Francesco Calcagno

Basic information

Patronymic
Other names
Genre
Male
Place of origin
Brescia, Republic of Venice
Date of birth
1528
Attributed date of birth
No
Age at the time of execution
22
Marital status
Not applicable
Last occupation / Qualification
Priest
Previous occupations
Religious status
Cleric
Religious order
Benedictines
Accusations

Proceedings

Start date
7 February 1550
End date
14 October 1550
Courts involved
Inquisition of Venice, Inquisition of Brescia
Extradition
Yes
Other judges involved
Council of Ten (Venice)
Notes

Start date: Calcagno was called to appear in front of the local inquisitor, the Dominican Stefano de’ Conforti, and the vicar of the bishop of Brescia, Paolo de’ Aleni.

End date: sentence (“The sentence was communicated to the rectors of Brescia on October 14”, see Felici (2024), p. 29.

Sentence

Court
Inquisition of Venice
Local judge
Marino da Venezia or Nicola da Venezia
Sentence date
14 October 1550 - 10 November 1550
Sentence place
Venice, Republic of Venice
Crime category
Formal heresy and Sacrilege & blasphemy
List of crimes

Lutheranism; blasphemy; apostasy; sodomy.

Sentence: “a man not only Lutheran but the most impious enemy of our Lord Jesus Christ, who said words and blasphemies for which, when you noble sirs will hear them with your so chaste ears, it will not be possible for you not to be horrified, words so heinous and foul about Our Lord and John the Baptist [actually the Evangelist] that no Turk or Jew or even the Demons not only have ever heard but even imagined”; see Felici (2024), p. 29.

Reason for conviction
Accessory penalties

Execution

Execution date
23 December 1550
Authority
Rectors of Brescia
Execution place
Brescia, Republic of Venice
Execution type
Cutting of the tongue; beheaded, and burned at the stake.
In effigy
No
After death
No
Presence of doctors / surgeons
Unknown
Name of the doctors / surgeons
Presence of comforters
Unknown
Name of the comforters
Presence of rebels / riots
Unknown
Sacraments imparted
Unknown
Notes for execution

“The sentence of the cutting of the tongue, beheading, and burning at the stake was carried out according to the instructions in front of a great crowd”; see Felici (2024), p. 29.

Sources

Letters

Archivio di Stato di Venezia (ASV), Sant’Uffizio (SU), Processi, b. 8, c. 10, letter by Rectors of Brescia to the Council of Ten, 16 August 1550.

ASV, SU, Processi, letter by Rectors of Brescia to the Council of Ten, 18 August 1550.

ASV, SU, Processi, letter by Rectors of Brescia to the Venetian Inquisition, 30 December 1550 (execution).

Local inquisitorial trials and documents

ASV, SU, Processi, b. 8, fasc. “1550 fra Francesco Calcagno” (sentence).

 

Decrees and acdf sources
Legal opinions consultations
Registers of the condemned
Other magistracies

ASV, Senato, Roma, Expulsis papalistis, fz. 19.

Petitions
Confraternities
Medical treatises
Polemical histories and martyrologies
Theological and legal texts
Collections of sermons
Printed or manuscript notices and reports
Chronicles
Travel diaries
Notarial acts and wills
Expense registers and economic documents
Memorial documents epitaphs etc
Iconography
Other

Related

Related persons
Bibliography

Del Col, Inquisizione e dissenso nel Friuli del primo Cinquecento, Udine, Forum, 2024.

Del Col Andrea, Marisa Milani, “Senza effusione di sangue e senza pericolo di morte”. Intorno ad alcune condanne capitali delle Inquisizioni di Venezia e di Verona nel Settecento e a quelle veneziane del Cinquecento, in Eretici, esuli e indemoniati nell’età moderna, ed. Mario Rosa, Firenze, Olschki, 1998, pp. 141-196.

Dall’Orto Giovanni , Adora più presto un bel putto che Domenedio. Il processo a un libertino omosessuale: Francesco Calcagno (1550), in “Sodoma”, 5 (1993), pp. 43-55.

Dall’Orto Giovanni, La natura è madre dolcissima. L’accettazione nel libertinismo italiano dei secoli XVI e XVII, in “Sodoma”, 5 (1993), pp. 27-41 (http:// www.giovannidall’orto.com saggistoria/calca/calca1 e 2.html).

Felici Lucia, Ateismo e sodomia nella Repubblica di Venezia: ancora sul caso di Francesco Calcagno (1528-1550), in “Riforma e movimenti religiosi”,  8 (2020), pp. 59-80.

Felici Lucia, A Sixteenth-Century Libertine Priest. Francesco Calcagno, in Cursed Blessings. Sex and Religious Radical Dissent in Early Modern Europe, ed. Umberto Grassi, London, Routledge, 2024, pp. 7-26.

Grassi Umberto, Sodoma. Persecuzioni, affetti, pratiche sociali (secoli V-XVIII), Viella, Roma, 2019.

Notes

According to Del Col, the Inquisition of Venice issued the sentence on November 10, 1550 (Del Col 2024, p. 97). Felici argues that “the sentence was communicated to the rectors of Brescia on October 14, so that they could implement the penalty in the city where the convicts had committed their criminal acts” (Felici 2024, p. 29).

Given this information, I have chosen to adopt the time span from October 14 to November 10, 1550.

Entry Author
Teresa Bernardi