Dinamiche interne della Congregazione del Sant'Uffizio dal 1542 al 1572

International audience("Nuova Rivista Storica", XCVII, fasc. 3, 2013, website: www.nuovarivistastorica.it) Research on the religious history of sixteenth-century Italy has for many years now concentrated on Italian 'heretics' and the problem of the so-called 'failed Italian Reformation'. In the 1990s, attention shifted to the study of the Inquisition, now often seen as the most powerful institution in early-modern Italy. Adriano Prosperi and others have in fact taken the Inquisition as their starting point for an exploration of the reasons behind the historical dominance of the Church in Italian history since 1500. Prosperi concentrated especially on the role of the Inquisition, the confessional and the work of local missions as co-ordinated parts of a single system that aimed to secure the Church's dominance of Italian society by controlling the consciences of the laity. On his reading, therefore, the Inquisition becomes the central institution of modern Italian history: he even refers to the 'inquisitorial unity of Italy'. But there is good reason to question this interpretation, and despite the historiographical influence of the leading current interpretation, we still lack a detailed study of the Congregation of the Holy Office, the Roman body that from 1542 came to control the operations of the local Inquisition tribunals in Italy. We know little about the Cardinal Inquisitors, the reasons they were appointed or dismissed, their relations with each other, or the way the make-up of the Congregation reflected wider power battles within the Papal Curia. Similarly, we remain ignorant of the officials who worked with the Cardinals on the Congregation, and the Congregation's policies and internal debates. It is clear that the apparent advance in the Church of the 'intransigenti' was matched from time to time by strong resistance, as for example during the pontificates of Julius III (1550-5) and Pius IV (1559-65) - the first of whom halted a series of high-profile trials, while the second succeeded in significantly weakening the powers of the Holy Office. Some Massimo Firpo's recent works and Chiara Quaranta's study of Pope Marcellus II marks an important step forward in this regard; but the bigger story still needs to be written