Until the 1970s the religious history of sixteenth-century Italy was understood in straightforward, almost dualistic terms. Standard accounts of the period described an intense conflict between reformers (spirituali) and reactionaries (zelanti or intransigenti), from which the latter, supported by the Roman inquisition, were able to emerge victorious. Recently, however, this paradigm has been replaced by a more nuanced picture, in which the boundaries between orthodoxy and heresy appear far from clear-cut. The periodisation proposed by earlier historians has also been challenged. Whereas Delio Cantimori identified the early 1540s as the decade in which the pendulum swung decisively against the reformers, subsequent research has revealed that heretical groups remained active in Italy for another forty years. This volume highlights the newly-discovered complexity of the early modern Italian religious landscape and includes essays by both Italian and North American scholars. Several contributions call into question the traditional distinction between spirituali and intransigenti. Ercole Gonzaga, cardinal-bishop of Mantua, is sometimes characterised as a doctrinal hardliner, but Paul Murphy shows that he was flexible in his private dealings with suspected heretics, while remaining opposed (like the spirituali Pole and Contarini) to public preaching on controversial subjects, out of concern for its destabilising social consequences. Gonzaga's ‘patrician reformist’ outlook was shared by Egidio Foscarari of Modena, who managed to bring his diocese, reputedly a hotbed of heresy, back into the orthodox fold through a combination of intensive spiritual counselling of the Modenese elite and campaigns to revive popular Catholic piety (Fontaine). Silvana Seidel Menchi argues that, until the mid-1550s, even the agents of the inquisition tended to look on their doctrinal differences with the reformers as mere quarrels about words; those arraigned before them were treated as faithful but misguided Catholics, to be reconciled to the Church rather than punished. The difficulty of distinguishing clearly between orthodox and heretical positions in the early sixteenth century is illustrated by the career of the Venetian painter Lorenzo Lotto, who died an oblate at the Holy House of Loreto but whose works are shot through with Protestant theological themes (Firpo). Even the Council of Trent was unable wholly to escape heterodox influences. The Tridentine decree on preaching, and subsequent Catholic homiletics, drew heavily on the Ecclesiastes of Erasmus, despite the official condemnation of the latter's works (McGinness). The reformist impulse in Italy had political and cultural, as well as religious, dimensions. For the Vatican librarian Agostino Steuco it was synonymous with the renovatio Romae and the restoration of papal authority, both temporal and spiritual (Delph); for others, such as the opposition to the Medici, it was closely bound up with resistance to authoritarian rule (Simoncelli). The hopes of many reformers were centred on Venice, home to a community of Florentine republicans and hailed by Guillaume Postel as a ‘new Jerusalem’, the seat of justice and divine law (Leathers Kuntz). The successful revival of the University of Padua following the War of the League of Cambrai is evidence of the Venetian magistracy's commitment to reform (Grendler). Several contributions hint at a change in the intellectual climate from the 1570s onwards. This is apparent from the fate of Filippo Mocenigo, archbishop of Cyprus, who found his nomination to the patriarchate of Aquileia blocked after voicing opinions that would have passed without comment in earlier decades (Bonora). Although the drift towards repression was gradual, it had a lasting impact on Italian culture; the failure to produce expurgated editions of books by suspect authors, for example, meant that those works were effectively forgotten (Fragnito). During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries control of Italian religious life became increasingly centralised at the Vatican, which developed impressive bureaucratic systems to manage its increased workload. Anne Jacobson Schutte sums up the changed situation as follows: ‘In the post-Tridentine Catholic world, all roads led to and from its administrative center, Rome.’ The twelve essays published here demonstrate the range and growing maturity of scholarship on early modern Italian religious culture. With the recent opening up of the archive of the Holy Office, a key source of which several contributors make use, it is to be hoped that this will remain a vibrant field of research for years to come.