Giuristi in fuga nell’Europa cinquecentesca : esuli religionis causa e ‘nuove’ percezioni giuridiche

Among the most striking consequences of the work of the Roman Inquisition, aimed at eradicating the heresy from sixteenth-century Italy, there was the escape from the peninsula of many jurists who, having embraced the ideas of the Protestant Reformation, were forced tochoose the path of the exile. The diaspora of Italian exiles, a phenomenon of vast proportions that testifies to the widespread adherence to the Reformation in almost all regions of Italy and in every social class, falls within the sphere of forced migration of a religious nature, which involved, on several occasions, the 16th century Europe. An attempt will be made to provide a general, necessarily summary picture of the complex problem of the religionis causaexiles, highlighting how the experience of exile favored a first definition of the concepts of libertas religionisand religious tolerance, in the laborious elaboration of new forms of coexistence in an age of irreducible controversies and incurable divisions.