Verità e opinioni. Dialoghi su Demoni e anime tra ebrei e cristiani nell’Italia del Seicento.

What did Jews and Christians talk aboul among them? Roman Inquisition trials against Jews are almost a unique documentary source to explain Christian perception of Jewish beliefs and to describe the real occasions that the two groups had for exchanging ideas, knowledge and practices, beyond any prohibition. During these intercultural exchanges, which involved not only literary and cultured circles but also lower social classes that allowed possible mutual influences. Christians willingly talked with Jews about religious topics; and, above all, they asked and inquired with great interest about their beliefs, customs and habits. In this paper, more than on doctrines and theories and on philosophical and theological debates, I will focus on behaviours, practices and discourses "from below", i.e. those widespread among ordinary people usually considered less Iiterate and cultured. But I will also analyse the echo of new notionns and ideas, for instance "libertine" and materialistic conceptions, that could be threatening for the orthodoxy of both Christians and Jews; and that were, in any case, capable of sowing doubt and questions. Considered from this perspective, the cultural exchanges among Jews and Christians show a circulation of ideas and books in every social class. Such a circulation could result in personal re-elaboration of heterodox issue, thus demonstrating that there was not a passive reception of models coming from above