Protestanti a Livorno nella prima età moderna

[Protestants in Livorno in the Early Modern Period]. Basing largely on his own earlier research, Villani argues that the Roman Catholic religious authorities in Livorno sought to prevent the rise of a rustic Latitudinarianism. After reconstructing the conflicts between Protestant resident foreigners in Livorno in the early modern period, the text goes on to explore the denial of any form of public Protestant worship, including denying them permission to fence their cemeteries. In the 1500s, the Friulan miller Domenico Scandella, also known as Menocchio, became aware of beliefs and customs different from his own after reading Sir John Mandeville’s fantastic descriptions of distant lands and began to question the foundations of his own beliefs and customs. The discovery that there were “many different kinds of nations, some believe in one way, some in another” gave to Menocchio what Carlo Ginzburg has efficaciously defined as “a relativistic shock,” almost identical to that that which Montaigne suffered reading reports on the natives of the New World. The Inquisitors of Pisa feared that somebody in Leghorn, seeing so many different religions and manifestations of faiths, could suffer a similar relativistic shock. Essentially, they feared that the conviction that ideas and ways of life that diverged from the traditional and those sanctioned by the authorities could be equally valid could spontaneously emerge. Even more dangerous was the possibility that a conviction could spread that liturgical practices and ecclesiastical organization were of secondary importance.