‘Heretics’ and protestant ‘Heresies’ in 16th Century Spanish Sicily

Abstract

The Spanish viceroyalty of Sicily, like the main part of the Old Continent, was invested by the development of the Protestant Reformation ideas from the 30’s of the XVI century. They deeply seeped through the Sicilian religious context, finding both an agreement and an efficient repressive answer from the Holy Office only from the following decade. That thanks not only to the Lutheran echoes of the Neapolitan society of Juan de Valdés, Giovanni Montalcino e Paolo Ricci but also to the indulgent position of the Viceroy: Ferrante Gonzaga.The purpose of this paper is to examine in his entirety and complexity the profiles, the amount and last but not least the so-called ‘Lutheran heretics’ in the island area in the Spanish period. This not only through the comparison of the list of the abandoned people to the Secular Arm, kept in Biblioteca Comunale di Palermo, but also of the list of the Sicilian autodafé in Archivo General de Simancas and the documents stored in Archivo Historico Nacional in Madrid