La inquisición romana entre reformas, cambios dinásticos y aboliciones: los casos de Nápoles y Toscana (1746-1754)

This article seeks to analyse the inquisitorial reforms promoted by Benedict XIV within his own territorial state, and the clash between the Holy See and the Italian states of Naples and Tuscany. After the dynastic changes of previous years, the two states decreed jurisdictional measures aimed at ending the presence within their territories of a foreign element: the Roman Inquisition. Combined analysis of both phenomena reveal a complex reality, in which we observe how, despite Pope Lambertini’s reformist measures designed to revitalize the operation of the inquisitorial tribunal within his own state, Benedict XIV also had to adapt to the changes and political strategies introduced by the two neighbouring states. The article reflects on these aspects, in the Italian political and ecclesiastical context, in order to support our hypothesis that the pontificate of Benedict XIV was a key milestone —to the extent of being a point of no return— in the protracted historical process between the mid-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that conditioned the entire early modern inquisitorial system until its progressive abolition.