La religione degli inglesi e il viaggio del principe. Note sulla Relazione Ufficiale del viaggio di Cosimo de’ Medici in Inghilterra (1669)

[The Religion of the English and the Voyage of the Prince. Notes on the Official Report of the travels of Cosmo de’ Medici in England (1669)]. The British stage of the European journey of Cosimo de’ Medici, Grand Prince of Tuscany, began on 1 April 1669 and lasted for two and a half months. A precious, anonymous, handwritten “official report” of the entire journey, illustrated with a series of watercolors and a more ample manuscript copy, without illustrations, are preserved in Florence in two and four undated (but written around 1689) volumes at the Marucelliana and the National library. Villani recalls the interest the pages of this report regarding the English stage of the journey have always provoked among scholars as a first hand report of Restoration Britain. Villani also discusses another four sources of Cosimo’s travels: the journals by Lorenzo Magalotti (since 1660 secretary to the Academy of Cimento), marquis Filippo Corsini, physician Giovan Battista Gornia and abbot Filippo Marchetti, master of the household. The official report was a team effort and these journals were used to write the final text. Since Anna Maria Crinò studies, the inspiration was attributed to Lorenzo Magalotti, who was also conceived as the coordinator of the team who wrote the report. Villani contests this idea investigating the anachronistic use of Anthony Bruodin’s Veritatis Propugnaculum Catholicae, published in Prague in 1669, as the main source for the digression on religion in England found at the end of the “Official Report.” In his book Bruodin describes the religious situation of English in 1640s and 50s. The editor of the “official report” limited himself to translate what Bruodin wrote, sometimes verbatim and sometimes summarizing it. This means that the report did not describe the real state of religion in England at the time of the journey of Cosimo de’ Medici, rather providing a stereotypical and anachronistic image of the country as a land swarming with many heretical sects