In the latter half of the sixteenth century the Roman Inquisition developed criteria to prosecute a series of operative arts, including various forms of divination and magic. Its officials had little interest in alchemy. During that period the Roman Inquisition tried few people for practising alchemy, and it was rarely discussed in official documents. Justifications for prosecuting alchemists did exist, however. In his influential handbook, Directorium inquisitorum, the fourteenth-century inquisitor Nicholas Eymerich had developed a clear rationale for the investigation and prosecution of alchemists as heretics. His position was endorsed in the 1570s by Francisco Peña in his commentary on Eymerich's handbook. In this article I explore the reasons why alchemy held this ambiguous status. I argue that members of the Dominican Order developed two traditions of thinking about alchemy from Aquinas's thought. The first, and closest to Aquinas's own belief, held that alchemy was a natural art that posed no danger to the Christian faith. The second, developed by Eymerich from a selective reading of Aquinas's writings, indicated specific circumstances in which alchemists could be investigated. The Roman Inquisition's response to alchemy vacillated between the positions advocated by Aquinas and Eymerich.
Historians have often argued that from the mid‐sixteenth century onward Italian science began to decline. This development is often attributed to the actions of the so‐called Counter‐Reformation Church, which had grown increasingly intolerant of novel ideas. In this article, I argue that this interpretation of the history of science is derived from an Italian liberal historiographical tradition, which linked the history of Italian philosophy to the development of the modern Italian state. I suggest that although historians of science have appropriated parts of this distinctive narrative to underpin their account of Italy's seventeenth‐century scientific decline, they have not always fully appreciated its complexity. In this article, I consider the work of two scholars, Francesco de Sanctis and Benedetto Croce. Both explicitly suggested that although the actions of the Church caused Italy to enter into a period of decline, they in fact argued that science represented one of the few areas in which Italian intellectual life actually continued to thrive.
religious pluralism (which have eroded somewhat the need to protect religious groups from one another).One minor shortcoming of the book, which perhaps stems from unavoidable space limitations, is that it does not engage with the historiography as well as it could have. To be sure, its legal discussions are superb, referencing when appropriate the scholarship of acknowledged experts such as Philip Hamburger. However, I think that its discussion of the religious diversity of the Thirteen Colonies would have benefitted from a little more depth and incisiveness. In my view, Green does not devote sufficient space to states' rights and their contribution to separationism (though, as noted, I commend him for highlighting Jefferson's and Madison's opposition to state religious establishments). David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed (1989) persuasively illustrates how the cultural differences between the statesreligion includedmade them determined to maintain their independence by emphasising states' rights. Separationism at the federal level was, I think, a consequence of this desire for liberty. I was surprised that Fischer's famous study does not feature prominently in Green's work and consider this neglect symptomatic of Green's somewhat minimalist discussion of states' rights.Nevertheless, as noted, I consider this shortcoming a minor one. Overall, the book is a worthy and timely contribution to the study of church-state relations in the United States. I expect that it will serve as a valuable reference work for years to come, and I look forward to reading any future publications of the author about this subject.
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