Books by Giuseppe Marcocci

This book explores the different forms of the writing of world history in the Renaissance by focu... more This book explores the different forms of the writing of world history in the Renaissance by focusing on the effect of overseas explorations and the first global interactions on the changing perspectives on history. It provides a fresh account that connects peoples and stories from Mexico to China, the Moluccas and Peru, as well as the Venetian print shops and the rival courts of Spain and England.
Such a global scope of Renaissance historiography shows to what extent unexpected discoveries challenged the recovery of models from Classical Antiquity: What was the historical past of peoples, like the Native Americans, of whom Europeans had never heard? In which way should they explain the traces of remote ages ignored by both the Bible and the Greek and Latin authors? How to reconcile a sudden multiplicity of histories with the increasing sense of the unity of the planet? Such questions led to a variety of answers in the writing of world history that still matter today.
L' anarchismo è per sua natura non dogmatico. In Anarchist Studies. Una critica degli assiomi cul... more L' anarchismo è per sua natura non dogmatico. In Anarchist Studies. Una critica degli assiomi culturali (elèuthera, pp.143, euro 13) Salvo Vaccaro non ha nessuna difficoltà ad ammettere che anche la tradizione anarchica ha bisogno di una «dialettica»: molte delle sue categorie subiscono infatti l'usura del tempo. Meglio allora parlare di «anarchismi», vari e diversi tra di loro. Per gli anarchici, «la libertà non è mai individuale bensì singolare plurale, non è una qualità etica dell'individuo bensì uno spazio impersonale condiviso con l'altro».

Em 1536 começava a funcionar, em Évora, onde a corte residia, a Inquisição. O seu objetivo princi... more Em 1536 começava a funcionar, em Évora, onde a corte residia, a Inquisição. O seu objetivo principal era defender a fé e a Igreja. A bula papal da fundação explicitava a natureza dos crimes sob a sua alçada. Apelava-se a todos que denunciassem qualquer pessoa suspeita de ter aderido às crenças luteranas, observado cerimónias e costumes judaicos ou islâmicos, negado a existência da vida eterna, acreditado na transmigração das almas até ao dia do Juízo, contestado a virgindade de Nossa Senhora ou que Cristo fosse o Messias prometido no Antigo Testamento, praticado a bigamia, bruxaria ou feitiçaria, possuído livros para celebrar sabats noturnos ou outros defesos pela Igreja, incluindo bíblias escritas em línguas vernáculas. Iniciava-se uma perseguição que levou milhares de vítimas, homens e mulheres, pelas suas ideias e comportamentos a serem presas, acusadas e, no limite, mortas nas fogueiras por condenação do Santo Ofício.
A consciência de um império. Portugal e o seu mundo (sécs. XV-XVII)
L'invenzione di un impero. Politica e cultura nel mondo portoghese (1450-1600)
Edited Books by Giuseppe Marcocci

This volume provides the first survey of the unexplored connections between Machiavelli’s work an... more This volume provides the first survey of the unexplored connections between Machiavelli’s work and the Islamic world, running from the Arabic roots of The Prince to its first translations into Ottoman Turkish and Arabic. It investigates comparative descriptions of non-European peoples, Renaissance representations of Muḥammad and the Ottoman military discipline, a Jesuit treatise in Persian for a Mughal emperor, peculiar readers from Brazil to India, and the parallel lives of Machiavelli and the bureaucrat Celālzāde Muṣṭafá. Ten distinguished scholars analyse the backgrounds, circulation and reception of Machiavelli’s writings, focusing on many aspects of the mutual exchange of political theories and grammars between East and West. A significant contribution to attempts by current scholarship to challenge any rigid separation within Eurasia, this volume restores a sense of the global spreading of books, ideas and men in the past.
1 Introduction: Re-Orienting Machiavelli
Lucio Biasiori and Giuseppe Marcocci
Part One – From Readings to Readers
2 Islamic Roots of Machiavelli’s Thought? The Prince and the Kitāb sirr al-asrār from Baghdad to Florence and Back
Lucio Biasiori
3 Turkophilia and Religion: Machiavelli, Giovio and the Sixteenth-Century Debate about War
Vincenzo Lavenia
4 Machiavelli and the Antiquarians
Carlo Ginzburg
Part Two – Religion and Empires
5 Roman Prophet or Muslim Caesar: Muḥammad the Lawgiver before and after Machiavelli
Pier Mattia Tommasino
6 Mediterranean Exemplars: Jesuit Political Lessons for a Mughal Emperor
Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam
7 Machiavelli and the Islamic Empire: Tropical Readers from Brazil to India (Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries)
Giuseppe Marcocci
Part Three – Beyond Orientalism
8 A Tale of Two Chancellors: Machiavelli, Celālzāde Muṣṭafā, and Connected Political Cultures in the Cinquecento/the Hijri Tenth Century
Kaya Şahin
9 Machiavelli Enters the Sublime Porte: The Introduction of The Prince to the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman World
Nergiz Yılmaz Aydoğdu
10 Translating Machiavelli in Egypt: The Prince and the Shaping of a New Political Vocabulary in the Nineteenth-Century Arab Mediterranean
Elisabetta Benigni
Le trasgressioni della carne: Il desiderio omosessuale nel mondo islamico e cristiano, secc. XII-XX (co-edited with U. Grassi)
Viella (Rome), 2015
Società ostili. Stereotipi, giustizia, integrazione (XVI-XVII secolo)
Società e Storia 138: 729-822, 2012
Per Adriano Prosperi, vol. 2, L'Europa divisa e i nuovi mondi (co-edited with Massimo Donattini and Stefania Pastore)
Edizioni della Normale (Pisa), 2011
Articles by Giuseppe Marcocci
Journal of Baroque Studies, 2017
In the past two decades, empires have increasingly attracted the attention of historians of the e... more In the past two decades, empires have increasingly attracted the attention of historians of the early modern period to the detriment of the traditional focus on states as the default political unit of analysis. The emergence of global history is not alien to this turn. This article maintains that our understanding of configurations of the early modern political map would only benefit from detaching the history of the state from its European trajectory and focusing on the multiple connections between states and empires across the world. Not only did both states and empires share the problem of having too much to rule, but their differences were not always so clear to the historical actors. Therefore, looking at their interactions at a local level might be a promising line to follow in future research.

The coexistence of a process of hierarchy and discrimination among human groups alongside dynamic... more The coexistence of a process of hierarchy and discrimination among human groups alongside dynamics of cultural and social hybridization in the Portuguese world in the early modern age has led to an intense historiographical debate. This article aims to contribute to extending our perspectives, focusing on the circulation of two global categories of classification: negro (Black) and gentio (Heathen) between the mid-fifteenth and late-sixteenth century. In particular, it explores the intersections between the perception of skin color and the reworking of theological concepts in a biologizing direction, which ran parallel to the development of an anti-Jewish theory based on blood purity. The line of enquiry leads from the coasts of West Africa, where it immediately meets the problem of slavery, to Brazil, via South Asia. The intense cross fertilization of the categories of negro and gentio in the Portuguese world provides us with an alternative geography and institutional process of racialization to that of the Spanish Empire.

Historical Reflections /Reflexions Historiques 41, 2: 37-52, 2015
In 1578, a same-sex community that gathered in a church, performing marriages between men, was di... more In 1578, a same-sex community that gathered in a church, performing marriages between men, was discovered in Rome. Documentary evidence now verifies this story, reported by many sources, including a passage of Michel de Montaigne's 'Travel Journal', but which was for a long time denied by scholars. While briefly reconstructing this affair, this article explores the complex emotional regime surrounding the episode. In particular, it argues that those who participated in the ceremonies did so not only as an expression of affection for their partners, but also in an attempt to legitimize their relationship in a rite that imitated the Counter-Reformation sacrament of marriage. This approach challenges the predominant historiography on the birth of homosexuality and helps us to better understand the sentiments of those who were part of a same-sex community in Renaissance Rome.

Storica 60: 7-50, 2014
Over the past two decades social sciences have experienced a global turn which also has affected ... more Over the past two decades social sciences have experienced a global turn which also has affected both the conventional chronologies and geographies of historical research. This article focuses on the Italian Peninsula in a period that can be termed early global age, roughly from 1300 to 1700, when connection and communication among the different parts of the world significantly increased.
The aim is to challenge the dominant narrative of Italy as a region whose history has been defined by its main dynamics within the Peninsula and its relationship with Europe and the Mediterranean. On the contrary, this article provides bold evidence, from overseas projections of Italian powers (before and after the formation of the Iberian empires) to intellectual reactions, from wide-ranging circulation of people and objects to global lives of individuals, that show to what extent a global reconfiguration of Italian history raises new questions and can open a promising field of research.

Journal of Early Modern History 18: 473-494, 2014
This article presents the first reconstruction of the relationship between conscience and empire ... more This article presents the first reconstruction of the relationship between conscience and empire in the Portuguese World between 1500 and 1650. It shows to what extent the foundation of the Mesa da Consciência ("Board of Conscience"), a royal council of theologians devoted to issues like war, commerce, conversion, and slavery, shaped the imperial ideology. In this context, "conscience" emerged as a keyword in the political vocabulary, reflecting the importance of moral theology for the political language in which the empire was conceived. It not only bolstered the hegemony of theologians but also encouraged the emergence of a missionary casuistry, which became increasingly independent of the central authorities in the kingdom and in Rome. Under the Habsburg domination (1580-1640) this system was dismantled and theologians lost their centrality at court. After the Restoration of 1640 some of the old institutions were recovered in name, but the old interconnection between politics and moral theology was not re-installed.

Lusitania Sacra 23: 17-40, 2011
O artigo procura apresentar novos dados sobre o contexto da fundação do Tribunal do Santo Ofício ... more O artigo procura apresentar novos dados sobre o contexto da fundação do Tribunal do Santo Ofício em Portugal (1536). A historiografia continua a ser influenciada pela reconstrução dos acontecimentos fornecida na segunda metade do século XIX, por Alexandre Herculano: uma dramática luta internacional entre um rei fanático, D. João III, o mundo corrupto da cúria papal e a capacidade diplomática dos agentes dos cristãos-novos em Roma. Sem pretensão de oferecer uma nova interpretação global do complexo episódio da introdução da Inquisição em Portugal, a adopção de uma perspectiva mais alargada aqui proposta permite colher aspectos decisivos que passaram despercebidos, desde a pressão da Inquisição espanhola sobre a coroa portuguesa para perseguir os cristãos-novos, até ao papel central do novo grupo de conselheiros em matéria de fé, que integraram a corte de D. João III entre o fim dos anos 20 e o início dos 30.
«Gabriel» is the Christian name of a slave from Ethiopia who was tried by the Goa Inquisition in ... more «Gabriel» is the Christian name of a slave from Ethiopia who was tried by the Goa Inquisition in 1595. This article brings his case to light for the first time, while offering a more general discussion of the spatial mobility and shifting religious identity of Abyssinian slaves in the early modern Indian Ocean world. A possible Ethiopian Jew, Gabriel would have repeatedly converted to Catholicism in the Portuguese Empire and to Islam in the Sultanate of Ahmadnagar (or in Balaghat, according to an alternative story of his life that we read in his trial). The article provides a detailed analysis of Gabriel’s depositions before the Inquisition. It discusses carefully his defensive strategy, the possible reasons for his narrative, and the geography of his movements, also by making a comparison with more successful Abyssinian slaves who lived in early modern India.
Tempo 15/30: 41-70, 2011
O objetivo do presente artigo é fazer uma incursão na história conectada dos dois grupos mais dis... more O objetivo do presente artigo é fazer uma incursão na história conectada dos dois grupos mais discriminados do império português da época moderna, dando particular atenção ao caso da sociedade colonial brasileira: os ameríndios e os negros africanos escravizados. Essa história é resultante de uma complexa teia formada por causas de diversas naturezas. Examinamos aqui três delas: o juízo acerca da capacidade de trabalho, a influência do paradigma antijudaico e o debate sobre a salvação da alma dos ameríndios e dos negros africanos. Palavras-chave: Discriminação -hierarquias sociais -escravidão
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Books by Giuseppe Marcocci
Such a global scope of Renaissance historiography shows to what extent unexpected discoveries challenged the recovery of models from Classical Antiquity: What was the historical past of peoples, like the Native Americans, of whom Europeans had never heard? In which way should they explain the traces of remote ages ignored by both the Bible and the Greek and Latin authors? How to reconcile a sudden multiplicity of histories with the increasing sense of the unity of the planet? Such questions led to a variety of answers in the writing of world history that still matter today.
Edited Books by Giuseppe Marcocci
1 Introduction: Re-Orienting Machiavelli
Lucio Biasiori and Giuseppe Marcocci
Part One – From Readings to Readers
2 Islamic Roots of Machiavelli’s Thought? The Prince and the Kitāb sirr al-asrār from Baghdad to Florence and Back
Lucio Biasiori
3 Turkophilia and Religion: Machiavelli, Giovio and the Sixteenth-Century Debate about War
Vincenzo Lavenia
4 Machiavelli and the Antiquarians
Carlo Ginzburg
Part Two – Religion and Empires
5 Roman Prophet or Muslim Caesar: Muḥammad the Lawgiver before and after Machiavelli
Pier Mattia Tommasino
6 Mediterranean Exemplars: Jesuit Political Lessons for a Mughal Emperor
Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam
7 Machiavelli and the Islamic Empire: Tropical Readers from Brazil to India (Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries)
Giuseppe Marcocci
Part Three – Beyond Orientalism
8 A Tale of Two Chancellors: Machiavelli, Celālzāde Muṣṭafā, and Connected Political Cultures in the Cinquecento/the Hijri Tenth Century
Kaya Şahin
9 Machiavelli Enters the Sublime Porte: The Introduction of The Prince to the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman World
Nergiz Yılmaz Aydoğdu
10 Translating Machiavelli in Egypt: The Prince and the Shaping of a New Political Vocabulary in the Nineteenth-Century Arab Mediterranean
Elisabetta Benigni
Articles by Giuseppe Marcocci
The aim is to challenge the dominant narrative of Italy as a region whose history has been defined by its main dynamics within the Peninsula and its relationship with Europe and the Mediterranean. On the contrary, this article provides bold evidence, from overseas projections of Italian powers (before and after the formation of the Iberian empires) to intellectual reactions, from wide-ranging circulation of people and objects to global lives of individuals, that show to what extent a global reconfiguration of Italian history raises new questions and can open a promising field of research.