The Fall from Grace: Religious Skepticism and Sexuality in the Early Modern Mediterranean World

This article explores the relationship between skepticism and sexual nonconformity in Italy from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. In the inquisitorial cases under examination, the praise of sexual freedom was supported by a heretical re-reading of the myth of the Fall from Grace. The criticism of religious deception is the link between sexual freedom and skepticism: these dissenters accused the elites of enforcing a morality based on a reward in the afterlife to keep people under control. Although these ideas have been mostly associated with seventeenth-century erudite libertines, this research shows them emerging almost a century before, in cross-class environments where forbidden books circulated widely. The article will explore how the written word was creatively re-appropriated in these composite social contexts, analyzing the influence of a Mediterranean tradition of radical doubt that cut across the boundaries dividing the three Abrahamic faiths. In particular, it will focus on the cultural exchanges between Christianity and Islam.


Introduction
This article will focus on a series of inquisitorial cases that were prosecuted in the Italian peninsula between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. The defendants celebrated sexual freedom through a heretical re-reading of the myth of the Fall from Grace. Stating that Adam and Eve practiced anal sex in the terrestrial paradise, some of them praised the pleasures of un-reproductive intercourse, both homo-and heterosexual. This idea was sometimes associated with a cluster of heretical beliefs that included a general mistrust towards the rites and ceremonies of the Church, the denial of the immortality of the soul, of Christ's resurrection, and the opinion that "all can be saved in their own faith" (that is, that eternal salvation could occur outside the sacramental boundaries of the Catholic Church, including among Jews and Muslims).
This heretical rereading of the Biblical account of Genesis also recurs in the writings of some of the most radical libertine thinkers of the seventeenth century. In terms that mirror, almost word for word, the heretical statements of our condemned sixteenth-century Italian dissenters, French writer François de La Mothe Le Vayer (1588-1672) and Dutch humanist scholar Adrian Beverland (1650-1716) discussed, in some of their works, the idea that sodomy was the original sin. The circulation in middle-rank and popular environments of a set of ideas that later became part of the repertoire of learned radical thinkers invites us to reconsider established genealogies and periodization. Given the available evidence, it seems that this scurrilous reinterpretation of the myth of the Fall from Grace also circulated independently from the cluster of heretical beliefs held by the dissenters whose trials this research is examining, and it appears to have continued to do so afterwards. Therefore, I am not hypothesizing a direct link of transmission that unites these cases and the subsequent emergence of this heterodox opinion in European learned culture. However, it is remarkable to point out how these dissenters integrated this curious interpretation of original sin within a heterogeneous ensemble of heterodox ideas, while following a rationale that was similar to the one adopted by those seventeenth-century intellectuals.
Radical atheism and irreligion were, thus, not the product of learned elites, but they reflected rebellious feelings of dissatisfaction with the status quo that cut across the social spectrum. Moreover, as we will see, many clues seem to suggest that their origin in the Christian West can be traced back to the contentious dialogue between the three main Mediterranean monotheistic religions. Finally, these cases confirm the extent to which sexual tropes long played a crucial role in uncovering the deceptive nature of religious revelations.

Social Background
This study is based on evidence from twenty-six cases in which the defendants were charged with -either as the main accusation or among other offenses -holding the belief that the forbidden apple symbolically represented Eve's buttocks and that, therefore, the original sin was anal sex.1 Most of the cases regarded individuals who were involved in larger networks of sociability where this outrageous opinion informally circulated. While in the seventeenth and eighteenth century this belief almost exclusively appears as an isolated heretical statement, in the first instances that I identified it went hand in hand with an articulated set of unorthodox beliefs that abruptly questioned some of the core tenets of the Catholic faith. By connecting the scattered information available, I argue that this idea originated in ecclesiastical circles and was subsequently appropriated by networks of lay nonconformists that cultivated a common interest in questioning the established religious beliefs and moral codes of their times.
Reference to the ecclesiastical origin of the idea that Adam and Eve committed sodomy in the terrestrial paradise is particularly evident in the first cases that were investigated by the Spanish Inquisition in Sicily. Both a priest and a theologian were implicated in eight cases reported between 1573 and 1605.2 Furthermore, one of the defendants, whose profession was not reported, stated that "there were theologians who held that opinion."3 Someone else specified that learned people and ecclesiastics were responsible for the spread of this indecent belief.4 The defendants of the most extensively documented late-sixteenth-and early-seventeenth-century cases, however, were a wide variety of laymen. Zozamo Canatta, a surgeon born in southern Sicily, faced the judges a number of times during his adult life, between 1560 and 1605, when his effigy was burnt at the stake after his death (due to natural causes when he was about seventyone years old). Marcello Impicciato was an illiterate grocer, prosecuted by the Neapolitan Inquisition in a long trial that lasted from 1598 to 1601. Ser Matteo Corti was a degraded priest tried by the Inquisition of Pisa in 1601.5 Ludovico Garrano, a jurisconsult, was a prominent figure in an extensive network centered in Palermo, which embraced a common interest in esotericism and magical arts. Involved in a tangled judicial case, he was forced to abjure de vehementi in 1633, and was sentenced to five years of imprisonment in solitary confinement, a sentence that was eventually commuted to house arrest.6 Finally, the last defendant who was prosecuted for the heretical statement that Adam and Eve committed sodomy in the terrestrial paradise, not as a single charge but along with other radical sceptical and irreligious ideas, was Antonio Partenio, a thirty-seven-year-old Venetian accused by the Inquisition of the Serenissima in 1705.7 Despite the difference in status of the defendants, all these cases share some relevant common features. The networks these dissenters belonged to usually cut across the social spectrum. According to the trial records, the witnesses engaged in lively discussions staged in a vast array of informal settings. The main square of a neighborhood where people gathered after work, the shops of apothecaries, the docks of a port city like Leghorn, the outskirts of a monastery, private houses, random streets and alleys and, later on, (in the eighteenth century) tobacconists and coffee-roasting warehouses were some of the backdrops against which these animated exchanges of ideas took place. Once uttered, the idea that the original sin was sodomy provoked outraged responses in some, curiosity in others; still others, however, rightfully feared the ubiquitous specter of the Inquisition. The desire to trigger reactions and shock the audience is a frequently attested personality trait of these dissenters. Although skepticism towards the sacraments, anti-clericalism, and radical doubt about the most counter-intuitive aspects of the Catholic catechesis (the virginity of Mary, the resurrection, the afterlife) were widespread popular attitudes in the early modern era, in the cases under examination the defendants sought to explain these widely shared feelings within a more consistent intellectual context. According to the witnesses, some of them declared themselves to be eager readers of forbidden books, and bragged about their learning with their neighbors and acquaintances. While I have already discussed other aspects of these cases in previous works,8 in this article I will attempt to reconstruct the learned sources that were discussed in these informal networks. Most times, what they read was not reported in the trial reports and therefore the reconstruction can only be speculative. In one case, however, the depositions of several witnesses named the authors and titles of what appears to be a select collection of radically subversive books.

An Esoteric Private Library
As noted earlier, Ludovico Garrano was tried for heresy and sorcery in Palermo.
He was also charged with denying the immortality of the soul, believing in God's impassibility, and negating the divinity of Jesus Christ.9 He did not believe in the authority of the pope, and denied his power to free souls from Purgatory.10 He and his friends were accused of often arguing about belleslettres (as they liked to call forbidden books in their jargon Abano" despite the fact that "it was something completely different, often an imperfect fragment whose image was enhanced by a high-sounding and eloquent title."21 However, some of the charges against the defendants are reminiscent of core principles of the medieval philosopher and astrologer's thought as they were absorbed in radical intellectual circles in the Italian peninsula (and beyond) in the late medieval and early modern period. Pietro d' Abano overtly advocated the astrological theory of the cyclical nature of religious eras, which was first formulated by Muslim authors and then circulated in European Christianity. According to this astrological theory, historical faiths were believed to be subject to a cyclical rhythm that included their origin, development, and decadence. As with other natural phenomena, these cycles were regulated by astral influences. In his Conciliator differentiarum philosopharum (written around the beginning of the fourteenth century), d' Abano argued that the birth of each religion, as well as other relevant events like Noah's flood and the birth of Muhammad, were related to a favourable astral conjunction. He also suggested a relatively rational approach to miracles, trying to reduce them to natural explanations. In his opinion, the prophets' supernatural powers could also be explained by the influences of the stars and notions of "complexions."22 Girolamo Cardano (1501-1576), still another author whose work was allegedly discussed among Garrano's circle, was probably one of the major contributors to the transmission of this astrological construct in the sixteenth century. A renowned mathematician, his eclectic interests embraced a wide range of 20 Leonardi, "Inquisizione, sette necromantiche," 86-87. disciplines. As an authoritative early modern champion of astrology, his lifelong commitment was to restore the tradition of Ptolemaic classical astrology, which he wanted to purify from the subsequent influences of Arabic authors that "encrusted" its pristine body during the translation process that occurred in the Middle Ages. Paradoxically though, the aspect of his thought that left the most lasting legacy was precisely the only part he decided to save of this tradition, that is, the theory of the great astrological conjunctions.

Grassi
Journal of early modern history (2021) 1-21 "openly stated" that "the whole world has been fooled by three impostors, Jesus Christ, Moses, and Muhammad."28 Frederick responded by denying the accusations and denouncing the pope himself as a heretic.29 The encyclical letter was written at the peak of the conflict between the two main secular and religious authorities of the Christian West (Empire and papacy). Pierre des Vignes, Frederick's chancellor, was in charge of replying to the pope's accusations against his master. His response, however, fueled further suspicions, and rumors spread that Pierre des Vignes wrote, in collaboration with the emperor, a treatise titled De tribus impostoribus.30 From then on, this pernicious text became a powerful instrument of control. Although no one saw it, for centuries the guardians of orthodoxy attributed its authorship to almost anyone who criticized the tenets of the Church or the foundation of its political authority.
To mention but a few, among those who -sooner or later -were accused of authoring this wicked book, we find the likes of Boccaccio, Pietro Pomponazzi, Niccolò Machiavelli, Desiderius Erasmus, Pietro Aretino, Bernardino Ochino, Francesco Pucci, Miguel Servet, Rabelais, Guillaume Postel, Giordano Bruno, Tommaso Campanella, Spinoza, and John Milton. Cardano was also among them.31 The legend of the three impostors is an ever-present theme in the history of European radical dissent, doubt, and atheism in the medieval and early modern period. As we will see, the circulation of an actual manuscript version of this much-feared text was attested to in the late seventeenth century, and a printed version eventually appeared in the early eighteenth. The historiography on the circulation, since the late Middle Ages, of the idea of the imposture of religion has been of the utmost importance to the progressive revision of Lucien Febvre's influential thesis, first advanced in Le probleme de l'incroyance au XVIe siecle. La religion de Rabelais (1942). Here, Febvre argued that, despite the ubiquitous condemnation of atheism in normative sources, the radical denial of God was something that, before the enlightenment, people just lacked the intellectual instruments to conceive of. However, it has since been proven that some of the core themes allegedly attributed to the book (and then contained in its known manuscript and printed versions) circulated widely in popular environments since at least the thirteenth century.32 A large part of this historiographical debate has revolved around the issue of the relationship between learned and popular culture. While the criticism of the top-down paradigm of intellectual history has been successfully revised, the notion of a separate "popular religiosity" that existed independently from -though clashing and mingling with -the culture of the elites seems also to be no longer convincing.33 As Federico Barbierato has pointed out in his seminal work on the spread of atheistic ideas in early modern Venice, the repertoire of erudite irreligiousness encountered needs that were already existent across the social spectrum. In a context where books were discussed in a wide range of public and semi-public settings, learned sources also provided common people with "easily recognizable elements to use and adapt to one's own ideas, which," with the support of literary authorities, "took on a greater degree of credibility." By using rhetorical conventions, literature "supplied a vocabulary and theoretical structure for existing states of mind."34 Paradoxically, however, the freedom of 32 It is not possible to give justice to the complexity of this historiographical debate in a single footnote. I will limit myself to mention the influential work of John

Grassi
Journal of early modern history (2021) 1-21 discussion enjoyed in informal settings allowed people to talk about religious matters more bluntly and directly than could ever have been done in a manuscript or, even more so, in a printed work.

Christ the Loaf, the Beggar, the Thief
The virulent attack against the Christian religion that was carried on by some of the defendants in the cases under examination is reminiscent of the core themes that have been historically associated with the theory of the imposture of religions. In the case of Marcello Impicciato, tried in Naples at the turn of the sixteenth century, we see some of the most outrageous and aggressive moves against the founder of the Christian religion. Impicciato's, however, was not the first denunciation to have occurred in Naples. Before him, another defendant was charged with believing that the forbidden fruit symbolized Eve's buttocks. The forty-year-old Biagio di Corso was brought to trial by the Neapolitan Inquisition in December 1577. Leonardo Costa, ex-jailer of the Archiepiscopal Curia, said that three prisoners testified to him that Biagio was living under a false name, and that he had been previously burned in effigy by the Inquisition of Palermo. This element seems to suggest that this idea circulated from Sicily to the Southern Italian peninsula through informal contact networks. Although the sources do not say if there were contacts between the Sicilian and the Neapolitan defendants, the description of the localized sociability they were immersed in allows us to formulate some reasonable hypotheses. Men and goods circulated extensively in economies largely based on trade, as was the case in Sicily and the viceroyalty of Naples. Traveling was not an exception for middle-rank professionals like most of the defendants of our cases. From the reports of Garrano's trial we know that some of his acolytes lived between Naples and Palermo, and that the Sicilian necromancers smuggled books from Venice, which they received unbound and which they then bound once arrived.35 It is quite likely that people characterized by curiosity and the will to challenge established systems of beliefs sought the company of like-minded companions or engaged in provocative discussions as much when they traveled as when they were at home. This picture, however, as tentative as it may be, must not be compared to the spread of a formal heresy. An established set of beliefs that required to be agreed upon, as well as the intent to proselytize, seem as alien to the mind-set of these individuals as the compliance to any form of religious orthodoxy. Curiosity, unsystematic thought, provocation, and irreverence were the key features that shaped their approach to the world that surrounded them.
These were indeed the main characteristics of Marcello Impicciato's words and actions. He allegedly repeated dozens of times to his acquaintances, neighbors, customers, and friends that "Christ was born a tramp, and he wandered around begging."36 Others reported him saying that Christ "was lashed because he deserved it,"37 because "he went robbing around"38 and that he "loved Saint Peter because they wander around together stealing fishes and dividing them up among them."39 Impicciato, like Ludovico Garrano and Zozamo Canatta before him, was accused of denying Christ's death on the cross, thus undermining the core tenet of the Christian religion. He allegedly repudiated his resurrection, claiming that "It is in not true that Christ died on the cross: he just pretended to be dead. If he had died, he wouldn't have come back to life … When have you ever seen someone be resurrected from the dead?"40 He was also reported to have added: "Who has ever seen this Christ? These images are made by carpenters; they're just men's inventions."41 Zozamo Canatta believed only in the first part of the Christian Credo and not in what was written after "in Jesum Christum filium eius."42 In 1581 he was reported as having said that the Jews had not killed Christ our Lord.43 Ludovico Garrano, for his part, sometimes denied the divinity of Jesus, while others allegedly argued that someone else had been sacrificed in his place, referring to Simon of Cyrene.44 This precise reference literally echoes one of the statements for which the Friulian miller Menocchio -made famous by Carlo Ginzburg's groundbreaking book The Cheese and the Worms -was charged. He was, indeed, 36 ASdN, SU,1067(1598-1601), 14r. January 12, 1598. Aloisio Antonio Alfano. 37 Ibid., 21v. February 20, 1598. Mattia Simeone di Napoli. 38 Ibid., 22v. 39 Ibid., 143v. January 15, 1599. Ferdinando de Luca alias "Scoglio." These statements are reminiscent of a long textual tradition that dates back to anti-Christian pagan writers like Celsus and continues in Jewish polemical writings like the Toledot Yeshu. These themes were subsequently incorporated into the theory of the imposture of religions in early modern Europe. I will delve into these aspects of this tradition in the monograph I am currently devoting to these cases. already seen that Venice was a supply source for the illegal market of forbidden books that nourished the curiosities of Garrano's esoteric circle. Moreover, Zozamo Canatta, the first of the defendants to be accused of believing that sodomy was the original sin, was kept as a slave by Muslim corsairs when he was an adolescent and spent a significant amount of his juvenile life as a converted Muslim in North Africa. Among his charges, there was the belief that "all can be saved in their own law," that is, that salvation was accessible also outside the boundaries of Christianity. This idea was widely spread in those times, as a result of the ongoing tensions between the three main monotheistic faiths, of the phenomena of mass conversions in the Spanish empire, and of the excruciating pain caused by religious wars and tensions -all elements that were further exacerbated by the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. Skepticism, doubt, and the desire for a cease-fire to end the violent turmoil provoked by confessional and interreligious conflicts became a more or less conscious attitude of many women and men yearning for peace.52 The Muslim religion contained some elements that resonated with this widespread need for concord. As already pointed out by Mercedes García Arenál, anti-Muslim polemicists attributed the idea that "all can be saved in their own faith" to Islam.53 In his Antialcoran (1535), the preacher Bernardo Peréz de Chinchón (1488/1493-1556?) stated that "some of the learned men among the Muslims say that each can be saved in his own law. the West.55 There is evidence that these Qurʾanic passages were discussed not only in anti-Islamic writings, but also by Christian theologians and philosophers open to reconsidering the official position of the Church regarding the relations between historical religions. In this fashion, they were quoted also by Marsilio Ficino in his De Christiana religione.56 As we have seen, the analyses of some of the works contained in Garrano's private library also call into question the relationship between Muslim and Christian intellectual traditions. When we consider attempts to explain the world, its origins, and the destiny of humanity on grounds other than religious revelations, the boundaries dividing the three main Mediterranean cultures tend, indeed, to blur. Renaissance natural philosophy and natural sciences, including astrology, medicine, oneiromancy, and magic were rooted in the classical tradition, and their circulation was made possible by the translation movements that took place in the Arabic-speaking world first and, subsequently, in the central centuries of the European Middle Ages. The tradition of the heterodox interpretations of Aristotle in Europe, which since the twelfth century had provided the intellectual foundation for radical ideas like the denial of creation and the immortality of the soul, were rooted in the reception of Ibn Rushd's (Averroes) commentaries on the works of the Greek philosopher.57 The theory of the imposture of religions itself originated in the midst of the conflicts between the three main Mediterranean monotheistic faiths. Back in the seventh century CE, the foundation of Islam was a breakthrough in the consolidation of a critical approach towards revealed religions. Muhammad claimed to be a prophet, and this claim was rejected by Jews and Christians alike. As a response to that, the traits that distinguish a true prophet from an impostor became a key issue in Islamic theological writings. The development of the disparate Jewish and Christian criteria of true prophecy was fueled by the polemics against Muslims.58 In this intricate interreligious dispute, each 55 Guilelmi side helped to shape and remodel the theological edifice of the other, but ultimately the seeds of doubt were also planted within each religious tradition. The status of prophecy and revelation per se started to be questioned, and the theme of the imposture of religion came to undermine the foundation of every possible religious faith.59 These ideas emerged in Western Christianity during the Middle Ages in contexts of religious blending, such as at the court of Frederick II, or in contexts where the three faiths coexisted, like in Iberian Al-Andalus.60 However, it was not only ideas and books that circulated in the Mediterranean world. People coming from different religious backgrounds traveled, clashed, and often coexisted side-by-side for long periods of time. Practices of day-by-day coexistence favored processes of hybridization. The Iberian context played a crucial role in the long-standing history of the interactions between Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the basin of the Mediterranean Sea. Notwithstanding its intrinsically conflictive nature, the coexistence of the three faiths in Iberia gave birth to fruitful processes of cross-pollination, but also encouraged the development of doubt and skepticism. As already noted by John Edwards in a study on the heretical statements prosecuted by the inquisition in the Castilian dioceses of Soria and Osma between 1482 and 1502, "blasphemy, materialistic attitudes, skepticism, anti-clericalism" were widespread attitudes among common people in contexts where religious minorities coexisted with the Christian majority.61 After the decision to force Jewish and Muslim individuals to convert, "conversos" and "moriscos" often maintained loyalty to their religious and cultural roots, transmitting their legacy through a wide range of dissimulation practices. In a context where concealment became a habit, doubt easily sowed its seeds. Forced transits between the faiths could reinforce the sense of belonging to a threatened tradition, but they could also foster processes of identity crisis. As Stefania Pastore has pointed out, this climate characterized by conflicts and coexistence, translations and adaptive strategies, led to the development of an intellectual undercurrent of doubt in Spain that in some cases resulted in the development of overtly heretical positions.62 While some developed 59 Ibid., 35. beliefs that were close to "certain deistic standpoints" that emerged in France and Holland between the late sixteenth and the seventeenth century, other dissenters adopted forms of "radical skepticism, which resulted in the denial of the immortality of the soul and of the validity of all religious precepts," which echoed -just as the Sicilian Zozamo Canatta did -"the centuries-old theories on the three rings, or the three impostors."63 Doubt, therefore, was not just a matter-of-fact approach to religious matters in a world divided by faith, but also an intrinsic part of a common cultural heritage. The readings of our dissenters seem to provide a case in point for this statement. While it is difficult from the sources to assess exactly how they themselves were aware of such connections, the reality is that these individuals bore the fruits of vines whose roots, underneath the surface, resulted from the interweaving of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian legacies alike. Traditions of radical doubt cut across the boundaries of the faiths. On the one hand, doubt was a collateral result of interfaith polemics that ultimately ended up undermining the belief in religious revelations per se. On the other, it nourished itself on the attempts made by scholars belonging to the three main Mediterranean religious traditions to accommodate, or refuse to, their own religious beliefs with the legacy of Classical philosophy and science, which constituted a common background for Jewish, Christian, and Muslim philosophers and theologians alike.

Libertinism
In 1705, about a century and a half after the first Sicilian trials, Antonio Partenio was prosecuted by the Venetian Inquisition. He was accused of being a swindler who tricked simple people out of their money by pretending to exercise the arts of magic. At the end of his depositions, however, he also provided a long list of unorthodox opinions in matters of faith. He disputed the tenet of predestination, favoring instead a belief in universal salvation. He, too, denied the immortality of the soul, denounced the greed of the Catholic hierarchies, the meaninglessness of their rituals, and the absurdity of the temporal power exercised by the pope. He also believed that Adam and Eve committed sodomy in the terrestrial paradise. In his final confession, he stated that "religion it is nothing but the cover of political power, so as to conceal its tyranny," thus adding an additional layer to the denunciation of the deceitful nature of the 63 Ibid.
Christian religion already made manifest by these cases.64 This pointed clarity ("cover," "conceal") reflects a changed context. The beginning of the eighteenth century was, indeed, a turning point in the history of the reception of the idea of the imposture of religions. The mysterious book that was said to have circulated since the late Middle Ages finally made its appearance in two major forms. Several manuscripts titled De tribus impostoribus and the Traité des trois imposteurs appeared between 1688 and 1719. They were the result of the collective work of heterodox circles mainly located between northern Germany and Holland, and their authors were driven not only by their antireligious beliefs, but also by profitmaking interests. Although manuscript copies were made from these two basic works, their core contents remained stable.65 Eventually, a print copy of the Traité, the more influential of the two, appeared in 1719. The French treatise "offered a recapitulation of antireligious arguments that had been developed from Celsus and Julian all the way to modern atheists"; they were "linked more or less coherently to form a sort of handbook for the perfect villain, the Bible of the unbeliever, the 'little red book' of irreligion."66 When Partenio was tried, however, the idea that Adam and Eve committed sodomy in the terrestrial paradise had also emerged in the work of at least two major representatives of seventeenth-century radical libertine thought. The first one, La Mothe le Vayer, is among the direct sources that were almost literally copied in the French version of the Three impostors, along with Vanini, Naudé, Charron, Hobbes, and, above all, Spinoza, who appears, himself in the title of the first print edition of the book, L'Esprit de Spinoza. La Mothe le Vayer, in two of his works, the Antre des nymphes and the Hexaméron Rustique (1671), discussed the idea that, in the terrestrial paradise, the female buttocks were the forbidden fruit, attributing the genesis of this unorthodox belief to previous rabbinic literature.67 A few years later, in 1678 (and then again in 1679) one of the most outrageous libertine works ever, Adrian Beverland's De peccato orginali, came out. Beverland attacked the bigotry of religious sexual morality by presenting his solution to the problem: allowing greater sexual liberty. As Partenio also stated in his confession, "who is allowed to err, errs less." While exaggerating the negative aspects of lust, Beverland "actually suggested to the In 1700 the idea that the original sin was sex was eventually defined as a heretical proposition -and not a heresy -by a resolution of the theological consultors of the Roman Holy Office on July 18, 1700.69 The archives of the Roman Inquisition have been another important source of information for reconstructing the circulation, within central and northern Italy, of the heretical belief that the original sin was sodomy. Unlike the cases we have already discussed, in this archival material there is no mention of the larger cluster of unorthodox ideas shared by the Sicilian, Neapolitan, and Venetian defendants. The belief that the forbidden apple symbolized Eve's buttocks appears to be a sexual joke that, despite its outrageousness, had no other serious heretical implications. While this statement was not extensively discussed in the cases we have already mentioned above, its origins and content emerge clearly from the analysis of the latter ones, which are preserved in the Roman archives.
Gregorio Corsetti, Director of the Ghislieri College in Pavia, who was prosecuted by the Roman Inquisition in 1686, confessed that in order to justify the opinion that the primeval fault was sodomy he had relied upon a passage in which the jurist Egidio Bossi (1488-1546) quoted an Augustinian text on sodomy.70 In a chapter of Bossi's Tractatus Varii (a compendium of criminal law) entitled De Stupro detestabili in masculos (On the dreadful sexual abuse among males) there was a paragraph titled Sodomiticum vitium habuit originem à mulieribus (The sodomitic vice originated in women). Here, the author, indeed, quoted an Augustinian Sermo ad fratres in eremo (n. 47) on sodomy.71 The work was, in fact, an influential pseudo-Augustinian writing composed in the late Middle Ages that circulated widely despite its controversial contents. 72 In the sermon, the author accuses women of being the cause of the spread of the sodomitic vice, following the famous Pauline passage of Romans 1.26-27. The pseudo-Augustinian author addresses to the female gender the rhetorical question: "Women, mothers of lust, wasn't it enough for you to deceive the first man?" (O mulieres luxuriae matres, nonne sufficiebat primum hominem decepisse?).73 Although in the passage there is no indication that Eve's infraction was having solicited Adam for anal sex, this exegesis is not completely unimaginable given the context.
Beyond the quest for the origins, yet another case preserved in the archives of the Roman Holy Office helps clarify the basic logic of this heretical statement. Friar Giovan Battista d' Antrodoco confessed that he stated that "buggery is an act of beatitude, and that this was the reason why God forbade Adam from eating the apple in the terrestrial paradise because it symbolized buggery, which God wanted to keep to himself."74 This radically subversive opinion projects onto God a commonplace assumption of the burlesque and satiric poetry of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: that sodomy was a sophisticated privilege of the ruling classes.75 Antonio Rocco, in his scandalizing apology of sodomy, Alcibiade Fanciullo a Scola (Alcibiades the Schoolboy) articulated this idea in a fashion that is highly reminiscent of D' Antrodoco's interpretation, who probably knew of the clandestine manuscript and read it. Rocco deemed sodomy a "celestial pleasure," and accused the religious and political institution of forbidding it in order to preserve it for themselves by terrifying the ignorant and simple "populace." 76 The theme of deception comes back here: sexual deception was the root itself of political and religious deception. Works like Rocco's Alcibiades delves Grassi Journal of early modern history (2021) 1-21 deeply into the tradition of erotic and satirical prose and poetry that had flourished in Italy since the fifteenth century.77 However, it takes these themes a step further and, in line with the currents of European erudite libertinism, it attributes a heuristic and philosophical role to the use of sexual innuendos.78 By framing sex in the light of natural philosophy, works like Rocco's Alcibiades contrasted the current morality (that, based on a reward in the afterlife, aimed to subjugate the people) with an ethic that encouraged enjoying the pleasures generously offered by Nature to human beings. From this perspective, religion was an instrument of control, whose most powerful political tool was the demonization of sexual pleasure.79

Conclusions
I found the initial evidence of the idea that the original sin was sodomy and that the apple symbolized Eve's buttocks in the documents of the Spanish inquisition in Sicily from the second half of the sixteenth century. Probably originating in ecclesiastical environments, these heterodox beliefs circulated among informal circles of lay dissenters, where it was discussed along with a set of radically heterodox beliefs like the denial of the immortality of the soul, of the virginity of Mary, and of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. These opinions were couched in a skeptical framework whose elements can be connected to an enduring Mediterranean tradition which, cutting across the boundaries dividing the three Abrahamic faiths, aimed at undermining the belief in revealed religions and prophecy.
The leading figures in these informal groups of dissenters mostly belonged to the middle-high ranks of the world of the urban professions, but the sources report their discussions taking place in public or semi-public spaces where people belonging to all levels of society gathered and participated. The relations between these sets of unorthodox ideas and the opinion that Adam and Eve committed sodomy in the terrestrial paradise is not made explicit in the initial cases. Its internal logic becomes clearer in later instances, where, nevertheless, this belief appears as an autonomous statement and not in relation to other serious crimes of opinion. However, the content that emerges in these later explanations is consistent with the core themes of the cluster of unorthodox ideas originally associated with it. Sodomy was depicted as a celestial pleasure, and its prohibition was interpreted as still another manifestation, probably the most radical, of religious deception. This connection between sexual, religious, and political trickery is clear in the writings of seventeenth-century erudite libertines who reported this interpretation of the myth of the Fall from Grace. However, almost a century earlier, some dissenters in the Italian peninsula reached the same conclusions, using sex as a device to unveil the deceiving nature of institutionalized religions. The study of these cases can contribute to the rethinking of established periodization and genealogies, further proving how much the development of skeptical approaches to religion, as well as incredulity and atheism, were not just refined literary products. Instead, they were aspects of a wider culture in which common people, middle rank professionals, and members of the cultivated elites did not just passively read books, but also creatively elaborated upon such ideas and contributed to their proliferation. It also points out the extent to which sexual themes, rather than being mere "divertissements" or manifestations of folk attitudes, were important theoretical tools in a wider critique of religious and political authority and authoritarianism.