religious life 417
limits was sometimes lacking.97 foreign visitors, particularly those from
Protestant countries, have left us detailed descriptions, mainly amused,
sometimes indignant, of this most particular social triangle.
- Repression?
“in Venice they enjoy the utmost freedom of conscience”: with this asser-
tion Jean Bodin opened his Colloquium heptaplomeres (1594). While other
cities and regions are tormented by civil wars, oppressive tyrannies, cut-
throat fiscalism, and inquisitorial persecution against scientific activi-
ties—reasons Bodin—this city is free from such burdens and servitude.
only Venice could thus provide a credible backdrop to the Colloqium hep-
taplomeres, in which seven interlocutors compare the seven religions or
doctrines they profess: Roman Catholicism, lutheranism, Calvinism, skep-
ticism, Judaism, islam, and last a sort of naturalistic deism, which emerges
from the discussion as a particularly credible religious position.98 setting
his audacious colloquium in Venice, Bodin was attributing to the Republic
a religious tolerance unequalled in 16th-century europe and which would
have remained unsurpassed during the following two centuries, during
which time the Colloqium heptaplomeres—still in manuscript form at the
author’s death—would search in vain for a publisher.99
Bodin’s claim is difficult to reconcile with the existence of a tribunal
like the Holy office, which between 1541 and 1794 (the date of its abo-
lition) investigated 3592 people (an approximate number based on the
surviving documentation), initiated a significant number of trials against
booksellers and publishers, and executed, sent to the galleys, and con-
fined in prison cells many dozens of people—all for crimes of conscience
or opinion.100
Bodin’s judgment ought to be considered a fragment of a myth of Ven-
ice that already existed in europe and which the Signoria consciously
promoted. in reality, not one of the religious or philosophical options
expressed in the Colloqium heptaplomeres—beyond, obviously, the official
97 Roberto Bizzocchi, Cicisbei. Morale privata e identità nazionale in Italia (Rome/Bari,
2008).
98 Jean Bodin, Colloquium heptaplomeres, de rerum sublimium arcanis abditis, ed.
ludwig Noack (Paris/london, 1857), p. 1.
99 The Colloquium heptaplomeres is published in an anonymous french translation
under the title Colloque entre sept scavans qui sont de differens sentimens des secrets cachez
des choses relevées, ed. f. Berriot (geneva, 1984).
100 federico Barbierato, “Venezia,” in Adriano Prosperi, ed., Dizionario storico dell’Inqui-
sizione, vol. 4 (Pisa, 2011), pp. 1657–60.