ABSTRACT
The confiscation of the patrimonies of individuals condemned by the courts of the Roman Inquisition has become very important in studies of the history of the Holy Office and, more broadly, of Italian economy and society in the early modern period. Still, our knowledge of these areas remains piecemeal and fragmentary. Vincenzo Lavenia has recently investigated the theological-juridical premises of the confiscation of goods [“publicatio bonorum”] as it developed in the Middle Ages and subsequently (with the determining contribution of the Salamanca school), as well as the complex relations which developed during the 1500s between the Holy Office and the governing authorities of various Italian peninsula states which, in various situations, contested the rights (and the fruits) of penal confiscation with the ecclesiastical courts.1
