On the Origins of Enlightenment: The Fruits of Migration in the Italian Liberal Historiographical Tradition

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

“…By reading these works, the Neapolitan Hegelians sought to make sense of the condition of contemporary Italy, and to construct a program for future action. The restoration of intellectual liberty and the establishment of a viable philosophical culture could restore Italy's fortunes once more (Grilli , 353–58; Tarrant , 364–65).…”

“…The adoption of German thought nevertheless remained contentious within nineteenth‐century Italy. Spaventa therefore constructed his history to serve two ends: first, to justify his use of what were, to his critics at least, foreign traditions of thought; and second, to develop a compelling account of Italy's intellectual history as a means to explain its stalled social and political development (Grilli , 362; Tarrant , 364–67).…”

“…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).…”

“…Above all, they stressed that the Italian Renaissance had indeed pointed the way toward modernity, but from the mid‐sixteenth century the Church began to create an environment in which free thought was no longer possible. Cantimori's most celebrated work, Eretici italiani del cinquecento , traced the diaspora of Italian radical thinkers forced to seek exile in Northern Europe and its intellectual consequences (Cantimori [1939] ; Tarrant , 371–75). Firpo, meanwhile, reconstructed the situation in Italy, offering a series of studies that described the trials and condemnations of figures including Bruno, Telesio, Francesco Patrizi (1529–1597), and Galileo (Firpo , , ).…”

“…As I have argued elsewhere, this narrative originated in the writings of a series of Italian historians and philosophers active from the mid‐nineteenth to the mid‐twentieth centuries. 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).…”