Beyond Sarpi: Reading Prohibited Books about the Council of Trent in Early Modern Italy

Paolo Sarpi’s 1619 history of the Council of Trent was the first account of the 1545-63 council which had laid the groundwork for the Catholic world in the wake of Protestant Reformation. Famously, the Venetian’s book was an illicit account: it was published in London without the author’s express permission (under a pen-name, “Pietro Soave Polano”), and amid circumstances that played to the ecclesiastical geopolitics of Jacobean England as much as those of Venice. Sarpi’s book brought to light exactly the type of behind-the-scenes information about the creation of the decrees that initial papal prohibition on commentary on Trent had meant to prevent. The book’s appearance in 1619 provoked immense interest, especially in England and France. Surprisingly, the work’s reception in Italy, where it was immediately prohibited, has been less well studied and it is there that Sarpi’s prohibition must be further contextualized. For Sarpi’s book was only one of many texts about the Council of Trent that were prohibited or expurgated in precisely the same period. By looking at these books and the requests of people who petitioned for licenses to read them, this talk brings to light authors who trespassed, as Sarpi had done, into territory meant to be the sole preserve of the Congregation of the Council. We must look beyond Sarpi to understand the moment in which his work was published and prohibited. By doing so, we unearth a complex episode in the simultaneous reception and making of the Counter-Reformation.