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Criticism and Confession: The Bible in the Seventeenth Century Republic of Letters. Nicholas Hardy. Oxford-Warburg Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. xii + 464 pp. $105.

Pirillo profiles Giacomo Ragazzoni, a merchant who served as an English agent, much valued for secrecy and intrigue. Although he professed his religious orthodoxy, he protected philo-Protestants from the Inquisition and traversed religious boundaries with essential information. He participated in the unofficial network of diplomatic channels between states without official communication. In chapters 5 and 6, the author introduces Alberico Gentili and Ludovico Castelvetro, who translated, annotated, and circulated controversial works. They built a scribal community and served as go-betweens for English Protestants and the scholarly communities in Venice. Inspired by book history and studies of marginalia, Pirillo looks at important texts such as Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata and the Venetian Relazioni as interpreted and used by scholar-diplomats. In these two chapters, which seamlessly integrate scholarly exegesis with political agency, the reader experiences diplomatic history at its best. By studying marginal figures, this book expands our understanding of the practice of diplomacy. As these scholars and informers operated in an increasingly polarized environment, they had to distinguish friend from foe quite carefully. The Venetian authorities regarded the philo-Protestants as agents of a foreign government fomenting a revolution in their own land that would benefit their enemies. The author is right to point out that the diplomatic situation between England and Venice (as experienced by contemporaries) does not fit the model of diplomacy within a modern state system. The book provides an excellent and valuable study of the circulation of manuscripts in the first information age. In the century after the arrival of the printing press, both sides of the religious divide recognized the utility of information warfare. In this portrayal of Venice in the Reformation, the author conveys the anxiety produced by the new media landscape. With his integration of book history with diplomacy, Pirillo makes an original and important contribution to the study of early modern Europe.