Paolo Sarpi

Dopo aver pubblicato nelle proprie collane, nel 2018, la prima edizione critica del trattato sarpiano Sopra l’Officio dell’Inquisizione, l’Istituto Veneto ha voluto dedicare una giornata di studi a Paolo Sarpi nel quarto centenario della pubblicazione dell’Istoria del concilio tridentino (Londra 1619). Questo volume raccoglie le relazioni presentate all’incontro e pone al centro le due grandi opere – nelle quali il servita veneziano aveva ricostruito, da angolature profondamente differenti, l’affermazione del centralismo pon- tificio e della Chiesa della Controriforma –, ripercorrendone la genesi e le scelte alla luce di nuove fonti e delle più recenti acquisizioni storiogra- fiche. Fa inoltre il punto sulla circolazione manoscritta e a stampa degli scritti di Sarpi, destinata a svolgersi a lungo lontano dall’Italia, orientata dai settori anticuriali del ceto patrizio veneziano e dalle vicende politico- religiose europee.

[The First Italian Edition of the Book of Common Prayer (1685) between protestant propaganda and Sarpian memories]. In 1685 the first printed edition in Italian of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, was published in London (Il Libro delle Preghiere Publiche Secondo l’Uso della Chiesa Anglicana). This article investigates the apologetic and controversial reasons that led to its publication. Because an Italian Protestant Church in England no longer existed when this translation was published, it was apparently not meant for use in worship. Furthermore, the same Italian Protestant Church in London, founded in 1550 and dissolved probably around 1663, had never adopted Anglican worship and both from the institutional and liturgical points of view had always been a Calvinist Church. The translation’s editor was Edward Brown, an Anglican cleric, who published a translation into English of Paolo Sarpi’s Lettere Italiane Scritte al Signor dell’Isola Groslot in 1693. Brown’s interest in Sarpi is particularly remarkable because, before the edition of 1685, the Book of Common Prayer was translated by the chaplain to the English ambassador, Sir Henry Wotton, for Sarpi himself between 1607 and 1610.

La “doppia faccia” di Chinatown analizzata in questo elaborato si riferisce a due modi, in contrasto tra loro, con i quali si approccia a questa enclave: uno è il punto di vista interno della popolazione cinese, l’altro è quello esterno all’enclave, cioè quello della popolazione più ampia con cui questa realtà etnicamente connotata si incontra e scontra quotidianamente. Da un lato vi è la comunità cinese con la propria leggibilità, il proprio orgoglio e tradizione, difficile da lasciarsi indietro una volta lasciata la patria; dall’altra parte vi sono le rappresentazioni e le percezioni degli individui che ritengono il proprio territorio “invaso” dai cinesi, tanto da sfociare spesso in atteggiamenti razzisti e in allarme per un presunto “pericolo giallo”

I saggi contenuti in questo volume affrontano alcune importanti questioni inerenti i rapporti tra il mondo consuetudinario e quello più propriamente definibile colto ed affidato alla scrittura. Questioni che, per l’età medievale e moderna, implicano una stretta relazione tra la percezione colta, elaborata e tendenzialmente astratta affidata alla scrittura e quella sostanzialmente legata alle pratiche sociali, ma pure intimamente collegata alla trasmissione orale e consuetudinaria. E, non a caso, le consuetudini occupavano un ruolo di primo piano nell’ambito della gerarchia delle fonti cui doveva teoricamente attenersi il giudice nella sua attività giurisprudenziale.
L’azione di controllo e di contenimento svolta dalle istituzioni ecclesiastiche e secolari fa emergere pratiche sociali che per secoli avevano agito quasi indisturbate, svolgendo un ruolo di primo piano nell’ambito di una società caratterizzata dalle distinzioni cetuali, dall’idioma della parentela e dalla frammentazione politica.
L’emergere della tradizione, intesa soprattutto nella sua accezione consuetudinaria e di ordinamento giuridico caratterizzato dall’oralità e dalla mediazione, è dunque un fenomeno storico e culturale che viene filtrato in età moderna dall’azione di istituzioni secolari ed ecclesiastiche volta a regolamentarla e ad indirizzarla entro parametri giuridici che sono il riflesso di nuove istanze sociali e politiche. E lo strumento interpretativo dell’antropologia giuridica aiuta lo storico a coglierne la portata e i significati. La raccolta di questi saggi intende essenzialmente porsi lungo questa linea interpretativa, volta a cogliere attraverso una variegata e complessa casistica giudiziaria l’emergere di pratiche sociali che a lungo furono ancorate alla consuetudine e alla trasmissione orale.

In the early 17th century the Venetian patriciate faced the opposition of the Papacy about the question of the government of Greek Orthodox subjects. This problem, which was inherent to the management of the Venetian state since its medieval conquests in Eastern Mediterranean, actually was linked to the evolution of the relationship between the Apostolic See and the Greek Patriarchate of Constantinople. However this very relationship, regardless of the influence it had on Venetian religious policy during the Renaissance, didn't determine the attitude of the Republic of St. Mark towards Greek subjects. The present essay tries to explore the different connotations which the “Greek question” assumed at the time of Paolo Sarpi and Fulgenzio Micanzio, depicting its historical premises and analyzing the different retorics used by these two consultori in jure in their proposals of resolution of Greek-Latin conflicts, in order to underline how a clearly religious problem was gradually forced to become a merely political and institutional matter.

For almost three hundred years there were those in England who believed that an Italian translation of the Book of Common Prayer could trigger radical change in the political and religious landscape of Italy. The aim was to present the text to the Italian religious and political elite, in keeping with the belief that the English liturgy embodied the essence of the Church of England. The beauty, harmony, and simplicity of the English liturgical text, rendered into Italian, was expected to demonstrate that the English Church came closest to the apostolic model. Beginning in the Venetian Republic and ending with the Italian Risorgimento, the leitmotif running through the various incarnations of this project was the promotion of top-down reform according to the model of the Church of England itself.

Under the Republic of Venice, the Abbey of Sesto al Reghena was one of the most important ecclesiastical and feudal institutions of Friuli. From the middle of the fifteenth century the abbots were chosen within the Venetian aristocracy, but this did not prevent serious conflicts on the exercise of temporal jurisdiction. The famous canonist and theological counsellor to the republic, Paolo Sarpi, had to deal with these conflicts. Finally, the abbey was suppressed by order of the Republic, as part of the reforms of the eighteenth century.

Tongues as sharp as blades and pens mightier than swords are amongst the most recurrent metaphors in Western culture. This book investigates the reality behind the image: the political uses of different forms of communication – oral, manuscript, and printed – in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Venice. From council debates to leaks and spies’ reports, from printed pamphlets to graffiti and rumours, political communication closely intertwined with the wider life and economic activities of this cosmopolitan and thickly populated capital of a large empire.
Today we take it for granted that communication and politics influence each other through spin-doctoring and media power. What, however, was the use of communication in an age when rulers recognised no political role for their subjects? And what access to political information did those excluded from government have? In answering, this book offers an original reinterpretation of early modern politics. While traditional political historians view events from the windows of government buildings, social historians have taught us to look at history from below. Neither perspective is sufficient in isolation, because even the most secretive oligarchs, ensconced in the Ducal Palace’s most restricted councils, were constantly preoccupied by their vociferous subjects in the squares below. In early modern Venice politics involved the patrician elite with the rest of the population, including women, in a thick web of continuous communication extending from government halls to the barbershops around Rialto.

Mercoledì 22 giugno nella sala conferenze dell’Istituto Storico Italiano per l’età moderna e contemporanea, via M. Caetani 32, discuteremo, alla presenza dell’autore, il volume "Making Italy Anglican" di Stefano Villani. Avvieranno la discussione: Maria Iolanda Palazzolo e Mario Infelise.
Modera il dibattito Marcello Verga
Sarà possibile seguire l'evento in streaming sulle pagine Facebook e Youtube dell'Istituto
Evento in collaborazione con la Biblioteca di storia moderna e contemporanea

Il pdf, documenta storiograficamente la vita e le opere di un importante personaggio politico ed ecclesiastico del Seicento, Sforza Pallavicino, oltre ad analizzare il suo pensiero politico, filosofico, morale estratto direttamente dall’analisi dei suoi scritti più importanti. Egli è stato gesuita e cardinale della Chiesa Cattolica, scrittore, poeta, filosofo, moralista e personaggio eminente della politica romana e della Curia nel secondo seicento. E’ conosciuto principalmente per la sua opera storiografica, di gran lunga la più importante e dibattuta soprattutto per la polemica con il frate servita Sarpi, l’Istoria del Concilio di Trento. Egli è anche però autore di notevoli trattati filosofici, estetici, morali e politici ancora oggi considerevolmente attuali. Il primo capitolo ripercorre tutta la sua vita, con gli avvenimenti che la caratterizzarono e in cui sono analizzate tutte le sue opere e il suo pensiero. Il secondo capitolo dopo un’introduzione della storiografia rinascimentale e barocca riferita al Concilio di Trento, approfondisce il personaggio di Paolo Sarpi e la sua Istoria per concludersi con l’analisi della risposta storiografica del Pallavicino. L’opera, commistione di storia e di apologia, è concepita in modo che il lettore possa passare al solo versante storico, escludendo le pagine apologetiche. Sforza Pallavicino, sin dalle pagine della introduzione, invita espressamente il lettore a raccogliere da tale storia preziosi insegnamenti relativi al «governo del mondo». Sul versante cattolico tale proposta si rende concreta in due prodotti editoriali complementari: una versione compendiata della Istoria priva delle pagine dedicate alle discussioni teologiche e la raccolta dei Detti sentenziosi che si leggono nell’Istoria del Concilio di Trento (1662).
Nell’ultimo capitolo, infine, si esamina nel suo evolversi i risvolti politici e morali del suo pensiero e delle sue opere. Innanzitutto s’indagano le riflessioni teorico - critiche del Pallavicino nel dialogo Del bene, successivamente nel Trattato dello stile e del dialogo. In queste opere si vede emergere il progressivo spostamento dell'autore verso posizioni estetiche e stilistiche indirizzate a sottomettere le risorse retoriche alle esigenze di chiarezza conoscitiva proprie di una moderna prosa scientifica. L’analisi continua nella riflessione morale dell’Arte della Perfezion Cristiana, dei trattati intorno alla Superbia e della Divina Provvidenza e infine analizza i risvolti del pensiero politico di tutte le opere citate.
Scopo di questo libro è approfondire il personaggio Sforza Pallavicino in particolare nella sua veste di uomo di Chiesa e di scrittore di filosofia, politica e morale, che rivela la sua cospicua influenza nella cultura della Controriforma.

This paper takes as its starting point Hobbes’s first European grand tour, which the future philosopher and his pupil William Cavendish II made together during 1614-15. On this tour, while in Venice they met Fulgenzio Micanzio, and probably also the famous Servite friar Paolo Sarpi, ‘consultore in iure’ of the Venetian Republic. Hobbes scholars point to the similarities between some political and theological-political doctrines of Sarpi and Hobbes, but this paper focuses on the two writers’ natural philosophy, showing the analogies linking them. Firstly, the two thinkers have the same conception of the different epistemological status that separates mathematics (conventional and aprioristic) from the physical sciences (in which knowledge acquired can only be hypothetical and conjectural). However, the correlations also involve the genesis of human knowledge: in both authors we find the same model, which starts from the action of an external object on the senses of perception, to reach the ‘‘universals’’ which are none other than names: all objects that occupy space in the natural world are bodies, and the entire physical world must be interpreted solely in materialistic terms of matter and local motion. Finally, the two thinkers make the same effort, although to different extents, to adapt the Aristotelian vocabulary to the exigencies of a new natural philosophy, which contemplates the world as simply a mechanical system; thus they leave behind them the Aristotelian physics, founded on qualities and other concepts of the Aristotelian tradition.

Paolo Sarpi (1552–1623) was a Servite monk, jurist, scientist and controversialist writing in the context of the political struggle between the Holy See and the Republic of Venice at the beginning of the seventeenth century. He is most well known for his History of the Council of Trent (1619), but his scientific achievements were also relevant. Like Cusanus, Sarpi was a student in Padua, and his interest in the Cardinal of Cusa, which is confirmed by direct quotations, ranges from the defense of the free interpretation of Scripture to Copernicanism and cosmology (he was a close friend of Galileo Galilei). But the main link between Sarpi and Cusanus is conciliar theory, upheld by Sarpi against the popes in the age of the attempted secularisation and separation of politics from religion, but also of the beginning of the so-called “nation-states.” The political and intellectual debates over the Venetian Interdetto led to a European-scale dispute between Sarpi and Cardinal Bellarmine, opposing two different ways of interpreting the need for a Catholic Reformation, and demonstrating the strong ties between late medieval conciliarism and early modern constitutionalism.

An important aspect in the early modern demise of Aristotelian natural philosophy is the reshaping of the doctrine of matter and place as continuous magnitudes. Before culminating in an outright rejection of Aristotle's physics, attempts at revising this theory originally grew out from within the scholastic tradition, as part of the debate on the extension of prime matter, i.e. whether the ultimate material substrate could be spatialised and to what extent.
Following in the footsteps of Philoponus's criticism of Aristotle, scholastic philosophers came to embrace the idea of a geometrically undefined materia prima, that is to say, a substrate that is three-dimensional but not confined as to its actual magnitude. The division, and subsequent spatialisation of matter into discrete parts (particulae minimae, corpuscula), is thus operated by an active principle (forma substantialis) that confines the substrate providing it with borders, thereby 'shaping' the shape-less matter.
In Sixteenth-century Italy, such a philosophical reconceptualisation goes hand in hand with an increased interest in the transformation of materials, especially glass and pottery making and, in medicine, it manifested itself in a renewed attention to the effects of drugs and the formation of the embryo. As to the latter, attention is especially devoted to the transformation of homogeneous, continuous and fluid parts (i.e. semen, temperaments and humours) into increasingly shaped and complex ones (e.g. cartilages, tissues, bones, organs) according to the geometrical principles of "place", "number" and "figure" (situs, figura, numerus).
Drawing from a variety of mostly manuscript or unfamiliar sources, in this paper I present some evidence as to how the debate migrated from philosophy to medicine, moving from the teachings of Jacopo Zabarella (1533-1589) and their elaboration by the theologian Paolo Sarpi (1552-1623), to Girolamo Fabrici da Acquapendente (1533-1619) and his newly discovered Methodus anatomica (1579) to culminate with an analysis of Santorio Santori’s (1561-1636) mechanical corpuscularianism.

The noble Mantuan cleric Camillo Olivo served as secretary of Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga, both in the government of Mantua and in the legation to the Council of Trent, where he personally distributed the grants of the Holy See to about a hundred Italian bishops. After the Council, due to his old relations with the "spirituals", he was tried for heresy, but avoided a serious sentence. Tired and embittered, he provided the young Paolo Sarpi with confidential information on the conciliar proceedings. This biographical entry also analyzes his career and economic conditions.

Аннотация
В настоящей статье рассматриваются особенности взаимоотношений государства и
православной церкви в столице и заморских владениях Венецианской республики в конце XVI
— XVII вв. Обзор истории государственно-конфессиональных отношений с православными
начинается с греческой общины столицы, история которой наиболее подробно освещена
источниками. Сам характер контактов столичных греков с духовными и светскими властями
был более целостным, чем на периферии, и следовал некоей причинно-следственной логике, из
которой исходили все стороны диалога. Религиозная же политика Венеции в заморских
колониях отличалась пестротой и неоднородностью в разные эпохи и на разных территориях.
Данные связи, обусловленные множеством факторов и обстоятельств (позиция папства,
положение православных в Османской империи и др.), казалось бы, были подчинены логике
сиюминутных интересов, ради которых обе стороны либо шли на взаимные уступки, либо
(явно или неявно) диктовали друг другу свои условия. Однако, насколько мы можем судить
по дошедшим до нашего времени документам, этот сложный диалог мог состояться лишь
благодаря тому, что его участников объединяла культурная матрица, которая позволяла найти
общий язык и пройти многовековой совместный путь среди отнюдь не простых обстоятельств
жизни итальянского Средневековья и раннего Нового времени. Взаимообогащение культур и
духовных традиций венецианцев и греков явилось не только частью византийского периода
истории Венеции — оно продолжилось в течение всей эпохи совместного проживания
венецианцев и греков в столице и в заморских колониях республики.
Ключевые слова: Венеция, Stato da Mar, православная церковь, государственно-церковные
отношения, Крит, Ионические острова, юрисдикционализм, Церковь Венеции

The essays contained in this volume deal with some important questions concerning the relationship between the world of custom and the world that can be most precisely defined as cultivated, which found its expression in writing. For the medieval and modern periods, these questions involve a close relationship between the educated, elaborated and tendentially abstract viewpoint expressed through writing, and the one substantially tied to social practices, intimately connected to oral tradition and custom. It is not by chance that customs played a primary part in the hierarchy of sources which a judge theoretically had to take into consideration in his jurisprudential activity.  The contact with the world of custom and tradition allows to see some of its most significant features, above all in the many judiciary cases produced by the ever more intrusive and classificatory activity of the ecclesiastical and secular institutions. It is possible to appreciate this aspect in many spheres of social and political life; however, it comes out most clearly in the complicated matter of marriage.
The emergence of tradition, understood above all in the sense of custom and of a legal order characterized by orality and mediation, is therefore a historical and cultural phenomenon filtered in the modern period through the activity of secular and ecclesiastical institutions that aimed at regulating and constraining it within legal parameters reflecting new social and political instances. And the interpretative tool of legal anthropology helps the historian understand its scope and meanings. This collection of essays essentially intends to follow this line of interpretation, in an attempt to grasp through a varied and complex selection of judiciary cases the emergence of social practices that had long been grounded in custom and oral transmission.

About 200 different editions of Paolo Sarpi’s works were published between 1619 and 1800, in all the main languages of Europe (apart from Castilian), mainly in central-northern Europe, with masked print indications. After an introduction on the myriad bibliographical questions raised in studying Sarpi’s publishing fortunes, the paper will concentrate on the strong resurgence of interest in the last thirty years of the seventeenth century and on the conflicts aroused

Dopo aver accolto nelle proprie collane, nel 2018, la prima edizione critica del trattato sarpiano Sopra l'Officio dell'Inquisizione, l'Istituto Veneto coglie quest'anno l' occasione del quarto centenario della pubblicazione dell'Istoria del concilio tridentino (Londra 1619) per dedicare una giornata di studi a Paolo Sarpi. L'incontro metterà al centro queste due grandi opere-nelle quali il servita veneziano ricostruì, da angolature profondamente differenti, l'affermazione del centralismo pontificio e della Chiesa della Controriforma-e ne ripercorrerà la genesi e le scelte alla luce di nuove fonti e delle più recenti acquisizioni storiografiche. Farà inoltre il punto sulle vicende della circolazione manoscritta e a stampa degli scritti di Sarpi, svoltasi a lungo lontano dall'Italia, orientata dai settori anticuriali del ceto patrizio veneziano e dalle logiche della politica europea alla vigilia della guerra dei Trent'anni.

In 1553, the religious exile Michelangelo Florio published in London the Italian translation of the Catechism of the bishop John Ponet, which had been published in Latin and English in the same year. This essay investigates the reasons that led Florio to publish his translation, of which, apparently, only a single printed copy, currently preserved in the British Library of London, is still existent. It also reconstructs the biography of Michelangelo Florio (formerly a Franciscan friar with the name of Paolo Antonio da Figline).
Florio, then in disgrace, made this translation not to educate the young members of the small Italian Protestant congregation in London (as hinted in the title page), but to gain the favor of the Duke of Northumberland, to whom the book was dedicated, hoping  that his daughter-in-law, Jane Grey, would become queen of England. The Catholic restoration of Mary Tudor doomed this project and forced him into exile.

With regard to Hobbes’ analysis of excommunication as a weapon used by Popes to exercise control over temporal states and sovereigns, it emerges that his discussion of the topic in De Cive is related to his treatment of another ban promulgated by the Roman Chuch: the interdict. The few references to interdict in Hobbes’ works suggest that he considered one specific historical event: the Interdict crisis of Venice, which occurred in 1606-7. Moreover, Hobbes’ analysis of excommunication in Leviathan, and his controversy with Bellarmine, lead us to a consideration of Sarpi’s works. Certain aspects of these may suggest Hobbes used in his argument some themes drawn from the writings of the Venetian friar. In turn this stimulates a deeper comparison of the political and theologico-political thought of these two men.

La modernité politique européenne est née d’un profond refoulement à valeur d’exorcisme, elle a honni l’ancienne configuration symbolique des pouvoirs spirituel et temporel en Chrétienté pour promouvoir un nouveau mythe, le mythe occidental — mythe de supériorité, mythe de puissance, mythe de valorisation du pouvoir  — par où l’ordre terrestre affirme une préséance conquérante sur les injonctives revendications de l’autorité religieuse. La fin des temps médiévaux a fait le constat douloureux de l’épuisement d’une espérance théocratique désormais irréalisable : l’Europe moderne semble naître dans l’urgence d’une confrontation, renouvelée et singulièrement avivée, au problème théologico-politique . D’un déplacement pluriséculaire, le début du XVIIe siècle — et, en particulier, la période qui court de l’Interdit vénitien (1606-1607) à l’affaire Santarelli (1626-1627) — a été une étape capitale. Pendant une vingtaine d’années, théologiens, juristes et politiques se sont affrontés, de manière presque ininterrompue, dans une gigantesque dispute portant sur la légitimité d’un éventuel pouvoir indirect du pape au temporel — controverse dont l’exceptionnelle longévité, l’indéniable unité et l’âpre vivacité témoignent de ce qu’il a paru alors que s’y jouait inexorablement, et pour la dernière fois peut-être, quelque chose d’obscur et pourtant d’essentiel.

The first Italian translation of the Book of Common Prayer was made in 1608 by William Bedell (the chaplain to James I’s ambassador in Venice) with the help of Fulgenzio Micanzio and Paolo Sarpi. This translation was part of an English propaganda plan to instigate a schism in the Church of Venice, at a time of conflict between the court of Rome and the Venetian Republic. This essay reconstructs the relationships between Sarpi and Micanzio and the English embassy in Venice. As far as we know, Bedell’s translation remained a manuscript with no known copies extant. At the British Library is preserved an Italian manuscript version dated 1661, whose authorship a certain Alessandro Amidei ascribed to himself. It is not impossible that this is a copy of the translation made in Venice a few decades before.

EN: The Interdict crisis of 1606-1607 was the culmination of centuries of tension between Venice and the Papacy has been the object of continuous interest by historians. Considering this tradition of studies and the latest contributions on this subject, the present research tries to explore the role played in the crisis
by the territories that were under venetian rule. Paul V’s decision to prohibit the celebration of the sacraments throughout the venetian dominions, in response to legislation considered detrimental to the freedom of the Church, was a further attempt to putting subjects against rulers and bringing the Serenissima face to face with the risk of internal collapse. The spiritual censures, and the nature of ‘war of scriptures’ that the conflict was to assume, meant that the subjects of the Serenissima became privileged interlocutors for the Princes involved in the dispute. The purpose of the present contribution is to analyse the forms and rhetoric of this dialogue, considering unpublished documents. Particular attention has been paid to the very first communications – both written and oral – occurred between Venice and the subject communities after the explosion of the crisis.

IT: La crisi dell’Interdetto del 1606-1607, deflagrazione di secolari tensioni tra Venezia e il Papato, ha riscosso un ininterrotto interesse storiografico. A partire da questa tradizione di studi e dai più recenti contributi sull’argomento, la presente ricerca intende interrogarsi sul ruolo giocato nei frangenti della crisi dalle comunità sottoposte alla Serenissima. La scelta di papa Paolo V di vietare la celebrazione dei sacramenti nei domini della Repubblica in risposta a leggi lesive
della libertà ecclesiastica si riproponeva di sollevare i governati contro i governanti, ponendo la Serenissima di fronte al rischio di un collasso interno. La sanzione spirituale e la dimensione di “guerra delle scritture” assunta dal conflitto fecero dei sudditi della Serenissima degli interlocutori privilegiati per i Principi
in contesa. Il presente contributo intende analizzare forme e retoriche di questo dialogo a partire dall’analisi delle prime comunicazioni – scritte e orali – intercorse tra Venezia e le comunità suddite nei primissimi giorni della crisi.

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

The events which led to the Venetian Interdict crisis of 1606–1607 include the approval of a law on emphyteutic leases that was designed to limit the expansion of ecclesiastical property. The law was approved by the venetian Senate in order to answer to a petition: this sequence of events can therefore be used to evaluate the close proximity of the Venetian petitioning system to the decision-making process. The preparatory documents for the presentation of the petition, largely unpublished, will allow us to evaluate the profound dynamics
of the dialogue between Venice and its dominion, as well as the structures, institutions, rhetoric and practices – both formal and informal – deployed to this end.