The book discusses efforts made by the Quakers in mid-seventeenth century Italy as part of their initial missionary thrust. In the first chapter entitled “Quaccheri e papisti” [Quakers and Papists] Villani, after having described for the benefit of Italian readers the genesis and the first developments of the Quaker movement (par. I.1: “I Tremolanti”: this word, that can be literally translated with ‘Tremblers’ is the term most often used in seventeenth-century Italy to translate ‘Quakers’) describes their missionary work in Catholic countries, focusing particularly on on Italy (par. I.2: “Missioni quacchere in paesi cattolici” [Quaker missions in Catholic Countries]). In 1657, Beatrice Beckley, Mary Prince, Mary Fisher, John Perrot, John Luffe and John Buckley moved towards Jerusalem. Perrot and Luffe, went to Livorno and Venice and then to Rome with the intention to convert the Pope. Perrot was incarcerated for almost three years while Luffe died in prison. Thomas Hart, Charles Bayly and Jane Stokes traveled to Rome in those years trying to get Perrot released (and both Charles Bayly and Jane Stokes were imprisoned in 1661). In 1657, Elizabeth Harris and Elizabeth Cowart went to Venice. In 1658 Samuel Fisher and John Stubbs went to Venice and Rome. Almost everyone stopped in Livorno that was, at the time, one of the most important international ports and the British hub for the trade with the Levant. George Robinson also stopped in Livorno in the winter of 1657. In Livorno again, at the end of 1658 Sarah Cheevers and Katherine Evans stopped going on to Alexandria probably with the intention to reach Jerusalem. When their ship stopped in Malta they were arrested, tried and imprisoned by the Inquisition. Finally, in 1661, John Stubbs, Henry Fell, Daniel Baker and Richard Scosthrop, stopped there before going on to China. Villani highlights that this missionary activity in Catholic countries unfolded when the Quakers were being accused by English Protestants of holding opinions dangerously similar to Popish ones about universal grace, free will, justification by work and not by faith alone (par. I.3. “Le ranocchie papiste” [‘Popish frogs’]). The second chapter entitled “I quaccheri a Livorno” [Quakers in Leghorn] reconstructs in particular the passage of the Quakers in this city in August 1657 (par. II. 1. “I quaccheri a Livorno” [Quakers in Leghorn]) and Venice (par II. 2. “I quaccheri e la Serenissima” [Quakers and the Most Serene Republic]). Villani meticulously reconstructs the stay in Livorno in 1657 of the Quaker missionary group, the relationships they established there with some people like the French merchant Origen Marchant, and the reactions of the authorities to their presence. It is significant that the governor showed great curiosity and certain sympathy for them and that only through a fear that the Inquisition would start making trouble (“far strepito”) expelled them. The Quakers left Tuscany: two of them, Mary Fisher and Beatrice Beckley made their way to Adrianople, while Perrot and Luffe turned to Rome (their vicissitudes are discussed in Chapter Three: “...Correggere gli errori del mondo” (To correct the mistakes of the world). Both groups had a very ambitious project, which reveals the deep utopian impulse that characterized the first Quakers. Mary Fisher wanted to meet with the Sultan and Perrot with the Pope, almost certainly under the illusion of being able to convert them to the gospel of the Inner Light. On the meeting with the sultan at Adrianople there are so far only Quaker sources (and it is possible that Fisher had been deceived and instead of the Sultan had only met a senior official). However, it is significant that the woman was granted an audience and, after that, a safe-conduct (par. III.1 “La Fisher dal Sultano” [Fisher with the Sultan]). Perrot and Luffe were less fortunate. Upon arriving in Rome, they entered in contact with some English-speaking priests in the hope of obtaining an audience with Pope Alexander VII. As soon as their arrival was known, on the night between 8 and 9 June 1658, the Quakers were arrested (par. III.2. “Perrot e Luffe dal Papa” [Perrot and Luffe with the Pope]). Villani has found numerous Italian sources that refer to their arrest, including the personal diary of the Pope himself. After a three and a half month incarceration in the prison of the Inquisition Perrot was transferred to the lunatic asylum at Santa Maria della Pietà. Twenty days after his incarceration in the prisons of the Inquisition Luffe had died, probably due to what would now be termed a hunger strike. The cell of the asylum where Perrot was incarcerated, probably around the end of October 1658, was very small (about 10 feet by 13). Initially Perrot was chained to the wall by the neck. Three days after the neck chain was removed and another one at the foot less than 6 and half feet long was put on him that still allowed a certain freedom of movement (he could at least walk three steps away from the wall to which was fixed). Perrot remained chained for three and a half months, meaning throughout the winter (a very cold winter according to Perrot). During this period the poor Quaker was often beaten with a whip. Even after being freed from the chains Perrot was beaten several times with the same instrument. During his stay in the asylum Perrot wrote several books, addresses and letters, some of which were published even before his release. The detention of Perrot excited great sympathy among the Quakers. The Quaker Thomas Hart of London, probably even made a journey to Rome to help Perrot (there are some allusions to this possible journey among the documents preserved at the Friends’ Library of London). It was followed by Charles Stokes and Jane Bayly, who attempted to secure Perrot’s freedom. But these two Quakers were also arrested in the spring of 1661. For reasons not yet known were all released at the end of May: it is possible that they brought with them some letters from Charles II and we know that in London the Quakers had a close relationship with the Catholic Lord Almoner of Queen Henrietta Maria (par. III.3 . “I tentativi di liberare Perrot” [The attempts to free Perrot]). Villani goes on to examine Perrot’s vicissitudes after his release (Chapter 4. [Catholics and Quakers]). As we have already mentioned, during the long period of captivity Perrot had managed to secret some of his writings to England. One of these documents fueled much discussion among the English Quakers and eventually caused a deep rift within the movement. It was a letter stating that it was lawful for Quaker men to keep their hat on during prayer. Until then male Quakers used to pray bareheaded during worship while women had to remain veiled, which was in line with the whole Christian tradition and Scripture. Quakers refused resolutely to take off their hats as a form of greeting, a gesture of great and immediate anti-hierarchical and egalitarian significance that was theologically justified by saying that this habit was a form of idolatry: we took off our hat, as form of honor, just in front of God and not in front of men. Perrot’s position emphasized the freedom of the spirit (and was a symbolic rejection of the organizing process that the movement was experiencing). Perrot’s arrival in London was followed by painful controversies with the leaders of the movement (who perhaps feared the prestige that the “martyrdom” inflicted on him by the Inquisition had given him); Perrot ultimately left England for ever in the autumn of 1662. Before leaving, he was formally expelled from the movement (par. IV.1. “Perrot scismatico” [Perrot Schismatic]). Villani then examines the Catholic attitude towards Quakers. Among the texts mentioned by Villani there is Confusa Confessio Trementium seu Quackerorum a book published in Cologne in German, in 1666, by the Jesuit Theodore Rhay and the manuscript official report of the 1669 journey of the Grand Prince of Tuscany, Cosimo de’ Medici, in England. If Rhay reconstructed the Roman episode of Perrot, paradoxically using as a source one of the writings published by Perrot then more original is the chapter devoted to religion in the report of Cosimo’s travels in which there is an ample description of Quaker tenets. It is interesting that in this synthesis of the Friends’ doctrine critically proto-Enlightenment elements that will be always present in the subsequent history of the Society probably because inscribed in its origin are evidenced (par. IV.2. “Perrot e i cattolici” [Perrot and the Catholics]). Further research by Villani has identified in Anthony’s Bruodin Propugnaculum Catholicae Veritatis, published in Prague in 1669, as the main source for this digression on religion in England. In April 1658, while Perrot and Luffe were still in Venice, Samuel Fisher and John Stubbs arrived into the town after a journey through Holland and the Rhine Valley (Chapter 5. “Il Quacchero ‘Fessero’” [The Quaker ‘Fessero’]). Their mission was probably one of the most important made in those years in Italy, especially given the intellectual stature of the two Quakers who were among the most prominent members of the movement (Samuel Fisher, to whom not coincidentally Christopher Hill has devoted an entire chapter in his The World Turned Upside Down, is one of the few seventeenth-century Quakers who had studied at Oxford University and wrote a text of biblical exegesis which foreshadows the Enlightenment examination of the biblical texts). In Venice, the presence of the Quakers was denounced to the Inquisition and the investigations that followed, reconstructed on the basis of the papers preserved at the State Archives of Venice (par. V.1. “Samuel Fisher a Venezia” (Samuel Fisher in Venice) give us an idea of the propaganda activity developed by the Quakers in the city (the inquisitorial documents mention the people they met and some of the pamphlets they spread). Fisher and Stubbs then went to Rome. Significantly, upon their arrival in the city in July 1658, they came into contact with the Jewish community, which informed them of the arrest of Perrot and Luffe. The two apparently acted with more circumspection and were thus able to return to England (par. V.2. “Samuel Fisher a Roma” (Samuel Fisher in Rome). Villani then examines the anti-Catholic writings of the Quakers and those of Fisher in particular, highlighting how, in line with the Protestant propaganda of the time, the polemic focused on Catholic idolatry and against the anti-Christian figure of the Pope (par. V.3. “Roma vista dai quaccheri” [Rome seen by the Quakers]). Villani goes on to discuss two other Quaker missions in the Mediterranean (Chapter 6. “A Livorno e a Malta sulla strada per Gerusalemme” (In Leghorn and at Malta and on the way to Jerusalem). The first of George Robinson who left for Jerusalem in 1657 “to preach to Turks and Papists” (par. VI.1. “George Robinson in Terra Santa” [George Robinson in the Holy Land]) and the second of two Quaker women, Sarah Cheevers and Katherine Evans, who left England at the end of 1658 for Alexandria who, when their ship stopped in Malta, were arrested and tried by the Holy Office of the Island and remained in prison for more than three and half years (par. VI.2. “Il processo a Evans e Cheevers” [The Trial Against Evans and Cheevers]). The two Quakers during their detention were visited by their coreligionist, Daniel Baker, who, later in England activated a campaign of solidarity with them. Eventually the two Quakers were released in 1663, possibly thanks to the intervention of the Jansenist d’Aubigny, Lord Almoner to Queen Henrietta Maria (par. VI.3. “La prigionia e i tentativi di liberazione” (The detention and the attempt to Obtain the Release). Both Robinson’s mission and that of Evans and Cheevers will be subject to a more detailed examination by Villani in two monographs published after the discovery of new unpublished (and unknown) documents in Malta and Rome. Villani then briefly describes the Quaker missionary activities in the Mediterranean in the early 1660s: Chapter 7. “Una seconda missione verso l’Est” (A Second Mission Eastwards): par VII.1. A tutte le nazioni sotto la volta del cielo (To All Nations Under Heaven); par. VII.2. “Fell e Stubbs ad Alessandria” (Fell and Stubbs at Alexandria); par. 3. Baker e Scosthrop da Livorno a Smirne (Baker and Scosthrop from Leghorn to Smyrna). The last chapter (Chapter 8. “Epilogo” [Epilogue]) describes the exhaustion of the Quaker missionary impulse after the Restoration. Their last great missionary adventure on the Continent was probably that of John Philley and William Moore who went to Hungary in 1662, at the time a theater of war between Austria and Turkey. In fact, after the Restoration the Quakers faced fierce persecution which made it almost impossible to organize missions abroad. During the Interregnum the Quakers were often in bitter conflict with the authorities, but in those years the repression, which also saw episodes of unprecedented ferocity, was essentially episodic and never reached a mass level. With the Restoration a period of almost thirty years of persecution began during which the Quakers endured terrible sufferings: in the twenty five years following the Restoration between ten thousand and fifteen thousand Quakers were imprisoned and about four hundred of them died in prison or because of abuse. In this situation, the English Quakers obviously cared more about their survival than evangelization, nevertheless, even if after 1662 there were not any major overseas missions organized by the movement, some Quakers still went in the Mediterranean. On these expeditions, probably organized on a personal basis, we have little information, often confusing and sometimes unreliable (par. VIII.2. “I quaccheri nel Mediterraneo dopo il 1662” [The Quakers in the Mediterranean after 1662]). During the 1700s the Quakers no longer bothered with proselytism and future missions resumed only in 1800s (par. VIII.3. “Declino spirituale” [Spiritual Decline]). Villani finally makes an assessment of the results of Quaker missions to Italy. In general, the misunderstanding was complete, both on the part of Catholics and the Friends. The story of Quaker missions in Italy is the story of a bit of a missed encounter. The Quakers, as we have seen, did not understand the Catholics, whom judged to be corrupt idolaters, and were repaid by an equal lack of understanding. Catholics did not consider the ‘Tremolanti’ worthy of being taken seriously, “being effect of mere foolishness their dogmas,” as Cardinal Francesco Barberini wrote in 1659 to the Inquisitor of Malta. Even the Somascan father, Stefano Cosmo, who seemed to grasp the core of the doctrine of the Friends more than others, “which consisted chiefly in wanting to restore everything in the state of innocence in which Adam was made,” did not appreciate the relevance and importance of these statements. When his questions on the visible church and the Vicar of Christ, was replicated (perhaps by Fisher) “that Christ was visible by those who have Him in themselves,” he simply concluded that “[they] did not have deep understanding of matters of controversy.” One could perhaps say that the confrontation between those that Quakers defined Papists and those that Catholics called ‘Tremolanti’, symbolically represents the conflict between a culture founded on the principle of authority and a culture that instead prefigures and anticipates the Enlightenment (par. 1. “Un bilancio” [A Balance]). The second part of the book contains a transcript of some manuscripts of considerable interest: a few letters relating to the missions in Europe, preserved in the Friends’ Library of London, and the acts related to two processes: one held at the Holy Office of Venice and the other at that of Malta. An extensive bibliography follows. Massimo Rubboli called the book “a complete and comprehensive study” that has the merit “of having filled a gap in the panorama of seventeenth-century religious history” “combining a rigorous first-rate historiographic narrative with a gripping narrative.” Piercesare Bori wrote that “the book is fascinating for the liveliness of the narrative, for the amount of sources hitherto unknown or little used, for the documents published in full in the rich Appendix, and is very useful to know the phenomenon of the first Quaker mission to understand the forces that moved the movement in its missionary impulse” and “also to know the reactions of the Italian culture of the time, lacking the basis to understand this religious phenomenon.” Relying on Villani’s research, the Quaker missionary activity is mentioned in one of the most popular Italian university textbooks of early modern history as an example of what has been efficaciously defined the prophetic phase of the English Revolution, when the sects thought possible to reform the world according to radical justice of the Gospel (Adriano Prosperi, Dalla Rivoluzione inglese alla Rivoluzione Francese (Turin: Einaudi, 2000), 40). The events narrated in the book are interesting for the originality of the research that, for the first time, explored organically the theme of Quaker missions in Italy, often using unpublished sources completely unknown to the historians who, in the past tangentially studied this topic. It is characteristic of a certain Italian historiographical style of recent years to privilege more a sound scholarship based on the study of primary sources than to run after vague theoretical problems. The book, however, clearly, even implicitly, addresses some general issues of great importance. This research has an interest in the first place in the history of religion, because it shows Catholic Italy as a land of protestant mission, although by Protestants as atypical as the Quakers. We are on the threshold of what Hazard called the crisis of European consciousness and that in recent years has been the subject of research of many scholars (and primarily of Jonathan Israel). The Quakers, who believed that they could get any result based on the strength of their arguments, were part of the radical critique of the existing state of things that allowed to ferment those intellectual positions which, through Spinoza, have created the conditions of the Enlightenment (and it is not a coincidence that probably the first work by Spinoza was the Hebrew translation of a Quaker text). The utopian charge that pushed the Quakers to cross the Channel is understandable only considering it as the result of the enthusiasm caused by the first English revolution. With the beheading of Charles I everything seemed possible, even the conversion of the Pope and the Sultan. The Quaker missions thus indicate the desire for a revolutionary rebirth that would mark a new beginning for the history of mankind. It is no coincidence that the governor of Livorno, announcing their arrival in the city said explicitly that their aspiration was to “correct the mistakes of the world.” The fact that most of the missionaries were often poorly educated had never left their village before taking these dangerous journeys abroad further confirms how the events of those years (the civil wars, the beheading of Charles I, the advent of a republican regime in England) were perceived by the lower population as revolutionary events (this element is currently greatly undervalued by revisionist historiography that interprets the English events of those years only as a chapter in a long-lasting war among the three British kingdoms). The Quakerism of the origins had two souls, one more institutional that theologically will lead to an evolution in a Pietist direction of the religious thought of the movement, and one that, emphasizing the action of the spirit within each man and woman, was characterized by the fierce criticism of any form of control and by a strong egalitarianism (Perrot in his letters from prison used the ‘thou’ form in addressing the Pope). Many of the Quaker missionaries did not casually uphold the second position. The stubbornness with which the Quakers held their hats in front of any authority and rejected the use of the forms of courtesy, became the known as signs of their loyalty to the belief in equality of all men and women and of their rejection of hierarchy, exactly the opposite of that justification and defense of the existing social order upheld by the Catholic hierarchy of the time. The study of their missionary activity is therefore important to understand the genesis of the conflicts among the first Quakers, conflicts that in recent years have been the focus of historical reflection by the several scholars who have studied the origins of the movement, in a prospective very different from the classical one.

Tremolanti e Papisti. Missioni quacchere nell’Italia del Seicento

VILLANI, STEFANO
1996-01-01

Abstract

The book discusses efforts made by the Quakers in mid-seventeenth century Italy as part of their initial missionary thrust. In the first chapter entitled “Quaccheri e papisti” [Quakers and Papists] Villani, after having described for the benefit of Italian readers the genesis and the first developments of the Quaker movement (par. I.1: “I Tremolanti”: this word, that can be literally translated with ‘Tremblers’ is the term most often used in seventeenth-century Italy to translate ‘Quakers’) describes their missionary work in Catholic countries, focusing particularly on on Italy (par. I.2: “Missioni quacchere in paesi cattolici” [Quaker missions in Catholic Countries]). In 1657, Beatrice Beckley, Mary Prince, Mary Fisher, John Perrot, John Luffe and John Buckley moved towards Jerusalem. Perrot and Luffe, went to Livorno and Venice and then to Rome with the intention to convert the Pope. Perrot was incarcerated for almost three years while Luffe died in prison. Thomas Hart, Charles Bayly and Jane Stokes traveled to Rome in those years trying to get Perrot released (and both Charles Bayly and Jane Stokes were imprisoned in 1661). In 1657, Elizabeth Harris and Elizabeth Cowart went to Venice. In 1658 Samuel Fisher and John Stubbs went to Venice and Rome. Almost everyone stopped in Livorno that was, at the time, one of the most important international ports and the British hub for the trade with the Levant. George Robinson also stopped in Livorno in the winter of 1657. In Livorno again, at the end of 1658 Sarah Cheevers and Katherine Evans stopped going on to Alexandria probably with the intention to reach Jerusalem. When their ship stopped in Malta they were arrested, tried and imprisoned by the Inquisition. Finally, in 1661, John Stubbs, Henry Fell, Daniel Baker and Richard Scosthrop, stopped there before going on to China. Villani highlights that this missionary activity in Catholic countries unfolded when the Quakers were being accused by English Protestants of holding opinions dangerously similar to Popish ones about universal grace, free will, justification by work and not by faith alone (par. I.3. “Le ranocchie papiste” [‘Popish frogs’]). The second chapter entitled “I quaccheri a Livorno” [Quakers in Leghorn] reconstructs in particular the passage of the Quakers in this city in August 1657 (par. II. 1. “I quaccheri a Livorno” [Quakers in Leghorn]) and Venice (par II. 2. “I quaccheri e la Serenissima” [Quakers and the Most Serene Republic]). Villani meticulously reconstructs the stay in Livorno in 1657 of the Quaker missionary group, the relationships they established there with some people like the French merchant Origen Marchant, and the reactions of the authorities to their presence. It is significant that the governor showed great curiosity and certain sympathy for them and that only through a fear that the Inquisition would start making trouble (“far strepito”) expelled them. The Quakers left Tuscany: two of them, Mary Fisher and Beatrice Beckley made their way to Adrianople, while Perrot and Luffe turned to Rome (their vicissitudes are discussed in Chapter Three: “...Correggere gli errori del mondo” (To correct the mistakes of the world). Both groups had a very ambitious project, which reveals the deep utopian impulse that characterized the first Quakers. Mary Fisher wanted to meet with the Sultan and Perrot with the Pope, almost certainly under the illusion of being able to convert them to the gospel of the Inner Light. On the meeting with the sultan at Adrianople there are so far only Quaker sources (and it is possible that Fisher had been deceived and instead of the Sultan had only met a senior official). However, it is significant that the woman was granted an audience and, after that, a safe-conduct (par. III.1 “La Fisher dal Sultano” [Fisher with the Sultan]). Perrot and Luffe were less fortunate. Upon arriving in Rome, they entered in contact with some English-speaking priests in the hope of obtaining an audience with Pope Alexander VII. As soon as their arrival was known, on the night between 8 and 9 June 1658, the Quakers were arrested (par. III.2. “Perrot e Luffe dal Papa” [Perrot and Luffe with the Pope]). Villani has found numerous Italian sources that refer to their arrest, including the personal diary of the Pope himself. After a three and a half month incarceration in the prison of the Inquisition Perrot was transferred to the lunatic asylum at Santa Maria della Pietà. Twenty days after his incarceration in the prisons of the Inquisition Luffe had died, probably due to what would now be termed a hunger strike. The cell of the asylum where Perrot was incarcerated, probably around the end of October 1658, was very small (about 10 feet by 13). Initially Perrot was chained to the wall by the neck. Three days after the neck chain was removed and another one at the foot less than 6 and half feet long was put on him that still allowed a certain freedom of movement (he could at least walk three steps away from the wall to which was fixed). Perrot remained chained for three and a half months, meaning throughout the winter (a very cold winter according to Perrot). During this period the poor Quaker was often beaten with a whip. Even after being freed from the chains Perrot was beaten several times with the same instrument. During his stay in the asylum Perrot wrote several books, addresses and letters, some of which were published even before his release. The detention of Perrot excited great sympathy among the Quakers. The Quaker Thomas Hart of London, probably even made a journey to Rome to help Perrot (there are some allusions to this possible journey among the documents preserved at the Friends’ Library of London). It was followed by Charles Stokes and Jane Bayly, who attempted to secure Perrot’s freedom. But these two Quakers were also arrested in the spring of 1661. For reasons not yet known were all released at the end of May: it is possible that they brought with them some letters from Charles II and we know that in London the Quakers had a close relationship with the Catholic Lord Almoner of Queen Henrietta Maria (par. III.3 . “I tentativi di liberare Perrot” [The attempts to free Perrot]). Villani goes on to examine Perrot’s vicissitudes after his release (Chapter 4. [Catholics and Quakers]). As we have already mentioned, during the long period of captivity Perrot had managed to secret some of his writings to England. One of these documents fueled much discussion among the English Quakers and eventually caused a deep rift within the movement. It was a letter stating that it was lawful for Quaker men to keep their hat on during prayer. Until then male Quakers used to pray bareheaded during worship while women had to remain veiled, which was in line with the whole Christian tradition and Scripture. Quakers refused resolutely to take off their hats as a form of greeting, a gesture of great and immediate anti-hierarchical and egalitarian significance that was theologically justified by saying that this habit was a form of idolatry: we took off our hat, as form of honor, just in front of God and not in front of men. Perrot’s position emphasized the freedom of the spirit (and was a symbolic rejection of the organizing process that the movement was experiencing). Perrot’s arrival in London was followed by painful controversies with the leaders of the movement (who perhaps feared the prestige that the “martyrdom” inflicted on him by the Inquisition had given him); Perrot ultimately left England for ever in the autumn of 1662. Before leaving, he was formally expelled from the movement (par. IV.1. “Perrot scismatico” [Perrot Schismatic]). Villani then examines the Catholic attitude towards Quakers. Among the texts mentioned by Villani there is Confusa Confessio Trementium seu Quackerorum a book published in Cologne in German, in 1666, by the Jesuit Theodore Rhay and the manuscript official report of the 1669 journey of the Grand Prince of Tuscany, Cosimo de’ Medici, in England. If Rhay reconstructed the Roman episode of Perrot, paradoxically using as a source one of the writings published by Perrot then more original is the chapter devoted to religion in the report of Cosimo’s travels in which there is an ample description of Quaker tenets. It is interesting that in this synthesis of the Friends’ doctrine critically proto-Enlightenment elements that will be always present in the subsequent history of the Society probably because inscribed in its origin are evidenced (par. IV.2. “Perrot e i cattolici” [Perrot and the Catholics]). Further research by Villani has identified in Anthony’s Bruodin Propugnaculum Catholicae Veritatis, published in Prague in 1669, as the main source for this digression on religion in England. In April 1658, while Perrot and Luffe were still in Venice, Samuel Fisher and John Stubbs arrived into the town after a journey through Holland and the Rhine Valley (Chapter 5. “Il Quacchero ‘Fessero’” [The Quaker ‘Fessero’]). Their mission was probably one of the most important made in those years in Italy, especially given the intellectual stature of the two Quakers who were among the most prominent members of the movement (Samuel Fisher, to whom not coincidentally Christopher Hill has devoted an entire chapter in his The World Turned Upside Down, is one of the few seventeenth-century Quakers who had studied at Oxford University and wrote a text of biblical exegesis which foreshadows the Enlightenment examination of the biblical texts). In Venice, the presence of the Quakers was denounced to the Inquisition and the investigations that followed, reconstructed on the basis of the papers preserved at the State Archives of Venice (par. V.1. “Samuel Fisher a Venezia” (Samuel Fisher in Venice) give us an idea of the propaganda activity developed by the Quakers in the city (the inquisitorial documents mention the people they met and some of the pamphlets they spread). Fisher and Stubbs then went to Rome. Significantly, upon their arrival in the city in July 1658, they came into contact with the Jewish community, which informed them of the arrest of Perrot and Luffe. The two apparently acted with more circumspection and were thus able to return to England (par. V.2. “Samuel Fisher a Roma” (Samuel Fisher in Rome). Villani then examines the anti-Catholic writings of the Quakers and those of Fisher in particular, highlighting how, in line with the Protestant propaganda of the time, the polemic focused on Catholic idolatry and against the anti-Christian figure of the Pope (par. V.3. “Roma vista dai quaccheri” [Rome seen by the Quakers]). Villani goes on to discuss two other Quaker missions in the Mediterranean (Chapter 6. “A Livorno e a Malta sulla strada per Gerusalemme” (In Leghorn and at Malta and on the way to Jerusalem). The first of George Robinson who left for Jerusalem in 1657 “to preach to Turks and Papists” (par. VI.1. “George Robinson in Terra Santa” [George Robinson in the Holy Land]) and the second of two Quaker women, Sarah Cheevers and Katherine Evans, who left England at the end of 1658 for Alexandria who, when their ship stopped in Malta, were arrested and tried by the Holy Office of the Island and remained in prison for more than three and half years (par. VI.2. “Il processo a Evans e Cheevers” [The Trial Against Evans and Cheevers]). The two Quakers during their detention were visited by their coreligionist, Daniel Baker, who, later in England activated a campaign of solidarity with them. Eventually the two Quakers were released in 1663, possibly thanks to the intervention of the Jansenist d’Aubigny, Lord Almoner to Queen Henrietta Maria (par. VI.3. “La prigionia e i tentativi di liberazione” (The detention and the attempt to Obtain the Release). Both Robinson’s mission and that of Evans and Cheevers will be subject to a more detailed examination by Villani in two monographs published after the discovery of new unpublished (and unknown) documents in Malta and Rome. Villani then briefly describes the Quaker missionary activities in the Mediterranean in the early 1660s: Chapter 7. “Una seconda missione verso l’Est” (A Second Mission Eastwards): par VII.1. A tutte le nazioni sotto la volta del cielo (To All Nations Under Heaven); par. VII.2. “Fell e Stubbs ad Alessandria” (Fell and Stubbs at Alexandria); par. 3. Baker e Scosthrop da Livorno a Smirne (Baker and Scosthrop from Leghorn to Smyrna). The last chapter (Chapter 8. “Epilogo” [Epilogue]) describes the exhaustion of the Quaker missionary impulse after the Restoration. Their last great missionary adventure on the Continent was probably that of John Philley and William Moore who went to Hungary in 1662, at the time a theater of war between Austria and Turkey. In fact, after the Restoration the Quakers faced fierce persecution which made it almost impossible to organize missions abroad. During the Interregnum the Quakers were often in bitter conflict with the authorities, but in those years the repression, which also saw episodes of unprecedented ferocity, was essentially episodic and never reached a mass level. With the Restoration a period of almost thirty years of persecution began during which the Quakers endured terrible sufferings: in the twenty five years following the Restoration between ten thousand and fifteen thousand Quakers were imprisoned and about four hundred of them died in prison or because of abuse. In this situation, the English Quakers obviously cared more about their survival than evangelization, nevertheless, even if after 1662 there were not any major overseas missions organized by the movement, some Quakers still went in the Mediterranean. On these expeditions, probably organized on a personal basis, we have little information, often confusing and sometimes unreliable (par. VIII.2. “I quaccheri nel Mediterraneo dopo il 1662” [The Quakers in the Mediterranean after 1662]). During the 1700s the Quakers no longer bothered with proselytism and future missions resumed only in 1800s (par. VIII.3. “Declino spirituale” [Spiritual Decline]). Villani finally makes an assessment of the results of Quaker missions to Italy. In general, the misunderstanding was complete, both on the part of Catholics and the Friends. The story of Quaker missions in Italy is the story of a bit of a missed encounter. The Quakers, as we have seen, did not understand the Catholics, whom judged to be corrupt idolaters, and were repaid by an equal lack of understanding. Catholics did not consider the ‘Tremolanti’ worthy of being taken seriously, “being effect of mere foolishness their dogmas,” as Cardinal Francesco Barberini wrote in 1659 to the Inquisitor of Malta. Even the Somascan father, Stefano Cosmo, who seemed to grasp the core of the doctrine of the Friends more than others, “which consisted chiefly in wanting to restore everything in the state of innocence in which Adam was made,” did not appreciate the relevance and importance of these statements. When his questions on the visible church and the Vicar of Christ, was replicated (perhaps by Fisher) “that Christ was visible by those who have Him in themselves,” he simply concluded that “[they] did not have deep understanding of matters of controversy.” One could perhaps say that the confrontation between those that Quakers defined Papists and those that Catholics called ‘Tremolanti’, symbolically represents the conflict between a culture founded on the principle of authority and a culture that instead prefigures and anticipates the Enlightenment (par. 1. “Un bilancio” [A Balance]). The second part of the book contains a transcript of some manuscripts of considerable interest: a few letters relating to the missions in Europe, preserved in the Friends’ Library of London, and the acts related to two processes: one held at the Holy Office of Venice and the other at that of Malta. An extensive bibliography follows. Massimo Rubboli called the book “a complete and comprehensive study” that has the merit “of having filled a gap in the panorama of seventeenth-century religious history” “combining a rigorous first-rate historiographic narrative with a gripping narrative.” Piercesare Bori wrote that “the book is fascinating for the liveliness of the narrative, for the amount of sources hitherto unknown or little used, for the documents published in full in the rich Appendix, and is very useful to know the phenomenon of the first Quaker mission to understand the forces that moved the movement in its missionary impulse” and “also to know the reactions of the Italian culture of the time, lacking the basis to understand this religious phenomenon.” Relying on Villani’s research, the Quaker missionary activity is mentioned in one of the most popular Italian university textbooks of early modern history as an example of what has been efficaciously defined the prophetic phase of the English Revolution, when the sects thought possible to reform the world according to radical justice of the Gospel (Adriano Prosperi, Dalla Rivoluzione inglese alla Rivoluzione Francese (Turin: Einaudi, 2000), 40). The events narrated in the book are interesting for the originality of the research that, for the first time, explored organically the theme of Quaker missions in Italy, often using unpublished sources completely unknown to the historians who, in the past tangentially studied this topic. It is characteristic of a certain Italian historiographical style of recent years to privilege more a sound scholarship based on the study of primary sources than to run after vague theoretical problems. The book, however, clearly, even implicitly, addresses some general issues of great importance. This research has an interest in the first place in the history of religion, because it shows Catholic Italy as a land of protestant mission, although by Protestants as atypical as the Quakers. We are on the threshold of what Hazard called the crisis of European consciousness and that in recent years has been the subject of research of many scholars (and primarily of Jonathan Israel). The Quakers, who believed that they could get any result based on the strength of their arguments, were part of the radical critique of the existing state of things that allowed to ferment those intellectual positions which, through Spinoza, have created the conditions of the Enlightenment (and it is not a coincidence that probably the first work by Spinoza was the Hebrew translation of a Quaker text). The utopian charge that pushed the Quakers to cross the Channel is understandable only considering it as the result of the enthusiasm caused by the first English revolution. With the beheading of Charles I everything seemed possible, even the conversion of the Pope and the Sultan. The Quaker missions thus indicate the desire for a revolutionary rebirth that would mark a new beginning for the history of mankind. It is no coincidence that the governor of Livorno, announcing their arrival in the city said explicitly that their aspiration was to “correct the mistakes of the world.” The fact that most of the missionaries were often poorly educated had never left their village before taking these dangerous journeys abroad further confirms how the events of those years (the civil wars, the beheading of Charles I, the advent of a republican regime in England) were perceived by the lower population as revolutionary events (this element is currently greatly undervalued by revisionist historiography that interprets the English events of those years only as a chapter in a long-lasting war among the three British kingdoms). The Quakerism of the origins had two souls, one more institutional that theologically will lead to an evolution in a Pietist direction of the religious thought of the movement, and one that, emphasizing the action of the spirit within each man and woman, was characterized by the fierce criticism of any form of control and by a strong egalitarianism (Perrot in his letters from prison used the ‘thou’ form in addressing the Pope). Many of the Quaker missionaries did not casually uphold the second position. The stubbornness with which the Quakers held their hats in front of any authority and rejected the use of the forms of courtesy, became the known as signs of their loyalty to the belief in equality of all men and women and of their rejection of hierarchy, exactly the opposite of that justification and defense of the existing social order upheld by the Catholic hierarchy of the time. The study of their missionary activity is therefore important to understand the genesis of the conflicts among the first Quakers, conflicts that in recent years have been the focus of historical reflection by the several scholars who have studied the origins of the movement, in a prospective very different from the classical one.
1996
Villani, Stefano
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11568/52009
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