‘ATHEISTS’ ON TRIAL

There were trials of ‘atheists’ in both Scotland and Naples at the end of the seventeenth century. As so often in such prosecutions, the victims in the two cases were young men. In other respects the trials were markedly different. In Naples the case was complex, protracted, and inconclusive. It began in 1688, when the twenty-one-year-old Francesco Paolo Manuzzi denounced two slightly older acquaintances, Basilio Giannelli and Giacinto Cristofaro, to the Inquisition. By 1690 Manuzzi himself had been arrested, and in 1692, as others were implicated, Giannelli was persuaded to turn his evidence against Cristofaro. Even then the case did not reach a conclusion, since the civil authorities succeeded in taking their objections to Rome; and though the accused suffered varying periods of imprisonment, they were all released by the end of the decade. In Scotland, by contrast, the case was straightforward, the trial and its aftermath mercilessly short. Thomas Aikenhead was charged on 10 November 1696, tried on 23 December, sentenced the following day, and hanged on 8 January 1697, two months short of his twenty-first birthday.

What were the charges against these unfortunate young men? Since in both cases the key witnesses were themselves vulnerable as associates of those on trial, it is all too likely that they said what they thought the respective authorities wanted to hear, rather than accurately reporting the opinions of the accused.