Censoring Science in Sixteenth-Century Italy: Recent (and Not-So-Recent) Research

Science, Religion, and Italy's Seventeenth‐century Decline: From Francesco De Sanctis to Benedetto Croce

“…For example, in their hugely important collection of documents from the archives of the Inquisition and the Index, Ugo Baldini and Leen Spruit use their research to critique the proposition that the Church suppressed science in Italy (Baldini and Spruit , 69–91). Furthermore, as I have noted elsewhere, vestiges of the arguments developed within the liberal tradition remain within surveys of the history of science in early modern Italy (Tarrant , 8–9). Gregory Hanlon, for example, has observed that there is still truth in the idea that the Church destroyed Italy's promising start in science (Hanlon , 252).…”

“…Events such as the burning of Bruno and the trial of Galileo prevented Italian intellectuals from developing and discussing new ideas. Since Italians no longer enjoyed the liberty to think freely, their homeland entered into a period of intellectual, cultural, and political decline, which persisted until the nineteenth century (Grilli , 360; Tarrant , 4–7; Tarrant , 364–67).…”

“…By c.1575, these institutions had successfully completed their task, but, rather than disbanding, they extended their vigilance to all areas of human existence, including those beyond their immediate purview such as social mores, art, literature, and philosophy. The Church's unprecedented, and indeed unwarranted, actions had a calamitous effect: suppressing free philosophical expression for generations to come (Firpo , 152–53; Tarrant , 4–9).…”

“…I have also suggested that although diverse—at times contradictory—and serving differing political agendas, the work of scholars such as Bertrando Spaventa (1817–1883), Silvio Spaventa (1822–1893), Giovanni Gentile (1875–1944), Delio Cantimori (1904–1966), and Luigi Firpo (1915–1989) constituted part of an Italian liberal historiographical tradition (Tarrant , 362–63). Although they were not usually concerned directly with science, the work of historians such as Firpo—who analyzed the Church's impact on philosophy—has been co‐opted into Anglophone history of science and used to make the narrower case that, after a promising start, Italy's scientific development was cut short by the actions of the Catholic Church (Tarrant , 4–9).…”

La censura inquisitorial en las Centurias de Amatus Lusitanus

“…After the Council of Trent, a new version, with the title Index Librorum Prohibitorum, was published in 1564, under Pope Pius IV. It contained several rules for intellectual control whose main motivation was to limit the Lutheran influence (Tarrant, 2014). In 1607, at the time of Paul V, an Expurgatory Index was published in Rome.…”