From Mary Queen of Scots to the Scottish Capuchins: Scotland as a symbol of Protestant persecution in seventeenth-century Italian literature
Italian authors of the seventeenth century produced a myriad of historical texts, tragedies, oratorios and poems that dealt with the events of Mary Stuart's life. The tremendous outcry that her story caused all over Europe made Scotland one of the most powerful symbols of persecution of Catholics by Protestants. It was the image of Scotland as a land of martyrdom that possibly prompted the publication of two seventeenth-century Italian ‘biographies’, narrating the vicissitudes of the lives of two Scottish capuchins, and which ran to multiple editions down to the eighteenth century. This article explores the literary reception of Mary Queen of Scots in seventeenth-century Italian literature and, in so doing, opens up religious, cultural, and political implications, pointing to links between Scottish Catholic and European intellectuals, and the publishing networks of sympathetic Marian writing.
CONVERSIONE E FAMIGLIA IN DUE TESTI LETTERARI ITALIANI DEL SEICENTO
ro delle colpe, vere e inesistenti, che venivano imputate al re dai suoi nemici c'era, anche e soprattutto, quella di voler ricondurre i suoi regni all'obbe dienza della Chiesa di Roma. L'accusa lanciata dagli oppositori puritani a Car lo I - sposato con la cattolica Enrichetta Maria, sorella di Luigi XIII - ebbe ampio corso nei paesi cattolici e anche in Italia abbiamo tracce del fatto che non poche furono le persone che leggevano le vicende inglesi in questo sen so. Sappiamo ad esempio che la pensava cosi il governatore di Livorno che, nel 1644, ai rappresentanti della comunita mercantile inglese di Livorno che chiedevano il permesso di far celebrare il culto protestante in citta, disse che avrebbero fatto meglio ad andare a messa considerato che, se la guerra civile allora in corso si fosse risolta con una vittoria dei realisti, questo avrebbe por tato alla restaurazione del cattolicesimo in Inghilterra: > disse, aggiungendo: >?. Allo stesso modo e significativo che, nella Repubblica veneta, un frate
Italian Influence on the Development of Calvinist Scholasticism
THIS ARTICLE TRIES to show that the rise of Calvinist scholasticism, which was the most important development in Calvinist theology during the second half of the sixteenth century, stemmed largely from several converging Italian influences, particularly from the writings of Peter Martyr Vermigli and Jerome Zanchi. Here Calvinist theology refers not only to the personal thought of John Calvin but also to the teachings of the founders of the Reformed or Calvinist tradition as it spread out from Geneva and Switzerland to France, Germany, England, Scotland, Poland, and the Low Countries. In this context Calvin emerges as the brightest star in a galaxy of Reformed theologians which includes Heinrich Bullinger, Pierre Viret, Theodore Beza and Wolfgang Musculus as well as Martyr, Zanchi and others. These theologians were often more influential than Calvin himself at a given place or time or on a given point of doctrine. Bullinger, Martyr, and Martin Bucer were all more important for spreading Calvinist ideas to Edwardian England than was John Calvin. Early Elizabethan Protestantism looked more to Zurich than to Geneva, as did early Polish Calvinism. German Calvinism owed more to Heidelberg than to Geneva.' These leaders developed their theologies sometimes in mutual dependence, sometimes with surprising independence. By no means was their relation to Calvin simply that of disciple to master, for each gave a personal nuance to his style of Calvinism. Thus the sixteenth century Jesuit Cornelius Schulting states on the opening page of his five volume polemic against Calvin and Peter Martyr that Martyr was clearer and far more learned than Calvin.2 Recently John Bray has pointed out that research in seventeenth century Calvinism leads "to the conclusion that the impact of Calvin upon the Calvinistic movement has been greatly over-rated. It may well be that some of