Il domenicano Filippo Maria Peruzzotti censore e predicatore agli ebrei del Lugo e l'espurgazione nel 1765 di un testo di polemica anticristiana

This study sheds new light on an almost unknown censor of the Hebrew books in Lugo di Romagna during the second half of the 18th century. This censor was Filippo Maria Peruzzotti, a Friar of the Dominican Convent in Lugo, only briefly mentioned by Marco Mortara, Abraham Berliner and William Popper. Peruzzotti was appointed as a censor for the strict censorship of the books of the Jews in the Ghetto of Lugo, ordered by the Inquisition after the confiscation and censorship carried out by the Dominican Friar Giovanni Antonio Costanzi in Rome in 1753. Peruzzotti worked with Costanzi, the main Roman censor, chosen for this role by Pope Clemente XII (1730-1740) in 1731, and was equally zealous in his work, believing that even Jewish books previously censored should be reexamined and expurgated. In Lugo, on the night of August 10, 1753, he censored nearly 200 Hebrew books. Manuscript 69 of the Classense Library of Ravenna contains a 16th century Manual of biblical passages for use in an Jewish anti-Christian polemic. A 1765 certificate by the censor Peruzzotti, handwritten on folded sheets of paper, is stiched into the manuscript. In this small code, the names of the books of the Bible are written in Hebrew but according to the Christian form. The censor Peruzzotti, probably a converted Jew considering his knowledge of Rabbinic Literature, believes that for its forceful anti-Christian polemic and hate, the book must be placed in the Index and absolutely prohibited.