Veneto

How to Accept the Unacceptable: Blasphemy and Atheism in the Judicial Practice of the Roman Inquisition in the Seventeenth Century

It is not possible to write the history of blasphemy, anticlericalism and religious scepticism in the Early Modern period without taking into consideration the variety of their different manifestations (not only words but also gestures), as well as the lexibility of the boundary separating blasphemy as an emotional outburst from blasphemy as a conscious act of rebellion against the Church as an institution and God as an idea. The author investigates these issues by looking at materials of the Republic of Venice in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.