Tra Stato e Chiesa. La lezione di Gaetano Cozzi

This article examines the ways in which Gaetano Cozzi studied the Catholic Church in its manifold components and, above all, its relationships with the secular power. In particular, it dwells on the ‘Sarpian paradigm’, which throughout the twentieth century influenced the Italian scholarship interested in religious phenomena. It also aims to show how Cozzi’s teachings may help today’s historians to overcome this paradigm in order to develop a thorough image of the Catholic Church in early modern Italy.