736 william eamon
although that judgment may have been too severe, there is little doubt
that by the end of the 17th century Venice was a city distinctly marginal
to the main currents of european thought. it was not until 1757 that an
enlightened pope, Benedict XiV, finally removed books teaching helio-
centrism from the index of Prohibited Books—though Galileo’s works
remained on the index until 1822. although the Venice of Goldoni and
Tiepelo was no cultural backwater—indeed it was a city full of art and a
magnet for tourists—it was, in its intellectual life, “curiously unwelcom-
ing to its citizens who had new ideas.”103
one science in which Venetians continued to maintain a leading posi-
tion was geography. ever since the time of ramusio, Venice had been a
clearing house for the publication of geographical literature. its map makers
were unexcelled in europe. Foremost among early modern Venice’s geog-
raphers was Vincenzo Maria coronelli (1650–1718), a minorite friar who had
a cartographic workshop at the Frari. in 1680, coronelli who established
what has been termed europe’s first geographical society, the accademia
degli argonauti, which he used to acquire cartographical and geographi-
cal material and texts from its membership spread across europe. it was
under the imprint of the argonauti that coronelli— officially appointed
“cosmographer of the Venetian republic”—published his enormous out-
put of maps and geographical information. However, it is chiefly for his
globes that coronelli is remembered—more than 100 in all, including,
most famously, one that he designed for louis XiV of France. Unmatched
in the day for their accuracy, wealth of information, and artistic quality,
coronelli’s globes established his place as the premier cartographer of the
baroque period.
Newtonian Debates in the VenetoGeography was a relatively safe science in counter-reformation italy.
cosmology, in contrast, was fraught with dangerous controversy. Whereas
elsewhere in europe the heated battles fought to defend one version or
another of the new mechanical philosophies distinguished the cultural
history of the 18th century, in italy such efforts were muffled by catholic
conformism. according to the Venetian ecclesiastic daniele concina,
writing in 1754, the “splendor and truth of revealed religion” in italy was
103 chadwick, “italian enlightenment,” p. 101.