ABSTRACT
The author examines the emergence of ecclesiastical fears from the 1740s, paying attention to the spread of Enlightenment books arriving in Italy from nearby France via the clandestine routes of the book trade. According to Italian priests and moralists, the Enlightenment seemed to upset the established order and to attack the Catholic identity of the peninsula in the name of cosmopolitan universalism. Novels in particular (Lettres persanes by Montesquieu, for instance, and Candide by Voltaire)-deemed able to reach a vast public, including the young, women and the so-called incautious readers-were increasingly considered one of the instruments of the Enlightenment and, as such, a vehicle for the spread of atheism.
Keywords: Enlightenment, ecclesiastical fears, novels, female reading
