religious life 415
convicted, and sentenced to death for “the crime of lesa maestà,” he was
decapitated in March 1644, not even 30 years of age.89
in Venice, the theme of the imposture of religions never assumed the
radical tones which characterized the theory of the three impostors. A
mysterious treatise of this title (De tribus impostoribus), which it was
whispered circulated secretly in europe, grouped together the founders
of the three monotheistic religions, Moses, Christ, and Mohammed, as
perpetrators of sophisticated otherworldly impostures which aimed to
ensure earthly power for the inventors and their successors.90 There is
no evidence that information or references to the blasphemous treatise
were circulating in Venice; there was knowledge, however, of the par-
able of the three rings, which some scholars have considered the ideal
breeding ground for the theory of the three impostors. The great notoriety
of the parable of the three rings was due, above all, to a famous novella of
the Boccaccio’s Decameron,91 and of which we have clear evidence from
the testimony of the “heretical” miller Domenico scandella, known as
Menocchio. in 1583 Menocchio recounted that parable to the inquisitor
of Aquileia with an eloquence revealing intense emotional participation:
he compared the three monotheistic religions to three sons equally loved
by their common father, who wished to confer to all three and to none
the ring which symbolized the supremacy of one to the others. Boccacio’s
novella was thus not a symbol of atheism: the miller from friuli concluded
that Judaism, Christianity, and islam needed to stop their disputes over
who held the monopoly on truth, since all three were emanations of god,
all men dear to god, and all capable of salvation in their own faith.92
The theory of the imposture of religions, in contrast, expressed a ten-
dency towards systematic atheism. Dazzling the imagination of mortals
with hopes of reward and fears of punishment after death is the most
potent inhibitor that can be imposed upon a collectivity: this idea occa-
sionally surfaced in the intertwining conversations of grocers’ shops, inns,
and boats in service between Padua and Venice. in a city that had devel-
oped a precocious spy network,93 the practice of private confession might
89 Documents from ferrante Pallavicino’s Avignon trial are conserved in Rome at the
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Ms Berb. lat. 6157.
90 georges Minois, Le traité des trois imposteurs. Histoire d’un livre blasphématoire qui
n’existait pas (Paris, 2009).
91 giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron, i, 3.
92 Carlo ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms. The Cosmos of a Sixteenth Century Miller
(Baltimore, 1992).
93 Paolo Preto, I servizi segreti di Venezia (Milan, 1999).