BOOK: Irene FOSI, Inquisition, Conversion, and Foreigners in Baroque Rome (Leiden: Brill, 2020). ISBN: 9789004422667, pp. 260, € 125.00

(Source: Brill)

ABOUT THE BOOK

In Rome, where strategies to re-establish Roman Catholic orthodoxy were formulated, the problem of how to deal with foreigners and particularly with ‘heretics’ coming from Northern Europe was an important priority throughout the early modern period. Converting foreigners had a special significance for the Papacy. This volume, which includes several case studies, explores the meaning of conversion and the changes of policy adopted by the church bodies set up to protect orthodoxy. It uses inquisitorial documents (from Archivio della Congregazione per la dottrina della Fede) and sources from other archives and libraries, both in Rome and elsewhere. The book includes an updated bibliography with a particular attention paid to anglophone historiography.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Irene Fosi is professor of Modern History at the University “G. d’Annunzio” of Chieti-Pescara in Italy. She is author of many original studies on Renaissance and Baroque Rome: All’ombra dei Barberini. Fedeltà e servizio nella Roma barocca (Rome 1997); Papal Justice. Subjects and Courts in the Papal States, 1500-1750 (Washington D.C., 2011); Conversion and Autobiography: Telling Tales before the Roman Inquisition, in “Journal of Early Modern History”, 17, 2013, pp. 437- 456; 'The Hospital as a Space of Conversion: Roman Examples from the Seventeenth Century', in Space of Conversion in Global Perspective, ed. by G. Marcocci, W. de Boer, A. Maldavsky, I. Pavan, pp. 154-174 (Brill, Leiden-Boston, 2014).

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction. Winds of the North
1 Rome, a Patria Comune?
 1 Rules and Procedures: Defining the Foreigner
 2 Religious Identity
 3 Protection, Integration, Exclusion: National Confraternities, Hospices and Colleges
 4 Conversions and Reconquests: The Venerable English College in the Late Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
2 Not Only Pilgrims: Reception and Conversion
 1 Conversion and the Holy Years
 2 Abjuring Heresy and Creating a New Identity
 3 Clement VIII’s “Womb of Paternal Compassion”
 4 Rome, a Den of Spies
3 Cristoforo Gaspare Fischer: a Goldsmith, his Inheritance and the Inquisition
 1 Cristoforo “Piscator aurifex in Urbe”
 2 Between Nuremberg and Rome
 3 Lengthy Negotiations and Powerful Intermediaries
4 Johannes Faber, “One of Italy’s Seven Sages”
 1 Johannes Faber’s Roman Career
 2 “Acquiring the Souls of Others”
 3 Friends and Compatriots
 4 Echoes of War
 5 A Dubious Reputation
5 Guillaume Reboul: a Troublesome Convert
 1 A Restless Pamphleteer
 2 Rivalry and “loathing”
 3 Between Paris and Rome
6 Unsettling Mobility: Foreign Heretics in Italy
 1 The Inquisitor’s Doubts
 2 Merchants in the Duchies of Mantua and Savoy
 3 At the Border of the Papal States
 4 From Leghorn to Florence by Way of Siena
 5 Naples: a Port City
7 Between Intransigence and Tolerance
 1 Alexander VII: New Conversion Politics
 2 Difficult Control
 3 A Cultural Conversion Project
 4 The Heretic’s Language
8 Petitions, Enclosures, Burials
 1 Petitions and Intermediaries
 2 Enclosing: the Ospizio Apostolico dei Convertendi
 3 Burials
 4 Onward to the Eighteenth Century
 5 Exiled Princes, Traveling Princes
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index


More information here