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This book explores two areas of interest: the Papal Inquisition in Modena and the status of Jews in an early modern Italian duchy. Its purpose is to deepen existing insights into the role of the former and thus lead to a better understanding of how an Inquisitorial court assumed jurisdiction over a practising Jewish community in the seventeenth century. The book highlights one specific aspect of the history of the Jews in Italy: the trials of professing Jews before the Papal Inquisition at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Inquisitorial processi against professing Jews provide the earliest known evidence of a branch of the Papal Inquisition taking judicial actions against Jews on an unprecedented scale and attempting systematically to discipline a Jewish community, pursuing this aim for several centuries. The book focuses on Inquisitorial activity during the first 40 years of the history of the tribunal in Modena, from 1598 to 1638, the year of the Jews' enclosure in the ghetto, the period which historians have argued was the most active in the Inquisition's history. It argues that trials of the two groups are different because the ecclesiastical tribunals viewed conversos as heretics but Jews as infidels. The book emphasizes the fundamental disparity in Inquisitorial procedure regarding Jews, as well as the evidence examined, especially in Modena. This was where the Duke uses the detailed testimony to be found in Inquisitorial trial transcripts to analyse Jewish interaction with Christian society in an early modern community.
relation to conversos – that is, Jews who forcibly or out of choice had converted to Christianity – either as former conversos themselves or as those who gave conversos returning to Judaism aid and comfort), and understand the issues confronting them in the Inquisition are just beginning to be considered.1 Scholars have in the past tended to group trials of Jews and conversos in Italy together and to see these two groups as being treated as one and the same by the Inquisition. This book argues that trials of the two groups are different because the ecclesiastical
Ralph Knevet's Supplement of the Faery Queene (1635) is a narrative and allegorical work, which weaves together a complex collection of tales and episodes, featuring knights, ladies, sorcerers, monsters, vertiginous fortresses and deadly battles – a chivalric romp in Spenser's cod medieval style. The poem shadows recent English history, and the major military and political events of the Thirty Years War. But the Supplement is also an ambitiously intertextual poem, weaving together materials from mythic, literary, historical, scientific, theological, and many other kinds of written sources. Its encyclopaedic ambitions combine with Knevet's historical focus to produce an allegorical epic poem of considerable interest and power.
This new edition of Knevet's Supplement, the first scholarly text of the poem ever published, situates it in its literary, historical, biographical, and intellectual contexts. An extensive introduction and copious critical commentary, positioned at the back of the book, will enable students and scholars alike to access Knevet's complicated and enigmatic meanings, structures, and allusions.
prosecuted by the ecclesiastical tribunals. When Duke Ercole III (1780–96) came to abolish the Holy Office in Modena on 6 September 1785 – the day that Giuseppe Maria Orlandi, the last Inquisitor General of Modena and Reggio, died – his execution of this act came with little justification. It seems that he had merely been waiting, out of gentlemanly cordiality, for the death of the Inquisitor to abolish the Holy Office in his capital, thereby finally following the pattern that had already occurred in other states in Italy. Inquisitorial jurisdiction was transferred to the
records, but usually present and undoubtedly prominent in the minds of critics, would have been 103 R. H. Helmholz a group of apparitors or summoners, the men who served the citations and other legal process that compelled parties to appear in court. They had to be present to prove that the absentees and the contumacious had in fact been lawfully summoned. This small group of men was all there was in the way of legal professionals. There were thus fewer subordinate officials in England than would have been present in similar ecclesiastical tribunals in many parts of
ecclesiastical tribunals can usually be located in county record offices or private collections and are idiosyncratic in their language, layout and written script. A number of such records has been published, 6 but the proportion is again very small in comparison with the extant documents. An up-to-date and accessible collection of translated sources that can provide an appreciation of the wealth of legal
into a contested point between competing Christian denominations. As Protestant soteriology denied that humans could save themselves through good works or sacraments, reformed churches promoted the correspondence between the Decalogue and external law. Conversely, the Catholic Church, emphasising the distinction between the spheres of law (body) and grace (soul), through the ‘power of the keys’ claimed exclusive jurisdiction over the moral sphere, externally in ecclesiastical tribunals and internally through the
streets of Palermo. To fully understand the importance of these performances, we must consider the famous Acts of Faith organised by the ecclesiastical tribunal for the suppression of heresy, better known as the Inquisition or Holy Office (Il Tribunale permanente del S. Officio della Inquisizione), in which impenitent ‘heretics’ were burned at the stake. This tribunal acted against five categories of persons: infidels (Jews or Muslims), heretics, black magicians or sorcerers, Maria Pia Di Bella 249 blasphemers and opponents of the Holy Office. Its mandate was
. Francis II ordered the release of religious prisoners and allowed them to petition him. In May the edict of Romorantin transferred the prosecution of heresy cases from royal to ecclesiastical tribunals, while punishment of illicit assemblies and seditious acts was translated from parlements to présidial courts. Robert Knecht argues that clerical courts were slack and secular tribunals permeated with unreliable, inefficient officials, so that Calvinist communities were henceforth left undisturbed by legal actions against them.102 In October 1560, following the ‘images
This chapter contains extensive critical commentary of A Supplement of the Faery Queene, exploring Knevet's complicated and enigmatic meanings, structures and allusions.