L’histoire religieuse de la communauté anglaise de Livourne (XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles)

The community of British merchants in Livorno, originating in the late sixteenth century, was from the middle of the seventeenth century undoubtedly the most important English community present in Italy, both in terms of numerical consistency and economic and political vitality. There are numerous studies on trade in the Mediterranean that highlight the role of Livorno from an economic point of view as the English port to the Levant and on the importance of the Livornese British Factory. But the history of the English community of Livorno in the seventeenth and eighteenth century is also the story of the conflicts that its members had with the political and religious Tuscan authorities to assert their right to openly practice their religious beliefs. This struggle to gain wider religious freedom included the British Protestants on one hand and the central and local Grand Ducal authorities, the Tuscan religious authorities and the Inquisition on the other. A plurality of subjects, often with divergent interests, that in the course of the seventeenth century confronted each other on two main issues: the opportunity for the community to have a Protestant minister and the possibility to have a cemetery to bury the British merchants who died in Livorno. The English community gained its own chaplain only in 1707 and was able to fence off the field that had long been used by the British to bury their dead only in the mid-1700s. The study of these events and the role played by some English merchants highlights the interplay between religion and politics that characterized the relationships between the British authorities of Livorno and the Medici of Florence