This chapter focuses on the Roman Inquisition’s efforts to protect the borders of the early modern Papal States. This territory posed particular challenges to the Inquisition because it was both geographically complex and marked by distinct political characteristics dating back to the Middle Ages. The main sources used are the correspondence between the Roman tribunal of the Inquisition and its peripheral branches – local deputies (vicari) and Inquisitors – and other officials such as bishops, governors, and municipal magistrates who wielded local authority. This rich body of documentation allows us to observe the daily activities of the various actors involved in controlling mobility in the Papal States and the difficulties encountered in regulation. The competence and ineptitude of the tribunal’s agents emerge in equal measure from these documents. The letters also enable us to observe how the “tribunal of the faith” and its intimidating system of justice were perceived by a particularly vulnerable population: the foreigners – especially students, merchants, and artists – who came to Italy from countries beyond the Alps where the Reformation had established itself.

In the early modern period, the borders inside Europe – the Italian states included – increased in number as an expression of the consolidation of geographic, political, religious, or economic power. These new frontiers created new confessional boundaries and identities. Looking at the edges of territorial boundaries illuminates this process of consolidation from several viewpoints. They reveal the external perceptions of frontiers that students, merchants, and artists had and the strategies of prudence and subterfuge they employed in negotiating them.