Faith, Friendship, and Natural Philosophy: The Oziosi Academy in Counter-Reformation Bologna

​In this monograph project, Nicole Reinhardt examines a Bolognese academy in which primarily students of medicine and philosophy gathered between 1563 and 1567. The brief existence of the Oziosi Academy raises a number of questions, not least that of the social, intellectual and religious classification of the students of natural philosophy at the university and in the immediate final phase of the Council of Trent. How did the members of the academy, who also called themselves the "apostles of Aristotle", relate to the religious reform impulses allegedly emanating from the Council and to expanding inquisitorial control? What was "reform" supposed to mean here, and how could the tension between Aristotelian and religious orthodoxy be sustained? The study of the Bolognese Oziosi not only provides a rare insight into early modern student sociability, but also opens up an unusual perspective on the end of the Council beyond the cardinals and political decision-makers. The micro-historical analysis suggests instead that the understanding of the direction of religious transformation was by no means unambiguous and the definition of the "Counter-Reformation" quite contingent.