Per ben adempiere al proprio dovere. La sede mantovana del Sant'Uffizio tra XVI e XVIII secolo

Until now the activity in modern times of the Mantuan branch of the Holy Office was known almost only for the trials conducted in 1567 against the circle of Endimio Calandra (secretary of cardinal Ercole Gonzaga) and for some occasional mentions in the local State Archive. The thesis tries to reconstruct the birth, the organisation, the territorial disposition (State and diocese) and the internal workings of the Office, with particular attention to the relationships towards the political power – in the first place the Gonzaga family (and Gonzaga Nevers), and then the Habsburgs in the 1700’s, a century which saw Mantua as a centre of important reforms. The materials recovered from the archives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith are organized around two important events, symptomatic of the concept of the power peculiar to princes and Roman cardinals: the conflict that in 1666 caused the expulsion of the inquisitor from the State and the jurisdictional and diplomatic happenings preceding the suppression of the Court, showing the increasingly less efficient intervention of the inquisitor in obstructing the printing of forbidden books (most significantly the “Baldus” by Teofilo Folengo) and in controlling the faithful and the clergy on the juridical basis of the papal bull “In coena Domini”. Considerations about the numerical consistency of the processes and the career of the men of the Church who had the role of inquisitor complete the study. Summary: Introduction; Surviving fragments; Overlays; The expulsion of 1666; In Austrian Lombardy; The organization of the court; The repertoire of the inquisitors of Mantua.