Biography

Mateusz Falkowski is a scholar of early modern Europe, studying intellectual and religious history with a particular focus on Italy and Spain. His work combines approaches from book history, classical reception studies, and the history of science. He received his PhD from Princeton University in 2023, defending his thesis “Precision and Pragmatism: Antonio Agustín’s (1517–1586) Philology, Antiquarianism, and Counter-Reformation” (supervised by prof. Anthony Grafton). He is currently a lecturer in Princeton’s Department of Art and Archaeology. Before arriving in New Jersey, he studied at the University of Warsaw, the University of Edinburgh, and New York University. He holds degrees in history and Arabic. His articles have appeared in Renaissance Quarterly and Environmental History.

Project Summary

This project studies the relationship between critical humanistic scholarship and the demands of religious reformations in sixteenth-century Europe. It investigates the tension between intellectual integrity, religious obligation, and pastoral prudence experienced by Catholic scholars during and after the Council of Trent (1545–1563). It brings new focus on the critical examination of canon law by Catholic humanists in the period, arguing that contemporary canon law studies provide a compelling case to examine the relationship between knowledge (scholarship) and ideology (religion), and the compromise between intellectual precision, religious obligation, and religious practice in contemporary Catholicism. This project focuses on the intellectual lives and careers of scholars and church officials orbiting around Rome and the papal Curia between the 1540s, when Catholic church began to organize a structured response to the Protestant criticism, and the 1580s, when the first official edition of canon law was printed in Rome (1582). Many of those eminent scholars who worked on canon law came from Spain. This project offers thus a new perspective on the dynamics between the intellectual worlds of Iberia and Italy in the early modern period. Finally, by tracing theoretical disputes and practical solutions adopted by scholars and prelates under new religious circumstances, this project tells the story of the emergence and increasing acceptance of Catholic self-censorship.