SPACES: Sex, disPlacements And Cross cultural EncouterS: While for a long time historians of ideas have highlighted the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Northern European liberal genesis of the idea of “tolerance”, recent historical research has indeed revealed its medieval and early modern gestation across the Mediterranean area. SPACES aims to originally investigate these early modern attitudes by uncovering the links between two apparently disjointed aspects (religious skepticism and tolerant attitudes towards non-normative sexualities), focusing on the cross-cultural interactions between Islam and Christianity. The research will be based on a solid archival investigation on inquisitorial sources. The project aims to prove that tolerant attitudes towards sexuality were related to both a sceptic approach to institutionalized religions and the development of concrete practices of toleration.

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