Curiosity, passion, modesty, generosity, and historical acumen—these rare gifts guide and inspire the work of John Tedeschi. Andrea del Col and Anna Jacobson Schutte invited eight scholars to contribute to this collection of essays, by way of thanks and tribute to Tedeschi, who was curator of rare books and manuscripts at the Newberry Library in Chicago. Jane Wickersham happily defines Tedeschi in RQ 67.3 as “the unofficial dean of Italian Inquisition studies” (1043), but his research includes heresy and Jewish history too.
This book is a festschrift, a tribute to John Tedeschi offered by senior as well as younger colleagues and friends, and by former students who then became authoritative scholars in their own rights. A range of different historiographical trends and themes are represented, and the outcome is an invaluable work, published in the elegant Viella series, which also includes a biographical profile of Tedeschi and a comprehensive bibliography.
The essays reveal Tedeschi’s vitality and his passion for history, with each scholar acknowledging his generosity in suggesting fields of research, in revealing new sources and even in translating from Italian to English (almost all of Carlo Ginzburg’s books, and many others). Tamar Herzig deals with the Jewish goldsmith Salomone da Sessa, il molto virtuoso, who converted to Christianity to escape a (possibly false) charge of sodomy in fifteenth-century Ferrara, while Guido Dall’Olio shows how Girolamo Menghi was deeply influenced by the Malleus Maleficarum when writing the Compendio dell’arte esorcistica. Drawing on inquisitorial sources, Marina Caffiero examines the Marrano identity and the Jewish conversos in seventeenth-century Rome, while Scaramella and Fonseca discuss the theme of marriage after the Tridentine decrees, with the growing problem of different interpretations and jurisdictions. Adriano Prosperi explores myths and stereotypes to show how Savonarola, in his real as well as in his imaginary role, played an important part in the Reformation.
Ginzburg and Lavenia chose two fascinating themes: Ginzburg examines a famous passage from Dante’s De vulgari eloquentia on cantio and lectio, and offers a critical interpretation, while Lavenia casts a discerning critical eye on the apocrypha of the sentence of Pilate, published in 1580 in L’Aquila, and its European reception. Moving to the seventeenth century, Jacobson deals with the biographies of Orsola Benincasa and their censorship, investigating the political choices made regarding sanctity themes, while del Col offers a chronological analysis of the most frequent charges of heresy made to the Inquisition in Aquileia and Concordia. Firpo and Biferali investigate how certain heretical ideas were expressed in some artistic works, taking the case of Girolamo Siciolante da Sermoneta, who worked for Caetani and Farnese.
All the essays in the volume celebrate Tedeschi and how he raised new research issues and pointed the way to some promising outcomes. We are indebted to Tedeschi for several important suggestions regarding the Roman Inquisition, an institution which in his view needs to be studied without prejudice: he broadened the discussion of the Inquisition and of the Italian Reformation, making a fundamental contribution with his outstanding bibliography, The Italian Reformation of the Sixteenth Century and the Diffusion of Renaissance Culture: a Bibliography of the Secondary Literature (ca. 1750–1997), compiled by Tedeschi in association with James M. Lattis, and with a historiographical introduction by Massimo Firpo (2000). Tedeschi also helped on the Dizionario storico dell’Inquisizione, edited by Prosperi and Lavenia (2010). Recently some of his essays were collected together in Intellettuali in esilio. Dall’Inquisizione romana al fascismo, edited by Giorgio Caravale and Stefania Pastore (2012), and we must also mention his last book with Anne Tedeschi, Italian Jews Under Fascism, 1938–1945: A Personal and Historical Narrative (2015).
The sober profile of John Tedeschi written by Jacobson Schutte deserves a few further words. She outlines Tedeschi’s Italian birth and the journey he and his family made (his father was head of the Department of Pathology at the University of Ferrara) to America in order to avoid the racial laws, and his silence on the issue until 2015. She also highlights Tedeschi’s efforts to create strong and free intellectual networks, as “an exemplary citizen of the contemporary republic of letters” (23).
