Speranze, progetti e reti interconfessionali in Europa fra Sei e Settecento. Heinrich Wilhelm Ludolf e Francesco Bellisomi

The subject of the essay is a transnational and interconfessional network involving Germany, Italy and England. Its protagonists are men linked by epistolary correspondences, bonds of solidarity, exchanges of books and ideas, and shared projects in which religion, culture and politics are intertwined. In particular, the focus is on Heinrich Wilhelm Ludolf (1655-1712) and Francesco Bellisomi (1663-1741). Ludolf was an orientalist, diplomat and traveler, as well as a deeply religious man associated with Halle Pietism. Bellisomi was an abbot from Pavia who was arrested and tried by the Roman Inquisition in 1701, escaped from the inquisitorial jail after about ten years of imprisonment, and was long supported and sheltered in his wanderings across different European countries precisely by the Pietist networks connected to Halle. The interpretation of these interconfessional relationships is centered on the category of confessional “impartiality”: a notion that emerges in this historical period especially in the Pietist context, and which can be regarded as a criticism of confessional barriers, as a refusal to accept doctrinal and dogmatic distinctions, or even as an attempt to establish contact or dialogue between individuals and/or groups belonging to different confessions (or even outside them). The essay includes a documentary appendix: a hitherto unpublished Latin text about the origins of German Pietism which Ludolf addressed to Bellisomi in 1700.