In 1555, Pomponio Algerio, a student at the University of Padua, was put on trial before the local Inquisition tribunal on suspicion of heresy. He proclaimed that the Pope was the Antichrist and that the bishops and cardinals were a gang of thieves and corrupt men. Pope Paul IV managed to have him extradited to Rome and subjected to a violent end in Piazza Navona on August 19, 1556.

The Pomponio Algerio Affair: A Fight for Religious Freedom recounts the contribution to the affirmation of religious freedom made, in the heart of the sixteenth century, by a twenty-four-year-old man of extraordinary culture, courage, and determination.