Making Truth in Early Modern Catholicism [1 ed.] 9789048550043

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SCIENTIAE STUDIES

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Edited by Andreea Badea, Bruno Boute, Marco Cavarzere and Steven Vanden Broecke

Making Truth in Early Modern Catholicism

Making Truth in Early Modern Catholicism, Amsterdam University Press, 2021. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2021. Amsterdam University Press. All rights reserved.

Making Truth in Early Modern Catholicism

Making Truth in Early Modern Catholicism, Amsterdam University Press, 2021. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Scientiae Studies The Scientiae Studies series is a forum ideally suited to innovative interdisciplinary discourses and strands of intellectual history pivoted around the circulation of knowledge. The series is deliberately global, so looks beyond, as well as within, European history. And since it confronts theories and practices in the early modern period that had yet to be separated into their modern ‚scientific‘ configurations, the proposals we welcome study both learned societies and artisanal knowledge, as well as the history of universities and the birth and evolution of early modern collections. Thus we aim to bridge the gap between material culture and history of ideas. While natural philosophy and natural history remain central to its endeavours, the Scientiae Studies series addresses a wide range of related problems in the history of knowledge, which respond to the challenges posed by science and society in our changing environment.

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Series editors Stefano Gulizia, University of Milan (Editor-in-chief, 2020–2023) Vittoria Feola, University of Padova Christine Göttler, University of Bern Cassie Gorman, Anglia Ruskin University Karen Hollewand, Utrecht University Richard Raiswell, University of Prince Edward Island Cornelis Schilt, Linacre College, Oxford

Making Truth in Early Modern Catholicism, Amsterdam University Press, 2021. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Making Truth in Early Modern Catholicism

Copyright © 2021. Amsterdam University Press. All rights reserved.

Edited by Andreea Badea, Bruno Boute, Marco Cavarzere, and Steven Vanden Broecke

Amsterdam University Press

Making Truth in Early Modern Catholicism, Amsterdam University Press, 2021. ProQuest Ebook Central,

The publication of this book is made possible by a grant from Pro-Post-Doc-Programm am Forschungszentrum Historische Geisteswissenschaften der Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, deutsches Historisches Institut in Rom, and Ghent University.

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Cover illustration: Detail, Portrait of Galileo Galilei, 1885, by Edmond van Hove. Groeningemuseum Brugge; Musea Brugge (www.artinflanders.be, foto Dominique Provost). Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout isbn 978 94 6372 052 6 978 90 4855 004 3 e-isbn doi 10.5117/9789463720526 nur 685 © The authors / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2021 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher.

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Table of Contents

A Product’s Glamour. Credibility, or the Manufacture and Administration of Truth in Early Modern Catholicism

Bruno Boute, Andreea Badea, Marco Cavarzere, and Steven Vanden Broecke

7

Part I  Accommodating 1. Scholastic Approaches to Reasonable Disagreement

41

2. Regulating the Credibility of Non-Christians: Oaths on False Gods and Seventeenth-Century Casuistry

63

3. How to Be a Catholic Copernican in the Spanish Netherlands

85

4. Appearance and Essence: Speaking the Truth about the Body in the Early Modern Catholic Church

111

Rudolf Schuessler

Marco Cavarzere

Steven Vanden Broecke

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Brendan Röder

Part II  Performing 5. Saving Truth: Roman Censorship and Catholic Pluralization in the Confessionals of the Habsburg Netherlands, 1682–1686

135

6. The Production of Truth in the Manufacture of Saints. Procedures, Credibility and Patronage in Early Modern Processes of Canonization

165

Bruno Boute

Birgit Emich

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7. Credibility of the Past: Writing and Censoring History within Seventeenth-Century Catholicism

191

8. Heresy and Error in the Assessment of Modern Philosophical Psychology

211

9. Modern Philosophy and Ancient Heresies: New Wine in Old Bottles?

237

Andreea Badea

Leen Spruit

Maria Pia Donato

Part III  Embedding 10. “Experiences Are Not Successful Accompaniments to Knowledge of the Truth”: The Trial of the Atheists in Late Seventeenth-Century Naples

263

11. Choosing Information, Selecting Truth: The Roman Congregations, the Benedictine Declaration, and the Establishment of Religious Plurality

279

12. Disciplining the Sciences in Conflict Zones: Pre-Classical Mechanics between the Sovereign State and the Reformed Catholic Religion

305

Index

331

Vittoria Fiorelli

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Cecilia Cristellon

Rivka Feldhay

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A Product’s Glamour. Credibility, or the Manufacture and Administration of Truth in Early Modern Catholicism Bruno Boute, Andreea Badea, Marco Cavarzere, and Steven Vanden Broecke

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Abstract This chapter furnishes the reader with a vademecum to the volume. It places uncertainty in the limelight as a key element for understanding confessional cultures and belief systems, and shows how early modern Catholicism struggled to f ind practical strategies for marrying deepseated uncertainties with its aim of operationalizing an absolute and revealed truth. Inspired by Michel de Certeau and Bruno Latour, among others, this introduction argues that a methodological transfer between science studies, history of knowledge, and religious history offers a toolkit to reconstruct the credibility of past beliefs. It introduces the volume’s focus on the myriad of connected laboratories and work floors of early modern Catholicism, and on the untainted emergence of a universal truth from such a multifarious activity. This praxeological approach is illustrated in the subsequent survey of this volume’s sections and chapters. Keywords: science studies, praxeology, history of uncertainty, early modern Catholicism, Michel de Certeau, Bruno Latour

Is truth ‘out there’? The proposition has lost much of its evidence. The premise that ‘facts are sacred’ is under pressure from fake news, alternative facts, and scepticism about official science. Conversely, fingers are wagged at a postmodern relativism that is allegedly seeping into scientific research, particularly in the humanities, before intoxicating public debate

Badea, A., B. Boute, M. Cavarzere, S. Vanden Broecke (eds.), Making Truth in Early Modern Catholicism. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021 doi 10.5117/9789463720526_intro

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in general.1 Historians, too, are eminently vulnerable to these accusations: the fluid, tangled realities and truths from the past often fail to meet the test of objectivity or ‘out-thereness’.2 And yet, history of science and science studies have also argued that both this eminently Western approach to the ‘out-thereness of truth’, and the alternative notion that ‘anything goes’, are rooted in a misunderstanding of the nature of knowledge-making and, more broadly, in a ‘Euro-American’ ontology that is as local as anything.3 It is only inside this ontology, the argument goes, that the sacrality of facts and the ‘out-thereness’ of truth appear to be in jeopardy as soon one observes that, following the Latin etymology of the word, facta are fabricated. It may be more productive to approach the simultaneously sacral and manufactured nature of facts as a paradox rather than an unsolvable postmodern contradiction: a treasure trove to penetrate the arcana of truth and the way in which it functions within precarious interpretive communities. ‘We live in a world where—as Marx forcefully argued—a product’s glamour relies on the invisibility of its unglamorous (but often clamorous) production.’4 So where does this approach leave truth? Inspired by this re-interpretation of Marx and by Bruno Latour, we would suggest that truth is the glamorous concept which Western communities have typically used to sign off and black box the enormous amount of costly and unglamorous work that goes into their epistemic practices. In order to take a salutary distance from this glamorous closing of the ranks and open up the ‘invisibility of its unglamorous production’, we have chosen to focus on ‘credibility’ instead. Within the ongoing process of circulation and appropriation of knowledge that actors of different sort incessantly carry out, ‘credibility’ stands for the (ascribed) ability of a knowledge proposition 1 Cf. the iconic counter-attack launched by Sokal and Bricmont, Impostures intellectuelles. 2 It is generally assumed that reality (1) does not only exist out there beyond ourselves but, in addition, in order to be objective, has to be: (2) independent of our actions and manipulations; (3) “given”, i.e. anterior to our discoveries or other actions; (4) definite, i.e., more or less specific, clear, certain, and def inable, provided that the proper methods are used; (5) singular and homogeneous (instead of multiple and heterogeneous); and (6) stable, in the sense that it remains constant if not disturbed, rather than precarious and dependent on continuous maintenance. Cf. Law, After Method, 8–9. 3 The concept ‘Euro-American’ should therefore not be confused with ‘English-language’, ‘Northern European’, or ‘Protestant-centred’. In this volume, it merely denotes the abovementioned set of assumed and functionalizing implications for the objectivity of truth/reality. Cf. Law, After Method, pp. 24–25. On the seeming incommensurability between ‘universal (scientif ic) knowledge’ and ‘local belief’ or the pensée sauvage vs. scientif ic rationality, see Vinck, Sociologie des sciences, pp. 99–102. 4 Highmore, Michel de Certeau, p. 3.

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or a claimant to knowledge to act at a distance on others.5 We use this concept precisely because it lacks the glamour, and hence much of the capacity for confusion, that epistemic tools like ‘truth’ have. It is far better suited to convey the social qualities of stability and reliability that slip into epistemic claims as the hard human work of epistemic standardizing and homogenizing has been carried out. Obviously, one could always choose to further analyse credibility into its social, material, and cognitive functions, and much recent work in social epistemology has done exactly that.6 Credibility involves trust, funding, career patterns, hermeneutical, and epistemological qualities like representativity, coherence, accuracy, methodological solidity, raw ‘data’, etc. In historical reality, however, these are difficult to disentangle. Data are social (as the need for representativity suggests) and trust is also generated by footnotes.7 Anthropologists of modern ‘big science’, for instance, explain the accumulative entanglement of financing, data, rewards, and careers via the concept of a ‘cycle of credibility’ that blurs the lines between cognitive and social functions.8 Compared to big science, institutionalized religion lends itself more easily to such an approach: from a secular point of view, it involves deeply unglamorous, indeed incredible, ‘beliefs’ and ‘doctrines’.9 But there are also more solid reasons for transferring this approach to the historical study of religion. The apparent dilemma between the ‘out-thereness’ of truth and the notion that ‘anything goes’, which has only begun to haunt students of science in the past 30 years or so, has been familiar to religious historians for a much longer time. Their field has long been populated, after all, by practitioners who either operated within the religious schemes they investigated, or else rejected these schemes altogether in favour of a secularist and culturalist understanding of religion from without. This volume aims to contribute to the process of this broader methodological transfer between science studies and the history of religion. It, too, 5 On ‘circulation’ in the history of knowledge and the equivalent of ‘transfer’ and ‘appropriation’ in religious history, compare Brilkman, ‘Confessional Knowledge’ and Ditchfield, ‘In Search of Local Knowledge’. 6 Cf. The Routledge Handbook of Social Epistemology; see also Rheinberger, On Historicizing Epistemology. 7 Cf. the inspiring insights in Callon, ‘Some Elements’. 8 For a brief introduction see Latour and Woolgar, ‘The Cycle of Credibility’; an inspiring application in Van Reybrouck, ‘Boule’s Error’. 9 From an anthropological point of view, see the chapter ‘L’objet impossible’ in Piette, La religion de près. Equally relevant are the historiographical debates in Clossey et al. and Clark et al., ‘The Unbelieved and Historians’.

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sets out from the assumption that the credibility of religious truth can be captured by reconstructing the unglamorous work floor where it was manufactured and administrated by a multitude of historical actors. Seen from this historicist perspective, the glamour of the product is its credibility. More specifically, we do this by focusing on early modern Catholicism, and especially on the learned Catholicism of elites, which has an innumerable number of Pandora’s boxes sitting on its archival shelves. A number of immediate historical factors would seem to encourage our enterprise, even though these are not necessarily unique to early modern Catholicism. First, Catholicism took the principled existence of absolute truths as a regulative ideal for the authenticity and credibility of institutions. Conversely, the Church of Rome had no qualms to identify itself as the sole depository and guardian, in a millenary apostolic succession, of a revealed truth untainted by human politicking and manipulation. Second, Catholic engagement with absolute truth was a high-stakes issue because that truth was transformative. Teachers were shepherds who did not merely transmit pure truth, but also sought to effect purification to attain the salvation of their flock. Merging orthopraxy with orthodoxy, early modern Catholicism offers ample opportunities to study how theoria and personal paideia, knowledge/ power and care of the self, epistemic techniques and anthropotechniques, intersected and connected.10 An ‘orthodoxic religion’ in the anthropological sense,11 this projected unity of the faith trickled down in the uniformity of religious practice and ultimately vented the unity of a monolithic Church Militant or, in scholarly terms, of Catholic confessional culture as such.12 Third, it is hard to underestimate early modern Catholicism’s success in projecting, even achieving, at least a workable semblance of transcendental order, to the extent that modern historians still privilege internal coherence and general trends as the markers of Catholic confessional culture and religious change. While the inertial force of scholarly traditions played an essential role in enhancing this forceful narrative in modern scholarship, it also taps inadvertently into the hard, daily work of zealous inquisitors, Church officials, and elites to keep internal plurality and fractures invisible, shady, or marginal. Needless to say, our enterprise is not without precedent. First, the last two decades saw the emergence of studies focusing on the striking plurality 10 Despite our references to the later work of Michel Foucault, his own engagement with early modern Catholicism was rare. For an exception, see Foucault, Les anormaux, pp. 155–216. On anthropotechnique, see Sloterdijk, Du mußt dein Leben ändern. 11 Asad, Genealogies of Religion. 12 See now Emich, ‘Konfession und Kultur’, and Maurer, Konfessionskulturen.

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of early modern Catholicism(s) across the globe. This new orientation is somewhat related to, but should not be confused with, earlier claims for a catholicisme au pluriel that were rooted in a surreptitious privileging of ideology as the true engine of religious change. This privilege, for instance, explains the ongoing vitality of an older historiography focusing on the history of -isms (Baianism, Molinism, Jansenism, Gallicanism, etc.) where expressions of plurality are held to reflect local (but doctrinally coherent or ‘pure’) sub-catholicisms, national churches, or even ‘counter-churches’. These were often staged as proverbial Davids struggling with a Roman Goliath on axes that distinguish pure or ‘real’ religion from Realpolitik, and sometimes even truth from error. But these are not the only available options for creating a salutary distance from Tridentine self-images. A precociously original alternative was contained in Michel de Certeau’s essay on the formality of practice (1972). While discussing the same themes cherished by traditional historiography of church and theology, de Certeau offered a much more fractured vision of early modern religious change.13 However, it is the turn of the twenty-first century that marked an increasingly sustained assault on the mainstream emphasis on doctrinal and institutional, or cultural and evolutionary, coherence in the study of early modern Catholicism.14 Second, the fractured nature of collectives (and their truths or beliefs) has become a central focus of research in the humanities in general. This focus draws, inter alia, on the post-Durkheimian anthropological insight that communities presenting themselves as solid, monolithic blocks prove no less heterogeneous, plural, or conflictual than avowedly pluralist collectives.15 Early modern Catholicism, too, can be viewed as a precarious community of (somewhat regulated) conflict. The endless wrangling over what is true, and therefore worthy of defending, offers an opportunity to understand how communities of belief (including early modern global Catholicism) are held together through everyday practice. This volume seeks to demonstrate that this question should be privileged over the more mainstream question of what (structure or culture) holds collectives together in principle.16 Such opportunities are not limited to the well-known confessional fractures dividing the Old Continent, or even to less familiar phenomena such as indifferentism and confessional ambiguity, or to the challenges springing 13 De Certeau, ‘La formalité des pratiques’. For an (all too rare) attempt to engage de Certeau’s approach, see the various essays in Lire Michel de Certeau. 14 Ditchfield, ‘In Search of Local Knowledge’; Frijhoff, ‘Foucault Reformed by Certeau’. 15 For an interesting take on Durkheim and post-Durkheimian reorientations of anthropology, see Arnaut, ‘Making Space for Performativity’. 16 On this issue, see Latour, Science en action.

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from intensif ied contacts with cultures overseas.17 It is not just at the anomalous fringes that early modern actors can be caught displaying a seemingly postmodern awareness of deep-seated cognitive uncertainties, of the situational validity of moral, ceremonial, or liturgical codes, and of the fragility of political, social, and religious configurations. It is at the very core of their world that they built their cohesion through performative acts and instable negotiations. In the past two decades, scholars have come to value uncertainty as an important key to seventeenth-century Catholicism.18 Much research has demonstrated the rifts within the ‘streamlined machinery’ of the Society of Jesus, and has focused on the performativity of managerial practices moulding this ‘Jesuit cacophony’ into a single actor on a global stage.19 In more traditional academic quarters the performativity of bureaucratic practices functionalized the elusive orthodoxy of a loose conglomerate of scholars into the hallmark of corporatist identity.20 The transregional—transcontinental, even—governance of other religious orders in their (g)local entanglements also offers many clues. The field of missionary studies has benefitted from an emphasis on actors’ perspectives, combined with a focus on practices designed to generate trust and credibility. The resulting ‘local’ histories were then judiciously plugged into the global transfers shaping early modern Catholicism.21 This wealth of new scholarship has yielded at least three essential elements for the project of this book. First, historians of early modern Catholicism no longer merely indulge in deconstructing master narratives of past and present. Rather, they seek to understand how early modern Catholics could turn their truth-driven master narratives into a forceful and mobilizing referent for action, knowledge, and belief. This volume’s short answer is: through hard work by chains of actors addressing problems on the ground. To revisit the previous paragraph’s question of how to investigate inevitably fractured collectives: while epistemological, moral, or cognitive uncertainties prove(d) hard to tackle in principle, it is rewarding to follow early modern 17 On confessional ambiguity, see Ossa-Richardson, A History of Ambiguity, and the essays in Konfessionelle Ambiguität. 18 Tutino, Uncertainty; Schreiner, Are You Alone Wise? 19 Gay, Jesuit Civil Wars. 20 Quattrone, ‘Accounting for God’; Friedrich, Der lange Arm Roms?; Boute, Academic Interests. 21 On the incessantly growing literature about mission, see at least A Companion to Early Modern Catholic Global Missions; Amsler, Jesuits and Matriarchs; Catholic Missionaries in Early Modern Asia; Heyberger, Les Chrétiens du Proche-Orient; Menegon, Ancestors, Virgins, and Friars; Molnár, Le Saint-Siège, Raguse et les missions catholiques; Windler, Missionare in Persien; Županov, Missionary Tropics.

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actors overcoming them, albeit with difficulty and at considerable cost, in practice. Practices and the credibility of their outcome, not ethereal ideas or concepts, constitute the central focus and the structure of this volume.22 This connects back to de Certeau’s aforementioned seminal essay on the formality of religious practices, which also advocated a deeply praxeological approach to credibility. Second, it is clear that such a praxeological line of approach is profoundly interdisciplinary. Literary studies have highlighted the precarious yet effectively mobilizing authority of texts in interpretive communities which encompass social collectives as much as the reading strategies and hermeneutical practices that support this authority.23 Furthermore, historians of philosophy and of science have made it incontestably clear that practices of knowledge production, validation, and accreditation were tangled with the concomitant manufacture of a scholarly persona.24 Sociology of science has emphasized the role of everyday practices of in- and exclusion for delineating and stabilizing fluid, competing, and/or coexisting communities and networks, following Gieryn’s trailblazing article on boundary-work and Bourdieu’s theory of practice.25 A series of culturalist ‘turns’ have enabled scholars to show how spatial, ceremonial, and material arrangements—both at premodern and modern universities—are constitutive of academic authority and charisma.26 It is in this context that bureaucratic or managerial practices (as in the aforementioned managerial practices of the Society of Jesus, or in the wielding of academic privilege) emerge no longer as mere footnotes to the so-called ‘structures of science’ supporting knowledge production. Latour’s work on laboratory life, or Becker and Clark’s on the bureaucratic ‘little tools of knowledge’, among others, has instead illuminated cognition and knowledge production from its material base. They show how the manufacturing of experts and data involved the agency of machines and cyborgs; the transformative operations of questionnaires, visitation reports, catalogues, charts, (wooden and paper) tables; and the spatial arrangements of laboratories, libraries, and lecture- and disputation-halls.27 Prior to the 22 The study of practices regarding the early modern period has been greatly intensified in recent years; see Die Praktiken der Gelehrsamkeit in der Frühen Neuzeit and Praktiken der Frühen Neuzeit. 23 Fish, Is There a Text in this Class? 24 Shapin, Never Pure; Paul, ‘What Is a Scholarly Persona?’; Hunter, ‘The History of Philosophy’. 25 Gieryn, ‘Boundary-Work’; Bourdieu, Esquisse d’une théorie; see also Was als wissenschaftlich gelten darf. 26 Clark, Academic Charisma. 27 Latour, Science en action; Little Tools of Knowledge.

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eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this learned culture was deeply tangled with the juridico-ecclesial regimes of knowledge production nurtured by medieval Christianity and early modern confessions. Third, it is now clear that these realities, including fractures and cognitive uncertainties, were not restricted to the fringes of early modern Catholicism, but were equally present at its (self-declared) core. In the Eternal City, practices of institutional, religious, or geographical differentiation were often balanced—or unwound—by administrative, censorial, or executive practices which aimed at homologating, neutralizing, occluding, or deleting a limitless variety. Iconic protagonists of Catholic orthodoxy such as the Inquisition and the Congregation of the Index often enter the stage as censorial mediators and pacificators.28 The striking pragmatism and ambiguity of Roman doctrinal, administrative, and legal governance in reaction to the supplications, reports, or denunciations from across the globe has also become a common thread in new studies on the Roman congregations of cardinals. Surprisingly, perhaps, heated conflicts involving existential doubts seldom resulted in strong Roman definitions. Curial institutions sought to navigate competing and mutually exclusive claims to tradition, truth, or pastoral relevance by managing, shelving, or bluntly ignoring them; by silencing litigants on the periphery; by ‘privatizing’ historiographical traditions or doctrinal controversies; and by catering to—or modifying—the honour codes that grounded the dynamics of learned polemics.29 All this reduces something of the surprise that Rome, the self-declared headquarter of Tridentine Catholicism, should paradoxically become a starting point for research into the plurality and the polycentric organization—cognitive and otherwise—of early modern Catholicism.30 The latter features balance out the drive towards doctrinal and liturgical homogenization which historians have often emphasized as a mark of religious change. It should be remembered that the Church defined its canon negatively (i.e. by the exclusion of deviation). This left ample room for a dynamic pluralization, although within a highly authoritative, generalizing, and often punitive register, and in turn allowed Catholicism to ‘go glocal’, and Catholics worldwide to inhabit a timeless set of rules and institutions. The combination of Roman brinkmanship and the reactive style of early modern 28 Cavarzere, La prassi della censura. 29 Gierl, ‘The Triumph of Truth and Innocence’; Badea, ‘(Heiligen-)Geschichte als Streitfall’. 30 Emich, ‘Localizing Catholic Missions’. Together with Prof. Dr. D. Weltecke (Frankfurt), Birgit Emich directs a Kollegforschergruppe (2020–2024) funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft on the policentric and plural nature of premodern Christianities at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt a.M., Germany.

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governance grounded a post-Tridentine plurality, informed by attempts to appropriate and transfer the Council of Trent’s image of an apostolic tradition to new circumstances, to different localities across the globe, by a multitude of actors servicing a wide range of programmes. Most notably, at least from a Roman point of view, all this had to happen without provoking a much-feared crisis about the infallibility of the papacy.31 Pluralization, in the sense of a dynamic rather than a residual plurality, is the proverbial worm in the apple of the homogenization drive across confessional divides that historians have observed at the end of the previous century. In the last few decades, this fluid understanding of plural cognitive systems and ditto interpretive communities has also substantially altered our comprehension of the coexistence or competition between (above all, Catholic) religion and science. Catholic confessional culture has proven more absorbing of the new epistemic ambitions of early modern science, as exemplified in the trajectory of Copernican cosmology, than is suggested by Galileo Galilei’s iconic brushes with Roman censorship.32 Similarly, scholars have reached a better understanding of the methodical engagement with uncertainty and duplicity that, via the epistemic innovations of probabilism (cf. below), early modern theologians increasingly showed in order to solve moral doubts and avoid perplexitas, or the inability to act.33 Scholarship contains many similar approaches to the history of science that must equally deal with the problem of plurality and the coexistence of diverging assertions on the natural world. This furnishes additional arguments both for ditching the habitual Whig narrative of the relation between science and religion in terms of competition, conflict, and science’s eventual victory, and for withdrawing an anti-modernist defence of religion, on three accounts. First, both science and religion were dependent on a previously generated, more or less easily transferable, institutional or charismatic credibility of spokesmen. Secondly, science and religion remained committed to the regulative principle of an absolute truth loaded with the above-mentioned Euro-American set of implications, and disposed of multiple practices to functionalize this principle. Finally, the contents or consequences of such absolute truths remained strikingly elusive, controversial, and disputed throughout much of the early modern period. These assessments warrant an emphatically symmetrical approach to the history of early modern expert communities, defying the modern gap between science and religion. What 31 Das Konzil von Trient. 32 Vanden Broecke, ‘Copernicanism as a Religious Challenge’. 33 Tutino, Uncertainty, and lately Schuessler, The Debate on Probable Opinions.

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is more, they also call for a symmetrical analysis of how practices created, stabilized, and articulated the credibility of both actors and contents, succeeding in establishing across ages and continents a Euro-American ontology with its requirements of purity.34 In order to further operationalize our praxeological approach, the different contributions to this volume have been assigned to three sections, respectively entitled ‘Accommodating’, ‘Performing’, and ‘Embedding’. Each of these sections illuminates one of three key ways in which early modern Catholics functionalized their notions of absolute truth (as well as their corresponding truth-driven master narratives). Theologians as well as historians, scientists, and other scholars managed to overcome the problems stemming from an elusive orthodoxy, an unsettling uncertainty, and blatant disagreements about the meaning of the faith’s central tenets by transforming truth into a mobilizing referent for (collective and individual) action and belief on the ground. We hope to demonstrate that the credibility of these narratives was largely constituted by such practices, which then often ‘went without saying’ as credibility itself gained an aura of self-evidence, in order to keep the work floor tidy and the ‘product’ both pure and purifying. Needless to say, these practices occasionally overlap, and our list could easily be expanded with other items, including equivocation, deletion, dissimulation, and modes of conflict, among others. The reader is invited to take this overall structure as a means of connecting the wide range of questions, themes, and methods in the following chapters to the general programme of this volume.

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1. Accommodating Our f irst section takes its title from one of the most notorious cultural practices of post-Tridentine Catholicism: the Jesuit policy of accommodating local and individual circumstances, as a matter of missionary method, with the translation of Catholic teachings and rituals into local philosophical and religious frameworks as one of the more spectacular examples.35 The credibility (or, considering the thoroughly legal reflexes of the institutional Church, legitimacy) of accommodation was often premised on the assumption of an underlying ‘common humanity’ rooted in natural law, and hence 34 A plea for a symmetrical anthropology in Latour, We Have Never Been Modern. 35 Regarding the divisions between ‘religious’ and ‘civic’ customs cf. Menegon, Ancestors, Virgins, and Friars.

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guaranteed by universalizing anthropologies. The chapters in the f irst section develop two main points about post-Tridentine accommodation practices. First, they illustrate that accommodation practices, and their foundations in humanist rhetoric and scholastic reasoning, were neither exclusive to the Jesuit order nor to a missionary context. Second, they raise questions about the connections between Roman doctrinal and ritual authority and the local beliefs and practices that it accommodated. As we saw it, the credibility of accommodation hinged on the assumption that a unified set of Roman teachings and rituals could be successfully translated and incarnated in a wide range of local beliefs and practices: in Europe and overseas; among ecclesiastical elites as well as among the rustici, idiotae, ‘simple folks’ and ‘infirm’. Everywhere, the Church sought to protect its flock (with a firm hand, if necessary) from spiritual harm. This situation does not differ greatly from what we can see in the domain of early modern knowledge practices, which (in Bruno Latour’s classic interpretation) also prioritized the task of mobilizing, translating, and accommodating local information into newly instituted master maps and centres of accumulation. Rudolf Schuessler’s introductory chapter on scholastic approaches to reasonable disagreement examines the backdrop to one of the most publicized and divisive controversies in the seventeenth century, raging both in Europe and overseas. As Schuessler convincingly argues, these resulted in the most sophisticated enterprise to regulate and accommodate reasonable disagreement prior to the recent return of the subject in modern analytical philosophy. Early modern Catholic scholars developed a conceptual and methodological toolkit to establish the tenability and assertability of conflicting, perhaps incompatible, yet ‘probable’ opinions among epistemic peers: opinions supported by reason and by expert authority that did not attain the epistemic quality of certainty or the status of official Church teachings. By maintaining less probable opinions in the fold of assertible opinions, early modern ‘probabilists’ broke with the ‘probabiliorism’ of medieval scholastics and expanded the number and scope of probable opinions in truth-searching procedures. This resulted in a reshuffling of the boundaries between the certain, the tenable, and the untenable. It should be noted that the Jesuits were iconic but hardly sole protagonists in this story, while missionary encounters offered but one among many triggers for the rise of probabilism. One of its main fields of application, casuistry, found practitioners in an expanding judicial system, but was also closely related to Catholic disciplining efforts through the confessional’s tribunal of conscience. The latter happened in Europe (where anti-probabilism and

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attacks on the ‘laxist’ effects of casuistry merged with anti-Jesuitism in the wake of Pascal’s Provinciales)36 and overseas (where missionaries worked to translate local rituals of shame into Christian penance practices). Casuistry, which acquired the trappings of a full-blown theological subdiscipline with separate chairs in many diocesan seminaries and in Jesuit colleges, among others, offered a recognized method of reasoning that, at the crossroads of law and theology, could forge a normative order in uncharted territories. Casuistic practical ethics ‘thought by cases’, in the sense that it organized everyday decision-making through piecemeal accommodation to codifications of specific circumstances of action, not to formalized abstractions of context-less normative behaviour.37 Marco Cavarzere’s case study on the validity of oaths on false gods in transcultural commercial relations offers a penetrating view on this dimension of casuistry. The vast colonial trade empires were not solely built on coercion, but also on contractual agreements with non-Christian communities and rulers. These contracts continued to require mutual oaths for confirmation that, however, could no longer be legitimized by Aquinas’s concept of fides, a merger of ‘trust’ in contractual parties bound by ‘faith’ in the same God. In the newly globalizing world of commerce and Christendom—ranging from Dutch trading posts in Malaysia, over the Moluccan Islands and Portuguese factories in India, to Danish, Portuguese, Dutch, and Prussian outposts on the African Gold Coast—a stunning variety of practices existed, including Christian merchants and representatives of European trade companies choosing to participate in pagan rituals of oath-taking. Cavarzere shows that similar forms of accommodation should not be mistaken for an early form of modern toleration or an emerging religious relativism. That the age-old practice of commercial oath-taking did not collapse in similar transcultural encounters testifies to the fact that practical agreements continued to be premised on a single, yet elusive religious referent that committed contractual parties with bewilderingly different cosmologies to a readjusted ‘network of trust’. This connection was validated and functionalized in the casuistic treatment of local ‘cases’ by Jesuit authors such as Lessius and Suárez at the beginning and by Protestant authors at the end of the seventeenth century. Although Protestant concerns differed somewhat from their Catholic counterparts, this chapter illustrates how 36 Gay, Morales en conflit. 37 Compare with the use of aphorisms in early modern astrology, or the use of medical cases in early modern medicine. On the former, see Vanden Broecke, ‘Evidence and Conjecture’, on the latter, see Pomata, ‘Sharing Cases’.

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casuistry emerged as a transconfessional normative toolkit to navigate the deep blue ocean, making a forceful case for comparative research across confessional boundaries. Accommodation thus shaped a wide range of institutional and disciplinary practices capable of handling even hard cases of doctrinal incommensurability. The conflict between Scripture’s literal meaning and the teachings of heliocentric cosmology offers an intriguing example. Steven Vanden Broecke’s work on the Catholic astronomer Wendelinus (Govaert Wendelen, 1580–1667), based in the Habsburg Netherlands, fleshes out the apparent anomaly of ongoing Catholic engagement with Copernicanism after Galilei’s condemnation by the Roman Congregations of the Index and the Holy Office in 1616–1633. Drawing on the empirical evidence that Wendelinus’s scholarly networks included ecclesiastics and scholars (Fromondus and Caramuel, among others) involved in the local implementation of the Roman ban against heliocentrism, this chapter offers a nuanced view of how public Copernicanism remained a reality in Rome’s North-Western bastion on the Catholic frontier. In line with this book’s stated claims, Vanden Broecke shows how ecclesiastical dignitaries, university professors, and local astronomer-priests like Wendelinus all privileged the question of how (rather than whether) to be a public Copernican. Wendelinus’s hermeneutical practices, around which his public persona was constructed, involved careful triangulation of astronomical demonstrations with consideration of the social and spiritual consequences of philosophical and astronomical assertions, and a carefully calibrated use of Scripture as a source of assertions on the natural world. These criteria inspired both trust and credibility about the ‘legitimacy’ of Wendelinus’s Copernicanism. These premises support Vanden Broecke’s conclusion that cosmological knowledge was not a top-down, non-negotiable product after the Galilei affair in the Habsburg Netherlands, and that the legitimacy of Copernican ideas did not solely depend on the protection of friends in high places, but rather on the Catholic Copernican’s sharing of his audience’s concerns and standards of epistemic decorum. In these chapters, the social and spiritual consequences of assertions emerge as important considerations in the assessment by religious authorities of their validity, testifying to the efforts of learned and ecclesiastical elites to transmit truths that were both pure and purifying. In his magisterial L’Erreur et son juge, Bruno Neveu distinguished several categories (‘perilous’, ‘scandalous’, ‘offensive towards pious ears’, ‘pernicious’, etc.) within a long list of theological qualifications that Roman censors and theologians used in order to weigh the distance of propositions from Revelation and

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Church-sanctioned matters of faith.38 Through this careful taxonomy, Roman authorities outlined undesirable spiritual or social consequences as legitimate grounds for condemnation. Brendan Röder‘s work shows how this line of argumentation could be activated as the looming danger of scandal and social rift threatened the Church community. Röder ventures into the realm of bureaucratic decision-making by the Roman Congregation of the Council, focusing on the issue of possible canonical impediments to the sacerdotal status of clergymen who incurred bodily defects through disease or mutilation. This issue is documented in hundreds of petitions, submitted by clergymen wishing to be cleared of (accusations of) irregularity, and sheds intriguing light on the double truth regimes under scrutiny: on the one hand, that of the medical reports by surgeons and physicians penetrating visible signs (symptoms) of invisible essences (diseases) inaccessible to non-expert observers; on the other hand, the directly visible, non-medical, prima facie evidence of the clerical body, which often sparked scandal when seen by the wider community during the performance of sacerdotal functions. Scholarly attitudes towards non-expert views were largely shared by cardinals and their advisors (see below); medical experts’ authority was seldom questioned; and medical reports continued to appear in great numbers in these files. Still, in case of dissonance, it is interesting to note that Roman decision-makers favoured disregarding medical opinions for the ‘wisdom of crowds’. Expanding the analysis to other domains such as demonic possession and criminal offences committed by public officials, Röder discerns two modes of truth-finding, through uncovering hidden truths (the medical expert approach) and covering up visible evidence (the curial approach) respectively. However, he argues against privileging one truth regime as more ‘modern’ than its ‘premodern’ alternative, as both modes continue to underpin cognitive and governance practices in the present. While illuminating how truth-driven master narratives could thrive not in spite of, but because of, accommodation, the chapters in this section raise some new problems. It is essential to ask to what extent the notion of a centralized master narrative that effectively accommodates local variety functioned as a regulative ideal authorizing practices, not as an actual object constructed and informed by such practices. In his recent A History of Ambiguity, Anthony Ossa-Richardson unearthed the long history of attempts to isolate the notion of an original and single authorial meaning that local interpretive practices seek to access. Interestingly, Ossa-Richardson also shows how post-Tridentine Catholic exegesis defended the view of scriptural 38 Neveu, L’Erreur et son juge.

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passages having multiple literal meanings.39 Clearly, this theoretical gesture problematizes—and potentially opposes—the very notion of a homogeneous master text that accommodates and integrates local variety. Several chapters in this section urge us to question the precise status and function of the Catholic ideal of an absolute truth accommodating the variety of the world. It would go too far to claim that these were entirely novel phenomena. At the very least, however, their proliferation in post-Tridentine Catholicism raises questions about our understanding of ‘accommodation’ as the translation and inscription of practices in pre-existing, separate truths. Instead, they point towards an alternative understanding of accommodation as the inscription of practices in a web of social relations of power: a web of relations between social actors that is authorized by the fiction of an absolute truth or literal meaning, and instantiated in the form of disciplined practices. 40 As de Certeau observed in his classic La fable mystique (1982), the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw the sudden proliferation of such authorizing f ictions, allowing the social practice of interpretation to continue in a world where the readability of divine will had become far less self-evident.41 Another way to look at the problem of whether or not master narratives are either singular or fictitious is offered by the Dutch physician and philosopher Annemarie Mol’s ‘praxiographic’ research into ontologies as they take form on a daily basis in late twentieth-century hospitals. Mol’s research reveals how, staying with Brendan Röder’s terminology, the essences accessed through a variety of practices (conversations with patients; different diagnostical tools applied in different departments of the same hospital; and a wide range of different treatments) multiplied, could contradict each other, and were occasionally coordinated between different departments while not (necessarily) aggregating into a single object to be inscribed in a single master narrative. 42 This opens up the possibility of a situational, practical, and multiple objectivity at the core of Euro-American knowledge cultures that otherwise tend to emphasize singularity and exclusivity as conditions 39 Ossa-Richardson, A History of Ambiguity, pp. 162–181. 40 De Certeau, L’invention du quotidien, pp. 248–249. 41 See De Certeau, La fable mystique, pp. 127–137. Likewise, the recent literature on the theme of secrecy in early modern science has called for a shift in attention from secrets to secrecy, from a strict focus on what is being circulated in knowledge societies to the way in which dynamic social relations are forged around secrets in the first place. Since ‘secrets are a social phenomenon’, the traditional focus on knowledge as the proper object of the history of science may thus be embedded in a broader study of social practices of belief and credibility, whose foundations resist an easy reduction in terms of economic value. See Vermeir and Margócsy, ‘States of Secrecy’, and, above all, Jütte, The Age of Secrecy, and Snyder, Dissimulation. 42 Mol, The Body Multiple.

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for truthfulness. The chapters in the next section about performing, which equally has a situational ring to it, provide additional material for this discussion.

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2. Performing If the concept of an absolute truth functioned as a promissory note facilitating translation and accommodation across local claims, the second section focuses on the performances that visualized, confirmed, accredited, and situationally achieved the coveted unity or coherence of doctrine and practice, to the extent that this unity could indeed become a given fact. As suggested before, the performance of transcendental order and unity, doctrinal and otherwise, may well have been one of the post-Tridentine Church’s most striking achievements. This assessment raises a number of issues. Performance can be understood as an improvising act, which plays on the double entendre of acting as doing or pretending to do something, and/or as an enactment of (this being Catholicism) an obliging and authoritative ‘out there’. In line with Röder’s findings in the previous section, staging Catholic unity and coherence of doctrine implied also that Catholic hierarchies and their expert advisors were actively involved in covering up disagreement and criticism on the public scene, through the proscription of books and/or the imposition of silence on warring scholars and scholarly or religious communities. Similar practices of dissimulation under the guise of authority underscore the performative dimension to censorship and (other) bureaucratic practices. The bulk of scholarship in the humanities accepts understanding performance in such a dramaturgical way, embracing the concept of theatre state enhanced by Clifford Geertz and other pathbreaking studies.43 Still, given the fact that truth, in early modern Catholicism, was not only to be pure but also purifying, the possible meanings of performance should be expanded to include the possibility of (salutary) transformation of individuals and collectives. This entails that performance should also be considered in terms of real effects and achievements, the meaning generally attached to the concept in economics, accounting, engineering sciences, and to those tedious bibliometric evaluations modern universities force their scholars to undertake. Rome loomed large in the previous section, but takes the centre stage here. The chapters in this section focus on curial approaches to themes 43 We refer first of all to the pioneering work by Geertz, Negara, and to the discussions stirred by this volume.

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that range between the liturgical enactment and functionalization of Catholic orthodoxy in the sacrament of Penance; the double liturgical and scriptural registers in canonization procedures; hagiographical and historiographical debates in the context of inter-religious competition; and the challenges posed by ‘novelties’—always a suspect category in theological speech—introduced by seventeenth-century natural philosophers. ‘Saving Truth’ by Bruno Boute, focusing on the administration of the sacrament of penance, engages directly with the double connotation of truth with purity and purification. The analysis builds on a case study of Roman censorship procedures in the early 1680s that sought to manage a heated conflict in the Habsburg Low Countries over seemingly innocuous didactic prints. Common to these prints, some of which would be proscribed by the Holy Office, was a summary of Catholic doctrine in seven articles, cognition of which was deemed necessary for salvation. Venturing into the polarized religious (elite) culture of the Spanish Netherlands, Roman censorship documents as well as polemical writings reveal that didactic disputes were deeply entrenched in the acrimonious conflicts over the correct method of penance. As a pivotal tool in the sacramental offensive of early modern Catholicism, and as a central platform for the enactment of sacerdotal authority and hierarchy, confession was a privileged battleground in the ‘rigorist’ reaction against established pastoral practices. From the 1640s–1660s onwards, this reaction encompassed anti-Jesuitism, a rejection of probabilism, and a fierce counter-attack against ‘laxist’ casuistry. Faced with the question of whether penitents should know the tenets of the faith in the so-called ‘seven articles’ explicitly, Roman censors proved once more preoccupied with scandal and the souls lost to pastoral civil wars over sacramental methodology. To counter these, they effected a practical formalization of (sacramental) practice into a tangible sign and the substitute of an elusive orthodoxy, as observed by de Certeau. In other words, censorial practices saved truth from partisan recuperation in the confessional by banning controversial contents from public liturgical acts. As consequence, censorship functionalized saving truth as an obliging, yet speechless, referent, a mediator for the justified communion of the faithful in the Eucharist. In this way, censorship paradoxically operated a pluralization of practices and beliefs in subliminal spheres that were to be kept off the public stage. Birgit Emich investigates another liturgical black box with similar features: beatifications of the blessed and canonizations of saints, another phenomenon valued by historians as a central tool of early modern Catholic renewal. The performative speech act of beatification or canonization appears in a whole new light if one draws on Latour’s image for the paradoxes

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of scientific ontology. 44 It in fact proved a Janus-faced event: on the one hand, it discovered, proclaimed, and acted on an anterior, sacred fact, i.e. the blessed or saint’s eternal life in God’s presence after death in an odour of sanctity; on the other hand, this sacred fact was afterwards manufactured in a highly uncertain process of trial and error. In other words, canonization was the outcome and culmination of two elaborate modes of truth-finding and decision-making that enhanced each other’s legitimacy, and that shed interesting light on curial governance in general. Initially, the (legalistic) mode of the bureaucrats prevailed, which involved expert investigation, consultation, and verification of evidence, reporting and navigating loopholes in the Congregation of Rites. Subsequently, fact-finding transitioned to the spiritual mode in a sequence of scripted sessions in the consistory of cardinals. From then on, the supreme pontiff, an absentee landlord in the mode of the bureaucrats, gradually took on a lead role in the limelight, culminating in the liturgical drama of the celebratory canonization mass at Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Here, prayers and the Holy Spirit’s guidance eclipsed the legal world of postulators, experts, and lawyers, of dubia and authenticated seals. The analysis, drawing on, among other cases, that of Jacek of Krakow (Saint Hyacinth, canonized in 1594), is followed by a survey of Roman decrees issued during the quintessential pontificate of Urban VIII (1623–1644), highlighting the deep-seated Roman concern about legitimacy. Alongside the anteriority of sacred facts, legitimacy and universality surface as tangled connotations of truth in the beatifications and canonizations conducted by one of Urban´s predecessors, Pope Paul V (Isidro Labrador in 1619; Francesca Romana in 1608; and Carlo Borromeo in 1610). This is revealed in the subsequent analysis of the dynamic relationship between centre and periphery, and of the pervasive influence of patronage and papal nepotism. This analysis recalls some findings in the previous chapters in this book. Emich carefully distinguishes between the factors and agencies openly displayed in Roman narratives through prints, public liturgy, and monuments and those that were contrarywise concealed, kept informal, or faded-out. Her findings support the argument that such cover-ups aimed to functionalize the universal truth of Roman canonizations across the globe; to establish its singularity amidst the plurality of early modern Catholicism; and to rescue its purity from the omnipresent particular, local, or clientelist interests crossing the boundaries between heaven and earth. 44 Cf. the gap between ‘Science’ and ‘science in action’ in Latour, Science en action, p. 28, which we consider here first and foremost as a chronological gap.

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Andreea Badea offers a different vantage point on similar phenomena by revisiting a well-known conundrum: why was the Curia the only European court that did not appoint official historiographers, despite the crucial function of history in confessional polities? She does this by juxtaposing two episodes at opposite ends of the seventeenth century: the Roman reactions to Sarpi and De Dominis, and the debates over the possible condemnation of the Bollandist Acta Sanctorum and Mabillon’s Epistola de cultu sanctorum ignotorum. Under the heading of ‘ignoring, overwriting, and deleting the opponent’, Badea points out that curial restraint in producing official, Rome-sanctioned refutations of Sarpi and De Dominis was matched with the discreet commissioning and coordination of a protracted war of words that was to be fought by authors (Bzovius, Alciati, and eventually Sforza Pallavicin) and universities (Paris, Louvain, Cologne) of repute. These efforts were intended to override inconvenient histories with an unofficial, yet semi-canonical version. Roman reluctance to enter the fray was about more than just decorum. The dealings with Papebroch and Mabillon also involved considerations about the religious and social consequences of critical hagiographies for the veneration of saints on behalf of the flock. Above all, while history and hagiography offered a legitimation of both the present and the future, the emerging source critique and the continuous unearthing of new sources by continental networks of scholars made this promise particularly slippery and provisional. Any authoritative intervention was liable to be jeopardized by new discoveries and to trigger a crisis of apostolic authority or to bind curial institutions to untenable positions. In this episode, expert practices of uncovering (new sources or flawed readings) met a Curia that again was rather inclined to cover up sources (of disruption) and therefore presented the past through a solemn speechlessness from the apostolic heights of Peter’s chair. Several themes and practices discussed in the previous chapters resurface in the contributions of Maria Pia Donato, on new approaches to sacramental physics in the Eucharist, and Leen Spruit, on Roman attitudes towards philosophical psychology. Both deal with the challenges of alternative natural philosophies (Cartesianism, atomism, corpuscularism) to the merger of confessional orthodoxy, an almost dogmatized Aristotelianism, and related scholastic practices that revamped the apostolic Church of Rome as a doctrinal and sacramental community in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. While both chapters take a long-term approach, Donato points out that a sustained attack against established Eucharistic physics culminated in the second half of the seventeenth century, and that it often coincided with attacks on behalf of the so-called novatores of Rigorism and Jansenism

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against scholasticism, casuistry, and allegedly laxist penitential practices. Conversely, authors frequently used the sacraments of confession and of the Eucharist as benchmarks for challenging the aforementioned post-Tridentine merger. Various key points emerge from this. First, both chapters confirm the preoccupation with the salvation of the flock and highlight the efforts to nip scandal in the bud—in other words, the double preoccupation with both pure and purifying truth that manifestly informed Roman assessments of philosophical statements’ assertability. This tended to result in rather weak condemnations (temerarious at best, Spruit) instead of hard qualifications such as haeresim sapiens, haeretica, haeresi proxima, or the corresponding degrees of error. This opens up perspectives for the practical and hermeneutical accommodation of doctrinal incommensurability observed by Vanden Broecke, resonating, for instance, in the apparent oxymoron of ‘Catholic atomists’ in censorial reports.45 Second, these weaker condemnations may reflect a generalized awareness of the porous boundary between theology and philosophy, and between orthodoxy and novelty. Taken together, these proscriptions highlight the pluralizing effects of censorship through the mutual objectification of canon and -isms (Spruit). Third, they reveal the precarious existence of a plural ‘community of censorial intelligence’ within an unstable Curia (Donato) and a wider scholarly community, where censors figured as authors, disputants, and polemicists. The representation of different theological schools and religious orders, not a distant neutrality, informed the Holy Office’s and the Index’s recruitment of its experts.46 In fourth place, the creation of ad hoc lists of statements from the past, a sort of ‘historical doxography’, proved a quintessential resource for truth-finding among authors and censors alike. Authors used history to connect their alternative physics with (pre- or ascholastic) Catholic traditions, in a way that recalls the primitivist leanings of Jansenist and rigorist novatores. Censors’ practices, on the other hand, aligned propositions with past heresies to determine their degree of deviation from orthodoxy. At least in the case of psychology, the sources deployed were often the same among authors and their censors (Spruit). In both chapters, the precariousness of the censorial community and of disciplinary and epistemic boundaries join with another issue central to this volume’s programme: the performative dimension of censorial practice, which Donato and Spruit seek to capture in the highly rhetorical quality of censorial discourse. Crafting both the censor and his audience (cardinals 45 acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica O 3 f, fols. 472r–475v. 46 Quantin, ‘Le Saint-Office et le probabilisme’.

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of the congregations, other experts), it devised both Rome’s otherwise ill-defined censorial community and its raison d’être: suspect, condemned, or tolerable -isms. This recalls the silent and stabilizing operations of bureaucratic (but equally highly rhetoric) ‘little tools of knowledge’ in the manufacture of the scholarly persona and his field of expertise. The work in this section raises questions complementary to the discussion on the implications and credibility of situational accommodations being grounded in a single master narrative. Some tension lingers between the dramaturgical understanding of performative practice—the most common approach in the humanities—on one hand, and its transformative dimension as much as its connotation with achievement in other disciplines—the performativity of practice, so to speak—on the other hand. In a narrow dramaturgical option, the student of truth and credibility needs eventually to confront what lurks behind the stage, what principle or force regulates the drama and posturing coming with the production of solid knowledge or the authority of spokesmen. This raises the question of whether a narrow dramaturgical option can be reconciled with the praxeological leanings of this volume and its corresponding choice to privilege the question of ‘how’ communities of belief aggregate in practice over the question of ‘what’ keeps them together in principle. Peter Burke’s quest, drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of practice, for the (non-performative) regulative principles of performance is highly illustrative in this respect. 47 Having briefly mentioned and then shelved the option of performance in terms of achievement, the argument needs to recur to the functionalization of an elusive yet pervasive habitus to establish the credibility of situational performances. In this approach, the researcher working with a narrow dramaturgical option eventually risks being overwhelmed again by the arcana s/he investigates. Seen from this perspective, the concept of a credibility being grounded in hard work including a wide range of epistemic and social practices offers a different approach. Related problems will re-emerge from the interpretative grid we propose in the next section.

3. Embedding The contributions to the third and last section of this volume engage with another practice that illuminates the ongoing functionalization of 47 Burke, Performing History. A discussion of Bourdieu’s theory of practice in De Certeau, L’invention du quotidien, pp. 82–90.

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truth. Generally, embedding carries several connotations ranging from raw materialism as the prime mover of ideologies over entanglement and acculturation to the full-blown hybridization of ‘text’ and ‘context’, to name just a few. For our purposes, we wish to draw the attention to the networked or tangled nature of truth in early modern Catholicism. Further qualifications are needed, however. Conceptually, ‘networks’ can be understood as social networks of position holders, including brokers and middlemen, as a pivotal resource for politics, the pursuit of religious programmes, or the circulation of knowledge. At face value, this option, which was systematized in the last decades of the twentieth century and in the early 2000s in the micropolitical paradigm accounting for the dynamics of early modern state-building and international diplomacy, 48 complements the actor’s perspective that most contributors to this volume prefer. Some difficulties remain, however. In a world dominated by social networks, the uncertainty or precariousness of doctrinal contents, sacramental programmes, ecclesiological set-ups, etc., and their credibility seem rather unproblematic: networks or homologous fabrics kept these going; and the social, cultural, or symbolical capital acquired in a process of (seemingly unproblematic) accumulation by institutional or informal position holders accounts for their success. Within such a hierarchical and synoptic discourse, painstaking negotiations, appropriations, and multiple agencies however remain partly hidden from view. The other option lies in keeping similar embeddings more fluid, the social positions and the resources involved unstable, uncertainty paramount, and appropriation central to religious transfers and change. With this option, the question of credibility and the functionalization of truth-driven master narratives again becomes relevant to explore how a multitude of agents and agencies, in an ongoing process of problematization, mutual enrolment, and mobilization, practically bundled and stabilized resources, built and nurtured more durable alliances, and managed to act as one entity in the pursuit of common objectives. 49 The chapters in this section illuminate two related aspects of this phenomenon. The first involves issues of enrolment and mobilization of various agencies. Cecilia Cristellon’s chapter explores the background of the papal declaration of Benedict XIV in 1741. With this official document, the Holy See confirmed the validity (a legal equivalent of truthfulness) of mixed 48 Reinhard, ‘Einleitung’. 49 On the concepts of ‘problematization’, ‘mutual enrolment’, and ‘mobilization’ see: Callon, ‘Some Elements’.

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marriages involving a Catholic spouse or marriages between two heretics, contracted in the Low Countries without the Tridentine requirement of sacerdotal attendance. The United Provinces hosted a sizable Catholic minority that, despite the prohibition on public worship, continued to thrive in the shadows of the ‘dominant’ Reformed Church. In the Habsburg and militantly Catholic South, tiny crypto-Protestant communities were joined by substantial numbers of Protestant soldiers, following various barrier treaties with the maritime powers against French expansionism. Long after prosecution of Catholics in the North subsided, the situation remained unclear. This unclarity put in jeopardy the salutary operations of other sacraments and trickled down south of the border with the Habsburg state. For Roman congregations—Propaganda, Council, and Holy Office—repeatedly petitioned by missionaries, apostolic vicars, and Belgian bishops, it proved nearly impossible to establish the existence of individual marriages in the face of prohibitive and/or competing state legislation. Add to these a feeble clerical presence; the absence of an established Catholic hierarchy enforcing rulings on the ground; and a striking variety of nuptial practices; with Roman gremia of decision-making reverting to ad hoc solutions or to strategic silence (non respondeatur). All this resulted in the Benedictine declaration of 1741 that, in the following years, would gradually be extended to other regions with large heretic populations. These are the premises of Cristellon’s thorough analysis of the Roman workshop. She delves deeply into the intelligence-gathering on cases spanning more than 150 years, the sorting of information, its interpretation by experts, and strategic or habitual omissions. Bringing to light its ‘unglamorous’ production, the author stresses the performative, indeed transformative, dimension of the Benedictine declaration, in legal terms a non-doctrinal document that contained neither novelty nor a normative approval of mixed marriages. It therefore did not untangle itself from the Tridentine norm, but meanwhile normalized exceptions to that norm without trapping the papacy in the slippery business of dispensations. It modified access to salvation in the past, the present, and the future; and thus re-embedded vast numbers of dubious spouses in the folds of the Church. In Cristellon’s work, these modifications join with interesting reality politics, in which papal inertia was activated and papal agency was conversely mooted in a declaratory register. In this way, it became possible to reassemble and mobilize the transcendental order of the apostolic Church of Rome as an obligatory passage point to salvation for a public that otherwise might have lost interest. Based on these findings, it is relatively safe to conclude that curial bureaucracies and committees mastered the art of making oneself

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indispensable by framing contexts, diagnosing difficulties, and mobilizing interested parties. This practice does not merely permeate diplomatic correspondence of the nunciatures or the ‘curialese’ of Roman bureaucrats. It also proves central to the practice of embedding and mobilization that modern scientists use in order to issue statements on nature, society, or the universe on the thin line between activity and passivity; between mere discovery of pre-existing realities and their messy production.50 A second aspect comes here to the fore: in Rome too, defining the problem was often an obligatory passage point to its solution. More specifically, it is the endless intertwining of unstable matters of concern popping up in this book that interests us and that moves to the centre of analysis in Vittoria Fiorelli’s essay on the trial, condemnation, and abjuration of the Neapolitan ‘atheist’ Giacinto De Cristofaro and his fellows in 1688–1697. This episode furnishes ample material to explore the tangled nature of atheism (eliciting comparison with the fluid existence of other -isms discussed in this volume). De Cristofaro’s atheism remained elusive, to the extent that many scholars preferred to list him among atomists in the wider attack on established Aristotelianism discussed in previous chapters. Paraphrasing Vanden Broecke, the question is not whether, but how to be an atheist. The shift from active to passive mode—eventually, the story is about how to be condemned as an atheist—is not unimportant, for De Cristofaro’s agency on the Neapolitan scene was gradually narrowed down to his public act of abjuration. On closer inspection, De Cristofaro had been nudged into the abjuration (rather firmly) by other agencies and actors that were (and/or claimed to be) in turn nudged into action by other tangible or transcendental entities. On the one hand, Fiorelli’s narrative displays the performative production of heresy in inquisitorial technique, moving from the periphery—the multitudes of auto-denunciators that, after the Roman condemnation of Quietism in 1687, exposed themselves to the pre-scripted interrogation forms procured by the Holy Office—to the clear and definable centre of a heretical movement. On the other hand, it is clear that De Cristofaro’s atheism bundled various intersecting and conflicting concerns about the religious and political polity of Naples and its ancient kingdom, both within Roman Catholicism and within a global Monarquía. The atheism trials at the end of the seventeenth century emerge as placeholders for the intensified collusion and negotiation of various programmes detained by the Inquisition in Rome, the Spanish Suprema, diocesan tribunals, orthodox Aristotelians, the kingdom’s power elites, the 50 See: Callon, ‘Some Elements’, and Latour, Science en action.

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Spanish Crown, and the general public. Some of these sought to establish themselves as obligatory passage points to the public good, while others may well have been more confused, failed to get a grip on events, or eventually ended up recanting ‘their’ atheism. De Cristofaro did not share the fate of the more or less contemporaneous Roman ‘libertines’, who faced capital punishment. Nevertheless, Fiorelli’s story recalls the parish priest Urbain Grandier in de Certeau’s La possession de Loudun, the hapless actor who was burned at the stake in a French provincial town fifty years earlier in an ever-widening, uncertain drama that involved nuns, demons, and the crushing authority of the state; restless rural dwellers and a divided town; cooperation and antagonism between physicians, exorcists, and theologians; as well as the scars left by religious strife and by the plague.51 Two conclusions can be drawn from the contributions to this section, each of which is somehow related to entangling and disentangling. First, De Cristofaro’s atheism remains something of an enigma. A tangible reality during the shameful act of abjuration, it evaporates in other places, among others in scholarly assessments carefully untangling his atheism from its context and re-embedding whatever is left of it in neat ideological or disciplinary categories. Yet, while pure atheism proved nebulous in Naples at the end of the seventeenth century, it gained reality (or credibility) as it was embedded in a wide range of other concerns and aspirations, culminating in its objectivation during salutary rituals of reconciliation with the Church. Agency furnishes another fascinating issue, in Cristellon’s analysis, with Rome walking the tightrope between activity and passivity: between pushing botched marriages in the past, the present, and the future into an equally botched form of existence. At the very end, the papal document brought the converted or Catholic spouses of these mixed marriages back into the communion of the justified while merely ascertaining their validity. In a chronological twist, the state of affairs generated by the Benedictine declaration came to precede it, with the arduous, centennial context of trial and error between Rome and the Low Countries to get a grip on things disappearing quietly from sight. In the concluding essay, Rivka Feldhay asks what kind of grand narrative of early modernity would fit the historiographical accents and emphases explored in the previous three sections. Taking her cue from Mary Louise Pratt’s fruitful metaphor of the ‘contact zone’, Feldhay proposes that we, instead of approaching early modernity as a site of increasing autonomy for politics, religion, and science, take their ongoing interdependence as a 51 De Certeau, La possession de Loudun. Cf. Weymans, ‘Michel de Certeau’.

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given, focusing our efforts on the specific discursive points through which this interdependence is incessantly articulated, and around which the boundaries between the partners of this ménage à trois are constantly re-drawn. Feldhay’s essay offers an exercise in this approach through its focus on discussions of state sovereignty, religious authority, and mathematical discipline as three such contact zones. The first section, accommodating, raises a spectrum ranging from fragmented regulative fictions over single but elusive referents and Latourian centres of accumulation to the possibility of Mol’s multiple, full-blown, but nonetheless localized and situational truths as both the object and the product of accommodation. The second section on performative practice shows, on the one hand, how the liturgical, administrative, and censorial performance created a salutary order which represented itself as the guardian, and depository, of truth over individual and communal transformation and justification; on the other hand, it points out that the full-blown performativity of practice succeeded at least in achieving a workable semblance of that transcendental order. The third section raises the possibility that, from a historicist point of view, embedding actually makes uncertain and impure realities and beliefs more real(istic) than pure ones, while the much-coveted anteriority of truth proves to be a product of careful discursive or plain practical manipulations and deletions. This is of course an open list. Within the different chapters here, a wide range of other, often related practices appear that allow truth to navigate Peter’s bark through thick fogs of doubt. The connotations of independence, anteriority, universality, singularity, etc. that we seek to untangle from objectivity for the sake of praxeological analysis should likely not be considered mere fictions—quite to the contrary, in light of the considerable efforts invested in their maintenance in the following chapters. The vast majority of the contributions to this volume even suggest that, as far as early modern knowledge cultures are concerned, the list of implications for truthful realities in modern Euro-American metaphysics may actually be expanded, with (the absence of obstacles to) purification as another assumed quality of absolute truth. Instead, it may be more productive to investigate these implicit or explicit understandings as matters of concern to be addressed practically, or as more or less obligatory passage points on the production line of religious truth, so to speak. This volume visits administrative, liturgical, scholarly, censorial, and legal laboratories for glimpses of pure and purifying truth as they surface from a disorderly, unglamorous work floor to be sorted, crafted, fine-tuned, stabilized, polished, and put to work—i.e. those moments in which truth gained credibility for historians, and an aura of

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self-evidence for historical actors. Whatever Marx said about unglamorous production processes, the editors of and contributors to this volume remain fully intrigued by the glamour of the product.

Acknowledgements We could not have compiled this volume without the support of the Academia Belgica and the Deutsches Historisches Institut in Rome (DHI), the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the Fund for Scientif ic Research – Flanders, and the Research Council of the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy (Ghent University). We wish to thank especially the Director of the DHI, Martin Baumeister, for his personal interest and encouragement. Funding for the publication of this volume was provided by the Pro-Post-Doc-Programm of the Forschungszentrum Historische Geisteswissenschaften der GoetheUniversität Frankfurt am Main, the DHI in Rome, and Ghent University. We also wish to thank: Heidemarie Niemann for editing the cover illustration and Valentino Verdone for compiling the index; our language editor, Tyler Cloherty, as well as Erika Gaffney and Chantal Nicolaes from AUP for the cooperation and support; and the reviewers and editors of AUP’s Scientiae Studies series for providing a venue for our book.

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Archival Sources Vatican City, Archivio della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede (acdf): acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica O 3 f.

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Asad, Talal, Genealogies of Religion. Discipline and Reasons in Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993). Badea, Andreea, ‘(Heiligen-)Geschichte als Streitfall. Die Acta sanctorum und Mabillons Epistola de cultu sanctorum ignotorum und die römische Zensur’, in Europäische Geschichtskulturen um 1700 zwischen Gelehrsamkeit, Politik und Konfession, ed. by Thomas Wallnig, Thomas Stockinger, Ines Peper, and Patrick Fiska (Berlin et al.: De Gruyter, 2012), pp. 377–402. Bourdieu, Pierre, Esquisse d’une théorie de la pratique. Précédé de trois études d’ethnologie kabyle (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1972). Boute, Bruno, Academic Interests and Catholic Confessionalisation. The Louvain Privileges of Nomination for Ecclesiastical Benefices (Leiden et al.: Brill, 2010). Brilkman, Kajsa, ‘Confessional Knowledge. How Might the History of Knowledge and the History of Confessional Europe Influence Each Other?’, in Forms of Knowledge. Developing the History of Knowledge, ed. by Johan Östling, David Larsson Heidenblad, and Anna Nilsson Hammar (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2020), pp. 26–49. Burke, Peter, ‘Performing History. The Importance of Occasions’, Rethinking History. The Journal of Theory and Practice 7 (2005), 35–52. Callon, Michel, ‘Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation. Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St Brieuc Bay’, Sociological Review 32 (1984), 196–233. Catholic Missionaries in Early Modern Asia. Patterns of Localization, ed. by Nadine Amsler, Andreea Badea, Bernard Heyberger, and Christian Windler (London et al.: Routledge, 2019). Cavarzere, Marco, La prassi della censura nell’Italia del Seicento. Tra repressione e mediazione (Rome: Storia e Letteratura, 2011). de Certeau, Michel, La fable mystique. XVIe–XVIIe siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1982). ———, ‘La formalité des pratiques. Du système religieux à l’éthique des lumières (XVIIe–XVIIIe s.)’, in id., L’écriture de l’histoire (Paris: Gallimard, 1975), pp. 152–214. ———, L’invention du quotidien. 1: arts de faire (Paris: Gallimard, 1980). ———, La possession de Loudun (Paris: Julliard, 1970). Clark, Roland, Clossey, Luke, Ditchfield, Simon, Gordon, David M., Wiesenthal, Arlen, and Zaman, Taymiya R., ‘The Unbelieved and Historians, Part III. Responses and Elaborations’, History Compass 15 (2017), 15:e12430. Clark, William, Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). Clossey, Luke, Jackson, Kyle, Marriott, Brandon, and Vélez, Karin, ‘The Unbelieved and Historians, Part I. A Challenge’, History Compass 14 (2016), 594–602. ———, Jackson, Kyle, Marriott, Brandon, Redden, Andrew, and Vélez, Karin, ‘The Unbelieved and Historians, Part II. Proposals and Solutions’, History Compass 15 (2017), e12370.

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Das Konzil von Trient und die katholische Konfessionskultur (1563–2013), ed. by Peter Walter and Günther Wassilowsky (Münster: Aschendorff, 2016). Die Praktiken der Gelehrsamkeit in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Helmut Zedelmaier and Martin Mulsow (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2001). Ditchfield, Simon, ‘In Search of Local Knowledge: Rewriting Early Modern Italian Religious History’, Cristianesimo nella storia 19 (1998), 255–296. Emich, Birgit, ‘Konfession und Kultur, Konfession als Kultur? Vorschläge für eine kulturalistische Konfessionskultur-Forschung’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 109 (2018), 375–388. ———, ‘Localizing Catholic Missions in Asia. Framework Conditions, Scope for Action, and Social Spaces’, in Catholic Missionaries in Early Modern Asia. Patterns of Localization, ed. by Nadine Amsler, Andreea Badea, Bernard Heyberger, and Christian Windler (London et al.: Routledge, 2019), pp. 190–204. Fish, Stanley, Is There a Text in this Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge/Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980). Foucault, Michel, Les anormaux. Cours au Collège de France, 1974–1975 (Paris: Gallimard/Le Seuil, 1999). Friedrich, Markus. Der lange Arm Roms? Globale Verwaltung und Kommunikation im Jesuitenorden 1540–1773 (Frankfurt: Campus, 2011). Frijhoff, Willem, ‘Foucault Reformed by Certeau. Historical Strategies of Discipline and Everyday Tactics of Appropriation’, Arcadia. Zeitschrift für Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft 33 (1998), 92–108. Gay, Jean-Pascal, Jesuit Civil Wars. Theology, Politics and Government under Tirso González (1687–1705) (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012). ———, Morales en conflit. Théologie et polémique au Grand siècle (1640–1700) (Paris: Cerf, 2011). Geertz, Clifford, Negara. The Theater State in Nineteenth-Century Bali (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980). Gierl, Martin, ‘“The Triumph of Truth and Innocence”. The Rules and Practice of Theological Polemics’, in Little Tools of Knowledge. Historical Essays on Academic and Bureaucratic Practices, ed. by Peter Becker and William Clark (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2004), pp. 35–66. Gieryn, Thomas F., ‘Boundary-Work and the Demarcation of Science from NonScience. Strains and Interests in Professional Ideologies of Scientists’, American Sociological Review 48 (1983), 781–795. Heyberger, Bernard, Les Chrétiens du Proche-Orient au temps de la Réforme catholique (Rome: École française de Rome, 1994). Highmore, Ben, Michel de Certeau. Analysing Culture (London: Continuum, 2006). Hunter, Ian, ‘The History of Philosophy and the Persona of the Philosopher’, Modern Intellectual History 4 (2007), 571–600.

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Jütte, Daniel, The Age of Secrecy. Jews, Christians, and the Economy of Secrets, 1400–1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015). Konfessionelle Ambiguität. Uneindeutigkeit und Verstellung als religiöse Praxis in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Andreas Pietsch and Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger (Heidelberg: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2013). Latour, Bruno, La science en action. Introduction à la sociologie des sciences (Paris: La Découverte, 1989). ———, We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge/Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993) ——— and Woolgar, Steve, ‘The Cycle of Credibility’, in Science in Context. Readings in the Sociology of Science, ed. Barry Barnes and David Edge (Boston: MIT Press, 1982), pp. 35–43. Law, John, After Method. Mess in Social Science Research (London et al.: Routledge, 2004). Lire Michel de Certeau. La formalité des pratiques. Michel de Certeau lesen. Die Förmlichkeit der Praktiken, ed. by Philippe Bütgen and Christian Jouhaud (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2008). Little Tools of Knowledge. Historical Essays on Academic and Bureaucratic Practices, ed. by Peter Becker and William Clark (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2004). Maurer, Michael, Konfessionskulturen. Die Europäer als Protestanten und Katholiken (Paderborn et al.: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2019). Menegon, Eugenio, Ancestors, Virgins, and Friars. Christianity as a Local Religion in Late Imperial China (Cambridge/Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009). Mol, Annemarie, The Body Multiple. Ontology in Medical Practice (Durham, nc et al.: Duke University Press, 2002). Molnár, Antal, Le Saint-Siège, Raguse et les missions catholiques de la Hongrie ottoman 1572–1647 (Rome et al.: Accademia d’Ungheria, 2007). Neveu, Bruno, L’Erreur et son juge. Remarques sur les censures doctrinales à l’époque moderne (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1993). Ossa-Richardson, Anthony, A History of Ambiguity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019). Paul, Herman, ‘What Is a Scholarly Persona? Ten Theses on Virtues, Skills, and Desires’, History and Theory 53 (2014), 348–371. Piette, Albert, La religion de près. L’activité religieuse en train de se faire (Paris: Métailié, 1999). Pomata, Gianna, ‘Sharing Cases. The Observationes in Early Modern Medicine’, Early Science and Medicine 15 (2010), 193–236. Praktiken der Frühen Neuzeit. Akteure – Verfahren – Artefakte, ed. by Arndt Brendecke (Cologne: Böhlau, 2015).

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Quantin, Jean-Louis, ‘Le Saint-Office et le probabilisme (1677–1679). Contribution à l’histoire de la théologie morale à l’époque moderne’, Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome 114 (2002), 875–960. Quattrone, Paolo, ‘Accounting for God. Accounting and Accountability in the Society of Jesus (Italy, XVI–XVII centuries)’, Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004), 647–683. Reinhard, Wolfgang, ‘Einleitung. Römische Mikropolitik und spanisches Mittelmeer’, in Römische Mikropolitik unter Papst Paul V. Borghese (1605–1621) zwischen Spanien, Neapel, Mailand und Genua, ed. by Wolfgang Reinhard (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2004), pp. 1–20. Rheiberger, Hans-Jörg, On Historicizing Epistemology. An Essay (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010). The Routledge Handbook of Social Epistemology, ed. by Miranda Fricker, Peter J. Graham, David Henderson, and Nikolaj Pedersen (London: Routledge, 2019). Schreiner, Susan, Are You Alone Wise? The Search for Certainty in the Early Modern Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Schuessler, Rudolf, The Debate on Probable Opinions in the Scholastic Tradition (Leiden et al.: Brill, 2019). Shapin, Steven, Never Pure. Historical Studies of Science as if It Was Produced by People with Bodies, Situated in Time, Space, Culture and Society, and Struggling for Credibility and Authority (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010). Sloterdijk, Peter, Du mußt dein Leben ändern. Über Anthropotechnik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2009). Snyder, Jon R., Dissimulation and the Culture of Secrecy in Early Modern Europe (Oakland: University of California Press, 2009). Sokal, Alain and Brickmont, Jean, Impostures intellectuelles (Paris: Odile Jacob 1997). Tutino, Stefania, Uncertainty in Post-Reformation Catholicism. A History of Probabilism (Oxford et al.: Oxford University Press, 2018). van Reybrouk, David, ‘Boule’s Error. On the Social Context of Scientific Knowledge’, Antiquity, 76 (2002), 158–164. Vanden Broecke, Steven, ‘Evidence and Conjecture in Cardano’s Horoscope Collections’, in Horoscopes and Public Spheres. Essays on the History of Astrology, ed. by Kocku von Stuckrad, Gerhard Oestmann, and H. Darrel Rutkin (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 2005), pp. 207–224. ———, ‘Copernicanism as a Religious Challenge after 1616. Self-Discipline and the Imagination in Libertus Fromondus’s Anti-Copernican Writings (1631–1634)’, Lias. Journal of Early Modern Intellectual Culture and Its Sources 42 (2015), 195–216. Vermeir, Koen and Margócsy, Daniel, ‘States of Secrecy. An Introduction’, British Journal for the History of Science 45 (2012), 153–164. Vinck, Dominique, Sociologie des sciences (Paris: Armand Colin, 2007).

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Was als wissenschaftlich gelten darf. Praktiken der Grenzziehung in Gelehrtenmilieus der Vormoderne, ed. by Martin Mulsow and Frank Rexroth (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2014). Weymans, Wim, ‘Michel de Certeau and the Limits of Historical Representation’, History and Theory 43 (2004), 161–178. Windler, Christian, Missionare in Persien. Kulturelle Diversität und Normenkonkurrenz im globalen Katholizismus (17.–18. Jahrhundert) (Cologne et al.: Böhlau, 2017). Županov, Ines G., Missionary Tropics. The Catholic Frontier in India (16th–17th Centuries) (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005).

About the Authors Andreea Badea is a researcher in early modern history at the GoetheUniversity of Frankfurt am Main. She has published on the history of knowledge, historiography, censorship, and Catholicism. Her latest publications include the co-edited volume Catholic Missionaries in Early Modern Asia. Patterns of Localization (2019). Bruno Boute is a researcher in early modern history at the Goethe-University of Frankfurt am Main. He has published on religious history and censorship, the history of the papacy, and the history of universities in early modern Europe.

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Marco Cavarzere is assistant professor of early modern history at the University Ca‘ Foscari of Venice. Among his latest publications is Historical Culture and Political Reform in the Italian Enlightenment (2020). Steven Vanden Broecke teaches early modern intellectual history and history of science at Ghent University. His research focuses on the ethical and spiritual dimensions of early modern knowledge practices, with a special emphasis on marginalized or contested knowledge practices like astrology.

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Part I

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Accommodating

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1.

Scholastic Approaches to Reasonable Disagreement Rudolf Schuessler

Abstract The scholastic controversy on probable opinions in the seventeenth century was one of the most extensive and acrimonious debates of the early modern era. Historiography has treated it as a quarrel over moral casuistry, but this underestimates its import. The scholastic preoccupation with the ‘use of opinions’ should be understood as a search for a general framework for dealing with reasonable disagreement between competent evaluators of truth claims (not only moral ones). In the early modern era, scholastic analyses as well as regulations concerning the prudent and legitimate use of opinions acquired an unprecedented scope and depth. For the first time in European intellectual history, detailed theories of reasonable disagreement emerged, based on explicit characterizations of competing probable opinions as reasonably tenable.

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Keywords: early modern scholasticism, probabilism, reasonable disagreement, opinion pluralism

For some decades now, reasonable disagreement has been a hot topic in (analytic) philosophy. People eagerly dispute the justification with which reasonable persons can uphold contrary beliefs or opinions once they realize that other reasonable persons oppose their views.1 Less attention is paid to the history of conceptualizations and regulations of reasonable disagreement. It is widely believed that preoccupation with the moral and epistemological underpinnings of disagreement between reasonable peers 1 For the modern debate on reasonable disagreement, see, e.g., Christensen and Lackey, The Epistemology; Feldman and Warfield, Disagreement; Frances and Matheson, ‘Disagreement’.

Badea, A., B. Boute, M. Cavarzere, S. Vanden Broecke (eds.), Making Truth in Early Modern Catholicism. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021 doi 10.5117/9789463720526_ch01

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42 Rudolf Schuessler

is a very recent phenomenon.2 The present inquiry shows that this belief seriously misrepresents European intellectual history. Since at least the thirteenth century, disagreement between scholastic specialists has been accepted as a fact not to be eliminated but managed by discursive rules that allowed for upholding controversial positions. As argued here, the development of the political, juridical, economic, and moral governance of medieval Christianity crucially depended on the rules and entitlements that flexibly regulated reasonable disagreement between academic ‘specialists’ who assessed right doctrine and right conduct in these fields. However, the extensive theoretical analysis of reasonable disagreement’s moral and epistemological underpinnings had to wait until the seventeenth century, when new scholastic doctrines sparked a huge debate on the nature and assertability of probable opinions. This debate produced the most detailed investigation of the foundations of reasonable disagreement before the twenty-first century. The first section of this chapter briefly introduces the concept of reasonable disagreement and underlines the importance of its historical dimension. The second section deals with medieval attitudes to reasonable disagreement between scholastic authors, while the subsequent section addresses the framework with which this issue was approached: the clash of probable opinions in scholastic debates. The fourth section turns to theoretical innovations and analyses concerning disagreement sparked by the debate on probable opinions in seventeenth-century scholastic thought. The last section provides a summary.

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1. Reasonable Disagreement and its History People disagree if they hold incompatible beliefs concerning the truth-value of a proposition. In the most common case, used here, this means that one person regards a proposition to be true and another person regards it as false. Disagreement is called reasonable in philosophy if the two people are reasonable, well-informed, and diligent in their assessment of the proposition, and if their judgment is based on logically and epistemically consistent reasons. There is, of course, much more to say about reasonable 2 Frances and Matheson, ‘Disagreement’: ‘the epistemology of disagreement is a mere infant. While the discussion of disagreement is not altogether absent from the history of philosophy, philosophers did not start, as a group, thinking about the topic in a rigorous and detailed way until the twenty-first century.’

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disagreement, as documented by the ongoing lively philosophical debate on this issue. In fact, the debate also proves the absence of agreement concerning the understanding of disagreement and reasonableness. For our purposes, however, we need not belabour the details of reasonable disagreement as conceived in modern analytical philosophy. It suffices to agree on a few basic premises: disagreement between competent and reasonable persons exists in many areas of discourse. In the modern debate on reasonable disagreement, ‘factual’ discourses stand in the foreground, that is, disagreements about what are, in principle, observable or scientifically confirmable facts. Since the objective truth or falseness of moral or political claims is controversial, it is also controversial whether reasonable disagreement about the truth of such claims is possible. Examples from morality or politics are therefore often avoided when cases of reasonable disagreement are put forward. Even in factual discourses, well-informed experts on a subject matter may tenaciously disagree, although they share the same information and have diligently verified facts. The reasonableness of individuals is, of course, not a foregone issue, but we may assume that there are epistemological and ethical standards for reasonableness on which disputants can agree. In theories of reasonable disagreement, equally well-informed reasonable opponents are often called ‘epistemic peers’. Sometimes very demanding criteria for epistemic peerhood are assumed, but in real-life contexts a rough equality of epistemic peers must suffice. At least, we often assume that two competent persons (e.g., weather experts) are equals in assessing the truth of a forecast. It may be asked, of course, why this claim should give rise to a philosophical debate. The answer is that it is far from clear what reasonable persons should do when they disagree with an epistemic peer. Should they alter their belief concerning a controversial proposition p when encountering an equally competent disagreeing opponent, or may they continue to believe in the truth (or untruth) of p without diminution? This is the main question in the ongoing debate on reasonable disagreement, and there are largely two camps of respondents.3 Proponents of the so-called conciliatory approach claim that we should lower our confidence in the truth of a believed proposition if we encounter an epistemic peer who denies it. Some conciliarists even think that two epistemic peers should average their credences, that is, suspend judgment as far as holding true or false are concerned, and meet halfway between probabilistic credences (i.e. quantitative degrees of belief or probability judgments). In contrast, the adherents of the so-called steadfast approach maintain that we may without alteration continue to believe in 3

See Frances and Matheson, ‘Disagreement’.

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the respective proposition, because merely encountering an opponent with different beliefs is not yet a compelling reason to change our beliefs. There are further important questions to answer with respect to reasonable disagreement. Are we morally required to voice our dissent if we disagree in important matters? Should upholding one’s position in reasonable disagreement be protected by norms of discourse or by law? These questions show that reasonable disagreement and its normative treatment are ethical and political issues even if the disagreement only pertains to non-normative ‘facts’. In modern societies, which normatively endorse freedom of speech, it goes without saying that disagreements are legitimate, and a fortiori if they arise between reasonable and well-informed people. This may nourish the belief that the normative acceptance of reasonable disagreement is a modern achievement, which only became possible after the Enlightenment era opened the way to freedom of speech. I will argue here that this view is erroneous. To be sure, there is a specifically modern attitude towards reasonable disagreement, which did not exist before the Enlightenment era or even before the twentieth century. However, neglecting older, premodern attitudes towards reasonable disagreement amounts to ignoring the considerable role its normative regulation played in the intellectual history of Europe. It also deprives us of understanding how modern notions of reasonable disagreement evolved out of older conceptions. It is therefore significant to realize that medieval scholastics began to be preoccupied with reasonable disagreement long before the modern era. They suggested morally legitimate ways of dealing with clashing opinions, while both sides in a controversy were entitled to uphold reasonable opinions. However, much of the conceptual analysis of reasonable disagreement remained inchoate in the Middle Ages, until a more detailed investigation of the grounds of conflict between plausible opinions engendered a more precise understanding of reasonable disagreement in the scholasticism of the seventeenth century (Baroque scholasticism). This last premodern step of theorizing reasonable disagreement produced the most detailed and complex treatment of its ramifications in European intellectual history before the subject’s resurgence in recent analytic philosophy.

2. Medieval Scholastic Dealings with Reasonable Disagreement Medieval thinkers were certainly not unaware of widespread mutual disagreement. Scholastic masters disagreed on a myriad of issues and perceived this fact as worrisome. They noted the existence of a variety of

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contradictory opinions (varietas opinionum) on many questions, as was, of course, natural for the medieval genre of disputed questions. 4 Dispute engenders disagreement, and scholasticism thrived on disputation. However, popular cliché has it that medieval disputes were sooner or later settled by authority, that is, the authoritative decision of a question by the Church. There would thus be no longstanding and unresolved disagreements on important matters, as is common in modern pluralistic societies. Indeed, scholastic disagreements could be settled through the teaching authority (magisterium) of the Church.5 Upholding a prohibited position might lead to dire outcomes for a dissident. Dissent could therefore be quashed by fire and sword. It would be wrong, however, to assume that every significant scholastic dispute was settled by an authoritative decision of the Church. In philosophy, theology, law, or medicine, the huge academic machine of scholasticism turned out far more disagreement than the Church hierarchy could have settled, even had it wanted to. This is particularly true after the thirteenth century, when scholasticism was in full swing and the number of universities (the seedbeds of scholastic disputation) proliferated. I am even tempted to use an analogy to modern industrial production and claim that scholastic disagreements were mass produced in the late Middle Ages. In final consideration, the number of authoritative settlements of scholastic disputes was rather low compared to the huge number of disputed (and differently answered) questions. Of course, whole areas of discourse were off-limits in the Middle Ages.6 Nobody could with impunity avow atheism, a ‘heretical’ creed, or deny the sinfulness of usury. However, this does not preclude sprawling disagreement in other areas. Cliché has it that such areas were insignificant, at best allowing scholastics to quibble and disagree about moot questions. In fact, however, there was tenacious disagreement about highly relevant issues, by any reasonable standard of relevance. Scholastic handbooks of confessors document significant disagreements concerning just warfare, hierarchical 4 See, e.g., Henry of Ghent, Quodlibeta, quodl. 4, q. 33: ‘Utrum doctoribus contrariantibus circa aliquod agibilium et agere secundam unam opinionem est sine omni periculo peccati, agere vero secundum aliam est in dubio peccati mortalis: mortaliter peccet ille qui agit illud de quo est dubium an sit peccatum mortale.’ 5 See Sullivan, Magisterium, on teaching authority (magisterium) in the Catholic Church. Magisterium is not a general licence to teach, but a title for authoritatively (co-)determining the content of religious teaching. 6 Prohibitions of heretical opinions and their persecution have led to the accusation that medieval Christian societies were ‘persecuting societies’ (Moore, The Formation). However, it should also be recognized that some limited academic freedom existed in the Middle Ages (see Courtenay, ‘Inquiry and Inquisition’; Wei, Intellectual Culture, Chap. 4).

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relationships in Church and state, marital relations, sexual norms, social behaviour, medical treatment, economic regulation, and teacher and student relations, to name but a few practically relevant issues.7 Legal handbooks and commentaries bulged with competing lawyerly opinions. Although life was deeply normatively regulated in the Middle Ages, disagreement on right conduct was rife almost everywhere, and many of these disagreements had enormous import. Let me offer just one economic example. Usury was considered sinful in the scholastic tradition—there existed no (open) disagreement on this. Yet scholastic moralists and lawyers did not agree which economic activities to consider usurious.8 For decades or centuries, they disputed and disagreed on exceptions from the ban of usury until a dominant opinion had evolved, or a papal decree permitted a kind of transaction that had been doubtful before. Usually, a papal permission did not prohibit a more conservative moral stance, and therefore did not necessarily end disagreements on economic morality. In the case of insurance contracts, whose modern type (acquisition of risk without capital contribution to a risky business) came into use in the late fourteenth century, it was initially disputed whether insurance contracts violated the prohibition of usury.9 Famous theologians and lawyers took different sides concerning this issue. Church authorities, who could have decided the moral status of insurance contracts, let the controversy run and the institution of insurance spread in Latin Christendom during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (in contrast to Islam, where insurance apparently was prohibited)10 until its benefits for Christian societies became obvious. At this point, the Church endorsed insurance contracts as licit and beneficial to the common good. Henceforth, insurance contracts became an institutional pillar for the evolving market economies of Europe. The example of insurance contracts shows that the toleration of disagreements, and especially scholastic normative disagreements, was highly important for the dynamic development of medieval and post-medieval societies whose normative regulation harked back to scholastic precedent until the eighteenth century. (This is, with a grain of salt, even true for Protestant societies, in which an early modern form of scholasticism became prominent in the seventeenth century.)11 From the perspective of the 7 See Biller and Minnis, Handling Sin. 8 See Noonan, The Scholastic Analysis. 9 Ceccarelli, ‘Risky Business’. 10 See Kuran, The Long Divergence, pp. 194 and 297. In Muslim countries, Western-style insurance contracts were often replaced by alternative contracts of risk sharing, such as takaful. 11 See Clark and Trueman, Protestant Scholasticism.

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medieval or early modern Christian normative order, scholastic disputes and disagreements revealed the pros and cons of normative regulations with analytical precision. The state of a debate (often neatly documented by scholastic authors) told a decision maker or his advisors how the balance of pros and cons stood, and allowed him to take a position once the prevalence of one side had become clear with some robustness.12 To sum up, scholastic disagreements were highly relevant for the governance of Christianity. Their positive function was understood by scholastic authors, and no attempt was made to generally eradicate disagreements even if they pertained to important issues of moral, economic, ecclesiastical, or political governance. Occasional authoritative interdicts closed off some areas of debate or disqualified some positions, but they were designed (in the eyes of the intervenors) to keep the system of scholastic discussion and disagreement on a truth-finding track rather than to disable it. However, to what extent can scholastic disagreements be considered reasonable? Given the cliché of scholastics who merely echo old authorities, doubts in this respect might linger. Yet, of course, this cliché is wrong. Renowned scholastic authors did not blindly follow tradition, but argued for their claims with characteristic logical precision and subtlety. In fact, many authors who were considered Thomists (thomistae) in the Middle Ages or the early modern era are not listed as Thomists today, because they argued too independently of Aquinas. Allegiance to an author or a scholastic school of thought (via) was usually a rather open endeavour, which left much room for a thinker’s own assessment.13 That is, we can accept the views of scholastic authors as reasonable if we take their premises as given. Where our understanding of facts differs, we should not retrospectively apply our knowledge of facts to judge the reasonableness of medieval authors. This should be borne in mind when we now discuss some nuts and bolts of medieval approaches to disagreement between learned specialists.

3. Reasonable Disagreement and the Clash of Probable Opinions Medieval understandings of reasonableness were part of a vast intellectual edifice in which accounts of prudence, right reason, right action, virtuous 12 See Bonaventura, Commentaria, p. 862: ‘per multam discussionem dubia ducuntur ad manifestationem.’ 13 Much of this was what Broggio, ‘Rome’, with respect to the sixteenth century calls an ‘open Thomism’.

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character, appropriate responsiveness to authority, and information requirements were densely interwoven. It is impossible to depict the respective intricate web of assumptions with a few strokes of the pen. Instead, we will focus on scholastic regulations concerning the ‘use of opinions’. On this basis, the reasonableness of a disagreement was effectively judged in the confessional or in academic disputes. Scholastic disagreement usually amounted to an opposition of probable opinions. That is, one side in a dispute held, for instance, probable opinion p and its opponents held probable opinion q which implied non-p. An opinion (opinio) was in the shortest and most widespread way defined as a proposition which a person held for true while feeling some unease that it nevertheless might be wrong.14 That is, the person was uncertain about her assent to a proposition and feared that her assent might be wrong. For this reason, opinion marked a stepping stone in the ranked order of doxastic attitudes. It was the lowest doxastic attitude involving assent (i.e. holding to be true), because it did not achieve a subjective certainty of being right, which was the mark of faith or conviction ( fides). Moreover, opinion fell short of knowledge (scientia), which bolstered subjective certainty with evident reasons. Not all opinions had the same epistemic quality. Opinions could be foolish or unfounded (improbabilis), and they could, on the other hand, be probable (probabilis). It is difficult to translate probabilis with any single English predicate. ‘Probable’ will inevitably invoke association with the modern concept of probability (a degree of belief or a relative frequency, but in any case, a number in the zero-to-one interval), which can be particularly misleading in the context of scholastic disagreements. In this context, probabilis derived its meaning mainly from the Aristotelian concept of endoxon. Aristotle characterized an endoxon as a proposition that was held true by ‘all people, most people, or the wise’, and this is also what scholastics called a probable opinion.15 Opinio probabilis is therefore often translated as approved, reputable, or plausible opinion, depending on whether the translator wants to emphasize that an opinion is received in a community, held by esteemed thinkers, or is plausibly believable.16 For our purposes, it should be pointed out that the endoxical understanding of probable opinion was at least prima facie a warrant of an opinion’s reasonable tenability (thus a translation with ‘plausible’ is presently most apt besides using the 14 See Byrne, Probability and Opinion, pp. 63–69; Kantola, Probability, p. 11. 15 See Aristotle, Complete Works, I, 100b20; Haskins, ‘Endoxa’. 16 See Kantola, Probability; Franklin, The Science; Schuessler, ‘Probability’.

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entrenched and straightforward ‘probable’). What all or most agree on is prima facie reasonably assertable, because it is prima facie unlikely that all or a majority err. (The Marquis de Condorcet proved in the eighteenth century mathematically that, given some idealizations, a majority of competent observers is more likely right than the opposing minority. Without the maths, this claim had long before been accepted by scholastic thinkers.)17 Moreover, what the wise (sapientes) or the wisest hold for true can prima facie confidently be asserted by any reasonable person. In the scholastic understanding of ‘probable opinion’, the term sapiens did not refer to a wise person in any sense distinguishing wisdom from learning. The ‘wise’, whose opinions counted in scholastic discourse, were simply highly learned persons, usually with a university degree. John Versor’s commentary on Peter of Spain’s Summula is revealing in this respect because it explicitly uses the term ‘expert’ (expertus) in elucidating the endoxon.18 Those whose competence rendered an opinion probable were therefore masters or experts of an art or science. Moreover, unanimously or commonly held folk opinions played no significant role in scholastic controversies, or generally in controversies that mattered for the governance of medieval societies. Scholastic disagreements, their regulation, and the social epistemology to which they gave rise have therefore a distinct expertocratic flavour. It was specialists or experts whose opinions mattered in truth-directed discourse. Contrary to Enlightenment norms, all those who were not specialists themselves (that is, those who could not competently determine a quaestio concerning an issue) were exhorted not to fully think for themselves but to follow a specialist opinion, not least in what we today call practical ethics.19 However, this did not necessarily imply blind adoption. If there were several alternative specialist opinions available to be followed, a bystander could follow the specialist whom he (or more rarely she) deemed to have the better reasons and better authorities on his side. Henry of Ghent already summarized these normative demands in the late thirteenth century, and his formulations became much quoted guidelines in the scholastic tradition.20 17 Baker, Condorcet. 18 See Peter of Spain, Summulae logicales, p. 170: ‘Auctoritas ut hic sumitur est iudicium sapientis in scientia sua […] unicuique experto in sua scientia credendum est.’ 19 See Tutino, Uncertainty, p. 96; Schuessler, The Debate, Chap. 5. 20 Henry of Ghent, Quodlibeta, quodl. 4, q. 33, fol. 148: ‘Tria sunt advertenda: 1. status doctorum: utrum veraces, qualiter instructi sunt; 2. rationes & fundamenta doctorum in sententiando: quorum rationes efficaciores & validiores & auctoritates expressiores; 3. conditio auditorium: an literati, potentes discernere determinationes; an simplices quos oportet alteri parti credere.’

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Since the typical probable opinion was an academic specialist’s opinion, it is easy to see that disagreements involving probable opinions could arise. Specialized philosophers, lawyers, theologians, or medical doctors differed in their opinions in the scholastic tradition no less than today. Some opinions, of course, lost their probability if conclusive counter-arguments could be found, but this was then—as it is now—rarely the case in academic disputes. The upshot was that usually both sides of a disputed question could be upheld as probable opinions. Scholastic authors explicitly acknowledged this, maintaining that the probability (or plausibility) of an opinion could coexist with the probability (or plausibility) of a counter-opinion.21 Thus, scholastic approaches and regulations concerning specialist disagreements de facto acknowledged the possibility of disagreements between reasonable persons, and moreover disagreements that could not be resolved even with the best state-of-the art argumentation. Judgmentally competent bystanders could endorse specialist views in such disagreements according to their own best judgment. The management of disagreements was an important element of scholastic intellectual governance. Forceful interventions were possible and occasionally occurred; but, apart from them, disagreements were managed according to discursive rules and entitlements which treated specialists (but not non-specialists) pretty much as equals. It was acknowledged that some scholastic thinkers were more competent or perspicuous than others, but there was no consensus on a standard according to which thinkers could be ranked.22 The pre-eminence of Aquinas is largely a modern or at least early modern phenomenon. In the Middle Ages, he was not even exclusively the guiding light of the Dominicans, his own order. Some brethren rather followed the teachings of Albert of Cologne or Durandus de St. Pourçain, two other intellectual heavyweights of the Dominican order.23 More generally, dozens of top scholastic authors competed on a more or less equal footing for appreciation in the medieval scholarly community. Prevalence often varied topic for topic, because one author’s contribution might be considered outstanding in one subject area and less so in some other. With no clear rank order established, it mostly mattered that the opinion of any good scholastic specialist was prima facie deemed probable and tenable even 21 See Kantola, Probability, p. 29; Schuessler, ‘Probability’. 22 Differences of quality effectuate that the larger part of a scholarly community was not always the better part (sanior pars) from a scholastic point of view. However, diff iculties in determining which side was the better were early on realized in the medieval Church; see Ganzer, Unanimitas. 23 On Albertism see Hoenen, ‘Thomismus’, and on Durandus see Iribarren, Durandus.

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in disagreement with equally competent others. All opinions of notable scholastics could prima facie be adopted by bystanders without risking sin. Princes, merchants, and housewives could therefore justify their actions in the confessional with a flurry of probable opinions, which gave medieval normative governance a flexibility (within certain bounds) that became most pronounced in the late Middle Ages and early modern era.24 The language of toleration is conspicuously rare in this context. Confessors are sometimes exhorted to tolerate (tolerari) probable opinions of penitents which clash with their own opinion (especially in moral matters).25 Yet, generally, acceptance of disagreement between intellectual equals was not treated as a core instance of toleration in the sense of grudgingly putting up with what is wrong. The medieval management of scholastic disagreement is characterized by respect for epistemic peers rather than by a mere toleration of opinions. The esprit de corps of medieval guilds and the mutual recognition of masters of an art may have buttressed this attitude. In the language of modern theories of toleration, the scholastic attitude to reasonable disagreement was respect-driven and not merely pragmatic.26 This fact is almost completely neglected in the literature on the history of toleration, in which the scholastic management of disagreements between specialists has so far not been attended to. The popular picture of a linear ascent from a pragmatic to a recognition-based acceptance of disagreements on the way to modernity is therefore misleading.27

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4. Theorizing Reasonable Disagreement: The Scholastic Debate on Probable Opinions in the Seventeenth Century So far, it has been shown that disagreement between specialists was accepted in the Middle Ages as a concomitant of rational (scholastic) inquiry. Disagreeing specialists and users of specialist opinions had to follow rules for the appropriate choice or adoption of opinions, but their decisions were also protected by prima facie entitlements to follow probable opinions if these

24 On scholastic moral casuistry and its flexibility, see Jonsen and Toulmin, The Abuse, and Schuessler, Moral im Zweifel. 25 Godefroid of Fontaines, Quodlibetum nonum, quodl. 11, q. 16; Lopez, Instructorium, tom. 1, cap. 120, p. 511. 26 For the distinction between respect-driven and pragmatic toleration, see Forst, Toleranz. 27 Standard works on the history of toleration in Europe, such as Forst, Toleranz, or Zagorin, How the Idea, insinuate such a picture.

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were deemed most probably true by the adopting agent.28 Since probable opinions were predominantly specialist opinions, their reasonable tenability was implicitly assumed even in the face of existing counter-opinions. The expertocratic outlook of this approach implied that only the opinions of specialists mattered for truth-searching debates. Ordinary citizens and all non-specialists were called upon to follow a specialist opinion. The scholastic system of managing disagreements, which built on these premises, fostered the ramification of scholastic debates; but it also enabled flexible and productive responses to new challenges in politics, economics, and the social sphere. Hence, it was an important element of the governance of medieval European societies. In the late sixteenth century, a momentous innovation occurred in the scholastic system of managing disagreements: the invention of a new doctrine of handling probable opinions. By that time, the Reformation had divided Latin Christendom, and scholastic disagreement management had mainly survived in Catholic moral theology, albeit fragments had been retained by Protestants. The new doctrine of choice among probable opinions was in the seventeenth century called probabilism.29 Probabilism allowed acting according to opinions which (although being probable) were less probable than a counter-opinion. The probabilism of Catholic moral theologians is difficult to understand for most modern readers, and for reasons of space I will refrain from explaining probabilism. Suffice it to say that probabilism added considerably to the flexibility of disagreement management by permitting choices from a greater spectrum of opinions than before and with less restrictive rules. Medieval approaches had allowed an agent to act on the basis of a probable opinion, which he deemed most likely true. Probabilism, in contrast, also permitted the choice of an opinion which the agent did not deem most likely true if the respective opinion only was probable. That is, any probable opinion current among scholastic specialists could be chosen as a premise for action, even if the user regarded another opinion as better justified. Agents usually regard their own opinion as better justified than any counter-opinion. Nevertheless, there can be good reasons to follow another opinion than one’s own. In collective choices, individual agents can have 28 If an agent could not make up his mind which opinion to regard as most probably true, he was required to follow the ‘safer side’, i.e., the opinion with the least potential to be sinful. 29 On probabilism in general, see Deman, ‘Probabilis’ and ‘Probabilisme’; Schuessler, Moral im Zweifel; Schuessler, The Debate; Tutino, Uncertainty. Deman, ‘Probabilisme’, is still important as an overview, but its assessments should be handled with care because the article is imbued with an orthodox neo-Thomist spirit that is biased against probabilism.

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reason to follow a joint course of action, even if they do not presume it to be the best course of action. Take the case of a board of directors that struggles to adopt a joint strategy for a firm. The board can agree on a joint course of action A even though some directors would regard an alternative course B as better. The point is that in many cases there will be disagreement among the directors as to the best course of action, and all joint actions will require some directors to act against what they consider best. Probabilism clarifies that in such cases agents do not violate any moral or epistemic norms if they acquiesce in not following their own views. However, probabilism also implies that agents should not acquiesce in a joint course of action which they deem improbable (improbabilis), that is, not adoptable by reasonable persons (i.e. reasonable epistemic peers). Medieval regulations did, of course, also allow for joint action, but they required an agent to change his or her opinion. The medieval demand to follow a most probable or (in case of doubt) safest opinion called for a change of opinion if a collective action relied on opinions that were considered neither most probable nor safest by an involved agent. In our case, the defeated board members would thus have to change their views. Probabilism, in contrast, granted them more intellectual freedom by allowing them to epistemically stand by their own assessments while adopting a joint course of action.30 The resulting dialectic between inner freedom and facilitated outer compliance may help to understand why probabilism became such a success story in conflict-riven times like the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. European societies were rocked by religious conflict and by strains of modernization in this period. Very likely, probabilism spread like wildfire in Catholic moral theology because it helped Catholicism to cope with these exigencies. For present purposes, however, it is more important that probabilism radically altered the medieval system of managing reasonable disagreements, which had persisted with some modifications until the rise of probabilism in the late sixteenth century. Innovations in the wake of probabilism included new understandings of probability, a widened ascription of authority in debates, prioritization of modern over ancient opinions, and a distinction of ‘degrees’ of probability. We will here only be able to discuss some of these novelties.31 One of the most daring claims concerned the eligibility of opinions with a lesser degree of probability than that of a fully (or certainly) probable 30 For this interpretation see Schuessler, The Debate, Chap. 11. 31 Tutino, Uncertainty, and Schuessler, The Debate, offer more detailed but still far from comprehensive accounts of the developments sparked by probabilism.

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opinion (opinio certo probabilis). An opinion was certainly probable if its probability was undisputed among competent observers. If only some competent observers regarded an opinion probable, while others denied the opinion’s probability, the opinion was merely ‘probably probable’ (probabiliter probabilis). From this distinction arose the question whether opinions whose probability was in this way controversial could, in fact, be legitimately followed.32 In an understanding in which probability implies reasonable assertability (see below), it might also be asked whether an opinion whose reasonable assertability is controversial among competent observers might reasonably be asserted. A pro-argument started from the premise that any probable opinion p is reasonably assertable. Now assume that p is the claim ‘opinion q is probable’. In this case, q would be reasonably assertable because p is reasonably assertable and p says that q is reasonably assertable. Of course, p might be controversial because probable opinions can be controversial. Hence, opinions whose probability is controversial might be reasonably assertable. The upshot is that the ‘probable probability’ (probabilitas probabilis) of q suffices for the reasonable tenability of q. The opponents of probabilism (called ‘antiprobabilists’) and moderate probabilists realized that acceptance of this chain of reasoning widened the space of reasonably adoptable opinions in a problematic way. Under its premises, a denial of reasonable assertability did not deprive an opinion of its reasonable assertability unless it was virtually unanimous among competent observers. Even highly contentious opinions might thus pass a test of reasonable tenability.33 The example of ‘probable probability’ shows that seventeenth-century Catholic scholastic moral theologians probed the conceptual and epistemological limits of reasonable disagreement. Another debated issue concerned logical operations with probable opinions. In analyses of this issue, scholastic authors already employed quantitative models of drawing balls from an urn. A proposition was called probable if the relative frequency 32 On the question of controversial assertability and ‘probable probability’, see Pasqualigo, Decisiones morales, Chapter De opinionis electione, decisio 18, n. 1+2; Deman, ‘Probabilisme’, p. 487; Schuessler, The Debate, Chap. 9. Note that meta-considerations concerning the import of disagreement on the legitimate attitude towards reasonable disagreement increasingly preoccupy modern epistemologists (see Frances and Matheson, ‘Disagreement’). The relevance of such meta-considerations was already understood by seventeenth-century scholastics, as seen in the debate over whether there can be reasonable disagreement about propositions whose reasonable tenability can be (reasonably) disputed. 33 For the antiprobabilist response to the challenges of probabilism, see Gay, Jesuit Civil Wars; Schuessler, The Debate, Chap. 8; Tutino, Uncertainty, Chap. 7.

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of confirmations (i.e. positive draws) surpassed a threshold of 50 per cent. The scholastic authors realized that under this premise the conjunction of two or more probable opinions need not be probable (leading to what today is called a lottery or preface paradox). If reasonable assertability is linked to a threshold model of correct assertion, it follows that the conjunction of reasonably assertable opinions need not be reasonably assertable.34 In my view, such intricate results document that the most intensive engagement with moral and epistemological problems of reasonable disagreement before the twenty-first century occurred during the great debate on probable opinions in the seventeenth century. This debate also led to a flurry of new scholastic definitions of probability. Around the middle of the seventeenth century, definitions of the probability of opinions for the first time explicitly referred to the reasonable adoptability of opinions. Thus, a probable opinion was defined as one which a reasonable and learned person could assert, as in the following definition by the French theologian Jean Gisbert: ‘Probability correctly described is a less than certain appearance of truth and such that it suffices for reasonable assent.’35 In earlier scholastic conceptualizations of probable opinions, the nexus between probability and reasonable assertability had remained implicit. It is, of course, plausible to assume that the opinions of scholastic specialists, which figured centrally in the medieval endoxic understanding of probability, were already considered reasonably assertable. However, it documents a further step of theoretical understanding of reasonable disagreement to render this nexus central for the meaning of an opinion’s probability. Given the nexus between an opinion’s probability and its reasonable assertability, it may be confidently claimed that the seventeenth-century debate on probable opinions prefigured the modern antagonism between conciliatory and steadfast approaches to reasonable disagreement.36 The medieval system of handling reasonable disagreements had already known a kind of ‘division of labour’ between conciliatory and steadfast attitudes. By definition, probable opinions fell short of the epistemic quality of certainty. Moreover, recognizing an opponent’s opinion as probable precluded regarding one’s own opinion as certainly true. An opinion to which a probable counter-opinion existed could at best be probable but not be certainly true. 34 See Schuessler, ‘Scholastic Probability’. 35 Gisbert, Antiprobabilismus, praeambulum 1, p. 3: ‘Probabilitas proprie dicta est species veri infra certitudinem talis ac tanta ut ad assensum prudentem sufficiat.’ 36 On conciliatory and steadfast approaches to reasonable disagreement, see Frances and Matheson, ‘Disagreement’.

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Thus, probable disagreement excluded certainty on both sides, and if a side A started with subjectively holding a proposition p to be certainly true, encountering a probable counter-opinion would have called for lowering A’s confidence in the truth of p. From a scholastic point of view, this would naturally result in taking p down a peg on the ladder of doxastic confidence from the doxastic state of conviction ( fides) to the state of opinion (opinio). Modern observers may regard such a downgrading as an implementation of the conciliatory demand to lower one’s confidence in one’s beliefs upon encountering peer-disagreement. On the other hand, both sides were entitled to stand by their opinions in scholastic disagreements. Hence, if both sides already start regarding their views as mere opinions, encountering dissenting others would not have called for a further lowering of the doxastic status of their attitudes. In this respect, the steadfast view seems appropriate, which assumes that encountering peer-disagreement need not lead to a lowering of one’s confidence. From a scholastic point of view, the conciliatory and the steadfast approach are therefore not complete antagonists. The conciliatory approach is appropriate if a person’s level of confidence is unwarrantedly high when meeting a dissenting peer, whereas the steadfast approach applies to persons whose level of confidence is already appropriate. This division of domains of application was further sharpened in the seventeenth-century debate on probable opinions. Prior to the debate, the assumption that probable opinions could retain their probability in conflict with each other was hardly questioned. Yet in the wake of the great debate on probable opinions some authors claimed that equally weighty reasons for assenting p and non-p cancelled each other out.37 Equal probabilities for truth on both sides thus destroyed each other, so that none of the antagonistic propositions could with good reason be asserted. Suspension of assent was the logical conclusion. This is akin to the modern suspensionist ‘equal weight’ view.38 Other authors denied that equally probable reasons for assent to contradictory propositions necessarily cancelled each other out. They stuck to the possibility of assenting to each side, thus endorsing what today is called a steadfast view. To mediate between these views, important probabilists like Martin de Esparza and Anthony Terill distinguished between commensurable and incommensurable epistemic reasons for assenting to propositions.39 Com37 Fagnani, De opinione probabili, n. 284: ‘Opinio in concursu probabilioris non est probabilis.’ 38 See Frances and Matheson, ‘Disagreement’. 39 Esparza, Cursus theologicus, Appendix, Art. 112, and Terill, Fundamentum, q. 8, ass. 2, n. 22. For a more detailed discussion of this issue, see Schuessler, ‘Der Wille’, and ‘Scholastic Probability’.

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mensurable reasons could be mapped on a single numerical scale analogous to physical weight. Incommensurable reasons could not be mapped on a single scale. Incommensurable reasons ‘exceed each other in different respects’, that is, one side ranks higher in one dimension and the other side in another dimension of reasons, but the dimensions cannot be compared with a single measuring rod. 40 Esparza assumed that equal reasons on both sides cancelled each other out if the reasons were commensurable but not if the reasons were incommensurable. (Anthony Terill claimed, among other things, that the comparison of scientific theories involved incommensurable reasons.) Thus, in the commensurable case, suspension of assent was appropriate, but in the incommensurable case steadfast assent to one’s own most favoured view remained possible. Implicit in the distinction of commensurable and incommensurable reasons is a differentiating attitude to what today is called the uniqueness thesis. According to the uniqueness thesis, for any body of evidence and proposition p, only one specific doxastic attitude (assent, dissent, or suspension of assent) is epistemically justified. 41 This would be true for commensurable but not for incommensurable bodies of evidence. In the latter case, each of the three doxastic attitudes can be held by reasonable persons if the incommensurable evidence for p and non-p is ‘on a par’ (that is, neither the evidence for p nor for non-p dominates the opposed evidence in all relevant dimensions).

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Conclusion Scholastic approaches to the adoption of probable opinions already acknowledged the possibility of reasonable disagreement between competent reasoners. Competence in a science was mainly ascribed to well-trained specialists, who had proven their skills through disputation, publication, or by otherwise satisfying the quality requirements of a scholastic academic community. Such kinds of ‘expert disagreement’ were the main form of reasonable disagreement dealt with in the scholastic tradition. As originators of probable opinions, scholastic authors were de facto treated as equals, because there was no universally agreed quality ranking between scholastic authorities. Disagreements between scholastic specialists were morally and 40 This distinction is similar to the modern distinction between being equal and ‘on a par’; see Chang, Incommensurability. 41 See Frances and Matheson, ‘Disagreement’.

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epistemologically regulated, but in a way that systematically left room for different weightings of reasons by different people and for upholding controversial opinions. The plurality of opinions among specialists also offered non-specialists some room for choice, although non-specialists were called upon to follow the opinion of a specialist rather than to straightforwardly form their own opinions. Before the seventeenth century, the possibility of reasonable disagreement was de facto acknowledged but not scrutinized in depth. This changed in the seventeenth century with the enormous scholastic debate on probable opinions, which engendered a wealth of moral and epistemological analyses impinging on reasonable disagreement. Some key concerns of the present debate on reasonable disagreement in analytic philosophy, like the distinction between conciliatory and steadfast approaches or the uniqueness thesis, were already addressed at the time. Other claims remain specific to a scholastic framework of conceptualization, while still others may resurface again if the nascent modern debate on reasonable disagreement lasts long enough. In any case, it is a mistake to believe that preoccupation with reasonable disagreement is a recent phenomenon. Acceptance of reasonable disagreement was already important for the governance of medieval societies. The first analytically deep scrutiny of the moral and epistemological foundations of disagreement between equally reasonable peers was accomplished by seventeenth-century scholastic authors.

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Bibliography Printed Sources Aristotle, Complete Works, ed. by Jonathan Barnes, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984). Bonaventura of Bagnoregio, Commentaria in quatuor libros sententiarum Magistri Petri Lombardi. II: In secundum librum sententiarum (ad Claras Aquas: ex typographia collegii S. Bonaventurae, 1885). Bresser, Martin, De conscientia libri sex (Antverpiae: apud Ioannis Cnobbari, 1638). Esparza Martin de, Cursus theologicus. Appendix de usu licito opinionis probabilis (Romae: Camera Apostolica, 1669). Fagnani, Prospero, De opinione probabili. Dissertatio excerpta ex commentariis Prosperi Fagnani (Romae: Balleoni, 1765).

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Fontaines, Godefroid de, Quodlibetum nonum (Louvain: Institut Supérieur de Philosophie, 1928). Gisbert, Jean, Antiprobabilismus (Parisiis: Jean-Baptiste Delespine, 1703). Gualdo, Gabriele [Nicolas Peguletus], Tractatus probabilitatis (Lovanii: Aegidius Prost, 1707). Henry of Ghent, Quodlibeta, 2 vols. (Louvain: Bibliothèque SJ, 1961; reprint of Paris 1518). Lopez, Luis, Instructorium Conscientiae (Lugduni: Pierre Landry, 1592). Pasqualigo, Zaccaria, Decisiones morales (Veronae: Bartolomeo Merlo, 1641). Peter of Spain, Summulae logicales (Venetiis: F. Sansovino, 1572). Terill, Anthony, Fundamentum totius theologiae moralis (Lovanii: Hovius, 1669).

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Literature Baker, Keith, Condorcet. From Natural Philosophy to Social Mathematics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975). Biller, Peter and Minnis, Alastair, Handling Sin. Confession in the Middle Ages (York: York Medieval Press, 2013). Boyle, Leonard, ‘Summae confessorum’, in Les genres littéraires dans les sources théologiques et philosophiques médiévales, ed. by Robert Bultot (Louvain-laNeuve: Université catholique de Louvain, 1982). Broggio, Paolo, ‘Rome and the “Spanish Theology”’, in The Spanish Presence in Sixteenth-Century Italy, ed. by Piers Baker-Bates and Miles Pattenden (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), pp. 85–102. Burgio, Santo, Teologia barocca. Il probabilismo in Sicilia nell’epoca di Filippo IV (Catania: Società di Storia patria per la Sicilia orientale, 1998). Byrne, Edmund F., Probability and Opinion. A Study in the Medieval Presuppositions of Post- Medieval Theories of Probability (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1968). Ceccarelli, Giovanni, ‘Risky Business. Theological and Canonical Thought on Insurance from the Thirteenth to the Seventeenth Century’,  Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 31 (2001), 607–658. Chang, Ruth, Incommensurability, Incomparability and Practical Reason (Cambridge/Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997). Clark, R. Scott and Trueman, Carl, Protestant Scholasticism. Essays in Reassessment (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1999). Courtenay, William, ‘Inquiry and Inquisition. Academic Freedom in Medieval Universities’, Church History, 58 (1989), 168–181. Christensen, David and Lackey, Jennifer, The Epistemology of Disagreement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).

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Deman, Thomas, ‘Probabilis’, Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques, 22 (1933), 260–290. ———, ‘Probabilisme’, in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, ed. by Eugen Mangenot and Alfred Vacant, 150 fasc. (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1899–1950), fasc. 114–115, pp. 417–619. Feldman, Richard and Warfield, Ted, Disagreement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). Fellmann, Emil, ‘Honoré Fabry (1607–1688) als Mathematiker. Eine Reprise’, in The Investigation of Difficult Things. Essays on Newton and the History of the Exact Sciences in Honour of D.T. Whiteside, ed. by Peter Harman and Alan Shapiro (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 97–112. Fleming, Julia, Defending Probabilism. The Moral Theology of Juan Caramuel (Washington dc: Georgetown University Press, 2006). Forst, Rainer, Toleranz im Konflikt (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2003). Frances, Bryan and Matheson, Jonathan, ‘Disagreement’, in Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/disagreement/, last access: September 2019). Franklin, James, The Science of Conjecture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001). Ganzer, Klaus, Unanimitas, maioritas, pars sanior. Zur repräsentativen Willensbildung von Gemeinschaften in der kirchlichen Rechtsgeschichte (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2000). Gay, Jean-Pascal, ‘Laxisme et rigorisme’, Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques, 3 (2003), 525–548. ———, Jesuit Civil Wars. Theology, Politics and Government under Tirso González (1687–1705) (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012). Haskins, Ekaterina, ‘Endoxa, Epistemological Optimism, and Aristotle’s Rhetorical Project’, Philosophy and Rhetoric, 37 (2004), 1–20. Hoenen, Maarten, ‘Thomismus, Skotismus und Albertismus. Das Entstehen und die Bedeutung der philosophischen Schulen im späten Mittelalter’, Bochumer philosophisches Jahrbuch für Antike und Mittelalter, 2 (1997), 81–103. Iribarren, Isabel, Durandus of St. Pourçain. A Dominican Theologian in the Shadow of Aquinas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). Jonsen, Albert and Toulmin, Stephen, The Abuse of Casuistry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). Kantola, Ilkka, Probability and Moral Uncertainty in Late Medieval and Early Modern Times (Helsinki: Luther Agricola Society, 1994). Kuran, Timur, The Long Divergence. How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011).

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Moore, Robert, The Formation of a Persecuting Society. Authority and Deviance in Western Europe 950–1250, 2 vols. (Malden/Mass.: Blackwell, 2007). Noonan, John, The Scholastic Analysis of Usury (Cambridge/Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957). Quantin, Jean-Louis, Le catholicisme classique et les Pères de l’Eglise. Un retour aux sources (1669–1713) (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1999). Schuessler, Rudolf, Moral im Zweifel, 2 vols. (Paderborn: Mentis, 2003–2006). ———, ‘Der Wille zur Meinung. Ignacio de Camargo und Antonius Terillus zur Macht des Willens über das Fürwahrhalten’, in Unsicheres Wissen in der frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Carlos Spoerhase et al. (Berlin et al.: De Gruyter, 2009), pp. 339–364. ———, ‘Scholastic Probability as Rational Assertability. The Rise of Theories of Reasonable Disagreement’, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 96 (2014), 202–231. ———, The Debate on Probable Opinions in the Scholastic Tradition (Leiden: Brill, 2019). ———, ‘Probability in Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy’, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/probability-medievalrenaissance/, last access: September 2019). Sullivan, Francis, Magisterium. Teaching Authority in the Catholic Church (New York: Paulist Press, 1983). Tully, James, Meaning and Context. Quentin Skinner and His Critics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). Tutino, Stefania, Uncertainty in Post-Reformation Catholicism. A History of Probabilism (Oxford et al.: Oxford University Press, 2018). Wei, Ian P., Intellectual Culture in Medieval Paris. Theologians and the University, c. 1100–1330 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Zagorin, Perez, How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003).

About the Author Rudolf Schuessler is professor of philosophy at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. His areas of research cover probabilism, early modern scholastic thought, issues of justice, and ethics in negotiations. He has recently published The Debate on Probable Opinions in the Scholastic Tradition (2019).

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2.

Regulating the Credibility of NonChristians: Oaths on False Gods and Seventeenth-Century Casuistry Marco Cavarzere

Abstract This chapter explores how casuistry served as a versatile body of knowledge, capable of connecting and adapting the allegedly immutable tradition of Catholic truth to specific social and political changes. Contractual oaths in the context of cross-cultural trade prove to be a case in point to explore the potential of casuistry. In cross-cultural trade, trust was in fact sanctioned by oaths. The problem was, however, that the authority called as a witness to the validity of these oaths was no longer the Christian God, but often the ‘false gods’ of other cultural traditions. Both in Catholic and Protestant contexts the problematic nature of such practices was solved through an innovative application of Christian moral law.

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Keywords: oaths, casuistry, cross-cultural trade, Reformation

In the last decades, early modern casuistry has attracted much attention. In particular, two elements have raised interest: on the one hand, the methodological character of casuistry, which aimed to analyse moral action through a strict interpretive grid; on the other hand, its focus on historical actors and on their specific deeds. Depending on their specializations, scholars have studied casuistry as a method applicable for solving problems of human bioethics or as an epistemological instrument that might help social sciences rethink the role of individual agency in historical development.1 1 For the connection between casuistry and bioethics see the seminal book by Jonsen and Toulmin, The Abuse; on social sciences see Penser par cas.

Badea, A., B. Boute, M. Cavarzere, S. Vanden Broecke (eds.), Making Truth in Early Modern Catholicism. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021 doi 10.5117/9789463720526_ch02

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However, in a strictly historical view, casuistry had first of all a regulatory function during the early modern period. Narrowly entwined with canon law and the ius commune, it forged a normative order, within which individuals and institutions could take their decisions. This art of decision-making was not limited to the forum internum, that is, to the realm of the individual conscience. Certainly, as many studies have shown us, confessors widely used the summae casuum in order to transpose the assumptions of moral theology into prescriptions for the spiritual guidance of the faithful.2 But casuistry was not only the meticulous description of sinful situations. Far from that, it addressed complex ethical issues, relevant to early modern society as a whole, and was omnipresent both in legal works and in treatises of moral theology.3 From this standpoint, casuistry was a recognized style of reasoning, which offered normative answers to determined social and political situations. This strong connection between the legal domain and the theological science of moral cases should not come as a surprise. Not only did moral assumptions have a different value in premodern societies, but the idea itself of norms as a set of predetermined classifications for all human behaviours was not commonly acknowledged. Without a casus, namely a specif ic circumstance of action, the law per se did not exist; as a consequence, in early modern Europe legal codifications often took the shape of collections of juridical decisions. 4 In other words, both law and moral theology were based on the analysis of individual cases and not on formalized abstractions. Pascal’s famous criticism of casuists pointed out the tension sometimes provoked by the concurrence between law and theology. As Pascal polemically observed, what the alleged moral laxity of Jesuit theologians allowed was often in opposition to the decisions of law courts and opened a breach in the normative expectations of society.5 Nonetheless, theological and legal casuistry were able to coexist in a peaceful and non-contrastive way for centuries.6 To historians’ great surprise, examples of casuistic reasoning are slowly emerging from the administrative archives of European institutions. In the early modern period, the decision-making process of governmental bodies also took into account moral arguments. The Mesa da consciência in 2 See the overview offered by Gay, Morales en conflit, pp. 11–35. 3 Decock and Birr, Recht und Moral, pp. 23–30. 4 See Judicial Records, and Case Law in the Making. 5 Pascal, The Provincial Letters, letter 6. 6 The scholarly debate about different kinds of normative pluralism has recently involved several legal historians (Lauren Benton, John Griff iths, Thomas Duve, etc.); for a historical treatment of the problem see Normenkonkurrenz in historischer Perspektive.

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Portugal, the role of the king’s confessors in the state administrations of the French and Spanish monarchies and, at a lower level, the consults written by well-known casuists for bankers and merchants serve to remind us of the relevance of casuistry in the daily management of early modern society.7 This chapter aims to study the way in which moral theology fulfilled its normative role through the lens of a specific case: that of the so-called oaths on false gods (iuramenta per falsos deos), namely the oaths taken by heathens on their own gods and goddesses. Exactly like casuistry, oaths have also drawn scholarly attention in recent times for their ambiguous character, at the crossroads between sacred and secular, theology and law.8 Oath-takers call as witness the divinity, while also making a worldly arrangement with other human beings. Oaths on false gods represent an extreme example of such a duplicitous situation. The legal acceptance of oaths on false gods, albeit legally necessary, might in fact imply the recognition of religious otherness. The secular need to grant agreements through an official, irrevocable commitment collides here with the religious impossibility of recognizing the validity of a testimony guaranteed by empty referents, namely non-Christian gods.9 Our interest does not lie in the theological side of the problem, but in the new relevance that these oaths acquired within a new system of crosscultural legal relationships during the early modern period. In the course of the Middle Ages, theologians and legal scholars had already frequently discussed the lawfulness of oaths on false gods. However, casuistry thoroughly redefined the terms of the debate at the beginning of the seventeenth century, at a moment when the interactions with non-Christian societies became more and more intense. While Christian churches were consolidating both their orthodoxies and orthopractices, the broadening of trade relationships brought about a coming-to-terms with new cultures and religions. How was it possible for inherently intolerant churches to shape normative responses to an increasingly complex world, which included a plurality of faiths and religious truths? This chapter first discusses how casuistry was able to change its positions about oaths on false gods, reacting to the demands of society and to the new 7 See recently Marcocci, ‘Conscience and Empire’; Reinhardt, Voices of Conscience; and the examples quoted in Decock, Theologians and Contract Law, p. 28 n. 99 and p. 50 n. 187. 8 The fundamental work on the constitutional and religious value of oaths remains the great fresco by Prodi, Il sacramento del potere; from a correlated perspective, the fascinating work by Agamben, The Sacrament of Language. 9 A somehow similar case is the one concerning the oath with heretics, discussed in Lavenia, ‘La fides e l’eretico’, and Decock, ‘Trust Beyond Faith’.

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situations arising during the early modern period. Secondly, it suggests that, in discussing similar moral problems, casuistry was able to create a frame of norms valid both for Catholic and Protestant churches and finally to present itself as a transconfessional normative system. Drawing evidence both from casuistic literature and from some examples of commercial practices, such a discussion of oaths on false gods shows that early modern European society, institutionally weak and religiously intolerant, was able to validate commercial and political agreements by accommodating theological truth to the old societal criterion of trust.

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1. A Basis for Discussion: Augustine and Thomas The problem of oaths with non-Christians was not a novelty in the early modern period. Despite the hegemonic policy of Christian churches, Christianity was always surrounded by other religious cultures, settled in Europe or in its vicinities. Encounters between Christians and non-Christians were normal in late antiquity and, during the Middle Ages, they continued to be common as a consequence of the Muslim conquests of Northern Africa, Spain, and Sicily, not to mention the continuous contacts with Jewish communities. Not surprisingly, when transoceanic trade and new colonizing projects changed the way in which Christians interacted with non-Christians, a theological tradition on oaths per falsos deos was already well established in the Catholic world. The two authorities on oaths with non-Christians were the two greatest theologians of the time: Augustine (354–430) and Thomas of Aquinas (1225–1274). Augustine first discussed the problem in ad 398 in a letter to Publicola, an unknown landowner from North Africa.10 Augustine’s discussion does not concern the problem of political oaths, which had been central in the theological discourse of early Christianity regarding the oath that Christians should perform to (pagan) emperors. In his letter to Publicola Augustine instead talks about contractual obligations with ‘barbarians’, that is, the labourers of Publicola’s properties and, more generally, the pagans who surrounded the Empire on every side. Augustine’s conclusions were not at all abstract. From a very practical point of view, Augustine affirms that Christians should accept oaths sworn by barbarians ‘in the name of demons’ (per daemonia): the heart of the matter was the preservation of 10 The letter is edited in Augustine, Epistulae, II, pp. 129–136. On its content, see Uhalde, ‘Barbarian Traffic’.

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public credit, and this was possible only through oaths. If Christians would not accept these oaths, ‘I know not whether we could find any place on earth in which we could live’, Augustine wrote in a rather pathetic tone. While oaths established a religious bond, they in fact also signified a social tie based on human trust. For the sake of the common good it was more important that the agreement was observed than the way in which it was made. By comparing the Christian faith ( fides) with the trust of contracts ( fides humanorum placitorum et pactorum), Augustine somehow conciliated the new Christian thought with the old Roman concept of fides as the act of remaining faithful to someone’s word.11 In a sermon of the same period about a passage of the epistle of Saint James regarding the prohibition of swearing, Augustine again clarified his point with a further example.12 Even Christians who swear on false gods and idols, like stones, are morally obliged to fulfil their oaths if they do not want to commit perjury. In fact, it does not matter if those who swear do not believe in what they swear: ‘after all, when you swear, you are not swearing to yourself or to the stone idol; you are swearing to your neighbour.’13 In an even clearer way, Augustine was once again pointing out that oaths were not only questions of religious faith, but regarded first as social conventions. More than 800 years later (1265–1274 c.), in the second part of his famous Summa theologiae, the so-called Secunda secundae on virtues and justice, Thomas of Aquinas framed the debate in a completely different way, although without rejecting Augustine’s conclusions.14 Like Augustine, Thomas in fact accepted the oaths sworn by pagans on false gods, but his opinion did not stem from the Augustinian idea that the fides humana, intended as trust, still had to play a role in Christian society. On the contrary, Thomas’s discourse on oath starts with a clear indication that every oath implies an act of veneration: to take an oath is latria, supreme worship of God. Pagan oaths are therefore a type of perjury and can be accepted only if Christians do not ask for them, but only receive them. The distinction was subtle but somehow effective, especially in the case of trade. Without approving the practice, Thomas was giving a theological justification to a de facto situation. In another quaestio, Thomas uses the example of the oath with 11 In general, Fuhrer, ‘Fac quod dicis, et fides est’. 12 For the sermon’s edition, see Boodts, ‘Augustine’s sermo 180’; on the question of the sermon’s date, which should be placed before ad 415, see Yates, ‘Is the Tongue Tamable?’ 13 The translation, based on the Maurist edition of 1683, is drawn from Augustine, Sermons III/5, p. 322. In this passage no difference can be noticed from the modern edition by Shari Boodts. 14 Thomas, Opera omnia, IX, quaestio 98, pp. 341–346, esp. art. 4 at p. 346.

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non-Christians in order to legitimize usury, that is, the practice of lending money at interest rates.15 As it is possible to accept oaths on false gods, in case of need it is also possible to accept money from someone who is willing to make usury. Following previous tradition, Thomas underlined that it is unacceptable to induce someone to commit a sin, but not to profit from someone’s sin for a good purpose. It is difficult to draw general conclusions from the selective reading of passages excerpted from a complicated, all-inclusive work such as the Summa theologiae. It is, however, worth noting that, despite accepting the oaths on false gods, Thomas modifies two fundamental points of Augustine’s argument. First, he clearly narrows down the definition of oaths to the relationship between men and God, excluding any other form of human trust. Second, his discourse, which completely ignores questions of public welfare, focuses on the individual conscience of the oath-taker. Christians can never recognize an oath on false gods, but they can accept that the oath is valid in a subjective manner, since the erroneous consciences of those who swear believe in the legitimacy of the oath.16 As Thomas writes in his commentary to Peter Lombard’s sentences, the man who swears on false gods commits a sin as far as the form of the oath is concerned (quantum ad formam juramenti), but not in his intention to tell the truth and commit himself to the agreement.17 Thomas’s presentation of the problem was the one which theologians would repeat until the sixteenth century.18 In the meantime, the legal practice canonized different behaviours. As often happened in the Middle Ages, the theological problem went hand in hand with further juridical debates. Bartolus de Saxoferrato (1313–1357) recognized oaths sworn by Jews, but declared that oaths in the name of Muhammad did not have legal value. As the Decretum Gratiani, a collection of canon law from the twelfth century, had shown, the difference resided in the intrinsic dissimilarity between Jews and other non-Christians: after all, Jews continued to swear on the ‘true God’.19 In a way, legal thinkers seemed stricter than theologians in their definitions; probably their positions better reflected contingent political and social situations—beyond a doubt, Jews were everyday counterparts of 15 Thomas, Opera omnia, IX, quaestio 78, art. 4, p. 166. 16 On Thomas’s concept of ‘erroneous conscience’, see in general Tutino, Uncertainty, pp. 5–9. 17 Thomas, Commentum, II, p. 443. 18 See for example Antoninus, Summa theologica, col. 309, or Soto, De iustitia et iure, l. VIII, quaestio II de periurio, art. III, pp. 268–269 (similar arguments are expressed in Soto’s Tratado, pp. 70–76; the book was firstly published in Latin in 1551). 19 For the reconstruction of this legal debate, see Quaglioni, ‘Gli ebrei e il giuramento’.

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Christians in the European courts of the Middle Ages. The cultural markers of the medieval world were, however, going to change during the sixteenth century; the words of theologians played a consistent role in shaping this transformation. Without following the evolution of the debates on oaths throughout the late Middle Ages, time has come to see how casuistry helped to redefine the relationships with non-Christians in the early modern period.

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2. New Worlds, Same Oaths After the conquest of America and the establishment of regular transoceanic trade, the frame in which the interactions between Christians and nonChristians took place radically changed. As new scholarship is making clear, the colonizing enterprises of European states, usually promoted through trade companies, were first and foremost based on the cooperation with local powers and indigenous communities.20 Violence and repression were certainly part of the bargaining; nonetheless, during the early modern period European empires ruled over vast parts of the world, primarily due to mutual arrangements. As a consequence, the extent of the agreements with non-Christians took on new dimensions, while the nature itself of the non-Christians with whom Europeans came to negotiate treaties and contracts profoundly changed. Jews and Muslims were well-known neighbours, with whom Christians had cohabitated for centuries, sharing similar cultures and religious beliefs. The non-Christian populations that Europeans encountered during their slow expansion represented an exotic universe, which needed to be understood and deciphered in its own terms. While the political and philosophical aspects of the negotiation with nonChristians has recently been subject to investigation, the theological debate opened up by these agreements, often sanctioned by oaths and religious rites, has not received much attention.21 However, it is not only worth noting that European Christians established close and mutual relationships of trust with other cultures, but that, in order to reach this goal, they did not hesitate to accept and officially acknowledge other cults and religious traditions that seemed completely extraneous to their own. Early modern politics was characterized by a stream of more or less significant treaties between European institutions of different kinds and 20 In the growing literature on empires and transcultural relationships, see Empire by Treaty. 21 For an overview on the ideological presuppositions for these political treaties, see Tuck, ‘Alliances with Infidels’.

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non-Christian rulers, which implied the use of oaths.22 First examples come from the Portuguese encounters with Muslim and Hindu states in India in the middle of the sixteenth century, but the practice of making agreements with local princes through oaths was widespread and certainly not confined to Portuguese diplomacy. Some decades later, in 1606 and 1609, the government of the United Provinces signed similar contracts with some minor kingdoms on the Malaysian coasts and on the Moluccan islands, where Dutch merchants were attempting to establish their bases.23 In these contracts and treaties, the expressions that European notaries used in order to describe the oaths of their non-Christian counterparts are quite generic and do not explain how the oaths actually took place. The Portuguese texts make clear that heathen princes used their own rites and formulas—they swore segundo seu costumbre—but they do not give details on the performative aspects of the oaths. What is evident, however, is the reciprocity and mutual value of these ceremonies: in a perfect parallelism, the Portuguese ambassadors are portrayed swearing on the Bible, whereas the local princes swear on their own gods. We have to wait until the second half of the seventeenth century in order to have much consistent evidence of the way in which oaths with non-Christians occurred. In this respect, the documentation on the African coasts of today’s Ghana is extremely rich.24 Here scholars had the chance to entwine institutional sources with the voyage journals of individual European travellers. Moreover, the so-called ‘gold coast’ was a favourite outpost of several different European colonial enterprises: during the seventeenth century it harboured Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, and Prussian fortresses. Like in many other cases, European authorities signed treaties here with local rulers and exchanged oaths as confirmation of their mutual agreements. Interestingly enough, the religious beliefs of Ghana populations did not belong to any of the world religions that Europeans had known for centuries. Loyal to traditional religions, the princes of the Gold Coast swore by eating, drinking, and calling fetishes of different kinds in testimony of their oaths. In recent years, the performative forms in which such cross-cultural trade took shape in early modern Ghana have been subject to meticulous investigation.25 Europeans not only accepted and recognized these heathen 22 A first legal categorization is offered by Steiger, ‘Recht zwischen Asien und Europa’. 23 Collecção, I, pp. 96–97, 118–120, 130–140, etc. and Corpus diplomaticum, I, pp. 41–45 and 58–59. 24 Brandenbourg Sources; Danish Sources; Sources for the Mutual History of Ghana and the Netherlands. 25 Brauner, Kompanien, Könige und caboceers, pp. 490–505; see also Mitchell, ‘The Fetish and Intercultural Commerce’.

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ceremonies, which contemporary learned treatises on world religions described as demoniac, but they even took part in them. Needless to say, official documentation, preserved in the archives of public authorities, continued to remain quite ambiguous about these forms of mutual agreements. Yet, other contemporary sources clearly refer to the direct participation of European traders in the ceremonies of fetish-oaths. German, French, and English traders reported to have drunk or eaten fetishes with their local counterparts.26 Even these travel logs seem, however, not completely trustworthy: they portray these events as necessary obligations, which Europeans had to fulfil against their own will in order to establish trade relationships with African populations. In reality, as recent research has pointed out, fetish-oaths were not merely tolerated but even encouraged.27 Europeans themselves often asked Ghanaian political heads to perform fetish-oaths and actively engaged in canonizing them as legitimate means of sanctioning trade agreements. Fetish-oaths did not only share some similarities with European oaths—after all, Christian oaths required touching the Bible, a comparable fetish-object.28 In the European view, the fetish-ceremonies also represented the same connection between moral and legal obligations embodied by commercial oaths on the Christian God within European societies. It therefore comes as no surprise that Europeans appropriated certain characters of local religions which better fit their own understanding of trade agreements.

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3. A Change of Pace: Suárez and Lessius Early modern European theologians knew little about the Ghanaian population and fetish-oaths, but they were not unaware of the agreements that European trade companies were making on the other side of the world. Some problems that were emerging from the commercial practice became pivotal to the new theological discourse about the oaths on false gods. Not by chance, the first signs of change came at the beginning of the seventeenth century, when cross-cultural oaths had become common practice in the political and commercial relationships between Europeans and non-Europeans. The first ones to acknowledge the ongoing change were two Jesuit scholars: Francisco Suárez (1548–1617) and Leonard Lessius (1554–1623), Suárez’s 26 Brauner, Kompanien, Könige und caboceers, pp. 495–496 and 498. 27 The point is strongly made in Mitchell, ‘The Fetish and Intercultural Commerce’. 28 Calore, ‘Tactis evangeliis’.

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former student at the Roman university of the order, the Collegio Romano. Both of them not only represented one and the same theological school, as far as the dispute on free will was concerned, but were also subjects of the Spanish Crown and particularly perceptive of the new developments in world trade.29 It is difficult to establish direct relationships between their theological stances about oaths on false gods. Their writings on the subject appeared almost simultaneously in the first years of the seventeenth century, between 1605 and 1609. It is, however, remarkable how their positions coincided in advancing a reconsideration of these oaths in comparison with the tradition embodied by Augustine and Thomas of Aquinas. Suárez gave a thorough presentation of the question in his book on religion (1609), within a larger debate on oaths and on the value of language.30 At the time this treatise appeared, the question of oaths had taken up political dimensions: in 1606, James I imposed the oath of allegiance on his subjects in order to exclude Catholics from public life and undermine papal pretensions to the English throne. Suárez engaged himself in the controversy with a famous treatise, the Defensio fidei catholicae adversus anglicanae sectae errores (1613, but written in previous years). These political debates, however, hardly influenced Suárez’s treatment of oaths on false gods. The point of departure for Suárez was instead Thomas’s definition: the oath on false gods was intrinsically wrong and one should especially condemn those who tried to convince others to swear on false gods; nonetheless, it was possible to accept these oaths in some special cases, as Thomas had shown in his Summa theologiae through the example of usury. In comparison to Thomas, Suárez was, however, much more prone to justify people who were forced to ask heathens to swear on their gods.31 Suárez’s reflections strictly followed the patterns of casuistic reasoning and selected specific situations under which oaths on false gods could be considered legitimate. First of all, central to his argument was the predisposition (dispositio intellectus) of those who swore on false gods towards the instrument of the oath itself: they should possess previous knowledge about the function of oaths. Secondly, it was essential that they could demonstrate a certain understanding of God’s nature. In other words, they needed to know what they were doing and which consequences they would face in 29 For a comparative treatment of Suárez’s and Lessius’s positions on oaths see Tutino, Shadows of Doubt, pp. 149–190. On Suárez see more generally A Companion to Francisco Suárez. 30 Suárez, De religione, I, pp. 297–298; II, pp. 351–353 (tract. V, lib. II, cap. V), pp. 479–481 (tract. V, lib. III, cap. XIII). 31 Suárez, De religione, II, p. 480.

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case of perjury. Suárez’s position closely resembled the ones that European trade companies were adopting in Ghana through fetish-oaths. Albeit clearly a heathen practice, the fetish-oath could be accepted as a legitimate guarantee because it appeared to have the fundamental characteristics of a European oath: it used the divinity as a tool for enforcing human trust. In Suárez’s view, another condition should also be taken into consideration before accepting a heathen oath: the situation in which the heathen was asked to swear. Suárez underlined that Europeans should require oaths on false gods only in special cases, when they served as means to secure peace or other forms of human activities. In this section of Suárez’s treatment, it became clear that his reasoning was aimed at giving a moral justification to current trade agreements and political treaties with non-Europeans. Among the right causes for claiming an oath on false gods Suárez quoted a broad spectrum of situations that belonged to the most usual commercial practices: to settle legal disputes, to sign a treaty, or to single out trade agreements (‘si sit componenda lis aut controversia finienda, vel foedus firmandum aut securitas in quolibet negotio accipienda’). Lessius’s interpretation was along the same lines of thought. In his commentary of Thomas’s Secunda secundae, the treatise De iustitia et iure of 1605, Lessius devoted a few clear sentences to oaths on false gods.32 In comparison with Suárez, Lessius did not engage in a comprehensive discussion; but without preamble he asked whether it was acceptable to ask someone to swear even if it was well known that he would swear in the name of Muhammad or some other idol. The answer was unequivocal and directly concerned merchants and cross-cultural traders. If the oath regarded contracts or served to protect from loss (damnum) or injustice (iniuria), it was not only licit to ask for an oath on false gods, but one could even force the heathen to perform it. The oath should, however, be expressed in absolute terms and should not mention that Christian traders insisted on it. Lessius underlined that this was the common practice of merchants who traded with infidels (‘quod est quotidianum apud mercatores, qui cum infidelibus contrahunt’). Probably due to their clarity, Lessius’s indications enjoyed great popularity among later theologians, who repeated them, often with the very same words, in their books of moral theology published during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.33 Yet not everyone welcomed Suárez’s and Lessius’s 32 Lessius, De iustitia et iure, l. II, cap. 42: de iuramento et adiuratione, especially dubitatio 10: Utrum fas sit deferre iusiurandum ei quem putas pereiraturum (p. 558). 33 See Reiffenstuel, Theologia moralis, tract. 6, dist. 2, q. 3, and Ferraris, Prompta bibliotheca, IV, sub voce iuramentum, art. 1, p. 244.

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conclusions with the same enthusiasm. Within the Society of Jesus another famous theologian, Thomas Sánchez (1550–1610), took a specific stand on their idea of justifying Christians who wanted to ask heathens to swear.34 How could someone establish the special situations in which it was licit to demand an oath on false gods? Lessius’s answer, which implied that private interest was sufficient in order to justify an agreement with infidels, was too lax. In Sánchez’s view, only public need, that is, everything connected with the bonum publicum, was a legitimate motivation to ask a non-Christian to swear on false gods. To sum up, loss or injustice was not enough to make an oath on false gods morally acceptable; a Christian government could claim an oath on false gods only if peace and war were at stake. Sánchez’s position was, however, quite isolated among contemporaries. Thanks to Suárez and above all Lessius, Catholic theology paved the way to justifying cross-cultural relationships and to recognizing that they were part of everyday life in seventeenth-century society. Far from being abhorrent, oaths sworn by heathens were now requested by European merchants for the sake of their own interests. Needless to say, such a recognition did not imply any form of religious toleration or, even worse, acceptance of other religions. Lessius’s words should be rather interpreted within his reconsideration of commercial practices and his focus on human freedom. As Wim Decock has recently underlined, Lessius was the first one to theorize the freedom of contracts and build his own theology on the idea of mutual consent.35 From his standpoint, oaths were first of all instruments capable of sanctioning agreements based on the free will of the parties; as a consequence, everyone had the right to ask for this form of binding agreement in case of need. But the practice of oaths on false gods was not confined to Catholic traders only. As the example of Ghana has shown us, both Prussian Lutherans and Dutch Reformed did not hesitate to swear by drinking and eating fetishes. What was the position of Protestant theologians on this issue?

4. Casuistry: A Transconfessional Normative System It has recently become clear that casuistry was not a confessional feature of the Catholic Church. Handbooks of cases, produced by theological faculties or individual scholars, were spread throughout the Protestant territories too—evangelical and Reformed alike—and expressed the need for answers 34 Sánchez, Opus morale, l. III, cap. VIII. 35 Decock, Theologians and Contract Law.

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to the moral problems of the day.36 Quite astonishingly, these works shared a strong family resemblance with their Catholic counterparts. Although they usually relied more strongly on biblical examples, they could not eschew following in the footsteps of the theological tradition of Catholic casuists. They, however, did not seem very interested in the moral problems posed by oaths on false gods. In most cases, they summarized Thomas’s position on the subject and declared these oaths illegitimate but valid ex conscientia erronea.37 At f irst glance, the problem of cross-cultural trade appeared to be less preponderant among Protestant theologians. On the contrary, they sometimes used the example of these oaths as another weapon of interconfessional polemics. The Lutheran theologians Friedrich Balduin (1575–1627) and Johann Heinrich Alstedt (1588–1638) drew a direct comparison between the oaths on false gods and the Catholic practice of swearing on saints: as in many other works of Protestant polemics, saints were here compared with heathen idols.38 Yet the demarcation line was not between Protestant theologians and Catholic ones. In the second half of the seventeenth century, several lectures and dissertations were published in different Lutheran universities which specifically dealt with oaths on false gods and, more generally, relationships with non-Christians. This widening of interest stemmed from a more general change in the cultural trends within German universities. Here the philosophical and legal discourse on natural law was starting to receive more attention and to spark heated debates among local universities.39 On the basis of these new doctrines some German dissertations treated the problem of the lawfulness of Christians making military alliances with infidels, a problem which Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) first posed in the first decade of the seventeenth century in an unpublished treatise, De societate publica cum infidelibus, and then discussed in other published works. 40 Under the pressure of this growing debate, often based on previous discussions of Catholic casuists, Protestant theologians came back to write about oaths on false gods, addressing the topic from a larger perspective than that adopted until then. Two lectures on this subject, which took place at 36 For a general presentation see Palumbo, ‘Conscientia, casus conscientiae’. 37 See for instance Perkins, The Whole Treatise, Book 2, Chap. 13, p. 381; Ames, De conscientia et eius iure, lib. IV, cap. 22, quaestio XIV, p. 305; Bechmann, Theologia conscientiaria, p. 360. 38 Balduin, Tractatus luculentus, pp. 246–247, and Alstedt, Theologia casuum, pp. 267–268. 39 Beiergrößlein, von Dorn, and Klippel, ‘Das Naturrecht’. 40 Brimmer, De foedere cum infidelibus contracto; Lyser, Disputatio politica; Richter, Dissertatio politica; some other dissertations on the subject appeared at the beginning of the eighteenth century. On Grotius, see Borschberg, Hugo Grotius.

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the University of Leipzig in 1685 and 1687, show how the Protestant riposte to the problem of cross-cultural relationships did not differ by and large from the Catholic one. These works did not only justify oaths on false gods, but also sustained similar positions to those of Suárez and Lessius on the possibility of making regular use of these forms of agreements with nonChristians. Johann Martin Lochmann, future Lutheran pastor in Leipzig, became interested in these oaths while studying more general topics at the local university, such as the problem of erroneous conscience and the moral definition of need. 41 In his lecture on oaths on false gods he not only presented the common doctrine on oaths, but also affirmed that a Christian should rely on oaths on false gods if they were the only means to settle disputes. As in Suárez and Lessius, there was no distinction between public or private interest: in case of quarrel (lis) with a non-Christian everyone was entitled to perform oaths on false gods. 42 The only exception—and this was an absolute novelty in the theological discourse about oaths on false gods—was atheists. With them it was not possible to make any kind of agreement. 43 Johann Caspar Baropio, another student of theology in Leipzig, was even clearer than Lochmann in his support of oaths on false gods as instruments of peace-making. 44 Baropio began his work stating that oaths served to confirm human trust, intrinsically corrupted in the natural state, by calling God to testimony. Oaths on false gods are true oaths since they have the same goal. Openly criticizing Sánchez, Baropio wrote that it was licit to ask heathens to swear on false gods. Oaths were in fact universal remedies to one and the same problem of mankind: the unfaithfulness and perfidy of men. While Catholic treatments of oaths on false gods somehow echoed the problems of traders and merchants, whom Jesuit theologians purposefully quoted as examples, the theology students of Leipzig maintained the discussion in general terms: on many levels, Saxony was more distant from cross-cultural trade routes than Spanish and Flemish universities. Moreover, theological arguments could be very distant from each other. Lessius recognized oaths on false gods on the basis of his belief in the free will of the contracting parties, while Baropio was convinced that oaths were the only remedy against the sinfulness of men. Despite these differences, the method embodied by 41 See Glotzer, Disputatio moralis de obligatione conscientiae erroneae, and Lochmann, Dissertatio moralis de iure necessitatis. 42 Lochmann, Disquisitio moralis de juramento per falsos deos, p. B3r. 43 Lochmann, Disquisitio moralis de juramento per falsos deos, p. C2r. 44 Baropio, Quaestio moralis.

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casuistry was the same, and offered a transconfessional normative system which could apply throughout Western Europe. Not only did Catholics and Protestants share similar ethical problems, but also the moral tradition of medieval Christianity continued to set its agenda throughout Europe. The point of departure for the discussion about oaths on false gods was in most cases Thomas of Aquinas, while new interpretations stemmed from similar urgencies and needs; what is more, this occurred through the reading of the same texts and the entrenchment of similar quotations. Research on Protestant casuistry and on its relationships with Catholic tradition is still hindered by scholarly specialization and by a subtle confessional resistance to comparing two apparently divergent systems of belief—as a sign of his break with the papacy, in 1520 Luther burnt a treatise of moral theology, the Summa casuum by Angelo of Chivasso. Needless to say, the analysis of some treatises published in Leipzig and in some other Lutheran universities of the German Empire offers a partial view on a multifaceted phenomenon which, during the early modern period, did not only concern academic debates. One might legitimately ask what role casuistry played in the policy of the East India Companies that controlled the trade routes with Africa and India. Historians have focused their attention on the consult-making activity of Catholic theologians, especially Jesuit ones; but there is probably as much to discover about the interactions between Protestant—Calvinist and Anglican alike—clergy and the governing bodies of European trade expansion. 45

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Conclusion: Networks of Trust During the early modern period, the question of trust became a fashionable topic. This success reflected the new internal and external situation of European states. On the one hand, confessional struggles had broken loyalty ties that had bound together political entities for centuries. For instance, in the Low Countries the question of trusting ‘heretics’, that is, those who were outside the community of the faithful, was not only a problem of political and theological theory, but an issue of good neighbourliness. 46 On the other hand, pagan populations were fast becoming allies of European powers in 45 On a theoretical level and on medieval sources see however the interesting essay by Helmholz, ‘The Canon Law of Oaths and English Commercial Law’. 46 Cf. Molanus, De fide haereticis servanda; Sweert, De fide haereticis. On Molanus’s work, see Prosperi, ‘Fede, giuramento, inquisizione’, pp. 167–171.

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the commercial and military competition across the oceans and even in Europe, as shown by the alliance between France and the Ottomans. In all these cases, trust was at least an essential ideological precondition in order to establish relationships. But, as the example of oaths on false gods clearly attests, trust was also fides as faith. Although Augustine was not often quoted in the seventeenth-century treatments on oath—and with good reason, given contemporary polemics on the legacy of his thought—the issue at stake was not very different from the one debated in his letter to Publicola: fides continued to signify belief both in God and in the sworn word of others. As Michel de Certeau has shown, faith, belief, and trust inevitably belong to the same communication circuit.47 The very act of believing results from social expectations and, ultimately, from trust in other men and human institutions. During the Middle Ages, in European societies, human trust became increasingly grounded on faith in the same god, as the political and commercial practice of swearing shows: oaths were primarily assertions of trust in other people through common belief in the Christian god. The confessional fractures within Europe and the new contacts with non-Christians, however, showed that such an alliance between trust and faith could no longer be renewed on the same terms. Certainly, the theological discussion on oaths on false gods does not demonstrate that religious otherness was becoming acceptable in the context of transoceanic trade and multiconfessional societies. On the contrary, the early modern focus on trust is the result of a new awareness about cultural differences, which actually strengthened the identities and cultural positions of each community of faith: after all, trust implies boundaries. Nor do these oaths attest to the ‘modernity’ of seventeenth-century Europe. The idea itself of commercial oath indicated the degree to which every relationship was still grounded on interpersonal contacts and on the belief in binding agreements of a religious nature. European society continued to be a societas coniurata, a sworn association; oaths served as needed signs of trust in order to bind a society that was still deprived of other tools for compelling observance of agreements. This chapter has aimed to show that in this changing world theology preserved a central role and turned out to be capable of offering valuable options to administrate truth and trust. In this process, casuistry became a fundamental instrument—so important that even Protestants could not renounce its use. We can certainly assume that theologians’ opposition to cross-cultural relationships would not have stopped transoceanic trade. 47 De Certeau, ‘Une pratique sociale de la différence’.

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In commercial practice, religious structures were often bypassed or might even be involved in trade brokerage, while trust was based more on specific practices between given parties in determined territories than simplistically on oaths or on the given word. 48 Lessius’s en passant reference to the possibility of forcing heathens to swear reminds us that real life might sometimes be brutal. And yet, during the early modern period, norms often did not seek to enforce decisions but to affirm consent and strengthen the legitimacy of the social system. In this respect, theology could still play a considerable role. The example of Ghana and its fetish-oaths might help to better illustrate this final point. In the Ghanaian case, Christian merchants did not only swear on false gods, but needed these oaths in order to legitimate their actions in the eyes of European authorities. In their view, oaths appeared to be the only instruments capable of certifying contracts and of giving legal expression to trust: through oaths, trading companies could claim their rights on these trade routes against other European powers. Within this context, moral theology, with its casuistic approach, served to transpose the traditional regulative system of Christian societies, based on trust through God’s invocation, in the new scenario of cross-cultural trade. Oath was still the only known tool for asserting relationships of trust, while the guarantee offered by a common god was somehow bypassed through the reference to a series of other moral indications. From this standpoint, casuistry actually represented a normative order for early modern Europe. It did not implement any regulation but justified legal actions in an obligatory way: oaths on false gods were valid and counted in court. Exactly like early modern law, casuistry worked first as a means of accommodation between alleged immutable structures of thought and ever-changing situations. In doing so, casuistry was more receptive and creative than many other contemporary systems of thought. While many theologians still defined the heathen gods as demons and juridical thinkers stigmatized infidels as inimici generis humani, casuists were able to recompose old definitions into an up-to-date conceptualization of cross-cultural relationships.49 The result was astonishing: casuistry managed to regulate the credibility of non-Christians by integrating them within the Christian order of the world. 48 See Religion and Trade; for a wonderful case study in which Catholic missionaries sometimes worked as brokers for Protestant and Catholic trade companies, see Windler, Missionare in Persien. In general, on the difficulties of studying trust in historical contexts, see Forrest and Haour, ‘Trust in Long-Distance Relationships’. 49 For general presentations on the topic, see Stroumsa, A New Science, esp. pp. 77–100, and Cavanagh, ‘Infidels in English Legal Thought’.

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Printed Sources Alstedt, Johann Heinrich, Theologia casuum […] (Hanoviae: Conrad Eifrid, 1630). Ames, William, De conscientia et eius iure vel casibus libri quinque editio nova (Amstelodami: Officina boomiana, 1650). Antoninus of Florence, Summa theologica in quattuor partes distributa. Pars secunda (Veronae: ex typographia Seminarii, 1740). Augustine, Epistulae, ed. by Aloisius Goldbacher, 5 vols. (Vindobonae/Lipsiae: Tempsky/Freitag, 1895-1923). ———, Sermons III/5 (148–183) on the New Testament (New Rochelle: New City Press, 1992). Balduin, Friedrich, Tractatus luculentus posthumus toti reipublicae Christianae utilissimus de materia rarissime antehac enucleata casibus nimirum conscientiae (Francofurti: Caspar Wachtler, 1654). Baropio, Johann Caspar, Quaestio moralis. an juramenta per falsos deos vera sint juramenta? […] (Tremonia-Westphalo/Lipsiae: Goezianus, 1687). Bechmann, Friedemann, Theologia conscientiaria sive tractatus de casibus conscientiae (Francofurti: Meyer, 1696). Brandenbourg Sources for West African History, 1680–1700, ed. by Adam Jones (Stuttgart: Fritz Steiner, 1985). Brimmer, Johannes Georg, De foedere cum infidelibus contracto (Argentorati: Tidemann, 1672). Collecção de tratados e concertos de pazes que o Estado da India portugueza fez com os reis e senhores com quem teve relações nas partes da Asia e Africa oriental, 14 vols. (Lisboa: Imprensa nacional, 1881–1887). Corpus diplomaticum neerlande-indicum, ed. by Frederik Willem Stapel, 6 vols. (’s-Gravenhage: Nijhoff, 1907–1955). Danish Sources for the History of Ghana, 1657–1754, ed. by Ole Justesen, 2 vols. (Copenhagen: The Royal Danish Academy for Sciences and Letters, 2005). Ferraris, Lucio, Prompta bibliotheca canonica, juridico-moralis, theologica […] (Romae: Societas veneta, 1766; first edition 1746). Glotzer, Christian, Disputatio moralis de obligatione conscientiae erroneae (Lipsiae: Christian Gözii, 1687). Lessius, Leonard, De iustitia et iure caeterisque virtutibus cardinalibus libri IV (Lovanii: Masius, 1605). Lochmann, Johann Martin, Disquisitio moralis de juramento per falsos deos […] propo­ sita a Johanne Martino Lochmann lips. autore-respondente (Lipsiae: Brandi, 1685). ———, Dissertatio moralis de iure necessitatis (Lipsiae: Lampius, 1692).

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Lyser, Friedrich Wilhelm, Disputatio politica de foederibus cum infidelibus (Lipsiae: Vidua Wittigau, 1676). Molanus, Johannes, De fide haereticis servanda tres […] (Coloniae: Kempsensis, 1584). Pascal, Blaise, The Provincial Letters, trans. by Thomas M’Crie (Blacksburg: Virginia Tech, 2001). Perkins, William, The Whole Treatise of the Cases of Conscience (London: John Legat, 1606). Reiffenstuel, Anaklet, Theologia moralis brevi simulque clara methodo comprehensa […] (Monachii: Johann Jaecklin, 1692). Richter, Christian, Dissertatio politica de foederibus cum infidelibus adversus fideles (Wittenbergae: Henckelius, 1687). Sánchez, Thomas, Opus morale in praecepta decalogi (Lugduni: Iacobus Cardon et Petrus Cavellat, 1613). Soto, Domingo, De iustitia et iure (Antverpiae: Philippus Nutus, 1567). ———, Tratado de come se ha de evitar el abuso de los juramentos (Madrid: Blas Roman, 1770). Sources for the Mutual History of Ghana and the Netherlands, ed. by Michel Doortmont and Jinna Smit (Leiden: Brill, 2007). Suárez, Francisco, De religione (Lyon: Cardon, 1630; first edition Coimbra: Crasbeck, 1609). Sweert, Robert, De fide haereticis servanda dissertatio (Antverpiae: Plantin, 1611). Thomas of Aquinas, Opera omnia […] Tomus nonus. Secunda secundae Summa Theologiae a quaestione LVII ad quaestionem CXXII (Romae: Typographia poliglotta, 1897). ———, Commentum in quatuor libros sententiarum Magistri Petri Lombardi (Parmae: Pietro Fiaccadori, 1858).

Literature Agamben, Giorgio, The Sacrament of Language. An Archaeology of the Oath (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010). Beiergrößlein, Katharina, von Dorn, Iris, and Klippel, Diethelm, ‘Das Naturrecht an den Universitäten Würzburg und Bamberg im 18. Jahrhundert’, Zeitschrift für Neuere Rechtsgeschichte, 35 (2013), pp. 172–192. Boodts, Shari, ‘Augustine’s sermo 180 on Iac. 5, 12. Ante omnia nolite iurare’, Recherches augustiniennes et patristiques, 37 (2013), pp. 1–50. Borschberg, Peter, Hugo Grotius, the Portuguese and Free Trade in the East Indies (Singapore: National University of Singapore, 2011). Brauner, Christina, Kompanien, Könige und caboceers. Interkulturelle Diplomatie an Gold- und Sklavenküste im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert (Cologne et al.: Böhlau, 2015).

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Calore, Antonello, ‘Tactis evangeliis’, in Il gesto e il rito nel cerimoniale dal mondo antico ad oggi, ed. by Sergio Bertelli and Monica Centanni (Florence: Ponte alle grazie, 1995), pp. 53–99. Case Law in the Making. The Techniques and Methods of Judicial Records and Law Reports, ed. by Alain Wijffels (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1997). Cavanagh, Edward, ‘Inf idels in English Legal Thought. Conquest, Commerce, and Slavery in the Common Law from Coke to Mansfield, 1603–1793’, Modern Intellectual History, 14 (2017), 1–35. de Certeau, Michel, ‘Une pratique sociale de la différence: croire’, in Faire croire. Modalités de la diffusion et de la réception des messages religieux du XIIe au XVe siècle (Rome: École française de Rome, 1981), pp. 363–383. A Companion to Francisco Suárez, ed. by Victor M. Salas and Robert L. Fastiggi (Leiden et al.: Brill, 2014). Decock, Wim, Theologians and Contract Law. The Moral Transformation of the Ius commune (c. 1500–1650) (Leiden: Nijhoff, 2013). ———, ‘Trust Beyond Faith. Re-Thinking Contracts with Heretics and Excommunicates in Times of Religious War,’ Rivista internazionale di diritto comune, 27 (2016), 301–328. ——— and Birr, Christiane, Recht und Moral in der Scholastik der Frühen Neuzeit, 1500–1750 (Berlin et al.: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2016). Empire by Treaty. Negotiating European Expansion, 1600–1900, ed. by Saliha Belmessous (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). Forrest, Ian and Haour, Anne, ‘Trust in Long-Distance Relationships, 1000–1600 CE’, Past & Present, 238 (2018), 190–213. Fuhrer, Therese, ‘Fac quod dicis, et fides est. Augustin über Treue, Glauben und Gerechtigkeit’, in Fides, Triuwe, ed. by Susanne Lepsius and Susanne Reichlin (Berlin et al.: De Gruyter, 2015), pp. 234–250. Gay, Jean-Pascal, Morales en conflit. Théologie et polémique au Grand siècle (1640–1700) (Paris: Cerf, 2011). Helmholz, Richard H., ‘The Canon Law of Oaths and English Commercial Law. Some Historical Connections’, in Der Einfluss der Kanonistik auf die europäische Rechtskultur, ed. by David von Mayenburg, Orazio Condorelli, Franck Roumy, and Mathias Schmoeckel, 5 vols. (Cologne et al.: Böhlau, 2009–2016), vol. 5, pp. 187–201. Jonsen, Albert and Toulmin, Stephen, The Abuse of Casuistry. A History of Moral Reasoning (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). Judicial Records, Law Reports and the Growth of Case Law, ed. by John H. Baker (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1989). Lavenia, Vincenzo, ‘La fides e l’eretico: una discussione cinquecentesca’, in La fiducia secondo i linguaggi del potere, ed. by Paolo Prodi (Bologna: il Mulino, 2007), pp. 201–218.

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Marcocci, Giuseppe, ‘Conscience and Empire. Politics and Moral Theology in the Early Modern Portuguese World’, Journal of Early Modern History, 18 (2014), 473–494. Mitchell, Matthew David, ‘The Fetish and Intercultural Commerce in SeventeenthCentury West Africa’, Itinerario, 36 (2012), 7–21. Normenkonkurrenz in historischer Perspektive, ed. by Arne Karsten and Hillard von Thiessen (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2015). Palumbo, Margherita, ‘Conscientia, casus conscientiae’, in Coscienza nella filosofia della prima età moderna, ed. by Roberto Palaia (Florence: Olschki, 2013), pp. 203–235. Penser par cas, ed. by Jean-Claude Passeron and Jacques Revel (Paris: Editions de l’EHESS, 2005). Prodi, Paolo, Il sacramento del potere. Il giuramento politico nella storia costituzionale dell’Occidente (Bologna: il Mulino, 1992). Prosperi, Adriano, ‘Fede, giuramento, inquisizione’, in Glaube und Eid. Treueformeln, Glaubensbekenntnisse und Sozialdisziplinierung zwischen Mittealter und Neuzeit, ed. by Paolo Prodi (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1993), pp. 157–171. Quaglioni, Diego, ‘Gli ebrei e il giuramento nell’età del diritto comune’, Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa, 40 (2004), 189–204. Reinhardt, Nicole, Voices of Conscience. Royal Confessors and Political Counsel in Seventeenth-Century Spain and France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). Religion and Trade. Cross-Cultural Exchanges in World History, 1000–1900, ed. by Francesca Trivellato, Leor Halevi, and Cátia Antunes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). Steiger, Heinhard, ‘Recht zwischen Asien und Europa im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert?’, in Von der Staatengesellschaft zur Weltrepublik? Aufsätze zur Geschichte des Völkerrechts aus 40 Jahren, ed. by Heinard Steiger (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2009), pp. 267–291. Stroumsa, Guy, A New Science. The Discovery of Religion in the Age of Reason (Cambridge/Mass: Harvard University Press, 2010). Tuck, Richard, ‘Alliances with Infidels in the European Imperial Expansion’, in Empire and the Modern Political Thought, ed. by Sankar Muthu (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 61–83. Tutino, Stefania, Shadows of Doubt. Language and Truth in Post-Reformation Catholic Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). ———, Uncertainty in Post-Reformation Catholicism. A History of Probabilism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). Uhalde, Kevin, ‘Barbarian Traffic, Demonic Oaths, and Christian Scruples (Aug. Epist. 46–47)’, in Romans, Barbarians, and the Transformation of the Roman World, ed. by Ralph W. Mathisen and Danuta Shanzer (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), pp. 253–264.

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Windler, Christian, Missionare in Persien. Kulturelle Diversität und Normenkonkurrenz im globalen Katholizismus (17.–18. Jahrhundert) (Cologne et al.: Böhlau, 2017). Yates, Jonathan P., ‘Is the Tongue Tamable? James 3:8 and the Date of Augustine’s sermo 180’, Revue d’études augustiniennes et patristiques, 63 (2017), 81–98.

About the Author

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Marco Cavarzere is assistant professor of early modern history at the University Ca‘ Foscari of Venice. Among his latest publications is Historical Culture and Political Reform in the Italian Enlightenment (2020).

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How to Be a Catholic Copernican in the Spanish Netherlands Steven Vanden Broecke

Abstract The notion of Catholic Copernicanism in the aftermath of the Galileo affair remains something of an apparent oxymoron. It has been suggested that after the Galileo affair of 1633, cosmological truth went underground in the Catholic world for many decades, thus creating an asymmetry in the role played by Catholic and Protestant Europe in the so-called Scientific Revolution. Focusing on the case of the Spanish Netherlands, this chapter unearths a considerably different situation, where Roman directives were appropriated under local criteria for adequate cosmological truth-telling, and where the notion of public Catholic Copernicanism continued to be a tangible reality. Keywords: Galileo affair, Copernicanism, Spanish Netherlands, science and religion, astronomy

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In memoriam Andries Welkenhuysen (1929-2020)

The notion of Catholic Copernicanism in the aftermath of the Galileo affair remains something of an apparent oxymoron.1 It has been suggested that after the Galileo affair of 1633, cosmological truth went underground in the Catholic world for many decades, thus creating an asymmetry in the role played by Catholic and Protestant Europe in the so-called Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. This story remains an important reference for the history of science in the Spanish Netherlands. Living in a region that the Tridentine Church approached as a northern bulwark against 1

See the comments on the Italian situation in Motta, ‘I criptocopernicani’.

Badea, A., B. Boute, M. Cavarzere, S. Vanden Broecke (eds.), Making Truth in Early Modern Catholicism. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021 doi 10.5117/9789463720526_ch03

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the Reformation, we are told that natural philosophers suffered increasing control by ‘the hair-splitting orthodoxy of the Counter-Reformation’.2 Likewise, the Galileo affair is held to have shaped new doctrinal conformism, under which cosmological reflection became confined to private rooms and correspondence with intimate friends.3 A recent revisionist volume on seventeenth-century Southern Netherlandish science has done little to challenge this view. On the one hand, it acknowledges the centrality of the dissemination of post-Tridentine Catholicism to local Habsburg and Spanish rulers, and of a culture of publicly demonstrating ‘a radical form of princely piety’. On the other hand, it dismisses this as irrelevant, possibly even detrimental, to Southern Netherlandish science: ‘This aim, however, certainly did not call for heterodox or novel doctrines, nor did it have any particular connection with scientific research.’4 Interestingly, the claim that Roman orthodoxy determined Catholic attitudes to Copernicanism after 1633 does not seem to apply to France.5 As Lisa Sarasohn pointed out in 1988, growing state control over religious affairs and individual theological or epistemological convictions were more decisive in shaping French attitudes to Copernicanism than Roman disciplinary power. This calls for a re-evaluation of the situation in the neighbouring Spanish Netherlands. Was cosmological truth imposed topdown as a non-negotiable product, as standard narratives appear to suggest? In this chapter, I argue that it was not. Instead, historical evidence suggests a situation where Roman directives were appropriated under local criteria for adequate cosmological truth-telling, and where the notion of public Catholic Copernicanism continued to be a tangible reality. My goal is not to suggest that in a strongly Catholic region like the Spanish Netherlands, Copernican convictions were entirely unproblematic after the events of 1616–1633. I would like to argue, however, that even after the Galileo trial, local Catholic engagement with Copernicanism was far more nuanced than a classic narrative of condemnation and censorship would 2 Opsomer and Halleux, ‘De natuurwetenschappen’, p. 251: ‘Profiterend van de vrede trok [Van Helmont] in 1616 naar Brussel, dat dankzij aartshertogin Isabella een centrum werd van wetenschap en belletrie. In dit milieu waakte echter de muggezifterige orthodoxie van de Contrareformatie.’ 3 Halleux, ‘De verstomming’, p. 178: ‘De gevolgen van de zaak Galilei mogen dus zeker niet worden geminimaliseerd. Het is juist dat de veroordelingen van 1633 de geleerden er niet van konden weerhouden het copernicanisme te volgen, hetzij binnen de veilige omgeving van hun studeerkamer, hetzij in hun briefwisseling met intieme vrienden; wel bereikten ze dat het aanleren van de nieuwe leer en de verspreiding ervan door het boek werden verhinderd, en dwongen ze de auteurs tot zelfcensuur en achterhouding van gegevens.’ Also see België in de zeventiende eeuw, II, p. 155. 4 Vanpaemel, ‘Royal Patronage’, p. 145. 5 Sarasohn, ‘French Reaction’.

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have us believe. In line with the overall goals of this volume, I intend to investigate how astronomer-priests and theologians maintained credibility and legitimacy for Copernicanism after the Galileo trial. As I will try to show, essential components were a shared interpretation of the type of problem that the 1616 decree sought to settle, and a shared interpretation of the epistemic and methodological virtues that served as markers of a religiously responsible Copernicanism. In order to do this, I first turn to one of the seventeenth-century astronomers working in the Spanish Netherlands: Govaert Wendelen (1580–1667).

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1. Strange Bedfellows: The Astronomer, the Theologian, and the Nuncio Govaert Wendelen, a native of Herk-de-Stad in the prince-bishopric of Liège, received a training in the studia humanitatis and mathematics from the Jesuit order and the University of Louvain in the 1590s.6 From 1599 to 1612, Wendelen lived in Southern France, where a position as tutor to the Arnaud family introduced him to an intellectual circle that comprised, amongst others, Peiresc and the young Gassendi. Having obtained a doctorate in canon and civil law from the University of Orange, Wendelen moved back to the Low Countries in 1612. Initially employed as headmaster of a Latin school, he soon embarked on a priestly career instead. From 1620 until his death in 1667, Wendelen slowly advanced in the formal ranks of the Church, but was mostly known for his erudite work in chronology, astronomy, legal history, and philology.7 Indeed, Wendelen’s extant treatises and correspondence offer a privileged view on the scientific networks that existed in the Spanish Netherlands of the f irst half of the seventeenth century. Leading theologians,8 philosophers,9 Latinists,10 and medical professors11 of the local University of Louvain; Antwerp burghers12 and 6 See Le Paige, ‘Un astronome belge’, pp. 59–61. 7 Zwartebroeckx, ‘Wendelen (Wendelinus), Godfried’. 8 Most notably, Libert Froidmont and Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz. 9 For instance, Arnoldus Mennekens (Brussels, Royal Library, Ms. 19112, letter 55); Gerard van Gutschoven (Silverijser, ‘Godefroid Wendelen (1580–1667) [part 2]’, p. 179). 10 Most notably, Erycius Puteanus. 11 Most notably, Vopiscus Fortunatus Plempius (Silverijser, ‘Godefroid Wendelen (1580–1667) [part 2]’, p. 98). 12 For instance, Jacob Edelheer (Silverijser, ‘Godefroid Wendelen (1580–1667) [part 1]’, pp. 145 and 148; Silverijser, ‘Godefroid Wendelen (1580–1667) [part 2]’, pp. 175 and 179); Gaspard Gevartius

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printers13; high-ranking functionaries of the Brussels court 14; Carmelite15 and Jesuit mathematicians;16 papal nuncios; foreign erudites like Gassendi, Boulliaud,17 Mersenne, Morin,18 Peiresc, Caramuel,19 Huygens, Golius,20 and Hortensius:21 all were eminently interested in Wendelen’s intellectual and personal trajectory. One of Wendelen’s close acquaintances was the Louvain theologian and natural philosopher Libert Froidmont (1587–1653). Froidmont’s influential Meteorologia (1627) invoked the authority of ‘our most erudite Wendelen’, while Wendelen’s De diluvio (1629) publicly referred to Froidmont as ‘the genius of nature, my Froidmont’ or ‘my excellent meteorologist’.22 Wendelen also enjoyed good relations with various papal nuncios to Brussels and Cologne, such as Giovanni Francesco Guidi di Bagno (Brussels, 1621–1627),23 Giacomo Rospigliosi (Brussels, 1665–1667),24 Pier Luigi Carafa (Cologne, (Brussels, Royal Library, Ms. 19112, letter 11; Silverijser, ‘Godefroid Wendelen (1580–1667) [part 2]’, pp. 175, 179, 182); Johannes Franciscus van Slingelandt (Brussels, Royal Library, Ms. 19112, letter 41). 13 For instance, Hiëronymus Verdussen (Silverijser, ‘Godefroid Wendelen (1580–1667) [part 1]’, p. 120). 14 For instance, the court physicians Andrea Trevigi and Jean-Jacques Chifflet; the royal cosmographer Michael Florent van Langren; Marquis Luis Abarca de Bolea y Almazán (Wendelen was his private mathematics tutor around 1640. Abarca was also the liaison between Caramuel and Wendelen.) Cf. Velarde Lombraña, Juan Caramuel, p. 59; Brussels, Royal Library, Ms. 19112, letter 43. 15 Anton Maria Schyrleus of Rheita (Silverijser, ‘Godefroid Wendelen (1580–1667) [part 1]’, p. 145). 16 Joannes Ciermans (Brussels, Royal Library, Ms. 19112, letters 61 and 66; Silverijser, ‘Godefroid Wendelen (1580–1667) [part 1]’, p. 145); Andreas Schottus (Silverijser, ‘Godefroid Wendelen (1580–1667) [part 1]’, pp. 147, 154); Guilielmus Hesius, Francis Line, Carolus Malapert (Silverijser, ‘Godefroid Wendelen (1580–1667) [part 2]’, p. 175). 17 Silverijser, ‘Godefroid Wendelen (1580–1667) [part 2]’, p. 182. 18 Brussels, Royal Library, Ms. 19112, letter 41. 19 Caramuel, Mathesis audax, pp. 64–68; Velarde Lombraña, Juan Caramuel, p. 59. 20 For instance, Brussels, Royal Library, Ms. 19112, letters 58 and 71. 21 Brussels, Royal Library, Ms. 19112, letter 58; Silverijser, ‘Godefroid Wendelen (1580–1667) [part 1]’, p. 145. There is also Justus Dudingus Clivius (Silverijser, ‘Godefroid Wendelen (1580–1667) [part 2]’, pp. 179–180). 22 Monchamp, Galilée, p. 78. Wendelen references Froidmont’s Meteorologica in Book 1 of his De diluvio, pp. 40, 44 (‘the genius of nature, my Froidmont’), 51 (‘my supreme meteorologist [optimus meteorologus illus meus]’), 54 (‘my meteorologist’). Another possible reference occurs on p. 42. For Wendelen’s relations with Baldassare Nardi, apostolic protonotarius in Brussels, see Nardi’s letter to Galileo Galilei of 9 April 1633 in Carteggio galileano, p. 347 (also discussed in Monchamp, Galilée, pp. 28, 70, 112). 23 Around 1630, Di Bagno was arduously trying to get Wendelen to move back to Rome with him. See Lettres de Philippe et Jean-Jacques Chifflet, passim. 24 See Silverijser, ‘Godefroid Wendelen (1580–1667) [part 2]’, p. 188.

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1624–1634), and Fabio Chigi (Cologne, 1639–1651).25 Wendelen’s relation to Carafa, for instance, was initiated by the nuncio himself, on the recommendation of his colleague Guidi di Bagno, in a letter dated Christmas Day 1633.26 Interestingly, these people also played an important part in extending Rome’s battle against Copernicanism towards Northern Europe. Froidmont published two influential anti-Copernican treatises between 1631 and 1634. In September 1633, Carafa published a poster notifying all subjects of the prince-bishopric of Liège of Galileo’s condemnation and the dangers of doctrines like Copernicanism—the very poster which is said to have dissuaded Descartes from publishing Le monde.27 It is remarkable that Wendelen enjoyed an excellent reputation as an astronomer and chronologist in this company, for Wendelen was a Copernican himself.

2. Copernicanism between Print Culture and Local Networks

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According to the testimony of Augustinus van der Meulen, Wendelen had been a Copernican since 1606, when he first observed phases of Mars.28 Among Wendelen’s unpublished manuscripts we find a treatise, De systemate mundano, which may have been written as early as 1613.29 In this treatise, Wendelen expressed his firm conviction that without terrestrial motion ‘no human mind could ever come up with a hypothesis that is congruent with the heavens’.30 Beginning with Constantin Le Paige (1852–1929), it has been assumed that some of Wendelen’s published works were straightforwardly Copernican as well.31 This claim should be qualified. Wendelen clearly 25 Chigi was the maecenas to whom Schyrleus de Rheita dedicated his discoveries concerning the Jupiter satellites. See Schyrleus de Rheita, Novem stellae, pp. 117–118; Caramuel, Mathesis audax, p. 60; Velarde Lombraña, Juan Caramuel, p. 77. 26 See Wendelen, Duorum eminentissimorum, fols. A2 r–v. Wendelen’s Loxias (1626) was dedicated to Guidi di Bagno, from the house of Andrea Trevigi. See Silverijser, ‘Godefroid Wendelen (1580– 1667) [part 1]’, p. 136. Carafa paid Wendelen a visit during his illness (Brussels, Royal Library, Ms. 19112, letters 41 and 43; also see Silverijser, ‘Godefroid Wendelen (1580–1667) [part 2]’, p. 188). 27 See Finocchiaro, Retrying Galileo, pp. 30–33. 28 Silverijser, ‘Godefroid Wendelen (1580–1667) [part 1]’, p. 123. 29 Silverijser, Les autographes, pp. 5. 52–82. 30 Silverijser, Les autographes, p. 59. 31 Early scholars tended to repeat the claim that Pluvia purpurea and Teratologia were openly Copernican works (Le Paige, ‘Un astronome belge’, p. 89; repeated by Monchamp, Galilée, pp. 164–165; Silverijser, ‘Godefroid Wendelen (1580–1667) [part 2]’, p. 187. Hallyn, ‘De kosmologie’, pp. 167–168, is slightly more careful).

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differentiated between various social settings when it came to the appropriateness of geokinetic language, and preferred to err on the safe side in print.

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2.1. Wendelinus Copernicanus in Print Although Loxias (1626) acknowledged the impact of Kepler’s Astronomia nova (1609) on Wendelen’s astronomical thought and occasionally toyed with geokinetic language, it in no way sought to engage a debate on world systems.32 In the first part of De diluvio (1629), Wendelen went further in his public adoption of physical astronomy. On the one hand, he accepted Keplerian elliptic orbits and Astronomia nova’s interpretation of the physical relations between the sun and the planets.33 Wendelen also outed himself as an admirer of William Gilbert’s magnetic philosophy.34 On the other hand, Wendelen refrained from unambiguous advocacy of a Copernican world system. Claiming that the sun’s motion around its own axis dragged all planets along with itself, Wendelen explicitly refused to pronounce himself on whether the earth was one of these planets, attributing such an opinion to ‘the neo-Pythagoreans’ instead.35 Neither Arcanorum caelestium lampas (1643) nor Eclipses lunares (1644) touched upon the world systems controversy. The first edition of Wendelen’s Pluvia purpurea (1646) echoed De diluvio’s overt support of magnetic philosophy in its reference to ‘magnetic love’,36 while the expanded second edition of 1647 carefully separated discussions of the earth–moon system from those concerning the sun and the ‘other planets’. In the case of the latter system, Wendelen defended Keplerian elliptic orbits and heliocentrism.37 In the case of the former, he defended magnetic attraction as the physical basis of the moon’s orbit. However, Wendelen refrained from unambiguously integrating both systems.38 Teratologia cometica (1652) came closest to a wholly unambiguous public Copernicanism, by focusing on the sun as ‘the centre of the planetary system’ and by including six instead of five planets in this system. Nevertheless,

32 Cf. Wendelen, Loxias, pp. 11–12, 21. 33 Wendelen, De diluvio, pp. 48–49. 34 Wendelen, De diluvio, pp. 60–61. 35 Wendelen, De diluvio, pp. 48, 50, 65. 36 Wendelen, Pluvia purpurea, p. 31. 37 Wendelen, De caussis naturalibus, pp. 51–52. 38 Wendelen, De caussis naturalibus, p. 46.

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Wendelen referred to the planet between Venus and Mars as ‘the third body’ rather than ‘the earth’.39

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2.2. Wendelinus Copernicanus in Erudite Networks Wendelen’s sympathy for Copernican novatores in natural philosophy, then, was combined with a measure of self-censorship on the issue of world systems. However, it appears that these restraints were only operative when Wendelen entered the public realm of print. In alternative settings like courtly debates or epistolary exchange, Wendelen remained surprisingly candid about his Copernican convictions. 40 A letter to Mersenne of 15 June 1633 reveals Wendelen’s shock at the news of Galileo’s interrogation by the Inquisition: ‘Did he really run into such danger through that opinion alone?’, Wendelen asked, ‘of which I always showed myself to be a defender, even in the presence of Cardinal Di Bagno.’41 Guidi di Bagno was the dedicatee of Loxias (1626), Wendelen’s first publication. In the dedicatory letter, Wendelen emphasized his ongoing work on a new set of astronomical tables, the Tabulae Isabellinae,42 which would reap considerable benefits in the determination of terrestrial longitude and the solving of chronological problems. 43 The dedicatory letter was written from the Brussels house of Andrea Trevigi (d. 1633), personal physician to the sovereign of the Spanish Netherlands, Isabella Clara Eugenia (1566–1633) and one of Wendelen’s courtly supporters. It would appear, then, that Wendelen engaged in courtly debate on the world systems during Guidi di Bagno’s tenure in Brussels (1621–1627).44 Likewise, Wendelen’s correspondence from the 1630s and 1640s made no secret of his Copernicanism. Wendelen told Mersenne in 1633 that he had been working on a proof of the motion of the earth, based on an analysis of Scriptural Hebrew. In a letter to his close friend Erycius Puteanus (1574–1646), dated 5 July 1638, Wendelen claimed to be working on a ‘Diatribe on the Motion of the Earth and the Pythagorean System of the World’.45 On 13 Novem39 Wendelen, Teratologia, p. 22. 40 Brussels, Royal Library, Ms. 19112, letter 90. 41 Mersenne, Correspondance, III, p. 433, letter 256. 42 Also referenced in the published correspondence between Wendelen and Caramuel in Caramuel, Mathesis audax, p. 61. 43 Wendelen, Loxias, fol. *4r–v. 44 Brussels, Royal Library, Ms. 5989, Wendelen to unknown (10 July 1627): Wendelen forwards Andrea Trevigi’s request to order a copy of the Mulerius edition of Copernicus’s De revolutionibus (1617) in Antwerp. 45 Brussels, Royal Library, Ms. 19112, letter 54.

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ber 1638, Wendelen confirmed that ‘he had now begun to defend Copernican astronomy in earnest’, presenting what was to become the Lampas (1643) as an essentially Copernican production. 46 Shortly before the publication of Lampas, Puteanus too described the treatise to the royal cosmographer Michael Florent van Langren (1598–1675) as ‘founded on the motion of the earth’. 47 In Mathesis biceps (1670), Caramuel y Lobkowitz recalled frequent discussions of the Copernican system with Wendelen at Leuven, presumably in the early 1640s. 48 In a letter to Gassendi of 26 November 1645, Wendelen announced a physical experiment on oscillating motions which ‘leads me to be confident of being able to demonstrate that the earth moves’.49 In his Copernicus Redivivus (1653), Daniel Lipstorp mentioned Wendelen as one of the illustrious contemporary Copernicans.50 Interestingly, there is some evidence that Copernicanism was also a ‘live’ option in the academic teaching contexts of the Spanish Netherlands. In 1626, the Leuven philosophy professor Laurent Ghiffene had one of his students defend a cosmological thesis that may have favoured Copernicus in physicis.51 In a published letter to Caramuel y Lobkowitz, probably written by the Douai theologian Jean Despierres (1597–1664),52 the latter mentions how quodlibetal disputations demonstrating the weakness of arguments against the motion of the earth were organized at the University of Douai. If these disputations indeed took place, it is likely that this was in the early 1640s and that Caramuel was one of Despierres’ consultants on these issues.53 The same letter to Caramuel stated that the Jesuits too issued printed theses against supposed demonstrations of the earth’s immobility.54 46 Brussels, Royal Library, Ms. 19112, letter 55. 47 Puteanus, Honderd veertien Nederlandse brieven, letter 92. 48 Caramuel, Mathesis biceps, I, p. 752a. At least in the early 1640s, Caramuel was in close relationship with Wendelen. See: Caramuel, Mathesis audax, pp. 58, 60–68; Caramuel, Mathesis biceps, I, p. 752b, and II, pp. 1709ff.; Caramuel, Theologia moralis (1652), pp. 108b–109b. 49 Gassendi, Opera, VI, p. 497b; cf. Monchamp, Galilée, p. 164. Wendelen previously raised the issue in a letter to Gassendi of 25 October 1643: see Gassendi, Opera, VI, p. 460. 50 Monchamp, Galilée, p. 162. 51 Monchamp, Galilée, p. 143 note 1. 52 On Despierre, see Encyclopédie catholique, X, p. 247a. 53 See Caramuel’s letter to Jean Despierres, 1644: Caramuel, Mathesis biceps, I, pp. 480a–483b. Caramuel may have discussed possible quodlibetal student questions with Despierres (Caramuel, Mathesis biceps, I, p. 480a). 54 Caramuel, Theologia moralis (1652), p. 84a; Caramuel, Theologia moralis (1656), p. 79a. Caramuel read a passage in the Jesuit Charles Malapert’s Austriaca sidera (1633, but written in 1627), p. 122, as similarly dissolving anti-Copernican arguments. See Caramuel, Rationalis et realis philosophia, p. 183a.

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At least three intermediate conclusions can be made. First, Wendelen tried to walk a fine line between the divulging of new physical and astronomical truths and the adoption of epistemic decorum in his printed works. Secondly, his Copernicanism was widely known, as was his work on more solid proofs for the heliocentric hypothesis. Thirdly, there is some evidence that both universities of the Spanish Netherlands, as well as some of the local Jesuit colleges, cultivated a public culture of critical examination of anti-Copernican arguments in physicis.

3. The Theologians and the Dangers of Copernicanism

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3.1. Wendelen’s Theologian-Friends on Copernicanism, 1: Libert Froidmont One text which contributed substantially to Wendelen’s reputation as a Copernican was Vesta (1634), authored by Wendelen’s close friend, the Louvain professor of theology Libert Froidmont. Of the six references to Wendelen in Froidmont’s Vesta, no fewer than four identified him as a Copernican, while the other two lauded him as ‘the best astronomer and mathematician in all of Belgium’ (p. 13) and ‘our friend and most illustrious astronomer among all the Belgians’ (p. 145).55 Vesta’s public pegging of Wendelen as a Copernican is remarkable in at least two respects. First, there is the timing of Froidmont’s portrait. Published at the beginning of 1634, Vesta followed closely upon the Roman condemnation of Galileo on 22 June 1633 and the letter of 1 September 1633 through which the nuncio to Brussels, Fabio di Lagonissa (1627–1634), informed the universities of Douai and Louvain of Galileo’s trial and the dangers of Copernicanism. The letter, which Fromondus duly inserted in Vesta, presented Galileo’s condemnation as a disciplinary affair curtailing the ‘depravity of erroneous dogma’. Second, there is the place where Froidmont invoked Wendelen’s Copernicanism. Like the earlier Ant-Aristarchus, Froidmont’s Vesta was an anti-Copernican critique, strongly influenced by the Decree of the Index of 5 March 1616 and occasioned by a successful defence of Copernican cosmology which the Dutch Calvinist minister Philip Lansbergen published in 1629.56 Drawing public attention to Wendelen’s Copernicanism in this specific context was a strange move, to put it mildly. 55 Froidmont, Vesta, pp. 13, 57, 65, 78, 145, 156. 56 On Lansbergen and Dutch Copernicanism in general, see Vermij, Calvinist Copernicans.

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This situation calls for a deeper examination of the theologian Froidmont’s precise interpretation of the 1616 decree and 1633 condemnation on the one hand, and of the dangers of Copernicanism on the other. On the first issue, it is important to signal that communication of the 1633 condemnation to the Spanish Netherlands was swift but inaccurate. By the summer of 1633, the papal nuncio to Brussels, Fabio de Lagonissa, had received a copy of Galileo’s abjuration and an instruction to inform the universities of Leuven and Douai of the Galileo trial and to remind them of the dangers of Copernicanism. However, Lagonissa’s subsequent letter to the universities, in line with general Roman practice, remained silent about the precise theological censures which had been attached to the Copernican propositions, as well as about Galileo’s conviction under ‘vehement suspicion of heresy’. This wiggle-room may explain why Froidmont could remain very hesitant to pronounce himself on the gravity of the Copernican theological transgression, and actively resisted an outright identification of Copernicanism with heresy.57 Likewise, Froidmont resisted the suggestion that geocentrism had become an article of faith (rather than an article of outward action and public regimen), decreed by direct papal authority (rather than the Congregation of the Index).58 Froidmont’s emphasis on the dangers of Copernicanism has often been diagnosed as ‘motivated by his f ierce loyalty to Rome’.59 According to Kenneth Howell and Tabitta van Nouhuys, Fromondus waged a single battle against Copernicanism and Calvinism: in his mind, both were instances of heterodoxy produced by alternative methods of exegesis.60 In other words, Fromondus is said to have defended Rome’s monopoly on the ultimate determination of theological and cosmological truth. At the very least, this interpretation is in need of refinement. Consider a passage in the third book of Vesta (1634), where Froidmont ranged the ‘Pythagoreans and Copernicans’ alongside the ‘Cynics, Stoics, Epicureans and Atheists’ as factions resolutely situated beyond the pale of the true Church.61 Upon closer inspection, this passage reveals many of the implicit concerns driving Froidmont’s anti-Copernican enterprise. On the one hand, there is a concern with the status of Rome as the centre of the true Church. In relation to this concern, Froidmont’s emphasis on the externality of 57 See Vanden Broecke, ‘Copernicanism’, pp. 81–82. 58 Froidmont, Ant-Aristarchus, pp. 28–29. Caramuel, Theologia moralis (1656), pp. 77a and 78a, followed the same interpretation. 59 Howell, God’s Two Books, p. 154. 60 Howell, God’s Two Books, pp. 155, 160; van Nouhuys, The Age of Two-Faced Janus. 61 Froidmont, Vesta, pp. 96–97.

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these groups with respect to the Roman Catholic Church appears to have functioned as a ‘mark’ or moral guarantee that the latter indeed formed the locus of the true Church. On the other hand, there is a concern with proper methods for maintaining this locus. Unsurprisingly, Froidmont equated these methods with Tridentine standards for scriptural exegesis. More surprising, however, is Froidmont’s portrayal of the relevance and credibility of such standards, which he associated with the need to protect the faithful against the dangers of the human imagination and unassisted reason deprived of (learned or magisterial) authority. More specifically, Froidmont emphasized the danger of humans increasingly projecting their own meanings onto the literal surface of Scripture without the guidance of the infallible Church, gradually enveloping themselves in a man-made religion, and slowly forfeiting the very possibility of salvation. Far more than with Rome’s top-down power to determine discrete articles of truth, Froidmont was concerned with the ordinary believer’s bottom-up ability to fashion religions beyond the pale of God’s saving grace. This suggests that issues of self-governance and ‘method’ in relation to God, Scripture, and Nature were far more important to Fromondus than the content of one’s convictions about the natural world. In and of itself, Copernicanism constituted neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for the erosion of such self-governance. But in the hands of astronomers who were already ‘alienated from the Catholic faith’, it might occasion such a process.62

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3.2. Wendelen’s Theologian-Friends on Copernicanism, 2: Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz Other theologians who kept the company of Wendelen held similar interpretations of the challenge of Copernicanism. In the highly successful Theologia moralis (1645), Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz (1606–1682), a Spanish theologian and polymath who was personally acquainted with Wendelen and his intellectual circle,63 used the 1616 decree as one of his case studies for a lengthy analysis of the theological and epistemic authority of the Roman 62 Vanden Broecke, ‘Copernicanism’, p. 85. 63 Caramuel lived in the Spanish Netherlands between c. 1632 and February 1644. For the terminus post quem, see Velarde Lombraña, Juan Caramuel, p. 22. For the terminus ante quem, see Velarde Lombraña, Juan Caramuel, p. 175. On Caramuel and Froidmont, see Velarde Lombraña, Juan Caramuel, p. 32. On Caramuel and Wendelen, see Velarde Lombraña, Juan Caramuel, pp. 58–60.

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Congregations of cardinals.64 Caramuel’s discussion elaborates many of the elements at work in Froidmont’s attitude to Copernicanism, among which I would like to highlight three. First, Caramuel explained how Copernicanism does not kill souls—heretics do. On the one hand, Caramuel fully acknowledged the legitimacy and advantages of Copernicanism in natural philosophy.65 On the other hand, he emphasized how the doctrine might carry negative spiritual consequences per accidens, when used to undermine the Church’s articles of faith.66 This risk called for an intervention on the level of the ‘practical articles’ of outward speaking, teaching, acting, but not on the level of the ‘articles of faith’, which concerned inner belief and opinion.67 For Caramuel, then, the 1616 decree was intended to regulate the practical regimen of the Church in foro exteriore, but not matters of conscience (in foro interiore).68 It invited erudite self-censorship to protect the Church body and the souls of its members against being torn asunder by heresy. Secondly, Caramuel introduced a distinction between philosophical and theological probability.69 In the former realm, geocentrism and heliocentrism were equally probable. Echoing certain Jesuit approaches to Copernicanism, Caramuel claimed that not a single philosophical or empirical argument demonstrated the earth’s immobility. Neither opinion was impossible, while both raised challenges and problems of their own.70 According to Caramuel, this assessment of heliocentrism’s philosophical probability offered a modicum of epistemological legitimacy to the aforementioned considerations of social and spiritual expediency. In 1616, the Congregation of the Index ‘decided that there was no human reason not to say that the motion of the earth contradicts Scripture’, even if the immediate consequence of this decision was to nullify heliocentrism’s philosophical probability.71 Thirdly, Caramuel too offered a psychological analysis of Copernican convictions, specifically where he touched on the difficulty of assenting 64 On Caramuel’s moral theology, see Fleming, Defending Probabilism. Caramuel’s discussion of the 1616 decree is also discussed in Tutino, Uncertainty, pp. 180–202. My own analysis is mainly based on Caramuel’s revised discussion in the third edition of the Theologia moralis (1656), pp. 76–82. 65 Caramuel, Theologia moralis (1656), pp. 77a–b. 66 Caramuel, Theologia moralis (1656), pp. 77a and 78a. 67 Caramuel, Theologia moralis (1656), p. 77a. 68 Caramuel, Theologia moralis (1656), pp. 77b, 78a. 69 Caramuel, Theologia moralis (1656), p. 80a. 70 Caramuel, Theologia moralis (1656), pp. 79a–b. 71 Caramuel, Theologia moralis (1656), pp. 82a and 80a.

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to the proposition that the sun moves. Once more sounding a highly probabilistic note, Caramuel claimed that since this proposition concerned nature—where nothing is a priori impossible—difficulty of assent formed a symptom of one’s being ruled by intellectual affects and passions rather than the mind.72

4. Wendelen’s Experience of the Roman Condemnation of Copernicanism Wendelen hardly experienced the context in which he pursued Copernicanism as unproblematic. An autograph note in his personal copy of his De tetracty Pythagorae dissertatio (1637) reads:

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No less danger comes from great fame than from a bad reputation [Tacitus, Agricola 5]. More than 300 years ago, the Frenchman Petrus Peregrinus de Maricourt [ fl. 1269] and others held that the earth moves. So did Cardinal Cusanus more than 200 years ago: see De docta ignorantia II.11–12, pages 38 through 40. The difficulty and labour of teaching has led to an eloquent negligence. As Cicero says in book I of De divinatione, people prefer to say that something is not rather than to learn what is. Carnal sloth, or the slowness of an uninformed and untrained mind, limits itself to the bark of the letter and thinks there is nothing to be investigated beneath, Augustine says in De civitate Dei XX.21.73

This personal comment clearly hints at challenges concerning the literal exegesis of Scripture; however, as Kenneth Howell has demonstrated, literal exegesis meant different things to different people. The question thus remains which precise intellectual constraints Wendelen experienced. The previous section demonstrated how local theologians like Froidmont and Caramuel interpreted the 1616 decree and 1633 condemnation. As they saw it, the Congregation of the Index was not concerned with the naturalphilosophical truth of heliocentrism.74 Instead, they interpreted it as seeking 72 Caramuel, Theologia moralis (1656), p. 79a. 73 Brussels, Royal Library, Ms. III.1108, fol. [Biiijv]. 74 See Caramuel, Theologia moralis (1656), p. 77b: ‘Et quidem, si ageretur tantummodo de motu, qui falso adscribebatur terrae, non puto fuissent solliciti Domini Eminentissimi: quaestio erat Physica, & per duo saecula tolerata aut permissa, quamdiu intra Philosophiae cancellos mansit.’

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to curb Copernican cosmology’s possible use as an argument in support of a wholly accommodationist exegesis of Scripture, which would allow heretics to sell human fabrications as true religion among the common folk.75 Oddly, Wendelen may have agreed with this interpretation of Copernicanism’s immediate socio-cultural context. At the end of his aforementioned personal copy of De tetracty Pythagorae dissertatio, Wendelen added another note on the ‘vigilance of the Italians’ in which he appeared to comment on the Roman Curia’s stance towards Copernicanism. Like his friend Caramuel in the later Theologia moralis, Wendelen understood Rome’s vigilance about ‘new or unheard things’ as motivated by concerns of social and spiritual expediency. Interestingly, he too considered this legitimate, even if it sometimes went with ‘forbidding to the extreme’. Once the dust had settled from this (local) socio-spiritual problematic, Wendelen thought, the truth would gradually emerge from darkness.76 For Caramuel and Froidmont, a satisfactory handling of Copernicanism thus involved a careful triangulation between astronomer’s demonstrations, assessment of local social effects of cosmological discourse, and the avoidance of Scriptural exegetical methods (supposedly) legitimating man-made religion. According to Caramuel, the 1616 decree was nothing more or less than an attempt to harmonize this triple challenge; even if future demonstrations of the earth’s motion would be forthcoming, he was adamant that such harmony could be preserved.77 Froidmont probably agreed, as shown by his public suggestion that one could still be a Catholic and a Copernican, and that Wendelen instantiated this ideal.78 This raises a further question: how was Wendelen seen to manage the aforementioned triangle?

5. Wendelen’s Practice of Copernicanism In Wendelen, Froidmont found at least some of his ideals for a responsible Copernicanism embodied. Accordingly, Vesta’s portrait of Wendelen is of considerable heuristic value in at least two ways. On the one hand, it clarifies the explicit or implicit criteria which Catholic intellectuals like Froidmont wielded for distinguishing between legitimate and illegitimate 75 Caramuel, Theologia moralis (1656), p. 78a. 76 Brussels, Royal Library, Ms. III.1108, fol. [biijv]. 77 Caramuel, Theologia moralis (1656), pp. 82a–b. 78 See Vanden Broecke, ‘Copernicanism’.

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Copernicanism. On the other hand, it helps identify those aspects of Wendelen’s Copernicanism, that allowed it to navigate the Catholic intellectual landscape after the Galileo trial. 5.1. Piety, Erudition, and the ‘Politicks’

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Not unlike Froidmont, Wendelen consistently put his erudition in the service of religion. One example of this is De diluvio (1629, but written in 1627),79 an incomplete treatise devoted to demonstrating the truth of a universal flood and conflagration.80 On the one hand, the treatise served the pious goal of combating the ‘politicks’ and atheists who rejected this ‘sacrosanct dogma’ of the Church.81 On the other hand, it assumed that erudite work on philosophical authorities, historical or empirical testimony, and antiquarian evidence was essential in combating these opponents, with Scriptural evidence counting as but one epistemic resource.82 In order to shape Christian faith, one first needed to convince human reason of the reality of its historical referents.83 One way of priming this strategy was a turn to arguments on word usage in (Scriptural) Hebrew—a specific subset of the general philosophical resource that was ‘Mosaic philosophy’ in early modern Europe.84 Wendelen’s argument that the bowels of the earth hold much water was supported, for instance, through Scripture’s reference to an abyss (p. 43).85 But Wendelen’s courtly friends in high places too liked to deploy the argument from Hebrew usage. On 14 July 1626, Andrea Trevigi received a letter from the army physician Frederik Vander Mye, in which the latter laid out the content of his new book on epidemic diseases in the Brabant city of Breda, with a view to gaining Trevigi’s approval.86 The book eventually did come out in Antwerp in 1627, with a dedication to the Infanta Isabella. 79 See Wendelen, De diluvio, pp. 46, 48, 49. 80 On this book and its relation to Wendelen’s larger chronological projects, see Welkenhuysen, ‘Aries’. 81 Wendelen, De diluvio, p. 3. 82 Wendelen, De diluvio, pp. 8–9. For further examples, see Wendelen on subterranean waters (Wendelen, De diluvio, pp. 42–43) and on the metaphysics of conflagration (Wendelen, De diluvio, p. 59). 83 Wendelen, De diluvio, p. 29: ‘Sed quod Religio pro auctoritate pietatis credi iubet, hoc Philosophia pro supercilio eruditionis persuadere nititur.’ 84 For Wendelen, chronological (and natural-philosophical) high-tech often stood in the service of establishing the reliability of Genesis as a historical document. See Wendelen, De diluvio, pp. 70–71. 85 For other references to proofs of natural matters from ‘the authority of Scripture’, see Wendelen, De diluvio, pp. 44, 48, 54. 86 Brussels, Algemeen Rijksarchief, Staat en Audiëntie 1463, letter of 14 July 1626.

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In this correspondence, Trevigi objected to Vander Mye’s minimalistic position on the aetiological role of astrological influences in sublunary epidemic diseases. Trevigi’s argument not only invoked medical and philosophical authorities, but the meaning of Scriptural Hebrew words denoting celestial stars as well. Not only does this lend historical substance to Froidmont’s claim that Trevigi embodied his model of a ‘Christian physician and philosopher’.87 It also suggests that Wendelen adopted epistemic ideals that were widely shared across his academic and courtly milieu. A predilection for Mosaic philosophy was also typical of the theologian Froidmont’s anti-Copernican critiques.88 Froidmont often invoked Scripture as a universal panacea against the innate tendency to error of man’s unassisted reason. Discussing the notion of a universal conflagration in Chapter 12 of De diluvio, Wendelen commented that: We heard all of antiquity confirm this, along with every erudite and pious man; we also showed how many of these were philosophers. Now let us listen to the pillar (columen) of all philosophy and erudition, the leader of all Apostles [references Peter’s second letter, followed by Paul Cor. 1, 3].89

Likewise, Wendelen’s chronological expertise allowed him to argue that Moses was the principal historian, ‘closest of all to the era of the Flood’.90 Much like the theologian Froidmont, Wendelen saw the service of erudite work to piety as a profoundly pastoral activity, intended to collect souls suffering an even greater Deluge in the ship of Saint Peter, in order to sail them to the port of salvation.91

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5.2. Scriptural Exegesis between Literalism and Accommodation It is evident that such a use of Scripture was a double-edged sword that could easily create a conflict between Wendelen’s Mosaic philosophy and his Copernicanism. Wendelen typically avoided such conflicts by engaging in a literal exegesis that revealed how Scripture confirmed his naturalphilosophical positions. When discussing the sun’s reality as a fiery ball in De diluvio, for instance, he pointed out the use of hammah, rather than the 87 Froidmont, Ant-Aristarchus, fol. *2v. 88 For an introduction to early modern Mosaic natural philosophy, see Blair, ‘Mosaic Physics’. 89 Wendelen, De diluvio, p. 59. 90 Wendelen, De diluvio, p. 67. 91 Wendelen, De diluvio, p. 69.

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more common shemesh, in passages such as Isaiah 24, 23; Isaiah 30, 26; and Song of Songs 6, 10.92 Interestingly, Wendelen did the same with some of the classic Scriptural loci adduced in support of geocentrism. Froidmont’s Vesta called public attention to this in the following passage:

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Other Copernicans are far more circumspect and prudent than you [Jacob Lansbergen]; especially our famous Wendelen, who deduced a true chronology until the Deluge, which corresponds with the heavens, from Sacred Scripture, and who does not cease to extract many secrets of nature from it. For recently, so as to come to your aid (but only in appearance), he derived the Copernican motion of the earth from the book of Job through various twists and labyrinths of argumentation.93

During one of their conversations, Froidmont explained, Wendelen shared his suspicion that the customary interpretation of Job 38, 32 was wrong. In the Vulgate and KJ versions, this verse read: ‘Numquid producis luciferum in tempore suo et vesperum super filios terrae consurgere facis?’ (‘Canst thou bring forth the day star in its time and make the evening star to rise upon the children of the earth?’). Having gone back to the original Hebrew, however, Wendelen considered this a more accurate translation: ‘Numquid axem super filiabus suis quiescere facies?’ (‘Canst thou make the axis [of the earth] stand still over the stars?’). Wendelen’s geomotive reading of Job is most likely that which Wendelen announced to Mersenne in a letter of 15 June 1633. Apparently, then, Froidmont’s portrait of Wendelen drew upon privileged insider knowledge about the astronomer’s cosmological thought, offering a more accurate picture than one might assume at first. Even for the famous passage in Joshua 10, 12–13,94 Wendelen offered an alternative literal interpretation to the habitual geocentric reading of the standstill of sun and moon. In his unpublished Diluvium, Wendelen took these verses to refer to the two luminaries’ natural power to shape storms, and assumed that Joshua slaughtered the Amorites on the day of the summer solstice.95 92 Wendelen, De diluvio, p. 61. 93 Froidmont, Vesta, pp. 78–79. 94 See Roling, Physica sacra, pp. 126–234. 95 Brussels, Royal Library Ms. 17900: ‘putant verbis illis Iosuis nihil aliud intelligi quam percussos grandine et fulminibus Cananaevi itaque hunc sensum verborum inde eliciunt cum videre Iosue ruentem in Cananaeos tempestatem et vehementes grandinis lapides in illos coelitus deferri idque sole constituto supra Gabaonem luna vero supra Dialonem quae

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What was the position of local theologians on all this? Surprisingly, Caramuel himself, in his aforementioned Theologia moralis, tried his hand at offering a literal exegesis that did not necessitate a geocentric reading of Psalms 103, 5 and Isaiah 44, 24.96 As for Froidmont, he considered Wendelen’s reading ‘ingenious, but erring through excessive ingenuity’, and proceeded to rebut this Copernican exegesis of Job.97 Nevertheless, it is Froidmont’s appreciation for Wendelen’s principled use of Scripture as a source of ‘secrets of nature’ that stands out. Despite their differences concerning the Copernican content of Job 38, 32, Froidmont much preferred Wendelen over other Copernicans when it came to Scripture’s relevance for the sciences. Recall how Caramuel and Froidmont both described the dangers of Copernicanism in terms of an accommodation theory of Scriptural language, according to which Scripture ‘speaks the language of everyday man, or of primitive man’, and therefore cannot be relied upon as a source of natural knowledge.98 In stark contrast with this, Wendelen f igured a Copernican who did accept an a priori role for Scripture in the natural sciences, not only in the f ield of chronology but even in his very Copernicanism.99 Wendelen was not an advocate of scriptural accommodation theory, and this made a major difference between a legitimate and an illegitimate Copernicanism in the eyes of his courtly and academic interlocutors.100 duo astra maximam vim habere creduntur ad ciendas tempestates votis a deo petiit ut sol et luna pro suarum facultatum modo et naturali vi atque energia incipientem iam lapideum imbrem continuarent in Cananaeos effundere dum omnis eorum exercitus deleretur, itaque Iosue Sol inquit quem supra Gabaonem video [Hebrew] persiste, quod nunc agis agito hostes nostros imbre tempestate grandine obterito Tu quoque luna Aialonis valli imminens idem eff icito […] Erat ergo id tempus quo Sol oriebatur non ut multi nugantur sub occasum et conspiciebatur in ortu aestivo in differentia ortiva maxima quo opinionem de Solstitio [innuat?] et conf irmat ita ut quantum saltem huic colligere mihi datum est in solstitii assertionem et ego inclinem.’ 96 Caramuel, Theologia moralis (1656), p. 79a. Caramuel compared the Scriptural use of the adjective stabilis in connection with the earth with that of Boetius’s De consolatione philosophiae I.3. 97 Froidmont, Vesta, p. 79. 98 Funkenstein, Theology, p. 215. 99 In other words, Wendelen ‘believed that Copernicanism could be reconciled even with the literal meaning of the text’ (Snobelen, ‘In the Language of Men’, p. 715), as did Rheticus (Snobelen, ‘“In the language of men”’, pp. 701–702, 726), Zuñiga, Bellarmine (Howell, God’s Two Books, p. 199), and Galileo himself in relation to Joshua 10, 13 (but see Howell, God’s Two Books, pp. 191–195 for a more reserved evaluation of Galileo’s position). 100 Also see Wendelen, De diluvio, p. 59.

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5.3. Erudite Pursuits, Astronomical Experience, and Physical Astronomy Of Froidmont’s four public references to Wendelen’s Copernicanism, two highlighted his predilection for an account of the relation between the sun and the earth, or between the earth and its atmosphere, in terms of magnetic attraction: Our most erudite Wendelen defends the same magnetic virtue of the earth. A Copernican in philosophy, he nevertheless derides Lansbergen while admiring Kepler.101 Moreover, even if someone would think that the earth is moved by some Intelligence, he must still accept that the air is carried around by mere friction, or perhaps by a magnetic virtue of the earth, following Kepler and Wendelen, our most learned Keplero-Copernican.102

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A third passage invoked Wendelen’s relation to the senses: The judgment of our illustrious Wendelen (who, before you think that I favour the side of your adversaries, is also still a Copernican) of the astronomy of your father [Philips Lansbergen] is such that I hardly dare to copy it down. For when he first read that treatise [Commentationes, 1630], he ran to our house in fuming anger. ‘For whom do these men write’, he asked, ‘men or mushrooms?’ My, they seem to have cast off the natural light of the intellect along with the light of orthodox Faith. Where are the instruments and experiments, by which one is expected to support and affirm those new paradoxes when the old opinions are destroyed? Our experiences and those of others have led us to very different measures of the heavens. We are not of such light and futile faith that we would believe Philips Lansbergen without any supporting evidence from instruments or art.103

According to Froidmont, Philips Lansbergen’s Copernicanism was one that locked itself up in the abyss of the human imagination. Already in Ant-Aristarchus (1631), Froidmont claimed to attack Copernicans who ‘first 101 Froidmont, Vesta, p. 57. 102 Froidmont, Vesta, p. 65. 103 Froidmont, Vesta, pp. 156–157: ‘Profecto cum lumine orthodoxae Fidei, videntur naturale lumen intellectus amisisse. Ubi instrumenta, ubi experimenta, quibus nova ista paradoxa, destructis veterum sententiis, oportebat struere & firmare? […] Nec tam levis ac futilis fidei sumus, ut Philippo Lansbergio, sine alia instrumentorum supellectile & arte (aut si habet, depromat) credamus.’

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deformed the system of the world through their imagination’ and only considered Scripture as an afterthought, a malleable surface that could be fashioned into a spokesman for their own inventions. Wendelen, as portrayed by Froidmont, shared the theologian’s abhorrence of such epistemic lightheadedness, strongly advocating the role of the senses rather than the imagination as an indispensable guide to the world systems controversy. For the theologian Froidmont, then, this appears to have constituted another essential difference between Wendelen and other Copernicans: concern for the primacy of epistemic guidance by the senses. In order to understand the background to this perception, it is worthwhile to consider Wendelen’s relation to Kepler. One cannot underestimate the impact of Kepler’s Astronomia nova (1609) and Epitome astronomiae copernicanae (1618) on the formation of Wendelen’s astronomical and cosmological thought. One fascinating piece of evidence is a letter that Wendelen wrote to the French chronologer Denis Pétau, sj (1583–1652) on 2 December 1627.104 In this letter, Wendelen discussed—inter alia—his handling of the equation of time during eclipse calculations. Wendelen described how the data of two eclipse observations (26 September 1624 and 24 March 1625) prompted him to consider various possible components of the equation of time.105 This, Wendelen adds, ‘led me to consider that the physical causes of lunar motion have an effect here [sese insinuantibus], [causes] which the moving forces of the earth here suggest with great favour, [thus] conquering Ptolemaic and Tychonic astronomy’.106 Bruce Stephenson laid out the extent to which Kepler’s physical astronomy of magnetism and light shaped his lunar theory, explaining how the former led Kepler to posit a third, ‘physical’ component of the equation of time in Book VI of the Epitome.107 Wendelen’s remark in the letter to Pétau thus not only illustrates the extent to which Kepler’s astronomy provided a basic framework for his own astronomical endeavours (incidentally, again confirming the accuracy of Froidmont’s portrayal of Wendelen). More importantly, it provides precious information about the way in which Wendelen’s ‘KepleroCopernicanism’ fitted in with his general intellectual and erudite pursuits. 104 Brussels, Royal Library, Ms. II.428.8 (1). 105 In apparent imitation of a procedure that Kepler’s Epitome already attributed to Tycho Brahe. See Stephenson, Kepler’s Physical Astronomy, p. 198. 106 This squares with the content of the unpublished De systemate mundano, where Wendelen presents the earth’s motion as a necessary implication of the finer details of several empirical phenomena, including the equation of time. See Silverijser, Les autographes, pp. 59–61. 107 On Kepler’s lunar theory in the Epitome, see Stephenson, Kepler’s Physical Astronomy, pp. 175–201; on the physical equation of time, see pp. 198–199.

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The Pétau letter specifically illustrates the extent to which an interest in the intricacies of lunar theory drove Wendelen’s interest in physical astronomy of the Keplero-Gilbertian variety. It also highlights how the timing of solar and lunar eclipses in turn drove Wendelen’s determination to get to the heart of lunar theory. Lunar theory was therefore not the final end for Wendelen. From his unpublished manuscripts and letters, one can arguably conclude that Wendelen’s lifelong ultimate project was to fix ancient chronology, and that his primary motive in pursuing astronomy in fact derived from these erudite interests. Even the new physical astronomy, then, was very much a means of standardizing and bringing coherence into empirical/historical data sets, and was appreciated for its efficacy in doing so. Recall that the Pétau letter was written around the very time that the Brussels court debate on Copernican astronomy is held to have taken place. By all accounts, Wendelen’s chronological and erudite pursuits were central to the lavish appreciation and support that he received in the courtly Brussels circles of the late 1620s and early 1630s. By implication, it seems reasonable to suppose that Wendelen’s strongly data-driven interest in Keplerian physical astronomy was also key to the broader interpretation and consideration of Copernican astronomy in this milieu.

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Conclusion Far from being an oxymoron, Catholic Copernicanism was a reality in the immediate aftermath of the Galileo affair. Even in the Spanish Netherlands, one of Rome’s main northern bulwarks in the first half of the seventeenth century, the affair did not create a situation where cosmological truth was imposed top-down as a non-negotiable product, contrary to what historians have often suggested. In previous work, I tried to elucidate this surprising situation by looking at the theologian Libert Froidmont, who articulated the challenges of Copernicanism both before and after the Galileo trial.108 This chapter is a companion piece in that it looks at the same situation, but now from the angle of a Copernican operating under this regime: the astronomer-priest Govaert Wendelen. The fascinating case of Govaert Wendelen shows how public Catholic Copernicanism continued to be a tangible reality after the Galileo trial. On the one hand, Wendelen’s published works carefully balanced the divulging of new physical and astronomical truths with a certain measure of self-censorship. 108 Vanden Broecke, ‘Copernicanism’.

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On the other hand, Wendelen’s correspondence and his curious appearance in Froidmont’s anti-Copernican treatises illustrate how a culture of erudite scholarly debate about Copernicanism was alive and thriving. This chapter argued that this situation was made possible by the existence of a shared epistemology and disciplinary map, which all of the protagonists of this story (courtiers, theologians, astronomers) adhered to, and this across the divide between Copernican and anti-Copernican. This shared intellectual framework allowed for a Catholic Copernicanism in two important ways. First, it privileged the question of how to be a Copernican, rather than whether to be a Copernican. This was the central question of the theologian Libert Froidmont’s critiques of Copernicanism.109 There is solid evidence that other local theologians like Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz, and even Wendelen himself, shared this perception of the central challenge of Copernicanism. Both saw the Church’s stance on Copernicanism as an attempt to regulate the practical regimen of the Church in foro exteriore, not so much in matters of conscience. Accordingly, it was enough to monitor the social downstream effects of Copernican discourse. Secondly, the aforementioned framework included an understanding of the specific markers of legitimate Copernicanism. This chapter suggested three criteria through which a Copernican astronomer like Wendelen could establish credit and trust among local Catholic erudite circles. First, inscribing erudite and astronomical work in articulate schemes for securing piety and salvation for society. Second, maintaining a positive place for Scripture as an epistemic resource. Third, approaching Copernican physical astronomy as an important and superior modelling resource through which one could improve the standardization and coherence of complex empirical datasets, such as in the field of chronology. Being a Catholic Copernican was not a matter of having powerful friends in high places, but of adopting widely shared local notions of social, epistemic, and methodological decorum.

Bibliography Archival Sources Brussels, Algemeen Rijksarchief: Staat en Audiëntie 1462–1463: Correspondence of Andrea Trevigi, physician at the Brussels court of the Archdukes, 1599–1633. 109 Vanden Broecke, ‘Copernicanism’.

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Brussels, Royal Library: Ms. II.428: Correspondence between Govaert Wendelen and Denis Pétau, sj. Ms. 5989: Correspondence between Govaert Wendelen and Caspar Gevartius. Ms. 17900: Govaert Wendelen, Diluvium id est chaos temporum. Ms. 19112: Correspondence between Govaert Wendelen and Erycius Puteanus. Ms. III.1108: Govaert Wendelen, De tetracty Pythagorae dissertatio (1637), with manuscript notes by the author.

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Printed Sources Caramuel y Lobkowitz, Juan, Rationalis et realis philosophia (Lovanii: Everardus de Witte, 1642). ———, Mathesis audax. Rationalem, naturalem, supernaturalem, divinamque sapientiam arithmeticis, geometricis, catoptricis, staticis, dioptricis, astronomicis, musicis, chronicis, et architectionicis, fundamentis substruens exponensque (Lovanii: Andreas Bouvet, 1644). ———, Theologia moralis fundamentalis, 2nd ed. (Francofurti: impendio Ioa.Gottfridi Schonvvetteri, 1652). ———, Theologia moralis fundamentalis, 3rd ed. (Lugduni: sumptibus Laurentii Annison et Ioan.-Bapt. Devenet, 1656). ———, Mathesis Biceps. Vetus et nova, 2 vols. (Campaniae: in officina episcopali, 1670). Carteggio galileano inedito con note ed appendici, ed. by Giuseppe Campori (Modena: Società Tipografica, 1881). Froidmont, Libert, Ant-Aristarchus, sive Orbis-Terrae immobilis liber unicus. In quo decretum Sanctae Congregationis S.R.E. Cardinalium anno 1616 adversus Pytagorico-Copernicanos editum defenditur (Antverpiae: ex officina plantiniana Balthasaris Moreti, 1631). ———, Vesta, sive Ant-Aristarchi vindex, aduersus Iacobum Lansbergium Philippi filium Medicum Middelburgensem. In quo decretum Sanctae Congegrationis S.R.E. Cardinalium anno MDCXVI & alterum anno MDCXXXIII aduersus Copernicanos terræ motores editum, iterum defenditur (Antverpiae: Balthasar Moretus, 1633). Gassendi, Pierre, Opera omnia, 6 vols. (Lugduni: sumptibus Laurentii Anisson et Ioan.-Bapt. Devenet, 1658). Lettres de Philippe et de Jean-Jacques Chifflet sur les affaires des Pays-Bas (1627–1639), ed. by Bernard de Meester de Ravestein (Brussels: Commission royale d’histoire, 1943). Malapert, Charles, Austriaca Sidera heliocyclia astronomicis hypothesibus illigata (Duaci: ex officina Baltazaris Belleri, 1633).

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Mersenne, Marin, Correspondance du P. Marin Mersenne, religieux minime, ed. by Marie Tannery-Prisset, Cornelis de Waard Jr., and René Pintard, 17 vols. (Paris: Gabriel Beauchesne & fils, 1932–1988). Puteanus, Erycius, Honderd veertien Nederlandse brieven van Erycius Puteanus aan de astronoom Michael Florent van Langren, ed. by J.J. Moreau (Antwerp: De Sikkel, 1957). Rheita, Anton Maria Schyrleus de, Novem stellae circa Iovem, circa Saturnum sex, circa Martem non-nullae, a p. Antonio Reita detectae et satellitibus adiudicat[a] e (Lovanii: typis Andreae Bouveti, [1643]). Wendelen, Govaert, Loxias seu De obliquitate solis diatriba. In qua zodiaci ab æquatore declinatio hactenus ignorata tandem eruitur, & in canonem suum refertur; quaque (vt Plinius ait) rervm fores aperiuntur (Antverpiae: apud Hieronymum Verdussium, 1626). ———, De diluvio [Antwerpiae: Hiëronymus Verdussen, 1629]. ———, Pluvia purpurea bruxellensis (Bruxellae: H.A. Velpius, 1646). ———, De caussis naturalibus pluviae purpureae Bruxellensis clarorum vivorum judicia (Bruxellae: ex officina Ioannis Mommarti, 1647). ———, Teratologia cometica, occasione anni vulgaris aerae MDCLII (s.l., 1652). ———, Duorum eminentissimorum S.R.E. Luminum Petri Aloysii Carafae nunc indigetis Fabii Chisii nunc Alexandri Septimi Pontifici optimi maximi stricturae morantium Gottefridi Vendelinii Lucubrationum incentivae [Tournai: Widow Adrien Quinque, 1655].

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Literature België in de zeventiende eeuw. De Spaanse Nederlanden en het Prinsbisdom Luik België in de zeventiende eeuw, ed. by Paul Janssens, 2 vols. (Brussels et al.: Dexia Bank-Snoeck, 2006). Blair, Ann, ‘Mosaic Physics and the Search for a Pious Natural Philosophy in the Late Renaissance’, Isis, 91 (2000), 32–58. Encyclopédie catholique. Répertoire universel et raisonné des sciences, des lettres, des arts et des métiers, formant une bibliothèque universelle, ed. by Société de l’Encyclopédie Catholique, Jean-Baptiste Glaire, and Joseph-Alexis Walsh, 18 vols. (Paris: Parent Desbarres, 1839–1848). Finocchiaro, Maurice A., Retrying Galileo, 1633–1992 (Berkeley et al.: University of California Press, 2005). Fleming, Julia, Defending Probabilism. The Moral Theology of Juan Caramuel (Washington dc: Georgetown University Press, 2006). Funkenstein, Amos, Theology and the Scientific Imagination (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).

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Halleux, Robert, ‘De verstomming van het kosmologische debat na de veroordeling van Galilei’, in Geschiedenis van de wetenschappen in België van de Oudheid tot 1815, ed. by Robert Halleux, Carmélia Opsomer, and Jan Vandersmissen (Brussels: Gemeentekrediet/Dexia, 1998), pp. 169–178. Hallyn, Fernand, ‘De kosmologie van Gemma Frisius tot Wendelen’, in Geschiedenis van de wetenschappen in België van de Oudheid tot 1815, ed. by Robert Halleux, Carmélia Opsomer, and Jan Vandersmissen (Brussels: Gemeentekrediet/Dexia, 1998), pp. 145–168. Howell, Kenneth, God’s Two Books. Copernican Cosmology and Biblical Interpretation in Early Modern Science (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002). Le Paige, Constantin, ‘Un astronome belge du XVIIe siècle: Godefroid Wendelin’, Ciel et terre, 12 (1891–1892), 57–66 and 81–90. Monchamp, Georges, Galilée et la Belgique. Essai historique sur les vicissitudes du système de Copernic en Belgique (Brussels: F. Hayez, 1892). Motta, Franco, ‘I criptocopernicani. Una lettura del rapporto fra censura e coscienza intellettuale nell’Italia della Controriforma’, in Largo campo di filosofare. Eurosymposium Galileo, ed. by José Montesinos and Carlos Solis (La Orotava: Fundación Canaria Orotava de Historia de la Ciencia, 2001), pp. 693–718. Opsomer, Carmélia and Halleux, Robert, ‘De natuurwetenschappen, de scheikunde en de geneeskunde’, in Geschiedenis van de wetenschappen in België van de Oudheid tot 1815, ed. by Robert Halleux, Carmélia Opsomer, and Jan Vandersmissen (Brussels: Gemeentekrediet/Dexia, 1998), pp. 229–258. Roling, Bernd, Physica sacra. Wunder, Naturwissenschaft und historischer Schriftsinn zwischen Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit (Leiden et al.: Brill, 2013). Sarasohn, Lisa T., ‘French Reaction to the Condemnation of Galileo, 1632–1642’, Catholic Historical Review, 74 (1988), 34–54. Silverijser, Florent, Les autographes inédits de Wendelin à la Bibliothèque de Bruges (Louvain: Ceuterick, 1932). ———, ‘Godefroid Wendelen (1580–1667) [Part 1]’, Bulletin de l’institut archéologique liégeois 58 (1934), 91–158. ———, ‘Godefroid Wendelen (1580–1667) [Part 2]’, Bulletin de l’institut archéologique liégeois 60 (1936), 137–190. Snobelen, Stephen, ‘“In the language of men”. The Hermeneutics of Accommodation in the Scientific Revolution’, in Interpreting Nature and Scripture in the Abrahamic Religions. History of a Dialogue, ed. by Jitse M. van der Meer and Scott H. Mandelbrote (Leiden et al.: Brill, 2008), I, pp. 691–732. Stephenson, Bruce, Kepler’s Physical Astronomy (New York: Springer, 1987). Tutino, Stefania, Uncertainty in Post-Reformation Catholicism. A History of Probabilism (Oxford et al.: Oxford University Press, 2018).

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van Nouhuys, Tabitta, The Age of Two-Faced Janus. The Comets of 1577 and 1618 and the Decline of the Aristotelian World View in the Netherlands (Leiden: Brill, 1998). Vanden Broecke, Steven, ‘Copernicanism as a Religious Challenge after 1616. SelfDiscipline and the Imagination in Libertus Fromondus’s Anti-Copernican Writings (1631–1634)’, Lias. Journal of Early Modern Intellectual Culture and Its Sources, 42 (2015), 67–88. Vanpaemel Geert, ‘Royal Patronage and Early Modern Science in the Spanish Netherlands’, in Embattled Territory. The Circulation of Knowledge in the Spanish Netherlands, ed. by Sven Dupré, Bert De Munck, Werner Thomas, and Geert Vanpaemel (Gent: Academia Press, 2015), pp. 139–160. Velarde Lombraña, Julian, Juan Caramuel, vida y obra (Oviedo: Pentalfa Ediciones, 1989). Vermij, Rienk, The Calvinist Copernicans. The Reception of the New Astronomy in the Dutch Republic, 1575–1750 (Amsterdam: KNAW, 2002). Welkenhuysen, Andries, ‘Aries seu Aurei Velleris encomium van Godefridus Wendelinus. Voorstelling, tekst, vertaling, aantekeningen’, De Gulden Passer, 85 (2007), 61–104. Zwartebroeckx, Herman, ‘Wendelen (Wendelinus), Godfried’, in Nationaal Biografisch Woordenboek, 20 vols. (Brussels: Paleis der Academiën, 1964–2011), IV, cols. 944–951.

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About the Author Steven Vanden Broecke teaches early modern intellectual history and history of science at Ghent University. His research focuses on the ethical and spiritual dimensions of early modern knowledge practices, with a special emphasis on marginalized or contested knowledge practices like astrology.

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4. Appearance and Essence: Speaking the Truth about the Body in the Early Modern Catholic Church Brendan Röder

Abstract This chapter explores notions of truth regarding the human body articulated in the early modern Catholic community. It uses records of dispensation procedures for so-called physical defects in the clergy to show how different actors claimed authority to establish evidence about individuals’ bodily characteristics such as impairments or diseases. The chapter argues that we should distinguish two major patterns of establishing evidence, one focusing on appearance, the other attempting to uncover an essence lying behind the openly visible. In using these different modes situationally, the Church accommodated diverging claims in practice and gained flexibility in decision-making.

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Keywords: disability, experts, clergy, Roman Curia, medicine, scandal

On the morning of 12 March 1686, in the parochial church of Sestri Levante, the priest Lelio Repetto fell to the ground and lost consciousness while celebrating mass. A large crowd of people witnessed this fall, apparently caused by an epileptic seizure. Witnesses questioned later stated that it happened right after the consecration of the Sacred Host, which broke into several pieces. When the responsible bishop of Brugnato heard of the incident, he suspended Repetto from saying mass on the grounds of his illness.1 1 All archival quotations are from the Archivio Apostolico Vaticano (aav), Congregazione Concilio, Libri Decretorum (LD) and Positiones (Pos.). For the case of Lelio Repetto see Brugnaten, 29.03.1692, LD 40, fol. 461r; LD 42, fol. 194r–v; and Pos. 80 and 107. I would like to thank the Max Planck Research Group ‘Governance of the Universal Church after the Council of Trent’ at the Max Planck Institute­for Legal History and Legal Theory for its support. Badea, A., B. Boute, M. Cavarzere, S. Vanden Broecke (eds.), Making Truth in Early Modern Catholicism. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021 doi 10.5117/9789463720526_ch04

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In this chapter, I use this specific case of alleged epilepsy and the ensuing legal case to analyse competing claims of speaking the truth about the human body. I will argue that we should distinguish between two different patterns of establishing this truth, one focusing on appearance and one on essence. The context is primarily a legal one but also one of cultural norms about the body. Through canon law norms and legal practice, the Catholic Church defined who could belong to the clergy by speaking about and controlling not just doctrine or education but also the physical body. The regulations on so-called bodily defects and canonical impediments or irregularities excluded persons with certain types of impairments and diseases, such as epilepsy, from clerical offices. Analysing the processes of negotiations over clerical status complements our understanding of the early modern Catholic Church, which placed great emphasis not only on clerical spirituality, doctrine, education, character, and behavior but on the bodies of its personnel as well. This analysis can also tell us about the types of knowledge and notions of truth used by various actors. Who speaks about truth, who could claim the truth about the body? Did drawing the boundaries of the clergy involve setting up boundaries between certain types of knowledge and between different ways to establish the ‘truth’ about the bodies in question? To what extent did the early modern Catholic Church, in this context, display concern or anxiety regarding the gap between appearance and essence?2 The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries provide a specific historical context for these questions as they saw an intense reflection on how to obtain secure knowledge of the physical human body. Processes of pluralization in several fields of culture fostered uncertainties about various aspects of corporeality. This was particularly the case in confessional debates over the real presence of Christ’s body in the Eucharist that showed different ways to relate substance and the outwardly visible appearance of material objects.3 The epistemological status of appearance and its relation to corporality and human perception was also at stake in the intensifying early modern debates on the genuineness of apparitions, spirits, and ghosts.4 At the same time, encounters between Europeans and other cultures intensified debates on corporeal diversity among humans.5 Furthermore, changing modes of investigation and conceptions of proof in natural philosophy, as well as 2 For the description of early modernity as an age of anxiety over the gap between appearance and essence, see Eli’av-Feldon, Renaissance Impostors. 3 Wandel, The Eucharist in the Reformation. 4 Clark, Vanities. 5 Davies, Renaissance Ethnography.

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medical insights into the fabric of the body, competed with each other and with theological or popular perception.6 The importance of the body in Catholic thought and especially connections between religion and medicine have received some attention in recent years. Fernanda Alfieri, for instance, has analysed Catholic discourses on sexuality and marriage.7 Important research on canonization by Gianna Pomata, Bradford Bouley, and others has stressed the decisive role of medical expertise in turning miracles from objects of faith into objects of knowledge.8 Medical and religious views of the body and different ways of decisionmaking coexisted in ecclesiastical procedures.9 However, we know very little about the role of the body in the appointment of clerical personnel and in the recruitment practices of the early modern Church (that is, the recruitment not of saints but of ordinary, living clergymen). The presence of medical experts makes this phenomenon especially suitable to explore the authority attributed to physicians in relation to other actors. The intertwined perspectives of Church officials, lay communities, and medical experts, that were important for sanctity and miracles, will prove to be important for clerical disabilities as well. To answer these questions, I proceed in four steps. First, I introduce the different sources that can be used to analyse ways of knowing clerical bodies, focusing particularly on administrative documentation of cases such as that of Lelio Repetto. Secondly, I analyse how physicians came into play and claimed authority over the body. Thirdly, I contrast this distinct physicians’ way of making truth with a very different notion of truth depending on context and visibility captured by the term scandalum. Lastly, I will explore whether the established notions are adaptable to phenomena beyond the topic of clerical bodies.

1. The Petitions’ Truth Two kinds of sources show the attention attributed to bodily ‘defects’ in the clergy. Theoretically, they were discussed in early modern canon law and legal-medical discourse. In practice, we can look at administrative 6 Serjeantson, ‘Proof and Persuasion’. 7 Alfieri, Nella camera degli sposi. 8 Pomata, ‘Malpighi and the Holy Body’; Bouley, Pious Postmortems. 9 For the distinction between a spiritual and a bureaucratic mode in canonization procedures, see Emich, ‘Roma locuta’ and her contribution to this volume.

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procedures, where there are several hundred cases of individual clerics writing petitions to the Roman Curia throughout the early modern period to clarify their legal and thereby clerical status and, if need be, asking for dispensations from the canon law regulations. In what follows, I will focus on the level of legal-administrative procedure to show how the Roman centre, drawing on local authorities and experts, dealt with issues such as the apparent epileptic Lelio Repetto. What often seemed quite clearly defined in the treatises could be a matter of intense conflict in practice. The truth about bodily defects was therefore the object of social negotiations between various actors. The material regarding physical ‘defects’ shows that the legal-physical boundaries mattered in practice but were also highly permeable, especially through dispensations, practical arrangements, and adaptations. The case of Repetto was taken up by a specific curial office, the Congregation of the Council. This Roman institution comprising several cardinals had been established after the Council of Trent to oversee the implementation of its norms on behalf of the pope. Within its competence were decisions on dispensations from canonical impediments.10 Documents produced in early modern dispensation procedures seem a rather unsuitable place to look for such a thing as truth. Any researcher who has read early modern petitions in whichever context will agree that they always claim to contain the truth and nothing but the truth, however exaggerated or invented petitioners’ claims may be. Clearly, telling the truth mattered because of the stakes involved, and petitioners were the first to have a vested interest in their calls being heard. Individuals could retain or lose their clerical status (and income), communities their priests, sometimes families their strategic plans to place sons in the Church. Historians such as Natalie Zemon Davis have addressed this methodological issue by focusing on fictional, narrative aspects of petitions. The stories told are not telling because they reveal the truth about historical events, but because they can show what readers and writers judged to be a ‘good story’, that is, a story credible to the people involved.11 In the early modern period, the Church could draw on long-existing strategies to cope with the problem of the truthfulness of accounts it received. The structural problem with deciding from afar was that the Curia could hardly verify these petitions itself. The centre responded to this problem economically with the use of general legal clauses, highlighted by 10 See the brief overview in Del Re, La Curia romana, pp. 161–173. 11 Davis, Fiction in the Archives, pp. 3–4.

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medievalists and legal historians. They were built into given privileges or graces, their legal effects linked to the truthfulness of the claims (veritas precum, si res ita se habet).12 The administrative centre could therefore avoid further efforts to verify narratives, either by simply adding the clause of truthfulness or, in a similarly formulaic way, by assigning the verification to local authorities. Regarding the question of canonical impediments, the bishop’s judgment (arbitrium) was the decisive factor. Local ordinaries were charged with the task of evaluating clergymens’ bodies, while the act of dispensation itself was reserved to the central authorities. The Congregation of the Council regularly demanded reports about local processes before taking a decision and incorporated statements from different local actors into its procedures. General clauses did not disappear, but they were complemented by a very different demand for information. Incidentally, through these documents sent to Rome a much more dense, if highly f iltered, description of situations on the ground becomes accessible to historians. The bishop and episcopal informative procedures took centre stage when it came to decisions about a person’s body. Ideally, this established a hierarchy of statements. The petitioner’s description of his own body, claiming to be the truth, was to be verified by the bishop. The most frequent instances of truth (veritas) are therefore in the episcopal reports that describe the petitions as in accordance or, on the contrary, at odds with the truth (veritati niti/veritate consonum).13 We know about some cases of discrepancies. Instead of missing a finger, as claimed originally, it turned out that a petitioner had lost his whole hand.14 The usages of the term veritas in procedures shows that truth in these cases was something that had to be established in correct procedures. At first sight, it may seem that the body presented clear evidence, which would make verification (for instance, through visual inspection) much easier than, for instance, learning the facts of past events or interpreting legal norms. Nevertheless, the means by which to arrive at statements about the body were highly contested. The case of Lelio Repetto illustrates the multiplicity of jurisdictional levels between the individual petitioner and the Roman centre.15 In fact, the Bishop of Brugnato, Giovanbattista da Diece, had first petitioned the 12 Hageneder, ‘Die Rechtskraft’. 13 For example Alben, 16.12.1684, Pos. 23 and Alesien, 27.11.1694, Pos. 140. 14 Augustana, 23.11.1771, Pos. 1168. 15 On the complex jurisdictional geography of Brugnato, see Cavarzere, La giustizia, especially pp. 18–24.

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Congregation of the Council because Repetto did not obey his suspension and claimed to be exempt from episcopal jurisdiction.16 While the bishop insisted on his authority, Repetto himself reached out to the Congregation of the Council, which in turn referred the case to the bishop of Luni and Sarzana, Giovanni Girolamo Naselli. Additionally, Repetto and Bishop da Diece had various pre-existing legal conflicts in which the former received a favourable verdict by the vicar general of the metropolitan see of Genoa.17 When Repetto asked for a dispensation to celebrate mass, the Congregation of the Council in Rome faced contradicting statements from a variety of local institutions about the legal situation as well as about the presence or absence of a specific disease. The discussion about the body was only one aspect of a problematic social relationship in an unstable jurisdictional setting. Still, at the stage when the case reached Rome, epilepsy had become the main point of contention.

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2. The Physicians’ Truth The case of Lelio Repetto is particularly illustrative as it shows that bishops and petitioners were not the only actors claiming true knowledge in assessing clerical bodies. The case papers preserved in the archive of the Congregation of the Council contain the accounts of eight different physicians, the most famous of them being Giovanni Battista Trionfetti, director of the Botanical Gardens in Rome. This material can serve as an example of how physicians’ authority to make true statements on the human body, rather than being accepted without question, was a matter of claims and attributions by different actors. Physicians and surgeons as experts (called periti, but also experti) were important points of reference in the petitions concerning physical ‘defects’. One can distinguish two ways in which such expertise occurs in the procedures deciding on a person’s bodily and clerical status. First, physicians—and surgeons in particular—dealt directly with clergymen’s (or on rare occasions nuns’) bodies. It was imperative for petitioners to prove the medical necessity of a surgical operation that led to an impairment. The Church saw self-mutilation as a sinful act, which would constitute a more severe impediment to climbing further in the clerical hierarchy than the bodily result itself.18 As a rule, all incisions, amputations of fingers, 16 Brugnaten, 08.07.1690, Pos. 80. 17 Brugnaten, 29.03.1692, Pos. 107. See also Cavarzere, La giustizia, pp. 163 and 212. 18 Maiolo, Tractatus, p. 43.

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legs, and genitals are described as not only carried out but also advised by medical experts (ex consilio medicorum), a legal formula deeply rooted in canon law.19 Sometimes this would be confirmed through testimony by the surgeons responsible for the operation, sent to Rome either in original or copy. With these documents, the petitioner could signal that medical professionals had advised him in the care of his own body. This transferred the responsibility for any mutilation to the experts. The second role of medical experts was to inform Church authorities about the ‘true’ bodily condition of an individual through examination or scholarly consideration. This was something rather different from their involvement as healers, although sometimes this knowledge could draw on direct involvement with the petitioner. One very noticeable result of canonical questions being medicalized was the frequent occurrence of the word ‘patient’. In medical discussions, it replaced the usual term, ‘petitioner’, with his name or clerical rank.20 The often lengthy statements of physicians preserved in case papers from around 1700 show the main features of the operation of medical expertise. It had a strong performative aspect, for instance, in various forms of oath. An oath attested not only to the truth of the statement, but at the same time to expert knowledge itself.21 Once called upon, expertise followed its own logic. Often, it was clearly not enough to sign a concise statement as a physician. Rather, physicians’ accounts were sometimes very long and detailed. Decision-making as such did not require this amount of scholarly information. One could argue that it complicated things to read extensive mini-treatises on various opinions and potential readings of the case. At the same time, this arrangement was essential in proving and exhibiting expert status, to the decisionmakers, to physicians’ themselves, and potentially to colleagues. Medical experts combined empirical observation and the use of book knowledge in commenting on the possibility of disease. Sometimes these tasks were divided between local and Roman physicians. In a case of alleged epilepsy of a cleric from Liguria in 1707 who wanted to be promoted to the sacred orders, a local physician who had examined him sent a sworn statement to the Congregation of the Council.22 A Roman protomedicus added his remote expert opinion on the reverse of this letter, thereby materially ensuring that the two opinions would most likely be read together. Based 19 20 21 22

For medical necessity regarding castration, see Rosselli, ‘The Castrati’. See e.g. Brugnaten, 29.03.1692, Pos. 107. See Rexroth, ‘Systemvertrauen und Expertenskepsis’, p. 37. Lunen. Sarzanen, 17.12.1707, Pos. 307.

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on the first physician’s statement, his own previous experiences, and the Observationes medicae (1584–1597) by Johann Schenck, he argued that the ‘patient’ was certainly not suffering from epilepsy.23 Physicians regularly claimed that they were proceeding according to the rules of their art, which can imply drawing on established authorities, but also on the latest theories in forming true statements. Observing individual bodies was sometimes but not necessarily part of this process. An important element of this fashioning of medical authority was the reference to long experience from medical practice. For authorities, it arguably belonged to a model of ‘good decision-making’. As one bishop writes, he had a petitioner ‘examined by two experienced physicians to separate uncertain from certain and fully satisfy the task’ imposed on him by the central authorities.24 For local authorities, consulting medical experts therefore helped to ascertain certain ‘true facts’ about a body and, at the same time, to answer requests from the centre in an administratively satisfactory manner. Medical expertise was used in ecclesiastical decision-making as a distinct, outside resource. This type of cooperation could arguably produce a specific added value that would benefit all sides involved in the procedure. Physicians and surgeons could show their authority. Church officials did not see these claims as disputing their power to make decisions. A strengthening of medical involvement could provide a stronger basis for ecclesiastical procedure, which relied on this expertise. However, even when the discussion became a medical one, authorities would not surrender their initiative completely; as several cases show, the procedure remained open-ended even after medical experts had been consulted. In addition, this should not lead us to assume that there was a clear-cut separation in social reality. Quite the opposite, there may be multiple ways in which medicine and Church would overlap: institutionally, personally, and in religious and scientific beliefs and practices.25 Medical expertise was instrumental in finding out the truth about physical conditions under scrutiny and in defining members of the clergy. The Church placed high trust in experts, particularly the learned physician. There was almost no general scepticism toward physicians in ecclesiastical 23 For the genre of observationes, see Pomata, ‘Sharing Cases’. 24 Oscen, 20.03.1700, Pos. 204. ‘Nunc autem, ut ab incertis certia separarem, et iniuncto mihi ab EE.VV. muneri plenius satisfacerem, eundem Ioannem […] a duobus peritis medicis visitari disposui.’ 25 See e.g. Andretta, Roma medica.

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procedures. In a rare instance of criticism, a bishop claimed that physicians in his territories were notorious liars, writing false testimonies for canons to be absent from their offices. The Congregation of the Council told him to punish the experts as well as those using false expertise to their benefit.26 Medical expertise in this instance clearly clashed with episcopal authority. However, these harsh views were still rather about individual cases. In other instances, various actors used competing and contradicting medical expertise. This rarely seemed to result in a general erosion of trust in medical expertise. There was always the true expert that could correct others. Rather than resulting in general distrust, we can see that this gave those involved a certain space to manoeuvre. Beyond all conflict and this apparent difference between medical experts, there lay a shared belief that physicians were the rightful judges of the state of the body and of the decision to receive or exercise orders. In the case of Lelio Repetto, all medical experts called on stated that he did not in fact suffer from epilepsy. Non-medically trained observers often misjudged his symptoms for epilepsy, they pointed out, referring to authorities such as Hippocrates, Galen, and Thomas Willis, professor at Oxford and founding member of the English Royal Society. They also described at length from which internal, humoral, and even cerebral processes the symptoms actually came and why epilepsy could be ruled out.27 What matters for the question of expertise in the decision-making of the Congregation of the Council is the medical experts’ structural claim to authority. For instance, in Repetto’s case the physician Paolo Sassio claimed that At first sight, it would seem that he should be excluded from saying mass as it appears indecent and dangerous that he falls to the ground with loud noise, foam in his mouth and distortion of his body and members. This notwithstanding, regarding the physician, the above mentioned Lelio should not be refused from saying mass.28 26 Melevitana, 15.11.1681, LD 32, fol. 29v: ‘Episcopus supplicat ut probatio infirmitatis a canonicis ex huiusmodi causa abesse volentibus non possit fieri per attestationem medicorum, qui, ut morem gerant partibus, saepe mentiuntur.’ 27 On the history of epilepsy, see Temkin, The Falling Sickness, and Schattner, Zwischen Familie, Heilern und Fürsorge. 28 ‘Prima facie videat repellendum a Missae celebratione cum indecens et periculosum sit ut […] cadat in terram cum clamore confuso, spuma in ore, corporis, et membrorum distorsione […] His tamen non obstantibus, quod ad medicum spectat, dictum D. Lelium non debere repelli a Missae celebratione.’ Brugnaten, 29.03.1692, Pos. 80.

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A specific knowledge allows the physician to see and understand what is happening inside the body, and distinguishes him from people not trained in the art of medicine. The physician Sassio argued, ‘The other side’s witnesses are to be excluded because they cannot testify about this disease as they are not experts in the art of medicine and the physicians that saw Lelio said that his accident was not an epileptic one.’29 Physicians asserted their authority through referencing learned discourses and practices of examination different from those of non-medical personnel. Other medical authorities on a central level, such as Trionfetti, the director of the botanical gardens in Rome, also rejected the view of Lelio’s disease as epilepsy and hence his suspension from mass.30

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3. The Limits of Medical Expertise As I have shown, physicians’ claims to a superior understanding of the body rested on the assertion of a specific reading of bodily signs. Medical experts disregarded non-medical accounts that allegedly misinterpreted what could be perceived at first sight by the senses. Physicians frequently used the distinction between ‘appearance’ to the non-trained eye and ‘essence’.31 There were, however, clear structural limitations of physicians’ authority in decision-making. The Church had a major interest in taking the prima facie appearance of bodies into account. Ecclesiastical authorities placed very high value on the opinion of the populus and its perception of clergymen. In the field of bodily ‘defects’ this is proven by the close attention to the reaction of the local community and the strong presence of the notion of scandalum in populo. This scandal, having occurred or being likely, should lead to the exclusion of a person from the clergy.32 Physicians’ expert status, on the contrary, relied on the denigration of the non-expert, embodied by the vulgar populus. The difference between those two models of evaluating bodies made conflict in individual cases highly likely. Bishops, as well as petitioners, used the notion of populus: lay 29 ‘Testes ex parte contraria inducti sunt repellendi, cum non possint deponere de tali infirmitate, quia in arte medica non sunt periti, et DD. medici, qui D. Lelium visitarunt, deponunt illius accidentia non fuisse morbi caduci.’ Brugnaten, 29.03.1692, Pos. 107. 30 Brugnaten, 29.03.1692, Pos. 80, Consulto del Dr. Trionfetti. Repetto according to him suffers from ‘mera affectione histerica virili […] epileptica propter imperitiam iudicata’. 31 Erving Goffman discusses this expert view in Stigma, pp. 50–51. 32 For the important notion of scandalum in canon law, see Helmholz, ‘Scandalum’, and Fossier, ‘Propter vitandum scandalum’.

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witnesses could represent this populus and express acceptance or rejection of a person as a clergyman. They spoke not only about the body, but also more generally on a social persona. Above all, they focused on what was perceivable at first sight, visible to everyone. In the case of Repetto, Roman decision-making in the end favoured the scandalum argument and ruled against the priest. The medical reading of the body, stating that Repetto had merely suffered from a temporary condition resulting from his scholarly work, was less important than the fact and outward appearance of the seizure.33 What had been established credibly through the extensive medical consultation was that popular opinion was wrong concerning Repetto’s true disease. This did not alter the fact of his fall at the altar but was aimed at a very different level, namely that of underlying reasons. Repetto himself was clearly very interested in focusing on the first aspect, the nature of his disease. It seems that the only effective way to defend himself was to call upon medical expertise. As we have seen, authorities also consulted medical experts on various levels. We can therefore infer that they were originally interested in both the questions regarding his apparent fall and the reasons for it. It was not a necessity that they finally decided to take the fall as such into account. While there were legal sources speaking very generally about a scandalum as grounds for exclusion, others, such as Gratian’s Decretum, speak of epileptici explicitly.34 While the latter text certainly does not have medical definitions in mind, it could still lend authority to placing high relevance on the exact nature of a disease. I would argue that scandalum and medicine should be seen as two very different ways of configuring visibility and the relationship between manifest and hidden. Medical experts promised to discover something real behind certain manifest signs. In the discourse of medical experts, the manifest is of utmost importance for diagnosis, but it eventually leads to the hidden.35 The discourse of scandalum also knows the distinction between manifest or openly visible and hidden, latent, or occult, but it privileges the former and almost entirely disregards the latter. Of course, what is hidden has not just disappeared; it is entirely unimportant. A hidden defect, in this logic, is not to be uncovered; it is not a defect in a meaningful, legal sense at all. 33 Trionfetti, for instance, claims that foam is not a sufficient sign of epilepsy, but this ‘sign’ was still incorporated in the congregational decision as a scandalous sign that Lelio suffered from morbo epileptico vel alio simili accidenti (Brugnaten, 29.03.1692, Pos. 80). 34 D. 33 C. 3 in Corpus iuris canonici, col. 123. 35 See Bylebyl, ‘The Manifest and the Hidden’.

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We can trace this difference in Paolo Zacchia (1584–1659), the most widely quoted proponent of medico-legal thought. He claims medical authority over all canonical impediments that result from a bodily condition, which, according to him, include many phenomena that non-medically trained eyes would attribute to the spirit. In particular, Zacchia reduces the various canonical terms such as inability, deformity, and others to the concept of morbus. In his chapter on ‘dissimulation of diseases’, he assures the reader that learned physicians can unambiguously detect even hidden diseases, a promise that seems exactly tailored to ecclesiastical authorities that wanted to proceed correctly by taking the medical truth of the body into account.36 At the same time, there is a clear sense that physicians’ expertise created a surplus not necessarily required in the field of canon law. Certain signs such as pain that are difficult to read for the non-expert or even invisible were simply not interesting for the Church in terms of irregularity. As Zacchia puts it, ‘morbus gallicus, which can be hidden, does not cause irregularity, notwithstanding that it is incurable and contagious.’37 Not only signs of disease, but also the permanent loss of bodily parts—the appearance of which were hidden under the garments—were irrelevant to the question of irregularity. ‘I should think it true, that even if somebody got notable scars from malignant French ulcers (which can easily be hidden under the dress) or even lost his male sexual organs fully, he should not be considered irregular because of this.’38 Conversely, Zacchia admits that there are signs that have nothing to do with morbus gallicus according to the expert physician, but are strongly associated with it in the mind of the people and thereby lead to irregularity because of the scandalum. Several oppositions of concepts and observational practices can illustrate these two diverging conceptions of the significant elements of bodies in a given context. First, one can emphasize the different meaning attached to signs. For the physicians, signs could point to a truth which was hidden to the non-expert’s view, for instance a disease behind a different disease, a healthy body behind a sick appearance or, more often, vice versa, a diseased body disguised as healthy.39 For physicians, these signs point to something 36 Zacchia, Quaestionum medico-legalium, I, p. 270. 37 ‘Morbum gallicum nempe, qui celari possit, non inducere irregularitatem, non obstante quod incurabilis sit, & contagiosus.’ Zacchia, Quaestionum medico-legalium, II, p. 657. 38 ‘Crederem hoc esse verum, ut etiam si quis ex malignis ulceribus gallicis, cicatrices insignes in corpore (quae tamen occultari vestimentis facile possent) contraxisset, aut etiam penem totum deperdisset […] non existimarem ex hoc irregularem fieri.’ Zacchia, Quaestionum medico-legalium, II, p. 657. 39 On sign conceptions in Renaissance medicine, see Maclean, Logic, Signs and Nature.

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deeper, something inside. On the other side, to pick an example from 1698, the scandalous signa of smallpox on the face of a candidate from Lucca were not invested with such ‘depth’. If anything, they point to the outside and acquire their meaning through the gaze of others, people who may be disgusted, surprised, or scandalized at first sight. 40 Medical expertise often stressed the observation of the body nudis carnibus. In the logic of scandalum, conversely, observers were content with the surface, that is, quite literally the clothes. Attention to the scandalous event, such as the seizure while saying mass, was specific to performing sacerdotal or other clerical duties. The search for causes of this case in the cerebral structure was the same for priests and lay people. In terms of social trust, what matters most in medical logic is the credibility of the medical expert. For the scandalum it is the credible image of a (healthy) clergyman, embodied by acceptance among the flock, the wearing of clerical garments, or the performance of clerical duties. Different values attached to the same concepts are also indicative of the two logics at work in the historical material. The vocabulary of scandalum often involved hiding or covering (tegere), that of medicine uncovering (detegere). An interesting point here is the different evaluation of simulation and dissimulation. 41 While for Zacchia, as a medico-legal expert, the status of dissimulation should be overcome, in the logic of scandalum it was a perfectly viable and valuable option. Overall, a readiness to cover up rather than to uncover can be observed in day-to-day decision-making at the Roman Curia. As has become apparent, the Church nevertheless incorporated statements regarding the true essence of bodies into its procedures.

4. Appearance and Essence beyond Bodily ‘Defects’ Before summarizing the findings, I will explore the adaptability of the two patterns described above, appearance and essence, to other thematic fields in early modern Catholicism and beyond. In particular, I will touch upon the topics of demonic possession and criminal offences of office holders. Staying within the realm of canon law, we can expand our focus to the question of demonic and other forms of possession that produced a 40 Lucana, 22.02.1698, Pos. 181. The nobleman Scipio Orsucci ‘notabilia signa patitur in facie supplicat secum dispensari super irregularitate’. He is allowed to obtain only the four minor orders. 41 For the discourse on these two concepts in and beyond the realm of politics, see Snyder, Dissimulation.

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significant scholarly discourse, bureaucratic procedures, and practices such as exorcism. 42 As with other forms of religious emotions, the potential for the ‘fake’ was threatening in various ways. 43 While a true inspiration by God was positive, in the case of demonic possession the opposite was the case. Finding out whether and by which spirit another person or oneself was possessed was far from easy, as shown by the precautions for exorcists in the Rituale romanum. The exorcist ‘should not easily believe that someone is possessed by a demon but he should have the known signs, by which one can distinguish a possessed from those that suffer from an excess of black bile or another disease’ (‘In primis, ne facile credat, aliquem a daemone obsessum esse, sed nota habeat ea signa, quibus obsessus dignoscitur ab iis, qui vel atra bile, vel morbo aliquo laborant’). 44 When carried out, these efforts represent another type of the quest for an essence lying behind appearances as described above. In the case of demonic possession, canon law offers an interesting point of comparison for our discussion. In his treatise on irregularities, Simone Maiolo, for instance, uses the chapter De Daemoniacis to discuss those people who are not really possessed but pretend to be (‘si quis Daemonicus non sit, sed se esse simulet’). 45 Interestingly, in our context, he writes that they are to be treated exactly as the real demoniacs. Here he quotes a passage from the Council of Constantinople:

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Therefore, [regarding] those who pretend they are possessed by a devil and by their depravity of manners feign to manifest their form and appearance; it seems good by all means that they should be punished and that they should be subjected to afflictions and hardships of the same kind as those who are truly demoniacally possessed. 46

The distinction between real and apparent in this passage yet again becomes blurred. One can of course claim that the act of feigning is itself a collusion with the devil. Certainly, unlike above, the semantic field of simulation or giving the appearance of something that is not there has strongly negative connotations here, simply because of the nature of the topic. My point, however, is that the passage quoted served to reach a reduction of complexity because 42 Sluhovsky, Believe Not Every Spirit; Clark, Vanities, especially pp. 123–160. 43 See e.g. Finzione e santità. 44 Rituale Romanum, p. 316. 45 Maiolo, Tractatus, p. 195. 46 Cit. in A Select Library, XIV, p. 392.

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it disregarded difficult follow-up questions that one would have to address when proving the distinction between real and fake. This mode of reducing complexity was used not just in canon law discourse but also in social and administrative practice. The records of the Congregation of the Council hold several cases in which the authorities indeed chose not to distinguish between simulated and real demoniacs. They also shed light on the intriguing question of why anyone would simulate demonic possession in the first place. In 1689, the Congregation of the Council had to decide on a case from the diocese of Burgos. A certain Francisco Garcia wanted to obtain a canonicate in the local cathedral, to which the chapter objected that he was or had been possessed (energumenus). 47 Francisco turned to Rome and ‘denied having ever been possessed, although once he had posed as such to avoid studies’. 48 If anything, he was now free of any such condition. What I want to stress regarding this case is not the potential of such accusations to be instrumentalized in social conflicts. 49 Rather, the answer by the Roman Curia is what matters in our context. Francisco was found to be irregular and thereby in need of a dispensation, which was commissioned to the bishop. The question of whether Francisco was really possessed or feigned to be is not only indecipherable for historians; it also did not seem to interest the authorities. Francisco was irregular even if only giving the appearance of possession, but the Church lifted this legal bar without further investigation into the matter. The issue of retrospectively claiming that one had only simulated possession shows that focusing on appearance functioned on two temporal levels. A person’s signs in the present could be taken at face value, and the same could be done with past signs. The alternative, getting to the heart of the matter, was all the more problematic in the latter case when the alleged possession lay in the past. Feigning possession was also a question of morality, which links it to sin, crime, or misdemeanour. Deviant actions, as discussed in dispensation procedures, but also ecclesiastical or secular court trials, lay in the past (unless we are dealing with continuous behaviour or something rooted in the very existence of a person) and could therefore lend themselves to a similar approach of focusing only on what was openly known to the surrounding community. At the same time, did not the declared goal of such procedures 47 Burgen, 01.12.1691, LD 41, fols. 194v–195r and 349r–v. 48 ‘Negans umquam se energumenum extitisse, licet aliquando talem se simulaverit ad effugienda studia.’ Burgen, 01.12.1691, LD 41, fol. 194v. 49 For not possession, but witchcraft and leprosy accusations as instrumental in social conflicts, see Douglas, ‘Witchcraft and Leprosy’.

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consist in finding out what had happened before passing judgment? Cases of homicide committed by clergymen are illustrative here. Indeed, voluminous trial records show how judges tried to discover what happened, or at least which narrative of events was the most credible. As stressed by research on early modern trials, rumours and forms of publica fama played a central role in establishing the ‘facts’.50 Appearance and essence would therefore converge in the attempts to discern the most likely version of events. Nevertheless, the two patterns can be distinguished very well, when one looks at ex post dispensations for clergymen involved in criminal trials. The fact that a crime had not been established by a court (secular or ecclesiastical) did not free the person from the legal consequence in the form of a canonical impediment. Mere involvement in a public criminal procedure created an obstacle for the clerical office, and the importance attached to appearance surpassed the essence of the event.51 In a broader perspective, the discussion of scandalum has expanded to modern, secular office holders from the perspective of current public law.52 The suspicion of an office holder’s wrongdoing is sometimes perceived as so disruptive for the social trust invested in the position as well as to the institution that a reaction (usually removal from office) follows, regardless of the actual legal relevance. Obviously, such mechanisms depend on the values of a given society, its concepts of public opinion, and, especially in modernity, on the course a matter takes in the media.53 Giving prevalence to appearance can itself be criticized and cause scandal from the perspective of strict adherence to essence, for instance, to the proven facts of a criminal offence. However, the historical rootedness and social functionality of such an approach should be taken into account.

Conclusion How did early modern actors arrive at true statements about the body and how did they distinguish between essence and appearance? Using the examples of epilepsy and other so-called physical defects, I have sketched out two ways of confronting uncertainty about such an issue. On the one 50 On the legal importance of fama, see Fenster and Smail, Fama. On different types of witness, see Frisch, Invention of the Eyewitness. 51 On the question of publicity in canon law, see Löbmann, Der kanonische Infamiebegriff. 52 Hilp, Den bösen Schein vermeiden. 53 Thompson, Political Scandal.

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hand, decision-makers and other parties involved could attempt to find the cause of things, to uncover an underlying essence. On the other hand, they could choose to avoid these efforts and reduce the difficulties of such an undertaking by accepting things at face value. Both ways could produce useful ‘facts’ for decision-making, but they prioritized very different actors and forms of argumentation. On the one hand, the quest for knowledge of an underlying corporeal essence was one of the core elements of medical expertise used in legal procedures. On the other hand, I have demonstrated the importance of scandalum that stood for the focus on appearance and popular, non-expert perceptions. Because the Church saw its acceptance as deeply embedded in social relations, the truth that mattered for the surrounding community was equally social and appearance-based. It should be clear that there was no strict separation of an ecclesiastical sphere, with its focus on scandalum, and medicine, with its focus on essence. As I have shown, the Church used both modes. In a way, the powerful difference between two modes of proceeding also signifies cooperation between the Church and physicians. For petitioners, medical expertise could provide a crucial tool to reject accusations against their bodies, accusations aimed at their clerical and consequently social status. The stronger a scandalum, as shown by the case of epilepsy, the more intense medical counter-strategies became. While we have ample proof of the content of medical expertise changing according to current paradigms in medicine, scandalum does not disappear with a growing intensity of medical expertise. The administrative use of scandalum as well as of medical experts remained very stable in Church procedures well into the modern period.54 The interconnections between the medical, clerical, and lay communities deserve attention as a key area of contact between religion and medicine. Discourses and practices of canonical impediments should join the ranks of canonization and marriage in research on the history of the body. The parallels in other historical contexts, while they could only be touched upon briefly in this chapter, should warn us not to presuppose that the interest in masking and covering up is a product of a certain culture, such as the Baroque.55 Far from belonging exclusively to modernity, the quest for an essence behind the openly visible can be found in early modernity as well. Although a modernist vision often tends to favour the uncovering logic 54 For the discussion of epilepsy as documented in a nineteenth-century collection of decisions by the Congregation of the Council, see Causae selectae, especially pp. 90–96. 55 For this view of the Baroque versus the Enlightenment regarding the importance of skin, see Benthien, Skin.

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over the one that covers or hides, neither of the two patterns is essentially more modern or disappears over time. The goal for further research can therefore only be to determine forms of usage and mixtures of these two logics in specific contexts. As I have argued, the gap between bodily appearance and essence was not necessarily seen with anxiety by the Catholic Church. Rather, different contexts and goals very much determined to what extent the difference between appearance and essence was problematized at all. Tracing the choices made in administrative practice can show that medical truth was called upon as the situation demanded but could be equally disregarded in other circumstances. Overall, we can detect the Catholic Church’s remarkable ability not only to invoke, but also to accommodate different knowledge claims about the body when making decisions.

Bibliography Archival Sources Vatican City, Archivio Apostolico Vaticano (aav): Congregazione Concilio, Libri decretorum 32, 40–42. Congregazione Concilio, Positiones: Alben, 16.12.1684, Pos. 23; Alesien, 27.11.1694, Pos. 140; Augustana, 23.11.1771, Pos. 1168; Brugnaten, 08.07.1690, Pos. 80; Brugnaten, 29.03.1692, Pos. 107; Lucana, 22.02.1698, Pos. 181; Lunen. Sarzanen, 17.12.1707, Pos. 307; Oscen, 20.03.1700, Pos. 204.

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Printed Sources Causae selectae, in sacra congregatione cardinalium Concilii Tridentini interpretum propositae per summaria precum ab anno 1823 usque ad annum 1869 (Regensburg: Pustet, 1871). Corpus Iuris Canonici, ed. by Emil Friedberg, 2 vols. (Lipsiae: Tauchnitz, 1879–1881). Maiolo, Simone, Tractatus de irregularitate et aliis canonicis impedimentis […] (Romae: ex typographia Andreae Phaei, 1619). Rituale romanum Pauli V. Pont. Max iussu editum (Antwerpiae: ex officina Plantiniana, 1617). A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church. Second Series, 14 vols. (New York: Cosimo Classics, 1983). Zacchia, Paolo, Quaestionum medico-legalium […], 3 vols. (Francofurti: sumptibus Joannis Baptistae Schönwetteri, 1666).

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Literature Alfieri, Fernanda, Nella camera degli sposi. Tómas Sánchez, il matrimonio, la sessualità (secoli XVI–XVII) (Bologna: il Mulino, 2010). Andretta, Elisa, Roma medica. Anatomie d’un système médical au XVIe siècle (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2011). Benthien, Claudia, Skin. On the Cultural Border between Self and World (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002). Bouley, Bradford A., Pious Postmortems. Anatomy, Sanctity, and the Catholic Church in Early Modern Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017). Bylebyl, Jerome, ‘The Manifest and the Hidden in the Renaissance Clinic’, in Medicine and the Five Senses, ed. by William F. Bynum and Roy Porter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 40–60. Cavarzere, Marco, La giustizia del Vescovo. I tribunali ecclesiastici della Liguria orientale (Pisa: Pisa University Press, 2012). Clark, Stuart, Vanities of the Eye. Vision in Early Modern European Culture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007). Davies, Surekha, Renaissance Ethnography and the Invention of the Human. New Worlds, Maps and Monsters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). Davis, Natalie Zemon, Fiction in the Archives. Pardon Tales and their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990). Del Re, Niccolò, La Curia romana. Lineamenti storico-giuridici, 4th ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1998). Douglas, Mary, ‘Witchcraft and Leprosy. Two Strategies of Exclusion’, Man. New Series, 26 (1991), 723–736. Eli’av-Feldon, Miryam, Renaissance Impostors and Proofs of Identity (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). Emich, Birgit, ‘Roma locuta – causa finita? Zur Entscheidungskultur des frühneuzeitlichen Papsttums’, in Praktiken der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Arndt Brendecke (Cologne et al.: Böhlau, 2015), pp. 635–645. Fama. The Politics of Talk and Reputation in Medieval Europe ed. by Fenster, Thelma and Smail, Daniel Lord (Ithaca et al.: Cornell University Press, 2003). Finzione e santità tra medievo ed età moderna, ed. by Gabriella Zarri (Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1991). Fossier, Arnaud, ‘Propter vitandum scandalum. Histoire d’une catégorie juridique (XIIe–XVe siècle)’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome. Moyen-Age, 121 (2009), 317–348. Frisch, Andrea, The Invention of the Eyewitness. Witnessing and Testimony in Early Modern France (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004).

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Goffman, Erving, Stigma. Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1963). Hageneder, Othmar, ‘Die Rechtskraft spätmittelalterlicher Papst- und Herrscherurkunden ex certa scientia, non obstantibus und propter importunitatem petentium’, in Papsturkunde und europäisches Urkundenwesen. Studien zu einer formalen und rechtlichen Kohärenz vom 11. bis 15. Jahrhundert, ed. by Peter Herde and Hermann Jakobs (Cologne et al.: Böhlau, 1999), pp. 401–429. Helmholz, Richard, ‘Scandalum in the Medieval Canon Law and in the English Ecclesiastical Courts’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Kan. Abt. 258 (2010), 258–274. Hilp, Ulrich, Den bösen Schein vermeiden. Zu Ethos und Recht des Amtes in Kirche und Staat (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2004). Löbmann, Benno, Der kanonische Infamiebegriff in seiner geschichtlichen Entwicklung, unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Infamielehre des Franz Suarez (Leipzig: St-Benno-Verlag, 1956). Maclean, Ian, Logic, Signs and Nature in the Renaissance. The Case of Learned Medicine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Pomata, Gianna, ‘Malpighi and the Holy Body. Medical Experts and Miraculous Evidence in Seventeenth-Century Italy’, Renaissance Studies, 21 (2007), 568–586. ———, ‘Sharing Cases. The Observationes in Early Modern Medicine’, Early Science and Medicine, 15 (2010), 193–236. Rexroth, Frank, ‘Systemvertrauen und Expertenskepsis. Die Utopie vom maßgeschneiderten Wissen in den Kulturen des 12. bis 16. Jahrhunderts’, in Wissen, maßgeschneidert. Experten und Expertenkulturen im Europa der Vormoderne, ed. by Björn Reich et al. (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2012), pp. 12–44. Rosselli, John, ‘The Castrati as a Professional Group and a Social Phenomenon, 1550–1850’, Acta Musicologica, 60 (1988), 143–179. Schattner, Angela, Zwischen Familie, Heilern und Fürsorge. Das Bewältigungsverhalten von Epileptikern in deutschsprachigen Gebieten des 16.–18. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2012). Serjeantson, Richard W., ‘Proof and Persuasion’, in The Cambridge History of Science, 7 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003–2018), III, pp. 132–175. Sluhovsky, Moshe, Believe Not Every Spirit: Possession, Mysticism, and Discernment in Early Modern Catholicism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008). Snyder, Jon R., Dissimulation and the Culture of Secrecy in Early Modern Europe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009). Temkin, Owsei, The Falling Sickness. A History of Epilepsy from the Greeks to the Beginnings of Modern Neurology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1945).

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Thompson, John B., Political Scandal. Power and Visibility in the Media Age (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000). Wandel, Lee Palmer, The Eucharist in the Reformation. Incarnation and Liturgy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Ziegler, Joseph, ‘Practioners and Saints. Medical Men in Canonization Processes in the Thirteenth to Fifteenth Centuries’, Social History of Medicine, 12 (1999), 191–225.

About the Author

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Brendan Röder holds a postdoctoral position in the Collaborative Research Centre ‘Cultures of Vigilance’ in Munich. He defended his dissertation on ‘The Priest’s Body. Assessing Physical Defects in the Early Modern Congregation of the Council’ at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität of Munich in 2019.

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Part II

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Performing

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5.

Saving Truth: Roman Censorship and Catholic Pluralizationin the Confessionals of the Habsburg Netherlands, 1682–1686 Bruno Boute Abstract Why were seemingly innocent didactic prints on seven articles of the faith that were, moreover, circulating in the Habsburg Netherlands for decades censured and prohibited by the Roman Inquisition in 1682? The answer to this question opens the way to a number of other conundrums that shaped early modern Catholicism in the Lord’s Vineyard in Belgium as well as in Roman palaces; to uncertainties that illuminate the dynamic relationship between truth and salvation, between orthodoxy and orthopraxy, between cognition of the faith and different forms of penitential practices in postReformation Catholicism, and between the drive towards confessional uniformity and a dynamic inner-confessional plurality.

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Keywords: censorship, Low Countries, Roman Curia, penance and penitential practices, Catechism, religious plurality and pluralization.

In June 1682, the internuncio of Flanders, Tanara, dispatched to the secretary of the Holy Office, Cardinal Facchinetti, a dozen booklets and leaflets in Dutch, French, and Latin with a rudimentary summary of Catholic doctrine in seven articles or ‘points’ the knowledge of which was deemed necessary for salvation.1 According to Tanara, the practice in the Low Countries of summarizing the central tenets of the faith into these seven points for the 1 Tanara to Facchinetti, 19 June 1682, in acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, O 3 a, Nr. 3, fols. 199r–v and 201r–v.

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instruction of the flock could be traced back as early as the 1630s. Drawing on a seminal textbook in Latin (i.e., written for clergymen) from the 1650s, the seven articles stated: (1) there is one God, maker of all things; (2) who is almighty; (3) that the soul is immortal; (4) that divine grace is indispensable for salvation; (5) that God is the supreme judge of all; (6) that God is one in three persons; and (7) that God’s son incarnated and suffered on the cross.2 At face value, these prints acted as nothing more or less than local mediators of the didactic turn in early modern Catholicism. Despite their straightforwardness, however, seven of them were prohibited by a solemn decree of the Holy Office of 6 August 1682 coram Sanctissimo (i.e. in a session presided over by the pontiff himself).3 An anonymous justification allegedly subscribed to by the parish clergy of the region’s principal towns and cities4 shared their fate in a decree of the Index Congregation of 3 February 1683, commissioned by the Holy Office.5 In 1685, Tanara once more dispatched a book on the subject to Rome,6 amidst alarmed calls from his informers that Roman proscriptions, among other things with respect to the ‘doctrine of the seven articles’, were not heeded in the permissive book market of the Habsburg Netherlands.7 Roman censorship decrees being notable for their (strategic) failure to articulate motives behind individual prohibitions,8 two questions arise from these premises: first, the question of why these at face value rather innocuous prints, destined to secure the salvation of the souls of simple folk, were prohibited at all; and, secondly, why they appeared on the censor’s desk only in 1682, after having circulated for at least half a century on the Catholic frontier in the Low Countries as well as in German-speaking areas.9 2 Andries, Necessaria Ad Salvtem Scientia. 3 A copy of the bando (or placard) in acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, O 3 a, Nr. 3, fol. 218r. An edition in Römische Bücherverbote. 4 Anon. [De Cuyper], Justificatio, in acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, O 3 a, Nr. 3, fol. 232r. 5 Decree of the Holy Office, 27 January 1683: acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, O 3 a, Nr. 3, fol. 234v. 6 Tanara to Cibo, 2 February 1685, acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, O 3 a, Nr. 3, fol. 237r–v, with reference to orders of the Holy Office of 18 November 1684 (decree of the Holy Office 15 November 1684, acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, O 3 a, Nr. 3, fol. 250v). 7 Testimonies of Ambrosius Ignatius De Thosse, deacon of the collegiate church of Saint Gudula in Brussels; Nicolas Dubois, Regius Professor of Scripture at Louvain University; Josephus de Reulx SJ, Professor of Divinity at the Louvain Jesuit College; Johannes Baptista van Aultre osa, subprior and Professor in Divinity at the Mechlin convent; Nicolaus Ouerdat osa; Johannes Franciscus vande Velde, vice-pastor and confessor of the Beguinage at Mechlin; and Franciscus Vanden Werve ofmrec; acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, O 3 a, Nr. 3, fols. 238r−243r. 8 Compare the contributions of Andreea Badea and Steven Vanden Broecke in this volume. 9 Cf. Nakatenus, Himlisch Palm-Gärtlein. The first edition of 1660 (Ceyssens, ‘Les sept points jansénistes’, p. 30) could not be retrieved. The work went through countless reprints and editions

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An answer to these questions, which this chapter seeks to deliver, accesses several conundrums that shaped early modern Catholicism in the Lord’s Vineyard in Belgium as well as in Roman palaces. These issues prove to be closely linked with the dynamic relationship between truth and salvation, and between orthodoxy and orthopraxy, in a religion that counts as an archetype of ‘orthodoxic’ religion.10 For Catholic renewal in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was not merely underpinned by a ‘didactic turn’, but also by an accentuated sacramental offensive. Via an in-depth analysis of censorship materials preserved in Rome, this chapter argues that the administration of sacraments—in this case, the sacrament of penance, a pivotal tool of Catholic discipline and community-building—constituted a highly performative exercise in the administration and functionalizing of truth in plural early modern Catholicism(s). This dynamic plurality of early modern Catholicism was neither at odds with nor residual to the disciplining and homogenization drive, which in previous decades has been privileged by historians as a diapason for religious change, and which was famously embodied by the Inquisition and its vigilant censors. Using uncertainty as a valuable resource for the study of early modern Catholicism,11 this chapter argues that the relationship between censorship and this dynamic intra-confessional plurality proves more layered than allowed for by traditional narratives.

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1. Just Another Day at the (Holy) Office: The Affair of the Seven Points from Flanders to Rome and Back Again A closer look at a wider chain of events diminishes something of the surprise. Facchinetti’s order to assemble information and prints followed up on Tanara’s earlier report of March 1682 to Secretary of State Cardinal Alderano Cibo on a spat between the Archbishop of Mechlin, Alphonse de Berghes (1669–1689), and two Augustinian friars of the Brussels convent.12 The archbishop had withdrawn the preaching licence of Franciscus Bassery osa; as the latter bluntly ignored the prelate’s orders and continued his throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and beyond, including, among others, French and Dutch translations. 10 On the notion of ‘orthodoxic religion’, see Asad, Genealogies of Religion, pp. 27–54. 11 On uncertainty as a condition and valuable resource for historical research, see de Certeau, L’écriture de l’histoire, p. 91: ‘L’histoire n’est jamais sûre.’ Forceful arguments for a re-evaluation of early modern confessions based on uncertainty in, among others, Tutino, Shadows of Doubt; Schreiner, Are You Alone Wise? 12 Tanara to Cibo, 27 March 1681, edited in Ceyssens, Sources 1680–1682, pp. 445–447.

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work in the pulpit nonetheless, both the culprit and the convent’s prior who had whipped him up were stripped by the archbishop of their jurisdiction as confessors. According to Tanara’s intelligence, the prelate pondered appealing to the secular arm to drag the defiant friar, if need be, from the pulpit in front of a scandalized flock. The Mendicant orders, for their part, rallied to the cause of the Augustinian friars against incursions of diocesan authorities on papal privileges allegedly exempting them from episcopal supervision. To Tanara’s credit, de Berghes would restore to both Augustinians, at the internuncio’s request, the licences to hear confessions and to preach later that year.13 Yet the stakes of the affair did not lose their disruptive potential. De Bassery shared with the internuncio his suspicion that the archbishop’s wrath sprang from his preaching that cognition of the tenets of Christian doctrine was most useful and holy, but not necessary for the soul’s salvation.14 His employers in Rome being as blissfully ignorant about local didactic practices as, by his own admission, Tanara himself, the papal diplomat enclosed a book in French in his report containing these ‘seven points’ in order to illuminate them.15 For now, Tanara had managed to keep both parties in check, airing hopes that, with time, ‘the heat of conflict would grow more tepid’.16 His optimism seems a bit peculiar. Under his tenure (and his predecessors’), persistent conflicts between the archbishop and the religious orders, which tapped into a venerable tradition of Catholic infighting between the regular and secular clergy,17 generally did not abate with time. In the devotional and sacramental sphere, enter de Berghes’ much-contested ‘procession decree’ of 1674 curtailing the frequent exposition and translation of the Holy Sacrament both in houses of worship and in the numerous processions of the Immaculate Virgin and the saints staged by religious confraternities, craft guilds, and urban communities. The episcopal edict provoked the Mendicant orders that claimed exemption from the archbishop’s rulings and that, conversely, reported increasing difficulties in obtaining approbation from the diocesan examination board for their confessors and preachers.18 13 Tanara to Cibo, 30 October 1682, edited in Ceyssens, Sources 1680–1682, pp. 582–583. 14 Tanara to Cibo, 27 March 1681, edited in Ceyssens, Sources 1680–1682, pp. 445–447. 15 Confession des sept points ou articles de foi, Brussels 1673, after Ceyssens, Sources 1680–1682, p. 445. The print could not be identified. 16 Tanara to Cibo, 27 March 1681, edited in Ceyssens, Sources 1680–1682, pp. 445–447. 17 A fresh approach to similar conflicts in relation to religious pluralization in Steckel, ‘Une querelle de théologiens?’. 18 Cf. for instance, Sebastianus a S. Paulo OCarm (Antwerp) to Seraphinus a Jesu Maria OCarm (Rome), 20 May 1682, edited in Ceyssens, Sources 1680–1682, p. 446.

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To add to the confusion, town magistrates and royal councillors throughout the Habsburg State in the Low Countries proved, to the horror of papal diplomats, all too eager to encroach on the liberty of the Church in their tenacious defence of the rich ritual life of the region’s towns and cities.19 After years of wrangling in the courts of Brussels, Madrid, and Rome, a papal brief of 20 May 1682 was to settle the dispute once and for all, but apparently failed to bring the Mendicants into line.20 With respect to the instruction of the youth, a cornerstone of the revitalization of Catholicism in the South Netherlands throughout the seventeenth century, De Berghes sided at the end of the 1670s with his Brussels parish rectors in their endeavours to recover the teaching of the catechism from the Jesuits, to whom it had been entrusted for many decades.21 In the reports on both issues to the Roman Secretariat of State, a scandalized flock performed as a Greek choir lamenting the unfolding tragedy of open discord among the Catholic clergy, while omnipresent heretics, true to the role attributed to them in Roman sources, duly triumphed.22 From the historian’s point of view, however, it is tempting to imagine experts and cardinals in the Roman Congregations of the Holy Office, of the Index, of the Council, and of the Rites reacting with a barely stifled yawn to the steady stream of reports, requests, complaints, and legal depositions pouring in from the Habsburg Netherlands. In the field of censorship, rough statistics of the geographical distribution of the Holy Office’s correspondents in the files of the Censurae Librorum series for 1660–1700 indicate that the Habsburg Netherlands—furnishing roughly half of the congregations’ correspondents beyond the Alps compared to a quarter for France and a quarter for the other parts of the continent combined 23—were closely monitored by Roman observers. Taking into consideration the Curia’s highly reactive style of governance, Roman authority must have been considered a versatile commodity in the region’s notorious factional struggles. From the 1640s onwards, the Roman Holy Office assembled massive intelligence on Catholicism in the Low Countries, both during the Jansenist crisis of the 1640s and afterwards, in accordance with the practice to organize Catholic 19 Cf. Ceyssens, Sources 1677–1679, and Ceyssens, Sources 1680–1682, passim. See also acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, M 4 a, Nr. 3. 20 Printed in De Ram, Synodicon Belgicum, II, pp. 380–381. 21 Ceyssens, Sources 1677–1679, pp. 467–468; Ceyssens, Sources 1680–1682, passim. 22 On the enrolment of ‘the laity’ and ‘the heretics’ in papal diplomatic dispatches see Boute, ‘Que ceulx de Flandres se disoijent tant Catholicques’. 23 acdf, S.O., Censurae Librorum 1660–1700. An analytical inventory in Systematisches Repertorium zur Buchzensur: Inquisition.

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plurality in the region along antagonistic lines between Jansenism and anti-Jansenism. In this context, it is not surprising that older historiography of an ecclesiastical bent celebrated the 1682 proscription of the seven articles as a victory of orthodoxy over Jansenism, sanctioning thus the claims of the (anti-Jansenist) advocates of a prohibition. Mirroring this narrative, the famous historian of Jansenism, Lucien Ceyssens, whose impressive scholarship has largely been built on the (early modern) premise that ‘Jansenism’ was a mere phantom created by anti-Jansenists with an axe to grind, argued that, in fact, the seven articles cannot be considered a Jansenist doctrine at all, having been propagated by Jesuit and Franciscan authors of repute, among others.24 In his view, the agitation against the seven articles in the early 1680s on behalf of the Augustinian friars and other Mendicants, the Jesuits notable for their low profile in this episode, was nothing more than a counteroffensive launched by besieged friars struggling, first, with the archbishop, whose concerns about their religious practices were bound to be addressed by the Curia of Innocent XI Odescalchi (1673–1689) in the papal brief of 20 May 1682; and, secondly, as the alleged target, alongside the Jesuits, of the 1679 condemnation of sixty-five ‘laxist’ moral propositions by the Holy Office procured by the ‘rigorist’ deputation of the Louvain Faculty of Divinity to Rome in 1677–1679.25 Following the classical motto ‘science explains truth, society explains error’, the ill-guided proscription of August 1682 constituted, in Ceyssens’s view, another example of the brutal Realpolitik deployed by anti-Jansenist careerists. At face value, a number of facts seems to support this view. In many quarters, notably among the parish clergy, the Holy Office’s decree coram Sanctissimo of 6 August 1682 was initially believed to be a fraud, divulged by triumphant friars rather than by the internuncio or other Church officials. Archbishop de Berghes, for his part, insisted on the continued use of similar summaries as a didactic instrument in his pastoral letter of 20 November 1682 to the parish clergy, preachers, and confessors, pending a Roman declaration on the extent of the Holy Office’s oracles.26 In the neighbouring diocese of Antwerp, the parish clergy aired its disbelief in its request to the bishop for 24 According to Ceyssens, the seminal treatise by the Jesuit Josse Andries referred to in the introduction, which was not among the prohibited prints, was a best-seller, with roughly 170,000 copies sold. Ceyssens, ‘Les sept points jansénistes’, p. 29. Translations: Andries, Noodighe wetenschap; Andries, Ce que l’on doibt scavoir; Andries, Nothwendige Wissenschaft. 25 Cf. the insightful analysis with respect to the (failed) condemnation of probabilism in Quantin, ‘Le Saint-Office et le probabilisme’. 26 A copy of the printed edict in acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, O 3 a, Nr. 3, fol. 222r.

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clarification on whether the proscription in the Roman decree (pending confirmation that it was not a fraud) was a prohibition of the prints that were explicitly mentioned, or whether it applied to innumerable similar leaflets and related didactic practices the clergy used to instil the tenets of the faith into its obstinate flock.27 The polemic writings that followed—the above-mentioned Justificatio praxeos pastorum, which Ceyssens drew from, as much as the prints that attacked it, which he shunned28—seemingly insert themselves into a pre-existing format of conflict between a secular clergy seeking to make the parishes obligatory passage points on the bumpy road to salvation and the religious orders advancing competing models of religiosity that heavily leaned on confraternities under their guidance. The affair’s brief resurfacing in the middle of the 1680s conspicuously coincided with vacancies in the college of graduated canons of Saint-Romuald’s Cathedral at Mechlin. Add Ceyssens’s reverential references to le grand Arnauld who, an exile in the Habsburg Netherlands, commented repeatedly in his correspondence on the unedifying aftermath of the Roman decree of 6 August 1682.29 After Ceyssens’s demolition work, any investigation into the credibility of the affair of the ‘seven articles’ as a casus belli for factional struggle seems superfluous, considering the complete lack thereof.

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2. Stairway to Heaven: The Wisdom of Flocks and the Perils of Being (Too) Explicit Qualifications are in order. Several elements to reassemble the stakes of the affair are found in sources that were available for previous scholarship on the subject—for instance, in the polemical writings against the Justificatio published in the aftermath of the Roman decree of 6 August 1682. For our purposes, however, we will turn to sources that were not available: the censorship materials in the Archives of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith that informed both this decree and that of the Index Congregation of 1683. Before the prints dispatched by Tanara and a dozen other, similar publications made their way to the Roman censor’s desk, they were surveyed (and, if need be, translated) by the Belgian friar Michael Van 27 Supplication of the Antwerp parish clergy to Bishop Joannes Ferdinandus Van Beughem, and the letter of the latter to internuncio Tanara of 10 September 1682, edited in Ceyssens, Sources 1680–1682, pp. 561–565. 28 Alexander a S. Teresia, Confutatio; Anon., Epistola. I was unable to consult Anon., Quaestiones. 29 Ceyssens, ‘Les sept points jansénistes’, p. 44.

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Hecke osa, lecturer in divinity at the Sapienza, a converted anti-Jansenist, a co-religionary, and advocate of the friars who had incurred the wrath of the archbishop.30 Drawing on Van Hecke’s preliminary investigations, two Italian surveys on roughly two dozen prints highlighted the theological dimension of the affair: in these prints, the cognition (and rudimentary understanding) of the seven articles was deemed necessaria necessitate medii; necessary as an indispensable means to acquire and preserve the state of salvation.31 The second survey ended with a list of several prints in the vernacular containing an image of a seven-step stairway to salvation which, combined with a title that emphasized the necessity of faith for salvation, was deemed non cattolico by the surveyor, who had otherwise abstained from similar judgments.32 The censor charged with the actual theological examination was the Blackfriar Raimondo Capizucchi, the former Master of the Sacred Palace,33 who had recently received the cardinal’s hat. In line with his brief, Capizucchi showed less restraint, stating that all these prints (i.e. the annotated prints preserved in inquisitorial archives and mentioned in the prohibition decree)34 were liable to proscription, containing, as they did, a wide range of difficulties: alongside a number of falsehoods and ambiguities in the accompanying clarifications to the seven points, the censor noted that the elaborations on the fundamental weakness of man smacked of the Lutheran 30 Tanara to Cibo, 27 March 1681, edited in Ceyssens, Sources 1680–1682, pp. 445–447. 31 Alongside these seven articles, the Jesuit Josse Andries, in his 1653 textbook, listed f ive other articles of which cognition was necessary necessitate praecepti (i.e. the ignorance of which was mortally sinful but which could be excused in cases of impotence, invincible ignorance, or other cases discerned by Catholic doctors; and which were eligible for absolution): the twelve articles of the Credo, the seven petitions of the Pater Noster; the Decalogue; the five precepts of the Church; and the seven sacraments, which completed the course materials for the catechism. 32 The two separate reports in acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, O 3 a, Nr. 3, fols. 208r–209v list several works, some of which were marked by capital letters after the manner of the diplomatic dispatches of apostolic nunciatures; others, by contrast, seem to have reached the Curia via other channels. Except for the ones present in the volume and prohibited on the bando of the Holy Office of 6 August 1682, the other works could not be identified with certainty. References to publication dates 1632 and 1653 indicate, however, that the textbook by Josse Andries SJ, as well as a fundamental authority on the subject, Sas’s Epitome, passed the review as well, but eventually escaped proscription. 33 On him, see ‘Capizucchi, Raimondo’ in Personen und Profile, and Cavarzere, ‘Il diario di un Maestro del Sacro Palazzo’. 34 Cf. bando 6. August 1682, acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, O 3 a, Nr. 3, fol. 218r: (1) Anon., Belydinge 1673; (2) Anon., Belydinghe 1680; (3) Anon., De Christelycke Leeringhe; (4) Anon., Regels Oft Maximen; (5) Anon., Den Noodighen Leydts-Man; (6) Anon., Confessio Septem Punctorum; (7) Anon., Professio septem Punctorum.

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error that all works of a sinner are inevitably sinful. With respect to the (particularly sensitive) sixth article concerning the necessity of Divine Grace for salvation—without which it was deemed impossible to resist temptation, to pray effectively, or to perform pious works—he dryly noted that ‘not everybody knows this, nor is everybody under obligation to know this, saltem explicite’. The notion of ‘explicit cognition’ on behalf of the flock returned in Capizucchi’s general conclusion, that the prints in question failed to distinguish between the contents that were to be known and believed necessitate medii and those that were not (notably in the dubious, controversial, or even erroneous clarifications to the individual articles). In consequence, they seemed to suggest that all contents were to be known and believed ‘explicitly’, a position Capizucchi qualified as false.35 The issue became central to a dubium drafted by the Commissioner of the Holy Office, Tommaso Mazza da Forlì op, following the above-mentioned supplication for clarifications submitted by Archbishop de Berghes in October 1682. On the latter’s request to define, in the wake of the proscription decree of 6 August 1682, which articles of the Creed were to be considered necessarii ad salutem necessitate medii and which were not, Mazza advised the cardinals that the pope should not provide such a definition (Sanctissimus non definiat): the matter was the object of intense debates among Catholic doctors, and the respective opinions were mutually endorsed by grave authorities. In the absence of pressing reasons or immediate danger to the faith, the Holy See should stick to tested curial policy and abstain from ruling in favour of or against one group or faction. Moreover, Mazza did not fail to point out that such a definition was completely beside the point, as it was not this issue the proscription decree of 6 August 1682 sought to address, but rather the claim that the faithful had to know and believe these articles explicitly, which Roman censorship had not approved (non approbavit Romana censura) considering ‘the incongruity and inopportunity of the time and the matter; and the condition of those to be instructed’.36 35 Cf. the anonymous censure in acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, O 3 a, Nr. 3, fols. 206r–207v. Capizucchi was identified as the author of the censure in a later dubium drafted on the question by the new commissioner (i.e. chief theologian and theological judge) of the Holy Office, Tommaso Mazza op: acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, O 3 a, Nr. 3, fols. 231r–v and 233r–v. 36 ‘Cadit itaque prohibitio super hoc quod dicunt tenere omnis scire et credere explicite eosdem septem articulos de necessitate medii ad salutem. Hanc opinionem et doctrinam maxime ad catechismum redactam, quo pretendunt instructi a pueritia christifideles in dogmatibus catholicis imbibendis e pueris uti primis rudimentis et tanquam fundamentalibus articulis fidei nostrae, non approbavit romana censura, tanquam incongruam et inopportunam tempori, negotio, et conditioni instruendorum.’ Tommaso Mazza da Forlí op, dubium prepared for the

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In tandem with the events unfolding in the Low Countries, Roman minds apparently grew more focused. The faithful (at least the adults among them) were not expected to rattle off the central tenets of the faith in the seven articles or to display a rudimentary understanding of them. The fact that leading theologians were involved in the scrutiny of prints and petitions from Belgium—a cardinal member of the congregation and former Master of the Sacred Palace, and the Commissioner of the Holy Off ice respectively—and that the prints in question had been proscribed via a decree of the Holy Office of the Feria V coram Sanctissimo rather than by a decree of the Feria IV (i.e. of the congregation of cardinals in the pope’s absence) or the Index Congregation reflects the importance attached to the matter in Roman quarters. Yet many questions remain—or are, indeed, raised by the somewhat curious turns of phrase and implicit understandings in the texts drafted by Capizucchi and Mazza. The censure of the Iustificatio praxeos pastorum at the beginning of 1683 by another heavyweight of the Roman Inquisition, the successor to Capizucchi’s former brief of Master of the Sacred Palace, Domenico Maria Pozzobonelli op, will both furnish answers and open new Pandora’s boxes.

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3. Truth in the Tribunal of Conscience: Domenico Maria Pozzobonelli op and Catholic Puritanism in Flanders The copy of the Iustificatio praxeos pastorum preserved in the Archives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith carries, on the last page, a hand-written declaration of 20 November 1682 by Joannes Cuijper, licenciate in Divinity, pastor of Saint John the Baptist in the now world-famous municipality of Molenbeek. Cuijper was archpriest of Brussels, archiepiscopal censor, and allegedly the anonymous booklet’s author. The declaration testified that the book was approved by a legitimate ecclesiastical censor; that it was examined, subscribed, and signed unanimously by all parish rectors of the principal towns of the archdiocese of Mechlin and the suffragan dioceses of Antwerp, Ghent, and Bruges; and that the list of signatures was kept by Cuijpers himself. This suggests that the book made its way to the censor’s desk at the request of those involved in its publication, including Cuijpers himself.37 According to the decree of the Holy Off ice of 5 January 1683 Congregation of the Holy Office of 27 January 1683, acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, O 3 a, Nr. 3, fols. 231r–v and 233r–v. 37 acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, O 3 a, Nr. 3, fol. 232r.

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charging Pozzobonelli with its examination, the work was submitted to the congregation by Cardinal Capizucchi. In 107 articles, it mounts a staunchly tutiorist defence that resembles the definition of the problem in the archbishop’s request to the Holy Office (which was to be rejected, as we saw, by Mazza): while it was indeed probable, considering the ongoing debates among theologians, that not every single article among the seven ‘points’ was necessarily to be known and believed necessitate medii, it was safer in practice to stick to the entire list nonetheless, as the probability of more lenient opinions would not save the ignorant from eternal damnation. In addition, a number of authorities (including Joannes Wiggers, Cornelius Sas, Juan de Lezana op, Aegidius De Coninck sj, and Guilielmus Herincx ofm) was listed in support, a strategy that itself smelled of probabilism, as Pozzobonelli would coyly point out in his censure.38 A number of other articles compared the ‘doctrine of the seven articles’ with the tutiorist approach to pastoral and sacramental practice advocated by the parish clergy the book claimed to represent. While the word explicite did pop up frequently throughout the text, there is not a single article to be found in the Justificatio (or in the archbishop’s request for clarifications) addressing objections like those raised by Capizucchi and Mazza. Pozzobonelli’s censure, which must have been drafted more or less simultaneously with Mazza’s dubium, did not pick up his fellow censors’ and co-religionaries’ focus on explicit cognition. He considered the consequences of the practices advocated by the Justificatio, as exemplified in his qualification as periculosa39 of a pastoral practice that barred those found ignorant of the articles necessarii necessitate medii from salvation, regardless of whether this ignorance was culpable or invincible.40 As for the flock itself—which Pozzobonelli did not see fit to discern between these articles and other articles of the faith cognition of which was necessary merely by ecclesiastical precept—the faithful would no longer bother to pray for the souls of the deceased who had ostensibly been ignorant about any article of the faith. In other words, the use of knowledge as a prerequisite 38 Pozzobonelli’s censure in acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, O 3 a, Nr. 3, fols. 230r–v and 234r. 39 On the medieval and early modern qualification of propositions, cf. the authoritative and immensely erudite treatment of the subject in Neveu, L’Erreur et son juge. To date, an in-depth investigation of the practice by the Holy Office is lacking; see a list and hierarchy of deviation in the Gradus Censurarum drafted by Giovanni Damasceno Bragaldi ofmconv based on the qualifications used to condemn Miguel de Molinos and Pietism in the second half of the 1680s, acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, UV 25, fol. 2r. 40 That is, ignorance that could not be ascribed to the sinner’s fault, a notion that was rejected in some rigorist quarters.

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for salvation threatened to disrupt the economy of piety and grace that linked the Church Triumphant in heaven, the Church Militant on earth, and the Church Penitent in purgatory. On the other hand, Pozzobonelli pointed out, the faithful with scruples about their own knowledge and understanding of the faith would risk falling into despair. The doctrine of the seven articles carried serious risks for the operational premise of Catholic confessional culture that the individual’s salvation (contrary to the salvation of the collective communion of the justified) was, and had to remain, fundamentally uncertain. 41 Pozzobonelli’s reference to despair is significant. The clear and present danger of desperation was often invoked in early modern pastoral literature in general as much as in the ongoing intra-Catholic polemics in the Habsburg Netherlands, functioning, as it did, as the evil twin of genuine Christian atonement. ‘Good’ remorse oiled the hierarchical machinery of grace, inducing the faithful to become penitents, to approach the confessional, and to allow hierarchy unfolding itself performatively as a dispenser of sacramental absolution and as the gateway to the community of the justified in the Eucharist. Despair, by contrast, was the potential bug in the soul’s emotional mechanics that, if generalized, would see the faithful shun the confessional, the death of Church discipline, the collapse of hierarchy, and the loss of tranquillity of the state.42 Pozzobonelli’s objections went straight to the heart of issues that, in the Justificatio, were either passingly mentioned or pop up as analogies, but that nonetheless prove critical to understand the significance attached to the work and the unfolding of events in the early 1680s—to an extent, in fact, suggesting that our vigilant censor was briefed by the opposite faction on the affair’s merits. For in Pozzobonelli’s censure, the locus of truth is the confessional, as far as adults were concerned. Although the conversations between confessor and penitent are, for obvious reasons, clouded in secrecy, other sources seem to confirm that a ‘model confession’ included an interrogation (and, if necessary, instruction) of the penitent concerning his knowledge and understanding of the basics of the faith. 43 As a matter of fact, the confessional probably constituted the only setting available for shepherds to put 41 On the (un)certainty of salvation in the respective confessional cultures read Schreiner, Are You Alone Wise? 42 A florilegium of insightful reading and transcultural comparative approaches in Sère and Wettlauver, Shame between Punishment and Penance, here specially Morenzoni, ‘La bonne et la mauvaise honte’. 43 ‘Testatur, quod praefatus Herroel sibi interroganti de punctis fidei, et necessariis necessitate medii recte responderit, ipsumque repererit sufficienter instructum.’ Testimony of Joseph a

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the knowledge of individual (adult) members of their flock to the test. This sheds new light on the triggers for the affair in March 1682: the sermon by Father de Bassery that attracted the archbishop’s wrath should probably be situated in the cycles of penitential preaching typically organized during Lent, the time-span in the liturgical calendar dedicated to the admonition and preparation of the faithful for fulfilment of their annual Easter obligation to confess and to approach the Lord’s Table. 44 Seen from the archbishop’s perspective, the suspension of the defiant friar’s licence to hear confessions was an appropriate measure to shield his flock from harm. Pozzobonelli plugged the affair of the seven articles into a wide range of uncertainties and polemics over the nature of divine grace as it either bended or nudged man’s free will towards righteousness, and in the related field of moral theology. These positions gradually crystallized as, somewhere in the middle decades of the seventeenth century, a reaction against ‘laxist’ casuistry, anti-Jesuitism, and anti-probabilism had merged, notably in France and the Low Countries, into a religious movement of sorts.45 ‘Rigorism’ being as much a polemical concept as its dialectical twin ‘laxism’, it is tempting to put the heterogeneous proponents of a more severe Catholic morality under the denominator of Catholic Puritanism, 46 in reference to their stated aim to return to a purer form of Catholicism they had retrieved in a distant, Paleo-Christian, past. There is little danger of confusing Catholic Puritanism with its Protestant namesake, being inextricably tangled, as it was, with concerns about sound sacramental method and a sacerdotal authority to be propped up, if necessary, by punitive measures of Church or state authorities. These concerns fed on a prolific ecclesiastical erudition detailing the alleged rigidity of Paleo-Christian penitential practices untainted by Mendicants or Jesuits. Meanwhile, they were also shaped by, among other elements, the ongoing battle over the confessional as the material locus of sacerdotal authority and Church hierarchy. The confessional constituted, for that matter, a primary battleground in other issues and conflicts featured in this chapter as well. Recent moves to reclaim the teaching of the catechism to the youth from the monopoly of the Jesuits cannot be disconnected from the rowdy polemics in the 1660s and 1670s at Ghent, Louvain, and elsewhere in the context of the controversies Sancta Elia OCarm concerning the fulfilment of his pascal obligation on behalf of Peter ‘the Devil’ Herroel, cf. the notarial instrument in agoc II Flandro-Belg. Conventus 3. 44 On the crucial canon 21 Utriusque Sexus of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) see Vincent, ‘La pastorale de la pénitence’. 45 On the construction of laxism, see Gay, Morales en conflit, esp. pp. 103ff. 46 An insightful approach in Quantin, Le rigorisme chrétien.

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over contritionism vs. attritionism involving the nature of remorse required for sacramental absolution. Evolving into a pastoral civil war waged from the pulpit, the printing press, and the professorial cathedra, these were triggered by the publication of controversial instructions from the Ghent Jesuits to prepare the youth for their first communion (and, by consequence, for their first confession). 47 In Mendicant minds, the archbishop’s edict concerning the frequent transfer and exposition of the Holy Sacrament in processions and churches directly targeted the confraternities under their spiritual guidance. Richly endowed with indulgences,48 these confraternities surface in their calls for help to Rome as differentiated penitential vehicles luring the various ‘states’ of the laity into the confessional. 49 In this context, it is significant that in 1678, the Louvain Divine and deputy in Rome, Franciscus Van Vianen, proposed to sort out the differences between the religious orders and the archbishop over devotional practices involving the Holy Sacrament once and for all by reforming confession along Borromean (i.e. more rigid) lines50—Vianen, of all people, having been identified by the Mendicants as the evil mastermind behind the loathed ‘procession edict’ in the first place.51 Enter the Roman condemnation of sixty-five laxist propositions as ‘at least scandalous and pernicious in practice’ Vianen and his fellow deputies helped to procure as envoys of the Louvain Faculty of Divinity to the Holy See. This much-publicized decree proscribed, among other things, the propositions that ‘a person is fit for absolution however much he labours under an ignorance of the mysteries of the faith, and even if through negligence, even culpable, he does not know the mystery of the most blessed Trinity and of the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ’, and that ‘it is enough to have believed these mysteries once’.52 Judging by Pozzobonelli’s censure, these particular proscriptions might well have galvanized the parish rectors the Justificatio claimed to represent in their attempts to install a ‘safer’ 47 Anon., Nievw Ondervvys. A copy in acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, G 2 c, fol. 787r. 48 With respect to early modern France, cf. Tingle, Indulgences after Luther; for the (late medieval) Low Countries, cf. Caspers, ‘Indulgences in the Low Countries’; documentary evidence for the dioceses of Cambrai and Tournai in Desmette, Les brefs d’indulgence pour les confréries. 49 Cf. Michael a S. Augustino OCarm to Giovanni Bona OCist, 20 October 1674, and to Seraphinus a Jesu Maria OCarm, 26 January 1675, edited in Ceyssens, Sources 1673–1676, pp. 242–248 and 332–335. 50 Franciscus Van Vianen (from Rome) to his Louvain colleague Henricus Scaille, 15 April 1679, edited in Ceyssens, Sources 1677–1679, pp. 412–413, among others. 51 On the strong connections between university dons and archdiocesan circles see, among others, Michael a S. Augustino OCarm (Brussels) to Seraphinus a Jesu Maria OCarm (Rome), 6 October 1674, in Ceyssens, Sources 1677–1679, p. 237. 52 Denzinger, Enchiridion, arts. 2164 and 2165.

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sacramental practice purified from abuse, superstition, and sacrilege. If Pozzobonelli’s attention to the laity’s possible reactions recall the modern scholarly insight that confession constituted a platform for subtle negotiations between the faithful and the clergy,53 his clerical mind first focused on potential abuses that resided in the transfer of this ‘safer practice’ by the clergy to the confessional. Its logical consequence was, Pozzobonelli pointed out, that those found ignorant about the seven articles ‘necessary by the necessity of means’ were ipso facto unfit (incapax) to receive sacramental absolution. Interestingly, this issue was barely treated in the Justificatio, which discussed the refusal of absolution on the account of ignorance of truths that were necessary necessitate medii for salvation in two—for the modern reader, somewhat abrupt—articles (xxxvii and xxxviii), criticized by Pozzobonelli for their equivocating. There, the author(s) merely rejected as abusive the refusal of absolution on similar accounts in extremis, being, in penitential lore, the penitent’s imminent death or mortal danger: in Pozzobonelli’s eyes, a matter open to interpretation and, by consequence, to abuse.54 That Pozzobonelli had struck a highly critical note, however, is confirmed by the fact that in the polemical writings against the Justificatio that were (allegedly) published in French-occupied Ypres in 1683, (the second edition of) the anonymous Epistola ad pastorem N.N. and the Confutatio praxeos pastorum authored by the Carmelite Alexander a S. Teresia, sacramental practice (and the refusal of sacraments to lacklustre penitents) took a much more prominent place. The more comprehensive Epistola in particular can indeed be considered, to a large extent, a penitential and sacramental treatise. Neither work reneged on the requirement to give penitents a good roasting in the confessional, for that matter; nor did either rail primarily against explicit cognition, as Capizucchi and Mazza did in their reports. For those whose knowledge was found wanting, however, the Epistola cautiously kept the door open for absolution along probabilistic lines, that is, ‘if the penitent insists’; repositioning the pulpit rather than the confessional as the primary locus for the instruction of the flock.55 That the concerns aired in polemical writings overlap with the objections raised in Pozzobonelli’s censure does not represent conclusive evidence that the Master of the Sacred Palace acted as strawman for his fellow Mendicants 53 See O’Banion, The Sacrament of Penance, passim. 54 Anon. [De Cuypers], Justificatio, p. 8. A copy in acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, O 3 a, Nr. 3. 55 With respect to the binding nature of extrinsic authority towards the confessor, see the contribution of Rudolf Schuessler to this volume.

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in the Low Countries, however. Other elements in the Justificatio may have alarmed this long-serving official of the Inquisition. First as a Socius to the Commissioner of the Holy Office and later as the post’s occupant himself (1666–1681), Pozzobonelli was party to the monitoring of a wide range of affairs in France and the Low Countries,56 including the condemnation of the forty-five ‘laxist’ propositions by Pope Alexander VII and its echoes at Louvain in the middle of the 1660s; the polemics and censorship procedures concerning the Theologia Moralis Diabolica by the Brussels Beghard Aegidius Gabrielis against his Jesuit namesake Estrix in the early 1670s;57 and the examination of the propositions denounced by the Louvain Faculty of Divinity, leading to the condemnation of sixty-five laxist propositions in 1679, during which he revealed himself a staunch adversary of probabilism.58 In this context, it is not surprising to learn that Pozzobonelli’s attention was drawn by the Justificatio’s attempt to build its tutiorist stance on the cognition of the faith’s basics in the seven articles into a defence of tutiorist pastoral care in general, regarding—among other issues—its insistence in several articles on the necessity of contrition (remorse underpinned by love of God and divine justice) over attrition (remorse that sprang from the fear of divine punishment, provided it excluded the will to sin) in the confessional. In the wake of the Ghent and Louvain controversies in the 1660s over which remorse qualified for absolution, a decree of the Holy Office coram Sanctissimo of 5 May 1667 ruled that both opinions could be taught, defended, and put into practice, while stipulating that adherents of both should now abstain from accusations of heresy or other theological qualifications.59 However, while the decree qualified attritionism as ‘currently more common’ among Catholic doctors, it stopped short of sanctioning the doctrine as ‘safe in practice’. Unsurprisingly, this outcome failed to satisfy attritionists,60 as it left considerable room for their ‘rigid’ adversaries to discredit, under a tutiorist banner, its practical application in the confessional. It is in this context that Pozzobonelli’s observation should be situated, that the refusal of absolution to those who proved ignorant about the seven articles necessaria necessitate medii for salvation would bolster the adherents of ‘the method of moral certainty’ to be acquired by the confessor over the true disposition of the penitent prior to absolution (which, lacking this 56 Cf. the lemma ‘Pozzobonelli, Domenico Maria’ in Personen und Profile. 57 Gabrielis, Specimina. 58 Quantin, ‘Le Saint-Office et le probabilisme’, p. 938. 59 Denzinger, Enchiridion, art. 2070. Cf. the files in acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, G 2 c. 60 Cf., alongside the supplication letter of the four Mendicant orders, the Bishop of Ghent D’Allamont to Rospigliosi, 4 April 1667, ed. in Ceyssens, Sources 1661–1672, p. 227.

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certainty, would have to be deferred),61 as it would provide them with fresh ammunition to disapprove ‘the practice of [the] others’ absolving penitents who (merely) displayed external (among others bodily) signs of attrition and who remorsefully promised emendation of their lives. The refusal and deferral of absolution had emerged a pivotal, indeed iconic, instrument to secure a more ‘pure’ sacramental practice in France as well as in the Low Countries—and conversely provided impetus for the proponents of a more benign approach, resulting in the Holy Office’s 1680 examination of the Methodus retinendi peccata: a Roman condemnation failing to occur, the Spanish Inquisition issued its proscription in 1681.62 Pozzobonelli obviously balked at approving yet more reasons for the refusal and deferral of absolution by adding the penitent’s ignorance of central tenets of the faith to the list: he advised a prohibition of the Justificatio on grounds that it constituted an unreformed apology for condemned writings and that it failed to avert the inherent dangers in practising their teachings. Significantly, before rendering his judgment, Pozzobonelli advised the cardinals of the Holy Office to remedy once and for all the ‘more necessary and universal’ question of attritionism, which he had always held as unresolved. More specifically, he advised proceeding through a confirmation of the above-mentioned ‘Alexandrine peace’ of 1667 (which merely prohibited censuring opposing views and decrying opponents as heretics), which was then to be sharpened by a general ban of all future disputes on the matter. This prohibition should then be accompanied by the precept that ‘all should strive, according to their abilities: the penitents, to repent more perfectly; the confessors, to induce and draw their penitents towards a more perfect repentance’.63

4. Cycles of Credibility: Towards the Materialization of Catholic ‘-Isms’? Did ‘the doctrine of the seven points’, as it was dubbed in Roman quarters, constitute a new, seemingly unassailable instrument to enforce a more rigid penitential regime on the flock (and on the ‘other’, read: Mendicant and Jesuit confessors) in the 1680s? The affair furnishes excellent material to investigate modes of existence of religious practices and programmes 61 See further developments in Huygens-Witsenburgh, Theses. 62 Cf. Huygens, Methodus. The work was examined twice by the Holy Office; cf. acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, G 3 f. 63 On Pozzobonelli’s censure see above n. 38.

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in early modern Catholicism as a community of conflict, the respective positions, including ‘laxism’ and ‘rigorism’, being to a large extent dialectic and synoptic products of the polemical configurations in which they crystallized. However, it is important to note that, prior to the 1680s, the notion that cognition of specific articles of the faith was necessary for salvation, related didactic practices, and the interrogation of penitents seems to have been uncontroversial among the region’s otherwise notoriously quarrelsome religious elites. Take, for instance, the comprehensive Status, Origo et scopus reformationis hoc tempore attentatae in Belgio […] sacramenti poenitentiae, a pseudonymous attack published in 1675 by the Jesuit Aegidius Estrix against the ‘innovators’ subverting the Church in the form of a supplication to Pope Clement X.64 Fleshing out each ‘novelty’ introduced in sacramental practice by ‘the Faction’, the chapter Dogmata de peccatis ignorantiae (‘On the sins of ignorance’) merely moved against the rejection by alleged crypto-Baianists and Jansenists of invincible ignorance of natural law as an exonerating circumstance in the confessional, another iconic controversy that preoccupied French and Belgian Catholicisms, but was only remotely related to the (local) affair of the seven articles. Allowing for some caution with regard to arguments e silentio, this suggests that the appropriation of the ‘seven articles’ by groups within Catholic Puritanism merging local didactic practice with (the deferral of) sacramental absolution is indeed situated in the early 1680s. Support for the Justificatio seems to have lingered in some quarters, judging by the (partisan) reports against the archbishop’s declarations in rowdy sessions of the metropolitan college of graduated canons in the middle of the 1680s.65 Yet, Roman proscriptions divulged by the Mendicants as well as oral instructions by Mazza to the archbishop’s agent in Rome66 seem to have nipped in the bud the transfer of didactic practices to the confessional; the issue, despite reprints of the ‘seven articles’ themselves, disappeared rather smoothly from the region’s rich repertoire of conflict. Pozzobonelli’s censure raises new questions, however. The work of a staunch anti-probabilist, it recalls to our attention the fact that the bipolarism often invoked by contemporaries may have worked well for them but is too reductive for modern historians following the endless meanders, shades, and

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.

64 Simonis [Estrix], Status. 65 On this affair, see acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, O 3 a, Nr. 3, fols. 269r−283r. 66 ‘Quoad instantiam vero archiepiscopi Mechlinien[sis] P. M[agister] S[acri] P[alatii] significet agenti dicti archiepiscopi sensum S. Congregationis.’ Decree of the Holy Office 27 January 1683, acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, O 3 a, Nr. 3, fol. 234v.

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crossroads of early modern Catholicism. The question remains, however, of how we should properly understand the Holy Off ice’s unwinding of a programme that, at face value, must have appealed to a pontiff with a strong reputation for ‘rigoristic’ leanings and to an Inquisition that would stick to an Innocentian line well after the pope’s demise;67 and that fitted well in the (mooted) ‘rigoristic turn’ of Catholicism in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.68 A key to this conundrum is to be found in the Epistola theologica ad pastorem N.N. of 1683, which included a discussion of various f ields of conflict and the reproduction of a few Roman decrees the anonymous author(s) deemed relevant, among which are the utility of confraternities and indulgences, and the modalities of the cult of Mary and the saints. In this company, the decree Cum ad aures of the Congregation of the Council regulating frequent and daily communion by both clerics and lay faithful stands out:69 published on 12 February 1679, it is contemporary to both the anti-laxist decrees of the Holy Office later that year and to the affair under scrutiny here. For in large quarters of Catholic Puritanism, a purer religious life (obviously underpinned by a pure sacramental practice) was associated with a reverential austerity in approaching the Lord’s Table (and, by consequence, the confessional).70 Another section lauds the assistance provided by the religious orders to the parish clergy in the administration of the sacraments, including during the obligatory Easter confession and communion—‘reassurances’ that in fact buried the claim that the fulfilment of these obligations was the exclusive brief of the parish clergy and the hierarchy of ecclesiastical office. Drawing on Michel de Certeau’s discernment of a ‘sacramental’ vs. a ‘devotional’ polarization of Jansenists and Jesuits in the eighteenth century,71 it is possible to describe the model routes towards salvation they devised in terms of sacramental and devotional cycles of piety in which sacramental practice constituted either the (slippery) culmination of Christian perfection after a long spiritual—or penitential—preparation or a highly effective trigger and enhancer for piety in a journey to Christian perfection guided by a spiritual director. The timing and finality of sacramental 67 Cf. the various contributions to Innocenzo XI Odescalchi, more specifically Gay, ‘Affinités (s)électives’. 68 Quantin, Le rigorisme chrétien, pp. 71–106. 69 Denzinger, Enchiridion, arts. 2090–2095. 70 Cf. one of the iconic works that constituted a central point of reference in Catholic Puritanism: Arnauld, De la freqvente commvnion. The first edition was published in 1643. 71 De Certeau, L’écriture de l’histoire, pp. 200–201.

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practice significantly altered its modalities and frequency among the flock. It allocated quite different roles to various strands of shepherds in the process, enacting different modalities of hierarchy (indeed, priestly rule) that enhanced the centrality of the religious orders and their confraternities, or instead aimed to subordinate the faithful to the hierarchy of ecclesiastical office in the parishes. It was bound to fuel the local crystallization of dialectical modes of religious life. These would materialize, among other ways, in the concomitant allocation of resources, another highly polemical issue underpinning much of Catholic anti-monasticism and anti-Jesuitism.72 Spatial and infrastructural arrangements—Jesuit and Mendicant cohorts in separate houses of worship vs. a parish infrastructure overburdened by a lay demand for frequent sacramental practice—would allow for the cyclical continuation and transfer of the respective models in time and context, as the faithful inevitably relapsed into sin on the road to salvation.73 Yet similar cycles of credibility did not deploy in a clear-cut manner. A more de-centred approach to a plural early modern Catholicism does not consist in constructing equally monolithic sub-blocks or ‘-isms’ to be treated by inquisitors (or historians) as relatively marginal. Several factors need to be taken into account: despite the flourishing of partisan discourses, most members of the religious elite were not reducible to political parties avant la lettre; nor were secular elites, for that matter. In both the affair of the ‘seven articles’ and in other battles over the confessional, opposition against the so-called novatores was transversal, crossing boundaries between the secular and regular clergy. Religious orders themselves could display deep divisions within their ranks, and Catholic Puritanism itself came in various shades. The Faculty of Divinity at Louvain remained conspicuously absent from the debate, much like the Jesuits.74 Moreover, similar pastoral and managerial cycles reproduce and functionalize the clerical (and inquisitorial) 72 (Illegitimate) f inancing was indeed a dominant motive in anti-Jesuit literature. See, for instance, the contemporary pamphlet: Anon., De Secreten der Jesuiten, which drew upon the much older Monita rivata Societatis Jesu. A long-term analysis of anti-Jesuit literature in the Habsburg Low Countries in Callewier, Hendrik, ‘Anti-jezuïtisme’. 73 Similar ‘cycles of credibility’ have proven their explanatory value to anthropologists of big science for a better understanding, through a cyclical entanglement of practices, social configurations, performance, and resources, of the striking stability of epistemic systems and scientif ic models. Cf. Latour and Woolgar, ‘The Cycle of Credibility’. An elaboration on the simultaneously technological and managerial cycle of salvation with respect to the Eucharist in Boute, ‘The Trial of Melchisedek’. 74 Compare, for instance, Gay, Jesuit Civil Wars. Alexander a S. Teresia, Confutatio, p. 30, points out this conspicuous absence of the Louvain pastors among the Justificatio’s subscribers, for that matter.

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enrolment of the flock as passive wards of clerical hierarchies. The vying for an audience from the pulpit, by contrast, recalls the mutual enrolment and interdependencies of laity and clergy, as much as the faithful’s willingness to exploit the coexistence of different sorts of confessors. Focusing on the censor’s work, it is interesting to note that Roman experts paradoxically also shunned greater doctrinal clarity, exemplified by Pozzobonelli’s qualification of the doctrine/practice as ‘perilous in practice’ rather than as ‘erroneous’ or ‘heretic’. His separation of ignorance from sacramental absolution did not aim to dismantle Catholic Puritanism in se, but effectively unsettled a practice that, in his view, would inevitably make it a more visible, possibly hegemonic force in the Low Countries. In analogy, the Alexandrine Peace of 1667, which Pozzobonelli would rather have given more teeth, merely juxtaposed (and therefore relativized) two opposing programmes on the public stage: simultaneously, it eroded the public relevance of learned and pastoral polemics by stripping the protagonists of their prerogative to censure opposite positions on the subject, a measure that, on the public stage, demoted their assertions in practice to the realm of ‘opinions’.75 Last but not least, Pozzobonelli’s proposal to ban all related disputes altogether, and above all his concept of what should be ordered instead, was an excellent bit of ambiguity on a wide range of issues that were constitutive to Catholic confessionalization. I’ll attempt to unravel this unexpected knot by pulling things together in the conclusions.

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Conclusions: Saving Truth in Early Modern Catholicisms In the censorship materials reviewed here, doctrine and practice appear entwined, to the extent that they are often used interchangeably by Roman experts. This raises the final question of the relationship between orthodoxy and orthopraxy as it unfolded in inquisitorial policy briefs wrapping up the affair of the seven articles. It should be noted that Rome, in line with Mazza’s recommendations (Sanctissimus non definiat!), cautiously abstained from ruling in the question of which articles of the faith were necessary ‘by the necessity of means’ for salvation; nor did the Holy Office ditch the notion of saving truth in itself, quite the contrary.76 The Suprema did not declare 75 On the trappings of authority in early modern learned polemics see Gierl, ‘The Triumph of Truth and Innocence’. 76 Cf., for instance, the response of the Holy Off ice to the Bishop of Quebec, 10 May 1703. Denzinger, Enchiridion, art. 2381.

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itself in a binding decree on its rejection of explicit knowledge either, for that matter, Mazza’s objections being circumstantial rather than fundamental. On top of all this studied ambiguity, the evidence suggests that instructions addressing the requests of the bishops of Mechlin and Antwerp were to be transmitted orally rather than in writing. All this puts Mazza’s opaque reference to ‘the incongruity and inopportunity of the time and the matter; and the condition of those who were to be instructed’ on a new footing. Apparently, not only the condition of the flock to be instructed but also that of the shepherds (and inquisitors) charged with its instruction, needs to be considered. Capizucchi’s curt assertion regarding the necessity of Grace that ‘not all faithful know this, nor should they be obliged to know it explicitly’ is a case in point: amidst his railings against the controversial or even partisan explanations of the ‘seven articles’ in the prints he listed for proscription, it seems that the shepherds too, as a whole, did not know, at least not with certainty. Nor was Roman ambiguity exceptional, judging by the analogous rulings of other congregations,77 not least among these Mazza’s reference to the arcana of the Roman Church to advise doctrinal restraint. Looking at the Holy Office’s brief, the affair of the seven articles was recurrently plugged into other major debates with uncertain outcomes, producing Roman decrees that, with varying success, aimed to erode the public relevance of learned and pastoral disputes (in the Alexandrine Peace of 1667) or to ban theological debates from the public stage altogether (in the controversies de Auxiliis at the turn of the sixteenth century), a solution Pozzobonelli strongly advocated for use in other circumstances. Roman censors and cardinal-inquisitors, who otherwise participated in the intra-Catholic controversies of the day as authors or academics, tried to counter urges towards ideologization by various factions through a practical privatization of disruptive provinces of the faith for the foreseeable future, ‘until the Holy See would find otherwise’.78 This facilitated, in the process, the emergence of separate areas for them to thrive (and liminal territory to wrangle over). The affair of the seven articles proves a quintessential moment to observe how uncertainty shaped early modern Catholicism from the bottom up. Marred by doubts and blatant disagreements over their explanation to the flock even among the clergy, basic tenets of the faith, cognition of which was deemed indispensable for the soul’s salvation, were, in practice (but not in 77 Cf. the contribution of Cecilia Cristellon to this volume. See also Windler, ‘Praktiken des Nicht-Entscheidens’. 78 On the ideologization of early modern Catholicism, see Gay, ‘Affinités (s)électives’.

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principle) transferred to the realm of implicit, practically internal, beliefs, as the Holy Office quietly jettisoned, for the time being, the requirement for explicit cognition and understanding. Saving truth from appropriation by litigious Church factions, the writings of the pope’s theologians also provide insight into the practices used to functionalise saving truth as the root of the Church’s mission. Having disavowed the necessity of explicit knowledge (Capizucchi, Mazza), and untangling cognition from absolution (Pozzobonelli), Roman experts sought to render the confessional obsolete as a mediator of (partisan) truth, while helping to formalize liturgical and sacramental acts, i.e. orthopraxy, into a sign, and an observable (and controllable) substitute for its slippery referent: in the affair of the seven articles, an orthodoxy that was in (penitential) practice ‘unsayable’.79 The sacramental act itself thus becomes a statement on behalf of a mute orthodoxy.80 This assessment sheds interesting light on Pozzobonelli’s efforts to contain Catholic Puritanism as a strong subculture within early modern Catholicism. In sharp contrast with practices emerging in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, sacramental confession was, besides the whispers of individual sins and moral counselling itself, a highly public, communal rite witnessed by parishioners, members of confraternities, or Jesuit sodalities, being performed, as it was, in open confessionals and, for the vast majority of the faithful, during public or semi-public events. (Deferral of) absolution, starting with the (non-)performance of the sign of the cross and either giving or postponing access to the justified community of the faithful in the Eucharist, must have been quite a public affair, in communities to which collective divine retribution for individual sinfulness posed a real threat. While proponents of more benign governance in the confessional fretted about the crypto-Jansenist, Baianist, or, above all, dogmatic underpinnings of ‘rigorism’, it may be significant that Pozzobonelli sought to weaken the crystallization of a subculture by containing practices that were now a distinctive ‘trademark’. Banning controversial doctrines and practices from a public stage under construction, Roman censorship paradoxically generated new spaces for them to thrive. Within Catholicism as a vibrant community of conflict, a highly formalized sacramental practice presented a unified Church Militant 79 ‘Le geste l’emporte sur le contenu. Il devient le signe le plus sûr. À la fois, il pose et il “dit” la croyance comme conduite.’ De Certeau, L’écriture de l’histoire, p. 205. 80 On the lasting consequences of these practical solutions, for instance, in religious studies and sociology using the ‘practising Christian’ as a primary and quantifiable unit of analysis, see Boute, ‘Schreiben, zensieren, praktizieren’.

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while remaining a vehicle for many conflicting truths and (from the point of view of theologians) mutually exclusive religious models. For Pozzobonelli, Mazza, and Capizucchi, however, this apparently implied hard (censorial and inquisitorial) work to keep Catholic plurality as ill-defined, invisible, and potentially off the record as possible—and religious groups from acquiring the features of a sub- or counter-Church, which the pope’s censors accomplished by targeting distinctive practices signifying a (partisan) theology.81 In the affair of the seven articles, the administration of the sacrament of penance emerges as a highly performative administration of a revealed truth beyond human politicking and manipulation.

Bibliography Archival Sources Vatican City, Archivio della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede (acdf): S.O., Stanza Storica, G 2 c; G 3 f; M 4 a; O 3 a; UV 25. S.O., Censurae Librorum 1660–1700. Rome, Archivio Generale dell’Ordine Carmelitano (agoc) II Flandro-Belg. Conventus 3.

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Printed Sources Alexander a S. Teresia, Confutatio Justificationis Praxeos, Quâ aliqui, sub nomine Pastorum, in Belgio consueuerunt anxiâ curâ populo proponere sep-tem quaedam Fidei Puncta tamquam credenda explicitè, ac necessariò necessitate medii, (quorum professio nuper à Sanctissimo Domino Innocentio XI. est damnata.) Publico data ad stabiliendam sufficientiam duodecim Articulorum Symboli Apostolorum, & avitam praxim ejusdem. Atque ad auferendas Plebis Catholicae perplexitates occasione septem Punctorum exortas (Ypris: Typis Antonii De Backer, 1683). Andries, Judocus, Ce que l’on doibt scavoir de necessité absolüe et par commandement, pour estre sauvé; ou comme parlent les théologiens, necessitate medii, & necessitate 81 Cf. the assessment by de Certeau with respect to the eighteenth century of a somewhat similar dynamic emerging within these obscure subcultures (ecclesiunculae), in which specific practices (among others in the penitential sphere) came to signify and substitute for, both internally and in the outside world, their (partisan) dogmatic referents. De Certeau, L’écriture de l’histoire.

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praecepti. Le tout representé avec cinquante & deux images en taille de bois, qui sont gratuitement données: et expliqué (Anvers: chez Cornille Woons, 1654). ———, Necessaria Ad Salvtem Scientia Partim Necessitate Medii, Partim Necessitate Praecepti, Per iconas quinquaginta duas Repraesentata. Quarum Ligneae Laminae gratis dantur. Pretium Libelli uide pagina 15. Auctore R.P. Ivdoco Andries E Societate Iesv (Antverpiae: Typis Cornelii Woons, 1654). ———, Noodighe wetenschap tot de saligheyt: genoemt by de godgheleerde necessaria necessitate medii, & necessitate praecepti. Met tween-vijftigh beelden uyt-gheleyt. Welcker houte plaeten worden voor niet gheiont (Antwerpen: by Cornelis Woons, 1654). ———, Nothwendige wissenschafft zur Seeligkeit: welches die Theologi nennen necessaria necessitate medii, & necessitate praecepti; in zwey-und fünfftzig Figuren fürgehalten, und in underschidlichen Sprachen auszgelegt (Antorff: bey Cornelius Woons, 1655). Anon.: Belydinge van de Seven Pointen Ofte Artikelen des Geloofs, de welcke een ieder moet weten door noodigheyt des Middels, om zaligh te worden, wat breeder uyt-geleyt om beter te verstaen. Den derden Druck (Tot Brvssel: by Lambert Marchant, 1673). Anon.: Belydinghe van de Seven Punten Ofte Artikelen des Gheloofs, de Welcke een ieghelyck moet weten door noodigheydt des middels, om saligh de worden, Wat breeder uytgheleydt om beter te verstaen (Tot Brussel: by Jacob vande Velde, 1680; leaflet in: acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, O 3 a, Nr. 3, fol. 202r). Anon.: Confessio Septem Punctorum, siue Articulorum Fidei, quae quilibet scire tenetur necessitate Medii ad consequendam salutem, fusius explicatorum ad meliorem intelligentiā (Bruxellis: apud Jacobum Campi, 1680; handwritten copy of a leaflet in: acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, O 3 a, Nr. 3, fols. 210r–213v). Anon.: De Christelycke Leeringhe, Ghedeylt in diversche Liedekens, seer dienstigh voor de Ouders ende haer-lieder Kinderen (Tot Brussel: by Peeter vande Velde, 1680). Anon.: De Secreten der Jesuiten. Secrete Instructien van de Paters der Societeyt. Extract Uyt the Historie van de Thou, rakende de selve Paters. Sententie Tegens Jean Chastel; Mitsgaders het bannissement der Jesuten uyt Vrankrijk. Relaes Van Monsieur de Rhony, Hoe de Paters weder in Vrankrijk zijn gekomen (Tot Meenene: by Christoffel Waermont, 1677). Anon.: Den Noodighen Leydts-Man Tot den Dienst Godts, Verciert met Vyf-En-Twintigh Liedekens […] (Ghedruckt Tot Antwerpen: Voor Lucas van Mettelen, Boeckverkooper, 1681). Anon.: Epistola Theologica Missa ad Reverendum D. Pastorem Ecclesiae NN. In quâ Breviter exponitur, quid sit de Doctrina Septem Punctorum Quae nuper in quibusdam Belgii parti-bus aliqui sparserunt, ac in Eccle-siis docuerunt, ac locis publicis im-pressa affixerunt, tamquam ide divinâ de necessitate medii,

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eplicitè forent credenda. Editio Secunda (Ipris: Ex Officinâ Joannis Baptistae Moerman, 1683). Anon.: Nievw Ondervvys Voor de Ionckheyt. Om wel te Biechten ende te Communiceren. Door eenen Priester der Societeyt Iesv. Met Vraghe ende Antwoorde (Te Ghendt: By Pieter Denys 1661). Anon.: Professio septem Punctorum siue arti culorum fidei, quos unusquisque debet scire necessitate medii, ut saluis fiat, latius expositi ut melius intelligantur (s.l.: s.n., s.d.) (handwritten copy of a leaflet in: acdf, Stanza Storica, O 3 a, Nr. 3, fols. 211r–212v). Anon.: Quaestiones aliquot propositae RR. adm. DD. pastoribus quorum nomine prodiit nuperum scriptum cui titulus Iustificatio praxeos pastorum &c. (s.l.: s.n., [1682 or 1683?]). Anon.: Regels Oft Maximen van het Christendom Gestelt teghen de Maximen Van de Wereldt (Te Ceulen: by de Weduwe van Peter Metternich, 1680[–1681]). Anon. [De Cuyper, Johannes], Justificatio Praxeos Pastorum, Aliorumque Curatorum; Quâ consueverunt Populo proponere Septem Fidei Puncta tamquam credenda explicite, ac necessariò necessitate medii. Publico data ad auferenda plurium, de eorumdem Punctorum Propositione diversimodè sentientium, Praejudicia (s.l.: s.n., 1682). Arnauld, Antoine, De la Freqvente Commvnion ov les Sentimens des Peres, des Papes, et des Conciles, Tovchant l’vsage des Sacramens de Penitence & D’Evcharistie, sont fidelement exposez: Pour seruir d’addresse aux personnes qui pensent serieusement à se conuertir à Diev; & aux Pasteurs & Confesseurs zelez pour le bien des ames. Qvatriesme Edition (Paris: Vitré, 1644. Gabrielis, Aegidius, Specimina Moralis Christianae et Moralis Diabolicae in Praxi (Bruxellis: Typis Eugenii Henrici Fricx, 1675). Huygens, Gummarus, Methodus remittendi & retinendi peccata. Accipite Spiritum sanctum: quorum remiseritis peccata, remittuntur eis: & quorum retinueritis, retenta sunt. Joan. 20 (Lovanii: Typis Hieronymi Nempaei, 1674). ——— (praes.) and Witsenburgh, Theodorus (resp.), Theses Theologicae de Certitudine Morali quam habere debet Confessarius de dispositione Poenitentis, ut eum sepositâ iustâ necessitate licite absolvat. Cum Appendice Adversus Libellum Cvi titvlvs, Fidelis Relatio &c. Quas Praeside Eximio Viro Domino Ac Magistro Nostro Gummaro Huygens Lyrano Defendet Theodorus Witsenburgh Goudanus in Collegio Adriani VI. Pontificis 2. Martii 1685. horâ 5. post meridiem (Lovanii: Typis Guillielmus Stryckwant, 1685). Nakatenus, Guilielmus, Himlisch Palm-Gärtlein zur beständigen Andacht, und Geistlichen Ubungen Nit allein mit Tagzeiten, Litaneyen, Gebet, Betrachtungen; Sondern auch mit heylsamen auẞ Göttlichem Wort und H.H. Vättern gezogenen Underweisungen und Lehrstücken […] (Gedruckt zu Cölln: Wilhelm Friessem, 1664).

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Sas, Cornelius, Epitome praxeos virtutum theologicarum. Præsertim qua media sunt salutis. Pastoribus confessarijs alijuis perutilis (Romae: Typis Vaticanis 1632). Simonis, Franciscus [Aegidius Estrix], Status, Origo, Et Scopus Reformationis Hoc Tempore Attentata in Belgio Circa Administrationem, et Usum Sacramenti Poenitentiae Juncta Piorum Supplicatione ad Clementem X. Pontificem Maximum (Moguntiae: Typis Ludovici Bourgeat, [1675]).

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Literature Asad, Talal, Genealogies of Religion. Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993). Boute, Bruno, ‘“Que ceulx de Flandres se disoijent tant catholicques, et ce neantmoings les hereticques mesmes ne scauroijent faire pir.” The Multiplicity of Catholicism and Roman Attitudes in the Correspondence of the Nunciature of Flanders under Paul V (1598–1621)’, in Die Außenbeziehungen der römischen Kurie unter Paul V. Borghese (1605–1621), ed. by Alexander Koller (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2008), pp. 457–492. ———, ‘Schreiben, Zensieren und Praktizieren. Die Aufklärung und die Geburt des praktizierenden Christen’, in Inquisitionen und Buchzensur im Zeitalter der Aufklärung, ed. by Hubert Wolf (Paderborn et al.: Schöningh, 2011), pp. 431–442. ———, ‘The Trial of Melchisedek. Bureaucrats of the Faith in Rome and Engineers of the Sacred in Flanders, 1606–1610’, Cristianesimo nella Storia, 31 (2010), 483–515. Callewier, Hendrik, ‘Anti-jezuïtisme in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden (1542–1773)’, Trajecta. Tijdschrift voor de geschiedenis van het katholiekeleven in de Nederlanden 16 (2007), 31–71. Caspers, Charles, ‘Indulgences in the Low Countries c. 1300–1520’, in Promissory Notes on the Treasury of Merits. Indulgences in Late Medieval Europe, ed. by Robert N. Swanson (Leiden et al.: Brill, 2005), pp. 65–99. Cavarzere, Marco, ‘Il diario di un Maestro del Sacro Palazzo (1678–1681). Raimondo Capizucchi e la censura Romana’, Dimensioni e problemi della ricerca storica, 1 (2012), 215–295. de Certeau, Michel, L’écriture de l’histoire (Paris: Gallimard, 1975). Ceyssens, Lucien, La seconde période du Jansénime. 1. Les débuts. Sources des années 1673–1677 (Brussels et al.: Institut Historique Belge de Rome, 1968). ———, La seconde période du Jansénisme. 2: Sources des années 1680–1682 (Brussels et al.: Institut Historique Belge de Rome, 1974). ———, ‘Les sept points “jansénistes”’, Augustiniana, 4 (1954), 47–69. ———, Sources relatives à l’histoire du jansénisme et de l’antijansénsime des années 1661–1672 (Louvain: Publications Universitaires de Louvain, 1968).

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———, Sources relatives à l’histoire du jansénisme et de l’antijansénisme des années 1677–1679 (Louvain: Publications Universitaires de Louvain, 1974). Denzinger, Heinrich, Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum. Compendium of Creeds, Definitions and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals, ed. by Peter Hünermann (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012). Desmette, Philippe, Les brefs d’indulgence pour les confréries des dioceses de Cambrai et de Tournai aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (ASV, Secr. Brev., Indulg. Perpetuae, 2–9), (Brussels et al.: Institut historique belge de Rome, 2002). Gay, Jean-Pascal, ‘Affinités (s)électives. Innocent XI et Tirso González de Santalla: aspirations réformistes et idéologisation du catholicisme à la fin du XVIIe siècle’, in Innocenzo XI Odescalchi. Papa, politico, committente, ed. by Richard Bösel et al. (Rome: Viella, 2014), pp. 113–143. ———, Jesuit Civil Wars. Theology, Politics and Government under Tirso González (1687–1705) (Farnham et al.: Ashgate, 2012). ———, Morales en conflit. Théologie et polémique au Grand Siècle (1640–1700) (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2011). Gierl, Martin, ‘The Triumph of Truth and Innocence. The Rules and Practice of Theological Polemics’, in Little Tools of Knowledge. Historical Essays on Academic and Bureaucratic Practices, ed. by Peter Becker and William Clark (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2001), pp. 35–65. Latour, Bruno and Woolgar, Steve, ‘The Cycle of Credibility’, in Science in Context. Readings in the Sociology of Science, ed. by Barry Barnes and David Edge (Cambridge/Mass.: MIT Press, 1982), pp. 35–42. Morenzoni, Franco, ‘La bonne et la mauvaise honte dans la littérature pénitentielle et la prédication (fin XIIe–début XIIIe siècle)’, in Shame between Punishment and Penance. La honte entre peine et pénitence, ed. by Benedicte Sère and Jörg Wettlaufer (Florence: Sismel Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2013), pp. 177–193. Neveu, Bruno, L’Erreur et son juge. Remarques sur les censures doctrinales à l’époque moderne (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1993). O’Banion, Patrick J., The Sacrament of Penance and Religious Life in Golden Age Spain (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012). Personen und Profile 1542–1700, ed. by Jyri Hasecker and Judith Schepers in Römische Inquisition und Indexkongregation, ed. by Hubert Wolf (Paderborn et al.: Schöningh: 2020). Quantin, Jean-Louis, Le rigorisme chrétien (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2001). ———, ‘Le Saint-Office et le probabilisme (1677–1679). Contribution à l’histoire de la théologie morale à l’époque moderne’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome. Italie et Méditerranée, 114 (2002), 876–960.

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Römische Buchverbote. Edition der Bandi von Inquisition und Index Kongregation, 1701–1813, ed. by Hermann Schwedt, Ursula Paintner and Christian Wiesneth, in Römische Inquisition und Indexkongregation, ed. by Hubert Wolf (Paderborn et al.: Schöning, 2015). Schreiner, Susan E., Are You Alone Wise? The Search for Certainty in the Early Modern Era (Oxford et al.: Oxford University Press, 2011). Shame between Punishment and Penance. La honte entre peine et pénitence, ed. by Benedicte Sère and Jörg Wettlaufer (Florence: Sismel Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2013). Steckel, Sita, ‘Une querelle de théologiens? The Concept of “Polemic” in the Historiography of the Secular-Mendicant Controversy’, in Les régimes de polémicité au Moyen Age, ed. by Bénédicte Sére (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes 2019), pp. 83–97. Synodicon Belgicum, sive acta omnium ecclesiarum Belgii a celebrato concilio Tridentino usque ad concordatum anni 1801, ed. by Petrus Franciscus X. De Ram, 4 vols. (Mechlin: P.J. Hanicq, 1828–1839; Louvain: Van Linthout, 1858). Systematisches Repertorium zur Buchzensur 1542–1700. Inquisition, ed. by Bruno Boute with the collaboration of Gian Luca D’Errico, Andrea K. Ottens, and Florian Warnsloh, in Römische Inquisition und Indexkongregation, ed. by Hubert Wolf (Paderborn et al.: Schöningh, 2020). Tingle, Elizabeth C., Indulgences after Luther. Pardons in Counter-Reformation France 1520–1720 (London et al.: Routledge, 2015). Tutino, Stefania, Shadows of Doubt. Language and Truth in Post-Reformation Catholic Culture (Oxford et al.: Oxford University Press, 2014). Vincent, Cathérine, ‘La pastorale de la pénitence du IVe concile du Latran. Relecture des canons 21, 60 et 62’, in The Fourth Lateran Council. Institutional Reform and Spiritual Renewal, ed. by Gert Melville and Johannes Helmrath (Affalterbag: Dydimos-Verlag, 2017), pp. 143–161. Windler, Christian, ‘Praktiken des Nicht-Entscheids. Wahrheitsanspruch und Grenzen der Normdurchsetzung’, in Religion und Entscheiden. Historische und kulturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven, ed. by Wolfram Drews, Ulrich Pfister, and Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf (Baden-Baden: Ergon Verlag, 2018), pp. 272–291.

About the Author Bruno Boute is a researcher in early modern history at the Goethe-University of Frankfurt am Main. He has published on religious history and censorship, the history of the papacy, and the history of universities in early modern Europe.

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6. The Production of Truth in the Manufacture of Saints. Procedures, Credibility and Patronage in Early Modern Processes of Canonization Birgit Emich Abstract This chapter traces the design of truthfulness and credibility in the two modes of decision-making: bureaucratic procedures and spiritual and liturgical settings that converged in the canonization of an early modern blessed or saint. These procedures were linked with the careful framing or, if necessary, obfuscation of local and clientelistic mechanisms that proved pivotal to the manufacture of saintly personae, but that simultaneously threatened to thwart the universal validity of the papal decision to elevate a person to the honour of the altars, shedding light on the production of truth in early modern Catholicism.

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Keywords: canonization, early modern sainthood, Roman Curia, bureaucratic practices, patronage, personnel decision

How do canonizations produce truth, or, put differently, how do they endow assertions and opinions with the status of universal truth? Formally, the truth-finding procedure reviewed in this chapter merely rubber-stamps an already existing reality rather than creating a new one: it ascertains that a person, called to holiness since his or her death decades or centuries ago, is living in God’s presence, can therefore serve as an example for the faithful, and can be called upon to assist the living as an intercessor with the Almighty. Through canonization, this pre-existing truth is confirmed, officially declared binding, and liturgically implemented. The ‘new’ saint is then included in the canon of official saints and elevated to the honour

Badea, A., B. Boute, M. Cavarzere, S. Vanden Broecke (eds.), Making Truth in Early Modern Catholicism. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021 doi 10.5117/9789463720526_ch06

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of the altars; from then on, she or he may be invoked in the prayers of and venerated by the faithful throughout the entire Church. The outcome of the canonization procedure thus confers official status and validity on an assumption about the sanctity of the person involved; conversely, this decision is effectively truthful to the extent that it meets with general approval or at least acceptance. This chapter examines how the Roman Church produced truth in this sense with an analysis of curial canonization procedures in the early seventeenth century. Historians have come to value canonization and the cult of saints as an important field of research into the so-called Counter-Reformation.1 On one hand, the canonization of saints, which came to an abrupt halt in 1523 but was resumed from 1588 onwards, is generally considered a pivotal instrument in the revitalization of the papacy: a new brand of saints provided Christians across the globe with tangible personifications of the post-Tridentine ideal of piety nurtured by the Church.2 On the other hand, it was precisely in the years between 1588 and 1642 that canonization acquired the shape it was to retain until 1983:3 Pope Sixtus V’s quintessential curial reform in 1588 oversaw, among other things, the creation of a dedicated Congregation of Rites responsible for canonizations; in 1642, Pope Urban VIII systematized the decrees issued since then (and incrementally so during his own pontificate), 4 thus solidifying the basic process for the centuries to come.5 The signif icance of the phenomenon for the post-Tridentine Church, as well as the efforts that went into the gradual establishment of a truth-finding procedure in the years before and after 1600, make this theme and its procedures highly relevant to the questions raised by this volume. More specifically, this chapter seeks to illuminate how procedures that were still evolving during prolonged processes of canonization became 1 A survey in Gotor, Chiesa e santità. 2 On the changing nature of sainthood between the late Middle Ages and the confessional age, see Burke, ‘How to Become a Counter-Reformation Saint’, and Burschel, ‘Imitatio sanctorum’. 3 A survey in Sieger, Die Heiligsprechung. 4 With respect to the reforms of Urban VIII see Sieger, Die Heiligsprechung, pp. 96–105; Dalla Torre, ‘Santità ed economica processuale’, and Gotor, ‘Le thêatre des saints modernes’. The extensive description of early modern procedures draws on the writings of Prospero Lambertini, the future Benedict XIV (cf. below). 5 It remained that way until Paul VI established in 1969 with the Congregation for the Causes of Saints (Congregatio pro Causis Sanctorum) a separate authority for this field. The latter, moreover, implemented the reforms initiated by Vatican II, which finally came into force in 1983. See the rough lines in Hausberger, ‘Heilige/Heiligenverehrung’, p. 658. On the procedure in force today, which for all the significance of the 1983 reform still resembles its early modern form in the basic features outlined in the text, see Schulz, Das neue Selig- und Heiligsprechungsverfahren.

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fit-for-practice, and produced correct, valid, and truthful decisions defying time and context. In the following paragraphs, I argue, firstly, that the Janus-headed truths produced by processes of canonization, which conferred saintly status on a person that was obtained in the Church Triumphant in heaven before the Church Militant on earth intervened, are founded on two modes of decision-making. The first refers to the documentary world of written proofs and their tortuous examination, to legal and historical-critical considerations in seemingly endless consultations, and to the meticulous authentication of supporting documents. This mode, which I refer to as the mode of the bureaucrats, found its place above all in the aforementioned Congregation of Rites. The second mode, by contrast, involved prayer, illumination, and the intervention of the Holy Spirit. This mode unfolds in tandem with the incremental involvement of the supreme pontiff in the ceremonies and eventually in the performative speech act of canonization. With reference to its single source, the Holy Spirit, I refer to this mode as the spiritual mode. In my opinion, the combination of both modes does not merely functionalize the truth of canonization, but applies to the entire decision-making culture of the Roman Church in the early modern era: in the mode of the bureaucrats, the institutionalized, bureaucratized, nationalized, also increasingly scholarized universal Church materializes; the spiritual mode, for its part, deploys its spiritual core and raison d’être, thus claiming its most conclusive legitimation. The legal, institutional Church alone would lack the legitimacy of (divine) inspiration; the spiritual dimension, conversely, lacks tested procedures capable of assembling the binding force of law. In the joint unfolding of the spiritual and the legal Church, the papal Curia produced decisions that effectively merged the claim to truth with an obliging commitment to that truth.6 These decisions were also underpinned by other mechanisms that secured Roman claims to truth and validity, reconciling universalist designs to local programmes and concerns in two ways: local programmes must be integrated into Roman canonization policy, while the very same local dimensions and interests that played a role in or actually triggered the process in Rome might compromise its outcome and therefore were to be phased out. The mechanisms to handle these seemingly irreconcilable concerns are addressed in the second section of this chapter. The concluding section pulls together both these mechanisms and the two modes of decision-making. 6 On the two modes of decision-making, see Emich, ‘Roma locuta?’. In this chapter, the argument is broadened somewhat with considerations that address this volume’s central question as to the truthfulness and credibility of such decisions.

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1. The Pope’s Bureaucrats and the Spirit: Modes of Decision Making Around 1600, the mode of the bureaucrats is to a large extent a mode of the legal profession.7 Formally, canonization is indeed a canonical trial; in its minutiae, much of the procedure proves very similar to a court trial. More specifically, the entire process breaks down into a number of separate components that can be roughly divided into two main phases. The first phase was constituted by the informational process on site. In the informational process, the local bishop verified on behalf of the pope whether the requirements for canonization were met by gathering information about the life, virtues, or martyrdom of the candidate, and by assessing whether he or she indeed enjoyed a reputation for saintliness. After these preliminary investigations, the trial documents were sealed and dispatched to Rome, marking the end of the local bishop’s agency in the affair. The second phase, the so-called apostolic process, was exclusively conducted by the papal Curia. It consisted mainly in reviewing the documents from the informational process. In a first move, the authenticity of the submitted files was duly checked. Seals, signatures, and other forms of authentication played a central role here. Simultaneously, however, the presence of basic requirements for holiness, in terms of the candidate’s life, virtues, and miracles, came under review. At the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, lawyers occupied centre stage in the proceedings. More specifically, the cardinals of the Congregation of Rites themselves were not charged with the first examination of the trial documents dispatched to Rome (even though many had also received a legal education), but juridically trained experts who explicitly acted as judges and lawyers. These also included the auditors (or judges) of the Sacred Roman Rota. Three of them were instructed by the pope to carry out extensive investigations. They controlled seals, statements, and testimonies from the informative process, which sometimes went back decades or even centuries. They also examined documents that were slipped into the files in the meantime and/or interrogated the available witnesses. They abided by two question lists: the interrogatorii on the credibility and level of knowledge of the witnesses; and the articoli, which dealt with the 7 The canonization procedures for Jacek of Krakow, elevated to the rank of Saint Hyacinth in 1594, and for Santa Francesca Romana, canonized in 1608, are well researched: see Finucane, ‘Saint-Making’; Zardin, ‘Il processo apostolico’; Bartolomei Romagnoli, ‘Il culto di Santa Francesca Romana’.

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lives, virtues, and miracles of the candidates themselves and which often numbered somewhere in the middle three digits.8 The interrogatorii were drafted by the senior canonist of the congregation. This so-called senior played a pivotal role in the whole process from 1588 onwards, obtaining in 1631 the official title of promotor fidei. The articoli concerning the candidate him- or herself, on the other hand, were furnished by the postulators or procurators, i.e. by the commissioners of the religious order, community, dynasty, or institution that began the proceedings, paid the bills, and favoured smooth and speedy proceedings. At the conclusion of their examination, the three Rota auditors drew up the relatio, a report covering the first process, introducing the candidate in more detail and summarizing the investigations. This report informed the following negotiations both in structure and content, implying that the relatio (and its drafters) played a decisive role. In the proceedings for Jacek of Krakow, elevated to the rank of Saint Hyacinth in 1594, and for Santa Francesca Romana, canonized in 1608, this task was still assigned to the Rota auditors. In the following period, however, the overwhelming influence of these judges seems to have stirred resistance from the congregation of Rites itself. In any case, the senior canonist among the officials of the congregation gradually succeeded in drawing to himself the reporting on the preliminary investigations to the congregation’s cardinals. His special status as promotor fidei from 1631 onwards may have played a role in this evolution. For as early as 1632 the records reveal a dispute between the Rota auditors and the promotor fidei on the question of who was in charge of formulating the subheadings of the relatio—i.e. the structure not only of the report, but also the outlines of the subsequent procedure. It would be wrong, however, to assess this shift of competences from Rota judges to the promotor fidei as an erosion of the eminently legal character of the process. The promotor fidei was often referred to as advocatus diaboli (or devil’s advocate), advocate general of state, or advocate general of the faith, his office primarily associated with legal excellence and accuracy. By consequence, the office’s ascendancy should rather be situated in the growing workload of the Congregation of Rites and its resulting professionalization.9 A short survey of the following stages sheds light on the laborious nature of the procedures. After the relatio was presented to the congregation, its cardinal-members in turn examined it. Subsisting doubts or questions were formulated in dubia, which were then discussed in a long series of 8 9

See also Ditchfield, ‘Tridentine Worship’, p. 208. So Ditchfield, ‘Tridentine Worship’, p. 209, who also reports on the dispute of 1632.

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successive sessions. If required, lawyers or theologians could be consulted as experts; in later decades, historians and eventually physicians joined in. Generally, however, the counsel of legally trained experts set the tone. Probably for the first time in 1594, a consistorial advocate entered the fray to defend the report of the Rota auditors against the doubts and inquiries from the congregation. Consistorial advocates were eminently linked to the institution from which they borrowed their title, the ancient consistory of cardinals. The fact that one of these top lawyers, who were not necessarily men of the cloth, also surfaced in the debates of the Congregation of Rites as spokesmen for their Rota colleagues, is indeed remarkable.10 Conversely, the promotor fidei acted on behalf of the congregation in his better-known quality as the devil’s advocate responsible for deepening the congregation’s doubts, finding the gaps in the argumentation of the relatio, and formulating new impediments or producing evidence against canonization of the candidate. These dubia were processed in a strict chronological order: first, the life of the candidate was scrutinized, followed by his or her virtues, and eventually the miracles reportedly performed on God’s behalf. The rigour applied to this part of the procedure can probably only be examined on a case-by-case basis. Take, for instance, the trial of Jacek of Krakow, whose canonization in 1594 was analysed by Ron Finucane. Finucane reached a surprising conclusion, qualifying the examination of the miracles allegedly performed by the Polish candidate as highly ritualized and superficial, indeed in terms of ‘legal ritualism’.11 This might well be accurate as far as the miracles were concerned: according to the records, the promotor fidei only bothered fleshing out the first two alleged miracles, before abruptly ending the prescribed questions on the remaining six ‘in deference to the candidate and to his holy life’. At face value, this qualifies the image of a meticulous and sustained examination. However, his intervention failed to remove all doubts: if the devil’s advocate was quickly satisfied, the cardinals of the congregation were not. It is significant that the dubium in question, which would continue to haunt the procedures for some time, did not concern the miracles as such, but the question of whether or not the transcript of the first trial of 1523/24 was authentic and therefore valid. It fits into the picture of a highly formalistic process that during a session of the congregation the Polish postulator of the candidate’s cause brought along seven compatriots who could verify and authenticate the seals from 10 Cf. Finucane, ‘Saint-Making’, p. 244. 11 Finucane, ‘Saint-Making’, p. 253.

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the informative process in their home country. And it is also in keeping with this appreciation of formal truth that the congregation itself ordered the production of an expensively decorated chest in which the applicants presented their files.12 These observations from the canonization procedure of Hyacinth are probably more than mere snapshots. Simon Ditchfield, for example, points out that legal and historical criteria had priority in canonization procedures for the period from 1588 to 1665. It’s likely that this overwhelming prevalence only intensified under the pressure of the methodological source criticism promoted in the later seventeenth century by the Antwerp Bollandists in the Acta Sanctorum, reviewed in this book by Andreea Badea. Seen from this perspective, it might be less appropriate, in my opinion, to speak of ‘legal ritualism’. Instead, the dominance of formal juridical-procedural aspects grounded, as much as in the other Roman congregations, the modus operandi of the Congregation of Rites. The resistance encountered by an otherwise authoritative and authoritarian Pope Sixtus V, for instance, testifies to the weight of such formal aspects in canonization procedures: acting on his wish to see his former co-religionary, Friar Felix of Cantalice, elevated to the honour of the altars, the Pontiff ordered the opening of canonization procedures, which then were bogged down in an endless bureaucratic quagmire. If the pope at the start declared that formalities were unimportant and that his mere wish warranted canonization, the Curia obviously begged to differ: Felix of Cantalice had to queue several decades for his beatification in 1625 and another century for his canonization in 1712.13 Apparently even the pope himself could not defy the mode of the bureaucrats. Conversely, however, the bureaucrats could not manage without the pope. The pontiff himself was only indirectly involved in the initial procedures: without his commissio or explicit mandate, the Congregation of Rites would not be authorized to conduct the process;14 during the procedures before the congregation, the pontiff was at each interval briefed in writing 12 Finucane, ‘Saint-Making’, p. 238. 13 See Finucane, ‘Saint-Making’, p. 241. 14 From a legal point of view, the congregation acted on a delegated jurisdiction. This is revealing inasmuch as, with the legal form of delegation, the pope secures for himself the supreme authority over canonization, while, in the opposite case, with the declaration of heresy, he has the supreme authority by virtue of his function as the head of the Holy Office. Thus the pope secures for himself sovereignty in the declaration of saints as well as heretics in legally different ways, which can be understood with Burke, ‘How to Become a Counter-Reformation Saint’, pp. 45 and 53, as two sides of the same coin. The close relationship between the Inquisition and the Congregation of Rites is a research topic in itself.

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by its secretary. It is interesting to note, however, that the Sanctissimus Dominus was called to action in person only after favourable completion of the examinations in the congregation. This occurred in two rounds: after confirmation by the congregation of the candidate’s death as a martyr or of his or her heroic virtues, the pope consented to the next phase or chose to abort the procedure. In the former case, the miracles came under the most significant scrutiny. First, the congregation ruled on whether or not recognition of the miracles as such was appropriate. This was determined by majority voting, with a final vote allowing cardinal-members with scruples to join the victorious majority and clear the path for much-desired unanimity. However, even a unanimous verdict by the congregation would not bind the pope’s hands, as the pontiff must in turn approve the recognition of an event in the candidate’s life as a miracle. Only after the candidate had cleared that hurdle could the pontiff order, in a two-step process codified in the seventeenth century, his or her beatification and eventual canonization. The procedures of the second stage, canonization, did not differ substantially from the first. Since life, virtues, and miracles were examined in the preceding beatification process, the investigation for canonization was limited to those miracles ascribed to the blessed’s interventions after his or her beatification. Similarly, the pope called the shots at the end of the procedures, both with respect to the recognition of those miracles and to canonization itself. The exclusive competence of the pope to find against or in favour of the candidate’s canonization proved unassailable: the advice of a panel of experts who, in a lengthy, highly formalized procedure, examined the case from every angle to determine whether or not the conditions for canonization were met was just that: solid, informed advice, not a legally binding ruling. In this respect canonization differs from all other variants of the canonical process: on one hand, the procedure demanded an individual and collective decision on behalf of the members of the congregation; on the other, this collective did not reach a final decision but merely a recommendation that the pope might or might not heed. Both outcomes occurred.15 This explicit separation of the process from the actual decision is also evident in the courses of action adopted by the participants. While the pope was present at the final vote of the congregation, he by no means proceeded 15 Schulz, ‘Heiligsprechung’, col. 1330: ‘Im Unterschied zu allen sonstigen kanonischen Prozessen, die auf einen durchsetzbaren Rechtsakt in Form eines vollsteckbaren Urteils abzielen, besteht die Besonderheit des Seligsprechungs- bzw. Heiligsprechungsprozesses darin, daß sie nur eine Schlußfolgerung darstellen, die auf ein mögliches Urteil des Papstes gerichtet ist, das dieser in Würdigung des Prozessergebnisses frei fällt, d.h., das er bestätigen, aber auch ablehnen kann. Beides kommt vor.’

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immediately to a judgment. In his fundamental work on the subject published around 1740, Prospero Lambertini, the future Pope Benedict XIV, who served for many years as a promotor fidei himself, lifts the veil on what happened next: instead, the pope ‘repeatedly recommends the matter to prayer, prays also himself, and only when he considers it opportune he will disclose his judgment and his will in the presence of the secretary and the promotor fidei of the congregation, when the apostolic letters are issued in the form of a papal brief and the day of the beatification is proclaimed’.16 Such an ‘opportunity’ may never arise. As a matter of fact, quite a few cases failed to result in the beatification or canonization of the candidate despite successful completion of the procedures in the congregation:17 the freedom of papal decision also included papal indecision.18 The Lambertini quote clarifies the logic behind this freedom of indecision: in these matters, the pope’s decision was ultimately rooted in prayer and in divine assistance that notoriously defied human deadlines. In the case of a favourable decision by the pontiff, the process entered a new phase. In this phase, the spiritual mode explicitly began to eclipse 16 Benedict XIV, Opus de servorum dei beatificatione; a new edition (with an Italian translation and reproductions of title coppers of the various editions, as well as sketches of seating arrangements and scenes from the trial attached to the work) of this fundamental work is being prepared by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints: Benedict XIV, De servorum dei beatificatione. The passage referred to in the text for technical reasons is summarized here after Lechner, Beatification und Canonisation, p. 405, point 8, there with the note in footnote 1 that the papal prayer was only pushed by Clement XI between the Congregation meeting and the final decision. In this respect, the trial was still evolving until the early eighteenth century. 17 It should be noted here that a beatification can theoretically be annulled, but the canonization is considered definitive and irrevocable. It is still under discussion today whether this decision is infallible or not. On the historical dimension of this debate see Schenk, Die Unfehlbarkeit des Papstes, as well as the brief overview in Kemp, Canonization and Authority, pp. 151–168; also with a view to the current debate: Piacentini, ‘L’infallibilità papale’, pp. 112–114. 18 This is different in the trial, i.e. in the mode of the bureaucrats: in the proceedings themselves, we do indeed find decision-making decisions, namely decisions signalling that a decision is at issue and that were perceived accordingly. This applies above all to the mentioned commission with which the pope ordered the initiation of the apostolic process before the congregation. Numerous actors, that is, persons or entities with whom the initiative for a beatification procedure originated, failed at this hurdle. Orders to open the relatively low-threshold informational process could easily be obtained by a multitude of actors and their procurators in Rome. The apostolic process, however, was linked to a number of conditions, so its initiation already represented a great first partial success on the way to its goal. Most importantly, however, the commission signalled that the proceedings would continue. This also brought the decision closer, as the procedure itself was built on timetables and deadlines. Thus, the gifts, celebrations, and other expressions of joy that generally accompanied the commission were probably primarily for its decision-making quality. See for the earlier period Wetzstein, Heilige vor Gericht, pp. 354–384.

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that of the bureaucrats, while the canonization process entered the domain of the universal Church. Both occurred initially in a sequence of three assemblies of the consistory of (all) cardinals (present in Rome). In the first consistory, the prefect of the Congregation of Rites read out its final report and asked the pope to proceed to the canonization. In the second consistory, a consistorial advocate gave a eulogy in praise of the candidate, culminating in a request for elevation to the honour of the altars. In each instance, the pope’s secretary proclaimed the scripted answers: respectively that the candidate was worthy; and that His Holiness himself was inclined towards canonization, but that the matter needed further consultation and, above all, God’s help. Attendees were urged to pray to that effect. Only in the third consistory did these prayers to God deliver results: the pope finally spoke, declared his consent, and asked the attending cardinals, patriarchs, and prelates to give their votum or judgment. With this act, the (positive) outcome of the proceedings was certain, though a positive votum delivered by the attendees, from a strictly legal point of view, was neither necessary nor binding. Its significance resided elsewhere: this sequence of secret or public consistories in which all of court society participated signified the involvement, acknowledgement, and consent of the universal Church. At this point, the pope could fix the date for the canonization ceremony. This ceremony would tap into the same register of celebratory solemnity and publicity that characterized, in crescendo, the three successive consistories. From now on, the spiritual mode introduced by the invocation of the Almighty in prayer took centre stage in the canonization procedure.19 The pope’s prerogative to rule in the spiritual mode was the central message of the pivotal moment in a saint’s canonization, which, in line with the liturgical centralization of the seventeenth century, took place in the Eternal City.20 During the festive canonization mass in the Basilica of Saint Peter, the decision was at once proclaimed and carried out, but there was much more to this liturgical setting. The ruling itself, and the resources it drew upon, were literally staged in a highly scripted social drama that 19 Klauser, ‘Die Liturgie der Heiligsprechung’; for details on the course of a canonization celebration in 1746 see Schalhorn, Historienmalerei und Heiligsprechung, pp. 49–67. For an earlier celebration see Rasmussen, ‘Iconography and Liturgy’. 20 Canonizations in Saint Peter’s were customary for a long time; Benedict XIV only had to conf irm this customary law in a bull of 1741: see Brinktrine, Die feierliche Papstmesse, p. 49. In 1662 Alexander VII then also celebrated the first solemn beatification in Saint Peter’s (for Francis of Sales), the pattern of which was to be maintained in the following period: see Hertling, ‘Materiali’, p. 194, as well as Sieger, Die Heiligsprechung, p. 112, and especially Stano, ‘Il rito della beatificazione’.

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presented the eventual decision at the crossroads of the Church Militant and the Church Triumphant, with the pontiff petitioned three times to canonize the candidate.21 To the first of these requests, presented by the candidate’s procurator, the pope or his secretary of briefs speaking on his behalf solemnly replied that a matter of this importance required prayer and heavenly assistance. The subsequent admonition to invoke the intercession of the saints was answered by the recitation of the litany. The second request was followed by the pope’s silent prayer, then his exhortation to pray for illumination from the Holy Spirit, after which the assembled congregation broke into the hymn Veni Creator Spiritus. It was only after the third of these increasingly pressing requests that the pope gave his approval in a performative speech act both proclaiming and executing the decision, the formula of which has remained almost unchanged:

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In honour of the Most Holy Trinity, for the glory of the Catholic faith and for the promotion of Christian life, we decide, after careful consideration and invocation of divine assistance, following the advice of the cardinals, patriarchs and archbishops gathered in Rome [modern version: following the advice of many of our brethren], by virtue of the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, and by virtue of the plenitude of power of the office entrusted to us, that the blessed N. is a saint. We include him/her in the list of saints and determine that he/ she will be venerated as a saint in the entire church. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.22

According to this formula, the plenitude of power residing in the ministry, rooted in the authority of Christ himself, allowed the supreme pontiff to reach a decision in consultation with his brethren (in the consistory rather than in the Congregation of Rites) and, crucially, with the guidance of divine assistance.23 The ceremony did not equivocate about the respective 21 On the petitio canonizationis see for the example of 1746 Schalhorn, Historienmalerei und Heiligsprechung, p. 59; for the pre-conciliar twentieth century see the eyewitness account with subsequent analysis in Klauser, ‘Die Liturgie der Heiligsprechung’, p. 162. 22 Schalhorn, Historienmalerei und Heiligsprechung, p. 60, offers the Latin formula from the canonization on 29 June 1746; the formula in German and Latin in Brinktrine, Die feierliche Papstmesse, pp. 50–51, is very similar. 23 It should be noted that the procedure calls upon God’s help, not His decision or instruction. The decision itself, which does not change the status of the saint’s soul but legally consists in the permission or the order of ritual veneration, is therefore not derived from God’s pre-made choice, but is an independent act.

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weight of these resources for decision-making, the decisive factor being God’s intervention. The lengthy procedures discussed earlier were reduced to the advice of the brethren in the consistory: the tedious processing and authentication of the central files in the mode of the bureaucrats had completely disappeared. The pope had not ruled based on files and procedural outcomes but acted upon inspiration from the Holy Spirit; in other words, the spiritual mode took over while that of the bureaucrats quietly receded, highlighted, among other things, by the iconographic programme in the magnificently decorated Basilica of Saint Peter itself.24 The analysis of the celebrations following the liturgical quintessence in Saint Peter’s would lead us too far. For the purposes of this chapter, two additional elements of the canonization procedure around 1600 will prove particularly relevant for the central questions of this volume.

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2. The Bumpy Trajectory of Local and Particular Interest to Universal Truth Building on the premises discussed above, it is relatively safe to see early modern canonization procedures as a prism for decision-making processes in Rome and, more specifically, those that operated the marking, enforcement, and functionalization of universally valid and indivisible truths. These were not merely informed by the two modes of bureaucrats and of inspiration: other peculiarities of the procedure arguably aimed to reconcile Rome’s projection of universality with a myriad of local programmes and interests. I briefly review two of these mechanisms: the plugging of local programmes into a centralizing canonization policy, and the obvious phasing-out of private interests nurtured by nepotism and clientelism on both the bureaucratic and liturgical stages. First, the canonization procedure proved a quintessential moment to capture the dynamic relationship between ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’.25 As a matter of fact, this relationship largely shaped the incremental Roman reform measures in the field during this period. In the chronology of these measures, we can discern roughly two phases, with their transition situated somewhere in the pontificate of Urban VIII (1623–1644): a first phase of centralization, in which the popes sought to concentrate authoritative decision-making in 24 Detailed examples are provided by Schalhorn, Historienmalerei und Heiligsprechung, and Rasmussen, ‘Iconography and Liturgy’. 25 See the authoritative treatment of this theme in Ditchfield, Liturgy, Sanctity and History.

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Rome and to suppress local participation in the official procedures; and a second phase that worked towards a reintegration of ‘the periphery’ into these procedures on Roman terms. It should be noted that similar concerns with procedure were not unique to the early modern period. Originating in late antiquity, the fine-tuning of the canonization procedure up to the end of the Middle Ages can be described in terms of a gradual enforcement of a papal monopoly in the field: first, at the expense of the claims of local bishops who played a (literally) decisive role in the acknowledgement of saints during the first centuries of Christianity;26 second, over the emerging dynastic states that not only sought to benefit from the channels between heaven and earth provided by national or dynastic saints, but that were keen to overtake the initiative, through pressing requests and otherwise, in determining who was to be admitted to the saintly community;27 and third, against the proliferation of unsanctioned local cults. It was these local practices in particular which the post-Tridentine Church increasingly balked at tolerating. Seen from this perspective, it is not surprising to learn that the regulations of Urban VIII addressed exactly these concerns: the decree Per decem annos of 1624 stipulated that henceforth a term of ten years would elapse between the conclusion of the first local procedure conducted by the bishop and the opening of an apostolic process in Rome. In 1627, the so-called 50-year-rule was added, mandating that discussions could be opened on the question of whether or not the requirements for martyrdom (or in their lack, for sufficient heroic virtues) were met only half a century after the death of a proposed saint. The most important decree of those crucial years was the decree super non cultu of 1625. It spelled out the aim of the regulatory zeal of the Barberini pontificate in the field, ruling that only those saints liturgically venerated on site from times immemorial (i.e. for more than 100 years), ‘or not at all’, could be elevated to the honour of the altars.28 This 26 On the role of the local bishops and also of the synods in the early period, see for example the brief overview in Marckhoff, Das Selig- und Heiligsprechungsverfahren, pp. 24–30; in more detail: Klauser, ‘Zur Entwicklung des Heigsprechungsungsverfahrens’. The first canonization by a pope was carried out by John XV in 993 to Ulrich of Augsburg. After the pope was repeatedly asked to perform this act and thus give it greater weight, Alexander III (died 1181) declared canonization a papal privilege in the decretal Audivimus. In 1234 it was included in the collection of decretals of Gregory IX and thus finally established in the ius commune. In tandem with this monopolization, further juridification took place. In the early modern period, with the foundation of the Congregation of Rites in 1588, the institutional and, with the procedural regulations of Urban VIII, the final procedural consolidation of the process was achieved. 27 See the stimulating contributions in Des saints d’État? 28 See the concise overview in Marckhoff, Das Selig- und Heiligsprechungsverfahren, p. 33, which very aptly speaks of ‘safety mechanisms’ to curb uncontrolled worship. The corresponding

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provision targeted the widely diffused practice of introducing overnight a cult for those recently deceased in the odour of sanctity and then exerting pressure on Roman decision-makers with thus crafted faits accomplis. The stakes of sanctity were high: religious orders, towns, cities, and princely dynasties all coveted a saintly patron from among their midst. Rome, for its part, was increasingly determined to complete the centralization of decision-making under way since the Middle Ages by gaining control over such local and regional cults. In 1602, Pope Clement VIII charged a special congregation with the question of how to deal with these local ‘blessed’, their cults, and their veneration by the faithful. Urban VIII’s measures put a definitive end to similar practices: in one stroke, the decree de non cultu transformed the regional veneration of candidate saints from a pressing argument for canonization into absolute grounds for exclusion. While Urban VIII’s decrees of 1625–1627 marked the culmination of Roman centralization policy in the field, they also heightened the inherent dilemma of papal governance. Rome had to cater to the religious concerns and models of piety of local churches if curial decisions were to find long-term acceptance in the Church worldwide. In the field under review here, saintly persons who were only venerated regionally could not be ‘processed’ out of existence; nor was such rigour convenient as these unofficial saints likely had an intimate relationship with local communities, thus forming a tangible bond between communities of the faithful and the universal Church, a central concern of Catholic reform after Trent. On the other hand, the Curia was reluctant to forfeit decisional control over access to the community of the saints under any circumstances. The procedure therefore had to absorb diversity without endangering the notion of the one, indivisible truth of which the Church claimed to be the sole guardian. But how could Roman claims be accommodated to such regional concerns? Again, the pontificate of Urban VIII solved this question, first by sharpening the contours of the vague distinction between beati and santi, i.e. between the blessed and the saint, and secondly by making both titles dependent on Roman decisions.29 Those who were to be venerated locally or in a particular region had to be processus super non cultu, in which this is checked, is still one of the prerequisites in the procedure today. Exceptions (casus excepti, which could then be canonized per viam cultus) were only permitted by Urban VIII for persons who had already been worshipped for more than a century at the time of the issue of the relevant breve Caelestis Hierusalem cives (1634). Especially on this variant of the procedure see Brosch, Der Heiligungsprechungsprozess. 29 A clear and forceful analysis of this connection in Ditchf ield, ‘Tridentine Worship’, pp. 209–217. With respect to the blessed and the institutional consolidation of corresponding procedures compare Gotor, I beati del Papa.

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beatified first in Rome. Universal devotion, on the other hand, could be bestowed only on those who, after beatification, also became the subject of canonization. Both procedures passed through the Congregation of Rites hardly differing from each other: the blessed candidate went through the whole examination procedure outlined above, bound to fulfil many similar requirements, including the performance of miracles. Canonization, then, required one more miracle by the candidate after her or his beatification. Despite these similarities, Urban VIII succeeded in plugging the local level into the universal one with his scaling of sanctity in blessed and saints: on one hand, all regional cults came at least formally under curial control; on the other, this two-tiered approach warranted the Roman procedure’s flexibility to respond to local or regional suggestions and needs. The procedure itself had to secure not only the Roman Curia’s decisional control in the field but also its acceptance and validity worldwide. Other means were at the new saints’ disposal too. A public relations campaign, involving final reports printed in many languages and in large numbers on the new saints and the procedures, was clearly intended to reach every corner of the universal Church. The consecrated banners bearing the saint’s effigy displayed in the Roman canonization ceremony were sent to her or his region as a core object, or objectification of the sacred act in Rome planted in the local church. A closer look at these communications between the Roman headquarters and ‘the periphery’, however, clearly reveals how the Curia sought to control the narrative in this phase, too: usually, it was the relatio drafted by the Rota auditors, i.e. the central document drafted during the legal proceedings before the Congregation of Rites, that was translated and divulged, not other arbitrary accounts of the canonization. The dispatch of the consecrated banners to the periphery, for its part, had to guarantee a speedy and early enforcement of a Rome-sanctioned iconography of the saint, a matter the canonization bulls elaborated in legally binding detail.30 The second mechanism used to secure universal validity untainted by human politicking addresses what could and should be expressed in the canonization process, its ceremonial acts, and the ensuing publishing spree, as well as what should be concealed or erased, to produce a universal, timeless (and indeed context-less), truthful decision. It is therefore helpful to discern those (f)actors influencing procedures that were made public from those that were not. To the modern observer, it might be surprising that the obvious display of political interests apparently did not jeopardize the 30 Cf. the cult of Santa Francesca Romana, the medial diffusion of which is under scrutiny in Boiteux, ‘La cerimonia di canonizzazione’.

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canonization and its status as truth. Regardless of whether the proceedings were initiated and conducted by one of the European crowns, a city, or a religious order, the identity of the procurator and his employers was by no means hidden. The letters of supplication arriving in Rome in large numbers from interested parties were publicly presented in the pope’s audiences; as a matter of fact, the letters were seen as proof that the candidate was broadly reputed as saintly among the elites of his or her homeland. In the proceedings themselves, curial officials sided with the ambassadors of the crowns who publicly supported the future saint’s cause, who expressed their gratitude to the pontiff in the consistories, who staged one of the three liturgical petitions in the church ceremony itself, who occupied a prominent place in the church, and who eventually covered the costs of the proceedings. The canonization bulls, for their part, often explicitly referred to the regional or local political constellations to be catered to by the canonization of a candidate in support of the political–military struggle of the local church.31 The fact that canonizations took place in the political sphere—and that they were inextricably linked with the prestige of the petitioners—was, by consequence, openly displayed at various stages of the procedure. Informal conversations and the messy business that inevitably accompanied the canonization procedures, by contrast, received much different treatment. First and foremost, there is the issue of patronage, which was literally ‘in the air’ in beatification and canonization procedures. Saints can be compared to patrons—indeed they are heavenly patrons. Anyone who needs assistance may turn to them, with reciprocity assured by the saint’s veneration in exchange for (possibly miraculous) interventions. Earthly patrons were not very different, providing access to scarce goods—financial resources, prestige, or offices—in return for a quid pro quo furnished by the petitioners. While veneration was not appropriate (earthly patrons could not be expected to perform miracles), the patron expected loyalty and active support from his petitioners. Such patronage relationships may seem timeless. Yet, their manifestation and significance for the functioning of society change over time. The early modern period saw the heyday of patronage: it was not only a cultural form that prescribed the rules for interacting across a range of socially unequal actors through fixed rituals and language expectations. It also underpinned, to a large extent, the governance and administration of the early modern state. At a time when the abstract loyalty of modern civil 31 Cf. the canonization of Jacek of Poland: on the supplications in the respective procedures, see Finucane, ‘Saint-Making’, pp. 234–236; concerning the role of the ambassador pp. 242 and 248; with respect to the canonization bull pp. 255–256.

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servants to their official duties did not yet exist, only the personal loyalty to the patron warranted the officials’ fulfilment of the government tasks entrusted to them. This bond of concrete personal loyalty was forged when a powerful patron elevated a less powerful client to an office in his gift. In return for this act of patronage, the official was expected to be obedient and loyal to his superior and patron. Such networks of loyalty and mutual commitment were not mere cronyism, but rather corresponded to the social norms of the time: alongside the obligation to look after one’s family and to share with it the fruits of success, loyalty, and obedience to one’s patron was a social imperative. Pietas was the name of this norm in the language of the time, and it would have been impious not to prize the connections to one’s own patrons, relatives, and compatriots over others. This basic social pattern can be observed everywhere in early modern Europe but reached rare heights in papal Rome. It was easier here than elsewhere to transfer the patterns of heavenly patronage to earthly relations—santo, for that matter, in some parts of Italy not only signifies a saint but also an earthly patron. Secondly, the need for relationships that generated personal loyalty and reliability was particularly high in an elective monarchy. Papal families came and went on the rhythm of the conclaves elevating new pontiffs on Peter’s chair, resulting in a cyclical reversal of the precarious patronage networks that characterized officialdom at the Curia and in the Papal States. Limited time horizons fuelled a sense of urgency in papal families depending on the election of a pope to propel them into the top ranks of the Roman nobility. These structural constraints caused a full-blown institutionalization of patronage in Rome between 1538 and 1692, an era in which virtually all pontiffs elevated a relative—in line with general patterns in clerical dynasties, usually a nephew—to the cardinalate at the start of their pontificate. This cardinal-nephew or nipote, as he was officially called, directed, as a vice-pope of sorts, the central agencies of curial politics in support of his papal uncle.32 In addition, he acted as the supreme patron of the clienteles that, during the family’s pontificate, joined the officialdom of the Curia or the Papal States, and fulfilled their tasks as faithful servants in the spirit of the pontiff and his nephew. The third function of papal nepotism strengthened its reputation for cronyism. For the cardinal-nephew was also expected to enrich his family and to assure its eternal memory through a calibrated practice of patronage designed to prepare the family for inevitable future demotion. Here our saints re-enter the picture. 32 On the figure of the cardinal-nephew, see Emich, ‘The Cardinal Nephew’.

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This pervasive influence of patronage and nepotism, and the attendant quid pro quo of favours between unequal partners, raises the question of whether or not, and to what extent, heavenly patrons were considered by their earthly counterparts as part of a business enterprise crossing the boundaries between heaven and earth. Practically, it raises the question of whether or not patronage played a role in canonizations. Even in the early modern period, it was complicated. Let us analyse the case of Pope Paul V Borghese, who ruled from 1605 to 1621. His pontificate has become somewhat paradigmatic in recent scholarship, having been extensively researched by Wolfgang Reinhard and his students.33 This systematic scholarly engagement with one specific pontificate and its ruling family illustrates the clientelistic entanglement of saints and canonizations. Take, for instance, the seemingly miraculous recovery of the Catholic King in Spain in 1619.34 Philip III was allegedly on the brink of death when he saw the relics of Isidro Labrador, the focus of a local cult at Madrid. This supernatural healing conveniently warranted the king’s quid pro quo to increase his support for Isidro’s canonization by Pope Paul V. In Rome, an agent on the city of Madrid’s payroll lobbied for canonization, the Spanish cardinals at the Curia supported their king’s wish, and the nuncio in Spain ‘was so deeply impressed that he inadvertently referred to Isidro as a saint in a letter’. Eventually, Isidro was beatified by Paul V, a service for which both he and his nephew, Cardinal Scipione Borghese, received warm letters of gratitude from Spain. The exchange of favours did not come to a halt with these letters, however: when the nuncio in Spain discreetly proposed the quid pro quo the papal Borghese family considered appropriate for Isidro’s canonization, the Spanish court complied by bestowing the dignity of Grandee of Spain on a scion of the Borghese family. Canonization would have followed but was cut short by Paul V’s own death. In Wolfgang Reinhard’s view, these connections should be considered clear-cut evidence of clientelistic practices permeating even the religious core business of the Curia.35 It is, indeed, difficult to ignore the tangible influence of the cardinal-nephew and of nepotism in general in curial correspondence with the nuncios and with those responsible for different stages of the procedures. Qualifications are in order, however. It should 33 A synthesis of the relevant scholarship in Reinhard, Paul V. 34 The following analysis draws on Reinhard, Paul V., pp. 626–628. 35 Reinhard understands canonizations unequivocally as the symbolical micropolitics of the papacy: see Reinhard, Paul V., p. 47, with reference to the resulting financial returns. A broad empirical basis for the signif icance of discourses and practices related to patronage in the canonization policy of Paul V in von Thiessen, Diplomatie und Patronage, pp. 420–428.

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be noted, first, that the same Paul V, who turned the planned canonization of Isidro of Madrid into a trade-off for a Spanish grandeeship, further formalized the canonization procedure under pressure of the Inquisition: the two-stage procedure codified by Urban VIII was, indeed, already de facto in vigour in the Borghese pontificate, during which canonization only occurred for those who were previously beatified in due process.36 Obviously, favouritism and the tightening of rules went hand in hand in seventeenth-century Rome. Secondly, it is not Labrador’s beatification—his canonization would follow under the next pope—that put a mark on the pontificate of Paul V, but the canonization of two individuals he deemed worthy of the honour himself: the Roman Francesca Romana and Carlo Borromeo. Santa Francesca Romana’s veneration in the Eternal City had a long tradition and her canonization was called for by the Romans themselves; it was moreover requested at several occasions in the consistory and was eventually executed by the pope on an intentionally significant date, i.e. the third anniversary of his election in May 1608.37 In 1610 Francesca was joined by Carlo Borromeo, the model archbishop (and cardinal), incarnation of Tridentine reform, the patron of pious Romans, whose canonization for all these reasons was a clear statement of Church policy while conferring on Paul V the status of a pontiff committed to Catholic reform.38 The canonization strategies of the Borghese pontificate seem to have paid off: even during his lifetime, Paul V was profusely thanked in panegyric writings for the elevation of both saints to the honour of the altars;39 in the long term, the Borghese remained associated with Counter-Reformation saints such as Santa Francesca Romana and San Carlo Borromeo. The Borghese made this link as tangible as possible themselves, in the sumptuous tomb of the pope commissioned by his cardinal nephew Scipione Borghese in the Cappella Paolina of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. 40 A closer look at this funerary monument reveals another argument. The statue of the kneeling and praying pope is surrounded by marble panels accounting the res gestae, the heroic deeds of the pontificate: the subjugation of the city of Ferrara, in the north of the Papal States, providing Paul V with 36 See Reinhard, Paul V., p. 627. 37 Given the importance of Francesca’s canonization for both the Catholic world and the city of Rome, it is not surprising that the celebration was carefully planned. See Boiteux, ‘La cerimonia di canonizzazione’. 38 See Rasmussen, ‘Iconography and Liturgy’. Reinhard suspects that even the canonization of Carlo Borromeo involved financial compensations: Reinhard, Paul V., p. 47. 39 See Reinhard, Paul V., p. 53. 40 The broader context in Ostrow, Art and Spirituality.

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a military bulwark; his victories in the wars against the Ottoman Empire; the reception of a Persian embassy on behalf of a universal papal prince/ shepherd whose reign/flock knew no territorial bounds; and, above left of a panel eternalizing his coronation, the pontiff during the acts of canonization of Borromeo and Francesca Romana. Significantly, the quintessential performative speech act of canonization is depicted: the central figure in a liturgical act, the pope merely acts on the impulses of the Holy Spirit. The mode of the bureaucrats or its intervening counsellors are hardly recognizable, while there is no trace at all to be found of the cardinal-nephew or other members of the Borghese family. 41 This is quite revealing. The political and diplomatic dispatches of the Curia and the correspondence of the cardinal-nephew himself leave few doubts about the massive influence of nepotist practices on many canonization processes. Yet these were apparently not to be shown. Cardinal-nephews, in their capacity as superintendents of the Papal States, might well appear in secular matters as supporters and helpers of their uncles. In the records of canonization procedures up to the funerary accounts of Paul V’s res gestae, by contrast, they played no (visible) role. In this field, omnipresent clientelistic practices and family interests were not recorded in both modes of decision-making; in the liturgical drama of canonization; or on monuments commemorating the act for eternity. It was certainly not a coincidence that the rituals invited us to overlook the cardinal-nephew; we were meant to do so. This should likely not be considered a perfidious tactic of obfuscation, but the result of a long-term process that introduced a form of differentiation between the realm of the secular, i.e. state administration and grand politics, which kept to different standards than the ecclesiastical-theological sphere. This assessment can be pushed further: the popes brought nepotism to its last great heyday until its abolition in 1692, when overstretched papal finances could no longer support this expensive system of governance. Paradoxically, seventeenth-century Rome excelled in the incremental formalization and regulation of curial procedures. Nepotism was, by consequence, not viewed negatively during this time: it was only intended to be less prominent, or at least less visible, in decision-making procedures in the religious sphere. To be sure, seventeenth-century cardinal-nephews 41 An example to the contrary is furnished by the Ludovisi family. A painting in the sacristy of Il Gesù in Rome depicting the canonizations of Ignatius and Franciscus Xaverius by Pope Gregory XV does not feature the pope or the Society’s fresh saint(s), but the cardinal-nephew Ludovico Ludovisi. This atypical cardinal-nephew may well constitute the exception confirming the general rule.

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tended to have a seat in the central dicasteries of papal power, above all in the Suprema Congregatio of the Inquisition (with the notable exception of Scipione Borghese himself). They wielded de facto a significant influence in key congregations, among others in the Congregation of Rites, but never occupied a prominent role in the ceremonial outcome of the proceedings. Let us see the aforementioned consistory of cardinals, which also rubber-stamped appointments for high ecclesiastical offices and dignities. Cardinal-nephews formally entered the consistory as cardinals, not as nephews of the pope. 42 This phasing-out of the cardinal-nephew’s influence and of nepotism as a system of governance is also observed in the canonization process, in the staging of the act of canonization, the following publishing spree, and on papal memorials, but above all in the procedure itself. The combination of the bureaucratic and spiritual modes did not allow room for an official positioning of the cardinal-nephew who, just as much as in the consistory or in the Holy Office, operated formally from within the ranks of his ‘brethren’, the other cardinal-members of the Congregation of Rites. However, nothing prevented him from throwing his informal weight around as the pope’s nephew. This explains why traces of his involvement are seen in the procedures’ files (as a cardinal) rather than in ceremonial or monumental settings. This phasing-out protected the validity and truthfulness of the canonizations from influence by private interests of the papal family.

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Conclusion This chapter’s findings can be summarized in three conclusions. The truth, in this case the universal validity of Roman rulings in canonization processes, was a product of two combined modes of operation. The spiritual mode enacted the immediate access of the Church and the pope to God, the very foundations of the Church, and its claim to infallibility. The pontiff’s final decisions, inspired by the Holy Spirit, were grounded by preliminary decisions and evaluations in the bureaucratic mode that enacted the institutional Church. In the powerful combination of both modes, decision-making and obligatory commitment to these decisions gained the highest possible degree of legitimacy. 42 This, at least, is a preliminary result of my research into the role of the cardinal-nephew in Roman consistorial acts related to the recruitment of the highest Church off icials in the context of the Frankfurt Research Group, ‘Personalentscheidungen in gesellschaftlichen Schlüsselpositionen’.

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Secondly, this two-tiered method proved elastic enough to process diversity without jeopardizing global Catholicism’s claim to unity and uniformity. Thus, both in the mode of the bureaucrats and in the public liturgical staging of the papal decision, the relationship between Rome and the universal Church on the ‘periphery’ is continuously negotiated and co-designed: if the papacy initially succeeded in asserting its monopoly over canonization by establishing forceful procedures, local needs and wishes needed to be integrated into them, a merger that reached its height in the early seventeenth century. The scaling of sanctity in the saints allowed Rome to keep its finger on the pulse of religious life throughout the regions of the universal Church, to accommodate local programmes, and to tolerate regional peculiarities, without forfeiting universalism. Here, too, the combination of a bureaucratic, flexible procedure and the spiritual legitimation of the decision proved to be quite effective: in the design of the legal procedure the Roman universal Church was able to accommodate its claim to universal validity to the needs of the local churches; the literally spiritual legitimation (that is, by divine inspiration) of the final decision, for its part, left no doubt about the truthfulness of valid (but nonetheless questionable) decisions. The focus on Roman procedures should not obscure the fact that cults and beliefs about saints and sanctity continued to flourish locally. Local religious practice in the Swiss Confederation, for instance, discerned a kind of intermediate stage between the blessed and the saints under the heading of the Vielseligen, adding another dimension to the multiplicity of early modern Catholicism. However, special regional features did not detract from, nor did they contradict, the binding nature of Roman decisions. 43 Last but not least, there were also factors that influenced the messy decision-making process in canonization proceedings in ways that threatened to undermine the validity of Roman decision-making. This did not apply to the grand politics of sanctity: in the fight for the Catholic cause the truth itself was not at stake; and, if a canonization was deemed convenient to support the Church Militant in a specific area, there could be no doubt about its validity even if the political interests in the game were obvious. Particular interests of individuals, let alone of the papal family, were viewed differently, however. Long before institutionalized nepotism was abolished in 1692, a differentiation of sorts seems to have emerged: in the secular area, popes could continue to openly rely on their nephews; in the religious-theological arena, the influence of the nipote had to be wielded via official channels. 43 Sidler, Heiligkeit aushandeln.

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There is conclusive evidence that cardinal-nephews in the seventeenth century could, and often did, influence Roman canonization procedures. In the corresponding proceedings, however, nepotism and patronage sank from view and from the record. The Roman Curia obviously viewed particular interests as liabilities that could harm the truth of the proceedings. And it was the role of these proceedings to secure the truth and universality of their outcome, the papal decision to elevate a saintly man or woman to the honour of the altars.

Bibliography Printed Sources Benedict XIV, Opus de servorum dei beatificatione, et beatorum canonizatione in septem volumina distributum, 7 vols. (Prati: in typographia aldina, 1839–1842). Benedict XIV, De servorum dei beatificatione et beatorum canonizatione. La beatificazione dei servi di dio e la canonizzazione dei beati, 7 vols. (Vatican City: Libreria editrice vaticana, 2010–2017).

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Literature Bartolomei Romagnoli, Alessandra, ‘Il culto di Sanat Francesca Romana nella Roma del Seicento’, in Missione e carità. Scritti in onore di P. Luigi Mezzadri C.M., ed. by Filippo Lovison and Luigi Nuovo (Rome: CLV, 2008), pp. 283–319. Boiteux, Martine, ‘La cerimonia di canonizzazione di santa Francesca Romana. Teatro, riti, stendardi e immagini’, in La canonizzazione di santa Francesca Romana. Santità, cultura e istituzioni a Roma tra medioevo ed età moderna, ed. by Alessandra Bartolomei Romagnoli and Giorgio Picasso (Florence: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2013), pp. 99–121. Brinktrine, Johannes, Die feierliche Papstmesse. Die Zeremonien bei Selig- und Heiligsprechungen (Rome: Herder, 1950). Brosch, Joseph, Der Heiligungsprechungsprozess per viam cultus (Rome: Universitas Gregoriana, 1938). Burke, Peter, ‘How to Become a Counter-Reformation Saint’, in Religion and Society in Early Modern Europe 1500–1800 (London et al.: Allen & Unwin, 1984), pp. 45–55. Burschel, Peter, ‘Imitatio sanctorum. Oder: Wie modern war der nachtridentinische Heiligenhimmel?’, in Das Konzil von Trient und die Moderne, ed. by Paolo Prodi and Wolfgang Reinhard (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2001), pp. 241–259.

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Dalla Torre, Giuseppe, ‘Santità ed economica processuale. L’esperienza giuridica da Urbano VIII a Benedetto XIV’, Archivio giuridico Filippo Serafini, 211 (1991), 9–48. Ditchfield, Simon, Liturgy, Sanctity and History in Tridentine Italy. Pietro Maria Campi and the Preservation of the Particular (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). ———, ‘Tridentine Worship and the Cult of Saints’, in The Cambridge History of Christianity. Reform and Expansion 1500–1660, ed. by Ronnie Po-chia Hsia, pp. 201–224. Emich, Birgit, ‘The Cardinal Nephew’, in A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal, ed. by Mary Hollingsworth, Miles Pattenden, and Arnold Witte (Leiden et al.: Brill, 2020), pp. 71–87. ———, ‘Roma locuta – causa finita? Zur Entscheidungskultur des frühneuzeitlichen Papsttums’, in Praktiken der Frühen Neuzeit. Akteure – Verfahren – Artefakte, ed. by Arndt Brendecke (Cologne et al.: Böhlau, 2015), pp. 635–645. Finucane, Ronald C., ‘Saint-Making at the End of the Sixteenth Century. How and Why Jacek of Poland (d. 1257) Became St. Hyacinth in 1594’, Hagiographica, 9 (2002), 207–258. Gotor, Miguel, I beati del Papa. Santità, Inquisizione e obbedienza in età moderna (Florence: Olschki, 2002). ———, Chiesa e santità nell’Italia moderna (Rome: Laterza, 2004). Id., ‘Le thêatre des saints modernes: la canonisation à l’âge baroque, in Des saints d’Etat? Politique et saintité au temps du Concile de Trente, ed. by Florence Buttay and Axelle Guillausseau (Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris Sorbonne, 2012), pp. 23–33. Hausberger, Karl, ‘Heilige/Heiligenverehrung. V. Die römisch-katholische Kirche’, in Theologische Realenzyklopädie, 36 vols. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1977–2004), vol. 14, pp. 654–660. Hertling, Ludwig, ‘Materiali per la storia del processo di canonizzazione’, Gregorianum, 16 (1935), 170–195. Kemp, Eric W., Canonization and Authority in the Western Church (London: Oxford University Press, 1948). Klauser, Renate, ‘Zur Entwicklung des Heiligsprechungsungsverfahrens bis zum 13. Jahrhundert’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Kanonistische Abteilung, 40 (1954), 85–101. Klauser, Theodor, ‘Die Liturgie der Heiligsprechung [1938]’, in Theodor Klauser, Gesammelte Arbeiten zur Liturgiegeschichte, Kirchengeschichte und christlichen Archäologie, ed. by Ernst Dassmann (Münster: Aschendorff, 1974), pp. 161–176. Lechner, Peter, Beatification und Canonisation der Diener Gottes. Nach dem größeren Werke des Papstes Benedict XIV (Regensburg: Georg Joseph Manz, 1862).

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Marckhoff, Ulrike, Die Selig- und Heiligsprechungsverfahren nach katholischem Kirchenrecht (Münster et al.: LIT, 2002). Ostrow, Steven F., Art and Spirituality in Counter-Reformation Rome. The Sistine and Pauline Chapels at S. Maria Maggiore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Piacentini, Ernesto. ‘L’infallibilità papale nella canonizzazione dei santi’, Monitor ecclesiasticus, 117 (1992), 91–132. Rasmussen, Niels K., ‘Iconography and Liturgy at the Canonization of Carlo Borromeo’, Analecta Romana Instituti Danici, 15 (1986), 119–150. Reinhard, Wolfgang, Paul V. Borghese (1605–1621). Mikropolitische Papstgeschichte (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 2009). Des saints d’État? Politique et sainteté au temps du Concile de Trente, ed. by Florence Buttay and Axel Guillausseau (Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris Sorbonne, 2012). Schalhorn, Andreas, Historienmalerei und Heiligsprechung. Pierre Subleyras (1699–1749) und das Bild für den Papst im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert (Munich: Scaneg, 2000). Schenk, Max, Die Unfehlbarkeit des Papstes in der Heiligsprechung. Ein Beitrag zur Erhellung der theologiegeschichtlichen Seite der Frage (Freiburg i. Pr.: Paulusverlag, 1965). Schulz, Winfried, Das neue Selig- und Heiligsprechungsverfahren (Paderborn: Bonifatius Verlag, 1988). ———, ‘Heiligsprechung’, in Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, 8 vols. (Freiburg et al.: Herder, 2006), vol. 4, cols. 1328–1331. Sidler, Daniel, Heiligkeit aushandeln. Katholische Reform und lokale Glaubenspraxis in der Eidgenossenschaft (1560–1790) (Frankfurt am Main et al.: Campus, 2017). Sieger, Marcus, Die Heiligsprechung. Geschichte und heutige Rechtslage (Würzburg: Echter, 1995). Stano, Gaetano, ‘Il rito della beatificazione da Alessandro VII ai nostri giorni’, in Miscellanea in occasione del IV centenario della Congregazione per le Cause die Santi (1588–1988) (Congregazione per le cause dei santi) (Vatican City: s.n., 1988), pp. 367–422. von Thiessen, Hillard, Diplomatie und Patronage. Die spanisch-römischen Beziehungen 1605–1621 in akteurszentrierter Perspektive (Epfendorf: Bibliotheca Academica, 2010). Wetzstein, Thomas, Heilige vor Gericht. Das Kanonisationverfahren im europäischen Spätmittelalter (Cologne et al.: Böhlau, 2004). Zardin, Danilo, ‘Il processo apostolico per la canonizzazione di Santa Francesca Romana (1602–1608)’, in La canonizzazione di Santa Francesca Romana. Santità, Cultura e Istituzioni a Roma tra Medioevo ed Età Moderna, ed. by Alessandra Bartolomei Romagnoli and Giorgio Picasso (Florence: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2013), pp. 53–78.

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About the Author

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Birgit Emich is professor of early modern history at the Goethe-University of Frankfurt am Main. She has published on the cultural history of the papacy, on early modern practices of administration, and on Reformation history. Her latest publications include the co-edited volume Wallenstein. Mensch – Mythos – Memoria (2018) and Geschichte der Frühen Neuzeit studieren (2019). Since 2020 she has co-chaired the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) collegiate research group Polyzentrik und Pluralität vormoderner Christentümer.

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7.

Credibility of the Past: Writing and Censoring Historywithin Seventeenth-Century Catholicism Andreea Badea

Abstract The chapter deals with the Curia’s reaction to Catholic historiography in the late seventeenth century. Authored by prominent Catholic thinkers, these books were widely admired throughout Catholic as well as Protestant Europe for their methodological approach. However, it was exactly their use of the historical-critical method that brought these authors into collision with Rome, which accused them of questioning the canonically attested truth that had already been defined with apostolic authority. Instead of simply banning them, censors and some factions of the Curia commissioned learned men to discredit these works, staging as absolute truth only the Roman historiographical version.

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Keywords: history of historiography, Acta Sanctorum, Jean Mabillon, Antonio de Dominis, Paolo Sarpi, censorship.

An essential element of the ‘age of criticism’ was the methodological process that allowed scholars to conduct empirical research in order to question existing statements and evidence critically, and to prove hypotheses for their readers. Early modern historians, such as Paolo Sarpi and the Bollandists settled in Antwerp, showed the potentialities of this approach by arguing against Rome’s appropriation of power and by revisiting Catholic dogma through a critical examination of the criteria of sainthood. Yet this alliance between criticism and historiography came at a cost. As recent research has shown, throughout the early modern period, the papacy not only sought to affirm its theological supremacy but, above all,

Badea, A., B. Boute, M. Cavarzere, S. Vanden Broecke (eds.), Making Truth in Early Modern Catholicism. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021 doi 10.5117/9789463720526_ch07

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tended to build an all-comprehensive Konfessionskultur capable of imposing general cultural markers not only for every science but for several aspects of everyday life.1 The works of Sarpi, Papebroch, and other historians of the time inevitably collided with the Roman Curia’s claim to exclusive interpretation of a consolidated confessional culture and its truths. Hence, both the Index Congregation and the Holy Office repeatedly examined and occasionally condemned their works throughout the seventeenth century. Yet the history of such prohibitions has not always been so clear-cut. The simplicity of the succession of censorship and prohibition obscures the plurality within early modern Catholicism, for the Curia was not the universally recognized, central power judging all things Catholic; instead, historians have come to consider it as one interpretive community among many. It had to consider other interests and to accept other views, within reason. It had to negotiate and renegotiate diverse opinions, ensuring that the idea of a single, unified Catholicism did not deteriorate in the eyes of its faithful and of members of other denominations. Therefore, the stringency with which Rome carried out book censorship also strongly depended on a constellation of different situations, including first of all the petitioners’ access to the Curia and their political and institutional weight. This chapter deals with such negotiation processes and examines how different actors behaved to ensure their credibility was certified and officially recognized. What tools did the Curia’s scholars—who were not merely active as authors but also as censors—employ to eliminate competing views of the past and to present their own as credible? Which instruments did they use to connect with the different interpretive communities and to bring the authors at least to distance themselves from the opinions contrary to the Roman Curia? Finally, in which ways did members of the Curia succeed in presenting themselves as supreme judges of a unified confessional culture and in delineating their Roman position as credible, generally accepted, and universal? To answer these questions, we first analyse the general importance of historiography for the early modern papal Curia and its corresponding reluctance to produce historiography. After that, we will focus on the Curia’s silent engagement in the scholarly dispute, to sabotage its opponents’ credibility and assert its position as the only one within the collective consciousness. 1 Thomas Kaufmann’s concept of a ‘confessional culture’ is theoretically expanded from a culturalistic perspective by Emich, ‘Konfession und Kultur’, esp. pp. 376, 385–387 and Emich, ‘From the Council to the Founding Myth’. See also Wassilowsky, ‘Was ist katholische Konfessionskultur’, pp. 402–412, and Wassilowsky, ‘Das Konzil von Trient’, esp. p. 28.

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1. Narrating and Adjudicating the Past In early modern Europe, historiographic knowledge was produced along denominational lines, particularly if it touched on the essence of the confession in question. Catholic historiography was thus not self-referential but served a functional purpose for theology or law. However, it is worth emphasizing that historical works did not always play just an auxiliary role in the early modern debates.2 History and historical knowledge were more than this. History represented theology and law at the same time. In doing so, it ensured the legitimacy of both present and future through its approach to the past and it became a problem for Roman censorship: as soon as scholars started to associate historiography with the critical analysis of sources, the whole discipline was in danger of being accused of heresy, particularly if truths already accredited by the Curia were thereby called into question by newly discovered sources. This was especially true for hagiographic works. The veneration of saints was considered an indispensable tool to foster Catholic loyalty and a condition for integration of Catholic confessional culture.3 As a consequence of the central role attributed to sainthood, the post-Tridentine papacy and the Curia worked hard to secure their claim to interpretational monopoly on saints and their cults. On this foundation, they pursued an institutional expansion that established its ultimate control over canonization and beatification processes. The efforts of Clement VIII (1592–1605) culminated in the establishment of the Congregazione per i beati in 1602, and under Urban VIII (1623–1644), the canonical standardization of this monopoly advanced through a series of decrees and increased use of the Inquisition in canonization and beatification processes. 4 Towards the end of the seventeenth century, the Curia, at any rate, assumed that there was no room for scholarly dispute about what, in canonical and theological terms, constituted the ‘community of saints’ and what in this context was meant as truth. Therefore, interventions about the lives of saints, their miracles, and deeds could not be made based on learned knowledge but had to be approved by the Curia. This means that any revision of such a hagiographic knowledge had to be validated by an act of law, promulgated by the Church 2 For the impact of Catholic historiography see Ditchfield, Liturgy, pp. 17–67, and Fiska et al., ‘Historia als Kultur’, pp. 5 and 9–10. On historiography within a specific Catholic res publica literaria see Benz, Zwischen Tradition, pp. 526–539. See also Donato in this volume. 3 On the signif icance of the saints, see Ditchf ield, Liturgy, p. 14, and Gotor, I beati, esp. pp. 335–356. See also Emich’s chapter in this volume. 4 See Gotor, I beati, pp. 127–253 and 285–418. See also Papa, Le cause, pp. 57, 61–63.

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as normative authority: Rome’s reluctance to leave this task to the learned world and its methodological tools of self-improvement was, thus, one crucial strategy to establish and institutionalize its theological supremacy. In this light, it does not surprise that the methodological hallmark of early modern historiography as a learned practice and its insistence on the verifiability of evidence and the reality of the written word were of little importance to the Roman Curia.5 It also makes sense that both the Curia and many of its Catholic opponents—including the Gallican bishop Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet—rejected this critical method.6 This attitude was justified by the assumption that critically oriented historiography could be seen as an attack on the traditions of a Church that believed itself founded on apostolic and divine authority.7 The Congregation of the Index regarded the Acta Sanctorum—authored by the so-called Bollandists—as constituting just such an attack. This particular interpretation of the Acta Sanctorum led in the 1690s to endless debates within the congregation on whether to forbid all volumes of this work. The work of the Antwerp Jesuits necessarily affected questions of orthodox practice in everyday life since it challenged the authenticity of certain saints, thus potentially interfering with the Church’s liturgy and the feast days of the saints in question. The constitutive element of the Bollandists’ work was the zeal with which they collated and compared disparate, widely dispersed sources, and solely on this basis issued judgments on the authenticity of hitherto unrecognized event correlations. Their sound knowledge of sources was grounded in the order’s widespread network and a willingness throughout Europe to supply them with so far unknown source materials.8 Yet it was precisely this work method, with its broad reference to sources, that caused the Congregation of the Index to accuse the Bollandists of heresy. The source material necessarily came from a range of ‘local churches’. The networking with the remotest places of the Catholic world and the unique 5 The Catholic Church only accepted the historically critical method and the contingency of history confirmed by it in the Second Vatican Council: see Klapczynski, Katholischer Historismus, p. 11. 6 Jean-Louis Quantin traces a similar attitude in Bossuet, who, while unequivocally welcoming the critical method, distances himself from it whenever it generates discord: see Quantin, ‘Bossuet’, p. 102. For an understanding of historiography as an academic pursuit, see Zedelmaier and Mulsow, ‘Einleitung’, pp. 1–3. 7 On this Tridentine concept of tradition, see Wiedenhöfer, ‘Zur Entwicklung’, p. 33. For the definition of the concept of tradition after the Council of Trent, in the sense of oral apostolic tradition, see Wiedenhöfer, ‘Tradition’, pp. 625–626. 8 Sawilla, Antiquarianismus, pp. 632–673; Daub, Auf Heiliger Jagd, pp. 7–10; Friedrich, Die Jesuiten, p. 325.

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capacity of collecting previously unknown sources exemplify the innovative nature of the Bollandists’ work. However, it was precisely here that they stood in apparent contradiction to the Congregation of the Index, which regarded the sources from the Vatican archives as the only authorized material. In some situations, the Bollandists were even able to revise, reinterpret, and rewrite unknown parts of history with the new sources unearthed outside Rome. Consequently, the Curia considered such academic methods as an attack on the Roman prerogative to interpret material on the saints, making any deviation from the standard history of events attempted heresy.9 The Acta Sanctorum is only one example of many works—classified in Rome as ‘histories of the local churches’ (ecclesiae particulares)10—that significantly contributed to the consolidation of disparate Catholic identities in seventeenth-century Europe.11 After all, historiographic works enjoyed a wide readership, and they were not only discussed in hermetically closed academic circles but—if written in vulgar—also read by less educated people.12 In order to assert the truth of events and to verify the factual authenticity of the sources quoted, such historical works often dared to critically question given evidence. In so doing, their authors developed an interpretational prerogative that strengthened their argument against the Curia’s efforts to bring historical truth in line with Catholic dogma. Daniel Papebroch (1628–1714), the central figure in the group of Bollandists, made public his criticism of Roman interference in his work methods and the concomitant censorship of his writings. He exposed his curial censors, then offering them advice on passages in his work that he believed worthy of censure.13 He both publicly advised the cardinals on overlooked heretical passages in his works and alleged they were led astray by the incompetency of the Spanish Inquisition, thus disqualifying them from any decision-making authority whatsoever.14 9 From the lecture of the secretary of the Congregation of the Index delivered before the assembled cardinals on 10 December 1697: see acdf, Index Prot. K3, fol. 94r. 10 One encounters this expression in the documents of the Congregation of the Index; for example, in the discussions regarding the prohibition of the Acta Sanctorum: acdf, Index Prot. K3, fol. 97v. 11 On the significance of the relationship between ecclesiastical and national history with respect to Italy, see Ditchfield, Liturgy, pp. 328–356. Backus and Pohlig remain essential reading on this question: see Backus, Historical Method, and Pohlig, Zwischen Gelehrsamkeit, pp. 496–513. 12 On the readership of novelistic historiographic works, see Mazauric, ‘L’histoire’, p. 119, and Berger, ‘Genres bâtards’, p. 300. 13 Papebroch wrote it also in a memoriale to the Congregation of the Index: acdf, Index Prot. H3, fol. 235v. 14 acdf, Index Prot. H3, fols. 234r–235v.

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Jean Mabillon (1632–1707), Papebroch’s occasional opponent in academic disputes and one-time welcome guest in the Eternal City, also had no wish to subordinate himself to the norms of Roman censorship. He refused to withhold his work from publication. Yet, out of fear that he would be forced to oppose officially sanctioned knowledge, he decided to publish it anonymously. The universally recognized leading figures of Catholic scholarship were not alone in trying to impose their learned opinion over the decisions of curial authorities. Étienne Baluze (1630–1718) also threw his academic weight behind attempts to prevent the threatened censorship of the Acta Sanctorum, writing to his friend, Cardinal Girolamo Casanate, powerful librarian of the Biblioteca Vaticana, to demand that proceedings against the Bollandists be halted in consideration of their importance for the Catholic cause and the academic world in general. Tragically, or perhaps ironically, he did so precisely on the day before his own book was proscribed by the Congregation of the Index.15 In any case, these disagreements between mostly non-Roman scholars on the one hand and curial officials on the other mirrored different considerations of learning: they both served different hierarchies—academic and sacral—and were thus committed to different intra- (and up to a certain level also extra-) Catholic traditions of thought. While many Catholic scholars took the religious orders to which they belonged, their secular rulers, religiopolitical movements, and occasionally the res publica literaria as points of reference in constructing their positions within Catholicism, in post-Tridentine Rome such self-perceptions were necessarily seen as polysemy that had to be suppressed. However, the usual instruments of power, i.e. censorship, inspired only unrest and not a lasting solution: additional options had therefore to be found. One solution might have been to commission an official version of history, a quasi-master narrative accredited by Rome. After all, the European royal houses had employed this medium for their ends for some time.16 Since the last third of the sixteenth century, however, the Curia had made no effort to assign an official, centrally authorized and financed historiography. To maintain its position as the sole judge of Catholic truth, the Curia had to be careful not to respond to historical works, lest it be drawn into a dispute and seen as just one voice among many. An official Roman historiography 15 Baluze’s letter to Casanate was partly edited by Maria d’Angelo. See d’Angelo, Il cardinale Girolamo Casanate, pp. 199–203. 16 Especially for the French court see Grell, ‘Les historiographes’. For the signif icance of historiography in setting the stage for political action, see Völkel, ‘Clio bei Hofe’, p. 16.

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would, on the one hand, have run the risk of defeat by such articulate and reputable opponents as the writers of the Acta Sanctorum. On the other, a too detailed historical record might have caused difficulties for later curial positions, should these be at variance with the current state of knowledge. In the final analysis, this reticence was an elegant way to avoid the likelihood of methodologically contingent conflicts for the foreseeable future, and thus charges of heresy like those levelled at the Acta Sanctorum. Nevertheless, Catholic authors continued to publish books that threatened to disturb the equanimity of accepted Roman truths. Although Roman censorship put them on the index of forbidden books, numerous readers continued to use them, regardless of whether these books were officially forbidden. To a certain degree, the circle of the readers of historiographical works corresponded with the circle of the faithful targeted by the Church. Just as with the necessity of presenting the Church as the universal authority, this pastoral dimension required practices that corresponded to traditional methods of control and discipline, such as censorship, because the aim was to create a climate of fear to discourage reading, turning readers into believers.17 Censorship worked in the reading public’s lower echelons, amongst those with little education, who, beyond being able to read, possessed little—and indeed no academic—learning. This method was however unsuitable for the learned elites: what Rome held to be the truth had to be communicated to the learned world in credible terms. Scholars had to be convinced!

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2. Ignoring, Overwriting, and Deleting the Opponent In order to undermine the credibility of forbidden books, it made sense for Rome to take a stand and wage cultural wars through well-targeted press campaigns. However, Rome’s self-image as supreme judicial authority did not permit it to engage in the ‘public arena’ of scholarly dispute.18 The Curia refrained from officially entrusting scholarly defenders of the Church creed with evidence against dissenting voices. Some of the Roman bureaucrats feared that the curial claim to centrality, universality, and judicial preeminence would have been questioned if they had publicly made themselves 17 Fragnito, Proibito capire, pp. 232–259. See also Paolin, ‘Bibelleserinnen zwischen Schweigen und Wort’, esp. pp. 243–244. For a basic reading see Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza, esp. pp. 103–116. 18 See Badea, ‘Deutungshoheit’, esp. pp. 101–104.

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a party. Therefore, Rome resorted to generating supposedly spontaneous defences of its truth: in the seventeenth century, at times, members of the Curia repeatedly published secretly commissioned confutations. Such assigned authors presented the arguments as their own and were only rewarded by their respective commissioners if they were successful. The confutation had long been used as an instrument for discrediting opponents, even for excluding them entirely from the interpretive community.19 In the following pages, we will see how these secretly commissioned confutations were connected with the hope of Roman bureaucrats to impose their views not only as true but as the only possible ones.

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2.1. Sarpi’s Challenge The first example concerns the History of the Council of Trent (1619) by the Venetian Servite Paolo Sarpi (1552–1623).20 This work was not merely a critique of Rome’s structural power grab in the Catholic world since the Middle Ages. It first of all intended to desacralize the ecclesiastical order created by the papacy, an order that understood and staged itself as directly stemming from God’s will. What is more, the book explicitly took a stance against the idea of the Curia as an entity that, albeit constantly changing in terms of personnel, was moving on a metaphysically prescribed path. Sarpi took up this image of a predetermined course, stripped it of its metaphysical (or theological) dimension, and demonstrated in his account of the Council of Trent the effectiveness of the structures created by Rome to strengthen its power.21 The assumption by ultramontanist researchers that Sarpi’s book struck Rome like a thunderbolt, occasioning the Curia’s forty years of terrified inertia and silence because not a single supporter of Rome in the whole of Europe dared to react to it, is—on closer examination of the records—untenable. Indeed, the records tell another story, one that narrates how Sarpi’s book triggered forty years of agitated silence and quiet activity behind closed doors, manifested not only in the supervision of several refutations and answers but paradoxically also in the persecution and suppression of even the smallest critical reaction.22 19 With reference to Thomas F. Gieryn’s concept of ‘boundary work’, this aspect is very clearly explained in Rexroth, ‘Praktiken’, pp. 13–14 and 24–27. 20 See Pietro Soave Polano [Sarpi], Historia. 21 See in this respect Peter Burke’s relativization of the Annales school as the first to challenge the histoire événementielle. Burke sees Guicciardini and Sarpi as the first historiographers in whose work the beginnings of a structural history are discernible: Burke, ‘Structural History’, pp. 71–72. 22 See Infelise, ‘Che di lui’, p. 356. See also Badea, ‘Deutungshoheit’, pp. 92–94 and 98–100.

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Cardinal Francesco Barberini (1597–1679), nephew of Urban VIII, oversaw discrediting Sarpi on the scholarly level. He did this by trying to involve Roman historiographers in such a way that there would be a single (Roman-accepted) answer to Sarpi in the end. Therefore, it was necessary to stop all other forms of scholarly engagement with Sarpi’s criticism and to keep under control all authors that aimed at responding to his challenge. Pursuing this aim, Barberini neutralized and defamed the continuator of Caesar Baronius’s Annales Ecclesiastici, the Dominican Abraham Bzovius (1567–1637). Though the latter was generally considered to be Paul V’s chosen successor to Baronius, he stood in the way of Barberini’s plans for an effective response to Sarpi’s conciliar history.23 Barberini’s animosity towards Bzovius appears to have been prompted by the celerity with which the latter continued work on the Annales, soon reaching the sixteenth century and thus the Council of Trent. Barberini, however, had already decided—whether or not in consultation with his uncle is unclear—that the only sanctioned refutation should be composed under his direction and written by the Jesuit Terenzio Alciati (1570–1651), this being the reason he allowed Alciati access to the necessary files while denying it to other curial scholars.24 In turn, Barberini had Bzovius closely watched by inquisitors and nuncios to prevent him from publishing his own books. Over time, his papal printing privileges were withdrawn, and the campaign of defamation against him proved so enduring that his works were revised and issued by other authors in the following years. Alciati died in 1651 without completing his refutation, so the task was passed on within the Society of Jesus to Francesco Maria Sforza Pallavicino (1607–1667).25 Efforts to protect Alciati and later Pallavicino as sole editors of this material affected the Curia’s entire sphere of influence. For instance, the Inquisition denied the poet Scipione Errico (1592–1670) permission to print his Censura theologica et historica against Sarpi’s history; he finally had his book published in Dillingen. In the case of the theologian and lawyer Filippo Quorli, in 1661, the Holy Office went so far as to explicitly order the local inquisitor to stop his book going to press, citing the imminent publication of Pallavicino’s work.26 The protonotary Paolo Pirano from Pesaro suffered a similar fate, told by the Roman Inquisition on 19 June 1656 to withhold 23 See Kraus, ‘Annales Ecclesiastici’, pp. 255–256. 24 Bauer, ‘Writing the History’, pp. 4–5. 25 Bauer, ‘Writing the History’, p. 5. 26 See Errico, Censura, and Quorli, Historia. For the inquiry in the Quorli case, see the letter of the Angeli of 14 January 1661 to the Holy Office: acdf, S.O., Tituli librorum 1658–1664, fols. 345r–v and 348v.

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his book from publication, as Sforza Pallavicino’s forthcoming book should be the only such work on the market.

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2.2. ‘nous n’avons point une Religion pour les Doctes & une Religion pour le Peuple’27 In 1698 the Benedictine monk Jean Mabillon wrote the Epistola de cultu sanctorum ignotorum. Here he showed that the Roman endeavour to pass off the mortal remains of the late ancient Christians buried in the catacombs as relics of martyrs—and to give them to transalpine churches for a fee—had no historical-factual basis. Through a historical-critical analysis of the archaeological finds, Mabillon insisted that the forty Christian martyrs documented in the fourth century were the only historically verifiable ones. The more than 14,000 additional bodies found mainly since the late sixteenth century belonged to Christians who died for various reasons.28 Rome, however, saw Mabillon’s reduction of the number of ‘authentic’ martyrs as a fundamental attack on the Church and its practices of administration. The refutations of Mabillon’s bestseller, printed everywhere north of the Alps—though secretly commissioned by his opponents in Rome—defended not only the Congregation of Indulgences and Sacred Relics’ flourishing trade in relics of martyrs but, above all, the truth as propagated by the Church in Rome. After all, the early modern Roman Church legitimized itself both internally and externally through the blood of these thousands of martyrs; as quasi-endorsement of the blood of St. Peter, the blood of the martyrs authenticated Rome as the hub of the Catholic world and its doctrine as the only true form of Christianity.29 That all these human remains were really those of martyrs was commonly explained, on the one hand, by the presence of vials, identified as ampules of blood, in the graves and, on the other, by the ornamentation of the graves. Yet in his Iter Italicum from 1687 Mabillon questioned the generally assumed link between grave ornamentation and the deceased’s cause of death. He analysed these typical elements in the Epistola de cultu sanctorum ignotorum, specifically the palm branch, the cross, and the vials, and proved that all 27 Anon. [Mabillon], Traduction, p. 14. 28 The multiplication of the forty Roman martyrs listed for the fourth century to the 14,700 listed in the account of the overzealous disciple of Bosio, Paolo Aringhi, in 1651, is discussed by Johnson, ‘Holy Fabrications’, p. 279. 29 Ditchfield, ‘Historia Magistra Sanctitatis’.

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the graves in the catacombs were indeed Christian, but none of the bodies could be assumed to be the mortal remains of a martyr.30 Mabillon’s approach was by no means new for the learned community: he was not the first to cast doubt on the martyrs’ identity. Immediately after the discovery of the catacombs in the late sixteenth century, Antonio Bosio (1575–1629) had already reached the same conclusion, but in the following years the Curia’s politically motivated decisions helped overwrite his work. Consequently, Mabillon was well aware that the opposition to his thesis about the martyrs was strong in the Curia. Hence, it did not come as a surprise that even scholars close to him, such as Antonio Magliabechi (1633–1714), defended the idea of a true Church authenticated with the blood of martyrs.31 After all, the Curia had already recognized 14,700 saints. Most of them were housed as dearly purchased relics in the churches of southern Germany, Switzerland, and Spain. The Maurist’s numerous purple-robed friends sought to warn him and discourage him from publishing his book. He had already sent it to some of them for review, including Leandro Colloredo (1639–1709), a cardinal of the Congregation of the Index. Colloredo tried to stop the publication of the book. Although he was unable to reach this goal, he at least succeeded in minimizing the damage: Mabillon dropped his planned dedication to Colloredo.32 Even the powerful Casanate, named Prefect of the Congregation of the Index in 1698, could not to talk the Maurist out of publishing.33 Mabillon himself saw the problem neither in disagreement over the historical events relating to the martyrs, nor in presenting facts at odds with Rome’s interpretation of them. He was quite willing to debate these issues in scholarly circles. In his view, universality remained the kernel of the Catholic faith: within the Church there was no room for a hierarchization of esoteric and exoteric circles and different interpretive communities, based on scholastic criteria. Since scholars and so-called ‘simples’ had access to—or were forbidden to read—the same books, Mabillon saw no way of separating scholarly discourse on the historicity of the martyrs from the pastoral care based on it.

30 See [Mabillon], Traduction, p. 9. See also Ferrua, ‘Introduzione’, pp. xviii–xix. Current summary in Herklotz, ‘Wie Jean Mabillon’, above all pp. 196–198. 31 Mabillon worried about this in a letter to Magliabecchi of 15 May 1698, Correspondance, p. 7. For the novelty of the content see Herklotz, ‘Antonio Bosio’, p. 98. 32 Reusch, Der Index, p. 592. 33 Claude Estiennot de la Serrée conveyed Casanate’s request to Mabillon on 18 February 1698: see Ouvrages posthumes, p. 309.

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To him, the fact that simple believers and scholars were equals as readers of the same book was the stumbling block to his academic work.34 He thus highlighted the incompatibility of scholarly knowledge and orthopraxis: the latter made it impossible to hold differing opinions and engage discursively with human knowledge, not least because in the free exchange of ideas there was a danger that less educated people might misunderstand him. Mabillon made clear his positions in the introduction to his French translation of his Epistola, because friends, principally Casanate protected him.35 Accordingly, it at first seemed impossible to take institutional steps against the Maurist. Filing a complaint against the book was impossible: The secretary of the Congregation of the Index would have had to present such a complaint before the cardinals, obtaining permission to start proceedings against the book. In that case, there would have been too many of Mabillon’s friends among the congregation’s cardinals. Mabillon’s exchange of letters with the Roman Procurator General of the Maurists, Claude Estiennot de la Serrée (1639–1699), indicates that certain factions in Rome had nevertheless prepared a refutation of the Epistola, apparently to be published in Cologne, but that most of those who had seen it considered it unpolished and hardly worth the effort of reading.36 However, the Réponse de Théophile français à la letter du prétendu Eusèbe only pretended to be published in Cologne, but was actually composed by the prominent French Jesuit Jean Hardouin and printed in Paris.37 Hardouin’s attacks were sharp, and although Casanate had tried to dissuade Mabillon from further disputing and thus drawing additional public attention to himself, the latter composed a vindication, even as his book was being translated into several languages.38 The response to this vindication, published in turn in Rome in 1700, bore the printing licence of the Master of the Sacred Palace and had a huge impact on Roman opinion of Mabillon’s book.39 All this hinted at Mabillon’s slowly worsening situation, also because Casanate died in March of that year, and in the following session of the 34 [Mabillon], Traduction, p. 14: ‘Voilà dit-on, Mr., des observations & des doutes qu’il faudroit cacher aux simples, crainte de les scandaliser, & moy je tiens, Monsieur, que c’est à faire aux Payens d’éloigner le peuple des Misteres: Ces déguisemens n’appartiennent qu’à de fausses Religions, nous n’avons point une Religion pour les Doctes & une Religion pour le Peuple.’ 35 See d’Angelo, Il cardinale Girolamo Casanate, p. 103. 36 See Estiennot to Mabillon on 1 July 1698: Correspondance, p. 9. 37 Anon. [Hardouin], Réponse. See also Herklotz, ‘Wie Jean Mabillon’, p. 214. 38 Correspondance, pp. 14–19 and 41. See also Herklotz, ‘Wie Jean Mabillon’, pp. 213–216. 39 See Bernard de Montfaucon (1655–1741) to Magliabechi on 12 June 1700: Correspondance, p. 94. See also Reusch, Der Index, p. 593, and Herklotz, ‘Wie Jean Mabillon’, p. 216.

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Congregation of the Index, charges were brought against his book. It entailed a cumbersome procedure lasting five years. At the end of this process, an agreement was made between the congregation and the Benedictine to reprint his reviewed work in order to avoid censorship. 40 Even though Sarpi and Mabillon occupied differing ideological and intellectual standpoints vis-à-vis Rome, they were nevertheless both Catholic writers. They originated from different contexts of a Catholicism that could hardly be called homogeneous, within which Rome’s structural authority and claim to the guardianship of ecclesiastical (and historical) truth was continually being called into question. Yet the Curia was not just any interpretive community within early modern Catholicism; it was its head office, constantly legitimizing itself anew. Examples of such efforts at legitimation are the congregations created since the sixteenth century. Thus, the Curia and the various petitioners constantly reaffirmed themselves as centre and periphery through these interrelationships. 41 Against this background, in both these cases the dicasteries responsible for censorship merely succeeded in eradicating in legal terms the learning propagated by these authors. Sarpi’s book ultimately landed on the Index in the very year of its initial publication, while Mabillon’s book received rough treatment, being secretly indexed for a time as donec corrigatur—until presentation of a corrected version. 42 Their dissemination via the printing press could nevertheless not be halted.

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2.3. Marco Antonio de Dominis and the Commissioning of Confutations The practice of secretly commissioning confutations directed not only at historiography but at every academic discipline will be briefly illustrated in a closing example. The writer in question was a very close friend of the above-mentioned Servite Paolo Sarpi, namely Marco Antonio de Dominis (1560–1624), who, amongst his other achievements, was the first publisher of Sarpi’s Historia del Concilio di Trento. When he was Archbishop of Split, before fleeing to England, De Dominis had already articulated anti-Roman sentiments. Many of these found their 40 Herklotz, ‘Wie Jean Mabillon’, pp. 217–222. 41 This mutual affirmation through administrative performance is treated by Boute, Academic Interests, pp. 221–311 and 487–583. 42 On the indexing of Sarpi’s book, see the entry of 18 November 1619 in the Index’s diary: acdf, Index, Diari 2, fols. 178v–179r. On Mabillon, see acdf, Index, Diari 13, fols. 15r–v, 19v–20r, 34v–35v, and 67v.

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way into his De republica ecclesiastica. The book is decidedly episcopalistic, taking up a position against the papacy and for the rights of temporal rulers in Church politics. During his flight to England in the summer of 1616, he printed a summary of this work in Heidelberg, accompanied by a declaration of his leaving the Church of Rome, under the title De causis profectionis suae. 43 Only two months later, both works were so well known in Rome that the Assessor of the Holy Office submitted them for investigation to the Congregation of the Index on 11 November 1616. 44 Six days later, the Venetian Inquisition started a trial for heresy against De Dominis. It is noteworthy that although De Dominis as a person became the case of the Inquisition, his books had been forwarded to the subordinate congregation, namely the Congregation of the Index. Probably the inquisitors tried to make as little trouble as possible around him, even though they had classified him as a heretic. As a matter of fact, the Congregation of the Index ordered to make public the prohibition of De Dominis’s book not in an individual ban but together with other works. 45 The bando with its now nine titles was immediately printed and dated 12 November. 46 This was indeed a resolute step; yet, considering De Dominis’s fame and his influential contacts, including the King of England, it was insufficient. After all, the former bishop’s affair was not simply about the dissemination of unacceptable knowledge but, more seriously, it challenged the unity of the Church. For De Dominis had turned his back on Rome—thus above all playing into the hands of James I—loudly and clearly calling Roman credibility into question. Prominent apostates or even converts were extremely valuable trophies to be won or lost in the interconfessional battle over the true faith. 47 Additional measures had to be found to thoroughly discredit the works and their author—to destroy the credibility and integrity of the apostate archbishop. Accordingly, only a short time afterwards, on 5 January 1617, several directives were issued to the nuncios by the Holy Office to search out volunteers to refute in particular De republica ecclesiastica. 48 43 Cavazza, ‘Marco Antonio de Dominis’, p. 452. 44 acdf, Index Prot. B, fols. 99v–100r. The fact that Cavazza erroneously cites 12 November is due to the time lapse between the issuing of the decree and of the bando. 45 acdf, Index Prot. B, fols. 99v–100r. 46 acdf, Index Prot. V, fols. 46r–v. 47 The foundational work on this is Völkel, ‘Individuelle Konversion’; for the Protestant part see also Cavarzere, ‘Das Papsttum’, p. 157. 48 acdf, S.O., Decreta 1617 (25), fols. 429 and 485.

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Three of the six cardinals who, as members of the Congregation of the Index, had banned De Dominis’s books in November 1616 finally decided on 26 April 1618 to commission scholars from the theological faculties of Paris and Leuven to compose refutations. At the University of Leuven, Charles Robaulx, Professor of Philosophy, seized this opportunity to end his university’s longstanding dispute with the Holy See by accommodating the latter’s wish for a refutation. Subsequently, texts composed in Leuven were sent to Rome, where Cardinal Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621) and the Dominican Desiderio Scaglia (1567–1639) edited them and sent them back to Leuven. The internuncio thus sought to cover up any connection between the directives issued in January regarding the commissioning of confutations and Robaulx’s offer. 49 In this, as always, the Curia insisted on discretion; nobody should know that Roman cardinals occasioned the reaction of the Leuven scholars to De Dominis’s works—or were actually orchestrating them.50 It is unclear to what degree the Catholic world at least suspected or even had definitive knowledge of such secret commissions. In any case, in 1685 French scholar Pierre-Valentin Faydit (1644–1709) sought to secure a living for his friend Antoine Varillas (1624–1696) by asking Secretary of State Alderano Cybo (1613–1700) whether it might be possible for Varillas’s polemic treatises on the history of Lutheranism and Calvinism to be financed by the Curia as a quasi-secret commission.51 It must be noted in passing that Faydit obviously had no scruples, in the middle of the regalia conflict between Innocent XI and Louis XIV, about having anti-Calvinist and unambiguously pro-Bourbon polemic financed by the Curia. It is thus very likely that Faydit’s inquiry was not particularly well thought out, inspired by a desperate need for cash. But regalia conflict and the rivalry between pope and king aside, at the end of the seventeenth century, it was scarcely conceivable that the Curia would, even secretly, indulge in interconfessional polemic. Though this was principally due to the post-Tridentine prohibition on participating in interconfessional disputes, it also involved the tacit admission that Rome’s own control over learning was limited. At the end of the seventeenth century the Index Congregation only concerned itself with other denominations when its members feared their opinion.52 49 See his note to the papal nephew of 15 December 1617: AAV, Fondo Borghese, II, 113, fol. 382r. 50 For the subject as a whole and its significance for Leuven interests, see Boute, Academic Interests, pp. 561–568. 51 Jovy, ‘Lettre’, pp. 466–469. 52 As in the session of the Congregation of the Index of 11 December 1697: acdf, Index Prot. K3, fol. 96v.

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Conclusion The Curia was aware that it was administrating plural interpretations of Catholicism and censorship could not be a ‘win-it-all’ solution. Consequently, Rome always participated indirectly in the production of learning whenever it was a case of refuting or, in the final analysis, eradicating undesirable learning or such as might endanger its own position. Historiography’s close ties to theology and law and its importance for both the present and the future made it necessary to keep a sharp eye on the discipline. Ultimately, however, all curial factions were extremely cautious in giving official interpretations of historical facts. Rome was to decide as a judge either for canonization or prohibition, or to informally influence authors in a certain direction, but the Curia itself had no historiographer. Thus, the Church escaped becoming its own research subject and identifying too closely with viewpoints that might later prove untenable. In such a case, the Curia would itself be exposed to outcomes over which it had no control as well as subjected to methodologies dictated by the republic of letters.

Bibliography Archival Sources

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Vatican City, Archivio Apostolico Vaticano (aav): Fondo Borghese, II, 113. Vatican City, Archivio della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede (acdf): Index, Diari 2 and 13. Index Prot. B, V, H3 an K3. S.O., Decreta 1617 (25). S.O., Tituli librorum 1640–1658 and 1658–1664.

Printed Sources Correspondance inédite de Mabillon et de Montfaucon avec l’Italie contenant un grand nombre de faits sur l’histoire religieuse et littéraire du 17e siècle suivie des lettres inédites du P. Quesnel à Magliabechi, bibliothecaire du grand duc de Toscane, Côme III, et au cardinal Noris accompagnée de Notices, d’Eclaireissements et d’une Table analytique, ed. by Antoine Claude Valery (Paris: Jules Labitte, 1847).

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Errico, Scipione, Censura Theologica Historica adversus Petri Soave Polani de Concilio Tridentino Pseudo-Historiam (Dillingae: apud Ignatium Mayer, 1654). Anon. [Hardouin, Jean], Réponse de Théophile français à la lettre du prétendu Eusèbe (Cologne [Paris]: C. Marteau, 1699). Anon. [Mabillon, Jean], Traduction de la lettre d’Eusèbe Romain a Theophile François, sur le culte des saints inconnus (Paris: chez Jean Mousier, 1698). Ouvrages posthumes de D. Jean Mabillon et de D. Thierri Ruinart, Benedictins de la congregation de Saint Maur I, ed. by Vincent Thuillier (Paris: Chez François Babuty, Jean-François Josse et Antoine-Claude Biasson, 1724). Polano, Soave Pietro [Paolo Sarpi], Historia del Concilio Tridentino. Nella quale si scoprono tutti gl’artificii della Corte di Roma, per impedire che né la verità di dogmi si palesasse, né la riforma del papato, & della Chiesa si trattasse (Londra: Appresso Giovan Billio, 1619). Quorli, Filippo, Historia Concilii Tridentini Petri Suavis Polani ex avctorismet assertionibus confutata […] (Panormi: Apud Augustinum Bossio 1661).

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Sawilla, Jan Marco, Antiquarianismus, Hagiographie und Historie im 17. Jahrhundert. Zum Werk der Bollandisten. Ein wissenschaftshistorischer Versuch (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2009). Völkel, Markus, ‘Individuelle Konversion und die Rolle der famiglia. Lukas Holstenius (1596–1661) und die deutschen Konvertiten im Umkreis der Kurie’, Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken, 67 (1987), 221–281. ———, ‘Clio bei Hofe. Einleitende Überlegungen zum Hof als Produktionsstätte von Geschichtsschreibung’, in Historiographie an europäischen Höfen (16.–18. Jahrhundert). Studien zum Hof als Produktionsort von Geschichtsschreibung und historischer Repräsentation, ed. by Markus Völkel and Arno Strohmeyer (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2009), pp. 9–35. Wassilowsky, Günther, ‘Das Konzil von Trient und die katholische Konfesionskultur. Zur Einführung’, in Das Konzil von Trient und die katholische Konfessionskultur (1563–2013), ed. by Peter Walter and Günther Wassilowsky (Münster: Aschendorff, 2016), pp. 1–30. ———, ‘The Myths of the Council of Trent and the Construction of Catholic Confessional Culture’, in The Council of Trent: Between Trent, Rome and Wittenberg, vol. 1, ed. by Wim François and Violet Soen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018), pp. 69–98. ———, ‘Was ist Katholische Konfessionskultur?’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, 109 (2018), 402–412. Wiedenhöfer, Siegfried, ‘Zur Entwicklung des frühneuzeitlichen Traditionsverständnisses’, Zeitsprünge. Forschungen zur Frühen Neuzeit, 1 (1997), 23–38. ———, ‘Tradition’, in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politischsozialen Sprache in Deutschland, ed. by Otto Brunner et al., 7 vols. (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1972–1997), VI, pp. 607–650. Zedelmaier, Helmut and Mulsow, Martin, ‘Einleitung’, in Die Praktiken der Gelehrsamkeit in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Helmut Zedelmaier and Martin Mulsow (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2001), pp. 1–7.

About the Author Andreea Badea is a researcher in early modern history at the GoetheUniversity of Frankfurt am Main. She has published on the history of knowledge, historiography, censorship, and Catholicism. Her latest publications include the co-edited volume Catholic Missionaries in Early Modern Asia. Patterns of Localization (2019).

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8. Heresy and Error in the Assessment of Modern Philosophical Psychology Leen Spruit

Abstract This chapter tackles three issues: (1) how was Catholic psychological orthodoxy set in a battle against pagan philosophies and heterodox Christian doctrine in antiquity and the Middle Ages; (2) how was it reset in early modern times in the battle against the ‘re-born’ heresies; (3) how did censors reply to the conflation of scholastic psychology with new philosophical and scientific findings? After the Council of Trent, the Roman Catholic Church launched a campaign against early modern alternatives to or criticisms of the scholastic building of learning, including its psychological section. Although Catholic censors assumed orthodox truth claims over or against non-scholastic views, there were also processes of mutual interaction, adaptation, and framing between the Church and early modern psychology.

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Keywords: censorship, early modern psychology, creationism, traducianism, heresy, heterodoxy

In the examination of philosophy and science, as in other disciplines, Catholic censorship did not develop separate formal criteria to inventory, label, and evaluate possibly heterodox opinions.1 Psychology, however, was one of the very few disciplinary areas of natural philosophy where the orthodoxy of texts or propositions could be tested with the help of the same scriptural traditions of Christianity as theology. In their investigations, the Roman censors were guided by Bible texts, Council decrees, by bulls and edicts of popes and bishops, by authoritative views of the Fathers and of 1

See Baldini and Spruit, Catholic Church and Modern Science, I, Introduction, Section 2.5.

Badea, A., B. Boute, M. Cavarzere, S. Vanden Broecke (eds.), Making Truth in Early Modern Catholicism. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021 doi 10.5117/9789463720526_ch08

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medieval and later schoolmen, by ancient, medieval, and contemporary repertoria of heretical views, and finally by medieval and early modern inquisitorial manuals. In the rhetoric and imagery of the early modern Catholic bodies of doctrinal control, the presence of dissent was frequently framed as a threat to the identity and purity of faith, especially in an area that, involving the essential nature of the human soul, went straight to the heart of the Church’s pastoral concerns. Thus, doctrinal deviation was most literally depicted with strong medical and biological imagery (plague, disease, sickness, infection). The battle was also fought with doctrinal conceptions imbued with an equally strong rhetorical value. To deter actual and possible followers of heterodox views, the latter were frequently qualified with the labels of ancient and medieval heresies. In this chapter, I attempt to reconstruct some methodological basic lines of Catholic censorship of early modern psychology. Therefore, in the first section I discuss the rise of orthodoxy in matters psychological, analysing how Catholic orthodoxy was discursively set in a battle against pagan philosophies and heterodox Christian doctrine in antiquity and the Middle Ages. After the Council of Trent in 1563, the newly founded Congregations of the Inquisition and the Index started a fresh battle against ‘re-born’ heresies and new challenges, also in matters psychological. The second section traces the use of traditional labels in the assessments of the psychological views of some contemporary philosophers whose works were extensively analysed by censors of the Roman bodies of doctrinal control. The focus is on Francesco Giorgio, Girolamo Cardano, and Francesco Patrizi, because in their books they put forth views in open or veiled conflict with Catholic doctrine that were intimately rooted in complex theoretical systems, forcing the censors to tackle highly problematic issues. Subsequently, seventeenth-century philosophers and scientists formulated radical alternatives to orthodox psychology from variegated points of view, ranging from dualism to materialism and atomism. Some philosophers and physicians re-invoked the Platonic idea of a world soul or ‘returned’ to traducianism (the transmission of the soul through the seed), while mechanical and corpuscular philosophy pushed other authors to abandon the scholastic view of the soul as a form that is present in the whole body (in toto corpore) and completely in every part of the body (tota in qualibet parte corporis). Many of these authors were devout Catholics, identified as such in censorship reports;2 their works often displayed a conflation of Catholic 2 Cf. for instance the reference to ‘Catholic atomists’ in Lorenzo Brancati di Lauria’s censure (11 August 1675) of Pissini’s Rerum Naturalium Doctrina, acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, O 3 f, Nr. 7,

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lore with new philosophical and scientific findings. In the third section I discuss the varied replies of the Roman censors to a selection of these newly arisen heterodox psychological developments, underpinning the interaction between orthodox normative machinery and heterodox challenges, as they often develop simultaneously. Thus, I intend to individuate a range of practices of denying and adapting, of rejection and appropriation, in sum of a dynamic coexistence or network of canon, censorship, and heterodoxy in which lines of demarcation are not always sharply drawn.

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1. The Quest for an ‘Orthodox’ Psychology in Antiquity and the Middle Ages Orthodox psychology slowly developed over the centuries and its scholastic version can be synthesized as follows. The intellect, which is one with the sensitive and vegetative principle, is the form of the body. This was defined as a doctrine of faith by the Council of Vienne in 1311. The human soul is a substance, but an incomplete substance, i.e. it has a natural aptitude and exigency for existence in the body, in conjunction with which it makes up the substantial unity of human nature. Though connaturally related to the body, it is itself of an unextended and spiritual nature. At the dawn of the Renaissance, this is the Catholic doctrine on the nature, unity, substantiality, spirituality, and origin of the soul. It is a synthesis of several strands in earlier rival systems. With materialism, it recognizes the physical conditions of the soul’s activity; with dualism, it recognizes its spiritual aspect, while insisting on the vital unity of human life. Psychology was one of a very few disciplinary areas of natural philosophy where orthodoxy could be detected and judged on the basis of formal juridical grounds that slowly developed since the rise of Christianity. In their investigations, the Roman censors were guided by Bible texts, council decrees, by bulls and edicts of popes and bishops, by authoritative views of the Fathers and of medieval and later schoolmen, by ancient, medieval, and contemporary repertoria of heretical views, and finally by medieval and early modern inquisitorial manuals. For present purposes, I focus on the Bible, council decrees, repertoria, and inquisitorial manuals. The Bible texts on the human soul most frequently cited in Inquisition and Index investigations are without doubt those regarding the creation fols. 472r–475v. On similar accommodation practices from the authors’ point of view, see Steven Vanden Broecke’s contribution to this volume on Catholic Copernicanism.

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and animation of man in Genesis.3 In the councils of the Church of the first centuries, psychological issues emerged only occasionally. And yet, some decrees contain doctrinal views that exercised a noteworthy influence on later theorizing and on censorial investigations and assessments. For example, the First Council of Toledo (397–400) condemned the view that the human soul is a ‘portion’ of the divine substance. 4 The Second Council of Constantinople (553) condemned Origen’s (c. 185–253/254) view of the pre-existence of the human soul.5 Finally, the Fourth Council of Constantinople (869–870) deposed Photius (c. 820–891), and anathematized his teaching that there are two human souls, one spiritual and immortal, the other earthly and mortal.6 Under Innocent III, the Fourth Council of the Lateran (1215) rephrased the condemnation of the existence of two souls in man, and it emphasized again the essential composition of man as a bond of ‘spirit’ and ‘body’.7 The General Council of Vienne (1311–1312) condemned three points of Peter John Olivi’s (1248–1298) teachings, among which the manner in which the soul is united with the body. The Council established as Catholic doctrine that the intellectual soul is the form of the body, and thus it became impossible to follow Olivi’s lead in this matter.8 Subsequently, the papal bull Apostolici Regiminis, issued on 19 December 1513 during the Fifth 3 Gen. 1, 27: ‘Et creavit Deus hominem ad imaginem suam’; Gen. 2, 7: ‘Formavit igitur Dominus Deus hominem de limo terrae et inspiravit in faciem eius spiraculum vitae et factus est homo in animam viventem.’ 4 Sacrorum conciliorum, III, col. 1004: ‘Si quis dixerit, vel crediderit, animam humanam Dei portionem, vel Dei substantiam, anathema sit.’ Cf. Denzinger, Enchiridion, p. 76. 5 Sacrorum conciliorum, IX, cols. 395–396. 6 Sacrorum conciliorum, XVI, col. 403: ‘Cum vetus novaque testamenti doceat, unicam homini, eamque ratione et intelligentia pollentem, esse animam; eamdemque sententiam deiloquorum omnium patrum et doctorum ecclesiae doctrina confirmet; sunt tamen qui duas homini animas asserant, et quibusdam vitiosis ratiocinatiunculis suam haeresim stabiliant. Itaque sancta haec et oecumenica synodus hujus impietatis conditores, cum tota secta sua magna voce anathematizat. Qui vero posthac contraria dicere ausus fuerit, anathema esto.’ Cf. Denzinger, Enchiridion, pp. 219–220. 7 Sacrorum conciliorum, XXII, cols. 981–982: ‘Deus creator omnium ab initio temporis utrasque de nihilo condidit creaturas, spirituales, et corporales, Angelicas videlicet, et mundanas, et deinde humanas quasi communem ex spiritu et corpore constantem.’ Cf. Denzinger, Enchiridion, pp. 259–260. 8 Sacrorum conciliorum, XXV, col. 411: ‘Porro doctrinam omnem seu positionem temere asserentem, aut vertentem in dubium, quod substantia animae rationalis, aut intellectivae, vere ac per se humani corporis non sit forma, velut erroneam ac veritati catholicae fidem inimicam sacro approbante concilio reprobamus: definientes, ut si quisquam deinceps asserere, defendere eu tenere pertinaciter praesumpserit, quod anima rationalis seu intellectiva non sit forma homini per se, et essentialiter, tamquam haereticus sit censendus.’ Cf. Denzinger, Enchiridion, p. 284.

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Lateran Council, obliged university professors to defend Church doctrine, to clarify the truth of faith, and to demonstrate on philosophical grounds that the intellectual soul, the form of the body, is immortal. Further, the bull commanded the professors to correct and thoroughly refute suspect or heretical psychological views, in particular Averroist and Alexandrist psychology (the mortality and unicity of the soul), and the eternity of the world.9 The bull thus aimed to establish the appropriate way to teach philosophical doctrines, playing a major role in early modern censorship of philosophy.10 In his Contra octoginta haereses opus, Epiphanius (310/5–403) did not devote a separate section to psychological heresies.11 Nevertheless, he passingly mentioned the corporeality of the soul, its creation by angels, and its divine essence and transmigration. Psychological heterodoxy was also analysed in the compilations of the teachings which were condemned at Paris and Oxford in 1240, 1270, 1277, and 1284. The 1277 condemnation of Étienne Tempier (d. 1279), bishop of Paris, is probably the best-known list, but it is only one of the approximately sixteen lists of censured theses issued at the University of Paris during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The collection of Parisian articles acquired some kind of official status, and it was frequently printed as an appendix to editions of Peter Lombard’s Sentences. However, the 1277 list devoted most attention to issues regarding 9 Sacrorum conciliorum, XXXII, cols. 842–843: ‘Insuper omnibus et singulis philosophis in universitatibus studiorum generalium et alibi publice legentibus districte praecipiendo mandamus, ut quum philosophorum principia aut conclusiones in quibus a recta fide deviare noscuntur, auditoribus suis legerint seu explicaverint quale hoc est de animae mortalitate aut unitate et mundi aeternitate, ac alia huiusmodi, teneantur eisdem veritatem religionis christianae omni conatu manifestam facere et persuadendo pro posse docere, ac omni studio huiusmodi philosophorum argumenta, quum omnia solubilia existant, pro viribus excludere atque resolvere.’ Cf. Denzinger, Enchiridion, pp. 353–354. For discussion, see Constant, ‘A Reinterpretation’. 10 This bull was also quoted by the Protestant historian Georg Horn in his 1655 Historia philosophicae. Horn also reported that Pomponazzi, one of the main targets of this edict, taught in the University of Bologna with a ‘salary provided by the pope himself’; see Horn, Historia philosophicae, p. 313: ‘Sane P. Pomponatius, qui publicis stipendiis Pontif. Max. in Academia Bononiensi docuit, publice defendit animam hominis mortalem esse: cujus etiam extant impiae de Dei providentia deque Christi miraculis assertiones damnatae.’ Remarkably, this triggered a reaction by the Congregation for the Index, which, in the late 1650s, was preparing a new index of forbidden books (first edition 1664). In September 1657, the secretary proposed changing Rule II, which allowed the reading of books by heretics that did not treat de religione. He mentioned the case of Georg Horn, who, in his history of philosophy, ‘had falsely accused Leo X of entertaining the mortality of the soul’. Bishops and local inquisitors could have provided a reading licence for a similar book, possibly after a (too) hasty examination. See acdf, Index, Diari 6, pp. 84–97. 11 I used Epiphanius, Contra octuaginta.

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human psychology and cognition. Among the relevant theses, we find the mortality of the rational soul, the uniqueness of the intellect, the denial of the view that the soul is the form of the body, and innatism (self-knowledge as the basis of all further knowledge).12 Another important compilation of condemned views is in Giles of Rome’s (1243–1316) Errores philosophorum. In this work Giles argued that Averroes erred because he held that the intellect is numerically one in all, and because this view entailed that the intellect is not the form of the body. On this account, Averroes was forced to claim that man belongs to the species ‘man’ not through the intellective soul, but through the sensitive soul.13 Avicenna, on the other hand, erred because he held that our souls are produced by the lowest intelligence.14 Algazel, Giles adds, erred because he held that the human soul proceeds from the giver of forms.15 Together with other compilations, Giles’ work was an important source for Nicolau Eymeric (1320–1399) when he composed his Directorium Inquisitorum, which appeared in an extended, annotated edition by Francisco Peña (c. 1540–1612) in 1578.16 In question IV of the second part of the Directorium, Eymeric discussed the errors of the ‘ancient philosophers’, that is, Platonists, Stoics, Pythagoreans, Epicureans, and the Peripatetics, including the Arabs. In the introduction, he mentioned the following psychological deviations: the transmigration of souls, the soul’s remaining in the body for a period established by nature, the mortality of the soul, the divine nature of the soul (the pantheistic views of the mind as Deus lucidus, or else as Deus in omnibus), the ‘partial’ immortality of the soul, and the corporeality of the soul.17 Eymeric then passes first to the heresies and errors of Aristotle, which do not include psychological issues. By contrast, under the errores Averrois he lists the uniqueness of the intellect and the loose union between the latter and the human body.18 The errors of Avicenna include the production of human souls by the last of the celestial intelligences, the soul’s capability of influencing another body through imagination, and the natural. In the errors attributed to Algazel, the dator formarum or last (tenth) celestial intelligence occupies a central position: it produces the human soul, it confers 12 See in particular Articuli parisienses, pp. 571–576. 13 Giles of Rome, Errores philosophorum, p. 22. 14 Giles of Rome, Errores philosophorum, pp. 30 and 36. 15 Giles of Rome, Errores philosophorum, pp. 42–44. 16 Reprints followed in 1585, 1587, 1595, and 1607. 17 Eymeric, Directorium inquisitorum, p. 238. 18 Eymeric, Directorium inquisitorum, p. 239.

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perfect knowledge and thus beatitude on the soul, and both the embodied and separate soul suffer for its being separated from it.19 In his annotation on this section, Peña underlined that the pagan philosophers cannot be qualified as heretics, as they never professed Catholic faith. However, they entertained several views that contradict faith, and hence Tertullian qualified them as patriarchae haereticorum. Thus, the reading of their works requires caution. Eymeric most probably had Giles of Rome as his main source for the individual errors and heresies detected in pagan philosophers. In the following questions, Eymeric dwelled on the heresies condemned in the early Church (Gnostics, Origen and followers, Priscillianus, and Manicheans), and in the medieval period.20 Of the inquisitorial manualists, Alfonso de Castro (1495–1558), author of De iusta haereticorum punitione and Adversus omnes haereses,21 offered the most extensive discussion of deviations in matters psychological. He listed nine forms: the negation of the view that the soul is the form of the body; the identif ication of the ‘spiraculum quod Deus spiravit in Adam’ (Gen. 2, 7) with the soul; the creation of the soul before the body; the divine nature of the soul; the denial of the creation of the soul by God; the transmigration of vicious souls in demons; the mortality of the soul; the transmigration of the soul from one body to another; and the incarnation of the soul in the body as punishment for sins committed before the infusion.22 In addition, Gabriel Prateolus (Du Préau, 1511–1588) referred throughout his repertorium of heretics and heresies to views which, for the most part, were already detected by his predecessors: the denial that the intellectual soul is the form of the body, attributed to Peter John Olivi;23 the corporeality of the soul, attributed, inter alia, to Tertullian;24 the soul as made of God’s substance, attributed to several (sub-)sects of the Gnostics;25 the creation of the soul by the angels;26 transmigration, attributed to Manicheans and others;27 the mortality of the soul, partially (as the form of the body) or 19 Eymeric, Directorium inquisitorum, p. 239. 20 Eymeric, Directorium inquisitorum, pp. 242–250. 21 De Castro, De iusta (first edition: Salamanca 1547); and de Castro, Adversus omnes (first edition: Paris 1534). 22 De Castro, De iusta, fols. 55r–62v. 23 Du Préau, De vitis, p. 394b. 24 See Du Préau, De vitis, pp. 460b, 434a, 254a. 25 See Du Préau, De vitis, pp. 48b, 103a, 140b, 178a, 196a, 304a. 26 See Du Préau, De vitis, pp. 156b, 316a. 27 See Du Préau, De vitis, pp. 18a, 19a, 305b, 132b.

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completely (Sadduceans and others);28 and the denial of the existence of the soul.29 In his monumental De haeresi, Prospero Farinacci (1544–1618) adopted Castro’s classification, thus listing among the ‘psychological heresies’ the mortality of the soul, the identification of the soul with blood, the denial that the soul is the form of the body, traducianism (i.e. the transmission of the soul through the seed), the divine nature of the soul, the creation of the soul by the angels, metempsychosis, and the incarnation of the soul in the body as punishment for sins committed before the infusion (i.e. introduction of the soul into the body).30

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2. Early Modern Psychology under Fire: Heresies in SixteenthCentury Authors During the first centuries of Christianity, the need for an ‘orthodox’ psychology arose when early Christian authors engaged with contemporary philosophical culture. It became a crucial issue in the battle against Gnostic heresies and in the discussion about the transmission of original sin. Then, after the rediscovery of Aristotelian philosophy in the West, the spread of Arabic noetics caused long-lasting controversies. In the Renaissance, the Catholic Church was pressed to tackle still other challenges: the non-confessional ‘philosophical’ interpretations of Aristotle’s works by Italian philosophy professors, but also several views (proposed by Platonists and naturalist philosophers) on the origin of the human soul that were formulated as corrections of, or explicit alternatives to, scholastic psychology. Subsequently, modern seventeenth-century philosophers and scientists formulated radical alternatives to orthodox hylomorphism from variegated points of view, ranging from dualism to materialism and monism. In particular, mechanical philosophy, eliminating substantial forms, pushed many authors to abandon the scholastic view of the soul as a form that is present in the whole body (in toto corpore) and completely in every part of the body (tota in qualibet parte corporis). Finally, in the eighteenth century, French authors, including La Mettrie, Holbach, and Helvetius, developed a frontal overall attack on Christian views of man and his destiny. 28 See Du Préau, De vitis, pp. 481b, 83b, 205b, 424b. 29 See Du Préau, De vitis, p. 481b. 30 Farinacci, Tractatus, pp. 15 and 21.

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Early modern psychological heterodoxy was multifaceted, and it developed on different levels. In general, the intimate link between Aristotelian natural philosophy, metaphysics, and (natural) theology made non-Aristotelian views suspect and easily turned any criticism towards Aristotelian philosophy into an implicit attack against the logical possibility of the truths of faith and into a threat to the unity of the scholastic building of learning and culture. This intimate link entailed first of all a strenuous opposition to heterodox Aristotelian views; but it also touched Renaissance versions of Platonism, forms of naturalism and materialism, and in general all modern alternatives to hylomorphism. Furthermore, in the decennia following the closure of the Tridentine Council, the Church vigorously opposed views suggesting or openly proclaiming a distinction between biblical and philosophical truth.31 How did Catholic censors assess early modern non-Aristotelian psychology? The censor’s handling of the works of Girolamo Cardano (1501–1576), Francesco Giorgio (1466–1540), and Francesco Patrizi (1529–1597) provides important clues to answering this question. Central issues in the extensive censurae from the early 1570s of Girolamo Cardano’s works were the limits to, or denial of, free will32—a theme that, in the following decades, would emerge as a central bone of contention among Catholic theologians as well, exposing divisions that would shape early modern Catholicism throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Discussing the violent astral influence on the mind of politicians and rulers,33 an anonymous censor of Cardano’s commentary on Ptolemy’s Quadripartitum associated Cardano’s views not only with the necessity of ruling the human will in Calvin, but also with the heresy of Priscillianus and his ancient followers, and with the Manicheans condemned by Augustine in De gratia et libero arbitrio.34 The censor referred to the Council of Braga held in 563, which condemned Priscillianus.35 The errors of the followers of Priscillianus and Manicheus were also traced in another anonymous assessment of Cardano’s views on 31 See the letter by the Holy Office to a peripheral inquisitor (dated 13 February 1593) regarding an anonymous professor of philosophy in acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, Q 3 d, fol. 487r: ‘crede, che la verità contenuta nella vera filosofia sia contraria alla Verità […] della Sacra Scrittura, con altre interrogationi, che a lei pareranno necessarie, et opportune; et restando nelle stesse risposte fatte altre volte, Vostra Riverenza espedirà la sua causa, sospendendolo dalla lettura, et esercitio d’insegnare per spatio di tre anni, ma sopravenendo altro, et havendo qualche dubio, ne darà avviso.’ 32 Recent studies on Cardano include Girolamo Cardano and Grafton, Cardano’s Cosmos. 33 Cardano, In Cl. Ptolomaei, Preface. 34 acdf, Index, Prot. H (II.a.7), fols. 338r–v, 341r, 339r–340v; reproduced in Baldini and Spruit, Catholic Church and Modern Science, pp. 1120–1126. 35 See Sacrorum conciliorum, IX, cols. 774–780.

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Scripture and religion.36 In a similar vein, discussing a group of works that also included astrological materials, the censor Angelo Morelli referred to the views of the Stoics.37 José Esteve, author of the first examination of Francesco Giorgio’s In Sacram Scripturam problemata, traced in some passages a clear tendency to interpret the creation of human souls in terms of a productio, which could be viewed as the transmission of the soul through the seed. In consequence, Esteve proposed eliminating the entire section where Giorgio entertained the infusion of the individual souls by God,38 because that view implicitly denied the creation of souls in time.39 Also, the Pisan professor Giacomo Tavanti analysed in some detail Giorgio’s psychological views. 40 He condemned the creation of the soul before the creation of the body, and, referring to earlier criticisms formulated by Sixtus of Siena in his Bibliotheca Sancta, Tavanti established a conceptual link with Origen’s heresy. Thus, he challenged a passage where the introduction of the soul into the body is discussed, because Giorgio ‘omitted’ to qualify the former explicitly as hominis forma. Crucial in his attack on Giorgio’s psychology is the latter’s interpretation of Genesis 2, 1–3, which excluded any divine act of creation after the work of six days. Tavanti vigorously rejected the implied creation of all souls in one unique act. The creation of the souls ante corpora was also condemned in an anonymous censura which not only mentioned Origen, but Pythagoras too.41 Yet another anonymous censor censured Giorgio’s stress on the creation of omnia simul, as it seriously jeopardized the creation of human souls in time.42 The censura of Francesco Patrizi’s Nova philosophia, written by Pedro Juan Saragoza, is important for its methodological introduction on the relationship between philosophy and theology. Referring to Tertullianus’s famous adagio that the philosophers are the ‘patriarchs’ of the heretics, 36 acdf, S.O., Censurae librorum 1570–1606, fasc. 4, fols. 42r–45v; reproduced in Baldini and Spruit, Catholic Church and Modern Science, pp. 1110–1119. 37 acdf, Index, Prot. H (II.a.7), fols. 404r–415r, 415v; see also the anonymous censura in acdf, Index, Prot. H (II.a.7), fols. 344v–368v, reproduced in Baldini and Spruit, Catholic Church and Modern Science, pp. 1188–1209 and 1297–1330. 38 Giorgio, In Scripturam, p. 202, probl. 492. 39 acdf, Index, Prot. AA (II.a.23), fols. 799r–806r, on fols. 805v, 803r, and 806r; in Baldini and Spruit, Catholic Church and Modern Science, pp. 1742–1762. 40 acdf, Index, Prot. N (II.a.12), fols. 517r–524v; reproduced in Baldini and Spruit, Catholic Church and Modern Science, pp. 1791–1821. 41 acdf, Index, Prot. AA (II.a.23), fols. 733r–752r, on fol. 736v; reproduced in Baldini and Spruit, Catholic Church and Modern Science, pp. 1832–1862, esp. pp. 1837–1838. 42 acdf, Index, Prot. AA (II.a.23), fols. 765r–776r, on fol. 769r–v; reproduced in Baldini and Spruit, Catholic Church and Modern Science, pp. 1862–1877.

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Saragoza argued that contemporary philosophers infect sound theology with ‘sick ideas’ derived from pagan thought. Patrizi in particular is accused of preferring Zoroaster to Holy Scripture, the councils, and the doctrine of the Fathers. A discussion of the animation of the heavens again brings up the name of Origen. By contrast, Benedetto Giustiniani, from whom the Congregation of the Index commissioned a second assessment, expressed a benevolent opinion on Patrizi’s philosophical views. He stressed that Platonism was accepted also by the first Fathers and openly condoned Origen’s errors. 43

3. Three Seventeenth-Century Case Studies Let us now focus on some later censorial proceedings regarding psychological views that include a reference to ancient heresies. I will skip the most ‘evident’ cases of psychological heresy, such as those denying the immortality of the soul, and focus instead on some cases that raised thorny issues for Catholic censors, because the authors did not openly contradict accepted dogmatic lore, and their errors were frequently ‘nested’ in intricate theoretical constructions. Cases in point are the universalist psychology (the possible subordination of the human soul to a universal soul or intellect), traducianism (the transmission of the soul through the seed), and the late seventeenth-century challenges to hylomorphism. I present an illustrative case of each.

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3.1. Universalism: Hieronymus Hirnhaim In the sixteenth century, Roman censors had already detected universalist tendencies in psychology in the works of Giorgio, Cardano, and Patrizi, but surprisingly the Renaissance legacy of a universal spirit or world soul became a central issue only in the assessment of De typho generis humani (1676)44 of the Prague-based philosopher Hieronymus Hirnhaim (1637–1679).45 In the central part of this work, Hirnhaim discussed at some length a doctrine of the world soul or spiritus universi, which he ascribed to a group of authors 43 Baldini and Spruit, Catholic Church and Modern Science, pp. 2197–2265. 44 Hirnhaim, De typho. 45 All-encompassing studies on Hirnhaim are lacking; for a first orientation, see for example Klitzner, Hieronymus Hirnhaim, Leinsle, ‘Abt Hieronymus Hirnhaim’, and Kivistö, ‘Hieronymus Hirnhaim’s De typho’.

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introduced as ‘Pneumocosmici’ (chs. XI–XVIII).46 Hirnhaim summarized the view of the world soul or spirit of the universe as follows. The Pneumocosmici argue that this soul is a substantial and indivisible form, which—like the human soul in the body—is present in the entire universe and in every single part of it. It is the effective principle underlying all natural operations in nature. This soul is also present in man, but here it is subordinated to the rational soul. Between all beings that lack rationality there is no essential distinction, as the universal spirit grounds all vegetative and sensitive operations. Hirnhaim listed thirteen objections to this doctrine, the most important being its apparent incompatibility with the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist, the ensuing existence in man of two souls, the impossibility of distinguishing between individuals, the disappearance of generation and corruption in nature, the immortality of the animal soul, and the animation of the heavens. To all these objections, the Pneumocosmici proposed a reply, however, duly reported by Hirnhaim (ch. XI). In ch. XII, the main arguments supporting the existence of a universal spirit are discussed. This doctrine provides an explanation for the pre-existence of forms in matter, spontaneous generation, action at a distance, the phenomena of sympatheia, antipatheia, and magnetism, and finally the order in the world, in particular the correspondence between macro- and microcosm. And arrived at this point, almost tacitly, Hirnhaim’s initial critical attitude towards the doctrine changed; in effect, the doctrine of the spirit of the universe—which is supported not only by the Platonic theory of ideas and the Augustinian notion of seminal reasons, but also by the view of bodies emitting ‘effluvia’ of (atomic) particles47—offers a most acceptable explanation for a wide range of phenomena of change in natural reality (chs. XIII–XIV), including celestial influence (ch. XVII). Giulio Maria Bianchi, secretary of the Index and one of the most authoritative censors at the end of the seventeenth century, focused on the issue of the universal spirit. He refuted Hirnhaim’s view that universal animation offers a solution to the apparent contrast of the killing of animals and the gentleness of Christ, because after death the animal souls would not be lost but are presumed to return to the universal spirit. Now, so Bianchi argued, the only criterion for ‘orthodox’ philosophy consists in its not raising any 46 They are also referred to in the title of a work by Francisco de Castillo Calderon, published in Prague in 1677, by the same editor that published Hirnhaim’s work; see Castillo Calderon, Exorcismus. 47 Surprisingly, this entails that mechanical philosophy could offer a new and auxiliary resource for typically Renaissance traditions.

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impediment for truth and Christian faith. And the doctrine of a universal soul or spirit raises questions concerning the transubstantiation (it is not the complete substance of the bread to perish) and the animation of Christ (in addition to his rational soul, the universal spirit would animate his body) that are seemingly insurmountable. This led Bianchi to his final conclusion: the doctrine of the world soul is dangerous and not in keeping with the dogmas of faith. 48 In his examination of Hirnhaim’s doctrine of the world soul, Giuseppe Maria Tomasi first drew attention to the decree of the Fifth Ecumenical Council in Constantinople (553) that condemned not only Origen’s view of pre-existence but also the animation of the heavens. Then, Tomasi also highlighted the contradiction of universal animation with the traditional doctrine of transubstantiation. Hirnhaim’s appeal to Augustine is of no use, because the latter explicitly recanted his earlier view on universal animation in his Retractions. 49 In the meeting of the Index on 13 June 1679, a petition by Hirnhaim was read; he asked to be charged with a correction of his book according to the instructions by the congregation. The cardinals ordered the secretary to transmit to Hirnhaim a list of topics and passages to be expunged or corrected,50 but he died shortly afterwards, on 27 August 1679.

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3.2. Traducianism: Johann Havenreuter and Daniel Sennert In early Christian thought, two theories evolved to resolve the problem of the origin of the human soul. The soul was held to be either generated from the parents in the same way as the body (traducianism) or it was believed to be formed by a special act of creation on God’s part for every individual (creationism). Traducianism can be traced to Tertullian and was later embraced by the Eastern Orthodox Church and Luther. Creationism was taught by many early Fathers and proclaimed by the majority of medieval and early modern schoolmen, as well as by Calvinist theologians. Both doctrines are encumbered with theological problems. If the soul originates with the body, then why does it not perish with the body? And if God creates the soul afresh in every human, how can it be imperfect, as a soul of fallen nature necessarily is? Since the rise of scholasticism, creationism was accepted as the only orthodox doctrine by the Catholic Church. 48 acdf, Index, Prot. RR (II.a.40), fols. 239r–243v. 49 acdf, Index, Prot. RR (II.a.40), fols. 248r–251r. 50 acdf, Index, Diari 7, fols. 72v, 73v.

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After the rise of the Reformation, Lutheran theologians wavered between traducianism and creationism. Luther’s view that the soul was transmitted from the parents to the offspring was not accepted by Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560), who endorsed creationism, while several later Lutherans, including Rudolph Goclenius Sr. (1547–1628) and Nicolaus Taurellus (1547–1606), developed detailed defences of the soul’s transmission through the seed.51 In the period under scrutiny the Roman Congregations detected some form of traducianism in the works of several Lutheran physicians and philosophers, among whom were Johann Havenreuter and Daniel Sennert. In 1612, the De anima commentary, written by Johann Havenreuter (1548–1618) and published in 1605, drew the attention of the Index.52 On 24 January a first examination was commissioned from the Regular Cleric Raffaele Rastelli, who presented his censura after only four days. In a succinct note Rastelli stated that this commentary contained propositions that ‘smelled’ of paganism, and that it attributed views about God to Aristotle that he actually never held. Next, Rastelli highlighted Havenreuter’s view that the human mind is potentially contained in the male seed, which he proved with Aristotle’s works, rational arguments, and passages from Holy Scripture, thus implicitly contradicting Thomas Aquinas and his commentator Cajetan.53 At the end of 1612, this commentary was also reviewed by Blasio Aloisio, who again challenged the idea of the origin of the rational soul from matter, and who defined this view as the heresy of the ‘Luciferiani’, also held by Tertullian and Apollinaris, as testified by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.54 In the first chapter of Book IV of his Hypomnemata,55 devoted to the discussion of the generation of living beings, Lutheran physician Daniel Sennert (1572–1637) formulated his central thesis: ‘Every form multiplies itself’ (Omnis forma sui multiplicativa).56 In Chapter VI, Sennert argued that the seed is animated and that the soul in the seed shapes the animated body. The seed consists of two parts: a thick part and a spiritual part, or spiritus. The spirit is not the principal cause of generation, but it is the instrument of the soul. Sennert argued that the soul in the seed guarantees the growth and development of the embryo. It does not skip from one subject 51 See Spruit, The Origin of the Soul, chs. 2.3 and 6. 52 Havenreuter, Commentarii in Aristotelis. 53 acdf, Index, Prot. G (II.a.6), fol. 45r. 54 acdf, Index, Prot. Y (II.a.21), fol. 263r. 55 For discussion of Sennert’s ideas on generation, see Roger, Les sciences de la vie, pp. 106–110; and Hirai, Medical Humanism, pp. 151–171. 56 Sennert, Hypomnemata physica, p. 150.

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to another; rather, the soul has power to multiply itself. Having ordained nature to perpetuate the course of generation and corruption, God stands only as the first and universal cause. However, God gave the second causes the capacities to produce their effects. At the moment of creation God assigned to the living beings the proper capacity to multiply (Gen. 1, 22). If there is something divine in living beings, they possess it on their own: animated seed. The seed is the vehicle by which the soul is communicated from the parents to the offspring. A plant produces a seed, which contains a vegetative soul, and this can only be an emanation from the mother plant. Likewise, each animal seed, male and female alike, contains a sensitive soul that emanates from the soul of the father or mother. And the souls are united at the moment of conception. Animals and humans do not have three souls, but one soul only.57 Then, in Chapter X, after the analysis of the generation of plants and animals, Sennert tackled the issue of the propagation of the human soul. For him the human soul emerges in the foetus after the first conception when the male seed and the female seed meet and are retained in the womb.58 Unlike Aquinas, who argued for a succession of souls, Sennert recognized only one single soul endowed with several faculties. Human beings have from the beginning only one rational soul, which has the vegetative, sensitive, and intellectual faculties and is transmitted through the seed.59 This does not compromise the soul’s immortality, which depends on God alone. Furthermore, when the intellect can spend such a long time in the mortal body, why may it not also be propagated with the seed?60 The human soul is transmitted through the seed, but it arises at conception. Thus, it is neither a part of the parental soul nor produced by it. It is the product of multiplication.61 Reginaldo Lucarini’s censura of Sennert’s Hypomnemata physica (1636),62 commissioned by the Congregation of the Index, is almost entirely devoted to the fourth Hypomnema, where the origin of the human soul is discussed. Sennert argued that the rational soul is not created but propagated through the seed.63 Sennert thus explicitly challenged Thomas Aquinas’s argumentations against the physiological origin of the human soul in his Summa theologiae,64 57 Sennert, Hypomnemata physica, pp. 185–250. 58 Sennert, Hypomnemata physica, pp. 289–291. 59 See ch. XIII in Sennert, Hypomnemata physica, pp. 314–331. 60 Sennert, Hypomnemata physica, pp. 336–338. 61 Sennert, Hypomnemata physica, p. 345. 62 acdf, Index, Prot. EE (II.a.27), fols. 31r–34r. 63 Sennert, Hypomnemata physica, pp. 259–260. 64 Thomas of Aquinas, Summa theologiae, q. 118, art. 2.

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qualifying them as meras evasiones.65 By contrast, Lucarini appeals to the Holy Writ, the Fathers (in particular Augustine and Hieronymus), and to other works by Thomas Aquinas.66 Then, Lucarini also explicitly criticized Sennert’s appeal to some biblical passages—that is, Gen. 46, 26 (‘cunctae animae quae ingressae sunt cum Iacob in Aegyptum et egressae de femore illius’) and Exod. 1, 5 (‘erant igitur omnes animae eorum qui egressi sunt de femore Iacob’)—as they are used to underpin a physiological explanation of the origin of the soul. Sennert also misinterpreted Gen. 2, 3 (‘quia in ipso cessaverat ab omni opere suo quod creavit Deus’), because from this quote he concluded that subsequently God only created new entities through miracles. Furthermore, Sennert wrongly claimed that all creatures are mortal. The former view was Origen’s heresy, condemned in several councils; the latter is censured in the Fifth Lateran Council. Further, Sennert argued that, as the soul does not subsist in the body, it cannot be created in the generation of man. According to Lucarini, Sennert deduced from a true premise an erroneous and highly ‘audacious’ proposition.67 Finally, in Sennert’s view the immortality of the soul is not a ‘natural’ condition; rather, it should be seen as a gift depending upon God’s free will.68 Now, this is a manifest heresy, also known as that of the Sadducees.69 On the basis of this censura, the congregation prohibited Sennert’s Hypomnemata on 12 May 1639 with the stipulation donec corrigatur (that is, unless it was corrected).70

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3.3. Hylomorphism Challenged: Andrea Pissini The rise of modern philosophy raised serious issues for several Catholic doctrines. Two in particular are worth mentioning here, because they are 65 acdf, Index, Prot. EE (II.a.27), fol. 31r. 66 He quotes Thomas of Aquinas, De potentia, q. 9; id., Summa contra Gentiles, Book II, ch. 86, in particular the polemics against Apollinaris. 67 ‘Temeraria’ was the qualification used for propositions professed without any authoritative or reasonable foundation. See Sessa, Scrutinium, pp. 448–449. 68 Some of the early Fathers, among whom are Justin Martyr and Arnobius, rejected the doctrine of natural immortality and made it contingent upon God’s grace, but the majority of the later Fathers viewed immortality as rationally provable. 69 Sadducees denied the immortality of the soul and the existence of angels, and they maintained the religious law in all its strictness. Many of their ideas and practices resurfaced in medieval Jewish sects after Pharisee ideas dominated the dispersed Jews of the Western Roman Empire. 70 acdf, Index, Diari 4, fols. 62r, 63r.

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central to the Catholic assessment and censure of Cartesian and other anti-Aristotelian philosophies. The new mechanical philosophy lacked the distinction between subject and accident, and thus deprived the traditional doctrine of the Eucharist of its philosophical and scientif ic explanation. Furthermore, in Cartesian philosophy, the soul ceased to be the principle of vegetative and sensitive life and was replaced by the mind. Descartes explained vital processes in mechanistic terms and thus the traditional ‘soul’ became as ‘mind’, a purely intellective entity. As a rule, this meant that the soul is no longer viewed as present ‘tota in toto et tota in qualibet parte’ of the body. This denial is central to the author discussed in this section. In Naturalium doctrina,71 the Olivetan monk Andrea Pissini (1633–1678) launched a harsh attack on the Peripatetic doctrine of matter and form.72 In Book I, analysing in detail numerous traditional arguments proposed by traditional Peripatetic philosophy, Pissini argued that prime matter does not exist. The following two books are devoted to refuting the Peripatetic view of form, irrespective of whether form is seen as naturaliter facta or as divinitus creata. Then, in Book IV, Pissini argued that the human soul is not the substantial form of the body, which is present ‘tota in toto, et tota in qualibet corporis parte’. The rational soul may be defined as the form of the body, but this should not be interpreted modo peripatetico. Indeed, the rational soul is an intrinsic principle, not because it is the essence of the body but because with the body it constitutes man. And thus, it is not ‘assistens’ but really ‘informans’ because through a ‘magnetic force’ it is ordered to the body.73 In Book V, Pissini presented his main thesis that all natural beings are made up of atoms. Subsequently, he solved a great number of possible objections (Books VI–VII), and rejected the Peripatetic views of privation, substantial union, and of accidental form (Books VIII, X, and XI). Finally, in Book XII, he formulated his view of the Eucharist, arguing that the traditional ‘species’, referred to in the Bible, the Fathers, and the Council decrees, in no 71 Pissini, Naturalium doctrina; this book is presented as ‘pars I’, but further parts never appeared. 72 Pissini’s conflict with the Holy Office is discussed in Donato, ‘L’onere della prova’. 73 Pissini, Naturalium doctrina, pp. 86–87: ‘Dicitur anima forma corporis; non quia sit constitutiva corporis in esse suo, cum ea sublata corpus remaneat: Sed quia cum corpore constituit hominem; et non per aliud, sed per semetipsam reddit corpus organicum habile ad secum patiendum sensum. […] Ecce ergo quomodo anima rationalis sit forma hominis intrinsica, et non assistens, nec informans peripatetico modo, quia videlicet est necessaria pars, adhuc ut homo sit, vivificansque per se corpus, et ad vivificandum illud ordinata fuit.’

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way may be regarded as physical entities, but that they are ‘apparitio, imago, similitudo panis et vini’. Indeed, beyond Christ’s body and blood, there is nothing physical or real in the sacrament of the altar. In conclusion, Chapter 5 of Book XII is devoted to a refutation of Serafino Piccinardi’s defence of Peripatetic philosophy against the ‘sects’ of Academics (in particular, the sceptical strand), Parmenidians (including Platonics, Wyclif, and Descartes), and Democriteans (atomism).74 The case against Andrea Pissini generated the most extensive proceedings, judging by the extant documentation in the Archive of the Congregation. It concerns the consequences of corpuscular philosophy for the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist and traditional scholastic psychology. After the denial of the imprimatur for his Naturalium doctrina by the Inquisitor of Venice in 1671,75 Pissini ‘secretly’ had his book printed in Augsburg and then imported it into Italy. Once informed by the Venetian Inquisition in the early summer of 1675, the Roman Holy Office started a wide-range offensive, and Pissini’s case was continuously discussed in the meetings of the Holy Office from 26 June 1675 until the end of 1676. A host of censors and consultors pronounced on his views. Then, the major part of the censurae was summarized and discussed by the officials and the cardinals of the Holy Office. Finally, Pissini was summoned to Rome and condemned to a formal retraction, the latter being printed and distributed, likely aimed at discouraging possible followers. The book Naturalium doctrina is frequently indicated as a liber tractans de athomis, or libro degli atomi. The censors concentrated on three propositions; one regarded the Eucharist, while the other two regarded the position of the intellectual soul: (1) ‘quod anima rationalis non informat corpus Peripatetico modo’; and (2) ‘anima rationalis non est tota in toto, et tota in qualibet parte corporis.’ In the congregation of 13 August 1675, Lorenzo Brancati, then consultor of the Holy Office, and Raimondo Capizucchi, Dominican and Master of the Sacred Palace, presented their censurae. For Brancati, the denial that the rational soul is the form of man plainly contradicted the decrees of the Council of Vienne and of the Fifth Lateran Council, while he qualified the second proposition, though not openly contradicting any article of faith, as suspect of heresy and non libera à temeritate. He therefore proposed to summon the author to Rome and impose upon him a retractation. By contrast, Capizucchi regarded the first propositon as not liable to theological censure, 74 Piccinardi, Philosophiae dogmaticae. 75 acdf, S.O., Decreta 1670, fols. 289r, 291v.

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because it had never been defined in the Holy Scripture, in the Councils, or in the tradition of the Church as pertaining to faith. Indeed, Pissini did not deny that the soul was the form of the body; he merely excluded it modo peripatetico, that is, the soul is not related to the body as the helmsman to the ship or as the intelligence to the celestial orb. The second proposition is audacious, but not erroneous, as it does not involve any denial of the spirituality of the soul. On the basis of the censurae the congregation decided to prohibit Pissini’s work on 13 August 1675, and to call the author to Rome.76 Then, in January 1676 new censurae were commissioned to seven censors, namely: Francesco De Nicolis, General Master of the Observant Franciscans; the Dominican Domenico Pozzobonelli, commissioner of the Holy Office; the Jesuit Martin de Esparza y Artieda; the Theatine Gaetano Miraballo; the Capuchin Bonaventura di Recanati; the Dominican Giulio Maria Bianchi (future secretary of the Index); and Michelangelo Ricci, mathematician and future cardinal. In February 1676, Pissini declared his willingness to correct his book, but first the qualificators had to finish their work.77 The censors wrote their examinations in the period between January and October 1676. Now, while Bonaventura di Recanati’s assessment was quite short, those written by Ricci, Bianchi, and Esparza were more detailed, while Miraballo and De Nicolis actually wrote very extensive censurae.78 Miraballo argued that the thesis ‘anima rationalis non informat corpus peripatetico modo’, taken at face value, is not to be censured, because Aristotle himself puzzled over the precise status of the soul, and Aquinas’s arguments for the rational soul as informing form are probabiles and not demonstrativae. However, Pissini denied that the intellectual soul informs the matter of the body, making up a substantial unity; and in this sense the proposition is heretical, as it had been condemned in three general councils, namely the Fourth Lateran, the Council of Vienne, and the Fifth Lateran Council. Miraballo qualified the proposition that the soul is not present in the entire body and in each of its parts as near to heresy. The other censors did not follow Miraballo in his harsh judgment. After an extensive analysis of Pissini’s texts, Ricci concluded that his views were not liable to any theological censure, although he admitted that Pissini ‘quod ad animam rationalem attinet, res ita duriter expressit, ut Lectores 76 acdf, S.O., Decreta 1675, fols. 254v, 258v–259r. 77 acdf, S.O., Decreta 1676, fols. 41v, 45v. 78 Extensive documentation will be available in the second volume of Baldini and Spruit, Catholic Church and Modern Science, forthcoming.

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parum attentos in errorem inducere possit’. According to Bianchi, denying that the rational soul is the form of the human body is ‘essentially’ heretical, but considering Pissini’s argumentation, he concluded that this view was not to be condemned as heretical, but rather as audacious. Bonaventura di Recanati held that Pissini’s psychological views were apparently erroneous. However, the author explicitly entertained the spirituality of the soul, and thus a ‘rigorous’ theological censure should be postponed until he offered more thorough explanations. De Nicolis labelled the incriminated propositions as erroneous in faith, while de Esparza regarded them as ‘near to heresy’. Finally, the commissioner of the Holy Office also concluded that Pissini’s propositions were erroneous rather than plainly heretical. The dissent among the censors appeared clearly in their summarized qualifications.79 These qualifications were presented to the cardinals, who discussed them on 21 and 28 October 1676. Then, in November of that year, Lorenzo Brancati prepared the text of Pissini’s retraction. Pissini read his retraction in the congregation of 2 December coram cardinalibus et consultoribus.80

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Concluding Remarks Let us now reconsider the three initial issues: (1) how was Catholic psychological orthodoxy set in a battle against pagan philosophies and heterodox Christian doctrine in antiquity and the Middle Ages; (2) how was it reset in early modern times in the battle against the ‘re-born’ heresies and new challenges; (3) how did censors reply to the conflation of scholastic psychology with new philosophical and scientific findings, in particular in the seventeenth century? First, in early Christian thought, two theories developed to resolve the problem of the origin of the human soul. The soul was held to be either generated from the parents in the same way as the body (traducianism) or it was believed to be formed by a special act of creation on God’s part for every individual (creationism). There was also an altogether different conception of the soul’s creation. According to its several formulations, every living soul existed in a former realm, either there created or eternally uncreated (pre-existence). Eventually, after several condemnations of traducianism and pre-existence, creationism became the orthodox Christian view, and 79 acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, N 4 c, fol. 5r; and O.3.f, fasc. 7, fols. 479r–v, 482r–v. 80 acdf, S.O., Decreta 1676, fols. 250v, 255r.

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after the reception of Aristotelian philosophy it was intimately linked to hylomorphism. The doctrine that the intellectual soul is created by God and linked to the body as its substantial form became dogma in the Council of Vienne (1311). This doctrinal decision made all deviations from Aristotelian psychology liable to theological censure. Second, after the closure of the Council of Trent in 1563, the Roman Catholic Church launched a large-scale campaign against early modern alternatives to or criticisms of the scholastic building of learning, including its psychological section. The censors of the dicasteries of the Inquisition and the Index, tackling a garden variety of heterodox views on the origin, nature, and freedom of the human soul, frequently invoked biblical texts, but for the qualif ication of heterodoxy they also repeatedly referred to ancient heresies. In particular, Origen wanders like a ghost through Roman censorial assessments. His view that after Creation God only created new entities through miracles (and thus not souls) is detected in Giorgio and, surprisingly, later also in Sennert. And even Patrizi’s doctrine of the animation of the heavens is associated with his name. However, the formal options of the ‘ancient heresy’ model turned out to be quite limited, as it did not match the sophisticated categorial frameworks of early modern philosophy, in which alternative psychological doctrines were developed. Third, in the seventeenth century, censors remained puzzled by the presence of non- or anti-scholastic psychological conceptions, some of them ‘traditional’ (that is, Neoplatonic views on the universal soul), others linked to the emerging modern corpuscular philosophy. The manuals of Nicolau Eymerich and Alfonso de Castro reveal that—at least until the end of the sixteenth century—the universal soul was not counted among the psychological deviations. Therefore, the assessment of the spiritus universi in Hieronymus Hirnhaim presents a new aspect of the doctrinal framework underlying the ecclesiastical censorship of Renaissance psychology. It did not formulate a generic condemnation of the position under charge, but it showed that a universalist psychology contradicts a central dogma of the Church (i.e. the Eucharist), thus revealing explicitly the dangerous potentialities of such a conceptual structure. Pissini embraced the new insights of corpuscular philosophy and thus rejected explicitly the hylomorphistic strand of scholastic psychology. And yet, the diverging pronouncements on his work reveal profound divisions among the censors of the Holy Office, and suggest difficulties in assessing non-scholastic psychology springing from the use of off-the-shelf censorial methods rooted in the theology of the schools. As is well known, the censors

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of the Roman congregations, like the ancient authors of heresy catalogues, discussed the doctrinal errors of heresies in a polemical fashion.81 At times, this led to results that, from a modern point of view, are peculiar, to put it mildly, all the more so because orthodox truth claims were assumed over or against other philosophical or scientific (biological) claims to truth. And yet, the relationship between the Church and early modern scientific and philosophical views cannot be qualified in terms of a total ‘warfare’. There were also, between the two parties involved, processes of mutual interaction, adaptation, and framing. In the mid-1590s, several authors, discussed in earlier sections, were explicitly invited by the secretary of the Index to collaborate in the correction of their own works.82 Patrizi and Cardano wrote extensive proposals for emendated versions of their books, although this did not change, or only marginally so, the ban on their books.83 In some of the seventeenth-century proceedings discussed here, the Roman dicasteries or their collaborators also attempted to reach a settlement or an accommodation with the authors. The Congregation of the Index accepted Hirnhaim’s proposal to correct his book, and the variety of censorial pronouncements on Pissini’s work suggest that at least some of the censors involved attempted to mitigate the (inevitable) condemnation. Additionally, the outcome of censorial proceedings against heterodox psychological views (again) shows that the Roman censorship was not involved in a ‘total war’ on heresy, and that it clearly did not intend a ‘take no prisoners’ approach. The dissonances between the censors in Pissini’s cause reveal pluralizing and stratifying aspects of censorship. Magisterium and heterodoxy were frequently involved in a common development, in which censorship and innovation crystallized simultaneously. Due to the discrepancy between ruling ideology and the possibility of contradiction and reply, the central bodies of doctrinal control were pushed to reformulate and reposition their authority and canonical views. Thus, Roman censorship of psychology was marked by pragmatic and situational aspects. Censorship did not consist in a rigid application of fixed rules; nor did the censors and responsible cardinals merely aim at the preservation of ideological power against subversive movements. 81 See Gierl, ‘The Triumph’. 82 See the letter by Paolo Pico in acdf, Index, Prot. M (II.a.11), fol. 222r–v (written in the period 1593–1596), in Baldini and Spruit, Catholic Church and Modern Science, pp. 276–278. 83 See Baldini and Spruit, Catholic Church and Modern Science, pp. 1033–1472 (Cardano) and 2197–2264 (Patrizi).

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Bibliography Archival Sources Vatican City, Archivio della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede (acdf): Index, Diari 4; Diari 6 (1654–1664); Diari 7. Index, Prot. G (II.a.6); H (II.a.7); M (II.a.11); N (II.a.12); Y (II.a.21); AA (II.a.23); EE (II.a.27); RR (II.a.40). Index, XI S.O., Censurae librorum 1570–1606. S.O., Decreta 1670, 1675–1676. S.O., Stanza Storica, N 4 c; O 3 f; Q 3 d.

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Printed Sources Articuli parisienses, in Petrus Lombardus, Sententiarum lib. IV (Parisiis: apud viduam Mauricij à Porta, 1550), pp. 568–613. Cardano, Girolamo, In Cl. Ptolemaei Pelusiensis IIII de astrorum judiciis, aut, ut vulgo vocant, quadripartitae constructionis libros commentaria […] (Basileae: excudebat Henricus Petri, 1554). Castillo Calderon, Francisco de, Exorcismus Pneumatis Macrocosmi PhysicoTheologicus: Contra Ethnicos Philosophos Pseudo-Trismegistos & Anti-Platones, Qui asserunt, Mundum esse hominem magnum, ingenerabilem, & incorruptibilem, immortalem, faelicem; nec non Adversùs Neotericos Academico-Pneumocosmicos (Pragae: typis Georgij Czernoch, 1677). de Castro, Alfonso, Adversus omnes haereses libri XIIII. Opus hoc nunc postremo ab authore recognitum est […] (Antverpiae: In aedibus viduae et haeredum Ioannis Stelsij, 1565). ———, De iusta haereticorum punitione (Venetiis: ad signum spei, 1549). Du Préau (Prateolus), Gabriel, De vitis, sectis et dogmatibus omnium haereticorum ab orbe condito ad nostra usque tempora elenchus alphabeticus (Coloniae: apud Gerwinum Calenium, et haeredes, 1569). Epiphanius, Contra octoginta haereses opus, Panarium, sive Arcula, aut Capsula Medica appellatum (Parisiis: apud Audoënum Parvum, 1564). Eymeric, Nicolau, Directorium Inquisitorum cum commentariis Francisci Peniae […] in hac postrema editione iterum emendatum et auctum, et multis litteris Apostolicis locupletatum (Venetiis: apud Marcum Antonium Zalterium, 1595). Farinacci, Prospero, Tractatus de haeresi (Romæ: ex typographia Andreæ Phæi, 1616).

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234 Leen Spruit

Giles of Rome, Errores philosophorum, ed. by Josef Koch, transl. by John O. Riedl (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1944). Giorgio (Zorzi), Francesco, In Scripturam Sacram problemata. Cum indice triplice: Primus, Tomorum & sectionum: Secundus, rerum & verborum: tertius, locorum Sacrae Scripturae citatorum & explicatorum (Parisiis: apud Michaëlem Somnium, 1574). Havenreuter, Johann Ludwig, Commentarii in Aristotelis philosophorum principis de animo, et Parva naturalia dictos libros. Omnibus philosophiae studiosis apprime utiles et necessarii (Francofurti: E Collegio Musarum Paltheniano, 1605). Hirnhaim, Hieronymus, De Typho Generis Humani, sive Scientiarum Humanarum, Inani ac Ventoso Tumore, Difficultate, Labilitate, Falsitate, Jactantia, Praesumptione Incommodis, et Periculis (Pragæ: typis Georgii Czernoch, 1676). Horn, Georg, Historiae philosophicae libri septem. Quibus de origine, successione, sectis & vita philosophorum ab orbe condito ad nostram aetatem agitur (Lugduni Batavorum: apud Iohannem Elseverium, 1655). Patrizi, Francesco, Nova de universis philosophia. Materiali per un’edizione emendata, ed. by Laura Puliafito Bleuel (Florence: Olschki, 1993). Piccinardi, Serafino, Philosophiae dogmaticae peripateticae christianae libri nouem in patrocinium Aristotelis ac in osores eiusdem tomus primus continens quatuor libros priores primum Apologeticum pro peripatetica, secundum Analyticum contra Accademicam sectam, tertium In parmenidicam, quartum In democriticam (Patauij: typis Petri Mariae Frambotti, 1671). Pissini, Andrea, Naturalium doctrina, qua funditùs eversis materiei primae, formaeque substantialis & accidentalis, cunctisque fermè sectariorum sententijs, cujuslibet auctoritate posthabita, rationibus firmis inopinata substituuntur, aut penitùs obsoleta revocantur (Augustae Vindelicorum: typis Koppmayrianis, 1675). Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissimum collectio, ed. by J.D. Mansi, 59 vols. (Firenze: Antonio Zatta, 1759–1798). Sennert, Daniel, Hypomnemata physica, 1. De Rerum naturalium principiis, 2. De occultis qualitatibus, 3. De atomis & mistione, 4. De generatione viventium, 5. De spontaneo viventium ortu (Francofurti: sumptibus Clementis Schleichij, et Consortum, typis Caspari Rötelij, 1636). Sessa, Giovanni Antonio, Scrutinium doctrinarum qualificandis assertionibus, thesibus, atque libris conducentium, exemplis propositionum à Conciliis Oecumenicis, vel ab Apostolica Sede reprobatarum ditatum (Romae: Typis, et sumptibus Rochi Bernabò, 1709). Thomas of Aquinas, Liber de Veritate Catholicae Fidei seu Summa contra Gentiles, ed. by Ceslas Pera, 3 vols. (Turin et al.: Marietti, 1961).

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———, Summa theologiae, ed. Pietro Caramello, 3 vols. (Turin et al.: Marietti 1952–1963). ———, Quaestiones disputatae, ed. by Raimondo Spiazzi, 2 vols. (Turin et al.: Marietti, 1953).

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Literature Baldini, Ugo and Spruit, Leen, Catholic Church and Modern Science. Documents from the Roman Archives of the Holy Office and the Index. I: The Sixteenth Century, 4 vols. (Rome: Libreria editrice vaticana, 2009). Constant, Eric A., ‘A Reinterpretation of the Fifth Lateran Council Decree Apostolici regiminis (1513)’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 33 (2002), pp. 353–378. Denzinger, Heinrich, Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum. Compendium of Creeds, Definitions and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals, ed. by Peter Hünermann, 43rd ed. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012). Donato, Maria Pia, ‘L’onere della prova. Il Sant’Uffizio, l’atomismo e i medici romani’, Nuncius, 18 (2003), pp. 68–87. Gierl, Martin, ‘The Triumph of Truth and Innocence. The Rules and Practice of Theological Polemics’, in Little Tools of Knowledge. Historical Essays on Academic and Bureaucratic Practices, ed. by Peter Becker and William Clark (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), pp. 35–66. Girolamo Cardano. Le opere, le fonti, la vita, ed. by Marialuisa Baldi and Guido Canziani (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1999). Grafton, Anthony, Cardano’s Cosmos. The Worlds and Works of a Renaissance Astrologer (Cambridge/Mass: Harvard University Press, 1999). Hirai, Hiro, Medical Humanism and Natural Philosophy. Renaissance Debates on Matter, Life, and the Soul (Leiden et al.: Brill, 2011). Kivistö, Sari, ‘Hieronymus Hirnhaim’s De typho generis humani (1676) and Scepticism about Human Learning’, in Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Monasteriensis. Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Congress of Neo-Latin Studies (Leiden et al.: Brill, 2014), pp. 326–336. Klitzner, Julius, Hieronymus Hirnhaim. Zum deutschen Geist im Barock Böhmens (Prague: Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1943). Leinsle, Ulrich, ‘Abt Hieronymus Hirnhaim. Zur Wissenschaftskritik des 17. Jahrhunderts’, Analecta Praemonstratensia, 55 (1979), 171–195. Roger, Jacques, Les sciences de la vie dans la pensée française du XVIIIe siècle. La génération des animaux de Descartes à l’Encyclopédie (Paris: Armand Colin, 1963). Spruit, Leen, The Origin of the Soul from Antiquity to the Early Modern Era (Sarzana: Agorà, 2014).

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236 Leen Spruit

About the Author

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Leen Spruit is a lecturer in Dutch language and literature at the Sapienza University in Rome, and since November 2016 professor of intellectual history at Radboud University. He published with Ugo Baldini Catholic Church and Modern Science. Documents from the Archives of the Roman Congregation, Part I: Sixteenth-Century Documents, 4 vols. (2009).

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9. Modern Philosophy and Ancient Heresies: New Wine in Old Bottles? Maria Pia Donato

Abstract This chapter revisits seventeenth- and eighteenth-century debates on the Eucharist and atomism as the backdrop of issues of credibility and authority. It explores how theology, erudition, and philosophy intertwined in defining dogma, and analyses how the Holy Office and the Congregation of the Index of Prohibited Books dealt with scientific tendencies within the Catholic world. In the light of recent scholarship underscoring the inertia of censorial mechanisms, the chapter argues that looking at censorship as a performative activity and at the social biases of doctrinal control helps to understand Rome’s attitude vis-à-vis philosophical novelties. More broadly, this new focalization highlights how truth was administrated and credibility established in the Catholic context.

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Keywords: Catholic censorship, natural philosophy, Jansenism, tradition, erudition.

Several decades ago, Pietro Redondi’s Galileo: Heretic famously argued that Galileo was put on trial by the Roman Inquisition for his Copernican worldview only as a diversion to conceal his dangerous atomist teachings that undermined the Catholic dogma of transubstantiation.1 At that time, the central archives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith were not open. Since their opening in the mid-1990s, a vast and still growing body of scholarship has shed new light on the Holy Office and the Congregation of the Index of Prohibited Books. Their functioning, composition, and evolution are now better understood, and crucial aspects 1 Redondi, Galileo.

Badea, A., B. Boute, M. Cavarzere, S. Vanden Broecke (eds.), Making Truth in Early Modern Catholicism. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021 doi 10.5117/9789463720526_ch09

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of their activities have been scrutinized. A more nuanced appraisal of the Inquisition’s action has thus emerged. Scholars now tend to consider them in a web of institutions competing to define orthodoxy and to control society and culture. Censorship is certainly one of the areas of research that has most benefitted from the Roman archives.2 The effects of censorship on natural philosophy have been the object of numerous studies and editions of archival materials.3 The elusive nature of orthodoxy and the shifting boundaries between theology and philosophy have also been underscored.4 Several new studies on Redondi’s thesis and post-Cartesian Eucharistic philosophy have seen the light too. In this chapter, I shall revisit the debates on the Eucharist and atomism as the backdrop of the questions of credibility and authority addressed in this book. Indeed, this issue sheds light on how theology, erudition, and philosophy intertwined, raising questions about truth and authority in defining dogma, and especially the value of Tradition and History—what kind of history, and who was entitled to use it. I shall focus on how the Roman centres of doctrinal police, namely the Holy Office and the Congregation of the Index of Prohibited Books, dealt with the centrifugal forces within the Catholic world who claimed the authority of history for themselves while undermining the scholastic hegemony that, in spite of nuances, had successfully underpinned the Counter-Reformation. In the light of recent scholarship underscoring the inertia of censorial mechanisms,5 I will argue that looking at censorship as a performative activity while paying attention to the social biases of doctrinal control and the political instability in Curia and Church helps to understand the Roman attitude vis-à-vis philosophical novelty and, more broadly, how truth was administrated and credibility established in a Catholic context.

1. The ‘Eucharist Heresy’: A Very Concise Introduction The famous document G3 accusing Galileo’s Essayer and the subsequent expertise of the Index Congregation prove that the Eucharist argument was used to attack non-Aristotelian physics as early as the 1620s. At a time 2 Church, Censorship and Culture; Inquisition, Index, Zensur; Delpiano, Church and Censorship; Caravale, Forbidden Prayer; Savelli, Censori e giuristi. 3 Notably Baldini and Spruit, Catholic Church. 4 Orthodoxie, christianisme, histoire; Beretta, ‘Orthodoxie philosophique’; Donato, ‘Les doutes’. 5 See at least Cavarzere, La prassi della censura; Mayer, The Roman Inquisition; Praktiken; Marcus, Forbidden Knowkedge.

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when the Copernican issue was still pending, reporting Galileo’s atomism was clearly intended to obtain a doctrinal resolution similar to the 1616 qualification of heliocentrism as ‘contrary to the faith’.6 More precisely, the anonymous consultant of the Index (possibly the Jesuit Melchior Inchofer) pointed at the fact that one could ‘rightly deduce from the opinion of this author that the accidents do not remain in the Eucharist without the substance of the bread’; hence, ‘if the author [Galileo] understands sensible species through minims’, he would revive the philosophy of the Ancients but would be forced to assert many ‘absurd’ things contrary to the faith.7 Although Galileo had not discussed transubstantiation, the Aristotelian framework within which the Catholic dogma had been formulated made it possible to consider his teachings absurd in the light of dogma and, conversely, to use dogma to rebut non-Aristotelian metaphysics. Of course, nothing was completely new. Controversy over the Eucharist had always existed, and since the Middle Ages a number of propositions had been formally condemned, from Berengar (1059) to Wyclif (1415). The Humanist suspicion vis-à-vis scholasticism fostered interest in ancient and early medieval texts on the Eucharist, such as those by Adonis of Vienne, Ratramnus, and Rabanus Maurus, who famously influenced Lutheran theology. Yet, the Council of Trent had ‘dogmatized’ the scholastic interpretation of the Eucharist. The text ‘in almo sanctae Eucharistiae sacramento post panis et vini consecrationem Dominum nostrum Iesu Christum, verum Deum atque hominem, vere, realiter ac substantialiter sub specie illarum rerum sensibilium contineri’ was in some sense a compromise.8 On one hand, it resorted to the notion of ‘species’, which was the most ancient and less controversial term, and did not enter into philosophical details on how Christ’s real and substantial presence was achieved; on the other hand it included the scholastic term ‘transubstantiation’, asserting that ‘quae conversio convenienter et proprie a sancta Catholica Ecclesia transsubstantiatio est appellata’. Some Roman theologians like Robert Bellarmine continued to argue the philosophical neutrality of the Tridentine dogma while enumerating errors and heresy concerning the Eucharist over the centuries.9 In fact, although the word transubstantiation was already used by the Fourth Lateran Council 6 Bucciantini, Contro Galileo. 7 Martínez, ‘Il manoscritto’, p. 234. 8 Session XIII, 11 October 1551. On this point, I do not agree with Artigas, ‘Un nuovo documento’. 9 Bellarmin, Disputationes.

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in 1215, it implied allegiance to hylomorphism. Aristotelianism was then so hegemonic that, in spite of nuances, such an interpretation was absolutely dominant in Catholic theological culture, and transubstantiation made perfect philosophical sense. Things began to change in the seventeenth century, when Aristotelianism began to be questioned by natural philosophers like Galileo, and theologians began to investigate the thorny issue of the Eucharist by turning their attention both to ancient explanations and new philosophical ideas. As a matter of fact, the first author who caught the eye of the Inquisition seems to have been a Sicilian priest, Giuseppe Ballo, who in the early 1620s penned a new interpretation of Eucharist under the title of Aenigma dissolutum, and strove unsuccessfully for years with the Holy Office to secure an imprimatur.10 Starting in the 1640s, then, in the wake of Descartes, the whole of Europe, both Catholic and Protestant, turned to such topics, while the crisis of Aristotelianism became more evident under the attacks of novatores of all kinds.11 What is particularly interesting for the purpose of this book is that theology and natural philosophy intertwined with erudition in a crescendo of polemics. Two basic ideas were put to work, both implying History: that atomism was older than Aristotelianism and could be Christianized just as the latter had been (a tenet that in the 1640s was famously developed and overtly heralded by Pierre Gassendi);12 that the Christian body of theology included possible interpretations of the real presence of Christ on the altar other than Aquinas’s, Scotus’s, and their commentators’. Sacred erudition and Patristics were shedding new light on the rich and plural Greek and Latin theology and liturgy—itself a rather conflictual activity.13 The medieval concept of species intentionales was particularly relevant in these debates, for it argued the miraculous nature of the Eucharist while relinquishing the scholastic explanation of transubstantiation.14 More broadly, the choice of the term species, rather than accidents, in the Tridentine canon became the focal argument of debate, as shown by the case of Ballo, the first documented in the Inquisition’s archives. In Difensione et

10 acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, O 3 f: Acta in propositiones delatas ad S. Off.m ab anno 1626 ad 1676 circa accidentia Eucaristica, n. 1. 11 Redondi, Galileo, pp. 345–401; Watson, ‘Transubstantiation’; Ariew, Descartes and the Last Scholastics; Adam, L’eucharistie. 12 Osler, Divine Will. 13 Badea, ‘(Heiligen-)Geschichte’. 14 Maier, ‘Das Problem’; Spruit, Species intelligibilis.

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insinuatione della novità dello scritto Aenigma dissolutum, penned in 1626, Dom Ballo humbly reminded his censors that The particular way is not certain […] is manifest, because the Holy Church gives a judgment on what can be said by Catholics only in general terms, thus it has always permitted that Her doctors explain the way [in which the body of Christ is present on the altar] according to their ideas, provided that they suggest it with the necessary proofs. Therefore one can see the very different opinions of Ockham, [Petrus de] Alliaco, St Thomas, and others.15

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A Baroque analogy of Catholic tradition with a mine of minerals enabled Ballo to conciliate novelty and antiquity, because, he wrote: ‘Anyone who opened the door of this great mineral field of Catholic intelligence over the most holy sacrament […] has always been allowed to extract any new treasure he may from that ancient and never exhausting mine.’16 The Eucharist question shook the lines within Catholic Christendom. Novatores in natural philosophy had always been numerous in the Church, especially among Jesuits. However, by the middle of the seventeenth century, the Society of Jesus declared war on atomism and corpuscularianism both within and outside the order.17 Several Jesuits began to insist on the de fide value of species as real accidents without subject, positing (not without reason) that the Tridentine dogma only made sense within Aristotelian metaphysics.18 Sforza Pallavicino, for instance, complied with the Society’s directives, and as early as 1650, in his Assertionum theologicarum, wrote against the opinions of atoms sine forma substantiali.19 Other orders followed on the same line, primarily the Dominicans, although their refined 15 Baldini, ‘Giuseppe Ballo’, p. 58. 16 Baldini, ‘Giuseppe Ballo’, p. 58. 17 Hellyer, ‘The Construction’. 18 Casati, Vacuum proscriptum; Compton Carleton, Philosophia universa; later Jesuit authors on this point include Mauro, Quaestionum philosophicarum; Raynaud, Eucharistica. 19 Pallavicino, Assertionum theologicarum, pp. 419–456. Pallavicino was the target of the conservative Society’s hierarchy, and had to retract his Zenonist teachings on continuum: see Costantini, Baliani e i Gesuiti, pp. 97–102. In his 1649 Vindicationes Societatis Iesu, Pallavicino refuted the need for strict adherence to Aristotelianism and Thomism in natural philosophy, while calling on defending the core Catholic sacramental teachings under attack from modern philosophies, especially atomism. On the various forms of accommodation of Jesuit natural philosophy, see Baroncini, ‘L’insegnamento’; Baldini, Legem impone subactis; Jesuit Science. On the moral controversies within the Society of Jesus, see Gay, Jesuit Civil Wars.

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culture made some of them aware of the thin line dividing theology from philosophy.20 In contrast, other authors drew upon non-Aristotelian physics, either Gassendian or Cartesian, and combined them with references to pre-scholastic theology. Some of them used the Eucharist as an argument to assess their philosophy, like the Capuchin Valeriano Magni and the Minim Emmanuel Maignan.21 Maignan elaborated a complex post-Cartesian corpuscular philosophy and was especially vocal in positing that he was simply following the Councils’ canons that never mentioned ‘accidents’ or gave physical explanations of transubstantiation. In order to answer to his critics, namely the Jesuits, in 1673 he added an Appendix de speciebus eucharisticis instaurata to the second edition of his Cursus philosophicus, emphasizing his claim that the borders between theology and philosophy had not been set once and for all by the Catholic Church.22 His brethren Minim Jacques Salier wrote no fewer than three volumes of Historia de speciebus eucharisticis to prove how dissonant the teachings of the Fathers were with scholastic theologians, and of scholastics with one another.23 Benedictine Robert Desgabets famously combined Cartesian philosophy with St. John of Damascus and Durand of Troarn in accusing the Peripatetics of heresy.24 In other words, disputes turned around Truth, Tradition, History, and Authority, endowing each term with a different significance. What truth, philosophical or theological, rational or mystical? What history, the whole history of salvation, the primitive Church’s, or post-Trent Catholicism? Did Tradition and History coincide? Whose authority, the Councils’ or the Doctors’? After all, Thomas Aquinas was declared doctor by the Dominican Pope Pius V in 1567, and Bonaventura of Bagnoregio by the Franciscan Pope Sixtus V in 1588: why should they be considered less authoritative than Augustine? And why should Augustine be considered less authoritative than Ambrosius? Indeed, controversies focused on the authority of pre-scholastic theologians, roughly before the twelfth century. Novatores in philosophy claimed the liberty to follow ancient authorities to repair the abuses of recentiores (i.e., scholastics) for the sake of the perpetuity of the faith, whereas scholastics implicitly posited the historicity of Catholic doctrine. Novatores were also 20 Goudin, Philosophia; Piccinardi, Philosophiae dogmaticae; Matton, ‘Note’. 21 Magni, Principia; Maignan, Cursus philosophicus. 22 Maignan, ‘Appendix’; Ceñal, ‘La filosofía de Emmanuel Maignan’; Grabmann, ‘Die Philosophie’; Heilbron, Electricity, p. 112, terms Maignan a ‘qualitative atomist’. 23 Salier, Historia. 24 Armogathe, Theologia cartesiana, pp. 85–113; Schmaltz, Radical Cartesianism.

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often archéolâtres in morals and ecclesiology.25 However, their camp was far from unanimous, and many venerators of Christian antiquity and proponents of positive theology scorned philosophical arguments which they considered alien to the letter and spirit of the Fathers.26

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2. Policing Borders, Administering Truth How did Rome react? Admittedly, by the mid-seventeenth century the Index, and to some extent the Holy Office, were bureaucratic entities that mostly reacted to denunciations. This does not imply that they did not look upon modern physics with suspicion. Rebuttals of Aristotelian substantial forms became the focus of growing concern. More precisely, the Inquisition was concerned with the metaphysical speculations and novel explanations of transubstantiation which, in the wake of Descartes, were becoming current among ecclesiastics. At the same time, and more acutely since the 1650s, the Holy Office was mesmerized by Jansenism and the clash between laxism and rigorism. This was basically a controversy over History and Authority and the place of Augustine in post-Reformation Christendom.27 In this context, denunciations began to snowball, each time trying to push the conf ines of dogma and opinion further. The number of cases that touched upon Eucharistic physics filed by the Roman Inquisition in the second half of the seventeenth century rose steeply, and most of them intertwined with moral theology in some way.28 It was precisely in an effort to prove its orthodoxy that the pro-Jansenist Faculty of Louvain signalled the potential theological implications of Descartes’ philosophy, on grounds of, among other points, his rebuttal of substantial forms as consequential for the explanation of transubstantiation, which eventually led to a suspension donec corrigantur of his opera in 1663.29 Five years later, the nuncio in Paris described Gassendi as a philosopher 25 Neveu, Érudition et religion, p. 365; Quantin, Le catholicisme classique. For Protestant debates on the Eucharist intertwining erudition, theology, and natural philosophy, see Snoeks, L’argument de tradition; Woodbridge, ‘La grande chasse’; Leijnhorst and Lüthy, ‘The Erosion’. 26 On this point, see Schmaltz, Radical Cartesianism, pp. 54–65, who rightly points at Jansenius’s own ambivalent view of the relation between philosophy and theology. 27 De Certeau, ‘L’histoire’; Le Brun, ‘Autorité’; Neveu, L’Erreur. 28 The complete series of cases examined by the Holy Office and the Index in Donato, ‘L’onere della prova’, and ‘Scienza e teologia’. 29 Documents in Armogathe and Carraud, ‘La première condamnation’. For the French antecedents and developments, see Roux, ‘The Condemnations’.

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‘whose maxims are in all respect contrary to Catholic faith’, with the sole aim of alerting Rome to the Jansenists, who allegedly embraced Gassendi’s tenets (the argument was instrumental, for Antoine Arnauld was fiercely opposed to Gassendi).30 In 1671, after Louis XIV’s ban on Cartesianism, Jesuit Honoré Fabri, who was on trial because of his virulent defence of probabilism, in an effort to divert the inquisitors’ attention, reported that dangerous Cartesian teachings were spreading with the help of the Jansenists, ‘and from such a doctrine many very serious problems arise as well as errors already condemned […] in the trial against Berengar and in the Council of Constance against Wyclef.’31 To make things more complicated, the balance at the papal court was unstable. The pontificates of Clement IX and Innocent XI favoured positive theology and rigorism. In the late 1680s, however, the balance of power shifted again. By then, tensions had escalated around probabilism and quietism. The Holy Office began to attack what jeopardized the role of Rome and the Inquisition.32 Unsurprisingly, the Eucharist issue resurfaced. In 1688, Gerardo Capassi of the Servants of Mary, dean of the studium in the Florentine convent of Annunciazione, was arrested for some Conclusiones ex theologia ac philosophia selectae. Suspect propositions referred to moral theology, sacred history, and physics.33 Two decades later, it was once again moral theology that put Minim Jean Saguens in trouble. His Systema gratiae philosophico-theologicum, published anonymously, was reported to Rome; the investigation directed the inquisitors’ attention towards Saguens’s philosophical work, namely his compendium Philosophia Maignani scholastica, which was eventually prohibited in 1709.34 In an effort to curtail disputes and speculation, in 1673 the Holy Office ordered local inquisitors not to license books stating that ‘substantial composites are not made by matter and form but by atoms or corpuscles’.35 It is worth highlighting that this was disciplinary resolution acting on preventive book control, rather than a formal qualification of atomism. In fact, in examining individual works on sacramental physics, the Holy Office and 30 Gasparri, ‘Documenti dell’Archivio’. 31 acdf, S.O., Censurae Librorum 1669–1672, and acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, O 3 f, n. 5, fols. 324–327. On the Jesuit, himself an innovator in natural philosophy, see at least Palmerino, ‘Two Jesuit Responses’, and Blum, Studies, pp. 199–214. 32 Signorotto, ‘The squadrone volante’. 33 acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, O 1 g, n. 9. The affair is already mentioned in Fabroni, Historia Academiae Pisanae, III, pp. 104–116; Reusch, Der Index, II, pp. 430–431. 34 Saguens, Philosophia. Documents on the Minim in acdf, Index Prot. S3, T3 and V3. 35 Donato, ‘L’onere della prova’.

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the Index went in most cases only as far as a judgment of temerity, although in some instances the defendants were also guilty of breaching the rules for imprimatur, which made their position more difficult and raised ipso facto suspicions on their credibility. Clearly, one reason for what would seem a contradictory line of action lies in the very mechanisms of doctrinal control as they had been consolidating over time, that is, focusing on individuals and single books. A further reason was the place of History: because controversies revolved primarily around the value of tradition for making truth, the Holy Office could not really resolve to rebut a whole segment of Christian history. The notion of Tradition was itself ambivalent, as it could overlap with the Church magisterium on the one hand, and theological consensus on the other (which was itself a criterion for evaluating new ideas). It should be noted that the overwhelming majority of authors examined by the Inquisition in relation to the Eucharist and atomism were regular clergy. To an extent, it was the unsurprising effect of the established hierarchy of the disciplines; because not only the teaching of theology but also of metaphysics was, with few exceptions, in the hands of ecclesiastics, it was improbable that a layman would discuss such issues overtly (which, in fact, Galileo had not). And after all, the Council of Trent, and the implementation of doctrinal police through the Inquisition and the Index, had enhanced the exclusion of the laity from what pertained to theology and biblical exegesis.36 It took the immense intellectual ambition of René Descartes to put forward a whole new metaphysics, but still, the absolute majority of those delving into sacramental physics were ecclesiastics. This fact is crucial for understanding the attitude of the Inquisition, though we must be wary of believing that administering truth proved easier therefore—quite the opposite.

3. Intermezzo: Censorship as a Performative Practice Historians familiar with inquisitorial sources know how nuanced the art of censoring was. The range of theological qualifications for any given proposition was extremely wide: heretical, close to heresy, erroneous, scandalous, obscene, doubtful, temerarious, stulta, false, aliena to sound doctrines, down to academic appraisals such as absurd, obscura, ‘wrong in philosophy as well as in theology’. Censorship consisted not only in policing Catholic doctrine, but rather in shaping it through successive layers of qualification on theses 36 Fragnito, La Bibbia al rogo.

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that, in fact, were solidified through censorship.37 Qualifications encapsulated both the degree of error and the nuance of the censors’ reprobation. Some of them came close to sensory perception, such as male sonans, offensive to pious ears, ‘smelling heresy’. The art of the censor was an expertise, nearly a kind of connoisseurship, thanks to which the censor could confine himself to the literal meaning of the sentence under scrutiny in its ‘evident sense’ and nonetheless probe into the author’s attitude and personality. Unsurprisingly, then, in dealing with books and people, Roman Congregations acted rather differently according not only to the great divide of laity/ clergy, but also to the person’s grade, position, age, geographical and national origin, intellectual prestige, and numerical strength of his order. Notably, all the ecclesiastics who were examined by Roman authorities were all relatively minor figures from peripheral centres. Such complexities were further enhanced by the fact that the Roman Congregations harboured a plurality of theological orientations and monastic traditions. In the course of the seventeenth century, in fact, the initial preponderance of the Dominicans had given way to a wider spectrum of religious orders.38 Furthermore, congregations were porous to external pressure. For instance, when the Index was examining Saguens’s work and, through him, Maignan’s philosophy, the superior of the Minims pleaded for additional expert opinions by ‘dispassionate new censors’, which they obtained.39 In a nutshell, doctrinal control was inherently positional. This is true of censorship vis-à-vis the external world, and of the congregations’ internal activity. In the past decades, thanks to the opening of the archives, historians investigating censorship have shed light on the nuances, even the conflicts, that existed among the representatives of different theological traditions sitting in the Roman congregations. Few, however, have examined censorship as a performative practice. 40 In fact, censorship was also a matter of performance. It was an art of scholarly and measured rhetoric in which doctrine and erudition must combine, but could not deflect from a peculiar style of eloquence embedded in the social hierarchies underpinning any censorial apparatus. It should not be overlooked that the censor must persuade his ‘public’—his fellow censors, the secretary, and assessor (who were the real gate-keepers of censorship 37 Neveu, L’Erreur et son juge. 38 Prosopographie 1701–1813 and Prosopographie 1814–1917. 39 acdf, Index Prot. A4, fol. 128. The Minims eventually distanced themselves from Saguens (who continued to write in favour of Maignan’s eucharistic philosophy); see Donato, ‘Scienza e teologia’. 40 On this point, see now Censure et style, and, for broader comparison, Darnton, Censors.

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because they chose whom to assign cases), as well as the Congregation’s cardinals and even the pope. The Holy Office and the Index were communities of censorial intelligence, sharing common values, intellectual tools, and a vision of the world, and yet members were under the perpetual scrutiny of their colleagues and superiors. Over time, along with the bureaucratization of procedures, a format was codified which consisted of isolating problematic propositions, then giving a general statement on the work and/or its author to help the cardinals decide a verdict, all drafted with a subtle balance of humility and self-assurance. A whole panoply of codes and practices was then put to work with the aim of asserting the authority and credibility of the consultor in charge, while reaffirming the hierarchical structure of the Roman institutions as a whole. Accordingly, the referee was expected to adjust his report to the book’s nature and content, of course, as well as to the author’s status. Hence, several dense pages were required on theological and metaphysical treatises by ecclesiastics vs. a two-page overview on devotional booklets, gravitas instead of contempt. Likewise, propositions were isolated and transcribed from theological writings with the aim of better refuting them, whereas they served as self-evident proof of crime in dealing with literary works. 41 Mastering this kind of rhetorical device was essential to signal and reinforce the sense of belonging to a hierarchical corps, while enabling each actor to secure his goal. In the first place, it was necessary to give the proof of one’s reliability and thus progress in the congregations’ internal hierarchy. Secondly, mastering censorial codes enabled the referee to manipulate the confines of the disciplines and enlarge the censor’s field of observation. 42 In examining Descartes’ writing, for example, Stefano Spinola marked the theory of matter in Principia philosophiae and passages on movement and sensation in Passions de l’âme as ‘worth of controversy’, whereas Tartaglia considered the explication of light in Méditations ‘alien to philosophy’ and his Eucharist physics ‘stumbling even in philosophy’. 43 Clearly, such remarks can be viewed as an expression of the old scholastic culture of many Roman theologians, who assessed new philosophical ideas through the categories these aimed to replace. But they were also rhetoric performances: by hinting at problematic philosophical aspects, censors activated a sense of community, while they cast doubts on the personality and intentions of the author under examination—in a word, they undermined his credibility. 41 Amadieu, La littérature française, pp. 227–228. 42 Donato, ‘Les doutes’. 43 Armogathe and Carraud, ‘La première condamnation’.

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Peripatetic Atomists and Cartesian Scholastics In order to have a clearer idea of how all these mechanisms operated, one needs to take a closer look at single affairs, although none of them was self-contained: each made sense only in relation to others. One revealing f ile is that of Atomi peripateticae, sive tum veterum, tum recentiorum atomistarum placita ad neotericae peripateticae scholae methodum redacta, published in 1674 by Capuchin Casimir of Toulouse (c. 1633–1674), whom Roger Ariew aptly terms a ‘peripatetic atomist’.44 The book featured corpuscular physics refuting the distinction between substance and accidents, rejected substantial forms, and understood species intentionales in a sense similar to Maignan’s. In dealing with the accidents, Casimir traced the series of authors in history who had taught an ‘opinion differing from those of Scotists, Thomists, and Suarists’, and argued that the primitive Church conceived species as actions, that according to the Scriptures Christ had miraculously appeared sub different specie, and scholastic theologians had misinterpreted the Fathers and Aquinas himself. 45 The book was examined by three theologians for the Index, who agreed that Casimir’s explanation of intentional species verged on subjectivism, turning eucharistic species into a mere appearance. The book was eventually suspended donec corrigatur in 1680. More precisely, Dominican Paolo Bernardini scorned Casimir’s rebuttal of the distinction between substance and accidents, an argument that was ultimately based on Anaxagoras and Parmenides. He duly noted that the core of Casimir’s argument was historical, that he discussed Anselm and Paschasius Radbertus ‘more ingeniously than correctly’, arguing that species were ‘the figures of bread and wine caused there by Christ through some I do not know what objective action’, a thesis he considered at least temerarious for it was illogical, contrary to the majority of scholastic philosophers and theologians (which was precisely what Casimir had intended), and wrongly deduced from the wording of Tridentine canons. Bernardini added in passing that he avoided reporting Casimir’s errors ‘that do not trespass the limits of philosophy’, a remark that served only to undermine further his credibility.46 Giuseppe M. Favino from Crema, a Conventual Franciscan, thought that Casimir’s theory was quite ingenious, yet weak and incoherent nonetheless. Furthermore, it ‘echoed’ 44 Ariew, Descartes among the Scholastics, p. 159. In Casimir’s view, atoms were differentiated by their shape, size, and motion, and surrounded by vacuum. 45 Casimir, Atomi peripateticae, V, pp. 260ff.; II, pp. 120ff. 46 acdf, Index Prot. R2, fols. 487–488.

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errors that had already been condemned, and was replete with dangerous novelty ultimately drawn from Pagan philosophers.47 Finally, cleric regular minor Filippo Grottieri began his votum recalling vehemently that only a few years earlier he had rebutted the explanation of species intentionales in Augustin Pietro de Conti’s Summa philosophica, which Casimir repeated with greater eloquence. It was now time to bring to a halt the ‘licence’ of novatores and atomists who cast doubts on the most basic notions of philosophy and everyday experience. After enumerating all ‘incorrect’ propositions in the book, Grottieri judged Casimir at the very least temerarious, for he implied that over the centuries all Christians had been deceived by their senses, whereas the doctrine of transubstantiation upheld from Aquinas to Juan de Lugo was so widely accepted as not to be binding. In fact, Grottieri did not even grasp the need for any new theory, the peripatetic explanation being perfectly apt to explain the senses’ impression. It was simply absurd to speak of a miracle of God’s omnipotence like Casimir did when ‘any supernatural mystery can easily and rationally be salvaged, while saving the rest of the natural order of things’, all the more so as the very proponents of modern theories labelled them as ‘probable’. 48 In a nutshell, the attitude of the Roman doctrinal institutions was twofold. On the one hand, the inquisitors did not understand novel explanations of transubstantiation—not per se but rather the very need of any new explanation replacing a perfectly rational scholastic one. On the other hand, they viewed history and tradition as a progressive, unitary, Rome-centred process. True, Roman authorities tended to approach novelty as a repetition of past errors, which was both a mental habitus and a necessity, as it was in all respects easier to pronounce judgments on errors formally condemned by general councils and/or papal bulls. Not surprisingly then, the name of Wyclif surfaced repeatedly, more or less pertinently. But as self-evident as it could be in reference to heresiarchs like Wyclif, History proved a slippery slope when the controversy turned on the interpretation of canonical Christian authorities. Did History after all coincide with Tradition? Anti-scholastics could rightly claim that Ratramnus and Rabanus Maurus were references as legitimate as Aquinas. Still, not without reason, Lorenzo Brancati da Lauria, a Franciscan theologian and would-be cardinal, noted in commenting on 47 acdf, Index Prot. R2, fols. 492–493. 48 acdf, Index Prot. R2, fols. 489–491. Grotteri’s long votum on Conti in acdf, Index Prot. 39, fols. 198–210. Notably, the Congregation decided that Conti’s theory ‘quo in eucharistia non remaneant vera et realia accidentia panis et vini, sed tantum apparentia, et cum ob eandam temerariam et erroneam opinionem paucis abhunc annis a S. Cong. SO damnatus fuit liber Ioannis Baptistae Chaivettae, RR PP decreverunt prohiberi’, acdf, Index Diari 7 (1665–1682), fol. 41v.

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Descartes’ metaphysics that from it ‘many absurd things ensue in theology and in regard to the faith’, namely that it implied that

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St. Anselm, the Master of Sentences [Peter Lombard], the Angelic Doctor, St. Bonaventure, Duns Scotus, and almost all Catholic theologians without exception for over five hundred years hallucinated in what they had taught and written on this sacrament, despite the fact that the Church had used their ideas to explain this sacrament in numerous general councils, including the Lateran Council, and the Councils of Constance, Florence, and Trent.49

After all, censoring was the art of situating a proposition in a web of meanings, both logical and historical, reactivating all History in its unrelenting unfolding. Hence, Roman censors showed their contempt and (nearly physical) irritation against the sophistication of novatores, which sow the discord of execrabilium errorum as in Luther’s times. Paradoxically, the irritation of Rome seemed to grow along with the reprobation of probabilism.50 Although, as I have indicated, many novatores were rigorist in moral theology and were driven by the veneration for primitive Christianity, their arguments did present some degree of artificiality, and as such were sanctioned both by Roman authorities and other archéolâtres, though for different reasons. Of course, the Inquisition also set its own history of dogma: once a decision of any kind had been made, it became possible to refer to the ‘orders already given by the Congregation’, as the usual expression ran. No formal qualification was needed to dissuade anyone from, or reprimand anyone for, teaching ‘dangerous’ theses—which, incidentally, was the reason archiving was so important. As late as 1706, when the Congregation of the Index examined Antoine Le Grand’s Institutio philosophiae (London 1678), this same twofold attitude was fully reactivated. The Franciscan Nicola da Rossiglione singled out the thesis that ‘there are no material or substantial forms in the body’ and ‘I cannot understand why Aristotelians strive so hard to introduce accidents into the world, as if they existed, nobody could perceive them’, judging that, although formally correct, its real meaning nonetheless contradicted the dogma, as it implied that Eucharistic accidents were but illusion, and quoted the condemnation of Wyclif. Venanzo della Trinità, a Discalced Carmelite, pointed at the dangerous consequences of 49 acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, O 3 f, fol. 328v, partially published by Armogathe, ‘Cartesian Physics’, p. 148. 50 Quantin, ‘Le Saint-Office’; Tutino, Uncertainty.

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identifying substance and res extensa, which made it at least ‘difficult’ to explain the Eucharist as defined by the Tridentine Council; furthermore, he drew the attention of the cardinals to the fact that Le Grand had breached the Holy Office’s 1673 circular letter (though this, of course, had not had—and could not have—any effect outside Italy).51 Last but not least, policing dogma implied selecting authoritative sources, that is, defining that theological consensus which represented one of the criteria by which theses were judged. In this area, too, Roman congregations set their own tradition, as inquisitors tended to refer to the writings and teachings of reputed theologians who had been members of the Holy Office, in a mutually reinforcing process of legitimation. We should remember, incidentally, that many Inquisition members and consultants had taught and written, or continued to teach and write, on the same matters they had to examine, and thus enforced the Inquisition’s jurisprudence in the intellectual arena. I have mentioned Juan de Lugo and Sforza Pallavicino, former professors at the Collegio Romano, who both contributed to make the Holy Office take a firmer position against non-Aristotelian physics in relation to transubstantiation.52 Their influence among inquisitors dealing with this issue remained strong long after their deaths, ‘because the opinion of the atomes had already been revived in that time’.53 Likewise, Lorenzo Brancati published a lengthy comment on the sacramental theology of Duns Scotus, his order’s highest authority.54 In other words, for the Roman judges too, History was a source of Truth, but not (at least, not always) in the same sense as those ‘antiquarian novatores’ conjecturing on species intentionales. The administration of truth consisted in doctrinal police performed through routine censorial mechanisms. It should be added that in most affairs dealing with Eucharistic physics, those targeted were members either of very ancient orders (i.e. more ancient than Dominicans, like Canons Regular, Benedictines, Augustinians, Servants of Mary) or of orders which did not have a statuary allegiance to a specific theological school (like the Capuchins and the Minims). In the seventeenth century, these orders were striving to find their intellectual and theological identities, and were also increasingly present in Roman congregations. What seems to have fuelled polemics was the fact that some orders were striving to find their authoritative benchmarks, and turned 51 Armogathe, ‘The Roman Censure’. 52 acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, O 3 f, n. 2. See De Lugo, Disputationes scholasticae, pp. 363ff. 53 acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, O 3 f, fol. 443v (1671). 54 Brancati, Commentaria.

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to less-known authors, relocating their stories in a broader history. These freshly established authorities were either ‘moderns’, like Maignan for the Minims and Magni for the Capuchins, or very ancient, like the ninth-century theologians rediscovered by the Benedictines.55 Capassi’s case, which I have mentioned, is useful in highlighting how corpuscular philosophy linked with references to history worked in undermining authority—but also, how dangerous the alliance was in the eyes of many, even among anti-scholastic rigorists, and how fine the line on which these walked. Among Capassi’s suspect theses, some touched upon Church history, namely the use of azym bread in primitive Christianity and the Council of Constance; others dealt with corpuscular physics and the substance/accidents distinction. A few addressed the Eucharist, including one ‘melius hoc altissimum Eucharistiae mysterium iuxte SS. PP. placita absque accidentibus a peripateticis scholis explicatis defendendum suscipimus’. In self-defence, Capassi claimed that many reputed authors had taught corpuscular physics, namely the Jesuits Cabeo, Fabri, Grimaldi, and Casati, and that ‘these modern philosophies only deal with corporeal things’.56 As for the Eucharist, he wrote:

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Having observed how strongly authors disagree in regard to the nature and quidditas of accidents […] and having observed that the councils have established that in the sacrament of the Eucharist the species of bread and wine remain without saying what they are […] it seemed to me that I could argue for the thesis that this mystery is better sustained if one restrains oneself in the terms with which the councils and the Fathers have spoken of the species, saying that there remain the species without determining what they are.

Nonetheless, Capassi was forced to retract his ‘scandalous and temerarious errors’.57 Once again, Rome could not go further than temerity. Notably, though, the Augustine scholar and rigorist theologian Emmanuel Schelstrate, while trying to soften the inquisitor’s reaction, disapproved of Capassi’s temerity and wished he would further abstain from ‘exotic opinions, which could harm the study of the sacred antiquities’.58 55 Barzazi, Gli affanni. 56 acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, O 3 f, fols. 430–446, quotation fol. 438v. 57 acdf, S.O., Decreta 1688, fols. 142v, 154v, 169r, 203r. 58 Dal Pino, ‘Il P. Gerardo Capassi’, pp. 111–112. Notably, Schelstrate admonished his admirer Capassi that from Cartesian premises ‘multa statuuntur de singulis sacramentorum materiae et formis, quae aegre cum Concilio Florentino conciliari poterunt. De his et similibus vel omnino

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Some Conclusive Remarks In 1705 the Holy Office felt compelled to send a second circular reminding local inquisitors of the 1673 ban on atomism.59 Polemics on the orthodoxy of modern natural philosophy continued for a while, and in most cases included the Eucharist issue. From time to time, the Holy Office and the Index turned their attention to those who taught libertas theologandi. In fact, as in many thorny issues, Rome basically tried to stop controversy. Yet, neither Maignan nor Gassendi were ever prohibited; the latter’s works were published in 1723 in Florence under Medici patronage.60 Does this mean that, willy-nilly, the Holy Office set a new frontier between theology and philosophy and resolved to administer Truth within the domain of defined dogmas? And was the call to history instrumental to relativizing claims of authority? To our modern mind, the struggle against scholastic culture per se is valuable. History was indeed a powerful tool in disrupting scholasticism. The use of the past should not, however, be mistaken for an anti-authoritative approach to truth. History is an intrinsically ambivalent principle. As noted by scholars such as Michel de Certeau, Bruno Neveu, Jean-Louis Quantin, and Stefania Tutino, it implies the quest for an older, hence more legitimate source of truth. Secondly, attention to shortcomings and internal disagreements in the Roman Inquisition does not deny the fact that ecclesiastical censorship played a role in shaping knowledge and policing disciplinary borders. It periodically re-enacted the subordination of lay intellectuals to ecclesiastics while underpinning social hierarchies in general. In this context, history was a jagged-edged resource, used to re-draw (or at least attempt to re-draw) the field within which the Church claimed exclusive authority. Not by chance, when lay authors mobilized historical arguments in favour of atomism, or more generally against scholastic culture, they inevitably fell under the Inquisition’s spell. It suff iced to refer to the Scriptures, of course, but also to quote the Church Fathers or the councils’ canons to incur censorship. Hence, the celebrated Neapolitan physician Lionardo di Capua’s Parere sopra l’incertezza della medicina, f irst tacendum putarem vel conciliorum sententiis inhaerendum, ne adversariis causa accusandi praebeatur. Rogo igitur, ut in tractandis rebus theologicis caute in posterum procedere velis; utque coepta eruditionis ecclesiasticae studia feliciter prosequari.’ 59 acdf, S.O., Decreta 1705, fol. 388v. 60 On these developments, see Donato, ‘Scienza e teologia’.

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published in 1681, heralded a mildly sceptical, anti-Galenist progressive vision of medicine. The book was reported for its temerarious praise of Democritus and other heretics. The Cistercian Giovanni M. Gabrielli drafted a very harsh report, encapsulating many of the points that I have raised in this chapter, as he drew up the list of the atrocities of di Capua’s ‘unchained satire’, which defended atomism and unduly quoted the Fathers to refute the most respected scholastic theologians and thus ‘profaned the theological chair, and infamously turned it into an Aristophanes theatre of slander’.61 Some years later, Costantino Grimaldi’s Risposta alla lettera apologetica in difesa della teologia scolastica di Benedetto Aletino, published in 1699 in response to the Jesuits who continued to be vocal against novatores using the Eucharist, and his two further Rispostes, which very skilfully turned the Council canons against Aristotelianism, were all eventually prohibited.62 In conclusion, I would like to suggest that future research should address the history of theology, or, more precisely, the way in which the history of theology (where, why, and in which format) was written in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries both by ecclesiastics and lay authors.63 This largely untapped problem could shed light on the ways the boundaries between disciplines were negotiated in an age of tremendous change, and how making history did eventually relativize claims of authority.

Bibliography

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Archival Sources Vatican City, Archivio della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede (acdf): Index Prot. Q2; R2; S3; T3; V3; A4; 39. Index Diari 7 (1665–1682). S.O., Stanza Storica, O 3 f; O 1 g. S.O., Decreta 1688 and Decreta 1705. S.O., Censurae Librorum 1669–1672.

61 Fattori, ‘Censura e filosofia’. 62 In fact, they were first allowed, in spite of the revisors’ negative assessments, but eventually prohibited in 1726: Comparato, ‘Ragione e fede’. 63 Inglis, Spheres.

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Printed Sources Bellarmin, Robert, Disputationes […] de controversiis christianae fidei (Venetiis: apud Minimam societatem, 1599). Brancati, Lorenzo, Commentaria […] in quartum librum Sentent. mag. fr. Ioannis Duns Scoti (Romæ: Manelphij, 1653). Casati, Paolo, Vacuum proscriptum disputatio physica (Genuae: Peri, 1649). Casimir of Toulouse, Atomi peripateticae […], 6 vols. (Biterris: Martel, 1674). Compton, Carleton Thomas, Philosophia universa (Antverpiae: Meursium, 1649). Goudin, Antoine, Philosophia juxta inconcussa tutissimaque Divi Thomae dogmata (Lyon: Pierre Compagnon et Robert Taillandier, 1671). de Lugo, Juan, Disputationes scholasticae, et morales, de sacramentis in genere, de venerabili Eucharistiae sacramento et de sacrosancto Missae sacrificio (Lugduni: Bordes, Arnaud & Rigault, 1636). Magni, Valeriano, Principia et specimen philosophiae (Coloniae Agrippinae: apud Jodocum Kalcovium, 1652). Maignan, Emmanuel, ‘Appendix de speciebus eucharisticis instaurata’, in Emmanuel Maignan, Cursus philosophicus recognitus et auctior concinnatus […] (Lugduni: Gregoire, 1673), pp. 583–590. ———, Cursus philosophicus (Tolosae: Bosc, 1653). Mauro, Silvestro, Quaestionum philosophicarum libri quatuor (Romae: de Lazeris, 1658). Pallavicino, Sforza, Assertionum theologicarum. Liber sextus de sacramentis (Romae: Corbelletti, 1650). ———, Vindicationes Societatis Iesu […] (Romae: typis Dominici Manelphi, 1649). Piccinardi, Serafino, Philosophiae dogmaticae peripateticae christianae libri novem (Patavii: Frambottus, 1671). Raynaud, Théophile, Eucharistica (Lugduni: Horace Boissat & George Remeus, 1665). Saguens, Jean, Philosophia Maignani scholastica (Tolosae: apud Joannem Vialar, 1703). Salier, Jacques, Historia scholastica de speciebus eucharisticis, 2 vols. (Lugduni: Valfray, 1687– 1692).

Literature Adam, Michel, L’eucharistie chez les penseurs français du dix-septième siècle (Hildesheim: Olms, 2000). Amadieu, Jean-Baptiste, La littérature française au XIXe siècle mise à l’Index. Les procedures (Paris: Cerf, 2017). Ariew, Roger, Descartes among the Scholastics (Leiden et al.: Brill, 2011).

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———, Descartes and the Last Scholastics (Ithaca et al.: Cornell University Press, 1999). Armogathe, Jean-Robert, ‘Cartesian Physics and the Eucharist in the Documents of the Holy Office and the Roman Index (1671–1676)’, in Receptions of Descartes. Cartesianism and Anti-Cartesianism in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Tad M. Schmaltz (London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 136–156. ———, ‘The Roman Censure of the Institutio philosophiae of Antoine Le Grand (1629–1699) according to Unpublished Documents from the Archives of the Holy Office’, in Cartesian Views. Papers Presented to Richard A. Watson, ed. by Thomas M. Lennon (Leiden et al.: Brill, 2003), pp. 193–206. ———, Theologia cartesiana. L’explication physique de l’Eucharistie chez Descartes et dom Desgabets (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1977). ——— and Vincent Carraud, ‘La première condamnation des oeuvres de Descartes d’après les documents inédits aux archives du Saint-Office’, Nouvelles de la République des lettres, 10 (2001), 103–123. Artigas, Mariano, ‘Un nuovo documento sul caso Galileo’, Acta philosophica, 10 (2001), 199–214. Badea, Andreea, ‘(Heiligen-)Geschichte als Streitfall. Die Acta sanctorum und Mabillons Epistola de cultu sanctorum ignotorum und die römische Zensur’, in Europäische Geschichtskulturen um 1700 zwischen Gelehrsamkeit, Politik und Konfession, ed. by Thomas Wallnig, Thomas Stockinger, Ines Peper, and Patrick Fiska (Berlin et al.: De Gruyter, 2012), pp. 377–402. Baldini, Ugo, ‘Giuseppe Ballo e le Congregazioni del Sant’Uffizio e dell’Indice’, in Filosofia scienza cultura. Studi in onore di Corrado Dollo, ed. by Giuseppe Bentivegna, Santo Burgio, and Giancarlo Magnano San Lio (Soveria Mannelli: Rubettino, 2002), pp. 47–67. ———, Legem impone subactis. Studi su filosofia e scienza dei gesuiti in Italia 1540–1632 (Rome: Bulzoni, 1992). ——— and Spruit, Leen, Catholic Church and Modern Science. Documents from the Archives of the Roman Congregations of the Holy Office and the Index (Rome: Libreria editrice vaticana, 2009). Baroncini, Giuliano, ‘L’insegnamento della filosofia naturale nei Collegi italiani dei Gesuiti (1610–1670). Un esempio di nuovo aristotelismo’, in La Ratio studiorum. Modelli culturali e pratiche educative dei gesuiti in Italia tra Cinque e Seicento, ed. by Gian Paolo Brizzi (Rome: Bulzoni, 1981), pp. 163–215. Barzazi, Antonella, Gli affanni dell’erudizione. Studi e organizzazione culturale degli ordini regolari a Venezia tra Sei e Settecento (Venice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 2004). Beretta, Francesco, ‘Orthodoxie philosophique et Inquisition romaine aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles. Un essai d’interprétation’, Historia philosophica, 3 (2005), 67–96.

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Blum, Paul R., Studies on Early Modern Aristotelianism (Leiden et al.: Brill, 2012). Bucciantini, Massimo, Contro Galileo. Alle origini dell’affaire (Florence: Olschki, 1995). Cavarzere, Marco, La prassi della censura nell’Italia del Seicento. Tra repressione e mediazione (Rome: Storia e Letteratura, 2011). Caravale, Giorgio, Forbidden Prayer. Church Censorship and Devotional Literature in Renaissance Italy (London and New York: Routledge, 2011). Ceñal, Ramón, ‘La filosofía de Emmanuel Maignan’, Revista de filosofía, 13 (1954), 15–68. Censure et style, ed. by Jean-Baptiste Amadieu and Thomas Hochmann, special issue of Romanic Review, 109 (2018). Certeau, Michel de, ‘L’histoire religieuse du XVIIe siècle. Problèmes de méthode’, Recherches de sciences religieuses, 57 (1969), pp. 231–250; English translation in Michel de Certeau, The Writing of History, trans. by Tom Conley (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), pp. 125–147. Church, Censorship, and Culture in Early Modern Italy, ed. by Gigliola Fragnito (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Comparato, Vittor Ivo, ‘Ragione e fede nelle Discussioni istoriche, teologiche e filosofiche di Costantino Grimaldi’, in Saggi e ricerche sul Settecento (Naples: Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici, 1968), pp. 48–93. Costantini, Claudio, Baliani e i Gesuiti (Florence: Giunti, 1969). Dal Pino, Andrea M., ‘Il P. Gerardo Capassi (1653–1737) e la sua corrispondenza con Schelstrate, i Bollandisti e i Maurini’, Studi storici dell’Ordine dei Servi di Maria, 7 (1955–1956), 15–126. Darnton, Robert, Censors at Work: How States Shaped Literature (New York: Norton, 2014). Delpiano, Patrizia, Church and Censorship in Eighteenth-Century Italy. Governing Reading in the Age of Enlightenment (London: Routledge, 2017). Donato, Maria Pia, ‘Les doutes de l’inquisiteur. Philosophie naturelle, censure et théologie à l’époque moderne’, Annales E.S.S., 64 (2009), 15–43. ———, ‘L’onere della prova. Il Sant’Uffizio, l’atomismo e i medici romani’, Nuncius. Annali di storia della scienza, 18 (2003), 69–87. ———, ‘Scienza e teologia nelle congregazioni romane: la questione atomista, 1626–1727’, in Rome et la science moderne. Entre Renaissance et Lumières, ed. by Antonella Romano (Rome: École française de Rome, 2008), pp. 595–634. Fabroni, Angelo, Historia Academiae Pisanae, 3 vols. (Pisae: Magnainius, 1795). Fattori, Marta, ‘Censura e filosofia moderna. Napoli, Roma, e l’affaire di Capua (1692–1694)’, Nouvelles de la République des lettres, 12/1–2 (2004), 17–44. Fragnito, Gigliola, La Bibbia al rogo. La censura ecclesiastica e i volgarizzamenti della Scrittura (1471–1605) (Bologna: il Mulino, 1997).

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Gasparri, Giuliano, ‘Documenti dell’Archivio del Sant’Uffizio per servire alla storia del gassendismo in Italia (1668–1723)’, Nouvelles de la République des Lettres, 18 (2008), 75–110. Gay, Jean-Pascal, Jesuit Civil Wars: Theology, Politics and Government under Tirso González (1687–1705) (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012). Grabmann, Martin, ‘Die Philosophie des Cartesius und die Eucharistielehre des Emmanuel Maignan, O. Min.’, in Cartesio nel terzo centenario del Discorso sul metodo (Milan: Vita e pensiero, 1937), pp. 425–436. Heilbron, John L., Electricity in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. A Study of Early Modern Physics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979). Hellyer, Markus, ‘The Construction of the Ordinatio pro Studis superioribus of 1651’, Archivum historicum Societatis Iesu, 143 (2003), 3–43. Inglis, John, Spheres of Philosophical Inquiry and the Historiography of Medieval Philosophy (Leiden et al.: Brill, 1998). Inquisition, Index, Zensur. Wissenskulturen der Neuzeit im Widerstreit, ed. by Hubert Wolf (Paderborn et al.: Schöningh, 2001). Jesuit Science and the Republic of Letters, ed. by Mordechei Feingold (Cambridge/ Mass: MIT Press, 2003). Le Brun, Jacques, ‘Autorité doctrinale, définition et censure dans le catholicisme moderne. Notes critiques’, Revue de l’histoire des religions, 211 (1994), 335–343. Leijnhorst, Cees and Lüthy, Christoph, ‘The Erosion of Aristotelism. Confessional Physics in Early Modern Germany and the Dutch Republic’, in The Dynamics of Aristotelian Natural Philosophy from Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century, ed. by Cees Leijnhorst, Christoph Lüthy, and Jan Thijssen (Leiden et al.: Brill, 2002), pp. 375–411. Maier, Annelise, ‘Das Problem des species sensibiles in medio und die neue Naturphilosophie des 14. Jahrhunderts,’ in Annelise Maier, Ausgehendes Mittelalter. Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Geistesgeschichte des 14. Jahrhunderts (Rome: Storia e Letteratura, 1967). Marcus, Hannah, Forbidden Knowkedge. Medicine, Science, and Censorship in Early Modern Italy (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2020). Martínez, Rafael, ‘Il manoscritto ACDF, Index, protocolli, vol. EE, f. 291r-v’, Acta Philosophica, 10 (2001), 215–242. Matton, Sylvain, ‘Note sur quelques critiques oubliées de l’atomisme. À propos de la transubstantiation eucharistique’, Revue d’histoire des sciences, 55 (2002), 145–166. Mayer, Thomas F., The Roman Inquisition. A Papal Bureaucracy and Its Laws in the Age of Galileo (University Park: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). Neveu, Bruno, L’Erreur et son juge. Remarques sur les censures doctrinales à l’époque moderne (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1993). ———, Érudition et religion aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris: A. Michel, 1994).

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Orthodoxie, christianisme, histoire, ed. by Susanne Elm, Eric Rebillard, and Antonella Romano (Rome: École française de Rome, 2000). Osler, Margaret J., Divine Will and the Mechanical Philosophy. Gassendi and Descartes on Contingency and Necessity in the Created World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Palmerino, Carla Rita, ‘Two Jesuit Responses to Galileo’s Science of Motion. Honoré Fabri and Pierre Le Cazré’, in The New Science and Jesuit Science, ed. by Mordechai Feingold (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2003), pp. 187–227. Praktiken der römischen Bücherzensur im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert, ed. by Andreea Badea, in Praktiken der Frühen Neuzeit. Akteure – Verfahren – Artefakte, ed. by Arndt Brendecke (Cologne et al.: Böhlau, 2015), pp. 332–385. Prosopographie von römischer Inquisition und Indexkongregation, 1701–1813, ed. by Herman H. Schwedt, Jyri Hasecker, Dominik Höink, and Judith Schepers, in Römische Inquisition und Indexkongregation, ed. by Hubert Wolf (Paderborn et al.: Schöningh, 2010). Prosopographie von römischer Inquisition und Indexkongregation, 1814–1917, ed. by Hermann Schwedt and Tobias Lagatz, in Römische Inquisition und Indexkongregation, ed. by Hubert Wolf (Paderborn et al.: Schöningh, 2005). Quantin, Jean-Louis, Le catholicisme classique et les Pères de l’Eglise. Un retour aux sources (1669–1713) (Paris: Institut d’études augustiniennes, 1999). ———, ‘Le Saint-Office et le probabilisme (1677–1679). Contribution à l’histoire de la théologie morale à l’époque moderne’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome – Italie et Méditerranée, 114 (2002), 875–960. Redondi, Pietro, Galileo eretico (Torino: Einaudi, 1983); English translation: Galileo Heretic, trans. by Raymond Rosenthal (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987). Reusch, Franz Heinrich, Der Index der verbotenen Bücher, 2 vols. (Bonn: Cohen & Sohn, 1883–1885). Roux, Sophie, ‘The Condemnations of Cartesian Natural Philosophy under Louis XIV (1661–91)’, in The Oxford Handbook of Descartes and Cartesianism, ed. by Steven Nadler, Tad M. Schmaltz, and Delphine Antoine-Mahut (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), pp. 755–779. Savelli, Rodolfo, Censori e giuristi. Storie di libri, di idee e di costumi (sec. XVI–XVII) (Milan: Giuffrè, 2011). Schmaltz, Tad M., Radical Cartesianism. The French Reception of Descartes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Signorotto, Gianvittorio, ‘The squadrone volante. “Independent” Cardinals and European Politics in the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century’, in Court and Politics in Papal Rome, 1492–1700, ed. by Gianvittorio Signorotto and Maria Antonietta Visceglia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 177–211.

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Snoeks, Remi, L’argument de tradition dans la controverse eucharistique entre catholiques et réformés français au XVIIe siècle (Louvain: Publications Universitaires, 1951). Spruit, Leen, Species intelligibilis. From Perception to Knowledge, 2 vols. (Leiden et al.: Brill, 1994–1995). Tutino, Stefania, Uncertainty in Post-Reformation Catholicism. A History of Probabilism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). Watson, Richard A., ‘Transubstantiation among the Cartesians’, in Problems of Cartesianism, ed. by Thomas M. Lennon, J.M. Nicholas, and J.W. Dows (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1982), pp. 127–148. Woodbridge, John D., ‘La “grande chasse aux manuscrits”, la controverse eucharistique et Richard Simon’, in Conflits politiques, controverses religieuses. Essais d’histoire européenne au 16e–18e siècles, ed. by Ouzy Elyada and Jacques Le Brun (Paris: Editions de l’EHESS, 2002), pp. 143–175.

About the Author

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Maria Pia Donato is CNRS research professor at the Institut d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine in Paris. Her latest publications include L’Archivio del mondo. Quando Napoleone confiscò la storia (2019) and Medicine and the Inquisition in the Early Modern World (2019).

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Part III

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Embedding

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10. ‘Experiences Are Not Successful Accompaniments to Knowledge of the Truth’ The Trial of the Atheists in Late Seventeenth-Century Naples Vittoria Fiorelli

Abstract During the last decades of the seventeenth century, the Roman Inquisition investigated a group of Neapolitan lawyers and legal scholars who, passionate about scientific and geometric reasoning, tried to reformulate the very concepts of science and truth. Leaving aside theoretical questions about the heuristic methods of this group, this chapter focuses on the response of the most reactionary wing of local society to this challenge, both in Naples and in Rome. Worried by the emancipation from the principle of authority taking shape in both lay and ecclesiastic culture, the Inquisition sought to maintain control over the different forms of religious and intellectual dissent unfolding in Naples.

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Keywords: Inquisition, Naples, atheism, history of atomism.

In a Neapolitan gazette of the late seventeenth century, the Giornali di Napoli dal MDCLXXIX al MDCIC, Domenico Confuorto remembered Giacinto De Cristofaro’s years in the inquisitorial prisons of San Domenico for having ‘followed the cult of the Epicureans or atheists’.1 This quote introduces the 1 Confuorto, Giornali di Napoli, I, p. 359. For De Cristofaro see De Ferrari, ‘Giacinto De Cristofaro’. It was De Cristofaro himself who traced the path of his education during the trial: ‘Io doppo haver studiato gramatica in potere di P. Antonio Oliviero mio Maestro, andai a studiare logica nel collegio dei PP. Gesuiti sotto il P. Fabio de Urbe e doppo andai a studiare legge ne’

Badea, A., B. Boute, M. Cavarzere, S. Vanden Broecke (eds.), Making Truth in Early Modern Catholicism. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021 doi 10.5117/9789463720526_ch10

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264 Vittoria Fiorelli

main historical problem discussed in the following pages: how did the Holy Office succeed in manipulating intellectual categories, such as Epicureanism and atheism, to reach political goals in early modern Naples? Along with a clearly philosophical definition—that referring to the ‘Epicureans’—we f ind the term ‘atheism’, the meaning of which, in the language of the institutions devoted to supervision of the faith, was much less clear. By calling De Cristofaro, his friends, and colleagues ‘atheists’, Confuorto did not imply any connection with the intellectual current that had revitalized the Renaissance tradition of atheism. In his view, atheism was first of all a useful category: it could both cover a wide range of accusations and label any form of political and intellectual innovation during the Kingdom’s complex political transition.2 Truth is always conceptualized within a precise historical frame in which politics, religion, and culture combine. This seems particularly apparent in the Neapolitan case at the core of this chapter. In the following pages, I analyse the conflict between the secular and ecclesiastical elites of Naples (namely the archbishop, the Holy Office, and the viceregal court) and the local followers of the Cartesian movement, the so-called novatores, who took a strong philosophical stance against the Aristotelian orthodoxy. In late seventeenth-century Naples, the development of modern philosophical and political ideas stood at the centre of a decisive political battle: on the one hand, philosophical innovations were unacceptable for the Church and the local elite; on the other, the novatores sought the support of the Spanish government, taking advantage of the tensions between Madrid and the papal court. To understand this situation, we start with the above-mentioned inquisitorial trial held in Naples in the years 1688–1697 against De Cristofaro and a group of young men from the legal professions.3 Although trained as lawyers, this group showed great interest in scientific thought and engaged pubblici studij’ (‘After having taken the basic courses with my teacher Antonio Oliviero, I went to the Jesuits to study logic with Fabio da Urbe and afterwards I went to study law at the public university’). bnn, Sezione manoscritti e rari, I AA 32, fol. 147r. 2 See Fiorelli, ‘Mezzogiorno in transizione’. The bibliography on atheism cannot be discussed here, but for the definition of atheism/atheists, the immediate reference is Frajese, ‘Ateismo’; for the Neapolitan framework see also Chiosi, Lo spirito del secolo; Ferrone, The Intellectual Roots; Imbruglia, ‘Censura e giurisdizionalismo’. 3 On the trial against the atheists, Luciano Osbat published a book in 1974, L’Inquisizione a Napoli, long before the opening of the acdf, which has now allowed me to study further documentation: see Fiorelli, ‘Ateisti’. Neapolitan documents from the trial collected by De Cristofaro’s defence are also in bnn, I AA 32, fols. 124r–139v: Sommario del Processo fabricato nel Sacro Santo Tribunale dell’Inquisizione di Napoli contro del Dr Giacinto de Cristofaro carcerato e

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themselves in the study of mathematical and mechanical disciplines. In particular, De Cristofaro (1664?–1725), the first of the ‘atheists’ arrested by the Inquisition, grew up in a lively scientific environment. Son of Bernardo, a friend of Tommaso Cornelio and his companion in the anti-Aristotelian Accademia degli Investiganti (‘Academy of Investigators’), from his youth he was staunchly opposed to the idea that every type of knowledge should be conceived as a subordinate branch of scholastic philosophy, for which no autonomy of principles was allowed. 4 The 1688 heresy trial against De Cristofaro was less the result of theological arguments than a consequence of this larger intellectual debate. Certainly, the Holy Office’s initiative against De Cristofaro and his friends arose from general opposition to the atomistic trends of the time; it can be seen as a reaction against those intellectual circles which, by sustaining atomistic interpretations, attempted to reinvigorate Cartesian thought in Naples. In those years, the battle around atomism was also a way through which it finally seemed possible to overcome the Aristotelianism prevailing in many academic and religious circles. In this book, Maria Pia Donato investigates the doctrinal and theological debate that determined new boundaries between scientific and theological truth.5 This chapter instead aims to present a case-study, in which such debates will be contextualized in the concrete dimension of the Neapolitan political arena. In other words, it is not our goal to undertake a theoretical investigation, but to analyse the political battle in Naples around atomism from both social and institutional perspectives.

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1. Between Crown and Inquisition: The Political Climate Before describing the trial against the atomists, it seems expedient to briefly recall the nature of the Neapolitan Kingdom during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Primarily part of the Spanish imperial system, Naples was nevertheless an ancient European monarchy, which still preserved its institutional settings, its long-established privileges, and its customary laws and practices. As the King of Naples also ruled Spain, Neapolitan elites Raggione incontrastabili à pro di quello. For a short summary of the trial in English see Robertson, The Case for the Enlightenment, pp. 93–101. 4 About the Accademia see Torrini, ‘L’Accademia di Sebastiano Bartoli’; Galluzzi and Torrini, ‘Premessa’. 5 On this aspect, see the chapter by Maria Pia Donato in this volume.

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claimed the institutional standing of their state as well as their right to be governed with respect for its prerogatives.6 In this context, the presence of the Holy Office in the capital has been, throughout the two centuries of the Spanish presence in Naples, a source of political tension. The Crown tried several times to establish a tribunal dependent of the Spanish Suprema in the city. Each time, the city claimed its standing as capital of a sovereign kingdom, emphasizing that its institutional status was different from that of a region subject to Spain, such as Sicily. Naples’ unique position depended on the political dynamics with the Spanish Crown and between the Crown and the Church, whose political influence was still strong in Naples at the end of the seventeenth century. Because of the violent reactions of the urban upper class to attempts to locally introduce the Inquisition al modo di Spagna (‘in the Spanish way’), the papacy decided to grant jurisdiction in inquisitorial matters to the archiepiscopal court of Naples. In judging inquisitorial cases, the archbishop was, however, supported by a commissioner delegated by the Congregation of the Holy Office in Rome.7 During the first period, and in some tense following moments, the appointed commissioner was the apostolic nuncio, the representative of the pope in Naples. The appointment of the nuncio as commissioner was a further signal that the Roman Inquisition always found it difficult to assert its power in the Kingdom, particularly in the capital.8 As the battle against heresy was entrusted to parallel courts (the archbishop of Naples, the commissioner of the Roman Holy Office, the nuncio, etc.) and revolts induced by Spanish politics against the Inquisition regularly broke out in Naples, the inquisitorial activities here were marked by continual tensions, triggered by this jurisdictional pluralism.9 6 The historiography on the relation between Naples and Spain throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is too rich to be recalled here. I suggest, to give some examples, works such as Musi, L’impero dei viceré, or Rivero Rodríguez, La edad de oro de los virreyes, and especially the quoted Galasso, Regno di Napoli. 7 For the Inquisition in Naples see Romeo, ‘Inquisition and Church’, and Novi Chavarria, ‘Procedure inquisitoriali’. More recently Fonseca, ‘Napoli’; Caravale, ‘Tacitly denied’; Romano, ‘Stato, Chiesa e Inquisizione nel Regno di Napoli’, but the primary reference is always Amabile, Il Santo Officio della Inquisizione. 8 Villani, ‘Origine e caratteri della nunziatura di Napoli’. 9 A folder called Inquisizione del Regno di Napoli e Miscellanea 1671–1777 in the acdf holds more than 1400 papers relating to opposition between the congregation and the Curia of Naples on the allocation of trials and inquiries, including sixteenth-century notes and transcriptions of documents: acdf, S.O., Stanza storica 42 HH 2 b (2)1; see many documents, including the dossier Inquisizione di Napoli, in acdf, S.O., Stanza storica HH 2 b, 1602–1775. About the Roman congregation’s connection with the ‘peripheries’ and specially with Naples: Scaramella, Le

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What is more, the Spanish Crown preserved another tool of power against the prerogatives of the Roman Inquisition. In fact, every investigation or trial needed the pre-emptive ‘authorization to proceed’, the so-called exequatur, from the Consiglio collaterale, the main organ of political support for the viceroy. The formal authorization of the Neapolitan government was thus part of the jurisdictional negotiation between Madrid and the Seggi, spaces of aggregation of the urban patricians.10 Needless to say, the presence of a Roman commissioner and the exequatur made the situation in the Kingdom of Naples very different from other Italian contexts. Within this enduring struggle between the Roman Inquisition and Neapolitan society, the inquisitorial trial against the ateisti (‘atheists’) was the greatest moment of tension in the relationships between the Spanish King of Naples, the papal court, and the urban elite in Naples since the Masaniello riots of 1647.

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2. The Accademia degli Investiganti: The Cultural Climate The theoretical confrontation over the sciences represented one of the liveliest topics of discussion during this period. In Naples, it developed in the context of the anti-Aristotelian Accademia degli Investiganti, founded in the middle of the seventeenth century by Tommaso Cornelio and Leonardo di Capua, but inactive for about ten years after the plague of 1656. Revitalized on the initiative of the Marquis of Arena, Andrea Concublet, with the primary mission of ricercare la verità nelle cose della natura (‘looking for the truth within the natural things’),11 this institution was the meeting place of the so-called novatores, frequented by important personalities, such as Leonardo di Capua and Francesco d’Andrea. The Accademia first helped develop the social and cultural expectations for a radical renewal among the Neapolitan upper class. In those years, several intellectuals were in fact trying to introduce lettere della Congregazione, and Fiorelli, I sentieri dell’inquisitore. About the inquisitorial revolts Cernigliaro, ‘La rivolta napoletana’. 10 Many documents on the tensions between the viceroy Count of Peñaranda and the deputation of the Piazze against the presence in the city of the minister of the Holy Off ice are in bnn, Sezione manoscritti e rari: Relatione di quanto soccede nell’anno 1661, bnn, XI C 37, fols. 340r–358v, Deputazione della fed.ma città di Napoli sopra gl’incidenti tentati da Mons. Piazza, ibid, fols. 327–339; and bnn, XI C 12. The debate continued for a long time, as evidenced by other manuscripts and printed documents, such as Ragioni della città di Napoli negli affari della Santa Inquisizione, bnn XI C 46, and Scritture della città contro l’Inquisizione, bnn, AA XI, 33. 11 Quoted in Fisch, ‘The Academy of the Investigators’. See also Giustiniani, Breve contezza delle Accademie, pp. 43– 48 and id., Memorie istoriche, I, pp. 62–71.

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in Naples contemporary European thinking, such as that advocated by Descartes, Gassendi, and Boyle. This group of aristocrats and of academic professionals was much larger and more heterogeneous than the one that rose around Tommaso Cornelio, the physician who, arriving in the city in 1649, first presented Cartesianism and Gassendism to Neapolitan culture, becoming a local reference for medical and philosophical studies.12 The experiences fuelled by Cornelio’s schooling were confined to his f ield of study, never influencing either university culture or the court. Nevertheless, this elitist circle of scholars paved the way for innovative debate on the methods of scientific research; the discussion infused the Galilean teachings with a reinterpretation of Lucretius, taking inspiration from the works of Gassendi and of classical libertinism.13 Although the novatores never formed a clearly recognizable social bloc, they represented a source of concern for universities and the ecclesiastical establishment of the city.14 This heavy climate of opposition soon led to the end of the Accademia degli Investiganti (1668) and a crisis of the scholarly network. At the same time, the Holy Office continued to keep a close eye on members of those circles and to investigate their scientific and editorial activities. All these facts led to the group’s individual and collective weakening, making it an easy prey for the Inquisition in the 1680s. We will not dwell on the disputes about the scientific method and the ways of reaching ‘objective truth’, which became heated among Neapolitan doctors, scientists, and representatives of the forensic class such as Giacinto De Cristofaro. By analysing the trial against the so-called atheists, we focus on the response of the most intransigent wing in the Neapolitan upper class, alarmed at the disregard of authority seen in both secular culture and among 12 Arriving in Naples, Cornelio held the mathematics chair founded for him by the viceroy Oñante, later turning to the chair of theoretical medicine. For more on him, see Torrini, Tommaso Cornelio; Comparato, ‘Tommaso Cornelio’; and Borrelli, ‘Tommaso Cornelio’. For the biography of D’Andrea see Mazzacane, ‘Francesco D’Andrea’, and for di Capua Scalabrella, ‘Leonardo di Capua’. For the general cultural contest Galasso, Regno di Napoli, VI, pp. 1111–1127; de Miranda, La quiete operosa. 13 For the topic of Neapolitan culture, see the collected papers in Galileo e Napoli, and especially Torrini’s chapter in the volume, ‘La discussione sullo statuto delle scienze’. 14 The Roman Congregation’s attention to these circles was already documented in 1671, when the cardinals sent a letter to the archbishop, Innico Caracciolo, asking him to watch over the city’s cultural climate: ‘per sapere se vi sia chi insegni, o tenga costà simile opinione non solamente per porgervi […] rimedio tale che tronchi ogni progresso […] ma anco per darne subito ragguaglio qua’ (‘in order to know if there is anyone who teaches or has these opinions not only to remedy by eliminating it, but also to give us news immediately’), published in Amabile, Il Santo Officio della Inquisizione, II, p. 55. About atheists: acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, O 1 a, fol. 123r; acdf, Index, Prot. IIa, fol. 307r.

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the ecclesiastics. The action of the inquisitors gave expression to these general worries, aiming to control the different religious and intellectual deviations springing up in Naples. In doing so, the Inquisition successfully suppressed a lively intellectual environment and strengthened the presence of ecclesiastical power in the Kingdom.

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3. The Trial The complaint against Giacinto De Cristofaro, Basilio Giannelli, and Filippo Belli was lodged by Francesco Paolo Manuzzi on 21 March 1688 with the commissary of the Holy Office, Giuseppe Nicola Giberti, Bishop of Teano.15 The three young men were suspected of having professed ideas related to libertinism and connected with the rediscovery of Lucretius’s atomism. The accused and the accusers had several common features: similar origins, intellectual backgrounds, and social and professional roots. The timing of the trial was particularly favourable for the Holy Office in Naples. On the one hand, these were the months when, after the condemnation of Miguel de Molinos’s propositions on 20 November 1687, the inquisitorial court of Naples intensely investigated the presence of quietism in the city. Several people professing a devout spirituality, both inside and outside ecclesiastic circles, were indeed fascinated by quietist ideas and were now worried about their connections within this religious movement. To avoid problems, they preferred to appear sponte comparentes before the Inquisition and to confess their alleged heterodox tendencies. This flow of denunciations appeared especially harmful for the scientific groups discussed here. Quietism, dangerously oriented towards a moral and subjective reconstruction of religious feeling, was in fact insinuating itself into the Accademia degli Investiganti and, what is more, within the group of those whom the Inquisition would later label as atheists.16 15 The copy of the complaint is in bnn, I AA 32, fols. 1r–22v. In the dossier related to De Cristofaro, as is customary for inquisitorial documents, the names of other accused and the identity of the prosecutor are omitted: ‘In occasione di haver pratticato […] sentij dire da H e da Giacinto di Cristofaro nell’anno prossimo passato che Christo signor nostro […] non fusse vero figlio di Dio venuto a incarnarsi’ (‘Last year I used to meet H and Giacinto di Cristofaro and I heard them say that Christ was not the son of God who came to incarnate’). The theme of mortality of the soul appears continuously in the following pages of the dossier, where the interrogatories prior to 1693 are recorded. 16 For quietism in Naples, it is still necessary to refer to De Maio, Società e vita religiosa a Napoli, pp. 161–178. For a more general perspective, Malena, ‘La costruzione di una eresia’; Modica, L’infetta dottrina; and, of course, Tellechea Idígoras, Molinosiana, and id., Il proceso.

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On the other hand, in 1687 a new inquisitor, Giovanni Battista Giberti, Bishop of Cava, arrived in the capital and restored outward signs of the inquisitorial court by reopening the prisons of San Domenico and distributing licences from the Holy Office to low-level members of the clergy. Cardinal Giacomo Cantelmo, newly arrived to replace Antonio Pignatelli (raised to the papal throne as Innocent XII) as archbishop, supported the inquisitorial action, aware of the danger represented by deviation from orthodoxy. From the beginning, the trial against the atheists showed great procedural flexibility, allowing the inquisitors to better oppose Naples’ intellectual circles. As was common practice in the Roman Congregation’s initiatives to weaken and discipline intellectual groups, the inquisitors began from the outer circle, then advanced to neutralize the centre of the group. To reach this goal, they used a well-structured interrogation format, which brought better results. The cardinals of the Inquisition sent this format to Naples and went on to use a similar set of questions for another important trial: that against the so-called Roman libertines, similarly addressed against ‘intellectual novelties’.17 The main difference between the trial against the Roman libertines and that against the Neapolitan atheists, however, lay in the different political context. As discussed previously, the Neapolitan Inquisition was highly charged from the start, fuelling long-lasting political conflicts. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that local elites saw the trial as the Roman Inquisition’s intrusion into the city’s political dynamics. Luigi Amabile, the first to study the atheists’ trial at the end of the nineteenth century, affirmed that the complaint against De Cristofaro and his friends was driven by members of the Neapolitan clergy, seeking to undermine the credit of representatives of the bureaucratic and forensic circles, who sustained government reforms during the time of the previous viceroys at the Roman Curia.18 Later, in the 1970s, Luciano Osbat went even further: in his view, religious and political motives fuelled the trial. On one hand, there was public discomfort with ecclesiastical circles loyal to Rome; on the other, the initiative of the reckless and arrogant Count of Conversano, who sought to intimidate the viceroy 17 The scheme of sixty-three questions is also in the interrogatory held on 13 January 1693: see bnn, I AA 32, fols. 12r–18v. Frajese, Dal libertinismo ai Lumi, pp. 16–18. 18 See Amabile, Il Santo Officio della Inquisizione. Amabile’s work is still considered an essential source for all research on the Inquisition in Naples, but it is necessary to be aware of his marked adhesion to historiographical Antispagnolism. The complaint against De Cristofaro and his friends, close to Tommaso Cornelio and Francesco d’Andrea, was entrusted to a vassal of Giulio Acquaviva.

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by discrediting the government’s most important collaborators.19 Both perspectives converge in their interpretation of the most relevant point of the atheist’s case: the growth of a system of intellectual and social relationships rooted in the professional middle class. This system, catalysed in intellectual groups such as the Accademia degli Investiganti, had primarily political goals, intent on opening a new cultural and political era in Naples. Let us come back to the trial. In May 1690 Manuzzi left for Madrid to support, in the Council of Italy, the case of his lord, Giulio Acquaviva, against the bishop of Nardò on questions related to ceremonial conflicts. Manuzzi had abjured in Naples after having accused De Cristofaro, Giannelli, and Belli, and was subsequently released. Interestingly, Manuzzi travelled with his former co-defendant, Giannelli, who accompanied Gennaro D’Andrea in Madrid, the new regent of the Consiglio d’Italia. In the Spanish capital, the two Neapolitans did not bother to hide their friendship. They were both captured and interrogated by the General Inquisitor in response to Rome’s request; in Naples, in 1691, the new inquisitor, Giberti, also arrested De Cristofaro, although he soon gave way to Cardinal Cantelmo, Rome’s choice to implement the process.20 This decision’s great impact on the city produced an immediate reaction in the Piazze, which established a Deputazione perpetua per le cose pertinenti al Santo Ufficio, a civic committee of aristocrats, dedicated to defending the prerogatives of the archbishop against any interference from the Roman Inquisition. The Deputazione drafted a defence outlining the responsibilities of the ecclesiastic heads during the tensions that disturbed the city and the viceroyal government. The real issue at stake was that the Neapolitan ruling classes did not intend to accept the Roman Inquisition’s meddling in the inquisitorial trials of the Kingdom, contravening the ordinary procedure of the diocesan courts and the prerogatives of Naples. The Deputazione asked for concrete guarantees for the accused and defended the archbishop’s exclusive jurisdiction over the city. However, even contemporaries saw the Neapolitan Piazze’s request as characterized by juridical inconsistency. 19 Osbat, L’Inquisizione a Napoli. See also De Ferrari, ‘Giacinto De Cristofaro’. For a complete analysis of all the events, see Galasso, Regno di Napoli, III, pp. 734–744. 20 De Cristofaro tried to neutralize Manuzzi’s denunciation by maintaining his innocence in the diocesan court, but ‘il 12 di Agosto del detto anno 1691 fu davanti del Tribunale del S. Conseglio con non poca ignominia carcerato e condotto in S. Domenico [poi trasferito] in una stanza del convento con idonea sicurtà’ (‘on 12 August 1691 he was arrested by the Tribunal del S. Consiglio with ignominy and led to S. Domenico [then transferred] to a room sufficiently safe in the convent’): see bnn, I AA 32, fols. 125r–v.

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The viceroy Francisco Benavides, Count of Santo Stefano, worried about the coalition between the nobles and the civil class, decided to support the claim for autonomy and for the privileges of the Kingdom and its capital. With the support of the Consiglio collaterale, Giberti was removed on 25 September and all the accused in the trial against the atheists were transferred to the archiepiscopal jails. Rome’s reaction was not long in coming: once the nuncio Lorenzo Casoni was appointed ad interim as inquisitor, the issue was moved to Madrid, where the Council of Italy approved Benavides’ position. Despite this success, the situation in Naples remained the same. The apostolic nuncio continued to fulfil the role of delegate of the Holy Office, even moving the prisoners to the jails of the Inquisition, while the Piazze continued pressuring the government to reaffirm the ancient privileges. The viceroy, for his part, protected the connection between the Piazza del Popolo’s position (the popular Piazza) and that of the noblemen by strengthening the role of the Collaterale in the creation and expression of the government’s political will. The political situation pressed Rome towards greater moderation. In the summer of 1692, the role of the commissary for inquisitorial issues was moved from the commissioner of the Holy Office to the archbishop, transforming the latter into the official counterpart of the citizens’ initiatives—an institutional shift that, without forcing Rome to formally renounce authority to the commissioner, caused a de facto overlapping between the diocesan and Roman inquisitions. In September 1692, De Cristofaro’s interrogatory marked the restart of the trial entrusted to the Jesuit Domenico Jameo and to the Pio Operaio Emilio Cavalieri, who was targeted by the Seggi for his aggressive attitude as an inquisition judge.21 For this reason, he was appointed bishop of Fondi and immediately removed, following Rome’s decision along the path promoveatur ut amoveatur. 21 The dossier about De Cristofaro contains a letter to the viceroy accompanied by numerous testimonies in which the attitude of physical and psychological violence and manipulation demonstrated by the avvocato fiscale (‘public prosecutor’) Cavalieri is denounced. As proof, the letter recounts the capture and interrogation of Filippo Belli, who was forced to denounce De Cristofaro: ‘Con che si denota chiaramente dagl’interrogatori suggestivi con l’esaminarsi in tal ore dal fiscal [Cavalieri] senza l’ordinario commissario, farlo stare con ferri a piedi […] che non volere estorquere la confessione’ (‘It is clear from the suggestive interrogatory, from examining him by the f iscal [Cavalieri] in absence of the commissary, from the decision to keep him with cuffs on his feet, that they wanted to extort a confession’). bnn, I AA 32, fols. 253r–v.

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The following year, further arrests and frequent interrogatories did not clarify the definition of heretical responsibility for the accused. From the depositions emerges the picture of a barely unorthodox cultural fabric, animated by meetings and discussions, and evidence of nothing more than oral communications, handwritten papers, and forbidden books read or quoted.22 Without reaching the severity of the convictions imposed for similar reasons on defendants of inferior social rank, such as Giovanni De Magistris and Carlo Rosito, a de levi abjuration was imposed on Giacinto De Cristofaro.23 Like the other intellectuals involved, he did not hesitate to recant. This was further confirmation that De Cristofaro’s alleged doctrinal mistake did not stem from a firm intellectual belief. The process ended with a condemnation, returning to the doctrinal level a dispute that had become a political and institutional clash. Nevertheless, tensions in the city remained high. The restored dialogue between the viceroy and the archbishop paved the way for the Delegazione—still claiming the Neapolitan privilege of having the archbishop as judge in the heresy trials—to ask the pope for help. For this reason, in the summer of 1693 Pietro de Fusco, De Cristofaro’s lawyer, along with the Marquis of Monteforte, Mario Loffredo, arrived in Rome, hoping that Pope Pignatelli, personally involved in the Neapolitan events, and the Duke of Medinacoeli, Luis Francisco de la Cerda y Aragón, Spanish ambassador and later viceroy of Naples, would help them. The objective was to win a decision that granted trial defendants the right to read dossier files, including witness declarations.24 The Roman diplomatic mission obtained no final result. In August 1695, the political protests in the capital restarted. An edict solved the jurisdictional 22 It is well known that people met in private homes to discuss science and philosophy; inquisitors were also very skilled at keeping informed about these events. In 1686, for example, Giberti, helped by the consultor Carlo Palumbo, sent to the cardinals in Rome a table of subjects indexed in three columns based on a survey of conversations held in a private house. The bishop of Teano received from the cardinals a decretum that imposed on the suspected, whose names were omitted, ut astineat a talibus propositionibus: see 1686. Theses philosophicae propugnate Neapoli. Asseritur nullam dari formam substantialem nisi humanam idest animum rationale. Materiam esse extensionem in lungum latum et profundum, in acdf, S.O., Censurae Librorum 1686–1687, fasc. 17, fols. 197r–202v. 23 The Atto di condanna e abiura di Gio. de Magistris nel S.to Officio napoletano dated 14 February 1693 is in bnn, XI E 15, fols. 226r–231v, and Rosito’s, dated the following 15 February, is ibid., fols. 232r–236v. 24 Documents on the Neapolitan Delegation in Rome in 1694 are in bnn, XI E 15: by Pietro de Fusco fols. 105r and 141r–144v; a letter from Rome by Mario Loffredo to the deputation in Naples ibid., fols. 215r–217v. See also bnn, XV B 1–4 passim.

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issue, defining the diocesan inquisitorial court as a peripheral delegation of the Roman congregation—a formal solution that represented a success for the Piazze and the intellectual circles of Neapolitan lawyers.

Conclusion

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In conclusion, it can be said that the inquisitorial action against the atheists not only inspired clashes, but also helped mature the political positions of the ‘civil class’ and of the more enlightened circles of the Neapolitan elites. The trial in fact opened a new era in Neapolitan culture. The academic environments were no longer firmly controlled by the court through the off ice of the Cappellano Maggiore, which also directed the university; academics found an important ally in the growing professional circles. These made space for the elaboration of new juridical and economical thought, as well as for the physical and mathematical sciences. Both paths sought to support a more concrete and reformist approach. Civil and political militancy now became inseparable from the diffusion of specific theoretical positions. The conclusion of the trial against the atheists, so different from other similar contemporary events culminating in the death penalty—the outcome of the trial against the Roman libertines—confirms, ultimately, that the activities of the Neapolitan Inquisition were influenced and oriented above all by a political rationale. The atheists’ trial, beyond simply local or peripheral implications, was primarily determined by the larger political dynamics of the Kingdom of Naples and by the confrontation between the Crown of Spain, the papal court, and those loyal to each.

Bibliography Archival Sources Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, Sezione manoscritti e rari (bnn): Mss. AA XI 33; I AA 32; XI C 12; XI C 37; XI C 46; XI E 15; XV B 1–4. Vatican City, Archivio della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede (acdf): Index, Prot., IIa. S.O., Stanza Storica, HH 2 b (2) 1; HH 2 b, 1602–1775; O1 a f. S.O., Censurae Librorum 1686–1687.

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Printed Sources Confuorto, Domenico, Giornali di Napoli dal MDCLXXIX al MDCIC, ed. by Nicola Nicolini, 2 vols. (Naples: Lubrano, 1930–1931). Giustiniani, Lorenzo, Memorie istoriche degli scrittori legali del Regno di Napoli, 3 vols. (Naples: Simoniana, 1787–1788). ———, Breve contezza delle Accademie istituite nel Regno di Napoli (Naples: Bibliotecario della Real Biblioteca Borbonica, 1801).

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Literature Amabile, Luigi, Il Santo Officio della Inquisizione in Napoli, 2 vols. (Città di Castello: Lapi, 1892). Borrelli, Antonio, ‘Tommaso Cornelio nella Napoli degli Investiganti’, L’Acropoli, 16/2 (2015), 180–186. Caravale, Giorgio, ‘“Tacitly denied”. Inquisition, Heresy and Dissimulation in the Kingdom of Naples’, in The Roman Inquisition. Center and Peripheries, ed. by Christopher Black and Katherine Aron-Beller (Leiden et al.: Brill, 2018), pp. 234–267. Cernigliaro, Aurelio, ‘La rivolta napoletana del 1547 contro l’Inquisizione’, in Rivolte e rivoluzione nel Mezzogiorno d’Italia (1547–1799), ed. by Antonio Lerra and Aurelio Musi (Manduria: Lacaita, 2008), pp. 13–72. Chiosi, Elvira, Lo spirito del secolo. Politica e religione a Napoli nell’età dell’illuminismo (Naples: Giannini, 1992). Comparato, Vittor Ivo, ‘Tommaso Cornelio’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani (Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia italiana, 1960–), XXIX, pp. 136–140. De Ferrari, Augusto, ‘Giacinto De Cristofaro’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani (Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia italiana, 1960–), XXXIII, pp. 586–589. De Maio, Romeo, Società e vita religiosa a Napoli nell’età moderna (Naples: ESI, 1971). de Miranda, Girolamo, Una quiete operosa. Forma e pratiche dell’Accademia napoletana degli Oziosi (Naples: Fridericiana editrice, 2000). Dizionario storico dell’Inquisizione, ed. by Adriano Prosperi et al., 4 vols. (Pisa: Edizioni della Scuola Normale, 2010). Ferrone, Vincenzo, The Intellectual Roots of the Italian Enlightenment. Newtonian Science, Religion, and Politics in the Early Eighteenth Century (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1995). Fiorelli, Vittoria, ‘Ateisti’, in Dizionario Storico dell’Inquisizione, ed. by Adriano Prosperi et al., 4 vols. (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2010), I, pp. 118–120. ———, ‘Mezzogiorno in transizione. Prospettive e tradizioni di ricerca sulla cultura religiosa e la pratica devota tra storia e storiografia’, Nuova rivista storica, 98 (2014), 1157–1176.

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———, I sentieri dell’inquisitore. Sant’Uffizio, periferie ecclesiastiche e disciplinamento devozionale (1615–1678) (Naples: Guida, 2009). Fisch, Max Harold, ‘The Academy of the Investigators’, in Science and Medicine in History. Essays on the Evolution of Scientific Thought and Medical Practice in Honour of Charles Singer, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1953), I, pp. 521–563. Fonseca, Giuseppe, ‘Napoli’, in Dizionario storico dell’Inquisizione, ed. by Adriano Prosperi et al., 4 vols. (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2010), II, pp. 1097–1099. Frajese, Vittorio, ‘Ateismo’, in Dizionario storico dell’Inquisizione, ed. by Adriano Prosperi et al., 4 vols. (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2010), I, pp. 114–118. ———, Dal libertinismo ai Lumi. Roma 1690–Torino 1727 (Rome: Viella, 2016). Galasso, Giuseppe, Il Regno di Napoli, VI, Società e cultura nel Mezzogiorno moderno (Turin: utet, 2012). Galileo e Napoli, ed. by Fabrizio Lomonaco and Maurizio Torrini (Naples: Guida, 1987). Galluzzi, Paolo and Torrini, Maurizio, ‘Premessa’, Quaderni storici, 48 (1981), 752–762. Imbruglia, Girolamo, ‘Censura e giurisdizionalismo nel secondo Settecento a Napoli. Il Delegato alla reale giurisdizione’, in La censura nel secolo dei Lumi. Una visione internazionale, ed. by Edoardo Tortarolo (Turin: utet, 2011), pp. 115–147. Malena, Adelisa, ‘La costruzione di una eresia. Note sul quietismo italiano del Seicento’, in Ordini religiosi, santi e culti tra Europa, Mediterraneo e Nuovo Mondo (secoli XV–XVII), ed. by Raimondo Michetti, Bruno Pellegrino, and Gabriella Zarri, 2 vols. (Galatina: Congedo, 2009), I, pp. 165–184. Mazzacane, Aldo, ‘Francesco D’Andrea’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani (Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia italiana, 1960), XXII, pp. 523–536. Modica, Marilena, L’infetta dottrina. Inquisizione e quietismo nel Seicento (Rome: Viella, 2009). Musi, Aurelio, L’impero dei viceré (Bologna: il Mulino, 2013). Novi, Chavarria Elisa, ‘Procedure inquisitoriali e potere politico a Napoli (1550–1640)’, in I primi Lincei e il Sant’Uffizio. Questioni di scienza e di fede (Rome: Bardi, 2005), pp. 32–45. Osbat, Luciano, L’Inquisizione a Napoli. Il processo agli ateisti, 1688–1697 (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1974). Rivero Rodríguez, Manuel, La edad de oro de los virreyes. El virreinato en la Monarquía Hispaníca durante los siglos XVI y XVII (Madrid: Akal, 2011). Robertson, John, The Case for the Enlightenment. Scotland and Naples, 1680–1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Romano, Antonio Salvatore, ‘Stato, Chiesa e Inquisizione nel Regno di Napoli. L’inedita relazione di Bartolomeo Capasso per Pasquale Stanislao Mancini’, Archivio storico per le province napoletane, 85 (2017), 149–174.

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Romeo, Giovanni, ‘Inquisition and Church in Early Modern Naples’, in A Companion to Early Modern Naples, ed. by Tommaso Astarita (Leiden et al.: Brill, 2013), pp. 235–256. Scalabrella, Silvano, ‘Leonardo di Capua’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani (Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia italiana, 1960–), XXXIX, pp. 712–715. Scaramella, Pierroberto, Le lettere della Congregazione del Sant’Ufficio ai tribunali di fede di Napoli, 1563–1625 (Trieste et al.: Università di Trieste/Istituto italiano per gli studi filosofici, 2002). Tellechea Idígoras, José, Molinosiana. Investigaciones sobre Miguel Molinos (Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española, 1987). ———, El proceso del doctor Miguel Molinos (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2005). Torrini, Maurizio, ‘L’Accademia di Sebastiano Bartoli. Gli Investiganti’, in Sebastiano Bartoli e la cultura termale del suo tempo, ed. by Raffaella M. Zaccaria (Florence: Olschki, 2012), pp. 33–43. ———, ‘La discussione sullo statuto delle scienze tra la f ine del ’600 e l’inizio del ’700’, in Galileo e Napoli, ed. by Fabrizio Lomonaco and Maurizio Torrini, pp. 358–383. ———, Tommaso Cornelio e la ricostruzione della scienza (Naples: Guida, 1977). Villani, Pasquale, ‘Origine e caratteri della nunziatura di Napoli (1523–1569)’, Annuario dell’istituto storico italiano per l’età moderna e contemporanea, 9–10 (1957–1958), 283–539.

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About the Author Vittoria Fiorelli is full professor of early modern history at the University Suor Orsola Benincasa in Naples. Her main publications focus on the intellectual and social transformations related to devotional and charitable practices and ecclesiastical organization, the Inquisition, women’s history, and aristocratic networks.

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11. Choosing Information, Selecting Truth: The Roman Congregations, the Benedictine Declaration, and the Establishment of Religious Plurality Cecilia Cristellon* Abstract The Benedictine declaration (1741) affirmed that, in the Low Countries, marriages between Protestants or mixed marriages contracted without the formalities prescribed by the Tametsi were valid. The content, form, and time of the Benedectina illustrate the Catholic Church”s intention to reconcile its aspirations for a monopoly on doctrinal truth and universal jurisdiction with limited enforcement capability. Without issuing a general prohibition, for about 150 years Roman congregations collected information on this flexible practice, searching for solutions on a case-by-case basis. This information became a valuable resource for the purposes of normative production.

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Keywords: Low Countries, mixed marriages, Benedictine Declaration, enforcement capability, normative production, religious plurality

This chapter investigates the Benedictine Declaration of 1741, the so-called Benedictina, which affirmed that, in the Northern and Southern Low Countries, marriages between Protestants or mixed marriages contracted without the formalities prescribed by the Council of Trent were valid. It first analyses the case law that led to the promulgation of this papal document, paying particular attention to the communication between the local churches and the Roman congregations.1 Secondly, it examines how the information gathered * 1

I would like to thank Kim Friedlander for the linguistic revision of the text. aav, Congr. Concilio, Libri Decret., vol. 91, fols. 279–369v. See also Benedictina.

Badea, A., B. Boute, M. Cavarzere, S. Vanden Broecke (eds.), Making Truth in Early Modern Catholicism. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021 doi 10.5117/9789463720526_ch11

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280 

CECILIA CRISTELLON

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for about 150 years by the Holy Office, the Congregation of the Council, and the Propaganda Fide were carefully selected by the legal consultants of Pope Benedict XIV and became a flexible resource for the purposes of normative production. Finally, it surveys the argumentative strategy of the Declaration, which assumed a performative character, although it claimed not to introduce any innovation. This last aspect became a central feature of the Roman interpretation. About twenty years after the Benedictine Declaration, following a consolidated juridical opinion, the commissary of the Holy Office, Serafino Maccarinelli, emphasized that declarations as such did not intend to innovate, nor did they change the essence or nature of things, but explained them. They did not issue new laws, but merely manifested (declared) the ones that already existed.2 In doing so, Maccarinelli recalled a metaphor used by the jurist Prospero Fagnani. He compared the act of declaring with that of shaking out the grains of an ear of wheat: this action does not alter the grains or the nature of the wheat itself, which existed before the grains were extracted.3 Thus, Maccarinelli explained, the Benedictine declaration possessed no performative character. From the very beginning, Benedict XIV specified that the validity of the marriages covered by the Benedictine formula was conditional on the absence of diriment impediments. 4 This prevented the Church of Rome from assuming a positively normative role in favour of mixed marriages—a role the Church would have played if it granted dispensations from such impediments.5 With the 1741 Declaration, Benedict XIV had in fact issued 2 acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, MM 5 g, fasc. 6. In this document Maccarinelli was expressing his opinion about the validity of a mixed marriage celebrated in Pera without the parish priest (1767). 3 Prosperi Fagnani Ius canonicum, Chap. 10 Super specula, n. 2, Ne cler. vel monach.: ‘Exemplo eius, qui excutit granum ex spicis, qui non novam speciem facit, sed eam que est, detegit.’ On Prospero Fagnani Boni (1588–1678) see Quaglioni, ‘Fagnani Boni, Prospero’. See also Palazzini, ‘Prospero Fagnani’. 4 Marriage impediments are divided between impedient impediment—and among these is included the impediment mixtae religionis—for which the bond is illicit but valid once contracted, and diriment impediments, for which the marriage is null. See Plöchl, Geschichte des Kirchenrechts, III, pp. 78–83. 5 To avoid the positively normative role in favour of mixed marriages, Innocent X (1644–1655) established that the curial offices could not release dispensations from the diriment impediment of kinship if the petitions were not presented by proven Catholic petitioners. Otherwise the dispensations could have been granted only with the formula abiurata prius heresi. See Petra, Commentaria, Constitutio XII Johannis XII incipiens Cum nonnulli, § 14, p. 76. Following a decision of the Congregation of the Council (1597), except in very exceptional cases, the Inquisition refused to dispense from diriment impediment in the case of ‘heresy’ of one or both contracting parties, seeing as the Catholic Church, though tolerating mixed marriages, would never have

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a provision that de facto contradicted the decrees of the Council of Trent. Significantly, he decided to issue such a provision more than a century after the publication of the Tametsi in the form of a declaration (not a decree or a papal constitution), thus claiming not to introduce doctrinal novelties. The Benedictina’s content, the form used to communicate it, and the time of its promulgation reflect the will of the Catholic Church to reconcile its aspirations for the monopoly of doctrinal truth for the universal jurisdiction over the baptized with its limited enforcement capability in places under non-Catholic rulers. This inability to intervene had prudently led Roman congregations—and in particular the Holy Office—to avoid general prohibition on mixed marriages, limiting themselves for a long period to collecting information on the local practice, and to finding concrete solutions on a case-by-case basis. To declare the marriages contracted in the Low Countries valid and therefore true despite the Tridentine decrees, however, was not a neutral act, but one capable of modifying reality in present or past, and of affecting salvation, in the future. It was an expression of authority, inserting elements of dynamicity into an order defined by that same authority, with a view to stabilizing it.6 Within this process, the communication between local churches and Roman congregations played a crucial role.7 These interchanges occurred mainly through reports presented by the bishops to the interactions of the Council and through writings of the missionaries addressed to the Congregation for the Propagataion of the Faith, as well as through the formulation of dubia and the request for dispensations mixtae religionis before the Holy Office. Such a communication network, which sometimes had a self-justifying function approved them by a positive act: on this and on the fact that the Inquisition relied on diriment impediments to indirectly combat mixed marriages, se Cristellon ‘L’inquisizione’, pp. 99–102. 6 Stimulating reflections in Amelung, Leppin, and Müller, ‘Introduction’. 7 A pre-eminent role in regulating mixed marriages belonged to the Holy Office, responsible for issues regarding the sacraments and for the resolution of dubia raised in regard to the entire Catholic world, which were often subjected to the Inquisition through the filter of other congregations, especially Propaganda Fide. The Inquisition was responsible for the issuing of dispensations mixtae religionis, on which it deliberated following a procedure usually initiated with the mediation of the cleric in partibus and, sometimes, at the request of the Apostolic Penitentiary. The Congregation of the Council acted mostly indirectly in the management of mixed unions: it was called to speak on the validity of mixed unions in regions with a strong ‘heretical presence’, and where the Council of Trent was published, it censured them when they were not in accordance with Tridentine norms. Finally, the Apostolic Penitentiary, the principal office of papal pardon, was involved in the management of mixed unions by virtue of its faculty to legitimize invalidly contracted marriages and to grant dispensations to poor individuals in matters relating to marriage. On dubia regarding the sacraments, see Administrer les sacrements; in particular, see Broggio, de Castelnau-L’Estoile, and Pizzorusso, ‘Le temps des doutes’, pp. 5–6.

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(when members of the local clergy described the difficulties that hindered a literal application of the dictates of the Council of Trent), also produced a reservoir of information upon which the Roman congregations could draw. It helped constitute a praxis that diverged from the norm so as to become a norm itself, playing a dynamic role within the normative order regarding marriage in general and bi-confessional unions in particular.8

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1. The Benedictine Declaration As is well known, in 1563 the Council of Trent required the presence of the parish priest, at least one of the intended spouses, and at least two witnesses at a wedding; marriages celebrated without them were therefore invalid.9 In the United Provinces the decrees of the Council of Trent were published before the prohibition of Catholic public worship from the 1570s onwards and the recognition of the Reformed Church as the heersende Kerk or ‘dominant Church’. Marriages not celebrated by the parish priest were therefore considered invalid from the point of view of the Catholic Church.10 On the other hand, in the United Provinces marriage had to be contracted in the city hall before a civic official, or in a church by a Calvinist pastor to be valid for the state. In some provinces it was only possible to celebrate the marriage in a church by a Calvinist pastor. This method was also often preferred by Catholics, both because marriages celebrated according to a religious rite were significantly less expensive and because Catholics continued to consider the churches their own, although they were used for Calvinist worship after the Reformation.11 The Catholic Church forbade marriages celebrated in front of a Reformed pastor: such a ceremony was considered gravely disordered because it led to communicatio in sacris, that is, it crossed the confessional boundaries in 8 On normative orders, the role of communication, and justifying discourses see Die Herausbildung normativer Ordnungen; Die Vielfalt normativer Ordnungen; and Rechtfertigungsnarrative. 9 Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta, pp. 753–759. These provisions were understood as a means to censure a secular marriage practice: Cristellon, Marriage, pp. 159–217. 10 In a letter sent to Propaganda in 1668, the apostolic vicar confirmed that the Council of Trent had been published in the Low Countries: see acdf, S.O., Dubia circa matrimonium, 1740–1756, 1749, fol. 379. On the rise, consolidation, and reorganization of the Reformed Church in the United Provinces see Selderhuis and Nissen, ‘The Sixteenth Century’. More in general see Parker, The Dutch Revolt; Duke, Reformation and Revolt; The Origins and Development. 11 Kooi, Calvinists and Catholics, p. 194; Pollmann, ‘Burying the Dead’; Pollmann, ‘The Cleansing of the Temple’. For an overview of the changes introduced by the Reformation in law and custom see van der Heijden, ‘Marriage Formation’.

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the matter of the sacrament—and was aggravated by the formula typically spoken by the spouses, who united themselves ‘before this holy community’ This forumla was inadmissible for Rome, since the community in question was deemed ‘heretical’.12 The Catholic Church obliged its own members to marry in the presence of the parish priest, or of the missionary who acted on his behalf, possibly after having contracted a civil marriage valid only for the state.13 The Republic, however, forbade anyone to celebrate marriage again in front of a Catholic priest after he or she had already been married in a Calvinist or civil ceremony, a law not much respected in practice.14 In the case of mixed marriages the picture was further complicated: the collision between different normative systems made it almost impossible to apply the canonical directives, so that parish priests and missionaries frequently appealed to Rome for solutions.15

2. Case Law and a Web of Information

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In 1711, the nuncio to Cologne, who had responsibility for the Dutch mission, applied to Propaganda at the request of a priest named Van Aelst, asking for the resolution of his own doubts and those of other missionaries.16 He described a widespread praxis, in accordance with synodal dispositions, by which a Catholic who contracted a confessionally homogeneous marriage in front of a Calvinist minister, and who then remarried according to the Catholic rite, would be readmitted to communion after six months of 12 acdf, S.O., Dubia circa matrimonium 1740–1756, fasc. XI, 1749, fol. 345. The document also refers to previous practice. On communicatio in sacris see Nottarp, Zur Communicatio in sacris; Santus, Trasgressioni necessarie; Windler, ‘Uneindeutige Zugehörigkeiten’; Windler, Missionare in Persien. 13 Kooi, Calvinists and Catholics, p. 194 and n. 83. Civil marriage was a provision against the phenomenon of clandestine marriage. For the legislation of the various provinces see also Parker, Faith on the Margins, p. 61. 14 Kooi, Calvinists and Catholics, p. 194 and n. 85. See also acdf, S.O., Dubia circa matrimonium 1740–1756, fasc. XI, 1749, fol. 345: ‘I cattolici di bassa condizione, per risparmiare le spese prestino il consenso davanti di un predicante, e nella di lui chiesa faccino le pubblicazioni.’ For an example of ratification of marriage before the missionary in Leusden see also Cornelissen, Romeinsche Bronnen, I, p. 372, 26 August 1629. 15 For mixed marriages in the Low Countries see Kaplan, ‘For They Will Turn Away Thy Sons’; Kaplan, ‘Intimate Negotiations’; Kaplan, Divided by Faith, pp. 266–293; Kaplan, ‘Integration vs. Segregation’; Forclaz, ‘The Emergence of Confessional Identities’; and, with attention also on the policy of the Roman Congregations, Forclaz, Catholiques au défi de la Réforme, pp. 281–324. 16 acdf, S.O., Dubia 1603–1722, fasc. XXXVI, Olanda. See also Forclaz, Catholiques au défi de la Réforme. On the Dutch mission see Parker, Faith on the Margins.

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penitence.17 But—the missionary wondered—in the case of mixed marriages, were parish priests or missionaries permitted to celebrate the union? And, if so, what was to be done with the Catholic whose spouse had no intention of remarrying in the presence of a Catholic priest? In 1668 the synodal dispositions of Johannes van Neercassel, titular Bishop of Castoria and apostolic vicar of the Hollandic Mission (1663–1686), forbade missionaries, under pain of suspension a divinis, from celebrating mixed marriages ‘without his permission’ (a clause that, as we shall see, favoured the development of jurisprudence regarding bi-confessional unions; we should remember that in principle, however, the Catholic Church prohibited mixed marriages).18 Missionaries, Van Aelst affirmed, despite documentary evidence to the contrary, did not celebrate such unions, though they did readmit the Catholic partner to communion after six months of penitence.19 In appealing to Propaganda, which in turn forwarded the case to the Inquisition, the nuncio asked the following. First, whether marriages contracted in the United Provinces in front of a ‘heretic’ minister were valid, and if so whether a Catholic woman who had married a ‘heretic’ and lived with him ‘in danger of abandoning the Catholic faith’ could be admitted to communion. Secondly, whether the parish priest could or should assist at the renewal of consent, when the Calvinist party refused to convert. Thirdly, whether the Catholic party could be readmitted to communion without separation being imposed, in cases where the ‘heretical’ party refused to renew his or her consent before the parish priest. It had to be borne in mind that, as far as the state was concerned, separation was not justified by religious difference.20 Rigorous Catholic intervention against mixed marriages, moreover, could jeopardize the fragile equilibrium with secular authorities and the hierarchies of the Reformed churches. According to the nuncio’s letter to Propaganda, missionaries were convinced that the annulment of mixed marriages would cause great difficulties for the children, for the state, for the institution of marriage, and for the missionaries themselves. For the children, because they would be 17 ‘Nemo ipsos, qui in templis acatholicorum coram praedicante matrimonium inierunt, ad sacrae communionis gratiam admittat, nisi ad minus per sex menses penituerint, et sese ad divinissimum animarum pabulum praeparaverint, quamvis statim post istam coniunctionem coram predicante factam, iuxta declarationem apostolicae sedis catholico ritu benedici possit et debeat’: see van Neercassel, Constitutiones servandae, p. 499. 18 On prohibition of mixed marriages, Cristellon, ‘Mixed Marriages’, pp. 295–304. 19 acdf, S.O., Dubia 1603–1722, fasc. XXXVI, Olanda, fols. 373–374. For marriages celebrated by missionaries see for example acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, UV 54, fasc. 10. 20 Divorce was allowed only in case of adultery or malicious abandonment: see van der Heijden, ‘Marriage Formation’, pp. 160–161. Even the consistories, however, encouraged separation or divorce in the case of confessional diversity: Kooi, Calvinists and Catholics, p. 200.

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considered illegitimate; for the state, because it would give rise to litigation over heredity and inheritance; and for marriage itself, because a policy of annulment would encourage abuses and constitute a means of seduction for Catholic men. One missionary lamented: ‘There are not a few men who live according to the flesh, who will contract marriage with a heretical woman and, after he has satisfied his own desires and dissipated her wealth, will flee to a Catholic city and move on to a second marriage.’21 Cases like these, in fact, were denounced to the Congregation of the Council.22 Finally, declaring mixed marriages contracted without the parish priest invalid, would cause difficulties for the missionaries, because they could be denounced to the magistrates, who would then immediately exile them. This last difficulty was a fear kept alive by historical memory. At this date (1711), persecution of Catholics had considerably weakened, but was not a completely unjustified fear. In 1620, for example, a Jesuit was imprisoned in Amsterdam on charges of persuading a French Catholic to leave her Dutch Calvinist spouse, ‘not being able to live together with her husband without offence of our holy religion’.23 When, in 1655, a young Catholic, wishing to marry a Calvinist, led a priest to convince both her and her father to convert, the consistory alerted the burgomaster, who expelled the priest.24 Moreover, in 1602 the same apostolic vicar, Vosmeer, was accused by the Court of Holland of lese-majesty for ‘conspiracy with prelates and foreign powers’ precisely because, in contempt of the laws of the Republic and likely following an indication of the Holy Office,25 he claimed that marriages contracted according to the forms prescribed by such laws were not valid.26 It should also be remembered that, whether or not the fear of Catholics was well-founded, ‘well into the nineteenth century the thoughts and actions of the Dutch Catholics were still characterized by a hidden church mentality’.27 After expressing the fears of the missionaries, although aware that the resolution could become normative for the affected missions, the nuncio of Cologne begged the congregation to consider how ‘worthy of great 21 acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, UV 54, fasc. 10, n. c. 22 aav, Congr. Concilio, Libri Decret. II (1575–1581), fols. 32–33, n. 51. 23 Cornelissen, Romeinsche Bronnen, p. 271, n. 353, 22 February 1620. 24 Kooi, Calvinists and Catholics, p. 202. 25 acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, L 4 m, ‘Nella causa di matrimonio del duca di Wirtemberg, Sommario A, 1602 Olanda’. 26 Parker, Faith on the Margins, p. 59. 27 Abels and de Groot, ‘The Eighteenth Century’, p. 385. Parker, Faith on the Margins, p. 53, mentions that, ‘As late as 1700, Catholics in Amersfoort wrote Codde that they could not attend church, because it would arouse the authorities and bring about danger.’

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compassion’ were not only ‘those miserable Catholics who have not had the necessary virtue and obedience to the Church, and who find themselves embarrassed and implicated in such marriages’, but also the Catholic parish priests and pastors, faced by sincerely penitent believers, not knowing how to ‘favour their spiritual well-being’. Aware that it was incapable of effectively intervening in this matter, the Holy Office decided it was best not to respond to these uncertainties.28 Indeed, the various doubts expressed to Rome by apostolic vicars and missionaries in earlier decades found no simple solution. The Congregation of the Council, often after consulting with the Holy Office, considered mixed marriages performed without parish priests invalid, but managed to avoid making a generalized statement. It was aware that such unions were tolerated, but when asked about specific cases it declared them null and void.29 The Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, while avoiding a clear statement on the validity of mixed marriages, definitely denied their liceity; in 1657 it issued an instruction to the apostolic vicar of Holland that prohibited missionaries from marrying persons of different confession, on pain of suspension a divinis.30 In the following year (1658), the apostolic vicar begged the Holy Office to mitigate the disposition of Propaganda: aware of the special status of its decisions, since it defined the doctrine of the Church, the Inquisition assumed a more prudent role, and unanimously decided to recommend some unspecified remedies to the vicar and the missionaries, conforming to the opinions of ‘approved authors’. It also trusted the vicar himself to impose the proper penance for such a ‘crime’.31 Thirteen years later (1671), the apostolic vicar Johannes van Neercassel himself, otherwise known for his rigorist leanings, applied to the Holy Office. The problem 28 acdf, S.O., Dubia 1603–1722, fasc. XXXVI, fols. 379–380, and particularly fol. 380 for quotations. See also acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, UV 54, fasc. 10, n. c.; acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, L 4 m, ‘Nella causa di matrimonio del duca di Wirtemberg, Sommario A, 1671 Olanda’. On the practice of not deciding, see Windler, ‘Uneindeutige Zugehörigkeiten’, p. 314. 29 aav, Congr. Concilio, Synopsis, fol. 79, 4 September 1677 (Gedanen. Matrimonii); see also Benedictina, pp. 92 and 94, at the question ‘an in provinciis Belgii confederatis valeant matrimonia catholicorum cum heterodoxis contracta coram magistratu heretico non obstante decreto concilii de solemnitatibus matrimonii in illis provinciis publicato et recepto, congregatio concilii die 23 augusti 1681 rescripsit ad mentem cum Sanctissimo, scilicet, si esset respondendum dubio, esse respondendum negative.’ See also ibid., p. 98 (3 March 1696). 30 See the following footnote and Parker, Faith on the Margins, pp. 65–66. 31 acdf, S.O., Dubia, 1603–1722, fasc. IX, fol. 174: ‘remedia, quae apud doctores proponuntur’; acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, UV 54, fasc. 10, n. c.: ‘iuxta probatorum auctorum doctrinam’. On probati auctores and the releasing function that the general reference to ‘approved authors’ had, see Meyer, ‘Ursprünge und Funktionen’, p. 147. See also Windler, ‘Uneindeutige Zugehörigkeit’, p. 338.

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he submitted regarded the possibility of admitting to the sacraments a Catholic who had converted to the Roman faith after marrying, when his or her ‘heretic’ spouse was not prepared to renew consent before a Catholic priest. This was inadmissible, according to the Holy Office, in cases where the marriage was celebrated—as it logically would have been—before a Protestant minister: the marriage without a parish priest was invalid and the couple was therefore living in concubinage. Questioned, lastly, whether it was suitable for parish priests to assist at mixed marriages to prevent the fornication of couples married by ‘heretical rite’, living ‘like legitimate couples’, ‘under the same roof and in the same bed’, the Holy Office prudently decided not to reply.32 As Vincenzo Petra (1662–1747) explained later, the answer would have inevitably declared the marriage null, but it was decided not to proceed, so as not to endanger the Catholics.33 This, then, was the case law dealt with by the theologians whose views influenced the Benedictine declaration. In the next section I examine the argumentation behind the Benedictina.

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3. The Benedictina’s Argumentation The process that would lead to the enactment of the Benedictine declaration was initiated by Pope Clement XII (1730–1740), who instructed the Congregation of the Council to draw up a report on the situation in the Netherlands using the accounts of the apostolic vicar and the Belgian bishops of the Habsburg Netherlands. Four consultors were asked to prepare an opinion on the issues raised: Thomas Sergio of the Congregation of the Pii Operai; the Cistercensian Gioacchino Besozzi; and the Jesuits Domenico Maria Turano and Egidio Maria Giuli. For the occasion, reports were collected from the apostolic vicar and archbishop of Mechlin, and from the suffragan dioceses of Ypres, Bruges, Antwerp, and Ghent.34 32 acdf, S.O., Dubia, 1603–1722, fasc. XXXVI, fols. 379–380, and fol. 380 for quotations; see also acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, UV 54, fasc. 10, n. c.; acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica, L 4 m, ‘Nella causa di matrimonio del duca di Wirtemberg, Sommario A, 1671 Olanda’. 33 Petra, Commentaria, Const. XII Iohannis XXII, n. 24, p. 44: ‘cum sanctissimo ad mentem, quae erat, quod si respondendum esset ad dubium, dicendum esse matrimonia non valere, attamen animadversum fuit id non expedire, quia potius deberent permitti in eorum bona fide permanere, quam tot periculis exponere catholicos’. For examples of confessional retaliation or softening of confessional policy for fear of retaliation, see Freist, ‘One Body, Two Confessions’, p. 292; Te Brake, ‘Emblems of Coexistence’, p. 67; Kaplan, Cunegonde’s Kidnapping. 34 The date of Clement XII’s request is not known at this time, but the report of the bishop of Ypres, which is the first among those considered in the Benedictine Declaration, dates back to 1737.

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The reports were particularly concerned with the territories of the dioceses that extended to the Generality Lands. These were thoroughly Catholicized in the early seventeenth century, but were conquered in the later phases of the Eighty Years’ War and politically subject to the authority of the States General of the United Provinces.35 Moreover, from the 1670s onwards, but particularly in the early eighteenth century, the Belgian bishops were concerned with a tiny crypto-Protestant minority in the Habsburg Netherlands being joined by the Dutch and/or English garrisons in the so-called ‘barrier cities’ against France. The prelates were unsure whether to treat these garrisons as integral parts of their diocese or as separate units, even in sacramental matters.36 The report sent in 1737 by the bishop of Ypres, where one of these garrisons was stationed, provided the impetus for a unified solution to the century-old issue of marriage in the Netherlands.37 The report was, in fact, merely a pretext, since it did not present significant cases, or a new urgency of any kind.38 We can consider this case representative of the complexity and plurality of well-documented practices. The Roma Curia treated it as one example of many, strengthening its own normative authority in a time when the centrality of Rome was in question. It was a particularly critical period for the Catholic Church in the Netherlands, marked by tensions between secular and regular clergy alongside the factional struggle between anti-Jansenists and Jansenists. Jansenism and moral rigorism had even met with some sympathy—in the case of van Neercassel—or with the full acceptance—in the case of Peter Codde—of the apostolic vicars themselves. A few years earlier, the crisis culminated in the schism of Utrecht, after which the States General sought to further weaken the cohesion of Catholics by expelling the apostolic vicars, who came to Brussels and took up residence there until 1794. Furthermore, under a provision issued in 1730 by the States of Holland, only priests born in the Netherlands who were not part of an order and willing to obey secular 35 De Mooi, ‘Second-Class yet Self-Confident’. 36 Van Nimwegen, ‘The Dutch Barrier’. 37 aav, Congr. Concilio, Relat. Dioeces., b. 404 (Yprensis), fol. 58 (15 January 1737). 38 In 1722, for example, the Bishop of Ypres reported that ‘filiae catholicae quandoque seducentur ab hereticis ad matrimonium, et cum iuxta leges ecclesiae a pastoribus a matrimonio repelluntur, contrahunt coram ministro heretico et in huiusmodi matrimonio nulliter contracto vivunt impune’. See asv, Congr. Concilio, Relat. Dioeces., b. 404 (Yprensis), fol. 39. See also ibid., b. 59 B (Anversa), fol. 11: ‘An licite contrahant matrimonium catholici, dum coram ministro heretico, postquam eidem concioni interfuerunt, iubentur contrahere et postea hec verba coram hac sancta comunitate’ (1692). See also ibid., b. 148A, Bruges.

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authority, rather than the pope, could be admitted to their territories. The clerics also had to sign a document stating that papal bulls could only be declared with the consent of the government.39 The administration of sacraments in general and marriages in particular was often a battleground between vicar and missionaries (particularly Jesuits), who flexibly interpreted the decrees of the Council of Trent. 40 The political climate led Rome to believe it was time to deal decisively with the problem of marriages, with which for the local clergy, both secular priests under the authority of the apostolic vicars and missionaries of the religious orders, had been burdened almost exclusively for too long. The pope spearheaded the solution, so as not to support the independence of local churches promoted by various currents of thought that crossed Europe; the anti-Jesuitism of these currents assumed more generic anti-Curia traits. 41 As we shall see, the issue was resolved by resorting to the practice that developed through the substantial abstentionism of Rome, and because of the authority of previously neglected local authors. The consultations preceding Benedict XIV’s declaration debated whether marriages contracted by Protestants and between Protestants and Catholics in the Northern and Southern Netherlands in defiance of the Tridentine decrees (therefore without a parish priest) were valid. The question of the validity of Protestant marriages was important for Rome, as we have seen, in the case of conversion to Catholicism by a spouse who wished to remain united to a Reformed spouse married by way of the Calvinist rite. It is very interesting to examine the ways in which, during the debates, the mandates of the Council of Trent were interpreted, circumvented, and manipulated so as to initiate important changes without formally introducing them. According to the opinion of the consultors, marriages contracted by ‘heretics’ without respecting the decrees of the Council of Trent were certainly to be considered valid at least ‘in contractual terms’, because it was likely that the Tridentine norms did not extend to ‘heretical’ states or communities. This opinion contradicts various resolutions taken earlier by the Holy See on marriages celebrated in individual parishes in the Holy Roman Empire,42 and did not constitute a strong precedent, since opposing decisions would be taken 39 Abels and de Groot, ‘The Eighteenth Century’, pp. 384–392. 40 See the contribution by Bruno Boute in this volume. 41 Explicit reference to the danger of Jansenism in Benedictina, p. 37. 42 See Benedictina, p. 215: ‘Sacra Congregatio Concilii, que 29 ianuarii 1605 episcopo Tricariensi Sedis Apostolicae ad Belgas Legato rescripsit hereticos quoque, ubi decretum tridentini sess. 24 cap. 1. De reform. matrim. est promulgatum teneri talem formam observare: et propterea etiam ipsorum matrimonia absque forma Concilii, quamvis coram ministro haeretico, vel magistratu

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again in the second half of the eighteenth century. The consultors’ opinion in fact calls into question the close link between the nuptial contract of the baptized and the sacrament of marriage, as definitively established at Trent.43 Yet the Council was interpreted not according to the letter, but according to the spirit. Adopting an opinion already expressed by the missionaries, the consultors tended to favour the validity of marriages contracted by a civil official or Protestant pastor, affirming that this was fully within the spirit of the Council of Trent’s decree.44 With Tametsi the Church sought to end the practice of clandestine marriage by imposing the presence of the parish priest and witnesses. The presence of a civil official or Calvinist pastor in the United Provinces guaranteed the publicity of the union and prevented clandestine marriages: the presence of such officials could be considered as equivalent to a parish priest for sealing a marriage’s validity.45 If the marriages of non-Catholics performed without a parish priest were invalid, those who contracted them would be de facto guilty of fornication and concubinage, which would contradict the spirit of the Council Fathers.46 Following the opinion of the apostolic vicar (and contrary to what was hitherto believed, and confirmed by the apostolic nuncio in 1658),47 from the accounts given by the dioceses, by the Congregation of the Council, and according to the opinions of local historians who have been overlooked—such as Cornelius Paulus Hoynck van Papendrecht, author of the Historia ecclesiae Ultrajectinae48—and even banned—such as Hugo Franciscus van Heussen, coadjutor of van Neercassel and author of Batavia sacra, 49 the consultors concluded that it was impossible to establish whether or not the decrees of loci contracta, nulla atque irrita esse (29 ianuarii 1605).’ See also Tamburini, Expedita iuris divini, naturalis et ecclesiastici, tract. VI cap. 2. 43 Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta, pp. 753–759. For a history of the notion of marriage as contract, as well as a study of conflicting models of marriage (Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, Anglican, and Enlightenment) and their social and political impact over the centuries, see Witte, From Sacrament to Contract. 44 On the fact that the missionaries supported this view, see acdf, S.O., Dubia circa matrimonium XXXVI, Olanda, fol. 381. 45 Benedictina, p. 238: ‘Nec una, sed duplex in omnium rem attentius considerantium, oculos incurrit: nempe littera legis, et mens legislatoris.’ 46 Giuli: ‘Detrahendum esse aliquis severitati, ut maioribus malis sanandi caritas sincera subveniat.’ Benedictina, p. 216. But see also infra n. 74. 47 acdf, S.O., Dubia circa matrimonium 1740–1756, fasc. XI, 1749, fol. 379. 48 Hoynck van Papendrecht, Historia ecclesiae Ultraiectinae. On the author see https://www. dbnl.org/tekst/aa__001biog10_01/aa__001biog10_01_0985.php (last access: 30 September 2020). 49 acdf, S.O., Censurae Librorum 1715–1717, Nr. 15. The book was prohibited with a decree of the Holy Office (5 August 1716) and with a bando of the Holy Office (18 August 1717 and 29 July 1722). Cf. Systematisches Repertorium, vol. 2, p. 148.

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the Council were published in the United Provinces. Certainly, publication was ordered; but the territory was in such a state of unrest that even many ecclesiastics loyal to the Council of Trent, such as Friedrich Schenck von Tautenburg, first and only Archbishop of Utrecht (1559–1580),50 doubted the decrees had been properly published in their own parishes.51 We should also remember that, in order to be valid, the decrees had to be published in individual parishes. When in doubt, it was best to incline towards the validity of marriages, and therefore to presume that Tametsi had not been promoted. Carlo Alberto Guidoboni Cavalchini, secretary of the Congregation of the Council, emphasized that ‘heretics’ were prevented from marrying in front of the parish priest,52 and parish priests were also forbidden to perform marriages involving non-Catholics.53 It was therefore not possible to tie the validity of the bond to their presence because the obligation to follow a law ceased when it was impossible to do so.54 It should also be noted that the Protestant pastor was considered a legitimate pastor ex communi populi errore (‘by common mistake’) and therefore, although he was not in fact a legitimate pastor, he valide assistit (‘assisted validly’).55 Without denying the publication of the Council in the region in the late 1560s, the consultors admitted that, although the Council of Trent could be considered published in the parishes understood as territorial units, it was not thought to be valid in those same parishes understood as communities, since the revolt affected their cohesion. According to Turano, the ‘heretics’ had publicly flouted their loyalty to the Church, although they could not, for the time being, escape Spanish temporal rule. They were therefore not bound by obedience to the Council, except, possibly, for the period in which it was hoped they could be rejoined to the communion of Rome—that is, until the Peace of Westphalia.56 The latter argument was used to justify decisions against the validity of marriage without a parish priest before the 50 Von Schulte, ‘Schenck von Tautenburg’. After the death of von Tautenburg the archbishopric of Utrecht became unoccupied until 1853, when Catholicism was restored: Parker, Faith on the Margins, p. 30. 51 See the opinion of the archbishop of Bruxelles, Benedictina, p. 25. He quotes Hoynck van Papendrecht, Historia, pp. 6–8, 25. 52 See n. 11. 53 See for example the bibliography quoted at n. 13. 54 Benedictina, p. 66: ‘cessare censeatur obligatio servandi legem, quae sive physice, sive moraliter servari non potest’; Fagnani, Ius canonicum, in 2. decretal., De foro competente, c. Si clericus, n. 58, p. 71: ‘Nulla est obligatio servandi formam, quae sit impossibili observatu.’ 55 Pichler, Summa iurisprudentiae, lib. 4, tit. 3 n. 16. p. 750. For an example, cf. Cristellon, ‘Does the Priest’, pp. 23–24. 56 Benedictina, pp. 167–168.

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Peace of Westphalia, which would have weakened the argument for which the Tridentine rule was repealed by a practice approved by the pontiff, because it was not explicitly censored. After 1648, in fact, marriages celebrated without a parish priest in the United Provinces were by common consent considered ratified in the Spanish Low Countries.57 Exempting ‘heretics’ from the provisions of the Council of Trent, at least in the regions where they held political power (‘they were in majority’),58 could gain strength from the authority of many theologians and canonists, from the most probati auctores of the second scholasticims59 (André Tiraqueau, Paul Laymann, Martin de Esparza, Adam Tanner, and Tirso González de Santalla) to those who were educated and/or had practised in the region as well as in the German Empire (Juan de Dicastillo,60 Bonagratia de Albsheim,61 Aurelio Piette, Juan Marin,62 Ausonio Noctinot, Franz Schmalzgrueber,63 Patritius Sporer,64 Jacob Wiestner, Vitus Pichler, Pirhig Ehrenreich, Marty Hein de Swaen, Jacob Wex, and Zeger Bernhard Van Espen).65 These theologians sometimes had a spiritual affinity with the apostolic vicar, as in the case of Gummarus Huygens with van Neercassel.66 They were not only theologians who had practised in other missionary territories, like Jacques Platel,67 but also canonists, such as Zeger Bernard Van Espen, as well as exponents of natural law, such as the Reformed Grotius and the Protestant Pufendorf. 57 Benedictina, p. 252. 58 Benedictina, pp. 253–254. 59 Die Ordnung der Praxis; Decock and Birr, Recht und Moral. 60 Juan de Dicastillo (1584–1642), probabilist, was professor of theology in Spain and in the German territories: https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/tce/j/juan-de-dicastillo.html (last access: 30 September 2020). 61 Bonagratia de Habsheim ofm cap. (?–1672). See http://www.prdl.org/author_view.php?a_id=5339 (last access: 30 September 2020). His main work was the Disceptatio de matrimoniis hereticorum. 62 Marin, Tractatus de matrimonio, sectio III, A post Trident. sit in aliquo casu validum matrimonium sine assistentia parochi et testium, pp. 210–222. 63 On Schmalzgrueber sj (1663–1735) see von Schulte, ‘Schmalzgrueber’. 64 Reusch, ‘Sporer’. 65 On Pirhing: von Schulte, ‘Pirhing’; on Van Espen (1646–1728) see von Schulte, ‘Van Espen’; on Pichler (?–1736): von Schulte, ‘Pichler’; on Archdekin: https://data.cerl.org/thesaurus/cnp00100337 (last access: 30 September 2020); on Wex, Holland, ‘Wex’. 66 Parker, Faith on the Margins, p. 81. On Huygens see http://www.prdl.org/author_view. php?a_id=4297 (last access: 30 September 2020). 67 Norbert Bar-Le-Duc (1697–1769)—also known as Abbé Jacques Platel, Pierre Parisot, and Pierre Curel—who traversed identities and continents, making a career out of controversy, worked in South India as a missionary in 1736–1739 and played a pivotal role in the Malabar Rites controversy. Back in Europe, he developed a literary offensive against the Jesuits. See Aranha, ‘Le meilleurs causes’.

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Although belonging to different and sometimes competing ecclesiastical currents, these authors understood confessional coexistence. They faced the moral challenges presented by the new religious and political constellations in Europe and in the New World, and developed a system of theological, legal, and political thought that dealt flexibly with the related problems; indeed, their books sometimes tempted censorship.68 The use of heterodox authors—even open followers of the Reformation—was permitted through adherence to the principle of usefulness,69 provided that the texts mentioned did not ‘strengthen heresy’.70 And if moreover, the apostolic vicar, the consultors, and the secretary of the Congregation of the Council felt obliged to justify the quotations of Grotius and Pufendorf, this was not their practice for other prohibited works and authors. Local practice was also used to confirm the opinions. The fact that the (rigorist) apostolic vicar van Neercassel in the Constitutiones, while forbidding the absolution of Catholics who married heretics until they expressed a genuine desire to convert or until they did not prove sincere penitence for having married in the Protestant Church, did not impose a new wedding celebration according to Tametsi, corroborated the opinion of those believing marriage without a pastor should be valid. As we have noted, the consultors tended to doubt that the Council was properly published—that is published in the specific parish—as far as the followers of the Reformation were concerned. But even if it were, the custom of the ‘heretics’ of celebrating marriage without respect for the Tridentine decrees would have had the effect of abrogating the ecclesiastical law. Custom, in fact, prevailed over ecclesiastical law, providing the custom (a) was reasonable, (b) was known to the pope, (c) was in force for sufficient time, and (d) had the—at least implicit—consent of the sovereign pontiff.71 68 For example, Van Espen on 17 May 1734 and Juan Marin on 5 July 1728 and 18 July 1729 with ban by the Congregation of the Index. See Römische Buchverbote, respectively pp. 128 and 103; about Van Espen see also Systematisches Repertorium, vol. 1, pp. 1005–1006; for Marin: Systematisches Repertorium, vol. 1, pp. 967–968. 69 Cavarzere, ‘Das alte Reich’, pp. 313–314. 70 Benedictina, p. 26. 71 The abrogation of ecclesiastical law by customs was a principle developed in canon law, starting from the twelfth century. If, according to Gratian, the custom constituted an unwritten law that completed the codified norm, being therefore subordinate, the canonist Rufino instead affirmed the capacity of the customary right to substitute itself for the written one, provided customs existed with papal consent—that could be, according to Uguccione, also tacit. The concept of tacit consent was handed down by common opinion (communis opinio) in the late medieval canon. The moral problem deriving from the fact that a time during which a group of people acted contrary to the—binding—law of the Church, according to Suárez, could be

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According to the consultors, there was no doubt that the custom of defying the Council in nuptial matters was reasonable, because ‘heresy’ rejected parish priests and conciliar decrees. Marriages contracted without parish priests and in defiance of Tametsi were nevertheless valid, and the children born to them were therefore considered legitimate. Heresy itself was of course unreasonable, but not everything that proceeded from it. And since ‘natural reason’ imposed the choice of the lesser among several possible evils, the only reasonable solution was to abrogate a law whose application had no effect against heresy, but which led to the stipulation of ‘permanently adulterine marriages, and constituted an expedient of seduction, giving rise to bigamy’. The authority of St. Thomas Aquinas—for whom positive human law lost its effect when it became not only useless but dangerous—supported this opinion.72 Since many requests for the solution of doubts were submitted to Rome, the prevailing custom in the United Provinces was undoubtedly known to the pope, who had given it de facto approval by implicitly tolerating it. Never, in fact, had the praxis been explicitly forbidden by the Holy See; nor had the missionaries or apostolic vicars been instructed to regard it as null and void—or at any rate not as regards general case law, but only in individual cases. Since the pope was aware that many ‘inconveniences’ would arise from any attempt to apply the Tridentine decrees in the region, he would act imprudently were he to oppose their abrogation in the Netherlands. Since imprudence was not among the pontiff’s characteristics, it may be presumed that he implicitly acknowledged the validity of marriage contracted publicly but without the parish priest. The decrees of the various congregations do not help to contradict his tacit assent because, as we gather from the account of the titular bishop of Castoria, no enactment of a Roman dicastery later than 1671 censured such marriages:73 since forty years were sufficient to transform a usage into a custom it lasted very well, with all its juridical consequences. Methodologically, the consultors addressed the question of the application of the Tridentine decrees as they did in a matrimonial cause, with arguments solved only on condition that the custom became binding not only with consent, but also with the approval of the legislator. His position, however, was little followed in the seventeenth century. Cf. Wehrlé, De la coutume; Landau, ‘Die Theorie’; Landau, ‘Spanische Spätscholastik’, pp. 414–415. 72 Thomas of Aquinas, Summa theologica II–II, q. 60, a. 5, ad 2: ‘Ita etiam leges quae sunt recte positae in aliquibus casibus deficiunt, in quibus si servarentur, esset contra ius naturale. Et ideo in talibus non est secundum litteram legis iudicandum, sed recurrendum ad aequitatem, quam intendit legislator.’ 73 For this case see acdf, S.O., Dubia circa matrimonium XXXI, Olanda, fol. 379.

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pro and contra the nuptial bond. On the basis of a centuries-old tradition it was held that the matrimonial cause—that is, the procedure that determined the validity or invalidity of a marriage—was gravissima et favorabilis; in this extremely delicate matter, in cases of doubt, the practice was to choose in favour of, rather than against, the matrimonial bond. Proofs against the validity of the marriage could not be held as conclusive. No sentence of nullity could be regarded as definitive, because there must always be left open the possibility of a reconciliation between the spouses.74 Even though in the past marriage without parish priests was insufficient in the Low Countries—one was led to understand—the time was now ripe for the validity of such unions to be recognized. Resorting to the principle of favor matrimonii, the consultors justified the fact that it was not expedient to apply the Council of Trent in the Low Countries. Resolved to maintain the validity of ‘heretical marriages’ in both the United Provinces and Belgium, the consultors disagreed about the validity of mixed marriages. Besozzi, Sergio, and Turano considered them null and void if contracted in spite of the Tridentine legislation in areas where a parish priest—or a missionary acting on his behalf—could be found. Since the Catholic party was obliged to respect the Tridentine decrees—in the Habsburg Netherlands by positive law,75 in the United Provinces by custom observed by Catholics76 —and since a sound contract had to be valid for both parties, the inability of the Catholic party to stipulate marriage in the absence of the parish priest voided the nuptial contract. According to Turano, the consultors ought to have considered whether there existed reasons to be indulgent: in the case of mixed marriages without a parish priest, he himself saw no reason for indulgence. Favouring mixed marriages was neither the intention of Trent nor of the Church; they served no Catholic advantage and, wherever there was a custom about them, it lacked at least one of the conditions necessary for becoming a norm: papal consent.77 Certainly it might be rational to declare the mixed marriage valid, but 74 This was codified in the Liber Extra in 1234. Cf. Decretales Gregorii Papae IX, lib. IV, cap. 1, tit. XV de frigidis et maleficiatis, col. 1517, 70. See also Cristellon, Marriage, p. 59 and passim for favor matrimonii. 75 The Habsburg Netherlands was in fact an overwhelmingly Catholic region with a tiny crypto-Protestant presence, garrisoned by Protestant troops, where no doubt existed about the due promulgation of the Tridentine decrees. 76 Although the United Provinces had sizable Catholic minorities, especially in the maritime provinces, the Reformed Church, heersende Kerk, held a monopoly on public religious services; yet a plethora of confessions coexisted almost peacefully. 77 We recall that, in order to become a positive norm, a custom had to be reasonable, known to the pope, established for sufficient time, and granted at least implicit papal consent.

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it was not compulsory, since there was no custom accepted by the pope; consequently, Turano saw no sense in declaring it valid. It was not, however, a prescribed custom (to be so it would have had to be in effect for over forty years). True, the titular bishop of Castoria and apostolic vicar Johannes Van Neercassel convalidated such unions, but they lacked papal consent, without which the custom would not advance to positive canon law. Such consent could not even be understood as tacitly expressed by the tolerant attitude of the Holy See. On the subject of mixed marriages celebrated in the diocese of Utrecht, a 1720 judgment of the Holy Office established that such a marriage was ‘null, because not contracted before the parish priest’.78 Only Giuli maintained the validity of mixed marriages, availing himself in positive terms of the same argument used by the other consultors against the bond. Drawing strength from the authority of de Swaen—while changing its context—he asserted that, since the marriage of two heretics performed by a magistrate or an heretical minister is valid, the same should be true of a marriage in which only one of the two parties is a heretic. This situation could also arise when a marriage occurred in a place where the Council is unpublished, uniting one person from there and another living in an area where the Council is published.79 Drawing on the reports of the Belgian bishops, of the apostolic vicar, and of the secretary of the Congregation of the Council, as well as on the opinion of the four consultors, Benedict XIV’s declaration established that in the United Provinces and in the Southern Low Countries, as well as in the Habsburg Netherlands, marriages between two ‘heretics’ contracted without the presence of the parish priest were valid. If both spouses converted to Catholicism, therefore, it would not be necessary to repeat the exchange of consent before a parish priest; if only one of them converted, neither would be permitted to remarry during the lifetime of the spouse. The validity of marriages made between non-Catholic parties implied that of mixed marriages as well. Embracing the isolated position of Giuli, Benedict XIV maintained that, since the non-Catholic party was exempt from respect for the Tridentine decrees by reason of the place and society in which he or she lived, such an exemption was extended (‘communicated’) to the Catholic party.80 78 acdf, S.O., Stanza Storica L 4 m, ‘Nella causa di matrimonio del duca di Wirtemberg. Sommario A. Risoluzioni riguardanti la clandestinità dei matrimoni de’ protestanti contratti non servata forma Concilii Tridentini delli quali si è trovata memoria nell’archivio del S. Officio. Risoluzioni anteriori alla Dichiarazione di Benedetto XIV per i matrimoni d’Olanda. 1720, Olanda’. 79 Benedictina, pp. 296–297. 80 Benedictina, N. 1.

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Conclusion The complex, even chaotic situation of the Low Countries made strict application of the decrees of the Council of Trent almost impossible. Members of the local churches applied frequently to Rome for the resolution of questions (dubia) which ‘were located within orthodoxy, within the space of discussion and negotiation’.81 Rome’s renunciation of an unrealistically rigid application of the Tridentine decrees (a renunciation that could go as far as the refusal to respond to a question) allowed the development of a nuptial praxis with the power to become a norm, through communication between local churches and the Roman congregations. Such communication ensured the seal of papal approval (albeit passive approval) necessary for praxis to be transformed into norm. The invitation to resolve a case in loco, according to the opinion of ‘approved authors’, strengthened the credibility of the local clergy, jurists, theologians, and historians. While the Benedictine Declaration was being drafted, there were attempts to resort to the authors’ authority to deny that the Council had been promulgated—at any rate in the form prescribed, that is, in the individual parishes. The Council, however, needed to be interpreted, and for the United Provinces a literal interpretation of its decrees was inappropriate since it would have been counter to the spirit of the Council itself. To respect the spirit of Trent, it was necessary to renounce the application of its decrees. The Church had the authority to define the nature of sin. By acting in this way, therefore, it cancelled in its own eyes the bigamy, fornication, and adultery of the past and the future, and saved the consciences of both confessors and faithful. Moreover, the Benedictine Declaration was gradually extended, by request, to regions with large Protestant populations, from Poland to Germany, from Canada to Malabar: in the opinion of Rome, always without introducing innovation of any kind, but simply acknowledging the existing situation—one that could become legitimate solely through communication with Rome. In the case of mixed marriages, Benedict XIV resorted to an operation of that probabilism which earned the Protestant’s criticism and contempt, and caused conflicts and internal fractures, but which, fundamentally, managed a complex reality that could not be handled purely dogmatically.82 81 Broggio, Castelnau-L’Estoile, and Pizzorusso, ‘Les temps des doutes’, p. 5. 82 On probabilism, I limit myself to quoting the most recent works by Schuessler, The Debate, and Tutino, Uncentainty, esp. pp. 189–222, on antiprobabilist pressures, doctrinal ambiguity, and Roman reaction. See also the contribution of Schuessler in this volume.

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Bibliography Archival Sources Vatican City, Archivio Apostolico Vaticano (aav): Congr. Concilio, Libri Decret., vol. 91; II (1575–81). Congr. Concilio, Relat. Dioeces., b. 59B, 148A, 404. Congr. Concilio, Synopsis variarum resolutionum ex selectioribus decretis Sacre Congregationis Concilii collecta per materias ordine alphabetico disposita. Vatican City, Archivio della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede (acdf): S.O., Censurae Librorum 1715–1717. S.O., Dubia circa matrimonium 1740–1756, 1780, XXXI, XXXVI; Dubia 1603–1722. S.O., Stanza Storica, L 4 m, MM 5 g, UV 54.

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Printed Sources Benedicti XIV, (Benedictina:) Declaratio super matrimoniis inter protestantes et catholicos necnon super eadem materia relationes antistitum Belgii et dissertationes reverendissimi P.D. Cavalchini archiepiscopi Philippensis. et quatuor insignium theologorum. Editio prima in Germania (Colonia: apud Iohannem Wilhelmum Krakamp et haeredes Christiani Simonis, 1746). Bonagratia de Habsheim, Disceptatio de matrimoniis hereticorum proposita et resoluta a F. Bonagratia Habsens Alsata franciscano capucino. Approbatio D. ordinarii Constant. vicarius generalis (s.l.: s.d.). Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta, ed. by Giuseppe Alberigo et al. (Bologna: Edizioni Dehoniane, 1991). Cornelissen, Johannes Dominicus Maria, Romeinsche Bronnen voor den Kerkelijken Toestand der Nederlanden onder der Apostolische Vicarissen 1592–1727 (’s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1932). Decretales Gregorii Papae IX suae integritati, una cum glossis restitutae (Romae: in aedibus Populi Romani, 1582). Fagnani, Prospero, Ius canonicum, sive commentaria in tertium librum decretalium cum disceptatione de grangiis, que in aliis editionibus desiderabatur, ac ipso textu suis locis apte disposito (Coloniae: apud Willhelmum Metternich, 1705). Hoynck van Papendrecht, Cornelius Paulus, Historia ecclesiae Ultraiectinae a tempore mutatae religionis in foederato Belgio, in qua ostenditur ordinaria sedis archiepiscopalis et capituli iura intercidisse. Accedunt varia monumenta huc spectantia, cum dissertationibus (Mechliniae: van der Elst, 1725). Marin, Ioannis, Tractatus de matrimonio (Matriti: Typis D. Gabrielis del Barrio, 1714).

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Petra, Vincenzo, Commentaria ad constitutiones apostolicas seu bullas singulas summorum pontificium in bullario romano contentas secondum collectionem Cherubini, incipientes a divo Leone Magno, tomus quartus (Romae: prope templum Sancte Mariae pacis, 1711). Pichler, Vitus, Summa iurisprudentiae sacrae universae, seu ius canonicum secundum quinque Decretalium Gregorii papae IX (Augustae Vincelicorum : Veith, 1758) Tamburini, Tommaso, Expedita iuris divini, naturalis et ecclesiastici moralis expositio (Coloniae Agrippinae: Busaeus, 1665). Thomas of Aquin, Summa theologica, ed. by Alessandro Francini Bruni (Siena: Cantagalli, 1951–1952). van Heussen, Hugo Franciscus, Batavia sacra, sive res gestae apostolicorum virorum, qui fidem Bataviae primi intulerunt (Bruxellis: pro Francisco Foppens, 1714). van Neercassel, Johannes, Constitutiones servandae à presbyteris in Foed. Belg. laborantibus (Bruxellis: apud Franciscum Foppens, 1668).

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Literature Abels, Paul H.A.M. and de Groot, Aart, ‘The Eigteenth Century’, in Handbook of Dutch History, ed. by Herman J. Selderhuis (Göttingen: V&R, 2014), pp. 361–434. Administrer les sacrements en Europee et au Nouveau Monde. Le Curie Romaine et les dubia circa sacramenta, ed. by Paolo Broggio, Charlotte de CastelnauL’Estoile, and Giovanni Pizzorusso, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome – Italie et Méditerranée, 121 (2009), 5–217. Amelung, Iwo, Leppin, Hartmut, and Müller, Christian A., ‘Introduction’, in Discourses of Weakness and Resource Regimes. Trajectories of a New Research Programme, ed. by Iwo Amelung, Hartmut Leppin, and Christian A. Müller (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2018), pp. 9–27. Aranha, Paolo, ‘Le meilleurs causes embarassent les juges, si elles manquent de bonnes preuves. Père Norberts Militant Historiography on the Malabar Rites Controversy’, in Europäische Geschichtskulturen um 1700 zwischen Gelehrsamkeit, Politik und Konfession, ed. by Thomas Wallnig, Thomas Stockinger, Ines Peper, and Patrick Fiska (Berlin et al.: De Gruyter, 2012), pp. 239–270. Broggio, Paolo, de Castelnau-L’Estoile, Charlotte, and Pizzorusso, Giovanni, ‘Le temps des doutes. Les sacrements et l’Église romaine aux dimensions du monde’, in Administrer les sacrements, pp. 5–22. Cavarzere, Marco, ‘Das alte Reich und die römische Zensur in der Frühen Neuzeit. Ein Überblick’, in Tribunal der Barbaren? Deutschland und die Inquisition in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Albrecht Burkardt and Gerd Schwerhoff (Konstanz: UVK, 2012), pp. 307–334.

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Cristellon, Cecilia, ‘Does the Priest Have to Be There? Contested Marriages before Roman Tribunals. Italy, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries’, Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften, 3 (2009), 10–30. ———, ‘L’inquisizione, il duca di Neoburgo e i matrimoni misti in Germania in età moderna’, Rivista Storica Italiana, 125 (2013), 76–108. ———, ‘Mixed Marriages in Early Modern Europe’, in Marriage in Europe 1400–1800, ed. by Silvana Seidel Menchi (Toronto et al.: University of Toronto Press, 2016), pp. 294–317. ———, Marriage, the Church and its Judges in Renaissance Venice, 1420–1545 (London: Palgrave, 2017). De Mooi, Charles, ‘Second-Class yet Self-Confident. Catholics in the Dutch Generality Lands’, in Catholic Communities in Protestant States. Britain and the Netherlands c. 1570–1720, ed. by Benjamin Kaplan, Bob Moore, Henk van Nierop, and Judith Pollmann (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), pp. 156–167. Decock, Wim and Birr, Christiane, Recht und Moral in der Scholastik der frühen Neuzeit 1500–1750 (Berlin et al.: De Gruyter, 2016). Die Herausbildung normativer Ordnungen. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven, ed. by Reiner Forst and Klaus Günther (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2011). Die Ordnung der Praxis. Neue Studien zur Spanischen Spätscholastik, ed. by Frank Grunert and Kurt Seelmann (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2001). Die Vielfalt normativer Ordnungen. Konflikte und Dynamik in historischer und ethnologischer Perspektive, ed. by Andreas Fahrmeier and Annette Imhausen (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2013). Duke, Alastair, Reformation and Revolt in the Law Countries (London: Hambledon, 1990). Forclaz, Bertrand, Catholique au défi de la Réform. La coexistence confessionelle à Utrecht au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Champion, 2014). ———, ‘The Emergence of Confessional Identities. Family Relationship and Religious Coexistence in Seventeenth-Century Utrecht’, in Living with Religious Diversity in Early Modern Europe, ed. by C. Scott Dixon, Dagmar Freist, and Mark Greengrass (Farnham et al.: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 249–266. Freist, Dagmar, ‘One Body, Two Confessions. Mixed Marriages in Germany’, in Early Modern German History, ed. by Ulinka Rublack (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 275–305. Holland, Hyacinth, ‘Wex, Jakob’, in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie (reprinted in Norderstedt: Hansebooks GmbH, 2017), vol. 42, pp. 265–266. Kaplan, Benjamin J., ‘“For They Will Turn Away Thy Sons”. The Practice and Perils of Mixed Marriage in the Duch Golden Age’, in Piety and Family in Early Modern Europe. Essays in Honour of Steven Ozment, ed. by Marc R. Forster and Benjamin J. Kaplan (Farnham: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 115–133.

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———, Divided by Faith. Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge/Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), pp. 266–293. ———, ‘Integration vs Segregation. Religiously Mixed Marriages and the “Verzuiling” Model of Dutch Society’, in Catholic Communities in Protestant States. Britain and the Netherlands c. 1570–1720, ed. by Benjamin Kaplan, Bob Moore, Henk van Nierop, and Judith Pollman (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), pp. 48–66. ———, ‘Intimate Negotiations. Husbands and Wives of Opposing Faiths in Eigtheenth-Century Holland’, in Living with Religious Diversity in Early Modern Europe, ed. by C. Scott Dixon, Dagmar Freist, and Mark Greengrass (Farnham et al.: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 225–248. ———, Cunegonde’s Kidnapping. A Story of Religious Conflict in the Age of Enlightenment (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014). Kooi, Christine, Calvinists and Catholics during Holland’s Golden Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Landau, Peter, ‘Die Theorie des Gewonheitsrechts im katholischen und evangelischen Kirchenrechts des 19. und 20. Jahrhundert’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte. Kanonistische Abteilung, 77 (1991), pp. 156–196. ———, ‘Spanische Spätscholastik und kanonistische Lehrbuchliteratur’, in Die Ordnung der Praxis, pp. 403–426. Meyer, Christoph H.F., ‘Ursprünge und Funktionen einer wenig beachteten Quelle kanonistischer Tradition und Argumentation’, Rechtsgeschichte – Legal History, 20 (2012), pp. 138–154. Nottarp, Hermann, Zur Communicatio in sacris cum hereticis. Deutsche Rechtszustände in 17. und 18. Jh. (Halle: Niemeyer, 1933). Palazzini, Pietro, ‘Prospero Fagnani. Segretario della Congregazione del Concilio e suoi editi e inediti’, in La Sacra Congregazione del Concilio. Quarto Centenario della Fondazione (1564–1964) (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1964), pp. 361–386. Parker, Charles H., Faith on the Margins. Catholics and Catholicism in the Dutch Golden Age (Cambridge/Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008). Parker, Geoffrey, The Dutch Revolt (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977). Plöchl, Willibald M., Geschichte des Kirchenrechts, 5 vols. (Wien: Herold, 1952–1969). Pollmann, Judith, ‘Burying the Dead, Reliving the Past. Ritual, Resentment and Sacred Space in the Dutch Republic’, in Catholic Communities in Protestant States. Britain and the Netherlands c. 1570–1720, ed. by Benjamin Kaplan, Bob Moore, Henk van Nierop, and Judith Pollmann (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), pp. 84–102. ———, ‘The Cleasing of the Temple. Church Space and its Meanings in the Duch Republic’, in Religious Ceremonial and Images. Power and Social Meaning (1400–1750), ed. by José Pedro Paiva (Coimbra: Palimage, 2002), pp. 177–189.

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Quaglioni, Diego, ‘Prospero Fagnani Boni’, in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani (Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia italiana, 1960–), vol. 44, pp. 187–189. Rechtfertigungsnarrative. Zur Begründung normativer Ordnung durch Erzählungen, ed. by Andreas Fahrmeir (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2013). Reusch, Heinrich, ‘Sporer, Patritius’, in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie (reprinted in Norderstedt: Hansebooks GmbH, 2017), vol. 35, p. 273. Römische Buchverbote. Edition der Bandi von Inquisition und Index Kongregation, 1701–1813, ed. by Hermann Schwedt, Ursula Paintner, and Christian Wiesneth, in Römische Inquisition und Indexkongregation, ed. by Hubert Wolf (Paderborn et al.: Schöning, 2015). Santus, Cesare, Trasgressioni necessarie. Communicatio in sacris, coesistenza e conflitti tra le comunità cristiane orientali (Levante e Impero ottomano, XVII–XVIII secolo) (Rome: École française de Rome, 2019). Schuessler, Rudolf, The Debate on Probable Opinions in the Scholastic Tradition (Leiden et al.: Brill, 2019). Selderhuis, Hermann J. and Nissen, Peter, ‘The Sixteenth Century’, in The Handbook of Dutch Church History, ed. by Hermann J. Selderhuis (Göttingen: V&R, 2014), pp. 157–258. Systematisches Repertorium zur Buchzensur 1701–1813, vol. 1: Indexkongregation, ed. by Andreea Badea, Jan Dirk Busemann, and Volker Dinkels, in Römische Inquisition und Indexkongregation, ed. by Hubert Wolf (Paderborn et al.: Schöning 2009). Systematisches Repertorium zur Buchzensur 1701–1813, vol. 2: Inquisition, ed. by Bruno Boute, Cecilia Cristellon, and Volker Dinkels, in Römische Inquisition und Indexkongregation, ed. by Hubert Wolf (Paderborn et al.: Schöning, 2009). Te Brake, Wayne, ‘Emblems of Coexistence in a Confessional World’, in Living with Religious Diversity in Early Modern Europe, ed. by C. Scott Dixon, Dagmar Freist, and Mark Greengrass (Farnham et al.: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 53–79. The Origins and Development of the Dutch Revolt, ed. by Graham Darby (London and New York: Routledge, 2001). Tutino, Stefania, Uncentainty in Post-Reformation Catholicism. A History of Probabilism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). van der Heijden, Manon, ‘Marriage Formation. Law and Custom in the Low Countries 1500–1700’, in Marriage in Europe 1400–1800, ed. by Silvana Seidel Menchi (Toronto et al.: University of Toronto Press, 2016), pp. 155–175. van Nimwegen, Olaf, ‘The Dutch Barrier. Its Origins, Creation and Importance for the Dutch Republic as a Great Power, 1697–1718’, in Anthonie Heinsius and the Dutch Republic 1688–1720. Politics, War, and Finance, ed. by Jan A.F. de Jongste and Augustus J. Veenendaal, Jr. (The Hague: Institute of Netherlands History, 2002), pp. 147–175. von Schulte, Johann Friedrich, ‘Pichler, Vitus’, in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie (reprinted in Norderstedt: Hansebooks GmbH, 2017), vol. 26, pp. 108–109.

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———, ‘Pirhing, Ehrenreich’, in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie (reprinted in Norderstedt: Hansebooks GmbH, 2017), vol. 26, pp. 177–178. ———, ‘Schmalzgrueber, Franz’, in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie (reprinted in Norderstedt: Hansebooks GmbH, 2017), vol. 31, pp. 627–628. ———, ‘Van Espen, Zeger Bernhard van’, in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie (reprinted in Norderstedt: Hansebooks GmbH, 2017), vol. 39, pp. 476–478. ———, ‘Schenck von Tautenburg, Friedrich Freiherr’, in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie (reprinted in Norderstedt: Hansebooks GmbH, 2017), vol. 31, p. 66. Wehrlé, René, De la coutume dans le droit canonique (Paris: Sirey, 1928). Windler, Christian, ‘Uneindeutige Zugehörigkeiten. Katholische Missionare und die Kurie im Umgang mit communicatio in sacris’, in Konfessionelle Ambiguität. Uneindeutigkeit und Verstellung als religiöse Praxis in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Andreas Pietsch and Barbara Stollberg Rillinger (Gütersloh: Güthersloher Verlagshaus, 2013), pp. 314–345. ———, Missionare in Persien. Kulturelle Diversität und Normenkonkurrenz im globalen Katholizismus (17.–18. Jh.) (Cologne et al.: Böhlau, 2018). Witte, John, From Sacrament to Contract. Marriage, Religion, and Law in the Western Tradition (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997).

About the Author

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Cecilia Cristellon is a researcher in early modern history at the GoetheUniversity of Frankfurt am Main. She has published on mixed marriages and rites of passage. She recently authored Marriage, the Church, and its Judges in Renaissance Venice, 1420-1545 (2017) and co-edited Grundrechte und Religion im Europa der Frühen Neuzeit (16.–18. Jh.) (2019).

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12. Disciplining the Sciences in Conflict Zones: Pre-Classical Mechanics between the Sovereign State and the Reformed Catholic Religion Rivka Feldhay Abstract Traditionally, the early modern period is characterized by a process whereby religion, politics, and science are gradually separated into independent cultural spheres. This account conceives of the process of modernity in terms of ‘total conflicts’ between abstract institutions (‘the state’, the ‘Church’, ‘science’), stemming from the demand for freedom of each of these institutions to determine their own norms of behaviour and thought within their own boundaries. The account I offer, in contrast, emphasizes the centrality of the rise of ‘sovereign’ states enhancing the creation of specific networks of interdependencies between rulers, the carriers of religion, and professional artists and scientists. However, interdependence also entailed ‘conflict zones’, where boundary work between political, religious, and scientific discourses was carried out.

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Keywords: Jean Bodin, Paolo Casati, sovereignty, Catholicism, conflict zones.

It would be no exaggeration to say that we are witnessing today a crisis which seems to undermine the very foundations of our civilization. The world order of sovereign, independent states is being questioned under the pressure of globalization from the outside and nationalistic-populism from within. While globalization demands surrendering sovereign power in favour of intense international collaboration, large segments of society experience it as unwelcome interference in their well-being, expressing

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growing distrust in parties and in bureaucratic and intellectual elites that tend to support globalization. Moreover, distrust of the elites also means that the fact-based truths upon which modern political and scientific discourses have been founded since the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are being undermined. Thus, overriding scepticism towards the liberal democratic process—based on rational and free debate—that has shaped modern sovereign states for a long time is rapidly growing, while quasi-authoritarian regimes, basing themselves on strong nationalist sentiments of the demos and striving for ethnic homogeneity, also confer new power upon religious establishments. These phenomena seem to shake the socio-political, cultural, and intellectual order known as modernity. The present civilization crisis, as I understand it, provides us with an opportunity to revisit the political, social, and intellectual processes that took shape in 1550–1650, giving birth to the idea of sovereign states and their relation to religion and science, namely to the roots of the consensus around the modern world which is now being shaken. There is a lesson to be drawn from this crisis. For a long time, most scholars in the humanities and the social sciences understood the separation of religion and state, as well as the autonomy of science from religion, as a process of liberation (comparable to Charles Taylor’s ‘subtraction histories’), emancipating political rulers from the yoke of the Church while undermining the ancient bond between knowledge and faith. According to this view, it was the separation of spheres that brought about progress, thus defending the socio-political and scientific order from violent civil wars and constant cultural wars. This account of the rise of modernity, however, has already been heavily criticized, among others by Bruno Latour, arguing against the ‘triumphant’ tone of the ‘moderns’ vis-à-vis the ‘ancients’—those left behind—that threatens to create a dichotomy between winners and vanquished.1 In fact, the separation between the autonomous world of science—a modern, human creation—and the realm of ‘traditional nature’—the latter left behind for investigation by anthropologists (just like the isolation of heaven with a ‘crossed God’ above from the human world of subjects below)—is in Latour’s eyes the result of successful ‘work of purification’ done by modern experts, whose main task is to mask the ‘work of networking’, producing a multiplicity of natural–cultural hybrids that threaten to destroy the planet. Thus, Latour’s claim that nous n’avons jamais été modernes is a kind of early warning, urging us to take a critical stance vis-à-vis a story of modernity seen from the perspectives of the winners that tends to hide the threats 1 Latour, We Have Never Been Modern.

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posed by the age of the Anthropocene, as well as highlighting the dangerous gaps between ‘the West’ and ‘the rest’ that may tear our civilization apart. This chapter should be understood as a contribution to the critique of modernity in the spirit of Latour, without necessarily fully identifying with all of his arguments—from the angle of the history of early modern science in its relation to politics and religion of that period. To begin with, I attempt to cast a fresh gaze on the political and cultural order, suggesting a re-examination of the structure underlying the newly arising sovereign state. This ‘newly invented’ political entity, I suggest, was structured around networks of interdependence between political rulers, religious elites, and the class of professional artists and scientists. In the first section, I analyse the logic of this structure and point out some of its consequences. The discursive products that grew up in the shadow of such a structure are delineated through some examples in the second and third sections. In the spirit of Latour I emphasize at this stage that relations of interdependence did not entail erasure/destruction of the boundaries either between political, religious, and scientific discourses or among the institutions in which they were embedded. Rather, I take boundary work to be a constitutive feature of all rational discourses, always established through the construction of specif ic discursive objects, in a specif ic place, and under changing political and cultural conditions. Therefore, boundaries between different discourses are unstable. It is through ‘boundary work’ that the cultural map is formed, but the map itself is never frozen; it is given to modification and change that ensures not just separation but also transgressive crossings between the spheres. Obviously, as long as boundary work is being carried out, frictions and conflicts necessarily erupt. Such conflicts are local, however; hence the need to replace the vocabulary of ‘total wars’—between state and Church or between science and religion—with the vocabulary of concrete ‘conflict zones’.2 While contextualizing conflictual encounters within a broader cultural map, the historian needs to take into account the contingent nature of such conflicts, the threat of disruption they represent, but also the openings they offer towards negotiations of values and interests among actors taking part in the different discourses, both friends and foes. Moreover, such conflicts, I believe, did not tend to bring about unambiguous solutions in the form of ‘separation of spheres’. For the idea of separation entails the existence of consensus around the limits of political and religious power and the full autonomy of scientific thought. I doubt whether such consensus has ever 2 White, A History of the Warfare, and Draper, History of the Conflict.

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really existed. Instead of such an assumption, I suggest focusing on particular sites of dialogue as well as on zones of conflict, and contextualizing them within broad socio-cultural patterns that characterize, in my view, the historical epoch of ‘early modernity’. As mentioned above, my point of departure is the emergence of the sovereign state, initiated by the pope and his jurists before the Reformation.3 It was the legal model of the sovereign state spreading in both Catholic and Protestant Europe that endowed the ruler—the absolute king—with the image of omnipotence, while lacking in practice the knowledge and experience necessary to exercise the concentration of his power. Thus the need was created to strengthen the regime not just by imposing laws from above but also through educating and disciplining the people—a task often performed by religious agents and their institutions—and by creating for them a collective identity that would ensure their direct loyalty to the prince, the centre of the sovereign state. No less crucial was the need to develop the state’s military and economic potentials, much depending on professionals in the different fields of the arts and the sciences. Hence, a dialectics of power and recognition became the major marker of the relationships between political rulers, religious leaders, and functionaries and practitioners of the arts and sciences. A kind of delicate dynamics promoted the needs of both rulers and ruled while connecting them within new networks of interdependence. Such networks enabled the prince to organize and maintain the state through both conflicts and dialogues, while still sticking to his fantasy of absolute sovereign power. Having delineated the political structure in the context of which networks of interdependence grew up in the shadow of absolute rulers, the heart of my argument in this chapter lies in the investigation of the practices and debates that preoccupied political actors and thinkers, theologians, and artistic and mechanical practitioners, as well as men of science in universities, courts, and religious schools in early modernity. These resulted in a reconfiguration of the state–religion–knowledge relationships that became the basis of the modern world later on. The structural shift in the form and networks of power predominant in early modern Europe did not entail a necessary decline in the power of religion, as some theories of secularization and modernization might imply. What it did mean was the emergence of new socio-political and intellectual needs that modified the role of the Catholic religious establishment in developing new practices for focusing and unifying culture, while adapting itself to the 3 Prodi, The Papal Prince, and id., Una storia della giustizia.

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political rulers’ demand for concentration of power. No less significantly, in the professional-intellectual field it implied the changing social and political status of practitioners—painters, sculptors, historians dealing with the representation and the shaping of the sovereign’s image. Similar were the changes in the position of mechanical practitioners—bombardiers, experts in machine design and construction, architects, military engineers who provided for the economic and military needs of rulers, thereby gaining new socio-political status. Furthermore, the know-how of such practitioners also became more and more relevant for the work of the new type of ‘scientist’ emerging in the period: individuals like Galileo Galilei, Thomas Harriot, and Johannes Kepler, who broke through the walls of medieval universities and the rigid boundaries between disciplines, especially between natural philosophy and mathematics, tending to work under the patronage of princes while serving them as ‘court mathematicians’.4 Thus, the changing politicalreligious situation also interacted with new feedback processes that occurred between practitioners and theoreticians within the field of scholarship itself. In the following section of this chapter, I delineate the political constellation of the emerging sovereign order of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in the context of which religion as well as the arts and sciences became relevant to politics and the state in new ways. Thus I show that claims for absolute power and obedience were mitigated by practical needs that put limits on this demand. In the next part, I analyse a few examples of the intellectual debate on the nature of religious authority within the Catholic Church that reflect the trajectory towards recognition of the limits of both temporal and spiritual power. Finally, in the last part, I outline the dynamics between innovation and tradition within the Catholic intellectual environment, especially in Jesuit schools and universities. Eventually, these dynamics led to the disciplinarization of mechanical knowledge as a physico-mathematical science. This process of disciplinarization—I am arguing—was legitimized and taught by the religious educational elite of the Catholic Church and highly demanded by sovereign rulers.

1. The Constellation of the Sovereign State: Dialectics of Domination and Dependency The first new conflict zone I examine grew out around the premodern state and the specific conception of sovereignty it gave rise to. The ‘sovereign 4 Biagioli, Galileo Courtier, and Westfall, Science and Patronage.

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state’ was a new type of political entity born out of the political and religious upheavals of the long sixteenth century. It was also the fruit of an ideology of ‘concentration of power’ emerging as a critique of the utopian political discourse of Renaissance humanists. The long sixteenth century has been called il secolo del soldato, ‘the century of the soldier’, and for good reason.5 It was a century of wars, fought by means of ever-growing armies and technologically improved weapons, claiming an ever-growing number of dead soldiers and civilian victims. It also brought a wave of dislocation, famine, and plague that stretched—with some interruptions—well into the middle of the seventeenth century. I shall not expand on the series of wars that plagued Europe, from Charles VIII Valois’s invasion of Italy in 1494 until the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. Obviously, these wars brought about dramatic changes both in Europe’s political map and in the relations between its powers. They are of crucial historical import because they are part of the concrete material background relevant for interpreting the context as well as the political, theological, and scientific modes of thought emerging in that period, together with the means of organizing and controlling them. Indeed, the sixteenth century— especially its first half—also saw demographic and economic expansion; concomitantly, it saw the flourishing of old sites of knowledge such as neo-scholastic universities.6 But enduring conflict and social dislocation were decisive factors that reformulated the question of ‘who is the superior ruler’: the temporal or the spiritual?7 They created new sites of knowledge, from the papal Congregations of the Index and the Inquisition to the fields of battle in need of knowledge about fortifications and cannons.8 Moreover, these conflicts have also modified traditional learning institutions, such as universities. Let me now zoom in on the first innovation of the sixteenth century: modern sovereignty. The main author I draw on to develop my discussion is one of the fathers of modern political theory, Jean Bodin (1530–1596), who was highly involved in the politics of the day himself. I argue that we need to carefully examine the tensions in Bodin’s theory of absolute sovereignty, by which I mean both tensions within his theory and, equally important, tensions (which Bodin may well have been aware of) between his theoretical 5 Paci, La guerra. 6 On demographics see Alfani, Calamities; on the history of universities see Universities and Science. 7 Tutino, Empire. 8 Motta, Bellarmino, and DeVries, ‘Sites of Military Science’.

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model and the political reality of the time. Bodin’s vision may thus equip us with the adequate reading glasses to examine sixteenth-century political constellations, particularly in their relation to religion as well as to different kinds of knowledge and its carriers. By the second half of the sixteenth century, Europe was flooded with literature concerning political matters, initiated by Machiavelli’s radical texts, which generated responses by jurists and humanists like Jean Bodin and Giovanni Botero (1544–1617), neo-scholastic theoreticians of political theology such as Francisco Suárez (1548–1617) and Juan de Mariana (1536–1624), Jesuit humanists-historians such as Antonio Possevino (1533–1611) and Pedro de Ribadeneira (1527–1611), and high-ranked statesmen-intellectuals such as Cardinal Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621) and later on Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642).9 All these authors were well rooted in the humanistic discourse that tended to emphasize the historicity and contingency of the political world. Many of them were aware of the threat of tearing themselves away from the metaphysical and theological anchorage that provided a clear end to human life: either the Christian goal of salvation and/or the rational vision of Aristotle. Most importantly for our present concern, they were all enchanted by an old theological metaphor to which they gave a new meaning: the absolute power of God (potentia Dei absoluta) in analogy to which they constructed the prince’s sovereign, absolute power. Bodin was probably the first early modern author to inquire into the nature of the state and how it operates.10 The unique, unshared, and unlimited power of the sovereign first emerges in Bodin’s description of the king’s rule as ‘absolute’ and ‘perpetuate’. The sovereign is characterized as the lawmaker. He dictates his subjects’ duty to obey, and the right to receive obedience for himself, the ruler. Yet the sovereign is not bound by any law, not even the ones given by himself. It is in this sense that the ruler has absolute power. Prior to Bodin, God was conceived as the source of all laws pertaining to man and nature.11 God was the legislator of the law which human beings—kings, estates, jurists, scholars—had ‘to find’, ‘to discover’, to study and apply.12 God was also considered free to either abide by his law, his potentia ordinata, or not—in which case he was applying his potentia absoluta. But Bodin attributed this ‘absolute power’ to the sovereign, a human being assuming godly power that is unbounded by his own law. 9 Bireley, Religion and Politics. 10 All my quotations from Bodin are translated into English and refer to Bodin, Six Books. 11 Elshtain, Sovereignty. 12 Grimm, Sovereignty, pp. 17–23.

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And yet, any effort by historians to understand the phenomenon of the sovereign state in terms of absolute power alone would be insufficient. While the notion of sovereignty with absolute power indeed entails the attribution of inhuman omnipotence to the ruler, it also creates a new field of duties and obligations between ruler and subjects. Indeed, Bodin himself goes on to write that, ‘besides sovereign power there must also be something enjoyed in common […] there is no commonwealth where there is no common interest’.13 In principle, this commonwealth is governed by the same hierarchical patterns and demand for obedience as exist between the king and his individual subjects. Bodin, however, feels obliged to speak about an additional aspect to this relationship: namely, an aspect of common interest implying some conception of the ‘public good’—that is, recognition of a common norm with which the sovereign complies. This interpretation well suits Bodin’s statement that ‘the absolute power of princes and sovereign lords does not extend to the laws of God and of nature’.14 The sovereign’s power is thus limited by God’s law and natural law informed by the notion of jus gentium. Furthermore: ‘a law and a covenant must […] not be confused’.15 All sorts of covenants regulate public and private life, and they may follow a different logic than that of the sovereign law. Thus, in the background of the fantasy of ‘omnipotence’ lurks a human reality that hardly complies with the quest for the ‘absolute’. In fact, the ruler’s power loses its force once the sovereign is considered not to be trusted unless under oath, nor relied on to keep a promise unless paid to do so.16 Hence a prince cannot go back on his promises and obligations, since he cannot afford to lose his credibility in the eyes of his people. Moreover, Bodin repeatedly refers to the necessities of physical—not just juridical—force for the maintenance of his state: ‘The prince is obliged to safeguard the persons, possessions, and families of his subjects, by force of arms.’17 Such passages suggest that, side by side with the early modern conception of the sovereign state as omnipotent, there is also a system of common norms that ties together rulers and subjects and places a limit to the fantasy of omnipotence. Two areas are particularly relevant for analysing the structure of sovereign rule: first, the relationship between state and Church; and second, the relation between knowledge and the state. 13 Bodin, Six Books, I, Chs. II–V. 14 Bodin, Six Books, p. 29; emphasis added. 15 Bodin, Six Books, p. 30. 16 Bodin, Six Books, pp. 29–30. 17 Bodin, Six Books, p. 22.

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Traces of the ideology that led to the bondage of state power and religious power in the early modern era are also to be found in Bodin’s text. The first chapter of his Six Books of the Commonwealth opens with a moral-religious vision about the end of the commonwealth, identical in Bodin’s eyes with the end of each individual member or subject. First and foremost, within religion there is the core of faith—in the sense of trust—that promises the predominance of fairness among members of the commonwealth: ‘Faith is the sole foundation and prop of that justice on which all commonwealths, alliances, and associations of men whatsoever, is founded.’18 At the same time, religion has the means to control people, who in the absence of such control tend to be ‘unfair in the distribution of punishments and honors’ and to bring about ‘excessive riches in a few and excessive poverty in the rest, idleness in the subject, and impunity in ill doing’.19 Thus, ‘priests, bishops, and popes’, concludes Bodin, ‘have always claimed the censorship of morals and religion’. 20 Their role is to cultivate exclusive loyalty to the sovereign—at the expense of local loyalties to the feudal lords—and thus to provide the commonwealth with unity and identity. An analysis of the battlefield as a site of knowledge is a second major area that exemplifies the structure of entanglement between the state and its experts in the field of knowledge and representation.21 The early modern battlefield should be seen as a huge laboratory requiring trained operators who specialized in loading and firing cannons, as well as smiths, carpenters, and masons working together with carriers of knowledge about the composition of substances that could produce effective gunpowder. Most of these workers came from the artisanal and lower classes and remained anonymous. But the proliferation of weapons and warfare in our period also attracted intellectuals and theoreticians capable of reflecting on ballistics, gunnery, war machines, and the construction of fortifications, using mathematical tools developed within the scholarly traditions of antiquity and the Middle Ages. Giovan Battista Benedetti (1530–1590) in the court of Savoy; Guidobaldo del Monte (1545–1607) and the Duke of Urbino; Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) at the court of the Medici: these are just a few prominent figures who exemplify the dependence between rulers and intellectuals, as well as the emergence of a feedback loop between theory and practice in 18 Bodin, Six Books, p. 183. 19 Bodin, Six Books, p. 145. 20 Bodin, Six Books, p. 192. 21 DeVries, ‘Sites of Military Science’.

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the context of the early modern sovereign state. These intellectuals were looking for patrons and shelter at the courts, where they engaged in writing about ‘the mechanical arts’ and developed their conceptual foundations. Eventually they were joined by painters, sculptors, and humanist writers trained to record and represent the glory attained by sovereigns through warfare and a flourishing economy. Botero’s famous Della Ragione di Stato (1589) invokes a comparison between money and people as the two basic resources of the prince’s strength. It is here that an inversion of the traditional hierarchy between nature presiding over culture—or art ‘imitating’ nature—is disclosed, shedding light on the subtle connections of power and knowledge in early modernity. I discuss just one example from his text: to the question of which is more important for making the state great—whether natural resources or the industry of people—, Botero answers:

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Without hesitation I shall say industry. Firstly, the products of manual skill of man are more in number and of greater worth than the products of nature, for nature provides the material and the object but the infinite variations of form are the result of the ingenuity and skill of man.22

The worth of wool, iron, marble, or wood in the form of dead matter, he claims, is nothing compared to the worth of man-made products which human skill, industry, art, and science are capable of creating from them. Such a political discourse, saturated with mechanical vocabulary, demonstrates how mechanical knowledge became a resource for states. In this context it is worth quoting Cardinal Richeleu’s Testament politique (published posthumously in 1688), which stresses the value of mechanical knowledge from the point of view of rulers: ‘Les politiques veulent, en un état bien reglé, plus des maîtres és arts-méchaniques que des maîtres és arts-libéraux.’23 This last quotation is a late reminder of the power and relevance of ‘the mechanical arts’ at a time when the ‘mechanical philosophy’ of Descartes as well as Newton’s ‘classical mechanics’ had already gained certain hegemony among natural philosophers. And yet it seems that, for all practical purposes, it was still the usefulness of the pre-classical ‘mechanical arts’ for a ‘well-ordered state’ that prevailed in political thinking about scientific education. Richelieu’s words recall the persistence of mechanics—neither ancient nor yet new science—which I call here pre-classical 22 Botero, The Reason, p. 151. 23 Richelieu, Testament politique, p. 140.

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mechanics.24 The quotation accurately reflects the dependence of rulers on their experts, as well as that of engineer-scientists on the material and legitimization provided by princes and kings.

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2. Conflict Zones and Disciplining Power: The ReConceptualization of Religious Authority While the organization of political power in sovereign states was conceived by contemporaries as a solution to the problem of civil and religious wars, the system continued to produce hybrids that actually enhanced conflict. Everywhere, tensions between the transcendental and immanent dimensions of life created what I call ‘conflict zones’. Such conflict zones included tensions between sovereign rulers and the pope over loyalty of subjects (the Venetian interdict of 1606/7, the oath of allegiance demanded by James I in 1606, the assassination of Henry IV in 1610), tensions between different Christian confessions over ultimate truth and the means to achieve it, and between scholars over intellectual hegemony. In my view, modern historians have tended to dichotomize these endemic tensions, while oversimplifying the relationship between domination and dependency in sovereign states.25 I believe historians need to delineate particular, multifaceted ‘conflict zones’ and analyse them in dialectical terms, paying attention both to the clashes of goals and motivations and to the unintended consequences that resulted from such conflicts. Furthermore, tensions and conflict between agents of rival political, religious, and intellectual groups have both constructive and destructive effects: they can enhance reflexivity towards power and thus lead to self-restraint, critical acumen, and evolution of knowledge; but they are also capable of instigating repression, domination, and the censoring of free thought. In this spirit, I now turn to a second conflict zone and the negotiation of tensions around it. This one concerns the political-theological, epistemic, and disciplinary dimensions of ‘authority’, which I investigate by examining the early modern Catholic discourse on faith and spirituality. The historical moment in which ‘authority’, its practices, and its meanings, emerged in the centre of the Catholic discourse on faith was a moment of political-theological struggle, as much as it was an intellectual moment. The 24 Here, I am following my colleagues and partners at the Max Planck Institute for History of Science in Berlin, who coined and disseminated the term ‘pre-classical mechanics’ for dealing with pre-Newtonian science. 25 Feldhay, Galileo and the Church.

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confessional split of Christianity occurred more or less simultaneously with the constitution of the papal temporal monarchy as a sovereign state. By the 1570s, Protestants consolidated their territorial churches and strengthened their relations to political sovereigns. Concomitantly, resistance to the Tridentine decrees was registered even within Catholicism. One focal point for these tensions emerged around the understanding of the relationship between spiritual and temporal authority. While the debate over authority had multidimensional implications for the international political system of sovereign powers, it also shaped the political-theological discussion on judgment of controversies over faith and its sources (scripture alone and/or tradition), over justification (grace alone or in concordance with free will), and over the sacraments (actual channels of grace or signs for the promise of grace). It is no wonder, then, that a reinterpretation of the concept of authority and its relation to belief and faith appeared in neo-scholastic commentaries to Thomas Aquinas’s treatise ‘On Faith’ (De fide) in the very same years.26 I try to clarify this conceptual transformation through analysing some key passages from Thomas’s original treatise, from Franciscus Toletus’s commentary on Thomas In Summam theologiae […] enarratio (Rome, 1869), and from Gregorius de Valencia’s Analysis fidei catholicae (Valencia, 1585). In the first question of his treatise, Thomas famously stated that ‘Faith is a mean between science [knowledge-scientia] and opinion [opinio-belief].’27 Faith is like science, for both enjoy the highest degree of certainty, as their object, ultimate truth or God, is a necessary being that cannot be otherwise.28 Yet faith differs from science ‘because the object of science is something seen whereas the object of faith is the unseen’.29 By ‘something seen’ Thomas means something known with a perfect degree of knowledge. But God cannot be perfectly known to humans in the here and now, for ‘by faith, we do not apprehend the First Truth as it is in itself’.30 In this respect, faith is similar to opinion or belief, in that it is based on divine authority. Thus, at the centre of the noblest and most dignified science, the sacred doctrine, arguments from divine authority (not human authority) were legitimate, according to Thomas. Simultaneously, in opposition to the traditional philosophical dichotomy between knowledge and belief that 26 Thomas’s De fide is in Thomas, Summa theologica, IIa-IIae, qq. 1–16. 27 Thomas, Summa theologica, IIa-IIae, q. 1. a. 2; emphasis added. 28 Thomas, Summa theologica, IIa-IIae, q. 1, art. 5. 29 Thomas, Summa theologica, IIa-IIae, q. 1, art. 5. 30 Thomas, Summa theologica, IIa-IIae, q. 1, art. 2.

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cannot be bridged, belief was recognized by Thomas as a legitimate aspect, or at least as a partner to the true knowledge that is faith. Thomas was thus able to link the concept of authority to the epistemic context of theological science, in turn creating a sophisticated intellectualist and epistemological account of religious truth. But he also pointed to the option of a political discourse on faith, which he did not explicitly differentiate from a scholarly or intellectual one. With respect to religious authority, he writes: ‘The very doctrine of Catholic doctors derives its authority from the church. Hence we ought to abide by the authority of the church rather than by that of an Augustine or a Jerome or of any doctor whatever.’31 Alongside superposing political and epistemic notions of authority, Thomas’s De fide also laid a foundation for distinguishing between different kinds of authority, including temporal power. With respect to temporal power over the political realm, Thomas follows St. Paul’s traditional reading of Romans 13, 2–4: ‘Let every soul be subject unto higher powers […] Whosoever resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God.’ Applying his rule that divine grace does not destroy human nature, Thomas stated: ‘Divine law, which is of grace, does not cancel human law, that is of natural reason.’32 Clearly, Catholic discourse of the Middle Ages already merged epistemic and political notions of authority to a considerable degree. In the sixteenth century, Thomas’s commentators took his work as a point of departure for further elaborations on this basic pattern. Grounding faith on persuasion and human judgmental authority, rather than on theologicalepistemic science and divine authority, their work was marked by humanistic modes of thought and methods that became part of theological discourse, most prominently through Melchior Cano’s method of loci communes. It was also part of the theory and practice of the sovereign’s demand for obedience, as well as of the development of an inner ‘forum of conscience’ that dictated obedience to Church authority.33 In other words, the sixteenth century marks the development of a far more robust ecclesiology and political theology: a far more precise analysis of how Church authority connects up with divine authority. A short glimpse into the roots of this transition can be had by looking at Toletus’s Enarratio and Valencia’s Analysis. While for Thomas commitment to ultimate truth, God, or the object of faith was guaranteed by theological science and divine authority, Toletus applied to Truth (with a capital T) a pragmatic understanding, the fruit of 31 Thomas, Summa theologica, IIa-IIae, q. 10, art. 12; emphasis added. 32 Thomas, Summa theologica, IIa-IIae, q. 10, art. 10. 33 Feldhay, ‘Authority’.

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his acute awareness of problems of representation in language.34 Without going into too much detail, Toletus’s analysis of truth shifts the emphasis from the model of ultimate truth as guaranteed by divine authority to truth as a complex interaction between three poles: the object of truth, the representation of that object, and the believer or subject of truth.35 For our purposes, the important point is that this shift redirected Toletus’s thinking towards the different modes of believers’ reception of truth: the reception of truth through the beatific vision in the world to come; its reception by means of theological science; and finally through faith. The beatific vision, the science of theology, and faith, he claimed, share first truth, which is God, as their object. However, they differ in that the saints have access to this truth ‘by vision’, namely in an immediate way. Theological science gives assent to its first principles, but moves from them by demonstrations to further conclusions. Faith, in contrast, is wholly anchored in authority, and that is how it differs both from knowledge and from belief. In stark contrast with Aquinas, Toletus thus concludes that ‘faith, as faith, is distinguished from opinion and science by the fact that it rests on the authority of the speaker alone’, from which he infers that the message is always in need of authoritative interpretation.36 This authority, he claims, finds its embodiment in the Church, whose ‘authority has its foundation in veracity’.37 For Toletus, then, the meaning of truth becomes a central issue that necessitates the authority of the Church as arbiter of such meaning. More broadly, truth becomes intimately connected to the community of speakers, to the cultural and historical situation of discourse, to the identity of deliverers and receivers. Setting out from the same point of departure, Valencia too was keenly aware of the difficulty inherent in any human attempt to understand Holy Scripture. In fact, according to Valencia, the frequent failures and errors 34 ‘Since by faith we believe that which is said and revealed by God, we can treat three aspects: the propositions in which we believe—these are the truths and conclusions of faith to which we give our assent; the one whose words we believe—this is God himself; the reason why we believe such propositions and bring up faith to God, which is the veracity [of this truth] in saying and asserting.’ Toletus, Enarratio, p. 12. 35 According to Toletus any truth—including ultimate truth—has three dimensions. First, things which are true have essence and existence, that is, veritas (God). For the believer, however, truth only exists as far as it is spoken. Hence the second dimension of truth is embodied in the trust accorded to the speaker, who must be ‘truthful’ (verax). Lastly, the meaning and intention are not the same as the words or representation. ‘Truthfulness’ (veracitas) only exists when the gap between meaning and representation is closed, and this is the third dimension invoked by Toletus (Enarratio, p. 12). 36 Toletus, Enarratio, p. 13. 37 Toletus, Enarratio, p. 13.

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of interpreters of Scripture are practically unavoidable.38 Such difficulties served as strong evidence for the necessity of an authority capable of presenting the Holy Scriptures to the believers, explicating the oral traditions, and judging controversies. This authority was neither wholly human nor wholly divine. Rather, it was human authority divinely inspired.39 This reveals Valencia’s remarkable sensitivity to the human dimension of authority, in spite of his reference to divine inspiration. Thus, from the beginning, an element of hermeneutic dialogue is explicitly woven into the practice of faith. However, it is precisely this human element, now inserted into Thomas’s notion of ‘divine faith’, that feeds and perpetuates a quest for closure: ‘But neither Holy Scripture, nor even tradition alone is that infallible authority, teacher of faith and judge in all questions’.40 In other words, in order to decide controversial matters of faith, an authoritative act of judgment is needed. Valencia compares this act to the exercise of judgment in a human court. Just as the letter of the law is not sufficient in judging human affairs, so the letter of Scripture and tradition is not enough in judging matters of faith.41 In both cases, the exercise of infallible authority in the act of judgment is a moment of closure of the dialogical process that constitutes the inherent logic of the practice of faith. Hence, such authority must be centred in the hands of one person, who is the pope. 42 And yet, Valencia’s text also illustrates the process by which the initial idea of representing divine authority through papal plenitudo potestatis was translated into a concrete discourse about the conditions of possibility of exercising such authority and its limitations. Thus, Valencia explicitly distinguishes between the pope’s infallible judgments in religious matters and the pope’s restricted authority in the field of the sciences: If it is said that the authority of the pope is infallible in those things that can be seen as related to piety and religion (and those related to salvation), it is not so in others that are in some sense mathematical and physical things, this is rightly said. For it seems that the authority is attributed to the pope in all things that concern the well being of the church, those related to piety and the salvation of souls, but not in other things related to the knowledge of the sciences. 43 38 Valencia, Analysis, 114, A. 29. 39 Valencia, Analysis, pars V. 40 Valencia, Analysis, pp. 83–84. 41 Valencia, Analysis, pp. 113–114. 42 Valencia, Analysis, pars VII. 43 Valencia, Analysis, p. 323.

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Moreover, following Cano, Toletus, and others, Valencia constructed a hierarchy of textual ‘places’ in which revealed truth has been preserved and articulated down the centuries, from Scripture to apostolic traditions, papal definitions and Council decrees, consensus among Church Fathers, doctors, and opinions of scholars, and finally the common feelings of believers. 44 Assent to the principles proposed in the articles of faith is reinterpreted by Valencia, then, in terms of ‘obedience’ to authority (obedientia mentis in assentiendo). 45 At the same time, Valencia—like later authors such as Francisco Suárez and Robert Bellarmine—reframes such authority, even that of the pope, as concrete and immersed in the aforementioned variety of intellectual and political realities. Bellarmine, in particular, develops the theory of the pope’s spiritual potentia indirecta—a theory that led to much antagonism toward him in the Curia. According to my analysis, it is a theory grounded in the recognition of authority’s profoundly human and historical nature. One aspect of this is its openness to negotiation—indeed, to a conception of authority as a network of interdependence. So far, I have focused on the conflictual dynamics between domination, obedience, and dependency; between temporal and spiritual power; and between different kinds and agents of authority. I would now like to proceed to a third conflict zone: the dynamics between innovation and tradition that characterized the field of pre-classical mechanics, focusing on the way it was conceived in Jesuit educational institutions in the seventeenth century after Galileo and before classical (Newtonian) physics.

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3. The Disciplinarization of Mechanical Knowledge and Its Transmission by Jesuits According to philosopher of science Peter McLaughlin, ‘much of the novelty of early modern science arises from the application of traditional conceptual tools to areas where they had not previously been thought to be appropriate in the service of goals for which they were not originally intended.’46 McLaughlin’s insight offers an angle from which one may understand the reason why pre-classical mechanics, that is, neither entirely coherent nor revolutionary in modern terms, was nonetheless incorporated within the educational programme of old and new early modern European universities 44 Valencia, Analysis, p. 332. 45 Valencia, Analysis, p. 72. 46 McLaughlin, ‘Contraries’, p. 562.

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as well as within the wide network of Jesuit colleges. One of the reasons was that by being applied to new areas and goals, the ‘science of machines’ (or practical mechanics) became relevant for princes’ and popes’ construction projects and military campaigns initiated as part of their efforts to concentrate power within the boundaries of their territories. The significant role played by Jesuits in the project of pre-classical mechanics—which was common to ‘moderns’ like Galileo and Mersenne on the one hand, and to creative physico-mathematicians like Paulus Guldin, Paolo Casati, and many others on the other hand—points again to the creation of networks of interdependency between rulers, religious leaders, and scholars: in this case mathematicians who taught and expanded the science of machines but also practised it in their role as military or hydraulic engineers responsible for the construction of fortifications or castles, or for big water projects. 47 Here too tensions and conflicts frequently interfered in the work of scientists, but did not prevent dialogue and conversation. In this context, the tension between innovation and tradition inherent in Jesuit teaching of pre-classical mechanics is highlighted through the figure of the well-known Jesuit physico-mathematician Paolo Casati. A short presentation of one of his texts provides a glimpse into Casati’s scientific practices. A brief look at his career pattern will shed light on the configuration of religiousprofessional experts within the sovereign system of territorial states. The text I comment on was published in the late 1650s and titled Terra machinis mota. 48 It is a fictive trialogue between Galileo Galilei, Marin Mersenne, and Paulus Guldin. In his letter to the reader, Casati offers a fictional representation of a real debate that took place at the Collegio Romano, where explanation of mathematical problems was presented in a sort of theatrical form once or twice a month, in the presence of philosophers, theologians, visitors, and students.49 The text itself consists of five dissertations in which different kinds of mathematical solutions are related to the problem of how much power would be required to move the globe of the earth out of its place by means of a mechanical device. This text exemplifies the Jesuits’ success in accommodating the project of pre-classical mechanics—including Galileo’s early mechanical project—into their programme of studies and research. This pre-classical mechanical project consisted of a fusion of the practical knowledge of machine builders, an Aristotelian theory of the mechanical advantage of 47 Mancosu, Philosophy, ch. 2. 48 Casati, Terra machinis mota. 49 Feldhay, ‘The Jesuits’.

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Fig. 1: Machine consisting of five big cog wheels. Paolo Casati, Terra machinis mota. Dissertationes geometricae, mechanicae, physicae, hydrostaticae (Romae: Ignatius de Lazaris, 1658), p. 5. (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich: http://mdz-nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb10525434-6).

machines built on the principle of the balance and lever, and the mathematical approach of Archimedes. The Jesuits legitimized it through the notion of physico-mathematics—both Aristotelian and anti-Aristotelian, as Renn and McLaughlin argue—and spread it among Jesuit students and their circle of supporters.50 Moreover, Casati’s daring attempt to teach mechanical principles through imagining a machine for moving the entire earth was a clever use of the ‘motion of the earth’ as a rhetorical trope invented in the 1590s by Christopher Grienberger.51 The persistence of such rhetoric lent some legitimacy to discussing the motion of the earth—albeit not from a Copernican perspective—some twenty years after Galileo’s trial. In order to give you a taste of Casati’s way of teaching mechanics, I shall now show you the image he used for his book: It is a drawing of a machine that consists of five big cog wheels (A, B, C, D, E) connected by axles to smaller cogs (F, G, H, I, K). A handle (ML) is connected to the smallest wheel (K), the ratio of ML to the radius of K being 5:1. The ratio of radius A to cylinder S, with the drawing rope around it, is also 5:1; and so are the ratios of the radii of all big wheels to small wheels. 50 On Renn and McLaughlin see Emergence and Expansion. 51 Gorman, ‘Mathematics and Modesty’.

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Casati—through his mouthpiece, Mersenne—tells us that the conversion between the big and small wheels through the axle produces five times more power for each axle, the ratio of their radii being 5:1. However, this happens at the expense of the time that passes as motion is transferred among the wheels. The result is, in his own words: So, the motion of the power in M […] to the motion of the weight in P is like 15,625 to 1 […] Hence, the power, which could move a weight of 100 pounds without the help of the machine, applied together with the help of this machine will lift a weight P of 1,562,500.52

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Casati attempts to conceptualize a quantity whose effect is augmented through the use of a combination of wheels. He then calculates the ratio between the motion of the power and the motion of the weight to be lifted. Even though Casati works within a dynamic and less rigorous Aristotelian mathematical approach, his result is the same as that of the static-mathematical approach of Archimedes. Thus, a lever pivoted at one extreme, with a given force applied at the other extreme, for a point removed from the pivot by 1/5 the overall length of the lever multiplies the power by 5. Now, Casati solemnly presents his text as a defence of Archimedes—a gesture that appears as a provocative innovation in the context of an institution declaring its devotion to Aristotelian physics. Thus he states: For many, Archimedes laboured under the opinion of arrogance if he could assert that given somewhere to situate himself, the earth would be dislocated from its foundations. Hence they held this dictum to be of the highest boldness; for indeed, as it can really neither be felt nor accomplished, it cannot be refuted by experiment.53

However, the body of knowledge transmitted by Casati has rather little to do with the written work of the Syracusan. Rather, it elaborates on a theme vaguely related to Archimedes in the popular imagination, but does it within a conceptual framework developed by pre-classical engineerscientists. Galileo, for example, following Giovan Battista Benedetti—court mathematician to the Duke of Turin—used Archimedes’ hydrostatics for solving the problem of free fall. Both Galileo and Benedetti believed it was 52 Casati, Terra machinis mota, p. 6. 53 Casati, Terra machinis mota, letter of dedication.

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possible to fuse Archimedes into a dynamical conceptual framework in order to solve problems of natural philosophy. In many respects, Casati adopted the same approach. In his later Mechanicorum libri (1684), he pointed out the connection between studying ‘the propensity for motion or rest innate in bodies’, through an understanding of the motion of machines, and the success in building ‘machines capable of moving loads by a sure method’. No wonder that in this same text Casati moves from discussing the motion and building of machines to a presentation of Galileo’s law of free fall and the exact ratio of acceleration, stating that the resulting accumulated spaces behave like the square of the times. Thus, he says:

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The increments of velocity are made according to the increment of the arithmetic progression of odd numbers starting with one, that is, 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, etc., in such a way that if a space is traversed in the first moment, which would be designated as 1, then the descending heavy body would move thrice as fast in the second moment, five times as fast in the third, seven times as fast in the fourth, and so on.54

Casati’s strategy of accommodation—namely, of negotiating the tension between Galileo’s innovation and the Aristotelian framework to which he was committed as a member of the Jesuit order—was to attribute this innovation to a ‘very learned’ fellow Jesuit, Giovanni Battista Riccioli, and to present it not as a theoretical breakthrough, but rather as emerging from experiments that no sober scholar could possibly doubt. For such strategies of accommodation, however, the Jesuits had to pay a high price, as they were blamed for insincerity and duplicity. Nevertheless, in the Catholic world, to a large extent due to the impact of Jesuit schools, such non-orthodox knowledge could first acquire the legitimacy of physico-mathematical science in the Aristotelian scheme.55 Moreover, Jesuit mathematicians had an interest in opening up the boundaries of ‘mixed mathematics’ to practical mathematical knowledge on the one hand, and to certain problems in the theory of motion on the other. Their participation in the pre-classical mechanics project marks their contribution to a crucial stage in the long process of the transformation of ‘mechanics’ from a modest mixed-mathematical science to the basic theory of motion, later recognized as classical mechanics, the heart of natural philosophy. It was precisely in the context of an attempt to unite the Aristotelian and 54 Casati, Mechanicorum libri, p. 687. 55 Mechanics and Natural Philosophy.

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Archimedean approaches to mechanics that Guldin invented the term ‘physico-mathematics’, delineating the space for a new kind of discourse that tended to erode the accepted disciplinary boundaries between physical problems of motion and the mathematical science of statics. Still, a caveat is necessary here: the Jesuits, albeit adopting Galileo’s experimental and kinematic law of fall, found it difficult to conceptually ‘digest’ the break from basic Aristotelian principles such as geo-centrism. My aim here, however, is not to dwell on the details of pre-classical physico-mathematics, but rather to point out the implications of the new place of machines and mechanical explanations in generating a dialectics of theory and practice and of tradition and innovation. Most importantly, both show an affinity to the dialectics of temporal and spiritual power in the political discourse, and to that between divine and human authority in the religious one. Casati saw his machines as embodiments of mechanical theory, and he took advantage of his imagined textual event (probably based on some real event) to demonstrate it practically. What is crucial here is the image of knowledge he thereby transmitted. First, we have the message sent to the ‘half-erudite’, according to which serious scientific knowledge is always based on experience and is mathematical by nature. Second, there is the message sent to professionals, according to which the science of mechanics at that time was not only a practical art. Rather, it was being transformed into a physico-mathematical science, based on a fusion of practical knowledge about machines, of Aristotelian-Archimedean principles of balance and levers, and finally of natural philosophical questions about motion. To achieve this new fusion, Casati had to appropriate the authority of Galileo himself, though not without taming the latter’s image and portraying him as a kind of ‘subdued’ Archimedes. Nonetheless, Casati portrays in front of our astonished eyes Galileo engaged in a civilized conversation with his fellow Jesuits (although this conversation often runs into disagreement and conflict, on which I cannot expand here). A few details about Casati’s career might be relevant to understanding the system of dependencies between political rulers, Church establishment, and scholars.56 Casati started to teach mathematics at the Collegio Romano two years before going to Sweden on a mission to convert Queen Christina from Protestantism to Catholicism. He was successful in this mission and was subsequently well rewarded by his order. In 1657 he was moved to the area of Venice, where he assumed a series of prominent positions in the 56 Gavagna, L’opera scientifica, and Gavagna, ‘Il carteggio’.

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Jesuit administration, occasionally serving as professor of mathematics in Parma and confessor to two successive Farnese duchesses. Finally, it is not superfluous to mention Casati’s involvement, during the 1680s, in large-scale water projects, attempting to canalize the Reno and the Po rivers.57 With his strong Jesuit identity, his role as confessor at the Farnese court in Parma, and his mathematical professorship, Casati embodied the hybridity and the dynamics of dependency and domination that was the mark of life in early modern centres of power. In addition to the transmission of mechanical knowledge, there were other motivations behind Casati’s trialogue. If space allowed, I would also demonstrate how these motivations are latent in the many rhetorical, even theatrical devices his text employs. One important purpose of his text was to convince his students and readers that science was the product of a république des lettres, where controversial matters are examined in a critical but civilized way. This, no doubt, is an idealized picture. Nevertheless, Casati’s text presents us with one strategy of building up a social and professional community that shares a common project and a civilizing mission. In Casati’s view, science was not innovative or revolutionary. Rather, science simply exists and its rich tradition traces back to Aristotle and Archimedes. Galileo’s work, in Casati’s view, was just one variation among many others, on a common, old theme. The question of how influential the episode of Jesuit science was in the broader scheme of the scientific revolution will have to await another study. What is important for me to stress is that, as historians of science, we would be mistaken to regard this episode as an unserious compromise between the new Galilean science and the old Aristotelean framework, or as a series of ad hoc explanations. Rather, what Casati represents is scientific engagement within a conflict zone, aiming to reconcile different conceptions of mechanics with practical and theoretical knowledge, with scientia and engineering, and with religion and politics. And this engagement involved reconciling a series of conflicts by means of an innovative and original mediation. This chapter used the language of ‘conflict zones’, which does not exclude dialogue and mediation across boundaries, to delineate some patterns of relationships between state, religion, and science that were predominant in the context of early modern Catholic culture. Delineating the contours of the power structure that emerged within the boundaries of the sovereign state seems to provide a broad political-cultural framework, adequate for accommodating not only my close analysis of some predominant theological 57 Gavagna, ‘Il carteggio’, pp. 13–14.

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and scientific discourses of that period, but also the series of micro-studies included in this volume, most of which are concerned with the practical work of stabilizing and universalizing knowledge claims in many other disciplines.

Bibliography Printed Sources

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Aquinas, Thomas, The Summa Theologica, trans. by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Bros., 1947). Bodin, Jean, Six Books of the Commonwealth, 1576, trans. by Marian J. Tooley (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967). Botero, Giovanni, The Reason of State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1956). Casati, Paolo, Mechanicorum libri octo, in quibus uno eodemque principio ectis vires physice explicantur & geometrice demonstrantur, atque machinarum omnis generis componendarum methodus proponitur (Lyon: apud Anissonios, 1684). ———, Terra machinis mota. Dissertationes geometricae, mechanicae, physicae, hydrostaticae (Romae: Ignatius de Lazaris, 1658). Richelieu, Armand Jean du Plessis, Testament politique (Amsterdam: H. Desbordes, 1688). Toletus, Francisco, In Summam Theologiae S. Thomae Aquinatis enarratio, ed. by Iosephus Paria (Rome: Propaganda fide, 1869). Valencia, Gregorius, Analysis fidei catholicae, hoc est, ratio methodica eam in universum fidem ex certis principiis ordine probandi, quam snacta Romana Ecclesia, adversus multiplices Sectariorum errores profitetur (Ingolstadii: David Sartori, 1585).

Literature Alfani, Guido, Calamities and the Economy in Renaissance Italy. The Grand Tour of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). Bireley, Robert, Religion and Politics in the Age of the Counterreformation. Emperor Ferdinand II, William Lamormaini, S.J., and the Formation of the Imperial Policy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981). Biagioli, Mario, Galileo Courtier. The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). De Vries, Kelly, ‘Sites of Military Science and Technology’, in The Cambridge History of Science, 7 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003–2018), III, pp. 306–319.

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Draper, John William, History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (New York: D. Appleton, 1875). Elshtain, Jean Bethke, Sovereignty. God, State, and Self (New York: Basic Books, 2008). Emergence and Expansion of Pre-Classical Mechanics, ed. by Rivka Feldhay, Jürgen Renn, Matthias Schemmel, and Matteo Valleriani (Dordrecht: Springer, 2019). Feldhay, Rivka, ‘Authority, Political Theology, and the Politics of Knowledge in the Transition from Medieval to Early Modern Catholicism’, Social Research, 73 (2006), 1065–1092. ———, Galileo and the Church. Political Inquisition or Critical Dialogue? (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995). ———, ‘The Jesuits. Transmitters of the New Science’, in Il caso Galileo. Una rilettura storica, filosofica, teologica, ed. by Massimo Bucciantini, Michele Camerota, and Franco Giudice (Florence: Olschki, 2011), pp. 47–74. Gavagna, Veronica, ‘Il carteggio Casati (1642–1695)’, Bollettino di storia delle scienze matematiche, 18 (1998–1999), 3–15. ———, L’opera scientifica di Paolo Casati (1617–1707) (Doctoral Diss.: University of Florence, 1997). Gorman, Michael John, ‘Mathematics and Modesty in the Society of Jesus. The Problems of Christoph Grienberger’, in The New Science and Jesuit Science, ed. by Mordechai Feingold (Dordrecht: Springer, 2003), pp. 1–120. Grimm, Dieter, Sovereignty. The Origin and Future of a Political and Legal Concept (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015). Latour, Bruno, We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge/Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993). Mancosu, Paolo, Philosophy of Mathematics and Mathematical Practice in the Seventeenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). McLaughlin, Peter, ‘Contraries and Counterweights. Descartes’s Statical Theory of Impact’, The Monist, 84 (2001), 562–581. Mechanics and Natural Philosophy before the Scientific Revolution, ed. by Walter R. Laird and S. Sophie Roux (Dordrecht: Springer, 2008). Motta, Franco, Bellarmino. Una teologia politica della Controriforma (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2005). Paci, Renzo, La guerra nell’Europa del Cinquecento e il generale Achille Tarducci da Corinaldo (Ancona: Proposte e ricerche, 2005). Prodi, Paolo, The Papal Prince. One Body and Two Souls: The Papal Monarchy in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). ———, Una storia della giustizia. Dal pluralismo dei fori ad moderno dualismo fra coscienza e diritto (Bologna: il Mulino, 2000). Tutino, Stefania, Empire of Souls. Robert Bellarmine and the Christian Commonwealth (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

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Universities and Science in the Early Modern Period, ed. by Mordechai Feingold and Victor Navarro-Brotons (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006). Westfall, Richard S., ‘Science and Patronage. Galileo and the Telescope’, Isis 76 (1985), 11–30. White, Andrew D., A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (New York: Dover Publications, 1960).

About the Author

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Rivka Feldhay is Professor Emerita of history and philosophy of science and ideas at the Cohn Institute, and head of the Minerva Humanities Center at Tel Aviv University. Her areas of research and teaching are knowledge, religion, and politics in the early modern era; Copernicus and Galileo in context; and science education in Catholic Europe. Her publications include Galileo and the Church. Political Inquisition or Critical Dialogue? (1995, reprint 1999, E-book 2010) and the co-edited volume Emergence and Expansion of Pre-Classical Mechanics (2019).

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Index Acquaviva, Giulio 270n, 271 Adonis of Vienne 239 Albert of Cologne 50 Bonagratia de Albsheim 292, 292n Alciati, Terenzio 25, 199 Alexander a S. Theresa 141n, 149, 154n Alexander III 177n Alexander VII (Fabio Chigi , Pope) 89, 89n, 150, 174n d’Allamont Eugeen-Albert 150n Algazel (Abū Hāmid Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghazālī) 216 Aloisio, Blasio 224 Alstedt, Johann Heinrich 75, 75n Amabile, Luigi 270 Ambrosius 242 Anaxagoras 248 d’Andrea, Francesco 267, 268n, 270n d’Andrea, Gennaro 271 Andries, Judocus 140n, 142n Angeli, Giovanni 199, 199n Angelo of Chivasso 77 Anselm of Canterbury (Saint) 248, 250 Apollinaris of Laodicea 224, 226n Aquinas, Thomas (Saint) 18, 47, 50, 66, 67, 67n, 68n, 72, 77, 224-226, 229, 240, 242, 248, 249, 294, 316, 316n, 317, 317n, 318 Archdekin, Richard 292n Archimedes 322-326 Ariew, Roger 240n, 248, 248n Aringhi, Paolo 200n Aristotle 48, 48n, 216, 218, 224, 229, 311, 326, Arnauld, Antoine 141, 153n, 244 Arnobius the Elder 226n Augustine (Saint) 66, 66n, 67, 67n, 72, 78, 97, 219, 223, 224, 226, 252, 317 van Aultre, Johannes Baptista 136n Averroes 216 Avicenna 216 di Bagno Guidi, Giovanni Francesco 88, 88n, 89, 89n, 91 Balduin, Friedrich 75, 75n Ballo, Giuseppe 240, 241 Baluze, Étienne 196, 196n Bar-Le-Duc, Norbert (Abbé Jacques Platel, Pierre Parisot, and Pierre Curel) 292, 292n Barberini, Francesco 199 Baronius, Caesar 199 Baropio, Johann Caspar 76, 76n Bartolus de Saxoferrato 68 Bassery, Franciscus 137, 138, 147 Becker, Peter 13 Bellarmine, Robert 102n, 205, 239, 239n, 311, 320,

Belli, Filippo 269, 271, 272n Benavides, Francisco 272 Benedetti, Giovan Battista 313, 323 Benedict XIV (Prospero Lambertini, Pope) 28, 166n, 173, 173n, 174n, 280, 289, 296, 296n, 297 Berengar of Tours 239, 244 de Berghes, Alphonse 137-140, 143 Bernardini, Paolo 248 Besozzi, Gioacchino 287, 295 Van Beughem, Joannes Ferdinandus 141n Bianchi, Giulio Maria 222, 223, 229, 230 Bodin, Jean 310-313 de Bolea y Almazán, Luis Albarca (marquis) 88n Bona, Giovanni 148n Bonaventura of Bagnoregio (Saint) 47n, 242, 250 Bonaventura of Recanati 229, 230 Borghese, Scipione (Caffarelli Borghese) 182, 183, 185 Borromeo, Carlo 24, 183, 183n, 184 Bosio, Antonio 200n, 201, 201n Bossuet, Jacques Bénigne 194, 194n Botero, Giovanni 311, 314, 314n Bouley, Bradford 113, 113n Boulliaud, Ismael 88 Bourdieu, Pierre 13, 13n, 27, 27n Boyle, Robert 268 Bragaldi, Giovanni Damasceno 145n Brahe, Tycho 104n Brancati di Lauria, Lorenzo 212n, 228, 230, 249, 251, 251n Bussi, Giovanni Battista (Nuncio to Cologne) 283 Bzovius, Abraham 25, 199 Cabeo, Niccolò 252 Cajetan, Thomas 224 Callon, Michel 9n, 28n, 30n Calvin, Johannes 219 Cano, Melchior 317 Cantelmo, Giacomo 270, 271 Capassi, Gerardo 244, 252, 252n Capizucchi, Raimondo 142-145, 149, 156-158, 228 Caracciolo, Innico 268n Carafa, Pier Luigi 88, 89, 89n Caramuel y Lobkowitz, Juan 19, 87n, 88, 88n, 89n, 91n, 92, 92n, 94n, 95-98, 102, 102n, 106 Cardano, Girolamo 212, 219, 219n, 221, 232, 232n Casanate, Girolamo 196, 196n, 201, 201n, 202, 202n Casati, Paolo 241, 252, 321-326 Casimir of Toulouse 248, 248n, 249 Casoni, Lorenzo 272 De Castro, Alfonso 217, 217n, 218, 231 Cavalieri, Emilio 272, 272n

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de la Cerda y Aragón, Luis Francisco 273 Cennini de’ Salamandri, Francesco (Nuncio in Spain) 182 Charles VIII Valois 310 Chifflet, Philippe 88n Christina, Queen of Sweden 325 Cibo, Alderano 136n, 137, 137n, 138n, 142n Cicero, Marcus Tullius 97 Ciermans, Joannes 88n Clement VIII 178, 193 Clement IX 244 Clement X 152 Clement XI 173n Clement XII 287, 287n Clivius, Justus Dudingus 88n Codde, Peter 285n, 288 Colloredo, Leandro 201 Concublet, Andrea 267 Confuorto, Domenico 263, 263n, 264 de Coninck, Aegidius 145 de Conti, Augustin Pietro 249, 249n Copernicus, Nicolaus 91n, 92 Cornelio, Tommaso 265, 267, 268, 268n, 270n De Cristofaro, Giacinto 30, 31, 263, 263n, 264, 264n, 265, 268, 269, 269n, 270, 270n, 271, 271n, 272, 272n, 273 de La Croix de Chevrières de Saint-Vallier, Jean-Baptiste (Bishop of Quebec) 155n Cuijper, Joannes 144 Cusanus, Nicolaus 97 Cybo, Alderano 205 Descartes, René 89, 227, 228, 240, 240n, 243, 245,247, 248n, 250, 268, 314 Desgabet, Robert 242 Despierres, Jean 92, 92n de Dicastillo, Juan 292, 292n da Diece, Giovanbattista 115, 116 De Dominis, Marco Antonio 15, 203, 204, 204n, 205 Dubois, Nicolas 136n Duns Scotus, John 250, 251 Durand of Troarn 242 Durandus de S. Pourcain 50, 50n Edelheer, Jacob 87n Ehrenreich, Pirhig 292 Epiphanius 215, 215n Errico, Scipione 199 De Esparza y Artieda, Martin 56, 56n, 57, 229, 230, 292 Van Espen, Zeger Bernhard 292, 292n, 293n Esteve, José 220 Estiennot de la Serrée, Claude 201n, 202, 202n Estrix, Aegidius 150, 152, 152n Eymeric, Nicholas 216, 216n, 217, 217n, 231 Fabio da Urbe 263n, 264n Fabri, Honoré 244, 252

Facchinetti, Cesare 135, 135n, 137 Fagnani, Prospero 56n, 280, 280n, 291n Farinacci, Prospero 218, 218n Favino, Giuseppe M. 248 Faydit, Pierre-Valentin 205 Felix of Cantalice 171 Fortunato, Orazio Antonio (Bishop of Nardò) 271 Francesca Romana (Saint) 24, 168n, 169, 179n, 183-184 Francis Xavier (Saint) 184n Fromondus, Libertus (Froidmont, Libert) 19, 87n, 88, 88n, 89, 93-95, 97-104 de Fusco, Pietro 273, 273n Gabrielis, Beghard Aegidius 150, 150n Gabrielli, Giovanni M. 254 Galen of Pergamon 119 Galilei, Galileo 15, 85-87, 88n, 89n, 93, 94, 99, 102n, 105, 237, 237n, 239, 239n, 240, 240n, 245, 268n, 309, 313, 315n, 320, 321, 323, 325 Garcia, Francisco 125 Gassendi, Pierre 87, 88, 92, 92n, 240, 243, 244, 253, 268 Gevartius, John Gaspar 87n Ghiffene, Laurent 92 Giannelli, Basilio 269, 271 Giberti, Giovanni Battista 270, 271, 272, 273n Giberti, Giuseppe Nicola 269, 273n Gilbert, William 90 Giles, Antoine 216, 216n, 217 Giorgio, Francesco 212, 219, 220, 220n, 221, 231 Gisbert, Jean 55, 55n Giuli, Egidio Maria 287, 290n, 296 Giustiniani, Benedetto 221 Giustiniani, Lorenzo 267n Goclenius sr., Rudolph 224 Golius, Jacobus 88 Gonzáles de Santalla, Tirso 292 Grandier, Urbain 31 Gratian 121, 293n Gregor IX. (Pope) 177n Gregor XV. (Pope) 184n Gregorius de Valencia 316, 319n, 320n Grienberger, Christopher 322 Grimaldi, Costantino 254 Grimaldi, Francesco Maria 252 Grotius, Hugo 75, 75n, 292, 293 Grottieri, Filippo 249 Guicciardini, Francesco 198n Guidi di Bagno, Giovanni Francesco 88, 89, 89n, 91 Guidobono Cavalchini, Carlo Alberto 291 Guldin, Paulus 321, 325 van Gutschoven, Gerard 87n Hardouin, Jean 202, 202n Harriot, Thomas 309 Havenreuter, Johann 223, 224, 224n

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Index

Van Hecke, Michael 142 Hein de Swaen, Marty 292 Helvetius, Claude Adrien 218 Henry IV., King of France 315 Henry of Ghent 45n, 49, 49n Herincx, Guilielmus 145 Herroel, Peter 146n, 147n Hesius, Guilielmus 88n van Heussen, Hugo Franciscus 290 Jerome (Saint) 226, 317 Hippocrates 119 Hirnhaim, Hieronymus 221, 221n, 222, 223, 231 d’Holbach, Paul Henri Thiry 218 Horn, Georg 215n Hortensius, Lambertus 88 Hoynck van Papendrecht, Cornelius 290, 290n, 291n Huygens, Christiaan 88 Huygens, Gummarus 151n, 292, 292n

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Ignatius of Loyola 184n Inchofer, Melchior 239 Innocent III (Pope) 214 Innocent X (Pope) 280n Innocent XI (Benedetto Odescalchi, Pope) 140, 153n, 205, 244 Innocent XII (Antonio Pignatelli, Pope) 270 Isabella Clara Eugenia of Spain (Governor of the Spanish Netherlands) 86n, 91, 99 Isaiah (Prophet) 101, 102 Isidro Labrador 24, 182, 183 Jacek of Krakov (Saint Hyacinth) 24, 168n, 169, 170, 180n Jameo, Domenico 272 James I (King of England) 72, 204, 315 Job 101, 102 John XII. (Pope) 280n John XV. (Pope) 177n John of Damascus (Saint) 242 Joseph a Sancta Elia 146n Joshua (prophet) 101, 102n Juan de Lugo 249, 251 Justin Martyr 226n Kepler, Johannes 90, 103, 104, 104n, 309 di Lagonissa, Fabio (della Leonessa) 93, 94 van Langren, Michael Florent 88n, 92 Lansbergen, Jacob 101, 103 Lansbergen, Philip (van Lansberge) 93, 93n, 103, 103n Laymann, Paul 292 Le Grand, Antoine 250, 251 Leo X. (Pope) 215n Leonardo di Capua 253, 254, 267, 268n Le Paige, Constantin 87n, 89, 89n Lessius, Leonhardus 18, 71, 72n, 73, 73n, 74, 76, 79

de Lezana, Juan Battista 145 Line, Francis 88n Lipstorp, Daniel 92 Lochmann, Johann Martin 76, 76n Loffredo, Mario 273, 273n Lombard, Peter 68, 215, 250 Louis XIV (King of France) 205, 244 Lucarini, Reginaldo 225, 226 Lucretius 268, 269 Luther, Martin 77, 148, 148n, 223, 224, 250 Mabillon, Jean 25, 196, 200, 200n, 201-203 Maccarinelli, Serafino 280, 280n Machiavelli, Niccolò 311 De Magistris, Giovanni 273, 273n Magliabechi, Antonio 201, 201n, 202n Magni, Valeriano 242, 242n, 252 Muhammad 68, 73 Maignan, Emmanuel 242, 242n, 252, 253 Maiolo, Simone 116n, 124, 124n Malapert, Carolus 88n, 92n Manicheus 219 Manuzzi, Francesco Paolo 269, 271, 271n de Mariana, Juan 311 de Maricourt, Petrus Peregrinus 97 Marin, Juan 292, 292n, 293n Marquis de Condorcet 49 Marx, Karl 8, 33 Mazza da Forlì, Tommaso 143, 143n, 144, 145, 149, 152, 155-158 Melanchthon, Philipp 224 Melchisedek (King of Salem, priest) 154n Mennekens, Arnoldus 87n Mersenne, Marin 88, 91, 101, 321, 323 de La Mettrie, Julien Offray 218 van der Meulen, Augustinus 89 Michael a S. Augustino 148n Miraballo, Gaetano 229 Mol, Annemarie 21, 21n, 32 de Molinos, Miguel 145n, 269 de Montfaucon, Bernard 202n del Monte, Guidobaldo 313 Morelli, Angelo 220 Morin, Jean 88 Moses (prophet) 100 Vander Mye, Frederik 99, 100 Nardi, Baldassare 88n Naselli, Giovanni Girolamo 116 van Neercassel, Johannes 284, 284n, 286, 288, 290, 292, 293, 296 Newton, Isaac 314 Nicola da Rossiglione 250 De Nicolis, Francesco 229, 230 Noctinot, Ausonio 292 Olivi, Peter John 214, 217 Oliviero, Antonio 263n, 264n Origen 214, 217, 220, 221, 223, 226, 231,

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Orsucci, Scipio 123n Ouerdat, Nicolaus 136n Palumbo, Carlo 273n Papebroch, Daniel 25, 192, 195, 195n, 196 Parmenides of Elea 248 Pascal, Blaise 18, 64, 64n Patrizi, Francesco 212, 219-221, 231, 232 Paul (Saint) 317 Paul V (Pope) 24, 182-184, 199 Paul VI (Pope) 166n De Peiresc, Nicolas-Claude Fabri 87, 88 Peña, Francisco 216, 217 Pétau, Denis 104, 105 Peter (Pope, Saint) 25, 32, 100, 175, 181, 200, 317 Peter of Spain 49, 49n Petra, Vincenzo 280n, 287, 287n Petrus de Alliaco 241 Philip III (King of Spain) 182 Photius 214 Piccinardi, Serafino 228 Pichler, Vitus 292, 292n Pico, Paolo 232n Pietro de Conti, Augustin 249 Piette, Aurelio 292 Pirano, Paolo 199 Pirhing, Ehrenreich 292n Pissini, Andrea 212n, 226-232 Pius V (Pope) 242 Platel, Jacques 292 Plempius, Vopiscus Fortunatus 87n du Plessis, Armand-Jean, Duc de Richelieu 311, 314, 314n Pomponazzi, Pietro 215 Possevino, Matteo 311 Pozzobonelli, Domenico Maria 144-147, 149-151, 155-158, 229 Prateolus, Gabriel (Gabriel de Préau) 217, 217n Priscillianus 217, 219 Ptolemy, Claudius 219 Publicola 66 Pufendorf, Samuel 292, 293 Puteanus, Erycius 87n, 91, 92, 92n Pythagoras 220 Quorli, Filippo 199, 199n Rabanus Maurus 239, 249 Radbertus, Paschasius 248 Rastelli, Raffaele 224 Ratramnus of Corbie 239, 249 Raynauld, Théophile 241n Repetto, Lelio 111, 111n, 113-116, 119, 119n, 120, 120n, 121, 121n de Reulx, Josephus 136n Rheticus, Georg Joachim 102n de Ribadeneira, Pedro 311 Ricci, Michelangelo 229

Riccioli, Giovanni Battista 324 Roblaux, Charles 205 Rosito, Carlo 273, 273n Rospigliosi, Giacomo 88, 150n Rufino of Bologna 293n Saguens, Jean 244, 244n, 246, 246n Salier, Jacques 242 Sánchez, Thomas 74, 74n, 76 Saragoza, Pedro Juan 220-221 Sarasohn, Lisa 86 Sarpi, Paolo 25, 191, 192, 198, 198n, 199, 203 Sas, Cornelius 142n, 145 Sassio, Paolo 119-120 Scaglia, Desiderio 205 Scaille, Henricus 148n Schelstrate, Emmanuel 252 Schenck von Tautenberg, Friedrich 291, 291n Schenk, Johann 118 Schmalzgrüber, Franz 292, 292n Schottus, Andreas 88n Schyrleus of Rheita, Anton Maria 88n, 89n Sebastianus a S. Paulo 138n Sennert, Daniel 223-226, 231 Seraphinus a Jesu Maria 138n, 148n Sergio, Thomas 287, 295 Sforza Pallavicino, Francesco Maria 25, 199-200, 241, 251 Sixtus of Siena 220 Sixtus V (Pope) 166, 171, 242 van Slingelandt, Johannes Franciscus 88n de Smet, Jean-Baptiste (Bishop of Ypres and of Ghent) 287n, 288, 288n Spinola, Stefano 247 Sporer, Patritius 292 Suárez, Francisco 18, 71-74, 76, 293n, 311, 320 Tanara, Sebastiano Antonio 135-138, 141, 142n Tanner, Adam 292 Tartaglia, Giovanni Agostino 247 Taurellus, Nicolaus 224 Tavanti, Giacomo 220 Taylor, Charles 306 Tempier, Etienne 215 Terill, Anthony 56, 56n, 57 Tertullian 217, 220, 223-224 Tiraqueau, André 292 Toletus, Franciscus 316-318, 320 Tomasi, Giuseppe Maria 223 Trevigi, Andrea 88n, 89n, 91, 99-100 Trionfetti, Giovanni Battista 116, 120, 120n, 121n Turano, Domenico Maria 287, 291, 295-296 Uguccione della Faggiola 293n Ulrich of Augsburg 177n Urban VIII. (Maffeo Barberini, Pope) 24, 166, 166n, 176-179, 183, 193, 199

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Index

Wendelen, Govaert 19, 87-93, 95, 97-106 Wex, Jacob 292, 292n Wiestner, Jacob 292 Wiggers, Joannes 145 William of Ockham 241 Willis, Thomas 119 Wyclif, John 228, 239, 249, 250 Zacchia, Paolo 122, 122n, 123 de Zúñiga, Diego López 102n

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Van Aelst (priest) 283, 284 Vanden Werve, Franciscus 136n Varillas, Antoine 205 Vélez de Guevara, Íñigo (Count of Oñante, viceroy of Naples) 268n Venanzo della Trinità 250 Verdussen, Hiëronymus 88n Versor, John 49 vande Velde, Johannes Franciscus 136n Van Vianen, Franciscus 148, 148n Vosmeer, Sasbout 285

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SCIENTIAE STUDIES

Scholarship has come to value the uncertainties haunting early modern knowledge cultures; indeed, awareness of the fragility and plurality of knowledge is now offered as a key element for understanding early modern science as a whole. Yet early modern actors never questioned the possibility of certainty itself and never objected to the notion that truth is out there, universal, and therefore safe from human manipulation. This book investigates how early modern actors managed not to succumb to postmodern relativism, despite the increasing uncertainties and blatant disagreements about the nature of God, Man, and the Universe. An international and interdisciplinary team of experts in fields ranging from the history of science to theology and the history of ideas analyses a number of practices that were central to maintaining and functionalizing the notion of absolute truth. Through such an interdisciplinary research the book shows how certainty about truth could be achieved, and how early modern society recognized the credibility of a wide plethora of actors in differentiating fields of knowledge.

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Andreea Badea is a researcher at the chair for early modern history of the Goethe-University of Frankfurt am Main. Bruno Boute is a researcher at the chair for early modern history of the Goethe-University of Frankfurt am Main. Marco Cavarzere is assistant professor of early modern history at the University Ca’ Foscari of Venice. Steven Vanden Broecke teaches early modern intellectual history and history of science at Ghent University.

ISBN: 978-94-6372-052-6

AUP. nl 9 789463 720526

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