The Effectiveness of an Anonymous Pen: The Experience of the Jesuit Polemicist Francesco Antonio Zaccaria.

The figure of the Jesuit Francesco Antonio Zaccaria (1714-1795) is exemplary for considering the style that the controversy acquired in the early modern period, when he abandoned the strictly theological-doctrinal debate in an anti-Protestant function and also expanded to the legal, historical, and literary in defense of the rights of the Church and of the papacy. This essay highlights and analyzes, in particular, the widespread eighteenth-century custom of anonymous writings. Authors did not want to escape censorship as much as to draw more attention to the contents and leave the writer the freedom of greater aggression of language and more effective apologetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]