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Proibito capire: La Chiesa e il volgare nella prima età moderna. By Gigliola Fragnito. [Saggi, 640.] (Bologna: Società Editrice il Mulino. 2005. Pp. 325. euro23,00 paperback.)
In this tough-minded book, Gigliola Fragnito revisits the subject addressed in her well-known monograph La Bibbia al rogo (1997): the post-Tridentine Church's successful campaign to ban the Bible in the Italian vernacular. During the intervening eight years, the landscape of sources available for studying this and many other facets of the Counter-Reformation has altered dramatically. The opening in early 1998 of the Archive of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has enabled scholars to explore what remains of the Congregation of the Holy Office's holdings, as well as the relatively complete archives of the Congregation of the Index and the Inquisition of Siena. They have produced an avalanche of publications that promise to transform our understanding of the framing of policy in Rome and efforts to implement it across the Italian peninsula and beyond-a topic...