Interdict

Abstract: Why did opera first succeed as a public art form in Venice between 1637 and 1650 when all the elements of the new form were fully evident? The answer is to be found in the conjunction between Venetian carnival festivity and the intellectual politics of Venetian republicanism during the two generations after the lifting of the papal interdict against Venice in 1607. During this extraordinary period of relatively free speech, which was unmatched elsewhere at the time, Venice was the one place in Italy open to criticisms of Counter Reformation papal politics. Libertine and skeptical thought flourished in the Venetian academies, the members of which wrote the librettos and financed the theaters for many of the early Venetian operas.

Abstract: Acknowledgments 1. Introduction: Text, Context, Temperament and Tradition 2. Celestial Hierarchies Revisited: Ullmann's Vision of Medieval Politics 3. "Verius est licet difficilius:" Tierney's Foundations of the Conciliar Theory after Forty Years 4. Legitimation by Consent: The Question of the Medieval Roots 5. "Anxieties of Influence:" Skinner, Figgis, Conciliarism and Early-Modern Constitutionalism 6. Complexities of Context: Gerson, Bellarmine, Sarpi, Richer and the Venetian Interdict of 1606-1607 7. Locke, Natural Law, and God: Again 8. Jacobean Political Theology: Holdsworth, McIlwain and the Absolute and Ordinary Powers of the King 9. "Adamantine Fetters of Destiny:" The Absolute and Ordained Power of God and King in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries 10. Epilogue: Oakeshott's Will and Artifice and the Mirror of Eternity Index of Names and Places Subject Index Bibliography