Riforma protestante ed eresie nell'Italia del Cinquecento.

This volume is a summary of the thought and experiences of Italian Protestants in Italy during the sixteenth century. Massimo Firpo presents these individuals and communities as representing a uniquely Italian brand of reform that came to be no more acceptable to the hardening orthodoxies of Geneva and Wittenberg than it did to that of Trent. They reflected a religious heritage that combined a complex of cultural, political and social sources. Their thought bound together the influences of the Alumbrados, Juan de Valdes, Erasmus, Luther and Calvin.

Firpo has divided the book into ten chapters that cover: the entrance into Italy of heretical ideas via the book trade; Venice as a point of dispersion of these ideas to the rest of Italy; the spread of heresy to the cities of the peninsula; Modena as an example of a city in which the formation of heretical groups became quite advanced; the experiences of individual heretics and the circulation of ideas; the development of reformed thought from Erasmus through the publication of the Beneficio di Cristo; the effects of the Sack of Rome on the development of Catholic attitudes toward Protestantism; the role of Juan de Valdes in the diffusion of Italian heresy; heresy in the upper echelons of the Church and nicodemism; and a final chapter on religious radicals.

Firpo's portrayal of Italian Protestantism highlights the widespread currency of reform thought among educated Italians. He emphasizes that these individuals and communities maintained hope that reform would take root in the Italian peninsula, albeit with ever flagging strength from the 1540s. Preachers and writers such as Giambattista Pallavicino, Celio Secundo Curione, Bernardino Ochino, and Pier Martire Vermigli engaged in a resilient ministry that, at least initially, overcame the opposition of inquisitorial authorities.

Firpo uses the example of Modena to illustrate the stages through which Italian Protestantism passed in the course of the sixteenth century. In the 1530s heretical literature was readily available from the booksellers of the city. Groups of Protestants gathered and spoke openly of matters of faith and worship. The response of the archbishop, Giovanne Morone, was to attempt to reconcile these people by means of the irenic program of dialogue espoused by Gasparo Contarini in 1542. The Protestants nevertheless resisted this method of attaining religious unity. They managed to survive with little oppression until the election of Cardinal Gian Pietro Carafa as Pope Paul IV in 1555. From then on their fortunes were in continual decline. The clear doctrinal definitions of the Council of Trent left them with less room to maneuver. In 1567 a papal brief that provided for the re-integration of heretics in Modena reduced the Protestant ranks even more. All realistic hope that Protestantism might survive in Modena and elsewhere in Italy had come to an end.

Much of what Firpo presents will not be new to those who work in the field. He reiterates his thesis that Protestantism and the intellectual openness of the Renaissance failed to survive in the face of a stern Tridentine Catholicism typified by Paul IV. This prominent and controversial reading of Italian religious history has been stated in more detail in his earlier works on the trial of Morone. The very sweep of this volume, however, introduces the reader to such a large number of prominent Italians, including high ranking ecclesiastics, who sympathized with or turned a blind eye to the Protestants of Italy that one must seriously wonder if Paul IV could possibly have been as typical as Firpo claims. This will serve as a helpful survey for students of sixteenth-century religious history. The bibliography is particularly helpful.

Paul V. Murphy UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO