Conflict and Collaboration: The Inquisition in Rome and the Papal Territories (1550-1750)

This chapter focuses the attention on the city of Rome and some regions and towns of the Papal State from late sixteenth to the middle of eighteenth century. The aim is to underline the conflicts and interrelations between the Inquisition and other central tribunals (Governator, Vicar), local bishops and governor and the role played by officers in the roman tribunal and in the peripheral ones. In this diversified context, drawing largely on unpublished archival material, my paper is intended to drawn up the collaboration and the opposition with local episcopal courts and the peripheral inquisitorial world and his staff, to verify the gap between theory and practice, between roman, central policy and the actual practice: how deep and incisive the inquisitorial control was in a peculiar context like the Eternal City and the Papal States?