Italian historian
Giovanni Romeo (born 1949) is an Italian historian.
Short biography.
Romeo was born in Procida. He is a full professor of early modern history at the University of Naples, and a specialist in social and religious history.
His monograph "Inquisitori, esorcisti e streghe nell'Italia della Controriforma" (1990) was considered pioneering and marked an important step forward in inquisitorial and witchcraft studies.
The themes of history of Inquisition and sacramental confession have been developed in two small books of interpretative synthesis: "Ricerche su confessione dei peccati e Inquisizione nell’Italia del Cinquecento" (Naples, 1997) and "L’Inquisizione nell’Italia moderna" (Rome-Bari, 2002). Romeo focus on the ecclesiastical strategies of control of sexual behaviours in his large monographs "Esorcisti, confessori e sessualità femminile nell’Italia della Controriforma" (Florence 1999) and "Amori proibiti. I concubini tra Chiesa e Inquisizione" (Rome-Bari, 2008).
In his works dealing with the history of Inquisition and sacramental confession, he has strongly criticised the new leading historiographical trends in inquisitorial history represented especially by John Tedeschi ("The prosecution of heresy: collected studies on the Inquisition in early modern Italy", New York 1991, Italian edition reviewed by Romeo in "Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa" in 1999) and Adriano Prosperi ("Tribunali della coscienza. Inquisitori, confessori, missionari", Turin 1996, reviewed in "Quaderni storici", again in 1999), focusing on their empirical and documental lacunas.