Cursed Blessings explores the relationship between sexual nonconformity and religious radical dissent in the early modern Western European world. While many studies have been devoted to the process of the "hereticalization" of nonnormative sexual practices and its use in anti-heretical propaganda, this book is entirely devoted to understanding the meaning of unconventional sexual behaviors from the perspective of the dissenters.
Divided into three parts, the first focuses on the Italian peninsula and explores alternative views on sexuality inspired by Renaissance currents of anti-clericalism, ancient Christian heresies, traditions of apocrypha of the New Testament, and Rabbinic literature. It also examines how embodied and gendered experiences influenced the dissenting views of religious women. The second part explores how reflections on Original Sin led to the questioning of Christian assumptions regarding sex and gender, highlighting the relationship between the criticism of sexual morality and disputes on free will, spirituality, and redemption. The third part examines how most of these threads were entwined into a more coherent philosophical framework in the writings of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century erudite libertines.
This book is designed for academic readers, including graduate and undergraduate students. Given its intersectional approach, it will be of interest to researchers, teachers, and students in a wide array of fields, including religious, gender, and sexuality studies, as well as literature. This book also tackles issues that are relevant to present-day debates, such as the problematic relations between sexuality and religion and the ongoing polemics surrounding the complicated interactions between religion and politics.
Table of Contents:
Umberto Grassi
Introduction: Sexual Nonconformity and Religious Dissent in Early Modern Europe
Part 1: Sex and the body as a form of resistance to Catholic Orthodoxy
Lucia Felici
A Sixteenth-Century Libertine Priest: Francesco Calcagno
Vittorio Frajese
The Disciple whom Jesus Loved
Isabel Harvey
The Venetian Inquisition and the bodies of Nuns. The Trial Against Suor Cecilia Sacrati, 1701-1706
Part 2: Heretical reinterpretations of original sin in Germany and the Netherlands
Dario Gurashi
Decrypting Adam and Eve: Agrippa on Sexuality and Redemption
Gary K. Waite
Adam, Eve, and the Serpent in David Joris’ Radical Spiritualism
Karen E. Hollewand
The Banished Scholar: Beverland, Sex, and Liberty
in the Seventeenth-Century Low Countries
Part 3: Between elite discourses and popular innuendos: European erudite libertinism
Jean-Pierre Cavaillé
The Philosophical Meaning of Sexual Transgressions: ‘Libertins Érudit’ and Sodomy
Peter Cryle
The Moral Radicalism of Libertine Dalliance in Eighteenth-Century France
