Per una Chiesa 'democratica'. La proposta di C. A. Pilati (1733-1802), fra Riforma d'Italia e satira libertina

Jurist, historian, publicist, Carlo Antonio Pilati from Tassullo (1733-1802) was engaged between Trento and the Hansburg Austria, but his thinking spread also in the Reign of Naples, on the basis of Grozio, Pufendorf and of freethinkers. In contact with the nobles Salis-Marschlins in the canton of Grisons, he devoted himself to the text A Reform of Italy (1767), for the anticurial and jurisdictional redefinition of the state, with the Episcopalian option of a national Church, between the religious dimension and the political sphere. Pilati makes reference to Machiavelli, Sarpi, Muratori and Genovesi, so that the prince may be able to realize the reforms, like 'legal despot' to the origin of the public prosperity. In 1769 (then in 1789), Pilati published the satire The Marriage of friar Giovanni: so he individualised a libertarian and anticurial run to win the stereotype of the Italy like a country characterised by the heat, the Holy Office and brigands, according to a Jacobin-Masonic style of antityrannical theatre. The satire of The Marriage is clearly against monkish manners and it sends back to the prototype of the corrupt religious one, between the sacrilegious success of 'ser Ciappelletto', and the fraudulent objectives of friar Timoteo, on the wake of Boccaccio and Machiavelli literary skill. With satire Pilati combines literary conscience and communicative will, in civil and political directions; the criticism towards the clerical system and the corrupted social classes shows the striking contradictions and the hypocrisies of the monkish cliquishness and of the Pharisaic 'whitened graves', to promote deep, necessary and undelayable changes.