Description
Book SynopsisAs has been well documented, the printed word was an essential vehicle for the transmission of reformed theology, and one that has left a tangible record for historians to explore. Yet as contemporaries well recognized, books were only a part of the process. It was the spoken word – and especially preaching – that created the demand for printed works. Sermons were the plough that prepared the ground for Lutheran literature to flourish. In order to better understand the relationship between oral sermons and the spread of protestant ideas, Preaching and Inquisition in Renaissance Italy draws upon the records of the Roman Inquisition to see how that institution confronted the challenges of reform on the Italian peninsula in the sixteenth century. At the heart of its subject matter is the increasingly sophisticated rhetorical skill of heterodox preachers at the time, who achieved their ends by silence and omission rather than positive affirmations of Lutheran tenets.
Trade Review“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.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements List of Figures Abbreviations 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 Process 5 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 Power Appendix: Chizzola trial Bibliography Index of Names Backlist
