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Abstract
The paper examines the history of relations between the Roman Inquisition and the societies of the Venetian Ionian Islands. Specifically, it studies cases of arrest or accusation to the Inquisition of subjects of the Republic of Venice residing permanently or displaying in the Ionian region delinquent behaviour on issues relating to faith during the period οf the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries. Besides the definition of the divergent ideas embraced or propagated by the accused as well as their deviant behaviours and practices, principal issues investigated are on the one hand the role and the policies of the State authorities regarding religious dissent and its repression, and on the other the perception of the Roman Inquisition by the local societies and the reflections of its function in the social domain.
Notes
1. The bibliography is to be found in the following studies: Birtachas, “Η δικαιοδοσία της Ιεράς Εξέτασης”; Birtachas, “Οι ελληνορθόδοξοι βενετοί υπήκοοι ανάμεσα στη Ρώμη και στη Βενετία”, chapter 2.1; Birtachas, “Le idee della Riforma”; Birtachas, “Διανόηση, αίρεση και καταστολή”; Birtachas, “Μορφές πρόσληψης της Μεταρρύθμισης”; Birtachas, “Ουμανισμός, Μεταρρύθμιση και Αντιμεταρρύθμιση”. See Chayes, “Carriers, Companions, Accomplices”; Ambrosini, “Inquietudini religiose”; Chayes, “Ciprioti fuorisciti riformati”. Note that both Chayes and Ambrosini ignore my previously mentioned studies, “Μορφές πρόσληψης της Μεταρρύθμισης” and “Ουμανισμός, Μεταρρύθμιση και Αντιμεταρρύθμιση”, which pertain to the same subject, i.e., the trials of the Cypriot philo-Protestants Franzin and Pier Paolo Singlitico, and Andrea and Marco Zaccaria.
2. Tedeschi and Monter, “Verso un profilo”, 70, 252–3 n. 8; Del Col, L’Inquisizione in Italia, 342–94.
3. See, for example, the cases of the Dominican friar Lorenzo di Orseti da Bergamo, as well as of the Dominican Priors Provincial Giordano Calepio and Vincenzo da Lugo. The friar served as Vicar of the Latin Archbishop and inquisitor in Cyprus, while the priors, apart from supervising the monasteries and the monks of their Order, had been appointed as inquisitors in Cyprus and in Crete respectively. Archivio di Stato di Venezia (hereafter: ASV), Senato, Deliberazioni, Mar, reg. 29, fols. 138r–v (olim 117r–v), 27 September 1547; ASV, Consiglio di dieci, Deliberazioni, Secrete, reg. 6, fols. 105r–v, 28 September 1553, and filza 8, attached documents on the deliberation; ASV, Savi all’eresia (Sant’Uffizio), b. 27, “Marà Emanuelle, Cassimati Giovanni, Gentile Francesco”, letter from the Bishop of Sitia Gaspare Viviani and the inquisitor of Crete Vincenzo da Lugo to the Venetian Holy Office, 5 April 1569. I am currently preparing the publication of the proceedings of this trial of Ioannis Cassimatis, Francesco Gentile and Manussos Maras of Crete.
4. Konomos, Ζάκυνθος, 26; Panaghiotopulu, “Πατριαρχικά γράμματα”, 331.
5. Panaghiotopulu, “Πατριαρχικά γράμματα”, 342.
6. The real presence of “atheism” in the society and culture of the early-modern age is still under discussion. Muir, Guerre culturali, 51 and n. 40; Barbierato, The Inquisitor in the Hat Shop, xxiv and n. 4. cf. Davidson, “Unbelief and Atheism in Italy, 1500–1700”.
7. For the Bonafès case, see Panaghiotopulu, “Πατριαρχικά γράμματα”, where the trial proceedings are published. Cf. Tsiknakis, “Η συνεργασία του Ιωάννη Μποναφέ”.
8. He was elected on 5 September 1568, assumed duties on 27 Μarch 1569 and remained in office until 7 Μarch 1571. According to Zapanti, after his term of service ended he remained on the island where he died on 25 July 1571. Zapanti, Κεφαλονιά 1500–1571, 84.
9. For this family of Venetian provenance in the aristocracy of Cephalonia and its involvement in the local administration, see Zapanti, Κεφαλονιά 1500–1571, 84, 95, 184, 208, 243, 260, 320.
10. This is a cordiform map of the world, known as the map of Hajji Ahmed. It was almost certainly prepared in Venice around 1559, for circulation in the Ottoman Empire, by Nicolò Cambi, Michele Membré and the printer of Hebrew books Marc’Antonio Giustiniani. After several delays the project was shelved either because of the unfavourable conjuncture in relations between Venetians and Ottomans (Manners, European Cartographers, 23), or, more likely, because of the accusation against Giustiniani (Arbel, “Maps of the World”, 25): the woodblocks were confiscated by the Venetian authorities and the map remained unpublished until 1795. Ménage, “The Map of Hajji Ahmed”; Vercellin, Venezia e l’origine della stampa, 103–6; Arbel, “Maps of the World”; Manners, European Cartographers, 21–3, 100, 111, 123–4 nn. 3–6.
11. Ioly Zorattini, Processi, ΙΙ, 140. It is true that we have no data on the settlement of Jews in Cephalonia before the beginning of the seventeenth century. Debonos, “Εβραϊκές οικογένειες στην Κεφαλονιά”; Debonos, “Cephalonia in the Year of Our Lord 1631”, 96–7.
12. For the case of Marc’Antonio Giustiniani and his son Antonio, see mainly Ioly Zorattini, Processi, ΙΙ, 22–4, 139–72, where the proceedings of their trial are published. Cf. Ioly Zorattini “Il S. Uffizio di Venezia”, 135–9; Grendler, “The Destruction of Hebrew Books”, 120–30. Notably, among the works that Fasoli denounced to the Inquisition (identified by Paul Grendler) there were in fact several prohibited ones. Grendler, “The Destruction of Hebrew Books”, 123–7.
13. Renaming of the Congregation of the Roman Inquisition, from 1965.
14. For the Jews in the Ionian Islands under Venetian rule, see the relevant studies in the two following volumes, with full bibliography: Lambropoulou and Tsiknakis, Η εβραϊκή παρουσία; Arbel, special issue Mediterranean Historical Review 27 (2).
15. Ioly Zorattini, Processi, XIΙΙ, 329–30.
16. See Ioly Zorattini Processi, XIΙΙ, 323–3, where the relevant archival material is published. Cf. Ioly Zorattini, “Altre storie di Adriatico”, 31–2.
17. Immediately after his conversion to Christianity and his return to Corfu, he divorced his Jewish wife Malca and married the Christian Cateruzza Muazzo.
18. See Ioly Zorattini Processi, XI, 137–159, where the relevant archival material is published. Cf. Pullan, Gli ebrei d’Europa, 91, 97 n. 38, 403, 422 n. 80, 474–5, 480 nn. 50–3; Ioly Zorattini, “Altre storie di Adriatico”, 32–4.
19. Podskalsky, Η ελληνική θεολογία, 57. For Corydaleus, his perception of the Neo-Aristotelian ideas of the West and his educational programme, see the following works where the main bibliography is collected: Tsourkas, Les débuts de l’enseignement philosophique; Tsourkas, “Les années d’études”; Podskalsky, Η ελληνική θεολογία, 83, 98, 120, 249, 256–63, 309–10, 313, and passim; Marazopoulos, Θεόφιλος Κορυδαλλέας; Patiniotis, “Οι Pestifarae Questiones”. On Aristotle’s interpretation of Cremonini, his erudite libertinism and his problems with the Roman Inquisition, see mainly: Schmitt, Cremonini, Cesare; Cesare Cremonini (1550–1631); Kuhn, Venetischer Aristotelismus im Ende der aristotelischen Welt; Riondato, and Poppi, Cesare Cremonini. Cf. Muir, Guerre culturali, 13–60. On Padua’s Aristotelianism from the age of Pietro Pomponazzi to Cremonini, see Martin, Subverting Aristotle, 61–85, and passim.
20. For his activity in the Ionian Islands and his clash with the Catholic camp there, see Papadopoulos, “Δράση Θεοφίλου Κορυδαλέως”. Cf. Birtachas, “Μεταρρύθμιση και Αντιμεταρρύθμιση στα Ιόνια Νησιά”, 520–2; Birtachas and Spanou, “Θρησκευτικές ζυμώσεις”.
21. According to his opponents, Corydaleus developed Aristotle’s ideas on the mortality of the soul, and he therefore did not believe in the resurrection of the dead or the existence of Hell or Paradise: like the Protestants, he rejected aural confession, the veneration of sacred images and the doctrine of transubstantiation; moreover, he was scathing of the Apostolic Canons and of St Nicolas because he had attacked Arius (in his view, a great philosopher), and so on. Papadopoulos, “Δράση Θεοφίλου Κορυδαλέως”, 36, 41.
22. See the opinion of the provveditore of Zante, Fantin Soranzo, in ASV, Senato (secreta), Dispacci dei rettori, Zante, filza 10, fasc. 38, 7 May 1634. Cf. Mertzios, “Θεόφιλος Κορυδαλεύς”, 13–14.
23. The original text: “... ο από τέλματος Σκώληξ, Θεόφιλος ή μάλλον ειπείν δαιμονόφιλος ο Κορυδαλεύς ο πικρός αποστάτης, ο κατά της του Χριστού εκκλησίας λυσσώδης λύκος …˙ η μέλαινα και σκοτεινή απάτη˙ το βδελυκτόν ακάθαρμα˙ το δυσσώδες και βέβηλον άγος˙ το του πονηρού δαίμονος αισχρόν καταγώγιον˙ ο πάσης αιρέσεως και αισχύστου πράξεως έμπλεος ... τα των δυσσεβών λουτέρων τε και Καλβίνων ασπάζεται, ο τρισάθλιος, και την ψυχήν θνητήν είναι φάσκει, και μετεμψύχωσι δοξάζει, ως ο πυθαγόρας, την των αγίων εικόνων προσκύνησιν αθετεί˙ την διά στόματος εξαγόρευσιν απαγορεύει και βδελύττεται, ... ο τρισκατάρατος˙ ... ουκ ορθώς ως ημείς οι ευσεβείς το δεσποτικόν σώμα και αίμα του Κυρίου ημών Ιησού Χριστού λατρεύομεν, ως αληθές σώμα και αίμα του Κυρίου αλλ’ αντίτυπον καλεί τούτο, ο ανάξιος του ζην˙ πολλούς τοίνυν των αφελότητι, και απλάστῳ γνώμῃ βειούντων εις το της ασεβείας βόθυνον εξώθησεν ο εμβρόντητος ...’. Archivio Storico “de Propaganda Fide” [della Congregazione per l’Evangelizzazione dei Popoli], Scritture originali riferite nelle Congregazioni Generali, vol. 181, fol. 214r. Cf. Papadopoulos, “Δράση Θεοφίλου Κορυδαλέως”, 70.
24. ASV, Consultori in iure, filza 43, fols. 258r–v: “Sulla richiesta avanzata a nome della Congregazione romana dell’Inquisizione dal cardinal Antonio Barberini che le autorità veneziane prendano provvedimenti contro un tale Scordiali, già allievo del Collegio greco di Roma, che va spargendo a Zante la dottrina della mortalità dell’anima”. Cf. Sarpi, Scritti giurisdizionalistici, 126–7, 176–8; Ball, “The Greek Community in Venice”, 79–80; Birtachas, “Η δικαιοδοσία της Ιεράς Εξέτασης”, 414–20, 436–7; Birtachas, “Οι ελληνορθόδοξοι βενετοί υπήκοοι ανάμεσα στη Ρώμη και στη Βενετία”, 81–4, 90–1 and n. 148; Peri, Orientalis Varietas, 102–4.
25. Papadopoulos, “Δράση Θεοφίλου Κορυδαλέως”, 50, 63.
26. Grendler, “The Tre Savii”; Davidson, “Rome and the Venetian Inquisition”; Del Col, “Organizzazione”; Del Col, “L’inquisizione romana”; Tedeschi, “Fonti inquisitoriali”, 67, 242 n. 120; Prosperi, Tribunali, 83–103; Del Col, L’Inquisizione in Italia, 342–94. See also the deliberations below of the Council of Ten, which impose the participation of the rettori from the stato da mar (from Cyprus and Crete) in the inquisitorial procedure: ASV, Consiglio di dieci, Deliberazioni, Comuni, reg. 17, fol. 70r, 7 September 1545; ASV, Consiglio di dieci, Deliberazioni, Secrete, reg. 6, fols. 105r–v, 28 September 1553; ASV, Consiglio di dieci, Deliberazioni, Secrete, reg. 9, fols. 8r–v, 17 June 1569.
27. Panaghiotopulu, “Πατριαρχικά γράμματα”, 316–18.
28. On dissimulation and nicodemism, see mainly Ginzburg, Il nicodemismo; Biondi, La giustificazione della simulazione nel Cinquecento; Rotondò, “Atteggiamenti della vita morale italiana del Cinquecento”.
29. For the problem of the relationship between schism and heresy through the practice and the legal and theological reflection of the inquisitors, see Lavenia, “Quasi haereticus”.
30. Barbierato, The Inquisitor in the Hat Shop, xxi–xxiv. For a case of irreligiousness from the second half of the sixteenth century, see Lavenia, “Processo e morte di Flaminio Fabrizi (1587–1591)”.
31. Panaghiotopulu, “Πατριαρχικά γράμματα”, 327–9. With reference to Bonafès’s participation in the negotiations for the implementation of the Gregorian calendar in the East, see Peri, Due date. Cf. Panaghiotopulu, “Πατριαρχικά γράμματα”, 309 n. 1.
32. Arbel, “Τhe Jews in Cyprus”, 28–30, 38; Arbel, Trading Nations, passim, esp. chapters 3 and 4. Cfr. Birtachas, Κοινωνία, πολιτισμός και διακυβέρνηση, 144, 221.
33. Apart from the special studies on the Venetian State by Grendler (The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, esp. 89–93, 140–5; “The Destruction of Hebrew Books”), Jacoviello (“Proteste di editori e librai”) and Ioly Zorattini (“Censura e controllo”; “Il S. Uffizio di Venezia”), more generally for the censorship of the Hebrew book in the sixteenth century, see mainly the following studies, with full bibliography: Wendehorst, The Roman Inquisition; Raz-Krakotzkin, The Censor, the Editor, and the Text; Hacker and Shear, The Hebrew Book; Raz-Krakotzkin, “Persecution and the Art of Printing”.
34. The Giustiniani printing house, the largest publisher of Hebrew books in Venice after the closure of the printing house of Daniel Bomberg, began operating in 1545, in the Calle delli Cinque alla Giustizia Vecchia. Until its closure in 1553, it developed considerable activity including the printing of 85 works in Hebrew, among them the contentious Babylonian Talmud. Amram, The Makers of Hebrew Books, chapters 9 and 11; Cioni, “Bragadin, Alvise”; Grendler, “The Destruction of Hebrew Books”; Kuntz, “Marcantonio Giustiniani”; Heller, “The Printer’s Mark”; Netanel, “Maharam of Padua v. Giustiniani”; Heller, “Sibling Rivalry”.
35. Ya’ari, Al Sreyfat ha-Talmud; Tsiknakis, “Μέτρα κατά της κυκλοφορίας εβραϊκών βιβλίων”. Cf. Parente, “The Index, the Holy Office, the Condemnation of the Talmud”; Raz-Krakotzkin, “The Burning of the Talmud”. Testimony for the burning of books in Cyprus: Arbel, “Τhe Jews in Cyprus”, 28.
36. On papal policy regarding the segregation of the Jews, see Stow, “The Papacy and the Jews”; Segre, “La Controriforma”.
37. Ioly Zorattini, Processi, XIΙΙ, 328.
38. Indicative of the Jewish economic transactions was the fact that by 1616 the tax debt of Zantiot Jews to the public treasury amounted to the considerable sum of 200,000 ducats. On the other hand, since the mid-sixteenth century, Venice had been requested by the organized Christian Community of Zante to prevent certain financial activities of the Jews that reportedly impinged on peasants’ scant revenues and on the island’s agrarian economy in general (see the Capitoli of 1553). Doubtlessly, the local aristocratic families – whose wealth came largely from the ownership and exploitation of the land – followed with anxiety the participation of Jews in agrarian credit and agricultural commerce. See Kolyvà, “The Jews of Zante”, esp. 201–2.
39. Kolyvà, “The Jews of Zante”, 201–2. With regard to the complex problem of the prostichi, its social consequences, as well as the degree of participation of Ionian Jews in this practice, see Michelon, “La peste dei prostichi”; Baroutsos, “Privilege, Legality and Prejudice”, 307–10; Pagratis, “Jews in Corfu’s Economy”; Pagratis, Κοινωνία και οικονομία στο βενετικό “Κράτος της Θάλασσας”, 174–8.
40. For Venetian policies towards marranos or converted Jews, see Pullan, Gli ebrei d’Europa, part III; Ravid, “Venice, Rome, and the Reversion of New Christian to Judaism”; Ravid, “The Venetian Government and the Jews”; Ioly Zorattini, “Jews, Crypto-Jews, and the Inquisition”; Ruspio, “Una comunità di marrani”; Ruspio, La nazione portoghese: Ebrei ponentini; Ruspio, “La nazione portoghese a Venezia” Cf. Plakotos, “Rumours, Gossip and Crypto-Jewish Identity”; Zeldes, “Jewish Settlement in Corfu”, 178–9.
41. Ioly Zorattini records two further cases of neofiti (neophytes), but transient from Zante, who intended to apostatize to the East. Ioly Zorattini, “Altre storie di Adriatico”, 29–30.
42. Muir, Guerre culturali, 51. For the concept of libertinism (libertinage) in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see, among others, Addante, Eretici e libertini nel Cinquecento italiano, esp. xi–xiii, 146–147; Barbierato, The Inquisitor in the Hat Shop, xxiv, 7–8, 164–84, 290–300. Cf. Cavaillé, “Libertino, libertinage, libertinismo”; Cavaillé, “L’histoire des ‘libertins’ reste à faire”.
43. Birtachas, “Verso lo Stato moderno”, 89–96. For the tense climate in Constantinople, Lucaris’s circle of friends and collaborators, his programme, and the attitude of Venice towards this important patriarch, see Hering, Οικουμενικό Πατριαρχείο; Augliera, Βιβλία, πολιτική, θρησκεία στην Ανατολή τον 17ο αιώνα, chapter 1; Podskalsky, Η ελληνική θεολογία, passim, esp. chapters 7 and 8. Cf. the observations of Pizanias, Η Ιστορία των Νέων Ελλήνων, 80–6.
44. See for example the relative criticism received by his student Meletios Syrigos. Podskalsky, Η ελληνική θεολογία, 57, 259, 274, 491.
45. For the impact of Corydaleus’s teaching and writings on the Orthodox East, see the bibliography mentioned in n. 19; and especially on the island of Zante, see it mentioned in the n. 22 dispatch of the provveditore of Zante, Fantin Soranzo: ASV, Senato (secreta), Dispacci dei rettori, Zante, filza 10, fasc. 38, 7 May 1634, [fol. 1v]: “The aforesaid Corydaleus, who was considered a man of great erudition, lives also in great and universal esteem of all these people, and particularly of the principal families of cittadini...”. Cf. Papadopoulos, “Δράση Θεοφίλου Κορυδαλέως”, 64. On Uniatism – a hybrid form of Roman Catholicism also known as Greek Catholicism – during this period in Greek lands under Venetian and Ottoman rule, in connection with the aims of Greek College of St Athanasius’s foundation and the problems emerged after the return of its graduate students from Rome to their motherland, see mainly Tsirpanlis, Το Ελληνικό Κολλέγιο της Ρώμης; Fyrigos, Il Collegio Greco di Roma. Cf. Peri, “Inizi e finalità ecumeniche del Collegio Greco in Roma”.
46. Papadopoulos, “Δράση Θεοφίλου Κορυδαλέως”, 49–50 and n. 69, 61 and n. 108.
47. Birtachas, “Μεταρρύθμιση και Αντιμεταρρύθμιση στα Ιόνια Νησιά”, 514–15 and n. 2. See for example the case of the Zantiot monk Pachomios Roussanos. He wrote a polemical treatise entitled “Κατά αγιοκατηγόρων … και κατά του Φρα Μαρτί Λούτερι” (“Against who decry the saints ... and against the friar Martin Luther”). Roussanos, Σιωνίτης προσκυνητής, 141–51. Characteristic was the case of the Corfiot humanist Antonios Eparchos, friend of one of the staunchest supporters of the dialogue between Catholics and Protestants, Cardinal Gaspare Contarini. Eparchos turned down Philip Melanchthon’s proposal to work for the fruition of the Reformation’s aims in the Levant. Indeed, he recommended that the German reformers put aside their religious disputes and join forces with the Roman Catholics in supporting the effort of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V to repel the Ottomans, who at that time were threatening Europe. Ghiotopoulou-Sisilianou, Αντώνιος ο Έπαρχος, 143–66. Cf. the restrained interest of the traveller Nikandros Noukios from Corfu who, after travelling in Europe, summarized his experiences in a text entitled Αποδημίαι (Voyages), thus providing first-hand information on the spread of the Reformation ideas and its effects. Nonetheless, he kept an equal distance from both Catholics and Protestants. Nicandre de Corcyre, Le Voyage d’Occident; Bouboulidis, “Παρατηρήσεις”; Minaoglou, “Greek Travellers”, 306.
48. Kaklamanis, “Ειδήσεις για τη διακίνηση του έντυπου δυτικού βιβλίου”; Kaklamanis, “Biblioteche private in Creta”.
49. Tzivara, “Ιδιωτικές βιβλιοθήκες στη βενετοκρατούμενη Κέρκυρα”, 190.
50. Augliera, Βιβλία, πολιτική, θρησκεία στην Ανατολή τον 17ο αιώνα, 27–30. Birtachas, “Μεταρρύθμιση και Αντιμεταρρύθμιση στα Ιόνια Νησιά”, 516–23.
51. On the history of this printing press, see the monograph of Augliera, Βιβλία, πολιτική, θρησκεία στην Ανατολή τον 17ο αιώνα.
52. Birtachas “Η δικαιοδοσία της Ιεράς Εξέτασης”; Birtachas, “Οι ελληνορθόδοξοι βενετοί υπήκοοι ανάμεσα στη Ρώμη και στη Βενετία”, 68–92; Birtachas, “Verso lo Stato modernο”, 92–5.
53. See, among others, Eymerich, Manuale dell’inquisitore, 124–46, 180–3; Brambilla, “Denuncia”. Cf. Preto, Persona per hora secreta, 19–21, 66–7.
54. We find a total number of five cases: two completed trials and three mere denunciations. Gialama, Ελληνίδες μάγισσες στη Βενετία, passim, and 457–86, where Samaritana’s trial proceedings are published.
55. See below some of the denouncers’ and defendants’ expressions about the strict connection in Venice between witchcraft and the so called greche (Greek women) but also about the association of relative practices with the Greek territories: “I wonder if they call me a witch, because I’m Greek”; “because I’m Greek, they call me witch”; “as long as she is Greek, her name would be sufficient, without further proof, to support her guilt”; “it is true what is said by everyone, namely that Greek women are witches”; “all say that Greece is full of these things [witching practices]”; “Greek women know these things very well”; “these Dalmatian and Greek women follow diabolic ways”. Gialama, Ελληνίδες μάγισσες στη Βενετία, 407, 408, 410–11, 417–18.
56. Martin, Witchcraft and the Inquisition in Venice; Seitz, Witchcraft and Inquisition in Early Modern Venice; Ginzburg, The Night Battles.