Alberto Moravia
1907–1990)Italian writer, whose novels and short stories display his narrative skill and psychological insight.Moravia was born of Jewish stock in Rome, the setting for most of his stories. He began ...
Alfred Firmin Loisy
(1857–1940).French biblical scholar and RC Modernist. An enthusiastic exponent of the historico-critical study of the Bible, he was dismissed from the Institut Catholique in Paris in 1893. In 1902 ...
Anton Günther
(1783–1863), religious philosopher. He spent most of his life in Vienna. He held that human reason could prove scientifically the mysteries of the Trinity and Incarnation, and that there was no ...
Antonio Fogazzaro
(1842–1911)Italian novelist and essayist. His humour and powers of characterization are at their best in Piccolo mondo antico (1895: The Little World of the Past), set north of Lake ...
Antonio Possevino
(c.1533–1611),Jesuit missionary and papal diplomat, born in Mantua, where he entered the Jesuits in 1559. The following year he was sent to work amongst the Waldenses in Piedmont, and ...
Antonio Rosmini-Serbati
(1797–1855)Reactionary Italian philosopher and theologian, ordained in 1821. He endeavoured to synthesize philosophy and faith, contrary to prevailing empiricism and positivism, and with the purpose ...
Arcangela Tarabotti
(1604–52)(pseud. Galerana Baratotti or Barcitotti). Venetian prose writer, advocate of women's liberty and equality, critic of contemporary patriarchy within the family, state, and Church, social ...
Bartolomé Carranza
(1503–76),Spanish Dominican theologian, born into a noble family in Miranda de Arga (Navarre) and educated at Alcalá de Henares (1515–20). He entered the Dominican Order (1520) and then continued ...
Bartolomé de Torres Naharro
(c.1485–c.1530)Spanish playwright. Ordained a priest in Italy and heavily influenced by Italian writers of the early modern period, he was the author of a collection of comedies together with ...
Bernardino Telesio
(1509–88)Italian philosopher and naturalist. Telesio studied in Padua but resided in southern Italy. The first two volumes of his major work, De rerum natura juxta propria principia appeared in 1565; ...
Blaise Pascal
(1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopherPascal was the son of a respected mathematician and a local administrator in Clermont-Ferrand, France. Early in life Pascal ...
censorship
1. Any regime or context in which the content of what is publically expressed, exhibited, published, broadcast, or otherwise distributed is regulated or in which the circulation of information is ...
Claude Fleury
(1640–1723), ecclesiastical historian. From 1689 he was one of the tutors to Louis XIV's grandsons, and after his death (1715) he was chosen as confessor to the young Louis XV. His chief work is his ...
Clement VIII
(c.1536–1605), Pope from 1592. It was his policy to secure the representation of all the conflicting influences in the curia, and especially to limit that of Spain. He supported the Catholic League ...
Counter-Reformation
A revival in the Roman Catholic Church between the mid-16th and mid-17th centuries. It had its origins in reform movements which were independent of the Protestant Reformation, but it increasingly ...
Daniel Papebroch
(1628–1714)Bollandist hagiographer. In 1659 he became J. Bollandus's assistant and continued till his death to take an active part in the compilation of the Acta Sanctorum, though he was ...
Decameron
A work by Boccaccio, written between 1348 and 1358, containing a hundred tales supposedly told in ten days by a party of ten young people who had fled from the Black Death in Florence. The work was ...
Dei delitti e delle pene
(1764). Beccaria's celebrated work on penal and judicial reform and a masterpiece of the Lombard Enlightenment. It was published anonymously, and placed on the Index in 1766. But it was ...
Étienne Baluze
(1630–1718), ecclesiastical historian and canonist. His works include an edition of the letters of Innocent III (1682; incomplete), Conciliorum Nova Collectio (1683), and Vitae Paparum Avenionensium ...
Family of Love
An Anabaptist sect, the members of which were known in English as ‘Familists’, founded by Hendrik Niclaes, a native of Münster who arrived in Amsterdam c.1531 and in 1539 or ...
