Erin Maglaque

Unwanted Thoughts

Robin Vose’s new history of the Index of Prohibited Books shows how Catholic censorship was, despite its totalizing ambitions, often incoherent and contradictory.

Magpie from the Met

“It’s so very important to remain alive to the unusual, and to strenuously resist any urge to explain strangeness away.”

Rome Was His Laboratory

By the time of his death in 1729, the astronomer, historian, and archaeologist Francesco Bianchini had been an aide to three popes and confidant to one Polish princess and an exiled king.

‘Monstrous’ or ‘Prudente’?

A new feminist history asks us to reconsider early modern queenship.