry Wotton, the English ambassador in
Venice, wrote to Giovanni Diodati, the leading personality of the
Italian Protestant congregation in Geneva, and professor of Hebrew,
who had recently translated the Bible into Italian:
Monsignor Paolo [Sarpi] has informed [Sir Henry] Wotton that this is the
time to start any sort of secret congregation in Venice. He says it will
be useful to procure from Geneva the services of a learned, modest
and eloquent person, familiar with the Holy Scripture, who will stay in
the house of Monsignor Paolo and Wotton, and will constantly receive
direction from Monsignor Paolo regarding how to behave, and
maintenance and protection if necessary from Wotton. It will be better for
him to be introduced as a scholar in medicine. We thought to extract a sort
of liturgy from the actual Roman missal, deductis deducendis, and to
leave aside the most difficult and contested articles of our faith, without
The author wishes to thank Massimo Firpo as well as Eugenio F. Biagini, Diarmaid MacCulloch,
Mary Laven, and Alexandra Walsham for their suggestions. Warm thanks also to Joan E. Redmond
for reading several drafts of this article.
Simone Maghenzani is Ph.D. Candidate at the Università degli Studi di Torino.
571
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CHURCH HISTORY
any contrasting argument, but building general orthodox foundations, from
which everyone will be able to discover the arguments for salvation.1
This enciphered communication—Wotton writes in the third person—shows
the complexity of the religious panorama in Venice around the Interdict
crisis.2 Paolo Sarpi, the leading opponent of the Counter-Reformation, a sort
of “Montaigne in the habit of a friar” as sometimes described by historians,3
was the key figure in an international network of Swiss Calvinists, French
Huguenots, and English Protestants. They were committed to a combination
of “opening to Italians the doors of the heavenly truth” (which Diodati
gave as the reason for a new translation of the Bible)4 and the political
opportunity of opening a religious front in the peninsula. Without being
himself a Protestant—as a consistent historiographical debate on Sarpi’s
religion over last decades has demonstrated5—Sarpi often affirmed that
settling a Protestant congregation in Venice could be a useful instrument of
political pressure against Rome and the Spanish power.
Particularly challenging in the letter is Ambassador Wotton’s approach,
probably misrepresenting reality and over-estimating the actual number of
philo-protestants on the Laguna. A learned gentleman involved in Court
politics and a literary friend of the poet John Donne,6 Wotton was in contact
with Italian members of Geneva’s church and academy, and with leaders of
the Huguenot party, in particular with the “pope of the Huguenots,” Philippe
Duplessis-Mornay.7 He was also the patron of William Bedell, the chaplain
1
Archive du Musée Historique de la Réformation, Geneva, Mss. Suppl. 11/17. Partly published
in Eugène de Budé, Vie de Jean Diodati, théologien génevois (Lausanne: Bridel, 1869). All
translations, unless otherwise indicated, are the author’s own. See also: La Sacra Bibbia tradotta
in italiano e commentata da Giovanni Diodati, modern edition by Michele Ranchetti e Milka
Ventura Avanzinelli (Milan: Mondadori, 1999).
2
Gaetano Cozzi, Paolo Sarpi tra Venezia e l’Europa (Turin: Einaudi, 1979). See also: idem, “Fra
Paolo Sarpi, l’anglicanesino e l’Historia del Concilio Tridentino,” Rivista storica italiana 53
(1956): 559–619.
3
Paolo Sarpi, Opere, ed. Gaetano e Luisa Cozzi (Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1969); idem, Istoria
del Concilio tridentino (Turin: Einaudi, 1973); David Wootton, Paolo Sarpi: Between
Renaissance and Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Vittorio
Frajese, Sarpi scettico (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1994); Corrado Pin, ed., Ripensando Paolo Sarpi
(Venice: Ateneo Veneto, 2006).
4
Emanuele Fiume, Giovanni Diodati, un italiano nella Ginevra della Riforma: traduttore della
Bibbia e teologo europeo (Rome: Società biblica britannica e forestiera, 2007), 69.
5
Vittorio Frajese, “Crisi di metodo o attenuazione ideologica? Problemi della recente storiografia
sarpiana,” Rivista storica italiana 121 (2009): 667–691; Corrado Pin, ed., Ripensando Paolo Sarpi.
6
See Logan Pearsall Smith, The Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton, 2 vols. (repr., London:
Oxford University Press, 1966); Gerald Curzon, Wotton and His Worlds: Spying, Science and
Venetian Intrigues (Philadelphia: Xlibris, 2006).
7
Philippe Duplessis-Mornay, Mémoires, Correspondances et vie de M. Duplessis-Mornay, 12
vols. (Paris: Treuttel et Wurtz, 1824–1825; Geneva: Slaktine, 1969). On the Protestant
propaganda in Italy, see in particular: Bruna Conconi, “Le ‘pape des huguenots’ à Rome. Sur
quelques fragments inédits de la correspondance de Philippe Duplessis-Mornay retrouvés à la
REFORMATION IN COUNTER-REFORMATION ITALY
573
of the British Embassy in Venice and author of the Italian version of the Book of
Common Prayer, later provost of Trinity College Dublin, bishop of Kilmore
and Ardagh, and driving force of the Irish translation of the New Testament,
and who later died during the 1641 Irish rebellion.8 Wotton had close ties
with international Calvinism, the network of “Brethren in Christ” born in the
late sixteenth century that played a relevant part in seventeenth-century
religious conflicts, as demonstrated by Ole Peter Grell, Andrew Pettegree,
and Philip Benedict.9 For example, Wotton would also be a strenuous
supporter of the Gomarist party at the Synod of Dort in 1618, against the
Arminians. But his established-Church background became a fundamental
resource in the context in which he served. In need of strong support from
Geneva, he soon welcomed to Venice the very same Diodati, under the false
name of Giovanni Coreglia, as a sort of plenipotentiary agent of the
Genevan Company of Pastors. Diodati himself would later write a long
report on his travels in Italy, describing both his hopes and frustrations
stemming from Sarpi’s religious ambiguity.10 While writing that letter,
Wotton still believed in a renewed attempt at evangelization within the
Venetian Republic, and in the opportunity to extract a liturgy from the
Roman missal, focusing on salvation by grace as the only central article of
faith. In assuming this attitude, he was conscious that doctrine is connected
to social and political contexts, and that what really mattered were those
fundamentals of faith that lead people to salvation. It was a sort of religious
gradualism. Wotton supported the definition of the article of double
predestination; but that was useful in Netherlands, and not in Italy. What
Bibliothèque Angelica. Première partie,” Bullettin de la Societé de l’Histoire du protestantism
français 154 (2008): 77–107; idem, “Le ‘pape des huguenots’ à Rome. Sur quelques fragments
inédits de la correspondance de Philippe Duplessis-Mornay retrouvés à la Bibliothèque
Angelica. Deuxième partie,” in Bullettin de la Societé de l’Histoire du protestantism français
154 (2008): 577–608.
8
Gilbert Burnet, The Life of William Bedell, D.D., Bishop of Kilmore in Ireland (Dublin: M.
Rhames, 1736); Evelyn Shuckburgh, ed., Two Biographies of William Bedell, Bishop of
Kilmore: With a Selection of His Letters and an Unpublished Treatise (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1902). See also Stefano Villani, “La prima edizione italiana del Book of
Common Prayer (1685) tra propaganda protestante e memoria sarpiana,” Rivista di storia e
letteratura religiosa 44 (2008): 24–45. Stefano Villani, “Italian Translations of the Book of
Common Prayer,” in Travels and Translations, ed. Alison Yarrington, Stefano Villani, and Julia
Kelly (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2013), 303–319.
9
Ole Peter Grell, Brethren in Christ. A Calvinist network in Reformation Europe (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2011); Andrew Pettegree, Foreign Protestant Communities in
Sixteenth-Century London (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986); Philip Benedict, Christ Churches Purely
Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism (New Heaven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002).
10
Giovanni Diodati, Briève relation de mon voyage à Venise en septembre 1608, Archive du
Musée Historique de la Réformation, Geneva, Mss. Suppl. 11/16, fols. 1r-6v. See also, de Budé,
Vie de Jean Diodati.
574
CHURCH HISTORY
really surprises in this correspondence—apart from the reference to a consistent
group of religious dissenters in Venice—is the desire not to create trouble, but
to lead people to the Protestant faith step by step, starting from a general
evangelical persuasion, then to a more defined confession. In the years of socalled confessionalization, this was an unusual perspective.
This and other evidence pose problems: what remained of the Italian
Reformation after the Council of Trent? What, if any, relationship existed
between Italy and Protestantism during the Counter-Reformation? The usual
narrative tells of the disappearance of Protestantism in Italy because of the
Inquisition between 1560s–1570s, and of its rebirth during the Risorgimento,
with missionary initiatives coming from America, the United Kingdom, and
Switzerland in the years of Italian Unification.11 The opening to scholars in
1999 of the Archive of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
(formerly, the Holy Office), and major investigations into pamphlets, cheap
books and correspondence, reveal a different situation, in which religious
and political propaganda were deeply connected.
This article presents some open questions of research in progress on
Protestantism and Italy between the 1550s and 1660. The period examined
starts after the peace settlements of Augsburg and Cateau-Cambrésis, and at
the end of the Council of Trent; it closes after Oliver’s Cromwell death, with
the Treaty of the Pyrenees, and with the coronation of Louis XVI of France.
I. THEMES
AND
SOURCES
Since the 1930s, and after a long period of apologetic or controversial studies,
the Italian Reformation has been a strong subject of investigation among Italian
early modernists.12 Delio Cantimori, the historian of early antitrinitarians
and socinians, with his definition of heretics as “rebels” to every church
denomination, and Federico Chabod, with his interests in the state-building
process, became its two modern pioneers13 In subsequent years, European
and American historians drew closer together on the subject: while often
11
Giorgio Spini, Risorgimento e protestanti (1st ed., Florence: Vallecchi, 1956); Derek Beales
and Eugenio F. Biagini, The Risorgimento and Unification of Italy (rev. ed., Harlow: Longman,
2002); Simone Maghenzani, ed., Il protestantesimo italiano nel Risorgimento: influenze, miti,
identità (Turin: Claudiana, 2012).
12
Massimo Firpo, “La Riforma italiana del Cinquecento. Le premesse storiografiche,” in
Disputar di cose pertinente alla fede. Studi sulla vita religiosa del Cinquecento italiano (Milan:
Unicopli, 2003), 11–66; Susanna Peyronel, ed., Cinquant’anni di storiografia sulla Riforma e i
movimenti ereticali in Italia (Turin: Claudiana, 2002); Stefania Biagetti, Il mito della Riforma
italiana nella storiografia dal XVI al XIX secolo (Milan.: Franco Angeli, 2007).
13
Delio Cantimori, Eretici italiani del Cinquecento (Florence: Sansoni, 1939; rev. ed, Turin:
Einaudi, 1992); Federico Chabod, Per la storia religiosa dello Stato di Milano durante il
dominio di Carlo V, 2nd edition (Rome: Istituto storico per l’età moderna e contemporanea, 1962).
575
theologian-historians were interested in the thought of personalities like Peter
Martyr or Girolamo Zanchi, definitions such as “the Reformation of the
exiles” became common. Between the late 1960s and the early 1970s, social
issues and new methodologies involved what was finally called the study of
sixteenth-century Italian religious life. Well-known historians such as Carlo
Ginzburg, Adriano Prosperi, Massimo Firpo, and Gigliola Fragnito started
their research journeys working on the Inquisition, and the Reformation.14
In the meantime, new American research, led by scholars such as
John Tedeschi, increasingly engaged with the subject.15 Using different
methodologies (“history from below,” editions of sources, the study of
religious practices), the debate on the Italian religious crisis in sixteenthcentury has finally led to some common agreements.
After decades of studies on Valdesianism (the movement of the followers of
the Spanish heretic Juan de Valdés), the expression “the Italian Reformation”—
instead of “the Reformation in Italy”—is now preferred. While “the
Reformation in Italy” shows the influence of Lutheranism—but mostly of
Calvinism—in the peninsula, “the Italian Reformation” highlights the
creativity, originality, and fragility of Italian dissent. When we look at Italian
history between the sack of Rome in 1527 and the final session of the
Council of Trent in the early 1560s, we must point out the role of the
spiritualist theology of Valdesianism, or the importance of a book-manifesto
like the Beneficio di Cristo.16 The Italian Reformation was the intersection
14
Carlo Ginzburg, Il nicodemismo. Simulazione e dissimulazione religiosa nell’Europa del
Cinquecento (Turin: Einaudi, 1970); Adriano Prosperi, Tra evangelismo e Controriforma (Rome:
Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1969); idem, Tribunali della coscienza (Turin: Einaudi, 1996);
Gigliola Fragnito, La Bibbia al rogo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1997); idem, Proibito capire
(Bologna: Il Mulino, 2005). Massimo Firpo, Riforma protestante ed eresie nell’Italia del
Cinquecento (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1993); idem, Disputar di cose pertinente alla fede. Studi sulla
vita religiosa del Cinquecento italiano; idem, Inquisizione romana e Controriforma: studi sul
cardinal Morone e il suo processo di eresia (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2005). See also the edition of
sources by Massimo Firpo and Dario Marcatto, I processi inquisitoriali di Pietro Carnesecchi
(1557–1567). Edizione critica, 2 vols. (Vatican: Editrice Vaticana, 1998–2000); and Il processo
inquisitoriale del cardinal Giovanni Morone. Edizione critica, 6 vols. (Vatican: Editrice
Vaticana, 1989–1995), now in a new critical edition (3 planned volumes; first: Vatican: Editrice
Vaticana, 2011).
15
See John Tedeschi, The Prosecution of Heresy: Collected Studies on the Inquisition in Early
Modern Italy (Binghampton, N.Y.: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1991).
16
Carlo Ginzburg and Adriano Prosperi, Giochi di pazienza. Un seminario sul “Beneficio di
Cristo” (Turin: Einaudi, 1973); Tommaso Bozza, Nuovi studi sulla Riforma in Italia. I. “Il
beneficio di Cristo,” (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1976); Barry Collett, Italian
Benedectine Scholars and the Reformation: The Congregation of Santa Giustina of Padua
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1985); Massimo Firpo, “Il ‘Beneficio di Christo’ e il concilio di Trento
(1542–1546),” Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa, 31 (1995): 45–72, reprinted in Dal sacco
di Roma all’Inquisizione. Studi su Juan de Valdés e la Riforma italiana (Alessandria: Edizioni
Dall’Orso, 1998); Adriano Prosperi, L’eresia del Libro Grande. Storia di Giorgio Siculo e della
sua setta (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2000).
576
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of plural impulses of reform, in which it is difficult to establish boundaries of
doctrine. It was a syncretism able to combine Luther with the knowledge of
Erasmus’s works, and the reformism of religious orders.17 It had a spiritual
creativity that naturally produced many paths to nicodemism. As Delio
Cantimori demonstrated,18 nicodemism was not just a way of conformity,
but was an understanding of doctrine and religious practice as an
adiaphoron: as something unimportant to the personal relationship with God,
and not relevant to salvation. Because of its peculiar nicodemite character,
the Italian Reformation was weak, and, it might be said, destined to defeat.
Unlike the traditional historiography, it was not a weakness due to the lack
of a sovereign able to support it. On the contrary, one should emphasize the
social pluralism of these reform movements, able to involve common people,
but also cardinals, a major part of Neapolitan aristocracy, many Venetian
patricians, and a consistent group in the Florentine court.19
This was a creativity that calls into question not only previous studies on
religious dissent, but also those on the Catholic Reformation, rethinking the
usual approaches.20 This was a Reformation in which religious identities
were progressively clarified only in the 1550s, and mostly in the 1560s.
Cantimori’s research reconstructed heretics’ stories from the time of their
exile, not actually questioning their previous identities, or the propaganda in
that period coming from abroad.21 But while he was interested in the
European intellectual legacy of the Italian anti-Trinitarians, the relationship
between Italy and Reformation was not yet broken. If normally all these
studies concluded during the years of the Council of Trent, then the problem
is to understand how Italy was still perceived in those years as an open field
for religious struggle.
17
Silvana Seidel Menchi, Erasmo in Italia: 1520–1580 (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1987).
Delio Cantimori, “Il nicodemismo,” Quaderni di Belfagor 1 (1948): 12–23; Ginzburg, Il
nicodemismo. Carlos Eire, “Calvin and Nicodemism: A Reappraisal,” Sixteenth Century Journal
10 (1979), 45–69; Carlos Eire, “Prelude to Sedition? Calvin’s Attack on Nicodemism and
Religious Compromise,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 79 (1985), 120–145; Perez Zagorin,
Ways of Lying: Dissimulation, Persecution, and Conformity in Early Modern Europe
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990).
19
Francesco Gui, “La Riforma nei circoli aristocratici italiani,” in Cinquant’anni di storiografia;
Pierroberto Scaramella, “La Riforma e le élites nell’Italia centromeridionale,” in La Réforme en
France et en Italie: Contacts, comparaisons, contrastes, ed. Philip Benedict, Silvana Seidel
Menchi, and Alain Tallon (Rome: École française de Rome, 2007); and Philip Benedict, “Elites
and Reform in France and Italy,” in La Réforme en France et en Italie.; Massimo Firpo, Gli
affreschi di Pontormo a San Lorenzo: eresia, politica e cultura nella Firenze di Cosimo I (Turin:
Einaudi, 1997).
20
Hubert Jedin, Riforma cattolica o Controriforma? (last edition: Brescia: Morcelliana, 1995);
See at least: Paolo Prodi, ed., Disciplina dell’anima, disciplina del corpo e disciplina della
società tra Medioevo ed età moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1994).
21
Cantimori, Eretici.
18
577
In considering the experience of Italy as a defeated Reformation, instead of a
Reformation that never happened, it became an unquestioned assumption that
between the 1560s and the 1580s—the high watermark of heresy trials—the
Reformation progressively but inexorably disappeared from the peninsula.
Obviously, at the end of the period of immediate religious crisis, in the
1560s and 1570s, the attention of the Holy Office and of local bishops
moved in other directions: the control of devotion, the censorship of
literature, theology, the redefinition of sanctity models. The control of
women, nunneries, and libraries were also a focus of interest. Often, the
religious struggle became an internal struggle, between secular and regular
clergy, diocesan bishops and inquisitors, with efforts toward greater internal
control.
Traditional historiography proclaimed the disappearance of Protestantism
from Italy, apart of course from the peculiar case of the Waldensians. There
has been a long tradition of erudite studies on the Waldensian community
through the centuries,22 although these are not always connected to broader
Italian social and political history. In any case, some moments have received
extensive attention: the effect in Italy of the revocation of the Edict of
Nantes in 1685 by Louis XIV is for example well-known; John Milton’s
travels in Italy, and his poem in favor of Waldensians, which ensured Oliver
Cromwell’s support for them; and later, the pensions and donations offered
to the Waldensians by William and Mary have also been documented.23 But
often this material was confined to a quite narrow context. The real historical
enquiry, involving new and neglected sources, is about relations between the
world of the Reformation and Italy during the actual Counter-Reformation,
until the 1660s, with questions as to the religious position of Italy vis-à-vis
Protestant powers, and the potential for that to change. The traditional thesis
of an unequivocal tale of the Counter-Reformation Church building a new
Italian proto-national identity must be reconsidered.
From the 1560s until the 1660s, international Protestantism, especially but
not only international Calvinism, connected the aim of fighting the “darkness
of papism” with a proper understanding of Italian political contexts. From
London, Geneva, the Netherlands and other places, the “propagation of the
Gospel” in Italy was a living attempt to convert Italians, or to invite those
who converted to flee. That is why it is possible to use the expression
“protestant propaganda” in Italy. A deliberate anachronism and a word with
a negative meaning in English, it is possible to use it solely in its Latin
22
For example, Albert De Lange et al., eds., Dall’Europa alle valli valdesi (Turin: Claudiana,
1990).
23
See for example, Franco Giampiccoli, J. Charles Beckwith, il generale dei Valdesi, 1789–1862
(Turin: Claudiana, 2012); Richard Newbury, Oliver Cromwell (Turin: Claudiana, 2013).
578
CHURCH HISTORY
sense: in 1622 the Roman Congregation de propaganda fide was also founded,
for the propagation of the Gospel in the New World and in Asia (and also in
places without a Catholic hierarchy, like the British Isles).24 Propaganda,
because it was organized by minorities conscious of the political situation. It
is impossible to describe them as “Protestant missions” in Italy: first,
because of the connections between Italy and the exiles communities;
second, because of the relationships with political powers. The exiles built
strong international networks, with powerful influences in the English Court,
and in the Genevan government and church. But in many cases the
propaganda was created by influential individuals, and not organized by
institutions, as happened in Rome.
For these many reasons the world of the exiles must be carefully
investigated. There were in fact important differences between Protestant and
Catholic exiles in their relationships with mother-countries.25 While
Protestants were used to creating national congregations, such as the Italian
church established in Geneva in 1552, Catholics in the initial years usually
became members of previously existing local churches. Exile was also
connected with the self-identity of Calvinism in particular (John Calvin’s
sermons on Job are the reflections of a French humanist exile in Switzerland,
to give one example), and the perception of the new land as a promised land
was very common. Places like Geneva became in their narratives a new
Jerusalem, the free nation that opposed the Antichrist. Protestant merchants
sometimes built economic empires abroad; many of those commercial
contacts were held even before their conversion, but their flight was often
accompanied by the movement of money to the United Provinces,
Switzerland, and London, frequently via Lyon’s bankers.
Even if the Council of Trent can be considered a major break in Italian
history, it was in the decade of its end that a real Protestant propaganda also
started to be directed toward Italy. To clarify the differences between this
and the texts previously circulating in the peninsula, it is necessary to
analyze Italian Calvinist pamphlet production in Geneva in the early 1560s,
as a sort of case study of this research, clearly demonstrating that the advent
of Counter-Reformation did not mean the end of Reformation.
24
On the themes of early modern political propaganda, Filippo de Vivo, Information and
Communication in Venice: Rethinking Early Modern Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2007).
25
Benjamin J. Kaplan, Bob Moore, Henk Van Nierop, and Judith Pollmann, eds., Catholic
Communities in Protestant States: Britain and the Netherlands, c. 1570–1720 (Manchester,
U.K.: Manchester University Press, 2009); Judith Pollmann, Catholic Identity and the Revolt of
the Netherlands, 1520–1635 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Geert H. Janssen, “The
Counter-Reformation of the Refugee: Exile and the Shaping of Catholic Militancy in the Dutch
Revolt,” in Journal of Ecclesiastical History 63, no. 4 (2012): 671–692.
579
II. ITALIANS IN GENEVA AND THEIR PAMPHLETS IN 1560S
In Geneva in 1555, the publisher Jean Crespin printed an Italian edition of the
New Testament. Its main purpose was the spiritual edification of the Italian
exiles. Since 1552, on the initiative of Marquis Galeazzo Caracciolo, an
Italian church was founded, and was soon entrusted to the pastoral care of
Celso Martinengo, formerly a canon. The community has been the subject of
much research, and consciousness of their historical position and relevance
prompted many heirs of exiles to publish memoirs.26 One famous memoir is
the Libro degnissimo dei ricordi delle nostre famiglie, written in 1622 by
Vincenzo Burlamacchi; individuals such as Pompeo Diodati, or families such
as the Calandrinis also wrote down their stories, copies of which still were
circulating in the nineteenth century.27
For decades, the Italian church was the main non-French-speaking
congregation in Geneva, and an eminent center of religious power, especially
from the early seventeenth century. In the second half of the sixteenth
century, the Italian community in the town counted a permanent population
of about 200 people, reaching its zenith in the 1560s, with 1,200 people. In
those years a significant change happened in Geneva, the result of a rapid
rise in population: the number of inhabitants grew from 13,000 people in
1542 to 20,000 in 1550, and increased even further with the outbreak of the
wars of religion in France, as Huguenot refugees arrived in the city,
especially in the 1560s and 1570s. Although the church gathered exiles from
Piedmont, Veneto, Calabria, Sicily, and Naples, emigrants coming from
Lucca soon formed the élite. While the former were often from the lower
economic strata—frequently craftsmen, such as gunsmiths from Naples or
Piedmontese textile workers—the others came from the educated families of
merchants of Lucca. They created a compact social group whose alliances
were sanctioned with marriages within a restricted circle. For generations
they were aware of republican freedom, and accustomed to the world of
finance and trade.28
26
Carla Sodini, ed., I lucchesi a Ginevra da Giovanni Diodati a Jean-Alphonse Turrettini (Lucca:
Actum Luce: rivista di studi lucchesi, 1993); Simonetta Adorni Braccesi, Strategie politiche e
proselitismo religioso degli esuli lucchesi tra confessionalismi e libertà di coscienza nella
seconda metà del XVI secolo, in Susanna Peyronel, ed., Circolazione di uomini e d’idee tra
Italia e Europa nell’Età della Controriforma (Turin: Claudiana, 1997).
27
Vincenzo Burlamacchi, Libro degnissimo di ricordi delle nostre famiglia, ed. Simonetta Adorni
Braccesi (Rome: Istituto storico per l’Età moderna e contemporanea, 1993). See also: Archive of
Trinity College, Dublin [TCD], ms. 1152, History of the Reformation in Geneva, donation by
Charles du Meuron, 1857.
28
William A. McComish, The Epigones: A Study of the Theology of the Genevan Academy at the
Time of the Synod of Dort, with Special Reference to Giovanni Diodati (Allison Park: Pickwick,
1989).
580
CHURCH HISTORY
The year 1558 marked the turning point in the story of the Italian church of
Geneva. Lattanzio Ragnoni, the less conciliatory successor of Martinengo, was
commissioned to draw up a confession of faith against the religious radicals.
That year was characterized by the explosive Biandrata case. Biandrata,
along with Giovanni Alciati and Silvestro da Teglio revealed his antiTrinitarian doctrine, in an affair which culminated in a stormy meeting of the
Italian Consistory. The opinions given by Calvin on the subject were clear
(his first clashes with Italians went back to the meeting with Sozzini in
1549). It was now evident the extent of the opposition to the Calvinist model
of many among the Italian exile community in Geneva. This inclination
would eventually also involve the masters; in 1563 Calvin read the French
translation of Juan de Valdes’s Cento e dieci divine considerazioni (One
Hundred Ten Divine Considerations), and realized the spiritualist nature of
Italian reformation.29 As stated in the Register of the Italian congregation,
those who “had feelings of diversity in faith” were finally expelled in
1558.30 The result was a split among the Geneva community of Italians.
As a result, a new season of missionary activities and publications connected
with the Italian church started in Geneva. Already in 1555 Gian Luigi Pascale
had offered a bilingual French-Italian version of the New Testament, using the
same Crespin text; in 1558 he would go among the Waldenses of Calabria as an
envoy of the Reformed churches. His mission remains obscure. Surely he
distributed the summary of St Paul’s letters, Le dotte e pie parafrasi sopra
l’epistole di san Paolo a’ Romani, Galati ed Ebrei, non mai più vedute in
luce, by Cornelio Donzellini, having been the editor of their Genevan reprint
in 1555, following the first edition in Lyon, in 1551. Pascale had also
produced a translation of Pierre Viret, De’ fatti de’ veri successori di Giesu
Christo et de’ suoi apostoli, et degli apostati della chiesa papale (The Acts
of True Successors of Jesus Christ and of His Apostles, and Those of the
Apostates of the Papist Church), published in 1556. The purpose of these
two books was the confirmation of orthodoxy, and doctrinal clarity, which
would be particularly useful in the context of a multi-faceted heterodoxy
such as the Calabrian-Waldensian one. Pascale was arrested in May 1559
in the village of Guardia. He was executed in 1560 in front of Castel
Sant’Angelo in Rome. This story soon became a cornerstone in the
hagiography of the Reformation in Italy: his martyrdom in consequence hid
the actual differences between the Genevan and Waldensian communities.
Activities in Geneva in the meantime continued. Shortly afterward, in 1562,
the Genevan Bible or duroniana (the printer being Francesco Durone) was
Massimo Firpo, “Giovanni Calvino e Juan de Valdés,” in Giovanni Calvino e la Riforma in
Italia, ed. Susanna Peyronel (Turin: Claudiana, 2011), 113.
30
See also, Lucia Felici, Giovanni Calvino e l’Italia (Turin: Claudiana, 2011).
29
581
published by Filippo Rustici. It included Crespin’s New Testament and Antonio
Brucioli’s translation of the Old Testament. It should be considered that only
three years earlier, in 1559, the Index of Forbidden Books promulgated by
Paul IV included Brucioli’s translation, although it still appeared in some
new editions in Venice, as well as in Lyon, where it had been printed since
1546.31 The Rustici Bible became the most widespread in Geneva, and
among Italian expatriates, particularly from the end of the decade onward,
considering that no Bible in Italian was printed in the peninsula after 1567,
when an edition of Malermi’s translation was reprinted last. The new
Council of Trent Index (1564) left some little new hopes for Bible
translations.32 Immediately Sebastien Honorat, publisher in Lyon, printed a
small edition of Massimo Theofilo’s New Testament version. Just a year
later, the publisher Rubio in Venice reprinted the Brucioli edition. As
demonstrated by Edoardo Barbieri, Brucioli’s 1560 version of the New
Testament was also reprinted in small format, with a significant revision by
the so-called Anonymous of Todesco (Todesco was the name of the
publisher), which included substantial anti-Roman notes, made “by a learned
and talented theologian” (unknown to us, and certainly not Theodore de
Bèze, as the legend goes33).
A text of devotion for the Italian community in Geneva could serve in a few
years as a text prepared for religious controversy. An emblematic case is the
version of the book of Psalms. In 1560, the publisher Jean Baptiste Pinereul
gave to the press an anthology, the Sessanta Salmi di David, tradotti in rime
volgari italiane secondo la verità del testo Hebreo, con il Cantico di
Simeone e i Dieci comandamenti de la Legge; ogni cosa insieme col canto.
Apart from a brief introduction, which was a translation of a commentary by
Calvin, there were only a few prayers. They belonged to the Reformed
tradition of domestic piety, as in the appendix of the 1542 Geneva
Catechism, containing prayers for the morning, mealtimes, and evening. The
same commandments were set to music, a clear demonstration of how this
volume would serve for family devotion as well as for the Italian public
service. But only six years later, in 1566, the printer republished the book
with the same title, but now accompanied by a translation of the Catechism,
some articles of faith, prayers, and the French reformed “Confession of
faith.” Significantly, in 1560 and in 1566, two Italian editions of Calvin’s
catechisms were also printed.
31
Jesus Martinez De Bujanda, ed., Index des livres interdits, 11 vols. (Sherbrooke-Geneva: Droz,
1985–2002).
32
See Fragnito, Proibito capire.
33
Edoardo Barbieri, Le Bibbie italiane del Quattrocento e del Cinquecento: Storia e bibliografia
ragionata delle edizioni dal 1471 al 1600 (Milan: Editrice Bibliografica, 1992).
582
CHURCH HISTORY
It has been demonstrated that the greater part of Italian heterodox book
production dates back to the 1540s. At the same time, the 1540s saw the
birth and growth of Calvin’s polemic against nicodemites, although at that
moment aimed totally toward the French context (for example, with the
Excuse à Messierus les Nicodemites, published in 1544). The break came in
1548, with the case of Francesco Spiera, who died after a long agony after
having abjured the reformed faith. In 1549, the Inquisition killed Fanino
Fanini; his story left a deep impression among the Italian philo-Protestant
community. These two very different examples (the death of the renegade,
versus the martyrdom of the faithful), would open up the possibility of new
publications, which were now focused on internal debates. On the one hand
Spiera’s story inspired Pier Paolo Vergerio, at that moment still a bishop, to
escape and to print a booklet on the horrendus casus34; it caused also the
printing of the Esortatione alli dispersi per la Italia, an encouragement to
flee. This in turn prompted the publication in 1552 of Giulio da Milano’s
Essortatione al martirio (The Exhortation to Martyrdom), a cornerstone of
Italian controversy against nicodemites, as well as the Tragedia del libero
abitrio (The Tragedy of the Free Will) by Francesco Negri. Calvin himself,
turning his attention from the French situation, promptly became involved.
1549 witnessed the printing in Geneva of an anthology of his writings
against nicodemites, the De vitandis superstitionibus. This book was in fact
reprinted in 1551 in Florence (although under a false place of publication in
Basel), well known as the Nicomediana. This was the first act of religious
distrust toward the court of Duke Cosimo de’ Medici, by a heterodox group
of Venetian refugees in Tuscany, who denounced the nicodemite subtleties of
that environment.35 A supporter of this initiative was Ludovico Domenichi,
with the collaboration of the same Cornelio Donzellini.
In some ways, the early 1550s represented the loss of hope, the years of
the inquisitorial repression, and the crisis of reform: this was reflected in the
circulation of books focusing on comforting the suffering brethren. The
Peace of Augsburg represented a significant break in this narrative.36 If
between 1550 and 1600, 45 volumes were published in Italian in Geneva, it
is possible to observe a particular period of initiative and enterprise in the
early 1560s. But the Peace of Augsburg marked a change in the production
of texts of propaganda. The more passive role of the Empire was now clear,
with its provisional religious settlement, and its decision to withdraw from
34
Pier Paolo Vergerio, Horrendus casus, qui ob negatam in judicio, cognitam Evangelii
veritatem, in miseram incidit desperationem (Basel, 1549).
35
Enrico Garavelli, Lodovico Domenichi e i “Nicomediana” di Calvino: Storia di un libro
perduto e ritrovato (Manziana: Vecchiarelli, 2004).
36
Susanna Peyronel, “La propaganda evangelica e protestante in Italia (1550c–1570),” in La
Réforme en France et en Italie.
583
the final phase of the conflict, which saw France and Spain as the only
protagonists. In Geneva, the exiles were now looking for their place in the
new political context. The mid-fifties was thus a time of growth and
strengthening for the Italians in the city, with the creation of the church, as
well as the emergence of internal conflicts, which exploded in 1558.
The contemporary political situation in the peninsula was particularly
difficult, with a solution only achieved in the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis in
1559. This date represents a decisive change for the production of reformed
Italian texts. 1559 saw the death of Henry II of France, followed a year and
a half later by his heir Francis II, opening up sectarian French conflicts.
Geneva had played a decisive role in this, consistently sending pastors to
France. Between 1555 and 1559, forty Huguenot churches were established
in France, and a further sixty-nine were under construction. The exchange
between Geneva and France was therefore constant; one result of this was
the beginning of translations into Italian of books initially produced in
French, and aimed at the French context of growing religious division.
Publishers such as Francesco Durone, Fabio Todesco, Giovan Battista
Pinerolio (Jean-Baptiste Pinereul), and Jean Girard, together with the Italian
community as a whole, acted as intermediaries for the spread in the
peninsula of French treatises, with a clear flavor of sectarian conflict.
In the early 1560s at least a dozen publications were printed. In particular,
the three-year period 1561–1563 was especially fruitful. At that moment, the
fortunes of the Protestant party in France seemed to be on the rise, beginning
with the release of the Prince of Condé, and with the religious discussions at
Poissy. Protestant hopes were tempered by the 1562 riots, finding a
temporary agreement only at Amboise in 1563. The texts produced were
targeted toward small congregations, and were useful in establishing a
theological orthodoxy and uniformity of practice. In 1560 Jean Baptiste
Pinereul’s La forma delle orationi ecclesiastiche e il modo di amministrare i
sacramenti, e di celebrare il santo matrimonio, secondo che s’usa nelle
buone chiese (The Form for Ecclesiastical Prayers and the Mode of
Administering the Sacraments, and Celebrating Holy Matrimony, According
to the Usage of Good Churches) was printed, a further example of
standardizing worship. Its 133 small pages contained the order of reformed
worship for ordinary Sundays, alongside the liturgy of baptism and the
Lord’s Supper, as well as one for wedding celebrations, and a prayer to be
made during a visit to the sick. This was not a lectionary or a text of
devotion, but a small liturgy, and certainly not addressed to the pastors of the
Italian community in Geneva. It was in fact followed by a Oratione privata
per quelli che si trovano in cattività (Private Prayer for Those in Captivity),
containing sentences like: “And be You pleased [Lord] to guide me to a
good path, and to reform me in truth to be obedient to your justice”; or
584
CHURCH HISTORY
“Above all, make me recognise that this wretched captivity where I am under
the tyranny of the Antichrist is a right punishment for not having served and
worshiped You as I ought.” The faithful were invited to confess their sin: the
sin of not having openly expressed their faith. In this narrative, persecution
consequently had a pedagogical purpose. However, the prayer continued:
“When You will be pleased to open up some doors to me, will not allow me
to be lazy and negligent to come out of this damned prison, to seek the
freedom and to serve your glory.” The invitation to take the opportunity to
escape was clear. “Give me the grace that I can forget all my carnal
commodities.” But the invitation to leave significantly followed the order of
worship, intended to help a community organize itself in any case.
The French model was actually effective. Again in 1561, the Parlamento de’
protestanti del Regno di Francia, proposto da monsignor Theodoro Beza
dinanzi al re di Francia et a la reina sua madre, et al re di Navarra, et a gli
altri consiglieri e prelati de la Chiesa come l’huom dice (The case of French
protestants, proposed to the King of France, the Queen Mother, the King of
Navarre, the councillors, and to the so called Church dignitaries, by
Theodore de Bèze) promptly was translated into Italian. The small booklet of
93 pages did not have any indication either of the editor, printer or the place
of printing. It was a sort of instant-book: speeches Bèze gave on September
9 in Poissy were published, including some considerations by the Cardinal
of Lorraine and Protestant comments. The size and anonymity of the text
suggests that theological French controversy could be reused for the Italian
situation. In the same year, the Huguenot “Confession of Faith,” also known
as “La Rochelle Confession of Faith,” was translated into and published in
Italian.37 It had been prepared in consultation between Geneva and France,
between 1557 and 1559. In 1560 it was then presented to Francis II of
France, demanding the cessation of persecution. The Italian version,
however, had a significant change. Without the supplication to the King, the
Confession was prefaced by thirty small pages of disputation. Topics
included doctrinal differences with Catholics and an account of the church in
Babylonian captivity. There was also an ecclesiological debate, focusing on
condemning the “lie” of apostolic succession, remarking how the true church
was only possible away from Rome. The anonymous author speaks of
himself and of his community as a victim of injustice, who would have
preferred to keep their situation quiet, if it could have led to any results;
however, his recommendation was to suffer the evil rather than react. The
author’s aim was not only to confirm the doctrine of his brethren, but to
37
Confessione di fede fatta di comun consentimento dalle Chiese che sono disperse per la
Francia e s’astengono da le idolatrie papistice, con una prefatione, la qual contiene la risposta
e difensione contra le calunnie che gli sono imputate, appresso Iacopo Burghese (1561).
585
offer them an exposition of the true beliefs. Somehow, the Italian version of this
“Confession of Faith” has a sort of rhetorical mechanism, speaking directly to
heterodox Italians like a persona ficta, responding to Catholic pressure but also
inviting people to resist and not necessarily to escape. For the author, there was
a possibility in being Christian and in living in Babylon. Probably, it was a way
to articulate an internal conflict among the Italian community, against both
persecution and the religious radicals.
Not only texts related to France came out in 1561. The publisher Fabio
Todesco printed in 164 pages the Breve et utile trattato della vita dell’uomo
christiano, nuovamente riveduto et stampato dall’autore (Short and Useful
Treatise of the Christian Life, Newly Revised and Printed by the Author).
In the front page there was only a verse from Romans 12, inviting the
brethren to the renewal of their minds. This was apparently a treatise on
ethics, although without an examination of virtues. On the contrary, the
anonymous author argued that his purpose was to show how a Christian can
order his life coherently.38 It was in fact a translation of chapter 21 of
Calvin’s Institutio christianae religionis. A similar operation was carried
on simultaneously with the release of “The true mode of Christian
peacemaking” (Il vero modo della pacificatione Christiana), also drawn
from Calvin’s pages and published in the same year. These two treatises
were easily marketable and easily spread in the peninsula. They both in fact
benefited from a translation a few years earlier.39 During the months of the
consolidation of the Italian community in Geneva, the notable humanist from
Messina, Giulio Caesare Pascali, had translated into Italian Calvin’s
masterpiece, publishing it in 1557. It was in some ways the demonstration of
the exiles’ adherence to Calvin’s doctrine, and contained a dedication to
Marquis Galeazzo Caracciolo. The work was certainly widespread, but was
essentially done for the spiritual edification of the community. Moreover,
Pascali was not new to these initiatives. In addition to producing sacred
rhymes himself, in 1555 he reprinted the Olivetan Bible in French (the first
commissioned by the Waldensians), with an Italian translation of Calvin’s
preface, entitled Come Cristo è il fine della legge (“How Christ is the
purpose of the Law”). The texts published in 1561 were very different,
in a small size, and not easily attributable to Calvin. Howewer, in 1561
Francesco Durone printed the Breve e risoluto trattato della cena del
Signore, composto da monsignor Giovanni Calvino e tradotto nuovamente in
lingua volgare italiana, which was of course Calvin’s treatise on the Lord’s
Supper. In a little over a hundred pages, the book reminded the reader of the
38
Breve et utile trattato della vita dell’uomo christiano, nuovamente riveduto et stampato
dall’autore (Fabio Todesco, 1561), 5.
39
Jean-François Gilmont, Bibliotheca Calviniana (Geneva: Droz, 1991).
586
CHURCH HISTORY
words of I Corinthians 11 about examining oneself before eating the bread and
drinking the cup. Both in the preface and in a small page entitled Argomento
(“Summary Argument”), were spelled out not only the instructions for the
Lord’s Supper, but also the profound differences between Catholic and
Reformed doctrines.
These treaties and booklets were often anonymous. It is quite difficult to find
proof of their diffusion at this moment, at least via Inquisitorial records: during
the years in which the elaboration of an Index was still ongoing, bearing in
mind the difference between the lists of Pope Paul IV and the Council of
Trent, the focus of the Holy Office seemed to be totally on actual trials. But
these pamphlets tell of the perception of the Italian situation in Geneva,
among the exile community. Instead of recovering from a defeat, the first
generation of expatriates cultivated a missionary vocation for Italy. It was
a vocation that became embedded in the consciousness of the exile
community, creating a real imagery and rhetoric, especially among the
second generation of exiles (those already born in Geneva). A few years
later, Niccolò Balbani, author of a biography of Marquis Caracciolo, printed
a new edition of Calvin’s catechism. He included, as a preface, a “Letter to
Italy.” It was in some ways, now, a political overview of the country.
III. PROTESTANT PROPAGANDA IN ITALY, C. 1550–1660
Protestant propaganda addressed to Italy since the early 1560s broke inexorably
its links with the Italian Reformation. One of its main purposes was in fact
putting order within the Italian religious syncretism. It was not anymore a
generic diffusion of Protestant texts, but a hope to intervene among Italian
philo-Protestants. It was now essentially a Calvinist propaganda, with few
exceptional elements. For example, in 1612 a Florentine aristocrat, Antonio
Albizzi (1547–1626), converted to Lutheranism and printed in Germany his
Decem principia doctrinae christianae, a summary of Christian doctrine
influenced both by Melanchton and the Beneficio di Cristo. But this was rather
exceptional. On the contrary, the propaganda of the late sixteenth-century was
supported by the network of Italian exiles, who were able to maintain a political
overview of the country. Exhortations to flee (like those of Antonio Trissino, an
exile from Veneto, in the 1570s) were intertwined with encouragements to
resist. Still in 1591, a pastor in Valtellina, Scipione Calandrini, introduced the
Italian edition of Philippe Duplessis-Mornay’s Treatise of the Church, in a new
letter to Italy, proposing a coexistence of both confessions (again adopting the
French model) fighting together against Anabaptists and radicals.
The start of the seventeenth century opened new perspectives. The
conservatism of Paul V led to the Venetian crisis: a religious and political
587
conflict in which the diplomats of Protestant countries played a key role.
England, France, and various German princes were primary actors in this
international scene; ambassadors like Henry Wotton and Dudley Carleton,
dissenting friars (Sarpi, Fulgentio Micanzio), Genevan preachers and French
politicians were the main characters of the Venetian drama. But, if traditional
historiography tells of the debates between Sarpi and his Protestant
correspondents (arguing about his religion), then it is necessary to highlight
the Protestant powers’ approach, maintaining an image of Italy as a land of
open religious struggle. This was also the purpose of the first translation in
Italian of the Book of Common Prayer. Although never actually printed, this
was the response to Wotton’s request for a liturgy. It was not an attempt to
introduce the English Church into Italy, but a possible way to organize the
ambiguous heterodox community in the Laguna. This was a community so
weak that it evaporated after the death of the King of France, even if the
same Henry of France was in turn a weak supporter of the Venetian philoProtestant cause, because of his need of legitimacy from the Pope himself.
The military and political conflict was not in any case coming to an end: the
Valtellina massacres of Protestants produced a new apologetic and
controversial literature. The start of the Thirty Years’ War of course brought
Protestant troops to Italy. But, mostly, after the Battle of White Mountain,
the same anti-nicodemite polemic would be revived.40 It is possible in this
way to analyze the long-durée of the fight against nicodemites, in which
religious leaders like Benedict Turrettini (professor of systematic theology in
Geneva) were involved directly. Naturally, the long decades of war are
fundamental to this story. As Inquisitorial records show, the Holy Office and
the Cardinals Barberinis were still worried about the diffusion of Protestant
books in the 1640s.41 The reactions to the propaganda were in fact strong
and constant, as a February 22, 1602 letter by Giulio Antonio Santoro,
Cardinal Secretary of the Inquisition, to Cardinal Gesualdo, archbishop of
Naples, shows:
[The Holy Father] commanded me to write to Your Lordship to be really
vigilant about the booksellers, to check if they carry Bibles printed in
Geneva, even if they falsely claim to be printed in Lyon [ . . . ], warning
that in the future you must never find similar books, giving the necessary
orders to avoid the serious troubles that could follow from reading the
Holy Scripture corrupted by heretics.42
40
Simone Maghenzani, “Polemica antinicodemitica e progettualità politica dei lucchesi di
Ginevra. Il ‘Breve trattato’ di Benedetto Turrettini (1626),” Schifanoia 40–41 (2011): 127–145.
41
See Archivio della Curia arcivescovile di Firenze, Tin-8.11, Barberini Francesco, Seniore
(1644), fol. 4.
42
Pasquale Lopez, Inquisizione, stampa e censura nel Regno di Napoli tra Cinquecento e
Seicento (Naples: Edizioni del Delfino, 1974), 342.
588
CHURCH HISTORY
It is of course quite difficult to determine the social profile of the books’
readers. As Alec Ryrie has shown about England, the importance of printed
texts risks being overemphasized.43 Often, the anti-nicodemite pamphlets
referred to merchants and book sellers. Undoubtedly, the same end of the
Italian religious crisis in the 1560s, with the evaporation of any real political
hopes for Protestantism in Italy, eroded the social legitimacy of being an
Italian heretic. It was not a time for aristocrats or patricians, but for traders
with connections abroad, or for people linked to the foreign communities in
Italy. In particular, the distribution of pamphlets was concentrated in ports
like Leghorn, where contacts with England were constant. But the
importance given by inquisitors to the book trade demonstrates its social and
religious relevance. Propaganda only stopped after the Thirty Years’ War,
with a new international religious situation. If Italy was still in a selfimposed Counter-Reformation isolation, the changing of the English political
landscape heralded yet another new moment in Italian Protestantism. While
French Protestants were now subjected to Louis XIV’s repression, the
English Interregnum—with its support for Italian Protestant communities—
was coming to an end with the return of the king. International and Italian
Protestantism now had to fight against more than the Roman Babylon.
IV. CONCLUSION
Looking at the Protestant propaganda in Italy between the 1560s and the 1660s
is a way of reconstructing the role and perception of Italy within European
Counter-Reformation religious conflicts. The consistent number of texts and
pamphlets devoted to the Italian situation show how Italy remained an open
question for the international Protestant community. Documents of the
Inquisition demonstrate the fear that Rome had about propagandistic activity,
although it is often difficult to identify the social and religious profiles of the
Italian readers of these cheap books. A partial answer could come from the
analysis of trials, especially those in Venice (where many records were well
preserved), as Federico Barbierato has demonstrated.44 Even with this
uncertainty, this research offers also a different perspective on a minority
community within Italian society. Recent studies by Miguel Gotor on
sanctity and by Elena Bonora on those Catholic bishops prosecuted by the
Inquisition after the Council of Trent as well as the consistent historiography
on the dioceses as shown by the pastoral visits, demonstrates that far from
43
Alec Ryrie, The Gospel and Henry VIII: Evangelicals in the Early English Reformation
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
44
Federico Barbierato, The Inquisitor in the Hat Shop. Inquisition, Forbidden Books and
Unbelief in Early Modern Venice (Farnham, U.K.: Ashgate, 2012).
589
the idea of there being a united Counter-Reformation Church marching
against vices, immorality, and ignorance, the situation was instead much
more complex in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.45
Research on international networks reaffirm that the Italian border was not
an Iron Curtain, but instead a porous boundary, with mutual exchanges
between Italy and the exiles’ world, and vice versa. In this sense, working
on the Protestant propaganda in Italy is another tile in the mosaic of political
and religious perceptions of Italy, which indeed cannot be described as
totally confessionalized.
The example of Sir Henry Wotton that opened this account points to the way
in which the Reformation in Italy had changed by the end of the sixteenth
century. It was a small movement that focused on local religious and
political contexts, but was ultimately, as a tiny minority, dependent on
support from abroad, and so more constrained in matters of theology and the
practice of worship: this was presaged by the translations of French texts
concerning practice and worship in the 1560s. The creativity of the
sixteenth-century Italian heterodoxies had been left behind, in favor of more
doctrinally unified initiative, better able to take advantage of and work
within political systems and conflicts. In the seventeenth-century sectarian
conflicts, Italy remained an open battlefield, at least from the Protestant
perspective. Ultimately, hopes of further reform would be dashed in the
second half of the seventeenth century, with the renewed repression of
Protestants by Louis XIV, and the religious disappointments of the English
Restoration, which created a new religious and political landscape in Europe,
until the renewals of the nineteenth century.
45
Miguel Gotor, I beati del papa (Florence: Olschki, 2002); idem, Chiesa e santità nell’Italia
moderna (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2004); Elena Bonora, Giudicare i vescovi (Rome-Bari: Laterza,
2007).

The Protestant Reformation in Counter

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