Abstract:
Between Renaissance and Enlightenment, the renewed universalistic pretension of the post-tridentine Papacy relies on a polycentric urban space, defined by multiple institutions of power, aristocratic courts and intellectual aggregations. In this sense, none of the pontifical reforms could ever impose a full orthodoxy, leaving a breach to all types of scientific practices, within a broad frame of disciplines, from natural philosophy to medicine up to antiquarianism. By contrast, the call for antiquity and for the mission was embodied within the same epistemological framework and had to tackle a similar challenge, i.e. the harmonization between holy and human history. Antiquarians and missionaries brought in the urban laboratory of Rome heterogeneous fragments, which have to be reunified in order to reestablish the Universal Church and its cultural authority.