The main language of the website is Italian, but the project aims to develop a multilingual platform. Ereticopedia has been a provisional and precarious project from the beginning. The essential idea was, and continues to be, to create an online dictionary of the individuals and movements that in the Mediterranean region confronted established norms and reclaimed rights to freedom of thought, expression, and action, including the right to dissent and the primacy of individual conscience over the norms, doctrines, and rituals of behaviour that were imposed or commonly accepted in the societies in which they lived. However, this dictionary also wants to focus on the other side of the coin: the instigators of the Inquisition and the persecution, decisive factors in the process of Catholic “confessionalization” which, from a certain point of view, particularly characterized the histories of Italy and Spain in the Modern Age. The long-term consequences of this process are manifested in the strong influence that the Catholic Church still exerts over the societies of these peninsulas. From the early stages of the project, which began as a solitary scientific experiment, arose the objective to attract the collaboration of scholars, experts, and enthusiasts. Our ambition is to create an organization that can develop in a free and independent way, as a work in progress without a predetermined structure or central direction that rigidly establishes the limits of the work. Additionally, online publication has appeared to be the best solution from a technical point of view, both to ensure the dissemination and visibility of the collected and published information, as well as to maintain its integrity and the potential of this site to naturally promote the discussion and collaboration among contributors who want to share their knowledge and experience. The project will therefore have an ‘evolutionary’ structure, far from the rigidity and immobility of current productions in academia and the publishing industry. This multilingual website, a digital project that is part of the collection “Il cannocchiale dello storico: miti ed ideologie”, published by Aracne editrice and directed by an international scientific committee, is administered by a team made up entirely of young researchers (see Credits). It is open for collaboration with any researcher or expert who is interested in participating.
