Benjamin Ravid

Venice and its Minorities

The Companion to Venetian History, 1400-1797 provides a single volume overview of the most recent developments. It is organized thematically and covers a range of topics including political culture, economy, religion, gender, art, literature, music, and the environment. Each chapter provides a broad but comprehensive historical and historiographical overview of the current state and future directions of research.

Reviews : Jonathan I. Israel, European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism, 1550-1750, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1985; xii + 293 pp.; £25.00

long before the appearance of Benedetto da Mantova’s work. In a chapter of profound erudition, even by Dr Collett’s standards, he convincingly shows (it is a much-discussed issue) that the Beneficio is really two works. One reflects Dom Benedetto’s’Antiochene’ approach typical of the Italian Black Monks, the other Marcantonio Flaminio’s part-Calvinist, part-Valdesian but essentially forensic soteriology. When it came to pastoral theology and a popular teaching, needless to say the monks, following Folengo’s ’good works bom of faith are necessary to salvation’, emphasized merit. Indeed, in what Collett regards as the debased theology of Dom Giorgio Siculo the Pelagianism that some had already detected in the monks’ outlook became manifest. Incidentally, Dr Collett dismisses Deglio Cantimori’s ideas that Siculo’s extreme work-righteousness was derived from Renaissance confidence in man: it was a distorted development of the Congregation’s concept of restoration into a doctrine