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Presentation
In the first decades of the 18th Century, in a Florence, brilliant, after more than two centuries of illiberal subjugation, concluded with Cosimo III de' Medici, the succeeding Dukes of Lorraine laical Regency encounters difficulty in gaining the favour of the population due to its intentions and views.
In this phase in which the nobility and the cultured class of Tuscany endeavour to recapture their privileges deteriorated under the Grand Duchy, the curial mobilisation tries, with a mock ecclesiastic police, to curb from the outset the new forms of religious protest, initiated by the florentine cultural anglophilia, which are expressed most eloquently with the foundation of the first freemason lodge of Toscana.
It is in this very context of innovative tensions and cultural vigor that the young Thomas Crudeli, of liberal and anti-conformist spirit, refuses to accept a life imposed by integralist rigidity.
His indomitable character ignores prudency and his sharp tongue does not hesitate to attack the adversary: he becomes a subject of special surveillance or, for the laical side, a free spirit.
He is co-opted by other men of elevated culture and important social standing and becomes the coordinator of the freemason society.
His lashing capacity and cultural keenness frightens greatly the ecclesiastic power which reacts with delay and clumsily to reaffirm its absolutist determination.
The inquisition first has him imprisoned, then seeks charges against him, condemns him, axorts an abjuration, pardons him and exiles him; in other words, an "anguish" built on irrelevant suspicions, half-confessions and retractions of unfaithful witnesses whose consequences fall solely and irreversibly on Thomas who dies - under house arrest - at Poppi, in Val d'Arno, exactly 250 years ago today.
But his martyrdom is not in vain.
After his case, the Dukes of Lorainne suppress the court of inquisition in Tuscany.
Honours to Thomas, apostle of freedom.
An interpretative revival of Thomas will be read by two of his descendants.
Virgilio Gaito
Grand Master
of Grand Orient of Italy
Palazzo Giustiniani
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