Sara Britti

The project delves into Cardinal Juan de Torquemada (1388-1368)’s action within the Roman Curia during the pontificate of Pius II and his role in the anti-Islamic controversy debate, exacerbated by the fall of Constantinople into the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II’s hands (May 1453).
The research is focused on the study of Torquemada’s Tractatus contra principales errores perfidi Machometi (1459), composed at the Pope’s request in relation to the opening of Mantua Congress (September 1459), which was convened to persuade the European lords to participate in a new Crusade against the Turks. The investigation aims at increasing the overall knowledge of Torquemada’s relevance as that of an intellectual who dealt with Islam entirely following the traditional anti-Islamic polemic of mendicant origin on the threshold of modernity, in which other and different approaches to the Islamic question emerged in his same milieu.
Final goal of the project is the preparation of a monographic and introductory study of Torquemada’s writing, accompanied by the original Italian translation and commentary of the treatise.