Venetian Holy Inquisition
[5][note 2] On 12 August 1289, under pressure exerted by Pope Nicholas IV, the Great Council voted to admit the papal inquisition into Venice's territories.
The state also exercised control financially by means of a fund, managed by the government, which received the assets confiscated from heretics and in turn covered the expenses of the Holy Office.
[7] In 1542, Pope Paul III established the Roman Inquisition as part of the Catholic Church's efforts to repress Protestantism in the period of the Counter Reformation.
[8] To secular rulers, the pope warned of the risks that came with heresy: social disorder, subversion of authority, and even the wrath of God for those governments that tolerated sin.
[9][10] The creation of the Roman Inquisition was strongly advocated by Cardinal Gian Pietro Carafa, later Pope Paul IV, largely on the basis of his personal experiences in Venice.
In a missive to Pope Clement VII in 1532, Caraffa lamented the diffusion of heresy in Venice and its territories, noting specifically the presence of itinerant apostates, particularly conventual Franciscans.
[14][15] Resistance also stemmed from the longstanding Venetian conception of the state as a sacred entity empowered by God and the resulting assertion of the government to administer local ecclesiastical matters.
[16] The task of reaching a compromise between the Church and the republic fell to Giovanni della Casa, archbishop of Benevento, who was nominated papal nuncio to Venice in 1544.
[15] Della Casa judiciously chose his cases and concentrated on prosecuting those heretics that were a greater threat to social order and the security of the state in an effort to win over the Venetian government.
In this new reality, Venice's previous efforts to counter the influence of the Holy Roman Empire by cultivating relations with England, France, and the league were no longer practicable.
[4] These Venetian officials, described as "honest, discreet, and Catholic men" ("probi, discreti e cattolici uomini"), were to assist and control the ecclesiastic tribunal with the objective of defending the sovereignty of the republic and its jurisdiction over its subjects.
[5][20] Although the Holy Office in Rome had sought greater clerical control, della Casa reassured his superiors that the three nobles chosen as the first savi all'eresia were intent on repressing heresy.
[4] Excluded were the so-called papalisti, members of those patrician families who maintained close ties with the papal court and often enjoyed ecclesiastical preferments in the form of offices and benefices.
[31][32] Although the inquisition could act on its own initiative whenever there was a suspicion of heresy or a Venetian secular magistracy could notify the religious tribunal of evidence discovered in criminal proceedings, most often an investigation began when a formal denunciation, signed or anonymous, was received.
[33][34] Some of the denunciations concerned individuals who had spoken out against the devotion to saints, the necessity of confession with a priest, the belief in the real presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, or the value of good works in salvation.
If the charge was found to have merit, normally having been confirmed by several witnesses, an arrest warrant for the accused individual was issued in the name of the inquisition, but only with the approval of the savi all'eresia.
[43] Torture, primarily strappado but also applying fire to the feet, was rarely used by the Venetian Holy Office, only in roughly three percent of the cases for which documentation survives.
In accordance with directives contained in the inquisitor's manual Directorium Inquisitorum, it was limited to situations in which the accused had contradicted himself and strong indications of guilt had already been discovered.
The condemned was rowed to the open Adriatic at dawn, and in the presence of a priest who recited prayers for the individual's soul, he was dropped into the sea, weighted by a stone.
[57] Additionally, in 1589 the Senate voted to grant safe-conduct to the 'Ponentine' Jews (from Spain, Portugal, and the Habsburg Netherlands), allowing them to legally settle in the Ghetto and conduct their international trade with no investigation into their religious past.
[54] Within Venice's territories, the riformatori dello studio di Padova, the educational committee of the Senate established in 1517, were administratively responsible for censorship, under the authority of the Council of Ten.
As representatives of the state, they were principally concerned with controlling political writings as well as those moral texts that could erode public mores and, as a result, threaten proper relationships within the society.
Little attention was given to religious writings in the early decades of the Protestant Reformation, despite growing pressures from the papacy to eliminate books critical of Catholic doctrine.
[61] Limited control began in 1527 when the Senate decreed that the protection of rights, either for the printer or the author, would be henceforth contingent upon the issuance of an imprimatur, the license needed to legally print any book.
Fines, issued by the esecutori contro la bestemmia (executors against blasphemy), were authorized in 1543 expressly for any printer or bookseller who trafficked in books contrary to the Catholic faith.
[64] An early attempt by the Council of Ten to draw up a list of banned titles in 1549 was unsuccessful, the Venetian printers arguing that at that time not even in Rome was there a similar index.
In 1569, following the Venetian acceptance of the decrees of the Council of Trent and the new Tridentine Index (1564), the government made the procedures to obtain the license for publication more stringent.
[65] In general, cases involving prohibited books were quickly resolved; the evidence was tangible, and printers and booksellers preferred to confess to the crime of illegal trafficking in forbidden texts and pay a fine rather than undergo an investigation into their private beliefs and associations and risk a charge of heresy.
