Eleonora Belligni
University of Turin

Email: eleonora.belligni@unito.it

Abstract

Off the Beaten Path. Francesco Porto’s Migrations and Religious Indifferentism in 16th Century Europe.

My paper aims to investigate the life-long exile of the 16th-century Greek-Italian philologist Francesco Porto (1511-1581). He belonged to a network of Italian humanists and religious dissenters which suffered uninterrupted prosecutions and were forced to flee from place to place: from Venice to Modena; then to Ferrara, finally to Switzerland and France. Porto’s story of migration can be analyzed both through the contexts he related to (places, courts, religious communities, cultural circles) and through the texts he wrote and translated. Both the former and the latter will be used to explain a pattern which can be applied to him as to other scholars, migrants and religious dissenters, like his friend and great humanist Ludovico Castelvetro. The same approach will lead to open new perspectives on the hoary old problem of the Italian Reformation: namely, on the way it developed in some areas and on its early failure. Porto’s pursuit of tolerance, mirrored both in his books and in his relationships, is one of the most creative features of the Reformation and a key to understand a peculiar kind of diaspora, driven by religious indifferentism. From this point of view, he can be considered a paradigmatic case, clearly outstanding from other famous examples of religionis causa exiles. Preference will be given to letters and literary sources from his network; judicial documents from religious archives in Rome; State papers from Modena and Venice and municipal records from Geneva and Montargis, where Porto spent his last years.

Profile

Eleonora Belligni is Associate Professor at the department of History of the University of Turin. Her studies concern Renaissance, Reformation and Counter-Reformation and she has been working on history of ideas and history of political and religious culture of Western Early Modern Europe Spain, England, France, Dalmatia, and small Italian States (Ferrara, Venice and Rome). Her scholarly interests range widely: literature and rhetoric, cultural history and history of political thought, gender history, history of childhood and education, history of economics.  From 2003, she has been investigating the relationship between religious culture and institutions in Western Europe from the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. Her last book is about the heretical court of Renée de France, duchess of Ferrara, as a part of an extended religious and political network spread all over Europe. More recently, she has started to work on two different topics which are meant to be the subjects of her next publications. The first topic is the so-called “myth of the Council of Trent”: namely the symbolic, religious and political meanings attributed to the most famous Council of the late Christianity, from early modern up to the present time scholars perspectives. The second issue is about the way historiography has been reflected by mass culture and media in the last two centuries, and about its reception through movies, radio and theater, comics and graphic novels, monuments and exhibitions.

List of most recent publications

Books

– Belligni, E. 2011. “Renata di Francia (1510-1575). Un’eresia di corte”, Utet.

– Belligni, E. 2008. “Evangelismo, Riforma ginevrina e nicodemismo. L’esperienza religiosa di Renata di Francia”, Brenner.

– Belligni, E. 2003. “Auctoritas e potestas: Marcantonio De Dominis tra l’Inquisizione e Giacomo I”, FrancoAngeli.

– Belligni, E. 1999. “Lo scacco della prudenza. Pubblicistica politica ed esperienza storica in Virgilio Malvezzi”, Olschki.

Selected articles

– Belligni, E. 2017. “Il Concilio di Trento tra storia e apologia: Pietro Sforza Pallavicino”, Trent and Beyond. The Council, Other Powers, Other Cultures, ed. Michela Catto, Adriano Prosperi, Brepols.

– Belligni, E. 2016. “Descrizione, prescrizione, utopia: economia e religione nella trattatistica della prima età moderna”, Fede, Mercato, Utopia. Modelli di società tra economia e religione (XVI-XIX secc.), FrancoAngeli.

– Belligni, E. 2016. “Il capitale storico tra cinema e nuovi media”, in La fabbrica della storia. Fonti e cultura di massa, eds. Eleonora Belligni e Maria G. Castello, Franco Angeli.

– Belligni, E. 2015.”Les évêques et les politiques culturelles dans l’Italie du XVIe siècle”, Seizième siècle, 11, pp. 247-260.

– Belligni, E. 2013.”Prese dal potere. Regine, nobildonne, condottiere nei film sulla prima età moderna”, Zapruder, 31, pp. 9-24.

– Belligni, E. 2013. “Visti dagli altri. Film che hanno raccontato l’Italia”, I Quaderni di Microcinema, Microcinema, pp. 13-184.

– Belligni, E. 2012. “Infiniti Mondi”, I Quaderni di Microcinema, Microcinema, pp. 15-190.

– Belligni, E. 2011. “Leggende nere e tavole a colori: i Borgia di Manara e Jodorowskj”, Historia Magistra, VI, pp. 106-114.

– Belligni, E. 2011. “Renata di Francia tra Riforma ginevrina e nicodemismo”, Giovanni Calvino e la Riforma in Italia. Influenze e conflitti, ed. Susanna Peyronel Rambaldi, Claudiana.

– Belligni, E. 2010. “Marcantonio De Dominis, Paolo Sarpi, Roberto Bellarmino. Il problema dell’autorità dopo il concilio tridentino”, Paolo Sarpi. Politique et religion en Europe, ed. Marie Viallon, Garnier, pp. 257-307.

– Belligni, E. 2008. “Francesco Porto da Ferrara a Ginevra”, Ludovico Castelvetro. Letterati e grammatici nella crisi religiosa del Cinquecento, ed. Guido Mongini, Olschki.

– Belligni, E. 2007. “Le antinomie della Controriforma”, Rivista Storica Italiana, CXIX, pp. 407-442.

– Belligni, E. 2007. “Renata di Francia fra Ferrara e Montargis”, La Riforma in Italia e in Francia: contatti, divergenze, analogie, eds. Silvana Seidel Menchi, Philip Benedict, Alain Tallon, Droz, pp. 363-379.

– Belligni, E. 2006. “Marcantonio De Dominis, Paolo Sarpi e i latitudinari della prima generazione”, Ripensando Paolo Sarpi, ed. C. Pin, Ateneo Veneto, pp. 137-152.

– Belligni, E. 2005. “La storiografia teatina”, Nunc alia tempora, alii mores: Storici e storia in età postridentina, ed. Massimo Firpo, Olschki, pp. 141-168.

– Belligni, E. 2005 [2007]. “Reti eterodosse e maestri di eresia: la corte di Renata tra Ferrara e Consandolo”, Schifanoia, 28/29, pp. 233-246.

– Belligni, E. 2000. “Sentenza e condanna postuma di Marcantonio De Dominis”, Il pensiero politico, XXXIII, pp. 265-294.

– Belligni, E. 1998. “Tacitismo e ironia”, Traiano Boccalini fra erudizione e polemica, Il pensiero politico, XXXI, pp. 311-313.