Dr Odile Liliana Panetta

My doctoral research focussed on the contributions brought by Italian Protestant refugees to the debate over the legitimacy of coercing heretics that raged across Switzerland in the three decades following the execution of the Antitrinitarian Michael Servetus in Geneva in 1553; my thesis is currently under consideration for publication with Brill’s Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions. My work on the Swiss heresy debate resulted in my first article, in which I examined justifications for the punishment of heretics in the thought of the prominent Reformed theologian Théodore de Bèze (1519-1605). Four further forthcoming articles reassess long-established, overtly biased narratives about the rise of religious toleration by examining the competing ideas about the suppression of heresy espoused by both orthodox Reformed and radical Protestants in the mid-sixteenth century. The themes I have explored include the role played by the Italian humanist and heterodox reformer Celio Secondo Curione (1503-1569) in contemporary discussions over religious coercion; the significance of a humanist background in shaping the positions of participants on both sides of the heresy debate; the relationship between Antitrinitarianism and religious toleration in the thought of Italian radical Protestants; and the import of the bestselling anti-coercionist treatise "Stratagemata Satanae" (1554) by the heterodox Italian exile Jacopo Aconcio.

At present, my main focus is a project on justifications for punishment and ecclesiastical discipline in early modern Reformed thought until ca. 1650. The project explores both how Reformed thinkers theorised the state’s role in inflicting corporal punishment for material and spiritual crimes alike, and how they sought to promote their ideas through polemical works, educational tools in Reformed academies and universities, and catechetical material for wider audiences; further, it examines debates within Reformed Protestantism over the respective roles of Church and state in policing lesser forms of misconduct, such as sexual transgression or drunkenness. My research speaks to debates over the role played by processes of confessionalisation in the rise of the modern state, and is part of a wider project, funded by the Aarhus University Research Foundation and led by Anna Becker, entitled “Body politic(s) – The body in early modern political thought”.