RICERCA ITALIANA     

Research program

European culture and the problem of otherness: historiography, politics, science of man in modern Europe (XVI-XIX centuries)

University Co-ordinator

Università degli Studi di MILANO-BICOCCA - SCIENZE UMANE PER LA FORMAZIONE - ()

Research Unit Leader

Erica Joy Mannucci

Description

1. The subject of religious otherness will be dealt with by prof. Massimo Firpo, who after completing the critical edition of the Inquisition trial of the Venetian patrician Vittore Soranzo (I processi inquisitoriali di Vittore Soranzo (1550-1558). Edizione critica (in collaborazione con Sergio Pagano), voll. 2, Città del Vaticano, Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 2004), will work on a monograph with the tentative title "Riforma, eresia, Inquisizione nell’Italia del ‘500. Vittore Soranzo «episcopo lutherano» di Bergamo". This monograph will reconstruct Soranzo’s biography, from his youthful humanistic studies with Pietro Bembo (who supported Soranzo as his successor as head of the diocese of Bergamo) to his interest in Valdes’ religious outlook which led him in the early 1540s to agree with the so-called «spirituali». Above all, it intends to examine the experience of the only Italian bishop who, at the time of the first phases of the Council in Trento, sought to promote from below and from the periphery a renewal of the Church based on doctrinal principles similar to those of the Protestant Reformation. This was the reason why the Roman Inquisition intervened and instituted two trials (1550-1 and 1557-8) against Soranzo, who finally was stripped of his office as bishop. These events clarify the bitter political and religious conflicts that were going on at the top of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, where the success of the most rigid attitudes against the Protestant Reformation and the inarrestable affirmation of Inquisitorial power gave rise to the long lasting model of the Counter Reformation Church, founded on the primacy of orthodoxy, on pervasive strategies of control and repression, on the clericalisation of religious life. Through this study the categories of religious otherness will receive a new, original treatment, rooted in the context of Italian history but as well in contact with religious otherness in the rest of Europe. The monographic volume that will represent the outcome of the research will be therefore a fundamental integration to a series of studies which constitute its context: Pio Paschini, Un episodio dell’Inquisizione nell’Italia del Cinquecento. Il vescovo di Bergamo Soranzo, F.I.U.C., Roma 1925, poi ripreso con il titolo di Un vescovo disgraziato nel Cinquecento italiano: Vittore Soranzo nella raccolta di saggi dello stesso Paschini, Tre ricerche sulla storia della Chiesa nel Cinquecento, Edizioni liturgiche, Roma 1945, pp. 89-151; Pio Paschini, Venezia e l’Inquisizione romana da Giulio III a Pio IV, Antenore, Padova 1959; Francesco Rota, Vittore Soranzo vescovo di Bergamo (1547-1558), Archivio storico brembatese, Brembate Sopra 1974; Paolo Simoncelli, Evangelismo italiano del Cinquecento. Questione religiosa e nicodemismo politico, Istituto storico italiano per l’età moderna e contemporanea, Roma 1979; Luigi Chiodi, Eresia protestante a Bergamo nella prima metà del ‘500 e il vescovo Vittore Soranzo. Appunti per una riconsiderazione storica, «Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia», XXXV, 1981, pp. 456-85; Silvana Seidel Menchi, Erasmo in Italia (1520-1580), Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 1987; Anne Jacobson Schutte, Pier Paolo Vergerio e la Riforma a Venezia 1498-1549, Roma, Il Veltro, 1988 (trad. it. di Pier Paolo Vergerio: the Making of an Italian Reformer, Droz, Genève 1977); Paolo Simoncelli, Inquisizione romana e Riforma in Italia, «Rivista storica italiana», C, 1988, pp. 5-125; La Chiesa di Venezia tra Riforma protestante e Riforma cattolica, a cura di Giuseppe Gullino, Studium cattolico veneziano, Venezia 1990; Andrea Del Col, L’Inquisizione romana e il potere politico nella repubblica di Venezia, «Critica storica», XXVIII, 1991, pp. 189-250; Salvatore Caponetto, La Riforma protestante nell’Italia del Cinquecento, Claudiana, Torino 1992; Massimo Firpo, Inquisizione romana e Controriforma. Studi sul cardinal Giovanni Morone e il suo processo d’eresia, Il Mulino, Bologna 1992; John Martin, Venice’s Hidden Enemies. Italian Heretics in a Renaissance City, University of California Press, Berkeley-Los Angeles-London 1993; Massimo Firpo, Riforma protestante ed eresie nell’Italia del Cinquecento, Laterza, Roma-Bari 1993; Massimo Firpo, Dario Marcatto, Il processo inquisitoriale del cardinal Giovanni Morone. Edizione critica, voll. 6, Istituto storico italiano per l’età moderna e contemporanea, Roma 1981-1995; Adriano Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza. Inquisitori, confessori, missionari, Einaudi, Torino 1996; Massimo Firpo, Gli affreschi di Pontormo a San Lorenzo. Eresia, politica e cultura nella Firenze di Cosimo I, Einaudi, Torino 1997; Massimo Firpo, Dario Marcatto, I processi inquisitoriali di Pietro Carnesecchi (1557-1567). Edizione critica, voll. 2, Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Città del Vaticano 1998-2000; Andrea Del Col, L’Inquisizione nel patriarcato e diocesi di Aquileia 1557-1559, prefazione di Anne Jacobson Schutte, Università di Trieste, Trieste 1998; Federica Ambrosini, Storie di patrizi e di eresia nella Venezia del ‘500, Franco Angeli, Milano 1999; Elena Brambilla, Alle origini del Sant’Uffizio. Penitenza, confessione e giustizia spirituale dal medioevo al XVI secolo, Il Mulino, Bologna 2000; Adriano Prosperi, L’eresia del Libro Grande. Storia di Giorgio Siculo e della sua setta, Feltrinelli, Milano 2000.
2. A second aspect of the problem prof. Firpo intends to treat regards the echoes caused by the spread of Reformed heterodoxy within the Italian artistic world of the 1500s – especially among painters – and of traces visible in the figurative art of the great season of Mannerism. The question is particularly delicate not only because of the influence of patronage, the weight of iconographic traditions and the rapid imposition of conformity and repression by the Inquisition but, as well, due to Reformed theology’s explicit condemnation of traditional sacred art which placed artists variously involved in forms of dissent and heterodoxy in dramatic contradictions both as men of conscience and painters. This is a theme prof. Firpo has already treated in two studies of artists of exceptional stature, Iacopo Pontormo in Florence and Lorenzo Lotto in Venice (Gli affreschi di Pontormo a San Lorenzo. Eresia, politica e cultura nella Firenze di Cosimo I, Einaudi, Torino 1997; Artisti, gioiellieri, eretici. Il mondo di Lorenzo Lotto tra Riforma e Controriforma, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2001; Storia religiosa e storia dell’arte. I casi di Iacopo Pontormo e Lorenzo Lotto, «Belfagor», LIX, 2004, 571-90). He plans to further develop this area of inquiry with a study on Battista Franco, another notable Mannerist who worked in Florence, Pisa, Lucca, Rome, Urbino, Osimo and Venice from the 30s to the 60s of the 16th century and was most probably involved in circles (and doctrines) of dubious orthodoxy.
In the same direction, prof. Mannucci intends to contribute to the study of the passage from underground to public communication of Spinozist and materialist positions (see Etre matérialiste à l’âge des Lumières. Hommage offert à Roland Desné, Textes réunis et publiés par Beatrice Fink et Gerhardt Stenger, Paris, PUF, 1999) as part of the reconstruction of a long-term chronological trajectory. She will concentrate her attention on a period which has been rather neglected from this point of view, that is the revolutionary and consular period, which has more commonly been studied for the evolution of institutional policy in its various phases (from the Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789 and the Civil Constitution of the Clergy to various solutions ranging from radical secularism and dechristianization, to the attempts at civil religion and the concordatary choices of the later phases) than for the presence of currents which were minoritary and extra-institutional (composed chiefly of intellectuals and artists) but which, as prof. Mannucci has already begun to indicate (Opposizioni al Concordato: l’ultima fiammata del secolo dei Lumi?, in the forthcoming Acts of the “Da brumaio ai Cento giorni: Cultura di governo e dissenso politico nell’Europa di Bonaparte” conference held in Milan, 10-13 November 2004), represent the element which to this day least well-known in the spectrum constituting the push towards dechristianization in French society in the early part of the 19th century: a trend whose historic importance has been underlined particularly by Bernard Plongeron in his classic works, which have not found adequate development in the historiographic debate which came to concentrate subsequently on the theme of Catholic reconstruction (see for example Jacques-Olivier Boudon, Jean-Claude Caron e Jean-Claude Yon, Religion et culture en Europe au 19e siècle, Paris, Armand Colin 2001), at least until the very recent rebirth of interest linked to the French centenary of the law separating Church and State in 1905. Nor is the area the study proposes to examine solely French; the current engaged in communicating and defending at the cultural and political level positions which are atheist and/or radically secular establishes new cosmopolitical convergencies, which can be noted for example in the interest for translating “holbachian” texts during the Italian Triennio (see for example Luciano Guerci, Incredulità e rigenerazione nella Lombardia del Triennio repubblicano, “Rivista storica italiana”, CIX, I, 1997 and Vittorio Criscuolo, Albori di democrazia nell’Italia in rivoluzione (1792-1802), Milano 2006) or by exiles in France (this is the case of Luigi Pio’s translation of the Guerre des dieux written by Evariste Parny indicated by Catriona Seth, Les poètes créoles du XVIII siècle, Parny, Bertin, Léonard, Paris-Roma, Memini, 1998) as well as in the literary efforts of Anglo-american authors politically active in France from the John Oswald of The Cry of Nature, 1791 ("Malheur aux faibles!". Condamnations de l'oppression des animaux, "Dix-Huitième Siècle", 28, 1996) or the Thomas Paine of The Age of Reason, 1794 (E.J. Mannucci, ed., L’età della ragione, Como-Pavia, Ibis, 2000). The evolution in the revolutionary period of a new vision of the family in the particular the advocacy of divorce – products of the refusal of Catholic morality and of the trend toward secularisation – are themes which have been studied recently from the point of view of cultural history as well the new history of law and gender history (see François Ronsin, Le contrat sentimental: débats sur le mariage, l’amour, le divorce, de l’Ancien Régime à la Restauration, Paris, Aubier, 1990 and Philippe Daumas, Familles en Révolution, 1775-1825, Rennes, PUR, 2003). Prof. Mannucci intends to further elaborate and complete previous studies touching on the figure of Sylvain Maréchal and of his circle (considering among others Luigi Pio) along a line of research linked particularly to the material in the Archives Nationales and the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. The results will be part a monographic study on the intellectual biography of Sylvain Maréchal and his image in the political and historiographic debate of the 19th and 20th centuries. She intends, as well, to oversee the on-line publication of “holbachian” translations from the revolutionary Italian Triennio, in particular L’Esame critico di S.Paolo, the translation of what was in turn the free translation made by d’Holbach of the work of the English deist Peter Annet entitled History and Character of St.Paul, which had had a strong influence on certain currents of Anglo-american heterodoxy. In this work she will be supported by dr. Chiocchetti. In this same direction of Anglo-american Protestant heterodoxy dr. Gaddo will look into themes regarding the history of historiography, while dr. Strumia will study the issue of women in revolutionary Italy in Piedmont and in the Cisalpine Republic and the definition by the counter-revolutionaries of the “subversive” otherness of their request for rights. She will make use of archives and contemporary printed material available in Milan, Turin, Bologna and Paris, aiming at a published study which brings to fruition the work she has already done (Le donne e la rivoluzione: le peculiarità dell’area valdese, in La Bibbia, la coccarda e il tricolore. I valdesi fra due Emancipazioni (1798-1848), Atti del XXXVII e del XXXVIII Convegno di studi sulla Riforma e sui movimenti religiosi in Italia, a cura di Gian Paolo Romagnani, Torino, Claudiana Editrice, 2001; Su «Il divorzio» e oltre, in Alfieri e il suo tempo, Atti del Convegno internazionale (Torino – Asti, 29 novembre – 1 dicembre 2001), a cura di Marco Cerruti, Maria Corsi, Bianca Danna, Firenze, Olschki, 2003; Il «Traité du mariage» di Carlantonio Pilati, in Carlantonio Pilati. Un intellettuale trentino nell’Europa dei Lumi, a cura di Stefano Ferrari e Gian Paolo Romagnani, Milano, F. Angeli, 2005). Recent studies in the history of the revolutionary period have given much attention to the theme of réseaux de sociabilité (cf. Jean-Clément Martin, ed., La Révolution à l’oeuvre. Perspectives actuelles dans l’histoire de la Révolution française, Rennes, PUR, 2005) : dr. Piemontino will give her contribution focusing on cosmopolitical intellectual networks in Genoa in the Napoleonic period.