Marie Curie Ambassador

Since June 2013, I've been living and working in York, UK with my son Lorenzo and my wife Valentina.

When I discovered I had won the Marie Curie fellowship, already three years ago (time really flies!!!!!), it was quite a shock in a way. I would never have believed I could have left my country for 2 years with a 7 year old child. The great opportunity - courtesy of the European Committee and the Marie Curie Fellowship - is truly a privilege.

I think these kind of experiences show the merit of the European project for academics, students and families. An idea which allows people to discover the diversity and cultural differences between our countries is worth keeping. These intercultural projects and exchanges between European countries are really important to build a real community of countries, in terms of politics and education, and not just in terms of economy.

Another reflection I would like to share, near the end to this two-year contract at the University of York, is how lucky we are when we can study what we love. How lucky we are when we can work on the subject and the field really interest us. And how lucky we are if our job brings us far away from our country to let us discover a new world of colleagues, of archives, of academia: in all, a new way of life.

The most incredible thing is that all these opportunities were a result of my rather archaic field of study: Early Modern History. In a world where everything is so fast thanks to new technologies, studying the past could seem to be an insult for the boys and the girls of the high schools I met during these two years. It could seem to be a waste of time, when all we need to know is at your fingertips: one click and you have access to the whole world. Apparently. Perhaps. However, I’m not absolutely sure. If this were the case, my job would have no meaning.

However, what I have really learnt during my career as a historian and what I have discovered in the Archive is something slightly different: it's not easy at all unveil the secrets from our past. It's not easy at all rebuild our past, trying to illuminate - sometimes with remarkably few clues from the documents - how things really developed, what people really thought, felt and wanted! And when we do discover it, thanks to the all sources the historians can use, trust me you feel like a magician who has just learnt a new trick. Or like a new Sherlock Holmes - since we are in Britain now - when he solved one of his complicated crimes.

Of course we need as historians the new technologies to retell the past to the new generations (as I'm trying to do using this blog) and even to have easier access to the documents. But the chance to spend your time in Libraries or in the Archives, in Italy as in the UK, in Japan as in the US, is something precious the historians should not ever loose. Even if the documents would be one day all digitised, researching the past means not only reading a document but discovering its meaning and its provenance. Trying to understand and follow the smell of the traces left from the past, like a detective. Researching and studying the past is a mission which sometimes doesn't give you the results you expected. That means you have to be patient and keep going: searching, even when it seems impossible to clarify the mysteries from the past. Someone after you will thank you for your efforts. Nothing in scientific research is lost.

An International Workshop

The Origins of the Inquisition in comparative perspective

An international workshop

The Treehouse,

Humanities Research Centre (HRC), Berrick Saul Building, University of York

21 May 2015

Organised by Simon Ditchfield & Andrea Vanni

in association with the Department of History & the

Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies (CREMS)

University of York

Recent work on the inquisition tribunals operating not only in Spain, Portugal and the Italian peninsula but also in the Habsburg Low Countries has made us appreciate as never before the degree to which they consciously wrote themselves into history as saviours of orthodoxy in the face of heresy. Some of the latest scholarship has shifted attention from focus on ‘the body count’, that is to say, the victims, to considering the ‘bodies that count’ – the inquisitors themselves, their careers and professional culture. This workshop intends to look at these themes in a truly comparative context: one, furthermore, that is not only synchronic – in which it will be asked to what degree can all four early modern inquisitions can be considered a single, transnational network - but also diachronic: how important is the history of the medieval inquisition to our understanding of its early modern successors?

Provisional programme

All papers are to be pre-circulated at least a week in advance. Discussants will chair each session and start off dicsussion/debate with a short 5-10 minute response to the papers – each paper author will then have five minutes or so to respond before the discussion is opened out to everyone present. There will also be a small audience of invited auditors.

09.30 - 11.00 Panel A: Medieval and Early Modern Origins

Lucy Sackville (Lecturer in Medieval History, University of York)

Andrea Vanni (Marie Curie postdoctoral Fellow, University of York)

Respondent: John Arnold (Professor of Medieval History, Birkbeck College, University of London)

11.00 - 11.30 Coffee/tea break

11.30 - 13.00 Panel B: Confessional histories of the Spanish and Roman Inquisitions

Kimberly Lynn (Associate Professor of History, Western Washington University)

Michaela Valente (Associate Professor of History, Università degli studi del Molise, Campobasso)

Respondent: Simon Ditchfield (Professor of Early Modern History, University of York)

13.00 - 14.15 Buffet Lunch for workshop participants incl. auditors (in Treehouse)

N.B. Afternoon workshop sessions will now be on the ground floor of the HRC in room BS/008

14.15 - 15.45 Panel C: The Habsburg & Lusitanian Inquisitions and their victims in history

Violet Soen (Associate Professor of History, KU Leuven)                                  

Giuseppe Marcocci (Research Fellow, Università degli studi della Tuscia, Viterbo) 

Respondent: Francisco Bethencourt (Charles Boxer Professor of Portuguese History, King’s College, University of London)

15.45 - 16.00 Short coffee/tea break

16.00 - 16.45 Concluding Round-table of discussants led by Nicholas Davidson (Associate Professor of the History of the Renaissance and Reformation, University of Oxford)  

18.00 - Distinguished Visitor Lecture in Bowland Theatre (HRC) – Massimo Firpo (Professor of Early Modern History, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa - University of Turin) Rethinking ‘Catholic Reformation’ and ‘Counter Reformation’: what happened in Early Modern Catholicism? The Case of Italy

19.00 - Wine reception in ground floor lobby of HRC

19.30 - Buffet supper for speakers and invited guests (The Treehouse)

N.B. As this is a workshop with pre-circulated papers, anyone wishing to attend must apply via email to the organisers Simon Ditchfield and Andrea Vanni by 1 May