Vol.14,No.1 | [Article] Eighteenth-century Neapolitan anticurialism The example of Damiano Romano

This study aims to reconstruct the core principles of Neapolitan anticurialism from the evidence found in the writings of the eighteenth-century lawyer Damiano Romano. Traditional Neapolitan anticurialism, developed in the context of opposing papal absolute supremacy over any single state’s ruler since the council of Trent, had demanded only a limitation of the Catholic Church’s jurisdictional power, defending the rights and prerogatives of royal power in the field of everyday administration, but did not cast doubt on ecclesiastical authority in the spiritual sphere. The religious and political principles proposed by Romano were emblematic of the traditional anticurialism of Naples. Romano did not raise any question in relation to papal authority in the sphere of faith and religious doctrines, whereas he tried to oppose papal legal incursions into the temporal sphere.