Cursed Blessings Sex and Religious Radical Dissent in Early Modern Europe Routledge Studies in Early Modern Religious Dissents and Radicalism Series

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.

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

Umberto Grassi is an independent scholar. He specializes in early modern history and has published on the history of sexuality, religious radical dissent, cultural history, and the history of emotions. He has held research positions at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa and the University of Sydney as a research fellow of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions. From 2018 to 2021, he was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow at the University of Verona and the University of Maryland. His previous publications include Bathhouses and Riverbanks: Sodomy in a Renaissance Republic (2021).