Venice's Hidden Enemies: Italian Heretics in a Renaissance City - Softcover

Martin, John Jeffries

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0801878772 ISBN 13: 9780801878770

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004

Synopsis

Winner of the Herbert Baxter Adams Prize of the American Historical Association

Renaissance Venice is generally portrayed as a city of harmony and consensus. This book offers a sharply different view by highlighting the history of religious dissent in this early modern city. Drawing on sixteenth-century records from archives of the Roman Inquisition, John Jeffries Martin reconstructs the social and cultural worlds of the Venetian heretics―those men and women who articulated their hopes for religious and political reform. Among them were Evangelists, Protestants, Anabaptists, Antitrinitarians, and Millenarians, whose ideologies ranged from moderate to radical. The protagonists included men and women from all social classes; but artisans, above all those in the elite crafts, proved especially likely to give their support to the new reform ideas. Martin's analysis, which explores the interconnections of religious beliefs and social experience, offers new perspectives on the Italian Reformation and demonstrates widespread persistent popular support for this reform of church and society well after the establishment of the Roman Inquisition in the 1540s.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"At last the religious nonconformists of Reformation Italy have been resurrected by a master historian. Allowing them to speak in their own words, not just those of the theologians who inspired them or the inquisitors who interrogated them, Martin nimbly recreates the social world of the Italian evangelicals, anabaptists, and millenarians. . . . One of the most successful blendings of social and religious history yet achieved."--Edward Muir, Louisiana State University

"Martin upsets the artificial boundaries between Renaissance and baroque Italy and forces historians to rethink larger questions of the period."--R. Po-chia Hsia, New York University

"Martin skillfully navigates the intricate channels of shifting religious commitments and social interests, archival records and a rich historiography, large historical changes and individual experiences. A model of synthesis of social and cultural history, and the best case study we have so far on the challenge of the sixteenth-century religious crisis in Italy."--Randolph Starn, Univrsity of California, Berkeley

About the Author:

John Jeffries Martin is a professor of history at Trinity University, the editor of The Renaissance: Italy and Abroad and co-editor of Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State, 1297–1797, also available from Johns Hopkins.

About this edition

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0801878772
• ISBN 13: 9780801878770
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304