“I Use Him as Doctors Use Vipers to Make Theriac”: Abraham Bzovius’s Ill-Fated Attempt to Oppose Paolo Sarpi’s Historia

The Dominican Abraham Bzovius was one of several early modern Catholic authors who wanted to take upon themselves the task of refuting Paolo Sarpi’s historical account of the Council of Trent. Bzovius was the official continuator of Cesare Baronio’s Annales and as such he thought he had the right and the duty to provide his authoritative historical expertise to such an important historical matter. By 1630, Bzovius’s plan was shot down by the Holy Office. The few scholars who have studied this affair attribute the Inquisition’s decision to the internal power dynamics within the Curia, and specifically to the pressure of Cardinal Francesco Barberini. Barberini was a strong supporter of the Jesuit Andrea Alciati, who at that time was also working on a response to Sarpi. Thus Barberini wanted to eliminate Bzovius’s work so that Alciati would have no competition coming from other Catholic historians. This paper will provide a different reading on the case, putting the conflicts within the Roman Curia in a wider geo-political and cultural context. The story of Bzovius’s ill-fated attempt to rebuke Sarpi, this paper argues, is an excellent case study to appreciate the manifold links between history-writing, politics, and polemics, as well as the complex role that the relationship between authors, censors, and printers assumed in seventeenth-century Europe