HIS1003- Caravaggio Flashcards Speaking Exam

Is rome a modern society?

When thinking about whether Rome was a modern society, I’m going to break it down into key areas: ecnomic modernity and the existence of fiscal-military state, as typical for liberal historians, as well as religion, censorship, surveillance and social disciplining.

Economically, if we define modernity as industrial capitalism, Rome is not modern — it had no factories or industrialisation. But if we think about consumer culture, Rome looks far more modern. The city underwent a huge construction boom across the 16th and 17th centuries, visible in projects like Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling (1508), the Capitoline redesign, and even the creation of the Jewish Ghetto in 1555. The booming art market also demonstrates consumption: the careers of Caravaggio and Gentileschi show a thriving, competitive cultural economy, with new dramatic styles poritrayed in Caravaggio’s Entombment of Christ (1603) and Gentileschi’s Judith Slaying Holofernes. So, Rome wasn’t industrially modern, but it did have a recognisably modern consumer culture.

For the fiscal-military state, I used James Collins’ criteria from Interpreting Early Modern Europe. He argues that modern states build standing armies, had recognised state debts, consistent law-making authority and recognition for their boundaries. Rome clearly fails the military test: it relied on mercenaries, not a standing army. It also lacked the modern system of state debt. However, it was financially forward-thinking in other ways: Sixtus V created a huge treasury in Castel Sant’Angelo, which contrasts with most European states spending 50–70% of their budgets on war. Rome also exercised strong law-making authority through powers like papal deposition — even if rulers like Elizabeth I or Henry of Navarre ignored it, the claim itself shows a modern sense of sovereignty. Rome’s borders were defined, but more importantly it positioned itself as the global centre of Catholicism, recognised in the extremities of the Spanish and French empire. Institutions like the national colleges (from 1552) and the Congregation de Propaganda Fide (1622) show a state building international authority. So Rome wasn’t modern militarily, but it had modern features of sovereignty and administration.

To assess Rome’s religious modernity, I used Ute Lotz-Heumann’s “Confessionalisation” thesis. She argues church and state became deeply intertwined in the 16th and 17th centuries, shaping society at every level — and Rome fits this perfectly. It invested heavily in education, censorship, doctrinal control and social discipline. The Index of 1572 and the Roman Catechism in 1556 demonstrate this confessional state-building. While historians like Schulze argue that some developments were independent of religion, Rome still shows all the mechanisms associated with early modern confessional states.

Surveillance and social disciplining is where Rome arguably looks most modern. Its census system allowed the state to monitor the population closely. Montaigne’s travel diary describes customs officers confiscating books and notes “how well they know the men of our countries,” showing sophisticated information networks. He also describes an execution carried out with complete order, involving groups like the Brotherhood of Souls. This demonstrates that discipline in Rome wasn’t only top-down — society itself internalised and reproduced it. So ,socially Rome shows strong signs of modernity.

Censorship is a major indicator of early modernity, and the papacy put a lot of effort into creating an efficient and sophisticated level of censorship, in particular, with the 1572 Congregation of the Index of the Forbidden Books. The Galileo trial of 1633 clearly highlights the strength of this system: he was forced to publicly abjure his views surrounding heliocentrism, showing the state’s reach even over difficult, elite intellectuals. However, Mark Greengrass’, in his chapter in Interpreting early modern Europe, highlights that the Roman Index, whilst extremely sophisticated, reveals the limits of censorship, with the competition between Rome and local bishops, and the fact that works like Galileo’s still circulated in France. For this reason, Censorship in rome was intense, yet flawed, but it is undeniable that it was a modern system.

So, overall, Rome is not a fully modern society, due to economic or military definitions. Howver, in terms of other areas, Rome was modern and therefore it does have a place as a modern society, or a society moving towards modernity, as the rest of Europe was doing.

How much can we tell about Artemisia Gentileschi's personal life from her paintings?

Interpreting Gentileschi’s paintings as direct reflections of her personal life is tempting, especially given the survival of the 1612 trial records and the dramatic material within her work. However, the extent to which her art is autobiographical remains debated. While her experiences shaped her perspective, the paintings cannot be treated as transparent records of her inner life. However, it is fair to say is that she certainly had an artistic identity, gravitating towards strong female protagonists. There are elements of her art that appear personally inflicted. Scholars such as Mary Garrard argue that Artemisia’s trauma is visible throughout her art, particularly in works like Judith Slaying Holofernes, which display unusually visceral female agency. Garrard interprets these as responses to the rape and the hostile legal culture Artemisia faced. Even Artemisia’s Susanna and the Elders in 1610, and therefore painted before the rape, centres on a woman threatened by male power, suggesting Artemisia was already acutely aware of gender vulnerability. Yet the autobiographical reading has limitations. Elizabeth Cohen and others caution that projecting modern psychological assumptions onto a 17th-century artist distorts the evidence. Justice in Artemisia’s Rome was rooted in honour, not trauma; the trial focused on family reputation, not Artemisia’s feelings. To assume that Artemisia processed events in a modern psychological way risks anachronism. Furthermore, many painters reused biblical or historical heroines as vehicles for dramatic expression — powerful women like Judith, Susanna, and Lucretia were standard subjects in Baroque art, not unique to Artemisia. A key problem is that artists did not paint freely or privately. Artemisia worked for elite patrons across Italy. Patronage, competition, artistic convention, and market demand shaped her output. Her subjects often had to be those requested by clients, meaning personal symbolism is hard to verify. What we can tell is that Artemisia consistently gravitated toward strong female protagonists. While this alone does not prove autobiography, it does demonstrate a conscious artistic identity. She doesn’t present herself as a victim, but uses this ‘trauma’ as a professional wielding complex, seen in her Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting in 1638. In conclusion, Artemisia’s paintings can tell us something about her awareness of gendered power, her interest in female heroism, and her professional identity, but they cannot be taken as literal expressions of her private emotional life. The trial shapes how we view her, but the artworks themselves remain ambiguous and heavily conditioned by period conventions and patronage. We can read themes, tendencies, and artistic choices, but not a detailed psychological autobiography.

To what degree were non-Christians tolerated in sixteenth and seventeenth century Rome?

Rome in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries liked to present itself as an “international city” – full of different languages, visitors, and even different Christian traditions – but it definitely wasn’t multicultural in any modern sense. You could live in Rome as a non-Christian, but only under a very strict idea of toleration: you were tolerated so that you could be converted. In other words, your presence was allowed, but only because the Church saw you as someone on a journey towards Catholicism.

The group that best tests the limits of toleration is the Jews of Rome. A Jewish community had existed there since the second century BC, yet by the mid-sixteenth century their lives were tightly regulated. The Church prohibited forced conversion on paper, but still made life extremely difficult. They were heavily taxed, excluded from civic offices, and used symbolically in public ceremonies, such as at papal inaugurations or the humiliating Jewish races during Carnival. These rituals reinforced Christian dominance and the idea that Jews were spiritually “stuck” and needed guiding.

Things tightened even further in the 1550s with Paul IV’s bull Cum nimis absurdum, which created the Ghetto. Jews were confined to a small, flood-prone part of the city with locked gates at night, forced to wear identifying clothing, banned from owning property, limited to certain occupations, and monitored in their economic dealings. The ghetto wasn’t just restrictive; it was meant to signal that Jews were tolerated only because conversion was the ultimate goal.

The Church also went after Jewish books: the Talmud was publicly burned in 1553, banned in 1554, and repeatedly reinforced on indexes of forbidden texts. Hebrew printing in Rome basically ceased until the nineteenth century. Alongside this, the Casa dei Catecumeni and later the College of Neophytes were established to take in potential converts, sometimes aggressively. Jews were required to attend conversion sermons every Saturday, and cases of children being baptised without parental consent regularly reached the Roman Inquisition, which usually upheld the baptisms even when condemning the method.

Similarly, Muslim slaves captured in wars against the Ottomans were used as oarsmen in the papal fleets. A handful were freed each year, but only once they converted. So, “toleration” really just meant “temporary accommodation until baptism.”

Compared to the Ottoman Empire—where Jews and Christians were second-class subjects but still protected, legally recognised, and allowed to run their own courts—Rome’s approach feels much more intrusive.

Rome’s approach also matches the broader pattern that H. Parker identifies in his comparison of the Ottoman Empire and the Dutch Republic. Parker argues that early modern “toleration” usually meant allowing minorities to exist only privately, under financial pressure, and with constant reminders of their lower status. In both the Ottoman and Dutch cases, minorities were kept out of public religious space, required to pay fees or special taxes, and protected only as long as they accepted subordination. Seeing it this way makes Rome look less like an outlier and more like another example of what Parker calls the “accommodation of dissent” inside societies built on religious unity. The Roman ghetto, conversion sermons and the policing of Jewish books all fit the same model.

So, non-Christians were tolerated in early modern Rome, but only within very controlled boundaries. Their presence was permitted, but never neutral. For Muslims, it meant the possibility of manumission through conversion; and for Jews, it meant a life confined both physically and socially, under constant pressure to abandon their faith. It wasn’t pluralism—it was managed, conditional, and often humiliating coexistence.

In which of Galileo’s books did he use the theological concept of accommodation, and how important was it to his career?

Galileo mainly used the theological idea of accommodation in his Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina, printed in 1615. This wasn’t a scientific work but a long public defence of how Scripture should be read when it talks about the natural world. In it, he leans heavily on Augustine’s idea that the Bible “accommodates” itself to ordinary human understanding — basically, Scripture describes the world in everyday language rather than literal scientific truth. So when the Bible says the sun “moves,” that’s just the language of appearance, not a claim about astronomy. This idea lets Galileo argue that Copernicanism doesn’t contradict the Bible because the Bible isn’t trying to teach astronomy in the first place.

Accommodation was massively important for Galileo’s career, as it was his main strategy for protecting his scientific work from charges of heresy. It was his way of saying: I’m not attacking Scripture — I’m explaining how Scripture and science can coexist. And in 1615, when Copernicanism was being denounced in Rome and people like Foscarini were getting in trouble, this theological move really mattered. It positioned Galileo as someone trying to stay loyal to the Church while also defending new science.

But ironically, the doctrine only worked up to a point. Bellarmine more or less rejected accommodation in this context, insisting that Catholics couldn’t reinterpret Scripture against the unanimous views of the Fathers of the Church. He basically said: unless you can demonstrate heliocentrism with absolute certainty, the Church can’t reinterpret the Bible. And Galileo didn’t have that kind of proof. So even though accommodation let him push back in 1615–16, it didn’t save him in the long run. By the 1630s — especially with Dialogue annoying Urban VIII — the issue wasn’t really theology anymore but obedience, politics, and Galileo appearing disloyal.

So, accommodation mattered because it shaped Galileo’s entire public defence, gave him a framework for arguing that Copernicanism was compatible with Christianity, and probably helped him avoid immediate condemnation in 1616. But it couldn’t protect him forever. Once the Church decided that Copernicanism was too dangerous — both doctrinally and politically — the limits of accommodation became painfully clear.

How did Robert Bellarmine’s theology defend papal power and how was this related to European political life?

Bellarmine’s basic argument is this: political authority is real, natural, and legitimate — but spiritual authority, held by the Church and ultimately by the Pope, is higher. And his writings, particularly his Disputationes, written in 1586-1589, walk a very careful line between not turning kings into sacred, untouchable figures, and not letting popes act like secular emperors.

He builds this in stages.

In Chapter 2 of his Disputationes he starts with the question: should Christians even have political authority? He lists the arguments against it — that rulers are corrupt, that Christians are spiritually “perfect” and that political subjection came from sin — but he essentially rejects these extremes. What he wants to show is that although Christianity doesn’t abolish secular power, it does place it within a higher moral framework. So already, he’s hinting that the Church gets to oversee the behaviour of rulers.

Then in Chapter 3, he flips perspective and defends magistrates. He says rulers are “called gods by God himself” and their office reflects the divine order. So he’s not anti-monarchy at all. In fact, this is part of his balancing act: monarchs govern legitimately, but their legitimacy comes from God, not from themselves.

By Chapter 5, Bellarmine argues even more clearly that human society needs government because people aren’t self-sufficient. Political authority is natural — but it must obey divine law, and therefore the Church has the right to intervene when a ruler acts immorally. He’s basically saying: kings can govern the world, but the Church governs the meaning of that world.

Finally, Chapter 17 draws the line very explicitly: kings can govern temporal matters, but they cannot judge questions of faith or appoint ministers. They must not interfere in the Church. If they do, the spiritual power of the church has the right to correct them. He even cites Chrysostom to show that a sinful leader can be “punished by the Church”. This becomes the foundation of Bellarmine’s famous idea of the Pope’s indirect power — the Pope cannot rule kingdoms directly, but he can act if the salvation of Christians is threatened, even to the point of excommunicating a king so that his subjects may depose him.

Now, this wasn’t just theory. It was directly tied to European politics. Bellarmine was writing in a world where kings were claiming divine right. In France, the Wars of Religion raised the horrifying prospect of a Protestant king ruling a Catholic country. And in England, Catholics were trapped between loyalty to the monarch and loyalty to Rome. For them, extreme papal powers — like the right to depose a monarch — were politically disastrous.

So Bellarmine had to solve a real political problem: How can the Pope preserve spiritual authority without forcing Catholics to become traitors to their own governments? His solution was subtle but powerful: the Pope has no direct temporal authority, but can act in extreme cases because his spiritual authority is supreme. This let him defend secular government while still keeping the papacy above it. And it put him in direct conflict with monarchs like James I, who insisted the Pope had absolutely no power to intervene.

So when Bellarmine writes the Disputationes, he isn’t just defending Catholic theology. He’s responding to the pressures of religious civil war, divine-right kingship, and the political survival of European Catholics. His theology gives the Church moral supremacy while recognising the legitimacy of secular states. And that delicate balance shaped the political debates of the seventeenth century — from the French succession crisis to the English Oath of Allegiance — and even influenced later thinkers like Hobbes and Locke, who borrowed his ideas about the origins of civil power while conveniently dropping the papal bits.