On Biographical Illusion: Bernardino Ochino as a Historiographic Problem” The article looks at the main historiographic issues involved in the life of the famous Capuchin preacher Benardino Ochino, who left the Catholic Church in the summer of 1542 in order to avoid one of the Roman Inquisition’s first citations. Drawing on the interpretations of a recent book by Michele Camaioni which is devoted to Ochino’s Italian years, the essay makes the point that the reconstruction of Ochino’s biography must take into account the fact that for a number of decades, both while he was alive and after his death, he represented mainly a penal problem. This inevitably influenced the production of the sources on him, whether they were legal sources, memoirs, polemics or histories. Moreover, the fact that during his lifetime Ochino professed nearly all the sixteenth century Christian religious confessions, and that he regularly clashed with the constituted authorities, has resulted in a trail of polemical writings about him, apologies, slanders, both from the Catholic and Protestant sides, which because of their militant and propagandistic bias, have inevitably distorted the picture we have of the man. Even the historiography of the Counter-Reformation, both that published by printers associated with the Roman inquisition and that coming out of the Capuchin order, which for centuries remained only in manuscript, immediately had to deal with the problem that Ochino had been one of the founders of a new religious order with Franciscan roots. This was an inconvenient fact, after his apostasy, one that needed to be rectified by applying revisionist techniques (anachronisms, manipulation of sources, emendations), all of which need to be carefully studied so as to avoid turning Ochino’s life into a “biographic illusion”.

Julian the Apostate in Spiridione Petrettini (1777-1833), a Graeco-Venetian writer. Draft of the article published in “Studi Veneziani” n. s. 58 (2009), pp. 515-545 [ISSN 0392-0437]

In questo volume Michaela Valente analizza la rappresentazione e l'immagine dell'Inquisizione romana tra Cinque e Settecento. Oltre che sulle classiche opere di Paolo Sarpi e Philipp van Limborch, Valente si sofferma su una serie di trattati e pamphlet che, a partire dalla contestazione delle finalità religiose del tribunale inquisitoriale romano, finivano per esprimere il rifiuto di ogni forma di persecuzione. Ne emerge l'ampio dibattito europeo che, a fronte di una controversistica cattolica incapace di rispondere alle accuse di crudeltà e ingiustizia, avrebbe portato - tramite il richiamo alla tradizione evangelica di non-coercizione e alla separazione tra peccato e reato, e quindi tra Stato e Chiesa - a una riflessione matura sui diritti della coscienza del singolo.

For a number of reasons, historical works have been an area of special interest for the congregations of the Index and of the Holy Office, since the beginnings of their activity of control over book production. During the nineteenth century, too, many historical books were sifted through by the two Roman institutions. These acts of censorship offer themselves as a very favourable perspective to observe the Church’s attitude towards the historical science, along that century that has loved to picture itself as the “Century of history”. Indeed, the examination of these documents allows not only to unearth the specific motivations that led to the prohibition (or the absolution) of a historical work, but also, more generally, to investigate the vision (or the visions) of history within that sort of representative sample of the Catholic official thought, which is the universe of the Pontifical censorship. This essay aims to present the methodological approach and the first outcomes of an extensive research on the censorship of the historical works in the 19th century, conducted in the ACDF. While illustrating the typology of works and the main historical issues under the attentions of the Index, it will focus especially on the hermeneutical criteria of the censors, as they emerge from the reports on the historical works submitted to their evaluation.

La prima rassegna sulla storia culturale quale indirizzo recente di studi, così come si presenta in diversi paesi