Modern Philosophy and Ancient
Heresies: New Wine in Old Bottles?
Maria Pia Donato
Abstract
This chapter revisits seventeenth- and eighteenth-century debates on
the Eucharist and atomism as the backdrop of issues of credibility and
authority. It explores how theology, erudition, and philosophy intertwined
in defining dogma, and analyses how the Holy Of f ice and the Congregation
of the Index of Prohibited Books dealt with scientific tendencies within the
Catholic world. In the light of recent scholarship underscoring the inertia
of censorial mechanisms, the chapter argues that looking at censorship as
a performative activity and at the social biases of doctrinal control helps
to understand Rome’s attitude vis-à-vis philosophical novelties. More
broadly, this new focalization highlights how truth was administrated
and credibility established in the Catholic context.
Key words:
Catholic censorship, natural philosophy, Jansenism, tradition,
erudition.
Several decades ago, Pietro Redondi’s
Galileo: Heretic famously argued that Galileo was put on trial by the Roman Inquisition for his Copernican worldview only as a diversion to conceal his dangerous atomist teachings that undermined the Catholic dogma of transubstantiation. At that time, the central archives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith were not open. Since their opening in the mid-1990s, a vast and still growing body of scholarship has shed new light on the Holy Office
and the Congregation of the Index of Prohibited Books.
https://lnkd.in/dd5ChqQn
