Umberto Grassi's What God Kept For Himself: Atheism, Sodomy, and Radical Dissent in Renaissance Italy
Editorial: "A revelatory account of sexual nonconformity and radical religious dissent in Renaissance Italy, drawing on never-before-studied Inquisition trials.
Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, a series of highly controversial Inquisition trials took place throughout the Italian peninsula. The defendants were all accused of the same heresy: claiming that Adam and Eve’s original sin had been committing sodomy, a 'celestial' pleasure reserved for God alone. Such claims were not merely subversive sexual innuendo. Rather, they were the most radical expressions of a much broader critique—one that not only targeted repressive sexual taboos but also denounced the corruption of the Church, questioned the authority of the pope, and suggested that organized religion itself was a hoax designed to maintain elite power."