Venice's Hidden Enemies

by Martin, John Jeffries

• ISBN13: 9780801878770
• ISBN10: 0801878772
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-09-16
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr

Summary

Renaissance Venice is generally portrayed as a city of harmony and consensus. This book offers a sharply different view by highlighting the history of religious dissent in this early modern city. Drawing on sixteenth-century records from archives of the Roman Inquisition, John Jeffries Martin reconstructs the social and cultural worlds of the Venetian heretics -- those men and women who articulated their hopes for religious and political reform. Among them were Evangelists, Protestants, Anabaptists, Antitrinitarians, and Millenarians, whose ideologies ranged from moderate to radical. The protagonists included men and women from all social classes; but artisans, above all those in the elite crafts, proved especially likely to give their support to the new reform ideas. Martin's analysis, which explores the interconnections of religious beliefs and social experience, offers new perspectives on the Italian Reformation and demonstrates widespread persistent popular support for this reform of church and society well after the establishment of the Roman Inquisition in the 1540s.

Author Biography

John Jeffries Martin is a professor of history at Trinity University, the editor of The Renaissance: Italy and Abroad and co-editor of Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State, 1297--1797, also available from Johns Hopkins.

Table of Contents

Preface to the Johns Hopkins Edition	ix
Introduction: Salvation and Society in Sixteenth-Century Venice	1	(22)
A Republic Between Renaissance and Reform	23	(26)
The Coming of the Inquisition	49	(22)
Evangelism and the Emergence of Popular Reform	71	(26)
The Humanity of Christ and the Hope for the Messiah	97	(26)
Hiding	123	(24)
The Place of Heresy in a Hierarchical Society	147	(32)
The Turn of the Screw	179	(18)
Two Horsemen of the Apocalypse	197	(20)
Epilogue: The Final Executions	217	(18)
Appendix: A Note on the Quantitative Study of the Inquisition	235	(14)
Sources and Bibliography: Heresy and Reform in Sixteenth-Century Italy	249	(24)
General Index	273	(10)
Index of Secondary Authors	283