Folklore, Magic, and Witchcraft: Cultural Exchanges from the Twelfth to Eighteenth Century 9780367557690, 9780367557676, 9781003095064

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FOLKLORE, MAGIC, AND WITCHCRAFT

This volume offers 18 studies linked together by a common focus on the circulation and reception of motifs and beliefs in the field of folklore, magic, and witchcraft. The chapters traverse a broad spectrum both chronologically and thematically; yet together, their shared focus on cultural exchange and encounters emerges in an important way, revealing a valuable methodology that goes beyond the pure comparativism that has dominated historiography in recent decades. Several of the chapters touch on gender relations and contact between different religious faiths, using case studies to explore the variety of these encounters. Whilst the essays focus geographically on Europe, they prefer to investigate relationships over highlighting singular, local traits. In this way, the collection aims to respond to the challenge set by recent debates in cultural studies, for a global history that prioritises inclusivity, moving beyond biased or learned attachments towards broader and broadening foci and methods. With analysis of sources from manuscripts and archival documents to iconography, and drawing on writings in Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, and other languages, this volume is essential reading for all students and scholars interested in cultural exchange and ideas about folklore, magic, and witchcraft in medieval and early modern Europe. Marina Montesano is Full Professor of Medieval History at the University of Messina, a fellow of Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, and a member of the scientific committee of the International Society for Cultural History (ISCH). Among her most recent monographs is Classical Culture and Witchcraft in Medieval and Renaissance Italy (2018).

‘An engaging collection linking magical events and traditions – from painting to shapeshifting, collecting to witch trials, fairies to astrology – across time and location: surprising and informative.’ Marion Gibson, University of Exeter, UK ‘Held together by the complex concept of cultural exchange, helpfully explored in the introduction, this collection of case studies illuminates numerous aspects of folklore, magic, and witchcraft, both medieval and early modern, from northern Scandinavia to the Islamic world, with a particular focus on Italy, bringing much new European scholarship into reach for an English-speaking audience.’ Jonathan Barry, University of Exeter, UK

Routledge Studies in the History of Witchcraft, Demonology and Magic

The Science of Demons Early Modern Authors Facing Witchcraft and the Devil Edited by Jan Machielsen

Demonology and Witch-Hunting in Early Modern Europe Edited by Julian Goodare, Rita Voltmer, and Liv Helene Willumsen

Folklore, Magic, and Witchcraft Cultural Exchanges from the Twelfth to Eighteenth Century Edited by Marina Montesano For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com /Routledge-Studies-in-the-History-of-Witchcraft-Demonology-and-Magic/b ook-series/RSHWDM

FOLKLORE, MAGIC, AND WITCHCRAFT Cultural Exchanges from the Twelfth to Eighteenth Century

Edited by Marina Montesano

First published 2022 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 selection and editorial matter, Marina Montesano; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Marina Montesano to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-0-367-55769-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-55767-6 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-09506-4 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

CONTENTS

List of illustrations List of contributors Acknowledgements Introduction Marina Montesano

x xii xv 1

PART I

Interpreting folkloric beliefs 1 The Tree of the Bourlémonts: Gendered beliefs in fairies and their transmission from old to young women in Joan of Arc’s Domrémy Andrea Maraschi 2 The rejuvenating blood: Marsilio Ficino and the witches Marina Montesano

19

21 33

3 The circulation and exchange of ideas, myths, legends, and oral traditions in the witchcraft trials of Italy Debora Moretti

46

4 Between Hell and Paradise: The legend of the soul of the Emperor Trajan Vincenzo Tedesco

59

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Contents

PART II

Cultural exchange among Christian, Islamic, and Jewish communities

71

5 Artificial creation of human life: Ibn Wa ḥšiyya as a source of the Futūḥāt al-makkiyya Michele Petrone

73

6 Fragments of a Jewish magical tradition in the library of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola Flavia Buzzetta

92

7 Parallel beliefs: Cultural exchange between Jews and Christians on magic and witchcraft, and the concerns of the Inquisition Marina Caffiero

104

PART III

Preachers as mediators 8 Some reports of magic, superstition, and witchcraft in the medieval mirabilia literature Christa Agnes Tuczay 9 “Diabolical sorceries”: Vicent Ferrer’s preaching and the emergence of the witchcraft construct(s) in early fifteenthcentury Europe Pau Castell Granados 10 Circulation of magic and folkloric traditions in the times of Antonino of Florence and Bernardino of Siena Fabrizio Conti

117 119

132

156

PART IV

The cultural interpretation of objects 11 The body of Christ: Exchanges and cultural upheavals in early-modern Italy Matteo Al Kalak

167 169

Contents

ix

12 The natural and the supernatural: Collecting, interests, and trials of the nuncio Francesco Vitelli in Venice, 1632–1643 Marco Albertoni

182

13 The witch unravelled: How Pieter Bruegel the Elder developed a visual code to depict witchcraft and sorcery Renilde Vervoort

198

PART V

Trading ideas about witchcraft

221

14 Ignorantia and superstitio: A discussion among theologians and inquisitors in the sixteenth century Michaela Valente

223

15 The MP and the astrologer: Rival cultures of witchcraft in the East Anglian witch-hunt Danny Buck

235

16 A witchcraft triangle: Transmitting witchcraft ideas across early modern Europe Liv Helene Willumsen

247

17 The shape of evil: Shapeshifting in the witchcraft trials of seventeenth-century Finnmark Amber R. Cederström

265

18 Circulating knowledge in European Enlightened discourses: Eberhard David Hauber and the Bibliotheca, sive Acta et Scripta Magica (1738–1745) Rita Voltmer Index

281

295

ILLUSTRATIONS

Map

16.1

Map of a witchcraft triangle, with lines running between Trier in Germany, Copenhagen in Denmark, North Berwick in Scotland, and Vardø in Norway. © Liv Helene Willumsen

248

Figures

12.1

12.2 12.3

12.4

13.1

Photograph of trial documents of don Paolo Bortignon showing the drawing of the magical-curative fetish he recommended. Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Savi all’eresia, busta 89, fol. 34 verso, 35 recto Photograph of a version of the Clavicula Salamonis owned by Francesco Viola, an annex in the trial. Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Savi all’eresia, busta 93, dossier Viola Francesco Photograph of a version of the Clavicula Salamonis owned by Francesco Viola, an exhibit in the trial. Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Savi all’eresia, busta 93, dossier Viola Francesco Photograph of a version of the Clavicula Salamonis owned by Francesco Viola, an exhibit in the trial. Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Savi all’eresia, busta 93, dossier Viola Francesco After Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Saint James at the Magician’s Realm, engraving, 1565 (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum)

183 188

188

189 199

Illustrations

After Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Saint James and the Fall of the Magician, engraving, 1565 (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) 13.3 Woodcut in: Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, 1584 (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France) 13.4 Woodcut in: Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, 1584 (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France) 13.5 Book of Ritual Magic, manuscript, 16th century (Ghent, University Library) 13.6 Les vaudoises, miniature in the margin of: Martin Le Franc, Le Champion des Dames, manuscript copied in Arras, 1451 (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France) 13.7 Frans Francken II, Witches’ Kitchen, painting, oil on copper, 1604 (Switzerland, Private Collection) 13.8 Frans Francken II, Witches’ Kitchen, painting, oil on panel, 1606 (private collection, © 2012 Christie’s Images Limited) 13.9 After David II Teniers, Departure for the Witches’ Sabbath, painting, oil on copper, ca. 1640 (private collection, © 2012 Christie’s Images Limited) 13.10 Cornelis Saftleven (attributed), Saint James and Hermogenes, painting, oil on canvas, ca. 1650 (private collection, © Kunsthandel P. de Boer, Amsterdam) 13.11 Jacques de Gheyn II, Witches’ Kitchen, drawing in ink on grey paper, 1608 (© Kupferstichkabinett der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz) 13.12 Sebastiaan Vrancx or Jacob Isaacz van Swanenburgh, Witches’ Sabbath in an Antique Ruin, ca. 1600–1610 (private collection) 16.1 Title page of the tract Troldfolck, published in Copenhagen 1591 © The Royal Danish Library, Copenhagen. Hielmst. 4153.4ᵒ (LN 40)

xi

13.2

199 202 203 204 207 211 214 215 215 216 216 254

Table

17.1

Animal shapes claimed by accused witches

268

CONTRIBUTORS

Marco Albertoni is research fellow at the University of Bologna. His first book is

La missione di Decio Francesco Vitelli nella storia della Nunziatura di Venezia (2017). He has recently compiled a bibliographic repertory on the Italian Reformation of the sixteenth century (forthcoming). He is currently working on columns of infamy in the early modern age. Matteo Al Kalak is Professor of History of Christianity at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. His most recent books are: The Heresy of Brothers (forthcoming), Lodovico Antonio Muratori: Religione e politica nel Settecento (2018), Il riformatore dimenticato (2016). He is currently working on the Eucharist and its cultural use in early modern Italy. Danny Buck is a Researcher at the University of East Anglia. He is completing a

PhD on the political and religious divisions within Great Yarmouth that influenced support for the 1645 witch-hunt. He specialises in puritan urban politics in the Caroline period and the British Civil Wars. Flavia Buzzetta is a research associate at Laboratoire d’études sur les monothéismes

(LEM – UMR 8584). Her publications include Magia naturalis e Scientia cabalae in Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (2019), Liber de homine. Edizione del ms.Vat. Ebr. 189, ff. 398r–509v (2015). She is currently working on Pierleone da Spoleto and his Kabbalistic manuscripts. Marina Caffero is a retired Full Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Rome “La Sapienza.” Among her books: Forced Baptism. Histories of Jews, Christians and Converts in Papal Rome (2011); Legami pericolosi. Ebrei e cristiani tra eresia, libri proibiti e stregoneria (2012); Storia degli ebrei nell’Italia moderna. Dal

Contributors

xiii

Rinascimento alla Restaurazione (2014); Il grande mediatore. Tranquillo Vita Corcos, un rabbino nella Roma dei papi (2019). Pau Castell Granados teaches in the Department of Medieval and Early Modern

History at the Universitat de Barcelona. His work focuses on the intellectual foundations of European witchcraft mythologies, as well as on the late medieval and early modern witch-hunts in the Iberian Peninsula. He is currently editing a collection of fifteenth-century sources which reveal the existence of entirely forgotten early witchcraft persecutions in Catalonia. Amber R. Cederström is an acquisitions editor at the University of Wisconsin

Press. She earned her Ph.D. in Scandinavian Studies – Folklore from the University of Wisconsin with her dissertation, Poisoner, Shapeshifter, Adultress,Thief: Legends and Images of Witchcraft in Finnmark and Gotland (2020). She has an M.Phil in AngloSaxon, Norse, and Celtic from the University of Cambridge (2006) and a B.A. in Folklore and Mythology from Harvard University (2004). Fabrizio Conti teaches History at John Cabot University. His publications include

the monograph Witchcraft, Superstition, and Observant Franciscan Preachers: Pastoral Approach and Intellectual Debate in Renaissance Milan (2015) and the edited volume Civilizations of the Supernatural: Witchcraft, Ritual, and Religious Experience in Late Antique, Medieval, and Renaissance Traditions (2020). He has taken part in international television documentary series. Andrea Maraschi teaches Medieval History at the University of Bari. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies, Reykjavík, from 2014 to 2017. His most recent book is Similia similibus curantur. Cannibalismo, grafofagia, e “magia” simpatetica nel medioevo (500/1500) (2020). He is currently working on sympathetic magic in medieval times, and he is editing a book on feminine magical knowledge in medieval Europe. Marina Montesano is Full Professor of Medieval History at the University of

Messina, a fellow of Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, and a member of the scientific committee of the International Society for Cultural History (ISCH). Among her most recent monographs is Classical Culture and Witchcraft in Medieval and Renaissance Italy (2018). Debora Moretti is research associate at the Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies (CREMS) at the University of York. Her research covers Italian and European magic and witchcraft from ancient to modern times. Her publications include “Binding spells and curse tablets through time,” in C. Houlbrook and N. Armitage (eds.) The Materiality of Magic: An Artefactual Investigation into Ritual Practices and Popular Beliefs (2015).

xiv

Contributors

Michele Petrone is Adjunct Professor of Arabic Culture at the Università Statale

of Milan. He has been fellow of the “Philosophy in al-Andalus” ERC project (Université Catholique de Louvain), working on the Nabatean Agriculture of Ibn Waḥšiyya and its reception by Andalusi Sufi thought. His interests include manuscript culture of Eastern Africa, with particular attention to Sufi poetry and devotional literature. He is currently working on the descriptions of jinns in al-Sakkākī and East African magic texts. Vincenzo Tedesco is research fellow in Medieval History at the University of

Messina. His main interest is the repression of religious dissent between Late Medieval and Early Modern Age. His publications include “Treasure Hunt. Roman Inquisition and Magical Practices Ad Inveniendos Thesauros in Southern Tuscany,” in Religions 10, 7 (2019), and Inquisizione, eresia e magia nel tardo Medioevo (2020). Christa Agnes Tuczay is Associate Professor Medieval German Language and

Literature at the University of Vienna. After working as a research at the Austrian Academy of Science she started to lecture medieval literature. Her habilitation paper on Ecstasy in Context was completed and published in 2009. Her main areas of research include medieval literature, cultural history of magic and divination, historical anthropology and psychology. Michaela Valente has won fellowships at the Associazione Amici di Anna Maria Battista (1996), Fondazione Luigi Firpo (2000), at the University of Salerno, at CNR. Since 2005 she is Associate Professor of Early Modern History at Università del Molise. She has joined several research groups in Italy and abroad. She has published essays and books on Jean Bodin, on the demonological debate and on the Roman Inquisition. Renilde Vervoort is a globe-trotting Doctor in History of Arts (Radboud

University, Nijmegen 2011) and independent researcher. She is the author and exhibition-curator of Bruegel’s Witches, which took place in Utrecht, (2015–2016) and Bruges (2016). She is currently researching the use of magic gems and rings in witchcraft and sorcery. Rita Voltmer is Senior Lecturer in Medieval and Early Modern History, University of Trier. Her most recent book is Demonology and Witch-hunting in Early Moden Europe (2020), co-edited with Julian Goodare and Liv Helene Willumsen. Her current projects are on the circulation of knowledge, processes of resilience, and criminal justice in medieval and early modern Europe. Liv Helene Willumsen is Professor Emerita of History, University of Tromsø (UiT The Arctic University of Norway). Her books include Witches of the North: Scotland and Finnmark (2013). In 2019 she was awarded the Norwegian King’s Medal of Merit. She is currently researching transference of demonological ideas across Europe.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This volume comes as an expansion of the panel I organized at the 12th Annual Conference of the International Society for Cultural History (ISCH) on Global Cultural History. With me there were Fabrizio Conti, Debora Moretti, and Vincenzo Tedesco; Michaela Valente would also have been there, but was unable to make it. To all of them my gratitude for sharing the project and exchanging ideas – both within the conference and outside, in beautiful Tallinn. Heartfelt thanks go to our friends and colleagues of the ISCH for having us there. I cannot name them all, but I must at least mention our chair, Jörg Rogge, Cathleen Sarti, and our host at the University of Tallinn, Marek Tamm. I also would like to acknowledge Max Novick at Routledge, who got in touch about a possible outcome, this book, from the session in Tallinn; and also Laura Pilsworth and Izzy Voice for helping me along the way. Of course, the biggest thank you goes to the authors who kindly responded to the call and were enthusiastic in offering suggestions, helping me in the nearly impossible task of being (almost) on time with the deadline.

INTRODUCTION Marina Montesano

This volume offers 18 studies linked together by a common focus on the circulation and reception of knowledge, ideas, objects, go-betweens, networks, translations. The idea began with a panel I organized for the 12th Annual Conference of the International Society for Cultural History (ISCH) on Global Cultural History, held in Tallinn (26–29 June 2019). It should be noted that in this context “global” does not refer so much to the object of study – unlike, say, “world history,” understood as a history of pan-global events – but more to an approach that focuses on connections, entanglements, exchanges, and integration. The panel’s title was very similar to the present book: “Cultural exchanges: Some cases in the domain of folklore and witchcraft.” The aim of the panel and the present volume alike is to study some cases of folklore, magic, and witchcraft according to the methods and the concepts of cultural history. I am going to start this introduction with a short definition of what “exchange” means in the realm of cultural studies; then I will proceed to lay out what is covered by the terms folklore, magic, and witchcraft, and why these field of studies are perfectly suited to being addressed with the analytical approaches of cultural studies; finally, I will present a quick overview of the five sections of this volume and their constitutive chapters, showing the many ways in which they elaborate this core focus.

The concept of culture What is culture? Originally, that is in classical Latin, the term is borrowed from the domain of agriculture: “culture” derives from the verb colere, “to cultivate.” It was then extended to practices of “care towards the gods,” hence giving us the term “cult.” It is not until the beginning of the nineteenth century that a definition of “culture” emerged that referred to an ideal of human refinement. During the second half of the nineteenth century, anthropologists began to

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spread a “total” concept of culture as “Civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense.”1 This famous definition, given by Edward B. Tylor in 1871, continues, it “is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.”2 His approach had the merit of detaching the idea of “culture” from the myriad competing ethnocentric and academic positions of the time, and making it a question of the collective heritage – intellectual and material – of any human society, at any level of social or technological development. The obvious limits of nineteenth-century evolutionism, which separated “primitive culture” from “civilization,” did continue to hold sway: “The educated world of Europe and America practically settles a standard,” Tylor wrote, “by simply placing its own nations at one end of the social series and savage tribes at the other, arranging the rest of mankind between these limits according as they correspond more closely to savage or to cultured life.”3 With these sizeable and evident limits acknowledged, we can nonetheless appreciate how Tylor’s definition asks that each community of human beings be recognized as having cultural “tools.” Moreover, a similar approach can be taken to complex societies in which, even if members do not have access to the same standard of education – indeed, might not all be literate – there are none who fall outside the domain of culture. Throughout the twentieth century, in the field of anthropology, the concept of culture continued to be the most discussed and evolving of topics. Among the key moments of this debate, it is useful to remember the German-American anthropologist Franz Boas, who at the beginning of the century proposed a definition radically different from Tylor’s. Boas rejected the positivist-evolutionist approach, advocating instead that culture be thought of as an integrated system of symbols, ideas, and values that should be studied as a whole.4 Another major shift in the definition of culture occurred a few years later, led by a pair of anthropologists, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn. In 1952, the two men published Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions in which they dissected all previous attempts to define the category in terms of habits, behaviour, heritage, beliefs, customs, and so on.5 Kroeber and Kluckhohn did not attempt a definitive explanation of what culture is. Rather, they argued that more emphasis should be given to language, in particular to its role in the communication and definition of cultural patterns.6 For about a generation in the United States it was anthropological dogma that race, language, and culture varied in complete independence from one another: any coincidence between two or more of the categories was either purely fortuitous or was the resultant of their happening to converge because of massive historical processes affecting them simultaneously throughout a long period. This simpliste view has been subject to considerable revision during the past decade or two. So far as language and culture are concerned, it seems inherently likely that there must be some mutual

Introduction

3

inf luence between any given language and the culture with which it is associated. If one assumes an order in nature, then one must expect that some of the same principles will prevail within any specified category of nature – in this case, culture as manifested both in the linguistic and in the nonlinguistic way-of-life.7 The emphasis on language advocated by these two anthropologists happened to coincide with a major shift occurring in twentieth-century humanities, namely the “linguistic turn,” a paradigm rooted in the work of the Swiss structuralist Ferdinand de Saussure.8 Imagining language as a system of signs whose meaning is generated through internal differentiation rather than inherent values, Saussure’s work ushered in a wave of scholarship that applied structuralism to all manner of disciplines, from literary studies to anthropology to psychoanalysis. Inf luential structuralist and post-structuralist thinkers include the likes of Gilles Deleuze, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Jacques Lacan, and Claude Lévi-Strauss, with many more outside France. Today, a semiotic view of culture is considered the only suitable approach to cultural studies. As Clifford Geertz clearly put it, As interworked systems of construable signs (what, ignoring provincial usages, I would call symbols), culture is not a power, something to which social events, behaviours, institutions, or processes can be causally attributed: it is a context, something within which they can be intelligibly – that is, thickly – described.9 Because of the breadth of this model, cultural studies has inevitably become allpervasive: there is nothing which falls outside this concept of culture, so each and every phenomenon must be read relative to this frame.

Folklore and the demise of the ‘two-tier model’ The debates on structuralism and culture as context are particularly relevant when we come to ask what we mean today by “folklore.” The arguments of structuralist linguistics were certainly inf luential, not least those expressed in the famous essay Folklore as a Special Form of Creation, published by the Russianborn scholars Petr Bogatyrev and Roman Jakobson in 1929, which appeared in translation across Europe from the 1960s onwards. The essay attributed to folklore characteristics such as mobility and creativity, once considered the exclusive provinces of “high” culture. According to the authors: What is important for folkloristic science is not the origin and existence of sources, which lie outside of folklore, but the function of borrowing and the selection and transformation of the borrowed materials. From this

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perspective the well known assertion that ‘the folk does not create, it recreates’ loses its edge, since we have no right to draw an impenetrable boundary between production and reproduction and to consider the latter as having somehow lesser value. Reproduction does not mean passive appropriation.10 In the historiography and anthropology of the 1960s and 1970s, folkloric culture was increasingly identified with the subordinate classes. This argument – advanced especially by Antonio Gramsci – saw folklore contrasted culturally and socially with the habits and interests of the hegemonic classes.11 This approach to the interpretation of culture has been deployed with varying degrees of f lexibility: sometimes as a universal criterion in light of which any situation can be understood, more often with profound attention to the complex contingencies of history. Undoubtedly, however, it offers a clearly defined criterion for analyzing complex cultures, within which not everyone subscribes to the same beliefs, rituals, and mentalities. In continental Europe, the pursuit of class-based analysis of folklore has been particularly strong, as demonstrated by the title of a 1979 issue of the quarterly Quaderni storici: “Religions of the Working Classes.”12 The contrast between hegemonic/cultured and subaltern/folkloric has been widely adopted in studies on religious life – not least in the works of Carlo Ginzburg in Italy and Robert Muchembled in France – but it is far from being the accepted consensus in that field of study.13 Criticism and proposals for change have come above all from medievalists, who are grappling with societies in which borders and cultural differences do not straightforwardly conform to social ones. For example, in the Early Middle Ages, the eastern migration of Germans to the edges of the Holy Roman Empire presented the historian with religious and cultural situations that required a less schematic approach. It can in fact be observed that the cultural heritage of the new arrivals remained unitary and cohesive for a very long period, with no direct or simple correspondence between cultural differentiation and social stratification (albeit that the latter was undoubtedly present within and between groups). The peculiarity of social dynamics in the Middle Ages led to the search for interpretive approaches to folklore that – while not entirely at odds with the existing ones – were better suited to the matters at hand. For example, as Jacques Le Goff noted, the line of cultural separation did not directly coincide with social stratification, because intellectual culture became the monopoly of the Church; even if there were great differences in the cultural background among the clergy, these were differences of degree not of kind, and the core values were of the same culture. A more clear dividing line existed between clerics and the laity. Whilst Le Goff is basing his argument on a situation typical of Merovingian Gaul, he does maintain that, in general, cultural differentiation should always be understood in the light of bipolarity or a conf lict – but he is equally clear that this must not only be taken to mean socio-political-economic distinctions between classes or ranks.14

Introduction

5

To speak of a dichotomy within culture does not, however, mean denying the existence of polarisation nor of a dense web of relations and circulation between the two poles. The French medievalist Jean-Claude Schmitt denies the validity of a two-tier model in which two cultures, one “learned,” the other “folkloric” are rendered distinct. He argues instead that the cultural system of the Middle Ages is essentially unitary and the two terms (learned and folkloric) must be understood not as mutually exclusive milieus but as opposed poles, at the same time dialectical and relatable, of a single cultural system. This conception of culture makes it possible to explain the phenomena of exchange, understood as both the folklorization of ecclesiastical culture and the vulgarization of learned or theological motifs: both transformations are typical features of medieval culture. Again, social class is recognized, but not as the sole determinant of exchange; rather, the relations of lay-popular-subordinate on the one hand, to cleric-ductile-hegemon on the other, are understood within the wider, unitary context of a culture. In any case, the debate is far from over. Arguments that posit “invariants”15 – that is, elements of a cultural substratum in which long duration prevails over the dynamics of change – remain even in recent publications, often with interesting results.16 Having refused the limitations of the two-tier model, the fundamental questions for historians dealing with topics of culture and folklore now ask how, in a complex society, the different social subjects – be they individual or collective – experience, elaborate, and interpret culture? Is it in a unitary or diversified way? If the latter, what drives the diversification? And how might we grasp or explain it? One answer seems to come from Roger Chartier’s use of the concept of “appropriation” to indicate the way in which different subjects perceive and interpret social objects.17 Or by the neighbouring notion of “transfer,” as conceived by Michel Espagne in his studies of resemantization and reinterpretation. Espagne traces the passage from one cultural and linguistic context to another, applying his transnational researches in order to understand modern Europe (though it can of course be applied elsewhere) as a cultural space connected by numerous “bridges.”18 The approach has proven useful in postcolonial studies, where researchers look beyond the one-way transmission of knowledge to instead study the bi-lateral exchange of cultural elements between dominating and dominated countries. Peter Burke has used the term “cultural hybridity” to refer to the processes and exchanges that were happening in the globalized world that pre-dates contemporaneity, through which cultural encounters of all kinds were created.19 The mapping of transfers and appropriations helps us to explain the migration of words, ideas, and objects from one cultural situation to another: it causes a reinterpretation, rethinking, and re-signification, and in the process recognizes how those words, ideas, and objects come to be perceived and used differently. These approaches seek to recognize all manner of transfers and appropriations, including movement in space, in time, from one class of people to another, between oral and written expressions, among different languages, and so on.

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In past years Peter Burke has expressed some doubts as to the possibility of employing Chartier’s vision outside of its original field of the circulation of printed material. Burke asserts that, The basic problem is that a ‘culture’ is a system with rather vague boundaries. The great value of Roger Chartier’s recent essays on ‘popular cultural uses’ is that he keeps this vagueness constantly in mind. He argues that it is pointless to try to identify popular culture by some supposedly specific distribution of cultural objects, objects such as books or ex votos, because these objects were in practice used or ‘appropriated’ for their own purposes by different social groups. […] The moral Chartier draws is that historians should study not cultural sets defined as popular but rather the specific ways in which these cultural sets are appropriated. […] It strikes me as the most important contribution to the popular culture debate in the last ten years. Historians are far from having absorbed all its lessons.Yet problems remain.The ‘appropriation’ model is most useful for the study of material culture; […] but it forces the historian or anthropologist to focus on the objects, the ‘social life of things’ rather than the life of the social groups themselves, and try to understand their mentalities, the logic of their different appropriations and adaptations of diverse objects, the way in which they create their life-style, then we need supplementary concepts.At this point we may have to return to some version of the ‘two-tier model’, modified to allow for the circulation of objects.20 Those who would dismiss Burke’s argument might assert that the dichotomy between material culture and culture tout court has been rendered archaic by the semiotic approach advocated by Clifford Geertz and others, whereby culture can indifferently consist of objects, institutions, ideas, or values; what counts is the way in which they are interpreted and perceived, or, to return to Chartier, “appropriated.” If culture is a context, a network of meanings, then there is no reason to distinguish so sharply between social objects and social behaviour; they are so closely related that one cannot mean anything without the other. Useful approaches, in past decades, have also arrived from fields of studies adjacent to ours. One example is the notion of “aberrant decoding,” a term coined by Umberto Eco in 1965 and translated into English seven years later, which seeks to explain how messages encoded into a set of signs by a sender can be interpreted in ways that differ from what was intended.21 The concept has been widely used in the context of media studies. Eco himself maintained that the phenomenon is most common in post-industrial societies, in which many different cultures intermingle.22 Given that cultural history is now considering the distant past in similar terms, Eco’s notion provides us with another tool with which to approach the subject. Clearly, the new approaches announced by the linguist turn in the social sciences and humanities have been essential in generating new definitions of folklore, with the “popular” dissolving into a context in which exchange and transfer

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are what really count. Similarly, they have allowed new approaches to the realm of magic and witchcraft.

Magic and witchcraft as exemplary models of cultural exchange The study of magic offers a wide range of possibilities to cultural historians, and especially to those interested in cultural exchange, because everything in the domain of Western magic speaks of it: geography, language, religious issues, and politics together forged a world of knowledge that was constantly changing and adapting. Magic is a wide domain; and it is difficult to definitively mark its boundaries.23 The Greeks originally borrowed it from the Persian world where, according to Herodotus, the mágoi were a priestly caste. The Greeks, however, broadened the meaning of the word to indicate, often in a negative sense, those who practised the occult arts; whilst the Gospel of Matthew speaks of mágoi from the East, presumably from Persia itself. As a consequence of these two uses, the early Christian world received a bipolar definition: on the one hand, the Magi were magicians or priests; and on the other hand, they were associated with the tradition and cult of the relics of the Three Kings. This second meaning, however, was exhausted and fossilized in the context of the Nativity celebrations, and the first, linking the Magi to the occult arts, became predominant. In the classical world, cultural forms that we call “magical,” such as certain types of divination, were considered perfectly licit; indeed, in Rome they formed a central part of the ceremonials provided for by the state itself. The real distinction between licit and illicit was determined by two factors: on the one hand, the differentiation between religio and superstitio – which, as we shall soon see, is itself in constant f lux; and, on the other hand, the degree to which magic had a cognitive purpose as opposed to an operational or performative one. The latter uses, it was argued, easily led to maleficium, that is, evil acts effected through occult practices. The concept of superstitio appears frequently in Latin literature.24 In the first century BC, Cicero speaks of it as an “excess” of religious practice – a corruption of religio, which he links to incorrect and false forms of divination 25 – whilst elsewhere he defines superstitiosus as someone who fears immoderately and irrationally every divinatory manifestation; put simply, a credulous person.26 Seneca speaks of “superstition” as the opposite attitude to that of the religious man.27 The writings of Columella in the first century AD, and especially of his contemporary Pliny the Elder, explain clearly the reason for these positions: the ignorant and uncouth peasants are superstitious, and their beliefs are contrasted to the scientific and rational attitude of the learned.28 Late Antiquity and, in turn, the Middle Ages inherited from the classical world this interweaving of concepts and definitions, which we can distinguish into three phases: superstitio as a magical-divinatory act; superstitio as “bad religion”; and, finally, superstitio as

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the religion of “others” (those who were counted as strangers by dint of being foreigners or because they were considered uncultured). The meaning of superstitio as “religion of others” became more widespread after the first century AD, when the propagation of cults foreign to tradition became a more pressing threat than in the past. Tacitus uses the word in reference to the customs of Celts and Germans, and when he discusses the “invasion” of Rome by oriental cults, such as Christianity. Not too long afterwards, as we know, the situation was reversed, and Christian authors started to use the same parameters to dismiss the waning paganism: Tertullian and Augustine respectively speak of superstitio Romana and the superstitiones of the pagans.29 Later, in the fifth century, the Theodosian Codex used the word superstitio to condemn heresies, the Jewish religion, and Latin and Germanic paganism.30 Throughout the Middle Ages and beyond, the term was adopted very frequently, in line with the classical tradition: the two uses – superstition as bad religion and as other people’s religion – gradually overlapped; in the eyes of clerics and scholars, the superstitious were those who adopted forms of worship that were theologically false, morally repugnant, or corrupted by remnants of paganism. Folkloric beliefs and practical magic would be deemed superstitious until the recent reconsiderations of the entire matter mentioned above. From the twelfth century, new forms of magical practice spread around Europe. At the same time, the economic balance of Europe continued to shift as urban centres once again rose in importance: cities such as Amalfi, Genoa, Venice, Pisa, and Barcelona took on new significance in Mediterranean trade; and various other events and forces – from the reconquest of the Iberian peninsula and the crusades, to the organization of cathedral schools, and above all of universities – contributed in a variety of incisive ways to the reintroduction in the West of branches of scientific-philosophical culture of classical or late antique origin, conveyed by the rediscovery of many Greek-Latin texts, passed through Arab and Hebrew elaborations and translations. The return of magic to the West as a high scientific-cultural expression is closely linked to this intellectual climate and to the transmission of texts dealing with astrology, divination of many kinds, and necromancy – this last taken to mean the conjuration of demons, and the blasphemous use of prayers and insignia to call upon Old Testament prophets and God himself to curse and corral the demons to obey the will of the summoner. During the Renaissance, a second major swing happened: humanistic culture meant that in Italy, and above all in Florence, groups of scholars arose who were attentive to the cultural renewal that accompanied the rediscovery of hitherto ignored ancient Latin works, and even more so by the arrival of Hellenic and Hellenistic texts directly from the Byzantine world. Among the latter were found many magical writings, which renewed those of the past centuries and ushered in a new era in which ceremonial magic had an important role – something we see exemplified in the following centuries by authors like Marsilio Ficino, Agrippa von Nettesheim, John Dee, and many more.

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It is not always easy, at this time, to establish a clear link between magic and witchcraft. Sometimes they were prosecuted as separate crimes, but usually the charges brought against alleged witches involved malevolent and harmful magic. Witchcraft, understood as the knowledge of techniques or the use psychic abilities to do evil with occult means, is an extraordinarily widespread phenomenon: many are the cultures that acknowledge such beliefs, and anthropologists study them across the globe. When we talk of witch-hunts, however, we refer to the specific context of Europe between the Late Middle Ages and the modern age. In this time and place, demonology met ancient beliefs, and anxieties spread among the population, giving rise to the persecution and burning of those found guilty. At the same time, new ideas regarding the powers of witches and wizards circulated, as did elaborate descriptions of the sabbat. The theological and scientific debates of this time had no contemporaneous equivalent elsewhere – albeit that, as Ronald Hutton points out, comparative methodologies can certainly be a useful tool for looking at the histories of witchcraft across European and nonEuropean contexts.31 The so-called “cumulative” concept of witchcraft refers to a narrative in which many elements concur, affirming a single, multifaceted model: the nocturnal assemblies of witches, usually but not always known as a sabbat; arrival at the appointed place by f light; the sealing of a pact and indulgence in sexual intercourse with the Devil; metamorphosis; the casting of harmful magic upon living creatures; and even weather magic. These are aspects of a general construct, and not all activities were reported in every trial; indeed, many features vary according to geographical area and chronology. This model of cumulative witchcraft layers motifs from a variety of sources: from popular beliefs – themselves myriad across different areas – to more intentionally composed, cultivated constructions, like those produced by demonologists. Preaching and, from early modern times, printed texts and iconography, could determine the migratory paths of local motifs to other areas. The circulation of knowledge is at the very base of the cumulative concept of witchcraft, and is the omnipresent fuel that subtends the initial moments of the witch-hunts around the middle of the fourteenth century. These topics are all addressed in the five sections of this volume. Through case studies and suggested interpretations, the book addresses the circulation of folkloric beliefs, interreligious transfers in the field of magic, the preachers as go-betweens, the life of objects, and the circulation and exchange of ideas about witchcraft.

Interpreting folkloric beliefs This first section includes four chapters which aim to demonstrate how one or more folkloric motif has been taken from one social context and interpreted or appropriated in another. The chapters range across different areas of Europe, covering the Late Middle Ages to early modern times.

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Andrea Maraschi returns to the fascinating trials of Joan of Arc in his “The Tree of the Bourlémonts. Gendered beliefs in fairies and their transmission from old to young women in Joan of Arc’s Domrémy.” He revisits Joan of Arc’s accounts of her childhood and links them with two different domains of cultural exchanges: first, the ways in which the Church perceived, received, and translated into the official Christian worldview beliefs such as those around Domrémy’s “Fairy Tree”; secondly, the gendered transmission between groups of different ages (old women to young girls) of such a belief. The tree elicited special interest from the women of the village, who appear to have preserved knowledge of its worship and secrets for generations. Accounts of this attendance were associated with the “voices” allegedly heard by Joan, and brought the attention of the secular and ecclesiastical elite alike. Both groups would interpret events in their own cultural terms; and given the importance of the trial, they would, of course, always have their political interests in mind. “The rejuvenating blood: Marsilio Ficino and the witches” draws on research from my book Classical Culture and Witchcraft in Medieval and Renaissance Italy (Palgrave Macmillian, 2018), in which I tried to show how the classical idea of the strix or the lamia travelled through space and time, was continually interpreted in different contexts during the medieval period, and became a part of the modern ideas of witchcraft. In this essay, I discuss a passage from Marsilio Ficino’s De vita in which he talks of the striges and their custom of sucking blood, and explains how imbibing blood from a youth can help old people to slow the effects of ageing. Ficino draws upon many different sources for his opus: medical and magical texts, including the Picatrix, have been related to the treatise. The short passage I analyse also demonstrates how the author was aware of the folkloric world of central Italy, where the image of the bloodsucking witch was rooted and where it was seeing a revival in Ficino’s own times. Debora Moretti also devotes her chapter, “The circulation and exchange of ideas, myths, legends, and oral traditions in the witchcraft trials of Italy,” to witchcraft in central Italy, in particular to the motif of the Walnut Tree of Benevento as a site of the sabbat. As one of the most popular witchcraft-related Italian folk traditions, the motif appealed to all levels of society and has survived from the Middle Ages into modern times. As such, Moretti argues, it can be treated according to the theory of ethnocultural substrata, well known in folklore studies. She presents cases drawn from trials that took place in the province of Siena, Tuscany, at the end of the sixteenth century, in which the interaction between the Inquisitors and people with oral knowledges is evident. Concluding the section, Vincenzo Tedesco’s “Between Hell and Paradise: The legend of the soul of the Emperor Trajan” considers a hagiographic miracle related by, amongst others, Jacobus de Voragine in his Golden Legend. The tale relates to Pope Gregory I, and underwent substantial reinterpretation in early modern times, before finally being condemned as a heretical proposition. It is a pious story of the soul of the Roman Emperor Trajan, who ruled from 98 to

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117 AD. Initially doomed to eternal damnation as a pagan, after some centuries the emperor’s soul was said to have been transferred to Paradise by God, thanks to the intercession of the pope. During the sixteenth century, the legend was drawn into a sophisticated, ongoing debate about the destiny of souls after death, with the result that its original meaning came to be negated.

Cultural exchange among Christian, Islamic, and Jewish communities Magic, as I have said, proves to be a fertile field of study for those looking at interaction among Christians, Jews, and Muslims – whether it be through the circulation of texts or by direct exchanges between individuals or communities. The second section of this book comprises three chapters devoted to this topic, chronologically encompassing the apogee of Islamic scholarship in the medieval period, and the Renaissance and early modern periods in Europe. The first essay of this section is by Michele Petrone. “Artificial creation of human life: Ibn Waḥšiyya as a source of the Futūḥāt al-makkiyya” presents a passage of the Futūḥāt al-makkiyya of Ibn ‘Arabī, an extremely inf luential Arab Andalusian Muslim scholar of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, in which he mentions Ibn Waḥšiyya, an author of almost three centuries before, born in Qusayn near Kufa in Iraq. Ibn Waḥšiyya’s Nabataean Agriculture is cited as Ibn ‘Arabī’s main source on the artificial generation of life – a subject that is considered taboo in Islam. As Petrone shows, the passage is debated and interpreted in both Jewish and Christian contexts, with different results; indeed, the possibility of artificially creating a creature able to mimic life or that is effectively alive has been widely discussed throughout the late antique and early modern periods by esotericists and occultists of diverse traditions. In the following chapter, “Fragments of a Jewish magical tradition in the library of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola,” Flavia Buzzetta examines intellectual exchanges between Christians and Jews in the Renaissance. Casting light on the Ashkenazi magical tradition of the Sefer Malachim, and its transmission and transformation in the Christian context, she presents a study of the notion of imago/demut which was encountered by Pico in Liber de homine, a Latin translation by Flavius Mithridates made at the end of the fifteenth century. Buzzetta shows how imago wax figurines – weapons that can confer damage and cause death through specific rituals – and the formulas related to their use, represent a form of hybridization, in which typical elements of Ashkenazi Hasidic esoteric thinking were made a part of the system created by Pico in his Renaissance context. The concluding essay of this section is by Marina Caffiero and focuses on “Parallel beliefs: Cultural exchange between Jews and Christians on magic and witchcraft, and the concerns of the Inquisition.” In the general context of the Inquisition trials against Jews and practitioners of magic in early modern times, Caffiero presents cases in which judges underlined and interpreted the

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commingling, exchanges, and combinations of spells and magic between Jews and Christians. From the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, magic was perceived as a new form of heresy; as Jews could not be persecuted as heretics, accusations of witchcraft and magical practices could be used as a way of undermining religious diversity and even clandestinely treating Judaism as heresy. Caffiero examines the little-known documentation related to trials for witchcraft involving Jews, sometimes with Christian accomplices, illustrating both their point of view and that of the inquisitors, in a circle of shared knowledge.

Preachers as mediators It is generally recognized that preachers in late medieval times had a central role in defining magic and witchcraft. Not only this, they also acted as cultural mediators between literary and oral domains, forming the definitions of magic and witchcraft among their lay audiences and the authorities that were entitled to prosecute witches. The third section of this book comprises three chapters which consider this topic, concentrating on the High and Late Middle Ages. In the first essay, “Some reports of magic, superstition, and witchcraft in the medieval mirabilia literature,” Christa Agnes Tuczay maps the dynamics of intersectional and intertextual exchange between very diverse areas of intellectual production (especially homiletic exemplary literature, narrative courtly literature, and didactic treatises) that deal with accounts of popular beliefs, magic, miracles, and mirabilia. The examination of clerical texts, with the use of exempla from medieval scholarly literature, proves a fruitful research topic, revealing the dynamics of interaction between the masses and the elite, the clergy and laypeople. This, in turn, allows for tracking of motifs as they circulate outside of their original context, undergoing repeated reinterpretations according to the alignment of the new narrative. Late medieval times saw a proliferation of homiletic activity, and with it a dramatic rise in encounters between learned preachers and the vast, composite public that filled the squares in front of them. One of the most famous was the Valencian Dominican Vincent Ferrer, whose role in defining witchcraft has been, until now, underestimated; with his chapter on “‘Diabolical sorceries’: Vicent Ferrer’s preaching and the emergence of the witchcraft construct(s) in early fifteenth-century Europe” Pau Castell rectifies this oversight. Ferrer’s sermons show a harsh condemnation of sorcerers and diviners: not only did he denounce their diabolical nature, he also posited that their very existence formed part of an eschatological framework characterized by the imminent arrival of the Antichrist. In Italy, it was surely Bernardino of Siena who wore the mantle of the most famous preacher of his time. Fabrizio Conti’s essay, “Circulation of magic and folkloric traditions in the times of Antonino of Florence and Bernardino of Siena,” concludes this section with a comparative study of Bernardino and Antonino Pierozzi of Florence. Both are central figures in their respective Franciscan and Dominican orders, although in historiography the Dominican

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has been overshadowed by his (near contemporary) Franciscan colleague – perhaps because of the greater availability of transcripts of Bernardino’s vernacular sermons. Conti’s comparison of the preachers’ respective texts – along with his consideration of other evidence concerning fifteenth-century magic culture, including trials for witchcraft – underline the circulation and variety of interpretations of folkloric and magic motifs.

The cultural interpretation of objects As I have remarked previously, the circulation of objects is a key topic in the discourse of cultural studies: books, of course, especially after the invention of movable-type printing, have enjoyed the most attention, but there remains space for considering items of other kinds, from the everyday to works of art. Three chapters deal with the cultural interpretation of such objects in different areas of Europe, with a focus on early modern to modern times. Matteo Al Kalak’s “The body of Christ: Exchanges and cultural upheavals in early modern Italy” examines how the sacrament of the Body of Christ is “appropriated” in different contexts. Firstly, he considers how the Eucharist can be understood and treated as an object, giving attention to the issues that arose from the physical dimension of the sacrament within Catholic doctrine and practice. Secondly, he explores cultural sharing of the Eucharist-object outside official religious institutions. Finally, he studies a third form of exchange, namely the subversion of Body of Christ stereotypes, drawing on cases concerning acts of desecration or irreverence by marginalized groups. Al Kalak analyses such cases in the context of Catholic Italy, with special attention to the period between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, after the dissemination of the decrees of the Council of Trent. In the second chapter of this section, “The natural and the supernatural: Collecting, interests, and trials of the nuncio Francesco Vitelli in Venice, 1632–1643,” Marco Albertoni draws attention to the interesting case of Francesco Vitelli, who had acted as an apostolic nuncio and a diplomat for many years. He was a man of great culture: the author of some political and historical treatises, translator of several works, and mentor to many younger scholars. Vitelli also had a peculiar interest in magic objects and books, both in his role as a nuncio and as a private collector. The meeting in one personage of these two apparently incompatible attitudes to magic deserves close analysis to understand both Vitelli’s personal stance, and the cultural significance of his attitude. To conclude this section, Renilde Vervoort’s “The witch unravelled: How Pieter Bruegel the Elder developed a visual code to depict witchcraft and sorcery” discusses the role of Bruegel’s paintings in translating the notion of the devil-worshipping witch into images that people could understand, associating them with specific objects like the broom, the hand of glory, the fireplace, fairies, and cannibalistic women. These objects would become established

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stereotypes of witchcraft, gaining popularity across northern Europe and inf luencing the imagery of many other painters, such as Frans Francken II, David Teniers II, Cornelis Saftleven, Jacques de Gheyn II, Sebastiaan Vrancx, and Jacob Isaacz van Swanenburgh. In turn, Bruegel’s depiction of witches was assimilated to the work of demonologists who consolidated the cumulative concept of witchcraft.

Trading ideas about witchcraft As discussed earlier in this introduction, the study of witchcraft is another field in which exchange and circulation are central factors, not least when thinking about the geographical reach of ideas. Indeed, within the five chapters of this final section, we find authors like Rita Voltmer and Liv Helene Willumsen, who have made this topic one of the central issues in their research. The geographical areas studied encompass various regions of Europe across modern times. Key to Michaela Valente’s chapter, “Ignorantia and superstitio: A discussion among theologians and inquisitors in the sixteenth century” are the notions of ignorantia and superstitio, categories evidently developed in a learned context. Valente first addresses the perception of these concepts amongst the Catholic elite of the Roman Inquisition, before presenting cases in which women tried to circumvent accusations of witchcraft and heresy by pleading ignorance. It is a peculiar situation in which cultural attitudes conceived by scholars with the purpose of classifying and condemning certain beliefs are appropriated – and even invoked strategically – by the very people the categories were meant to be applied to. Danny Buck’s chapter, “The MP and the astrologer: Rival cultures of witchcraft in the East Anglian witch-hunt,” takes us to England, and the Great Yarmouth witch-hunt of 1645. Buck presents the case of a man accused of practising astrology, an activity that was commonly requested in his community. At a certain point, the astrologer’s activities, originally regarded as quite distinct from witchcraft, drew the attention of witch-hunt. This led to the convergence, in a single court case, of differing models of astrology – approaches which operated in parallel in the locality, which ref lected different cultural values, and which hence cast light on the political motivations behind the different characterizations of these otherwise comparable cultural standpoints. In “A witchcraft triangle: Transmitting witchcraft ideas across early modern Europe,” Liv Helene Willumsen details how the transfer of demonological ideas from south-western Germany to north Europe, a renowned subject amongst witchcraft scholars, took place within a triangle formed by Trier in Germany, Edinburgh in Scotland, and Vardø in Norway, with an important role for Denmark, particularly Copenhagen. Willumsen focuses on the medium which carried those ideas – namely, printed material, and diplomatic and royal correspondence – but she also considers the travels of people, and their central role in the dissemination of new demonological ideas and theories about witchcraft.

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Amber R. Cederström’s chapter on “The shape of evil: Familiars and shapeshifting witches in seventeenth-century Finnmark” engages with cultural exchange in two major ways. Firstly, she examines how many of the authorities overseeing the trials of seventeenth-century Finnmark were not “native” Norwegians but rather officials from Denmark, where they were also trained. Secondly – and as a consequence – these ethnic or national distinctions were exacerbated and complicated by the fact that, whilst most of the authorities were not local, the accused typically were. Danish conceptions of witchcraft were closer to those of the continent, and thus they collided with northern Norwegian ones, which shared features with older Scandinavian beliefs and those of the contemporary Sámi, who also lived in Finnmark. Finally, the section closes with Rita Voltmer’s “Circulating knowledge in an Enlightened discourse: Eberhard David Hauber’s Witchcraft Quarterly, 1738– 1745,” which deals with scepticism towards magic and witchcraft. She focuses on Eberhard David Hauber, who held the position of superintendent of the German Calvinist county of Schaumburg-Lippe until 1746, when he moved to Copenhagen to become parish minister to the local German community. He was an advocate of non-belief in demon powers and witchcraft. He also sampled, edited, and commented on a great variety of texts on the matter, creating a network of learned men – mostly in northern protestant Europe, but stretching as far as Italy – who supported his position. Here, we see the ascendancy of enlightenment discourse, and the emergence of a new phase in the way folklore, magic, and witchcraft were considered.

In conclusion The studies in this volume traverse a broad spectrum both chronologically and thematically; yet, when brought together, their shared focus on cultural exchange and encounters emerges in an important way, revealing a valuable methodology that goes beyond the pure comparativism that has dominated historiography in recent decades. Several of the chapters touch on gender relations and contact between different religious faiths, using case studies to explore the variety of these encounters. Even if all the essays focus geographically on the European situation, they do so by investigating relationships more than highlighting singular, local traits, and it seems to me that they thus invite a broader investigation, one extending to a global perspective, that could widen the research to the non-European world. Folklore, magic, and witchcraft, despite having developed particular characteristics in Western Europe, are phenomena which should be approached within a wider range of historical and anthropological points of view. In short, the hope is that this volume responds to the challenge for a global history that, as we have seen in the recent history of cultural studies, prioritizes inclusivity – moving beyond biased or learned attachments to, for example, the West and male protagonists, toward broader and broadening foci and methods.

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Notes 1 Edward Burnett Tylor, Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art, and Custom (London: John Murray, 1871), vol. I, 1. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid., 35. 4 See Franz Boas, “The Aims of Anthropological Research,” Science 76, no. 1983 (1932): 605–13. 5 Alfred L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn, Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952). 6 See also Clifford Geertz, “Description: Toward An Interpretive Theory of Culture,” in Idem, The Interpretation of Culture (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 4–5. 7 Clyde Kluckhohn, “Notes on Some Anthropological Aspects of Communication,” American Anthropologist 63, no. 5 (1961): 897. 8 The primary reference is Saussure’s Cours de linguistique générale first published in 1916, after his death, which collates lecture notes and conference papers. See Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, eds. Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011). 9 The term “thick description” was adopted by Clifford Geertz from the English philosopher Gilbert Ryle. See Geertz, “Description,” 14. 10 Petr Bogatyrev and Roman Jakobson, “Folklore as a Special Form of Creation,” Open Folklore 9 (1980): 1–21. 11 Antonio Gramsci, “Osservazioni sul folklore,” in Idem, Letteratura e vita nazionale (Torino: Einaudi, 1950), 213–21. 12 Carlo Ginzburg, ed., “Religioni delle classi popolari,” Quaderni storici 41 (1979). 13 Carlo Ginzburg, The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983; first published in Italian as I benandanti, 1966); Carlo Ginzburg, “Folklore, magia, religione,” in Ruggero Romano, Corrado Vivanti, eds., Storia d’Italia. I caratteri originali (Torino: UTET, 1972), 603–76; Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth Century Miller (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980; first published in Italian as Il formaggio e i vermi, 1976); Robert Muchembled, Culture populaire et culture des élites dans la France moderne (XVe –XVIIIe siècle) (Paris: Flammarion, 1978); Robert Muchembled, La sorciére au village (Paris: Gallimard, 1979); Robert Muchembled, Société et mentalités dans la France moderne, XVIe –XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Armand Colin, 1990). 14 Jacques Le Goff, “Culture ecclésiastique et culture folklorique au Moyen-Âge. Saint Marcel de Paris et le dragon,” in Idem, Pour un autre Moyen-Âge. Temps, travail et culture en Occident (Paris: Gallimard, 1991), 236–79. 15 On the concept of “invariants” in folklore studies see Vladimir V. Ivanov and Vladimir Toporov, “The Invariant and Transformations an Folklore Texts,” Dispositio 1, no. 3 (1976): 263–70. 16 See the discussion of Carlo Ginzburg’s book Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004; first published in Italian as Storia notturna: Una decifrazione del Sabba, 1989) by Davide Ermacora, “Invariant cultural forms in Carlo Ginzburg’s ‘Ecstasies’: A thirty-year retrospective,” Historia Religionum 9 (2017): 69–94. 17 Roger Chartier, “Culture as Appropriation: Popular Cultural Uses in Early Modern France,” in Steven L. Kaplan, ed., Understanding Popular Culture (Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2010), 229–54. 18 See, among many, Michel Espagne, Les transferts culturels franco-allemands (Paris: PUF, 1999). 19 Peter Burke, Cultural Hybridity (Cambridge: Polity, 2009). 20 Peter Burke, “Popular Culture Reconsidered,” in Gerhard Jaritz, ed., Mensch und Objekt im Mittelalter und in der fruhen Neuzeit (Wien: VÖAW, 1990), 181–92, part.

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21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

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187–8. The entire volume is extremely useful for thinking through these issues. For a more up-to-date approach, see Peter Burke and Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia, eds., Cultural Translation In Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Now in Umberto Eco, Towards a Semiotic Inquiry into the Television Message, in Ackbar Abbas and John Nguyet Erni, eds., Internationalizing Cultural Studies: An Anthology (London: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 237–52. For the impact on media studies see, for example, Stuart Hall, ed., Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972–1979 (London: Routledge – University of Birmingham, 1980). For an in-depth analysis see Michael D. Bailey, “The Meanings of Magic,” Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 1 (2006): 1–23. Denise Grodzynski, “Superstitio,” Revue des Études Anciennes 76, no. 1–2 (1974): 36–60. Cicero, De natura deorum, I, 62. Cicero, De divinatione, II, LXXII, 148. Seneca, De clementia, II, 5. Columella, De agricultura, I, 8; Pliny, Naturalis Historia, XXX, 2, 7. Tertullianus, Adverus Marcionem, I, 9, 3; Augustinus, De Civitate Dei, X, 32, or XVI, 12. Codex Theodosianus, XVI, 5; XVI, 8; XVI, 10. Ronald Hutton, “Anthropological and Historical Approaches to Witchcraft: Potential for a New Collaboration?,” The Historical Journal 47, no. 2 ( June 2004): 413–34.

PART I

Interpreting folkloric beliefs

1 THE TREE OF THE BOURLÉMONTS Gendered beliefs in fairies and their transmission from old to young women in Joan of Arc’s Domrémy Andrea Maraschi

et alias oves habeo quae non sunt ex hoc ovili ( Jn 10:16)

Story of fairies and of a tree Wednesday, 28 January 1456, village church of Domrémy. Jean Morel, a 70-yearold labourer from Greux, tells church dignitaries that he has heard about the beech tree. It is called the “Ladies’ tree” because women and certain supernatural spirits known as “fairies” used to gather under said tree and dance beneath it. But – he adds – they no longer did so, not since verses from the Gospel of John were read aloud before it.1 It was day one of the Rehabilitation trial of Joan of Arc. Jean Morel, though probably an honest man, was hardly unsympathetic towards Joan (he had been her godfather) and after 25 years since the girl’s death, he likely wanted to distance himself from any suspicions about beliefs in demonic beings at his village. The aforementioned tree was still a burning issue, in fact, and had represented one of the key charges against the Pucelle. The reason was that in 1431, after inquests in Joan’s native region, the clerics at the trial were acquainted with the existence of a famous beech tree near her village,2 around which locals (especially young kids) used to sing and dance at certain times of the year. Joan’s prosecutor Jean d’Estivet mentioned the tree in his list of articles of indictment: he described it as magna, grossa, and antiqua (“large,” “thick,” and “ancient”), and noted that the folk called it l’arbre charmine faee de Bourlémont, that is, “the enchanting fairytree of the Bourlémont.” Furthermore, near this tree was a spring, and maligni spiritus (“evil spirits”) called Fata, in French faees, allegedly used to encounter utentes sortilegiis (“sorcerers”) at night near the tree and the fons to dance and to do – presumably – abominable things.3

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In the last winter days of 1431, however, the Church was not too concerned about local magicians or, at least, not as much as it was worried about the girl who in the last couple of years had saved France from the English disrupting social hierarchies, emerging as a leader of men and soldiers in patriarchal Christendom, and boasting her exclusive and privileged relationship with God. Joan had to face several charges, among which were her cross-dressing and her voices;4 the involvement with rituals around the tree, though, was one of the more problematic accusations to dismiss, and offers the opportunity to delve into the mentalities and habits of common people in fifteenth-century Europe. The Church took advantage of this same opportunity, and emissaries were sent to collect information about the inhabitants of Domrémy, as well as about Joan. The village in question was hardly different from many others at the time: on the contrary, just like many others, Domrémy was a Christian village with a “residual stratum of pagan religiosity”5 which had survived since ancient times. In this specific case, I argue, there also surfaces an even more dangerous circumstance: the tree drew particular interest from the women of the village, who seemed to have preserved the knowledge of its worship and secrets for generations, up until Joan’s generation at least. In the following pages I will try to explore such a possibility, and how it was perceived by members of the secular and of the ecclesiastical elite at the time. It is first important to start from d’Estivet’s description of the tree and of its visitors.6 The tree, which would still look impressive to Edmond Richer in 1628,7 was called “of the Bourlémont” because it was located inside the property of the aristocratic family of the Bourlémonts, in the middle of the bois chesnu, a grove of oaks, which was visible from the door of Joan’s father. It had two more epithets as well, as Joan herself stated: she knew it as Arbor Dominarum, “the Ladies’ tree,” whereas “others call it Arbor Fatalium, in French des Faées,”8 “the Fairies’ tree.” There apparently was a simple reason behind such names as well: according to the 60-year-old Jeannette Thiesselin (who also testified at the Rehabilitation process and had been Joan’s godmother herself ), a lady named Fée and the knight Pierre Gravier, lord of Bourlémont, used to meet under the tree: it was written in a romance which she heard read aloud.9 The “ladies” were thus noblewomen, the word “fairy” was a proper noun, and the tree was a locus amoenus where aristocrats practiced courtly love.10 The coincidence would be curious, however, for – even though there is evidence of bynames such as Fay and Fee in medieval France,11 the same cannot be said about its use as a name. Pierre Champion was not persuaded:12 in his opinion, Jeanne Thiesselin may have mistaken her memories and mixed them with a reading of the Romance of Mélusine.13 After all, many years had passed since Joan’s trial, and it is fair to assume that Jeanne was as reluctant to get involved in any issue with the Church as Jean Morel. In her defence, however, it is worth noting that a few other testimonies as well did not associate the tree with the fairies, but simply stated that the tree was so beautiful that many lords used to go there to spend a pleasant time with their ladies.14

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Were Jeanne wrong, the alternative was that the Faées could be “fairies,” and the Dominae “ladies.” Unfortunately for Joan, both elements were found particularly relevant in connection with her voices; and there was more. Joan testified that the spring which was near the tree was visited by sick persons who drank its water to recover their health: she had witnessed this herself, even though she did not know “utrum inde sanentur vel non” (which means that she did not exclude that this was possible).15 She used to go to the tree “with other girls”16 to make garlands of f lowers for the image of Our Lady of Domrémy, which they put on the branches. Sometimes they sang and danced, “but I sang there more than I danced.”17 The agents of the Bishop of Beauvais Pierre Cauchon, who presided over the trial, had already collected information about such rituals,18 and she was pressed to be more specific: many times, she added, she had heard the old folk (though none of her family) say that “domine Fatales illuc conversabantur,”19 that is, that “fairies gathered there.” Despite what Jeanne Thiesselin would say many years later, then, the belief in fairies at Domrémy seems to have been quite widespread among the old generation of villagers, if Joan confessed to having pluries heard it – and it would be fair to assume that it dated back to much earlier times. Elders and youngsters thus knew about the connection between the tree and the fairies, and it is no wonder that Cauchon suspected that Joan and her friends visited the huge beech to encounter them. There is one more layer to this account, however: Joan notes that one of her godmothers ( Joan, the wife of Mayor Aubery) claimed to have actually seen the fairies nearby the tree, and – again, like in the case of the healing spring – Joan did not distance herself from such a hearsay; she simply stated that she was not aware whether that was true or not, and that she had never seen fairies nearby the tree quod ipsa sciat (“as far as she knew”).20 In other words, she did not deny the existence of fairies, but stated that she did not know whether they gathered at the bois chesnu. Many inhabitants of the countryside did, though, and – most importantly – many thought that she first heard her voices right there, including her brother.21 A potential coincidence between the fairies and the voices emerged, which posed a fatal threat to Joan’s life. The reason lay in the theologians’ understanding of such beings as opposed to the villagers’. As seen previously, Joan’s inquisitors considered the fairies as maligni spiritus, since their conception of the supernatural was binary: it could be either divine (like miracles and angels) or diabolic (like magic or demonic entities).22 On the contrary, the inhabitants of Domrémy and its environs had a more syncretic conception of the supernatural, and believed in the existence of a third group of entities, neither angelic nor evil: those who had been thought to live near certain trees, springs, rocks, and hills since preChristian times, benevolent (but dangerous) liminal figures.23 In the specific case of Joan, it was fundamental to establish whether her voices (which the judges did not doubt existed) were or were not the result of her alleged encounter with fairies, where she used to hear them, and why: this, as we shall see, implies examining matters concerning gender as well. Joan repeatedly stated that the voices spoke to her not only when she was under the tree, but also in the fields,

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in church, in battle, in her cell, and – in general – whenever the church bells were ringing,24 so much so that she was often seen instantly dropping to her knees when she heard the bells. The voices began speaking when she was about 13 years old, and she always held they came from God and – more specifically – from Archangel Michael, St. Catherine of Alexandria, and St. Margaret of Antioch, although she also reported being visited by Archangel Gabriel.25 These saints appeared to her in such a form that she could embrace and kiss them, and that Catherine and Margaret revealed themselves wearing beautiful crowns.26 All of such assertions were extremely dangerous for their implications. Firstly, Joan ended up contradicting Thomas Aquinas’ doctrine on the intellectual and not corporeal nature of angels,27 and, secondly, she admitted placing f lowery garlands and chaplets imaginibus seu repraesentationibus earum (“before their images or likenesses”) in churches:28 therefore, it was fair to question whether the crowned saints who appeared to her were in fact saints or the beings for which the people of Domrémy hung f lowery garlands on the Fairy Tree. Therefore, since Joan’s description of her saints and of the circumstances of their appearances was consistent with an encounter with fairies, the question remained of whether she would have been able to distinguish between a saint and a fairy when she saw one. Needless to say, the judges were convinced that her cultural background misled her into thinking that her visitations were godly, while they were evil instead.

Cultural transmission of stories about fairies from old to young women It is common knowledge that Joan’s death was determined by political reasons, by her identification as a witch, and by her behaviour as a woman who upset gender roles and hierarchies. However, a deeper kind of bias concerning women crept over Domrémy. As earlier noted, Joan herself admitted that one of her godmothers saw the fairies, and the judges did not miss the chance to investigate the matter further. They asked whether the aforesaid godmother reputetur sapiens mulier (“was considered a wise woman”),29 but Joan sensed the trap: sapiens could refer to a forbidden kind of knowledge (such as witchcraft), while the Pucelle specified that she was considered a proba (“honest”) woman, not divina vel sortilega (“diviner or fortune-teller”). The question was loaded with centuries of prejudice concerning the alleged involvement of women in magic practice, and especially on the role of old women as active agents in the transmission of magical knowledge and superstitiones across generations of women. This is clear in Article IV of d’Estivet’s indictment, which draws sharp conclusions after the investigations at the village and Joan’s interrogation: [ Joan] learned through custom and the training of certain old women to practice sorcery, divination, and other superstitious works or magic arts. […] Joan herself said that […] especially from her godmother, she heard

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many things about visions and appearances of fairies [Fatorum] or fairy spirits [spiritum fatalium].30 The judges painted a picture of the community in which Joan grew up as not entirely Christian, still fond of ancient pagan beliefs. On top of this, being a girl, Joan spent much of her time among women, who handed down to her the belief in the evil spirits that used to gather around the tree.31 But, if Joan could not be held responsible for her own upbringing, she was guilty of not having repudiated such teachings once she had become an adult.32 Such conclusions were supported by Joan’s admission that, as a child, she used to go the tree alongside other young girls; even though she never stated that they went there to encounter the fairies, the judges deemed the coincidence too suspicious. Several men and women in the following decades would be accused of having contacts with fairy spirits to acquire knowledge of evil arts (as suggested by the cases of Agnes Hancock of Somerset, in 1438, and of Marion Clerk, in 1499),33 but Joan, despite herself, was also guilty of not being married. This placed her in an ambiguous position in society, 34 so much so that a professor of the University of Cologne loyal to the Armagnac cause, Henry of Gorinchem, had to confirm that Joan was a real woman in the f lesh.35 Others, such as the French bourgeois (probably a theologian) who famously wrote his memoirs of those years, said instead that the Armagnacs relied on the advice “of a creature who was with them in the form of a woman, […] what it was, God only knows.”36 Being a real woman, however, had other drawbacks: for instance, the ancient association between old women and nurses with tale telling.37 Among them were fairy tales, or fabulae, which since Apuleius’ time onwards were called fabulae aniles38: in fact, Apuleius has the tale of Cupid and Psyche told by an old to a young woman. This was hardly a positive connotation: according to the Roman grammarian Festus (second century AD), anilis derived from anus (“old woman”), which, in turn, came from Greek ανους, “without sense.”39 Due to gender education inequalities, in the Middle Ages reading and writing were a privilege reserved to the richest men only, which forced women to mainly rely on oral tradition. Such stories were not merely meant to entertain, though: certain fabulae aniles represented an opportunity to hand down wisdom, advice, and popular culture from generation to generation.40 But not only that: fairy tales “represent the archetypes in their simplest […] form,” observes Marie-Louise von Franz, and they mirror “the basic patterns of the human psyche.”41 Jan Ziolkowski remarks that, since antiquity, “the words of old women […] were held in especially low repute and yet at the same time were especially feared,”42 and particularly so in the case of fairy tales: old women’s stories posed a threat to mainstream elite culture. “Have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives’ tales,”43 read Paul’s epistle to Timothy, perpetuating such a classical concept into the Christian era: Christian intellectuals would often associate old women’s tendency to storytelling to their fondness of wine.44

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The thing is that women had all the time and the space they needed to transfer their knowledge and their stories to young girls: the moment of spinning and sewing.45 Young girls were then brought up in an environment which favoured fantasy over reason, orality over literacy, without male supervision.46 But in what did the oral lore of old women consist, in the case of the Fairy Tree of the Bourlémonts? A possible answer to this question will be proposed in the conclusive section. This was one of the key issues which Joan’s judges addressed. Joan stated that all she knew about faith, she learned it from her mother47 and, since she did not attend school, it seems fair to assume that her education was based on what she could absorb from both her domestic environment and the sermons delivered at mass, just like most peasant girls.48 It is not entirely surprising that, as a consequence, Joan’s understanding of the world, of the supernatural, and of her voices could be syncretic, in part Christian and in part popular, pre-Christian. In fact, she did not identify the fairies as evil spirits, as her judges did in accordance with Christian angelology, but she simply stated that she did not know anything about it. She noted, though, that the garlands that she and the other girls put on the tree’s branches, as well as the songs and the dances they performed beneath the tree, were not for the fairies but to honour the Blessed Mary of Domrémy.49 But this was the issue: Joan did not reject the idea of the existence of fairies, nor did the villagers who testified in 1453. In this sense, Joan seems to be a child of her own environment, one in which fairies existed, were females, and belonged to the realm of the supernatural: as opposed to what the Church held, though, at Domrémy the fairy ladies were neither evil spirits or angels, but a third kind of beings which visited humans to offer precious gifts since ancient times. If such a tripartite categorization of supernatural beings was not exclusively feminine, however, the rituals and the symbols associated with the tree were indeed.50 The tree was mainly visited by young girls in May, a month which the Church would dedicate to Mary in replacement of its ancient connection with Mother Earth (symbolizing the rebirth of nature and fertility). The villagers testified that the f lowery garlands which Joan mentioned were placed on the tree every Laetare Sunday (the fourth Sunday of Lent) “as votive offerings”51; the youngsters ( Jean Morel interestingly says “puelle et iuvenes”)52 would sing and dance around the tree, and would have the bread their mothers baked for the occasion. Thus, the ritual was described as having innocent features, it was well known to everybody, and everybody clearly stated that Joan had been brought up in a catholic family formed of good, honest, and hard-working people. Yet, if the ritual was innocent, why did the aforementioned Jeannette Thiesselin feel the need to specify that “she [ Joan] did not dance” at all,53 unlike any other girl? Did she find dancing a compromising element? In fact, Jeannette seems quite oblivious when compared with other testimonies, for she was not even sure that Joan had ever gone to the Ladies’ Tree (old Thévenin Le Roye, for instance, had seen Joan go there in the company of other girls, as Joan’s peer Gérard Guillemette, whereas Simonin Musnier and Mengette Joyart went there with her),54 even

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though she seemed to remember perfectly that the other youngsters of the village did go on every Laetare Sunday. Joan was an ordinary girl, according to the 35-year-old priest of a nearby Parish, Dominique Jacob: she went to mass, she confessed to the priest, she worked at home and in the fields to take care of her father’s animals, and, for what concerned the tree, she did exactly what the other young girls of the village used to do (thus contradicting Joan herself, to some extent).55 He was a priest, and did not dare mention fairies or other beings: as far as he was concerned, the tree was visited by the girls because it was magnificent, but his opinion seems too simplistic. This very explanation recurs in the testimony of Béatrice d’Estellin, a 60-year-old worker who had been Joan’s godmother, or so it seems: she often went to the tree, as many lords and ladies of the village did, for everybody found it beautiful. But she was also aware that in the old days the domine fatales, gallice fees (“fairy ladies, in French fees”) gathered there, even though they did not anymore, propter eorum peccata (“because of their sins”). She added that when the parish priest carried the crucifix through the fields on the eve of the Ascension, he would walk to the tree and read the Gospel there.56 Béatrice’s deposition is puzzling: who was she referring to when she said “their sins”? And, secondly, why did the parish priest feel the need to read the Gospel beneath the tree periodically? The first assertion seems to entail that the fairy ladies had been banished at some point by Christian agents, which would confirm Jean Morel’s testimony. The latter assertion seems a direct consequence of the former: the “ladies” were chased away, and the Church continued to impose its spiritual authority on the tree. Hauviette, the wife of Gérard de Syonne, who was approximately of the same age as Joan and had known her since they were young, added a few interesting details: Joan, she said, was particularly devout to the extent that she was known by the villagers to go to church and to confess repeatedly.57 Furthermore, having grown up in the same environment as Joan, she was perfectly familiar with the idea that feminine beings called “fairies” used to visit the tree in ancient times,58 even though neither she nor anybody she knew ever saw them. In her own small way, the said Hauviette helps to understand what a peculiar person Joan had been since before she became a national heroine: similarly, another peer of theirs – Jean Waterin – said that Joan used to isolate herself from her friends to talk to God, and that is why they made fun of her.59 At the same time, however, Hauviette shows that the oral tradition surrounding the tree had been passed down to her generation, and testified that Joan had visited the tree with her and other girls: the fairies may have not gone there anymore, but the youngsters of Domrémy knew they had, and they all periodically kept going back to the tree together. Such a popular tradition about the tree reached the higher tiers of society as well, though, and very far from the Bois chesnu: the 60-year-old knight Albert d’Ourches – who met Joan in Vaucouleurs and was from Ourches-sur-Meuse (ca. 20 miles to the north of Domrémy) – stated that he had heard that the fairy

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ladies used to be seen at the tree in the old days, even though nobody he knew had ever seen them. Interestingly, he also noted that he was told this 20 or 30 years before Joan had been heard of. This could have been an attempt to defend Joan, but it reinforces the impression that the tales surrounding the tree had nothing to do with the Pucelle: it was part of Domrémy’s cultural memory, which Joan received and – unfortunately for her – made known to the Church. D’Estivet would add a key peculiarity about Joan: she used to visit the tree at night, or whenever she could be alone.60

Domrémy between heterodoxy and cultural memory So, assuming that older generations of women had an important cultural heritage to hand down to younger girls, what did it consist of? Joan’s judges were convinced that it concerned the tree, and the fact that it was visited by benign beings which bestowed divinatory powers, while the nearby spring had healing properties. As suggested by the very etymology of Latin Fata, their main ability was foreknowledge.61 They were three, just like the saints who foretold the future to Joan, and were feminine beings (while Joan’s saints were two females, Catherine and Margaret, and one male, Michael). As seen above, the villagers themselves tended to identify the fairies as female. Such a belief was no novelty whatsoever, neither was the Church’s idea that women were naturally predisposed to believing in evil entities (fairies included).62 From Augustine63 to Burchard of Worms’ feminae sylvaticae or agrestes,64 to the inquisitor Bernard Gui,65 the idea that fairies were feminine demonic spirits recurs insistently.66 Still at the Rehabilitation process, this posed a problem to the villagers of Domrémy, who made sure to be clear about Joan’s relationship with the tree: many conceded that she used to go there with the other girls, but also stated that she would never go there alone, and her only purpose was to have fun in the shade of a beautiful beech.67 The villagers were under no threat, at that point, but found it more appropriate to be as vague as possible. Their cautious words, alongside the details they revealed about the tree, seem to disclose a profound sense of discomfort about the pre-Christian survivals at their village, of probable Celtic origins.68 Such survivals were even more evident to the eyes of Joan’s judges in 1431, when the matter was also politically relevant within the context of the Hundred Years’ War. Their inquiry was guided by an ancient bias against women’s stories about feminine evil beings who were believed to bestow precious supernatural gifts to those who worshipped them. La Pucelle seemed to perfectly match such a scenario, and for good reasons: according to her and other villagers’ testimonies, the tree played a major role in the pagan cultural memory of the village, transmitted orally for generations by the village’s women, as Joan stated about her godmothers.69 The tree had an undisputable association with women and with feminine supernatural beings, which some elders said to have seen personally, and was periodically visited by the youngsters (young girls in particular). The presence of a nearby healing spring added to the supernatural

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(and thus heterodox) identification of the place. Such an already problematic framework was brought to the attention of the Church by Joan. In herself, Joan did not represent a unicum: “a number of female prophets had been active in France in the decades preceding Joan’s entry into public life,” remarks Ann L. Barstow, and the role of female visionary prophet was pre-made.70 Such a role allowed women like Joan to play an active role in a patriarchal society: yet, Joan’s cultural background ended up being fatal, also due to her unprecedented role in the history of Europe.71 Both of the trials (in 1431 and 1456) represent invaluable historical sources into the individual conscience of Domrémy’s villagers. During those 25 years, the Tree of the Bourlémonts and the nearby fountain were exorcized, and the villagers seemed to have stopped visiting them as often.72 It is fair to assume, however, that it was an enforced change of attitude: Domrémy cut their umbilical cord with the pagan past for fear of the Church. Joan never saw fairies, quod ipsa sciat: but how could she know? Her three saints did have distinct Christian features, and their popularity in fifteenth-century Lorraine is certainly one of the reasons why a French mystic and patriot would have relied on their help;73 nonetheless, the supernatural gifts they gave Joan (prophecy, first and foremost) were typical of fairies as well. In hindsight, one of Joan’s major faults was to have never denied the very existence of such beings ( just like her friends, relatives, and neighbours), and to be a young woman, brought up by older women, in a context where women were the keepers of folk (i.e., non-Christian) traditions and stories.

Notes 1 “mulieres et persone fatales, que vocabantur fées”. La réhabilitation de Jeanne la Pucelle: la redaction épiscopale du procès de 1455–1456, ed. Paul Dancoeur and Yvonne Lanhers (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1961), 110. See also Richard F. Green, Elf Queens and Holy Friars. Fairy Beliefs and the Medieval Church (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 54. 2 Karen Sullivan, The Interrogation of Joan of Arc (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 2. 3 La Minute française de I’lnterrogatoire de Jeanne la Pucelle, d’après le requisitoire de Jean d’Estivet et les manuscrits d’Urfé et d’Orléans, ed. Paul Doncoeur and Yvonne Lanhers (Melun: d’Argences, 1952), 197 (Article 5). 4 Françoise Meltzer, “Reviving the Fairy Tree: Tales of European Sanctity”, Critical Inquiry 35 (2009): 493-520, at 496. 5 Sullivan, The Interrogation, 18; Laurence Harf-Lancner, Le monde des fées dans l’Occident médiéval (Vanves: Hachette Littératures, 2003), 11. 6 Scholars have debated whether the trial record is a reliable transcription of the inquiry. Some suggested that a few clever answers by Joan were deliberately omitted (Vita Sackville-West, Saint Joan of Arc [London and Southampton: CobdenSanderson, 1936], 316–7; see also the more recent and critical article by Françoise Meltzer, “Between Mysticisms: The Trial of Joan of Arc”, in Mystics: Presence and Aporia, ed. Michael Kessler and Christian Sheppard [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003], 75–89). It should be also noted that the French minutes of the trial survive in two incomplete manuscripts, and the only full transcript is a Latin translation

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7 8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

34

dating to several years after the trial: see Sullivan, The Interrogation, xv. On the contrary, A. Ernestine Jones and Daniel Hobbins think that the record is fairly accurate (A. Ernestine Jones, The Trial of Joan of Arc [London: Barry Rose Ltd., 1980]; Daniel Hobbins, The Trial of Joan of Arc [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005], 13). Quoted in Le Procès de condemnation de Jeanne d’Arc, ed. Pierre Champion, 2 vols. (Paris: Edouard Champion, 1920–1921), II, 369, note 173. Procès de condamnation de Jeanne d’Arc, ed. Pierre Tisset and Yvonne Lanhers, 3 vols. (Paris: Klincksieck, 1960–71), I, 65. “quia dicitur quod antiquitus quidam dominus […] Petrus Gravier […] cum aliqua domina, que Fée vocabatur, subtus illa arborem se visitabant”. Procès en nullité, I, 264–5. See also Andrew Lang, The Maid of France, Being the Story of the Life and Death of Jeanne d’Arc (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1913), 31. Sullivan, The Interrogation, 17. Sara L. Uckelman, Bynames in Medieval France [Draft], available at: https://silo.tips/do wnload/draft-bynames-in-medieval-france-sara-l-uckelman, 85. Le Procès de condemnation, II, 396, note 373a. Green, Elf Queens, 46. See, for instance, La réhabilitation, 121 ( Jacquier de Saint-Amant). Procès de condemnation, I, 65. Ibid. Ibid., 66. Marina Warner, Joan of Arc. The Image of Female Heroism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013; 1981), 231. Procès de condemnation, I, 66. Ibid. Ibid., 67. This hearsay was supported by a famous prophecy (which many knew, Joan included) about a virgin coming from an oak grove (a bois chesnu) who would save France (Sullivan, The Interrogation, 11). Laurence Harf-Lancner, Les Fées au Moyen Âge: Morgane et Mélusine. La Naissance des Fées (Geneva: Slatkine, 1984), 7–8. Anne L. Barstow, Joan of Arc. Heretic, Mystic, Shaman (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1986), 11; Carol Silver, “On the Origin of Fairies: Victorians, Romantics, and Folk Belief ”, Browning Institute Studies 14, The Victorian Threshold (1986): 141–56; Heidi Breuer, Crafting the Witch. Gendering Magic in Medieval and Early Modern England (London: Routledge, 2009), 104; Jean N. Goodrich, “Fairy, Elves and the Enchanted Otherworld”, in Handbook of Medieval Culture: Terms-Methods-Trends, ed. Albrecht Classen, 3 vols. (Berlin-New York: De Gruyter, 2010), 446–50; Laurence HarfLancner, “Fairy Godmothers and Fairy Lovers”, in Arthurian Women: A Casebook, ed. Thelma Fenster (New York: Garland, 2000), 135–52. Procès de condemnation, I, 418. Ibid., 248. Ibid., 71. Sullivan, The Interrogation, 37; Serge-Thomas Bonino, Angels and Demons. A Catholic Introduction, trans. Michael J. Miller (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2016), 64–5. Procès de condemnation, I, 177. Ibid., 168. Ibid., 196. Warner, Joan of Arc, 231. Sullivan, The Interrogation, 9. Goodrich, “Fairy, Elves”, 460–1; Green, Elf Queens, 19; Notes&Queries for Somerset and Dorset, ed. Frederic W. Weaver and Charles. H. Mayo, vol. XII (Sherborne: Sawtell, 1911), 33–4; The Register of John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1486–1500, III, ed. Christopher Harper-Bill (Woodbridge: Boydell&Brewer, 2000), 215 (no. 661). Breuer, Crafting the Witch, 156.

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35 Henry of Gorinchem, De Quadam Puella, in Procès de condemnation et de rehabilitation de Jeanne d’Arc dite la Pucelle, III (Paris: Renouard & C., 1845), 413. 36 Journal d’un Bourgeois de Paris, 1405–1449, ed. Alexandre Tuetey (Paris: Champion, 1881), 244. Translation mine. 37 Jan M. Ziolkowski, Fairy Tales from Before Fairy Tales. The Medieval Latin Past of Wonderful Lies (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2012), 57; Marina Warner, From the Beast to the Blonde (London: Vintage Books, 1995), xx. 38 Ziolkowski, Fairy Tales, 58; Jan Ziolkowski, “Old Wives’ Tales: Classicism and AntiClassicism from Apuleius to Chaucer”, Journal of Medieval Latin 12 (2002): 90–113. 39 Festus Sextus Pompeius, De verborum significatu quae supersunt cum Pauli epitome, ed. W. M. Lindsay (Leipzig: Teubner, 1913), 5, Gloss. Lat. 4:5. See Ziolkowski, “Old Wives’ Tales”, 94ff. for specific examples of such a biased attitude towards old women. 40 Ziolkowski, Fairy Tales, 63; Piero Camporesi, Rustici e buffoni. Cultura popolare e culture d’élite fra Medioevo ed età moderna (Turin: Einaudi, 1991), 20. 41 Marie-Louise von Franz, The Interpretation of Fairy Tales, Revised ed. (Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 2017), 1. 42 Ziolkowski, “Old Wives’ Tales”, 90. 43 1 Tim 4:7: “ineptas autem et aniles fabulas devita.” 44 Ziolkowski, “Old Wives’ Tales”, 103–8. 45 Yvonne Verdier, “Little Red Riding Hood in Oral Tradition”, Marvels & Tales 11, 1/2 (1997): 105–6. 46 Éva Pócs, “Why Witches Are Women?”, Acta Ethnographica Hungarica 48, 3-4 (2003): 367-83, at 375; Ziolkowski, “Old Wives’ Tales”, 96; and 109 Walter J. Ong, Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology: Studies in the Interaction of Expression and Culture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971), 113–41; Henri-Irénée Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity, trans. George Lamb (Madison, WI, 1982), 142. An almost contemporary example of women’s folk beliefs, though certainly biased, is represented by the socalled Évangiles des Quenouilles. In this text, peasant women are described as experts in divination, magic, midwifery, abortion, marriage, and remedies to secure the health of people and animals. Such a range of interests is consistent with the role that women played within the domestic environment. See The Distaff Gospels. A First Modern English Edition of Les Évangiles des Quenouilles, ed. and trans. Madeleine Jeay and Kathleen Garay (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2006). 47 Procès de condemnation, I, 41. 48 Sullivan, The Interrogation, 11. 49 Procès de condemnation, I, 198. 50 Meltzer, “Reviving the Fairy Tree”, 497. 51 Ibid. 52 La réhabilitation, 110. 53 Ibid., 118. The same detail is confirmed by Zabillet, the wife of Gérardin d’Épinal, who stated that, unlike her peers, Joan did not like singing or dancing (Ibid., 132). 54 Respectively, Ibid., 120, 126, 131, and 134. 55 Ibid., 112. 56 Ibid., 113. 57 Ibid., 127. 58 Their peers Simonin Musnier (Ibid., 131) and Michel Lebuin (Ibid., 140) were told that the fairies used to visit the tree. Since they had never seen them, though, somebody else whom they trusted (possibly an elder) must have told them. However, Simonin identified the fairies as maligni spiritus. 59 Ibid., 128. 60 Procès de condemnation, I, 198. 61 For an analysis of how the term fae evolved during medieval times, see: Isidoro di Siviglia, Etimologie o Origini, ed. Angelo Valastro Canale, 2 vols. (Torino: Utet, 2006), viii, xi, 90–3; Goodrich, “Fairy, Elves”, 431; Warner, From the Beast, 14; HarfLancner, Le monde des fées.

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62 Andrea Maraschi, “There Is More than Meets the Eye. Undead, Ghosts and Spirits in the Decretum of Burchard of Worms”, Thanatos 8, 1 (2019): 29–61, at 36–7. 63 St. Augustine, De civitate Dei, PL 41, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris: Migne, 1864), xv.23, col. 468. 64 Maraschi, “There Is More”. 65 Bernard Gui, Manuel de l’inquisiteur, ed. G. Mollat, 2 vols. (Paris: Champion, 1926– 1927), II, 22. 66 Harf-Lancner, “Fairy Godmothers”; Harf-Lancner, Le monde des fees; Green, Elf Queens, 1. 67 For example, La réhabilitation, 122 (Bertrand Lacloppe). See also Green, Elf Queens, 29. 68 Meltzer, “Reviving the Fairy Tree”, 496. 69 Barstow, Joan of Arc, xv. 70 For instance, Catherine de La Rochelle, whom Joan met and considered a potential competitor. Barstow, Joan of Arc, 38. 71 Ibid., 20. 72 Meltzer, “Reviving the Fairy Tree”, 498. 73 Barstow, Joan of Arc, 26–8.

2 THE REJUVENATING BLOOD Marsilio Ficino and the witches Marina Montesano

Introduction The fifteenth century saw the growth in Italy of cenacles of intellectuals focused on the renovation of culture through their reassessment of previously ignored ancient Latin works and, even more significantly, the study of newly available Hellenic and Hellenistic texts from the Byzantine world. In Florence especially, the Platonic and Neoplatonic renewal, together with the arrival of hermetic texts, drove a resurgence of interest in magic amongst the city’s scholars. In 1419, the manuscript containing the Hieroglyphics of Horapollo (fifth century CE) arrived in Florence, sparking interest in the literature of the Egyptian mysteries. Towards the middle of the fifteenth century, Marsilio Ficino began translating texts from the Platonic tradition; and later, in the 1460s, he undertook to translate the Corpus Hermeticum, producing a manuscript which would circulate widely. These texts, together with Ficino’s great work on the human soul, the Theologia Platonica (The Platonic Theology, 1469–1474), represent the cornerstones of Renaissance magic, a tradition which would see the vast heritage of ancient magical-astrological knowledge encounter Platonic-hermetic thought. These ideas would spread well beyond Florence throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, to touch the corners of Europe.1

The magical Renaissance Born in 1433 to Diotifeci d’Agnolo, Cosimo il Vecchio’s personal physician, and Alessandra di Nanoccio, Marsilio Ficino was from Figline and studied in Florence, probably between 1451 and 1458, under Luca de’ Bernardi di S. Gimignano and Niccolò Tignosi, the latter a master of philosophy. Ficino became a scholar of medicine, astrology, and magic, and in 1462 joined a circle

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of humanist intellectuals that, in tribute to Plato, adopted the name of the Academy.2 Throughout his life, Ficino devoted himself to the translation of Greek philosophical works, from Plato to the writings of Hermes Trismegistus. Italian humanism was characterized by its openness to new ideas concerning the understanding of man, a tendency inf luenced by the rediscovery of hermetic texts. According to Ficino himself, this rediscovery was encouraged by Cosimo il Vecchio, who in 1463 commissioned the philosopher to translate first Hermes Trismegistus’ writings and then Plato’s. The inf luence of these two authors would become a most evident characteristic in Ficino’s work. In 1463, Ficino published his Latin translation of the fourteen hermetic treatises (Corpus Hermeticum), a set of initiatic Greek texts retrieved from a single manuscript, which he collected under the title of Pimander (in fact the name of the first of the 14 treatises). With this translation – at times executed rather freely – hermetic thought began to circulate throughout Europe, finding great favour in a cultural climate characterized by its fascination with ancient Egypt.3 The treatises of the Corpus Hermeticum are linked to magical and astrological traditions which portray a universe that is everywhere alive; one made up of hidden correspondences, occult sympathies, and pervaded by spirits; in which everything is a refraction of signs endowed with hidden meaning.4 It was in Rome, in the first century BCE, that the myth of ancient Egypt as the origin of every civilization – including even that of the Greeks – found its first, full expression. It was a reputation that would only grow in the following centuries. With the discovery at the end of the fifteenth century of the Domus Aurea (built by emperor Nero, c. 64–68 CE) and the mosaic of the Nile of Palestrina (c. 100 BCE) hypotheses proliferated of a world of magic and mystery – an outlook alternative, if not outright antithetical, to rationalist orthodoxy.5 Hermes Trismegistus came to be seen as the earliest civilizer, older even than Moses. He was considered the first to study the divine and the order of demons, setting a path that would later be trodden by Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato, and the neoPlatonic thinker Plotinus.6 Because of the esoteric themes of some of his writings, Ficino found that he had to defend himself against the accusation that he was practising magic. Such allegations were particularly rife around the third book of his De vita libri tres (Three Books on Life), a volume which revived certain magical doctrines from the Asclepius (one of the 14 books of the Corpus Hermeticum) and drew on the Picatrix, an Arab compilation of Hellenistic magic that had been translated into Latin in the thirteenth century. This latter had been prohibited, but its formulae echo throughout contemporary and subsequent necromantic and theurgic manuals, especially in relation to those rituals and potions that are very detached from any idea of “natural magic.” Ficino wrote an Apologia in 1489, defending himself against the charges of using magic, and sent it to some of his friends, beseeching them to rally around him in defiance of these accusers, whose allegations had besmirched him even before De vita libri tres was published. After the book was printed, the attacks became yet fiercer, eventually drawing the attention of

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the Roman Curia. Ficino made more and more appeals for help to friends and acquaintances, until finally his innocence was recognized by the Pope. De vita libri tres represents the first treatise on the health of the intellectual. In it, Ficino discusses the magician as a philosopher, expert in the things of nature and the stars, able to unite the celestial with the earthly. In its finished form, the work consisted of three treatises in a single volume: the first two books gave advice for maintaining a healthy and long life, the third concerned the use of celestial knowledge to consolidate these effects. The stars, in fact, could have positive or negative effects on a man’s life – one must be on guard against harmful inf luences, such as the excess of black bile that might be caused by the sway of Saturn. It is especially in the third book that Ficino’s medical therapy takes on a magical-astrological bent, with the operations of nature being traced back to celestial inf luences. The physician who also understands astrology can diagnose and predict celestial effects, positive or negative, and treat the patient accordingly.7

On Retarding the Accidents of Old Age The first book of Ficino’s De vita libri tres, titled De vita sana (On a Healthy Life), begins by describing the melancholic humour known as black bile as the basis for genius. In the second part of the first book, however, and throughout the second, De vita longa (On a Long Life), black bile is also treated, more conventionally, as a pestilence, and grouped with the risks linked to a scholar’s life: insomnia, headaches, faintness of vision. This second book primarily contains remedies to promote a long and healthy life – we shall return to this shortly. The final book, De vita coelitus comparanda (On Obtaining Life from the Heavens), is the longest of the three and, as mentioned, the one most closely linked to the Corpus Hermeticum and the Picatrix. Ficino talks of astrology, talismans, suffumigation, singing, and dancing, all means of creating a close relationship between the Magus and his patient, and between their respective personal stars. Throughout, the book embraces the idea of Anima mundi, or “world soul,” as it had been conceived in Platonism.8 The second of the three books, De vita longa, contains a chapter titled “On the Use of Human Milk and Blood for the Life Old People” in which we find a peculiar passage which is worth quoting in full: Immediately after the age of seventy and sometimes after sixty-three, since the moisture has gradually dried up, the tree of the human body often decays. Then for the first time this human tree must be moistened by a human, youthful liquid in order that it may revive. Therefore choose a young girl who is healthy, beautiful, cheerful, and temperate, and when you are hungry and the Moon is waxing, suck her milk; immediately eat a little powder of sweet fennel properly mixed with sugar. The sugar will prevent the milk from curdling and putrefying in the stomach; and the

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fennel, since it is fine and a friend of the milk, will spread the milk to the bodily parts. Careful physicians strive to cure those whom a long bout of hectic fever has consumed, with the liquid of human blood which has distilled at the fire in the practice of sublimation. What then prevents us from sometimes also refreshing by this drink those who have already been in a way consumed by old age? There is a common and ancient opinion that certain prophetic old women who are popularly called ‘screech-owls’ (aniculas quasdam sagas, quae et striges vulgari nomine nuncupantur) suck the blood of infants as a means, insofar as they can, of growing young again. Why shouldn’t our old people, namely those who have no [other] recourse, likewise suck the blood of a youth? A youth, I say, who is willing, healthy, happy, and temperate, whose blood is of the best but perhaps too abundant. They will suck, therefore, like leeches, an ounce or two from a scarcelyopened vein of the left arm; they will immediately take an equal amount of sugar and wine; they will do this when hungry and thirsty and when the Moon is waxing. If they have difficulty digesting raw blood, let it first be cooked together with sugar; or let it be mixed with sugar and moderately distilled over hot water and then drunk. At that time, the blood of a pig is also an effective aid in warming the stomach. A sponge soaked with hot wine should absorb this blood f lowing from the pig’s vein and, while hot, should immediately be applied to the stomach.9 Commentators have been quick to deem this unusual remedy to be “extravagant.” Copenhaver is one of these, but offers no further analysis of the passage before he moves on to Ficino’s account of the rejuvenating qualities of myrobalans (also known as haritaki, the dried fruit of a south-west Asian tree commonly called “cherry plum”).10 The editors of the English translation refer to Ovid (to whom I will return in a moment) and to earlier medical traditions for the treatment of old age, but do not specifically attempt to clarify the passage’s origin or meaning. The sources from which Ficino has drawn his ideas are barely more enlightening. We know there is a literature devoted to the topic of human blood as a remedy – based on humoral pathology common to Greek, Arab, and Western medicine – according to which cold and dryness dominate the bodies of the elderly. The treatises which inf luenced Ficino were concerned with ameliorating the troubles that accompanied ageing, not with providing a formula for a longer life. The best known of these sources, which inspired many authors besides Ficino, is De retardatione accidentium senectutis (On Retarding the Accidents of Old Age) written during the first decades of the thirteenth century, formerly attributed to Roger Bacon (who anyway wrote on the subject of prolongevity in several works), now to a certain Dominus Castri Goet. The treatise gives two methods for retarding the effects of old age: through a regimen of health and through medicines. The first includes guidance on ambient air quality, exercise and rest, food and drink, sleep, bathing, nurturing the soul, and avoiding

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melancholy. The second describes drugs to help increase imagination, reason, and memory, giving instructions on how to prepare them from natural elements, and also presents a number of allopathic remedies. Myrobalan, so important to Ficino, is mentioned, and suffumigation is considered useful; but Goet’s treatise avoids the heavy use of astrological and magical talismans that will be so important to Ficino’s book and to Renaissance culture more widely.11 Just as Ficino went beyond the inf luence of Goet’s treatise when incorporating new astrological and magical ideas into his De vita, so he must have added the passage about suckling milk and sucking blood – the latter with its reference to the sagae and striges – to be done when the moon is waxing and the f luids are more abundant and f lowing. Whilst in Ficino’s time knowledge of how blood works inside the body differed from our present understanding, Arab doctors had already spread doctrines about circulation, especially pulmonary circulation, which had permanently displaced Galen’s idea that the blood forms in the liver before f lowing to the heart. Ibn al-Nafis (1213–1288), an Arab physician from Damascus, wrote a Commentary on Anatomy in Avicenna’s Canon in which he revised both Galen and Avicenna’s ideas, discovering the pulmonary transit of blood and anticipating Michael Servetus’ publications on the subject by almost 300 years.12 Of course, at the time that Ficino was writing, nothing was yet known about blood transfusion: experiments with the technique would not begin until the seventeenth century – conducted on animals and with very varied results – and it would not become standard medical practice until the twentieth century.13 The only medical practice involving blood that was widely practised in Ficino’s time was bloodletting – especially by cutting or leeches – a practice which would remain common into the nineteenth century. The reasons why striges thirst for young blood and why drinking it could benefit the elderly are not to be found in medical treatises, but elsewhere in Ficino’s library of inf luences.

On the use of human blood In the necromantic rite (in Greek nekya) described in Book XI of the Odyssey, Ulysses, anxious to question the shade of the dead seer Tiresias, follows instructions given to him by Circe: arriving at the appointed place, he digs a trench in the soil and pours in libations of milk, honey, and other sweet offerings, before cutting the throats of the animals he has brought there to sacrifice. The blood attracts the dead, who congregate around him; Ulysses must block their approaches with his sword, allowing Tiresias to sip the blood first in order that he might prophesize – only then might the other shades imbibe. In the poem, the blood is part of a more complex offering, yet it must be kept separate from the other elements. The question of why blood is so important for the dead has been discussed at length by many of the poem’s commentators, but no general consensus has been reached.14 It seems probable that the revivifying power of blood plays a role akin to that which is later seen in the modern Greek and Slavic

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contexts, in particular in the legends of vrykolakas, the undead who seek the blood and f lesh of the living.15 Of the other medieval stories that tell of revenants thirsty for blood, the most famous comes from William of Newburgh’s History of English Affairs, in which we read of an undead man who terrorizes the inhabitants of the province of York. The episode comes to an end when two youngsters find the man’s grave and inf lict “a wound upon the senseless carcass, out of which incontinently f lowed such a stream of blood, that it might have been taken for a leech filled with the blood of many persons.”16 Apart from quenching the thirst of ghosts and revenants, blood was also commonly cited as a miraculous cure for certain diseases.17 The practice advocated by Ficino in the De vita is supposed to have the same broad effect as a transfusion, albeit one crassly executed: by drinking the blood the vital elements pass from the youthful donor to the elderly recipient. The underlying notion is ancient. Indeed, a scandalized Pliny writes about medicines derived from human beings in Book XXVIII of his Natural History: Epileptic patients have the habit of drinking the blood of gladiators, as if they were living bowls; a thing that, when we see it done by wild beasts, in the same arena, is a spectacle that inspires us with horror. And yet these sick people consider drinking the warm and breathing blood from man a most effective cure for their disease, and they apply their mouth to the wound, to draw forth his very life. […] There are others, then, who seek the bonemarrow of the leg-bones, and the brains of infants.18 Some chapters later, Pliny returns to the theme, reporting that if blood “is applied to the mouth of a person who has fallen down in a fit of epilepsy, he will come to himself immediately.”19 Regardless of how many shared Pliny’s horror at the sucking of blood in public arenas, there was evidently a consensus on the efficacy of the practice – as the first passage affirms, the brains of infants were considered effective on the same principle. Blood, brain, and bone marrow are perceived as sources of life, and the younger or stronger the donor is, the more fortifying their substance is for the sick or elderly. Bathing in blood, especially as a treatment for skin ailments, is also a common theme in Pliny’s Natural History. He writes that, in Egypt, where leprosy was common, every time a king contracted the disease it heralded dire consequences for his people, who would be drained of their blood to fill the royal baths.20 That bathing in blood is a recurrent topic in medieval literature of a different genre further demonstrates the widespread belief in the practice. There is a legend dear to early Christianism, recounted in the Actus Silvestri (Acts of Sylvester, written at the end of the fourth century): when the emperor Constantine – who was still a pagan and in the habit of persecuting Christians at this time – fell ill with leprosy, his priests suggested a cure consisting of bathing in the blood of children. Constantine, however, affected by the cries of the mothers, refused to

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condone the practice. The following night, Saints Peter and Paul appeared to him in a dream and advised the emperor to be baptized, and to recall Bishop Sylvester (Pope Sylvester I, 314–335 CE), who had f led to Mount Soratte for fear of persecution. Healed by baptism in the Lateran Palace, Constantine is said to have granted the bishop of Rome gifts and privileges, recognizing him as the head of all Christians. References to the cleansing properties of blood are also found in Leviticus, where a ritual for healing a defiling skin disease is described: The priest shall order that two live clean birds and some cedar wood, scarlet yarn and hyssop be brought for the person to be cleansed. Then the priest shall order that one of the birds be killed over fresh water in a clay pot. He is then to take the live bird and dip it, together with the cedar wood, the scarlet yarn and the hyssop, into the blood of the bird that was killed over the fresh water. Seven times he shall sprinkle the one to be cleansed of the defiling disease, and then pronounce them clean. After that, he is to release the live bird in the open fields. (Lev: 14, 4–7) 21 The way in which blood is used in Hellenic magic goes on to inf luence the medieval and Renaissance treatises that derive from it: the Picatrix, necromantic books, and Agrippa von Nettesheim’s De Occulta Philosophia all contain blood sacrifices.22 Stories about the healing properties of blood also abound in chivalric literature. In one episode of the Grail saga, Perceval and his fellow knights come upon a castle whose lady is disfigured by leprosy. The blood of a pure maiden is needed to restore the lady’s health and beauty, and Perceval’s sister is bled to death whilst offering her help.23 Surely the most famous tale on this topic from chivalric literature is Ami et Amile, a late twelfth-century story in Old French with many earlier and later parallels, which recounts the story of two friends: one, Ami, has been struck down with leprosy because of a lie he has told to protect the other – leprosy was frequently perceived at this time to be a punishment sent by God. While Ami is wandering the country, abandoned by his wife and vassals, an angel reveals to him that he can be cured by the blood of Amile’s infant sons. When Ami tells Amile of his vision, his friend kills his sons and bathes Ami in their blood, curing the aff liction instantly.24 The men’s friendship thus tested, Amile’s children are miraculously restored to life, and the pair decide to set out on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to atone their sins. Despite each of these stories recognizing the restorative power of blood, it is noticeable that human and animal blood remain distinct ingredients – even when the rituals performed with them are similar – and that bathing in blood and drinking it are two very different actions. The closest example to the cure that Ficino proposes comes from a story told by a Roman chronicler, Stefano

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Infessura, dating from a few years after De vita was published. In 1492, Pope Innocent VIII, then 60 years old, was in poor health; a Jewish physician claims that young blood could restore the pope’s vitality, and promises to prepare the cure. The physician offers three ten-year-old children one ducatum (a golden coin) each, to perform bloodletting, intending to give the blood to Innocent VIII; but the children pass away immediately after the procedure, the physician quickly disappears, and the ailing pope fails to recover.25 Infessura’s story is probably inspired by the blood libels against Jewish communities that were frequent at this time, but it is noteworthy in the present context that a rudimental transfusion is expected to heal Innocent VIII – albeit that Infessura does not say whether the physician meant to administer the blood by injection, orally, by preparing a bath, or by some other means.

Sagae and striges These various cases demonstrate just how common the belief in the healing powers of young blood was, and thus bring us closer to understanding the passage from Ficino’s treatise. His mention of sagae and striges, however, has yet to be explained; as has his insistence that the elderly patient sucks blood only from a willing youngster. As noted above, commentators on Ficino’s De vita have been quick to refer to Ovid’s Fasti, in particular to the episode of young king Procas being attacked in his cradle by avidae volucres (“greedy birds”). “Est illis strigibus nomen,” “striges is their name,” Ovid continues, and their throats are full of the blood they have drunk.26 Yet it should not be assumed that this extremely wellknown Latin poem – one certainly known to Ficino – is the only inf luence on this particular passage of the De vita. Whilst there are clear similarities to the passage from Fasti, the latter does not mention sagae. This is a word with a wide range of meanings: as Cicero explains, saga comes from both sagire, “knowing a great deal” and presagire, “seeing the future”27; in literature, sagae are usually powerful magicians, even if they also exhibit a broad range of other characteristics. Striges are originally monstrous, birdlike creatures who attack corpses and toddlers. Sometimes they are imagined as women who magically transform into creatures, but for Ovid, striges are of unknown origin, perhaps born as birds or perhaps becoming such by some enchantment.28 Pamphile in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses is apparently a woman, but she performs a ritual to turn herself into an owl, another story Ficino certainly would have known.29 Alongside their widespread familiarity with these tales from ancient literature, those living in central Italy in the fifteenth century would also have seen many trials in which the bloodthirsty “witch” was a central character. The originators of this courtroom trend were a group called the Franciscan Observants. Incorporated to reform the Franciscan order after the crises undergone in the thirteenth century, the Observants aimed to restore stricter rules of behaviour amongst the friars themselves, and to extend the order’s role as moral guides to wider society. Bernardino da Siena was the most famous preacher of this group,

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known for using his sermons to directly guide public morality, but also to inf luence reform of city Statutes. The Sienese friar is the first to have revived the Latin term strix to condemn women who practised magic. Most probably he was not only drawing on written texts for inspiration, but also on the folkloric motifs of central Italy that were known to the literary sources and to the laypeople attending his sermons alike.30 Bernardino’s preaching helped to bring about a string of trials which drew on the motif of the blood-sucking woman – an accusation seemingly unique at the time to courts in this area. The first such case, dating from 1426, is known from an account kept by the same Bernardino da Siena that records the condemnation of a certain Finicella from Rome, who is said to have confessed to the killing of more than 30 boys by sucking their blood.31 A disciple of Bernardino, Giacomo della Marca stated in 1455 that another woman from Perugia, known as Santuccia, confessed to having murdered 50 children by sucking their blood through their ears.32 The inf luence of these preachers led to further trials on the same theme, such as those held in the region of Umbria: the first and most famous of these was a case brought by the civil authorities of Todi against a townswoman named Matteuccia in 1428, shortly after Bernardino preached in the city. In the sentencing she is labelled a striga (Middle Latin or vulgar for strix, the term gives us the Italian “strega” for “witch”) and indicted for attending the Stregatum – a gathering of women of her ilk at which children were terrorized and subjected to the sucking of their blood from many different places.33 Several other recorded trials occur immediately following Giacomo della Marca’s having visited a place to deliver his sermons. In April 1455, a certain Filippa Lucrezia from Città della Pieve (near Perugia) was condemned: the sentencing tells the story of how she was initiated into magic by another woman, Clarutia di Angelo, who had since died. Among other nefarious activities, the two women were said to have visited a nearby house where an infant lived and to have attacked him in his cradle, sucking almost all of his blood.34 Subsequent to her mentor’s death, Filippa continued these practices alone, riding on the devil’s back to the homes of small children, whose blood she sucked, killing more than 100 young victims.35 In November 1456 another Perugian woman, Mariana da S. Sisto of Perugia, was tried and condemned: along with an unnamed woman, she was found guilty of having exsanguinated little children.36 Certainly charges of this kind are much more readily brought against women, but in 1501 there was also recorded a trial against a man accused (along with two women, apparently known to the court, but not brought to trial) of having sucked the blood of babies, leaving them sick or bled out completely.37 In this last case, the purloined blood was to be cooked and eaten; in other cases, the accused were said to have produced from it ointments to use about their bodies, something also practised by Pamphile in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses. Many of the elements present in these trials were also found in the increasing number of reports of witchcraft across Europe: love magic, poisons, potions made

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from abject ingredients (fat, hairs, menstrual blood, parts of human and animal corpses), bodily transformation, and above all conspiracy with the devil. These diabolical meetings are close relatives to the sabbat, and include the stregatum and the f light to the walnut of Benevento (in southern Italy). Even the preparation of healing potions is seen as, in fact, deeper complicity with the devil – a way of witches gaining power over people. In another string of trials held in sixteenthcentury Tuscany, accusations of bleeding babies, usually through their navels, is again a common theme; the most detailed confession, that of an old woman called Gostanza, describes her sucking the blood from peoples’ wounds to heal them. But it was also reported that she would keep the blood in her mouth in order to give it to the devil – to what use he put it is not revealed.38 Even if the elitist world of a doctor’s son under the vicarious patronage of Cosimo de’ Medici was far removed from the lives of these women accused of witchcraft, Ficino would not have been unaware of the allegations and trials that proliferated in central Italy at this time. As well as the circulating reports of trials, there were preachers who spoke out against witchcraft and became widely celebrated, not least Bernardino da Siena: he had been canonized in 1450 by Pope Nicholas V, just six years after his death, with the hagiographical writings in his honour being mostly composed by humanists.39 Witchcraft continued to attract interest throughout Ficino’s time, and many contemporary treatises were devoted to it. The bloodsucking saga he clearly describes in that short passage of his De vita is close to the strix of local folklore; but it also resembles what was being said of those undergoing trial as witches – women whose alleged practices and beliefs were increasingly being linked to heresy and the demonic realm. This context makes clear why Ficino felt the need to in some ways distance himself from the idea of bleeding young children to rejuvenate the elderly. The youngster he proposes as a donor is “willing and happy” to give his blood for a good purpose – indeed, Ficino states that the donor may be “perhaps too abundant” with blood, implying that the bleeding will be mutually beneficial. Yet it remains that the act Ficino is imagining, the sucking of blood from a vein like leeches, resembles the alleged acts of those women being tried for witchcraft, and this similarity places his advice at a strange remove from the usual cures prescribed to the elderly.

Conclusion Throughout the twentieth century, many scholars have highlighted the magical content of the De vita, especially its third book, and noted similarities to the Picatrix. Eugenio Garin thought that De vita coelitus comparanda was practically a transposition of the Picatrix, “hidden” inside a book of medicine and astrological magic. Whilst astrology was officially prohibited, there was an openness to it in every European court of the time; but the Picatrix also contained more controversial material, talking of demonic rituals and conjuring.40 Garin might be overstating the matter in regarding Ficino’s third book as little more than a

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translation, but in a letter to his friend Michele Acciari (discovered and published by Daniela Delcorno Branca), Ficino is unreserved about his indebtedness to the Picatrix.41 The passage about blood-sucking striges and the use of blood for rejuvenation ultimately remains tricky to understand. Is Ficino serious? Is he making mischief? Given contemporary events, should the passage be seen as deliberately provocative? Certainly Ficino experienced troubles because of the magical resonances of his book; and even if he did not end up in jail – unlike, say, Pico della Mirandola, who stood accused of heresy for his writings – he nonetheless felt it prudent to adhere to the preaching of Savonarola in Florence, a Dominican friar who despised magic in all its forms, and especially divinatory astrology. This said, the reasons for Ficino’s adherence have been debated, and he withdrew from it after a short time.42 This brief chapter in Ficino’s De vita not only incorporates high ceremonial magic, but also folkloric beliefs that were typical of the region where he was born. A few decades before the book was published, in 1446, Luca Pulci (brother of the better-known Luigi) had written a poem, Il Driadeo [The Dryads], in which nymphs – called lamiae by the vulgar folk – ride night and day as retinue to Diana. The folklore that Pulci draws on for his poem is fundamental in many accounts of witchcraft,43 and also forms the basis for a work of 1492 by Angelo Poliziano, who adapts the theme for the opening of his philosophical pamphlet, Lamia, which draws on the stories of monstrous creatures he recalls being told as a child by his grandmother.44 But Ficino’s account remains the most striking. The tradition of drinking blood has so many resonances, both literary and folkloric, and Ficino dared to use a reference that resonated with the most dangerous associations of his times: witchcraft. If nothing else, this shows the degree of intellectual freedom in relation to historical material and current events that, for a brief time, was enjoyed by Renaissance scholars.

Notes 1 Eugenio Garin, L’umanesimo italiano (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1986); Eugenio Garin, La cultura del Rinascimento (Milano: Il Saggiatore, 2012). 2 Cesare Vasoli, “Ficino, Marsilio” in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (Roma: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, 1997), vol. 47, www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/marsilio-fi cino_(Dizionario-Biografico)/. 3 Mercurio Trismegisto, Pimander sive de Potestate et Sapientia Dei, ed., Maurizio Campanelli (Torino: Aragno, 2011). 4 Arthur Darby Nock, and Andre-Jean Festugière, eds., Corpus Hermeticum (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1945). See also Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964); Sebastiano Gentile, and Carlos Gilly, eds., Marsilio Ficino and the Return of Hermes Trismegistus (Firenze-Amsterdam: Centro Di, 2000); Eugenio Garin, Ermetismo del Rinascimento (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2006). 5 Nicola Bonacasa, ed., L’Egitto in Italia. Dall’Antichità al Medioevo (Roma: CNR, 1988); Cesare Vasoli, “Il mito dei geroglifici come linguaggio sacro e simbolico”, in Il simbolo

44 Marina Montesano

6

7 8 9 10 11

12

13 14 15 16

17 18 19 20 21

dall’Antichità al Rinascimento. Persistenze e sviluppi, ed., Luisa Rotondi Secchi Tarugi (Milano: Nuovi Orizzonti, 1995), 213–45. The bibliography is endless; we refer to a few standard works: Paul Oskar Kristeller, The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943); Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky, and Fritz Saxl, eds., Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion, and Art (London: Nelson, 1964); Eugenio Garin, Astrology in the Renaissance: The Zodiac of Life (London: Routledge, 1983); Gian Carlo Garfagnini, ed., Marsilio Ficino e il ritorno di Platone. Studi e documenti (Firenze: Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento. Studi e testi, 1986), 2 vols.; D. P. Walker, Spiritual & Demonic Magic: From Ficino to Campanella (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995); Brian P. Copenhaver, Magic in Western Culture: From Antiquity to the Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). John Christopoulos, “By ‘Your Own Careful Attention and the Care of Doctors and Astrologers’: Marsilio Ficino’s Medical Astrology And Its Thomist Context”, Bruniana & Campanelliana 16, No. 2 (2010): 389–404. On the medieval origins of this motif, see Tullio Gregory, Anima mundi. La filosofia di Guglielmo di Conches e la scuola di Chartres, eds., Massimiliano Bassetti, and Enrico Menestò (Spoleto: CISAM, 2020). Marsilio Ficino, Three Books on Life, eds. Carol V. Kaske, and John R. Clark (Tempe: Medieval & Renaissance Text & Studies, 1998), 197–8. Copenhaver, Magic in Western Culture, 240; Eugenio Garin, L’uomo del Rinascimento (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1988), 169; Marsilio Ficino, Sulla vita, ed., Alessandra Tarabochia Canavero (Milano: Rusconi, 1995), 156–7. John R. Clark, “Roger Bacon and the composition of Marsilio Ficino’s ‘De vita longa’ (‘De vita’, Book II)”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes XLIX (1986): 230–3; Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, “The Prolongation Of Life and Its Limits: Western Europe, XIIIth–XVIth C.”, and Charles Burnett, “Natural Death And The Alleviation Of Old Age In The Middle Ages”, in Longevity and Immortality. Europe – Islam – Asia. “Micrologus” XXVI (2018) (Firenze: SISMEL Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2018), 133–53, 155–68. John B. West, “Ibn al-Nafis, the pulmonary circulation, and the Islamic Golden Age”, Journal of Applied Physiology 105, No. 6 (December 2008): 1877–1880; Marios Loukas, Ryan Lam, R. Shane Tubbs, Mohammadali M Shoja, and Nihal Apaydin, “Ibn al-Nafis (1210–1288): The First Description of the Pulmonary Circulation”, The American Surgeon 74, No. 5 (2008): 440–2. Holly Tucker, Blood Work: A Tale Of Medicine And Murder In The Scientific Revolution (London: Norton, 2012). John Heath, “Blood for the Dead: Homeric Ghosts Speak Up”, Hermes, 133, No. 4 (2005): 389–400; Bridget Martin, “Blood, Honour and Status in Odyssey 11”, The Classical Quarterly 64, No. 1 (2014): 1–12. Tommaso Braccini, Prima di Dracula. Archeologia del vampiro (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2011). William of Newburgh, The History of English Affairs: Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, ed., Richard Howlett, Rolls Series no. 82 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1884–9) Books 5 in volume 2. 24, 7, 475–82. For a commentary, see Nancy Mandeville Caciola, Afterlives: The Return of The Dead in The Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2016). On the folklore and beliefs surrounding blood, see Piero Camporesi, Juice of Life: The Symbolic and Magic Significance of Blood (New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 1995). Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, XXVIII, 2. Ibid., 10. Ibid., XXVI, 5. Lev: 14, 4–7.

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22 See Marina Montesano, “The Smell of Magic”, Parfums et odeurs au Moyen Âge. Science, usage, symbols, ed., Agostino Paravicini Bagliani (Firenze: SISMEL Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2015), 205–20. 23 Pauline W. Matarasso, ed., “12. Adventures of the Three Companions”, The Quest of the Holy Grail (London: Penguin, 1969), 245–9. 24 Peter F. Dembowski, ed., Ami et Amile (Paris: Champion, 1991). For commentary, see Costanza Pasquali, “Il bagno di sangue risanatore nella leggenda di Amico e Amelio”, Lares 19 (1953): 25–36; Peggy McCracken, “Engendering Sacrifice: Blood, Lineage, and Infanticide in Old French Literature”, Speculum 77, No. 1 (2002): 55–75. 25 Stefano Infessura Scribasenato, Diario della città di Roma, a cura di Oreste Tommasini (Roma: Istituto Storico Italiano, 1890), 275–6. 26 Ovid, Fasti, VI, 131–42. 27 Cicero, De Divinatione, I, 64. 28 Ovid, Fasti, VI, 131–42. 29 Apuleius, Metamorphoses, III, 21. 30 On the Latin strix and its revival in late medieval and early modern times, see Marina Montesano, Classical Culture and Witchcraft in Medieval and Renaissance Italy (London: Palgrave, 2018). 31 Bernardino da Siena, Prediche volgari sul Campo di Siena 1427, Prediche volgari sul Campo di Siena 1427, ed., Carlo Delcorno (Milan: Ruconi, 1989), vol. 2, 1007–9. 32 Giacomo della Marca, Sermones dominicales, ed., Renato Lioi (Falconara M.: Istituto Storico dei Frati Minori Cappuccini, 1978–1982), vol. I, 424. 33 Mammoli Domenico, ed., Processo alla strega Matteuccia di Francesco (Todi, 20 marzo 1428) (Spoleto: CISAM, 2013, first print, 1969), 26–7. 34 Ugolino Nicolini, ed., La stregoneria a Perugia e in Umbria, Bollettino della Deputazione di Storia Patria per l’Umbria, 84 (1987), 5–87, part. 53. 35 Ibid., 54. 36 Ibid., 60. 37 Ibid., 66. 38 Franco Cardini, ed., Gostanza, la strega di San Miniato (Roma-Bari: Editori Laterza, 2001). 39 Marina Montesano, La memoria dell’esperienza di Bernardino da Siena nell’agiografia del XV secolo, Hagiographica, I (1994): 271–86; Daniele Solvi, ed., L’agiografia su Bernardino Santo (1450–1460). Quaderni di “Hagiographica” 12; Le Vite Quattrocentesche di S. Bernardino da Siena 2 (Florence: SISMEL Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2014). 40 Eugenio Garin, “Postille sull’ermetismo del Rinascimento”, Rinascimento 2, No. 16 (1975): 245–6. 41 Daniela Delcorno Branca, “Un discepolo del Poliziano: Michele Acciari”, Lettere Italiane 28, No. 4 (1976): 464–81. 42 Gian Carlo Garfagnini, “La questione astrologica tra Savonarola, Giovanni e Giovan Francesco Pico”, in Nello specchio del cielo : Giovanni Pico della Mirandola e le Disputationes contro l’astrologia divinatoria, ed., Marco Bertozzi (Firenze: L.S. Olschki, 2008), 117–41. 43 Luca Pulci, Il Driadeo d’Amore (Napoli: Tipografia A. Trani, 1881), 14–5. 44 Angelo Poliziano, Lamia, ed., Christopher S. Celenza (Leiden: Turnhout, 2010).

3 THE CIRCULATION AND EXCHANGE OF IDEAS, MYTHS, LEGENDS, AND ORAL TRADITIONS IN THE WITCHCRAFT TRIALS OF ITALY Debora Moretti

Introduction The modern study of historical witchcraft has shown how the circulation of cultural ideas and narratives has shaped the origin, the evolution, and the ultimate end of the witchcraft phenomenon characterizing Europe and its colonies approximately between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. The two constructs at the very core of the witchcraft phenomenon – the heretic/demonic witch and the sabbat – were indeed the results of the amalgamation of different cultural motifs, specifically learned theological ideas and folklore narratives. It was through pre-existing folklore beliefs that the demonic witchcraft mythology was circulated and embraced across geographical and social boundaries. Vice-versa, the detailed analyses of folklore motifs connected to witchcraft have helped historians in the identification of patterns in the circulation of cultural ideas related to this phenomenon.1 For this reason, witchcraft discourses – identified here as the evolution of the perception of magic and sorcery from antiquity to the early modern period and people’s perception of witchcraft through time – have heavily relied on the support of folklore studies, despite the troublesome nature of this discipline, to further understand the witchcraft phenomenon. Folklore traditions, if not portraying the exact factual truths, do offer the key to read how people understood, perceived, and remembered facts, beliefs, and objects. Their circulation and appropriation represented people’s wider world view. This world view may not be the scientific truth, but it is nonetheless an important point of view which historians cannot afford to ignore altogether.2 It is important to remember that this worldview ref lects the time at which a specific lore or belief was recorded, indicating the perception the people had at that specific time of the symbols represented by the lore or belief recorded.

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With respect to European popular witchcraft, the interdisciplinary approach – specifically the implementation of anthropological and folklore studies – played a paramount role in the advancement of the history of witchcraft itself. The importance of the interdisciplinary approach of history and folklore has been discussed in depth for at least 40 years and the turbulent relationship between the two disciplines has been cleverly summarized by Peter Burke’s “History and Folklore: A Historiographical Survey,” published in 2004. In this article, Burke defines three stages in the relationship between the two disciplines from the very beginning to today, focusing primarily on a British context. Each stage marks a change in this relationship from the “age of harmony” (1846–1920s) during which the blurred disciplinary boundaries allowed a certain interchange and interdisciplinary relations; the ‘age of suspicion’ (1920s–1970s) during which we see a sharpening of the disciplinary boundaries and an academic development of folklore outside England; to the “age of rapprochement” (1970s–present) during which the disciplinary approach card is on the table again as long as it is used within strict methodologies.3 In 2004 Ronald Hutton fully reviewed the debate on the relationship between history and anthropology – encompassing to a certain extent folklore – in witchcraft study, proving the mutually beneficial implementation of such a comparative approach in the identification of a “supranational” consistent figure “to which English-speakers have given the name of witch.”4 The historic-anthropologic-folkloric prospective directed the attention of some witchcraft historians towards the circulation of folk magic traditions and regional witchcraft beliefs and towards the voices of the people at a time when most of the research focused upon the inquisitors and the institutions – secular and religious – involved in the witchcraft hunt. This orientation also allowed the interaction and amalgamation of different cultural ideas as, for example, the witchcraft perceptions of inquisitors and judges versus the witchcraft perceptions of the unlearnt people.5 This new orientation, focusing on the regional and local phenomenon of witchcraft, was embraced also by Italian academics who relied more on ethnographic and folklore studies rather than anthropological studies as their AngloSaxon colleagues did.6 In Italy, in fact, it is safe to say that the history of magic and witchcraft never dissociated itself from folklore.7 The subject of my doctoral thesis followed this new orientation and focused on the diverse perceptions of the witch-figure transpiring from the witchcraft trials of two different regions of Italy: the Western Alps region of Piedmont and the Sienese region in South Tuscany.

Some examples of survival, circulation, and re-adaptation of folklore motifs Primary and secondary sources concerning the Inquisition archive of Siena (Tuscany) and the Episcopal archive of Novara (Piedmont) have shown a

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fundamental distinction in the perception of the character of the witch. The witches of the Alps seemed to have a more demonic character and presented all those stereotyped elements associated with the sabbat. In the Italian areas south of the Alps, this demonic character seemed to be almost non-existent or secondary. My research provided evidence that some early modern Italian beliefs in witchcraft were rooted in the circulation of more ancient traditions, explaining to a certain degree the regional variations in the perception of the figure of the witch. It also provided evidence that divergent regional folklore beliefs inf luenced the spreading and the acceptance at popular level of the mythology of the sabbat with a consequent impact on the nature of the prosecution of the crime of witchcraft during the early modern period in Italy. The mythology of the sabbat accepted to be – by all witchcraft historians – a learned construct was fully developed by the end of the fifteenth century, and in its fully developed capacity presented 11 main elements: 1) gathering in secret at night; 2) f light through the air at night; 3) invocation of demons or the devil; 4) devil appearing in the form of an animal or with parts of an animal; 5) adoring of the devil with the osculum infame (obscene kiss); 6) pact with the devil; 7) engaging in feasts and dances; 8) orgies; 9) cannibalistic practices; 10) apostasy and desecration of religious artefacts; 11) receiving instructions on maleficia.8 Other elements such as metamorphosis, use of ointments, and practices related to altered states of consciousness have also been integrated in the sabbat mythology despite being of a more folk nature. Despite the different location, the concept of gathering in secret at night seems to be well developed in both archives: in Piedmont (Novara), the gathering took place on top of the Cervandone Mountain; in Tuscany (Siena), it took place under the Walnut Tree of Benevento. What is very clear in both archives is the fact that people accused and tried as witches knew exactly the implications and the significance of the sabbat. They never called it sabbat but they knew what the judges and vicars would read in their tales of “the devil’s game” on the mountain or the gatherings under the “Benevento Walnut Tree.” They knew that their tales would be immediately translated into witchcraft practices. Both in Novara and Siena people knew what a witch was and which activities the witch should carry out. They all heard the sermons; they all heard the gossip regarding previous and current witchcraft trials. They all knew what the inquisitors or vicars wanted to hear because the mythology of the sabbat – the erudite invention based on theological and demonological premises sporadically conveying inf luences from folk beliefs – was pressed upon them by judges and inquisitors. The personality and culture of the individual judge and inquisitor had a fundamental importance in the trial proceedings but also in the exchange of witchcraft narratives as much as the folklore motifs had. During the trials, the defendants would get familiar with and inf luenced by the theological and

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personal interpretations given to magic and witchcraft by the judges, and they would include and absorb the judges’ narrative into their own narratives which also presented some elements of their own folklore, beliefs, and myths. On their part, the judges would use their own experiences and what they have learnt of popular magic and witchcraft during the trials to write new manuals which will form the judicial educations of new judges and inquisitors creating a circle of borrowed concepts.9 It is through these cultural exchanges between the learned ideas and the folklore motifs that we perceive the differences and regional patterns in the presence or absence of the construct of the sabbat. These patterns are dictated by how much and where people embraced the mythology of the sabbat and its elements and made it their own and that happened only when a pre-existing tradition similar in some ways to the construct of sabbat was firmly in place within their cultural materials. Similar pre-existing beliefs allowed people to recognize, understand, and, to a certain extent translate a mythological language percolated down from a learned demonological tradition. In Italy it is easy to see the geographical gradual circulation of the learned mythology of the sabbat from its place of origin in the north-west Alps to the south. Along this journey we can see where the full myth was embraced and where only some of the elements were embraced, if at all.10 The colourful varieties of the sabbat recovered from the trials up and down Italy can be understood as interpretative tools, old or current folk traditions through which people could make sense of something a little alien to them. This phenomenon is of course not only an Italian peculiarity. Diana Purkiss, in her study of the fairies’ stories behind the Scottish witchcraft trials, identified the same cognitive behaviour: If you are asked about what you do not know, you talk about what you do know, to show willing, to cooperate with the investigation. Folktales, of course, do not necessarily imply belief; some of the women who told these stories might have been repeating stories they might tell on other occasions with no legal significance, adventure stories told for pleasure or entertainment that were fitted by women, as well as the interrogators, into the rough mould of pact witchcraft.11 Pre-existing folk motifs were re-discovered, embraced, and upheld to make sense of and eventually adopt a new tradition. This is why we have so many variations of the sabbat: the devil’s game, the society of Lady Oriente, the Barilotto game, the Walnut Tree of Benevento, the Ladies from outside, the game of the good Ladies, just to name the most famous ones. The mythology – or rather the construct – of the sabbat was one, but the folk traditions it encroached on were many. Perhaps the most popular and long-lived of these traditions is the tradition of the Walnut Tree of Benevento. This tradition shows how pre-existing folklore traditions survived and circulated throughout time.

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Case studies In 1596 the priest of Castelmutio, a little village in the province of Siena Tuscany,12 wrote to the inquisitor denouncing a woman who had the reputation of “ruining/wasting” children (from the Italian rovinare/consumare to make them sick and to make them die) and knowing how to harm people with prayers and candles. It was common knowledge in the village that she was a witch (strega) and he wished for the intervention of the Inquisition for the better good of his village.13 The worried priest in so doing kick-started a lengthy trial involving five women, all accused of witchcraft, maleficia, and invocation of the devil. They were all imprisoned and tortured but only three were sentenced to abjuration and punishment. The main accused, Battista di Silvestro, an old woman three times a widow, was accused of having ruined children with her touch and of having threatened another woman with drying her up like a bramble by doing a spell with candles. She was interrogated many times and during her fifth interrogation, after admitting to having ruined a child because the devil told her so, feeling the pressure of the interrogation she said: The truth is that being in Castelmutio in the house where I used to live, the devil appeared to me two or three times, and once he appeared to me in the form of a young, beautiful man and having spent the entire day without eating because I did not have any bread, he asked me if I wanted some bread and I told him: Messer (Sir) no, I do not want it as I want to stay in this way till God wills it, and as soon as he heard the name of God, he disappeared, but, apart from this, I have never been where all the other women go.14 This last sentence was given freely to the inquisitor. She was trying to show to the tribunal that she was not as bad as the village rumours were implying, and in so doing she is giving us the indication of a folk tradition she was already familiar with and connected to where “the other women” – implying witches – would usually go. When the inquisitor asked her where the other women go she replied: It is said they go to the walnut tree [noce] … It is said that under that walnut tree they have beautiful amusements, they dance, play, eat and on the table there is everything we can imagine except for salt … after these amusements, every demon present there takes his own beloved among the women present there and those demons get to know their lovers carnally. They also light a big fire, they put a cauldron on it and they put children in it. They are dead children taken at night from their own graves by them. They boil them to extract fat and with this fat they make candles. These candles are used by them when at night they go into houses to ruin children because, as long as those candles burn, the inhabitants of the houses will not wake up. So I have heard.

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Battista was told about the walnut tree by her mother in law one evening while resting in front of the fireplace. This is a social practice called veglia in Italian (resting or needle-working while chitchatting near the fire with family and neighbours during winter evenings) still practised today in rural Tuscany. Battista’s mother in law told her that “those women” (meaning witches) would be carried to the Benevento Walnut Tree by demons. Battista admitted going to said amusements under the walnut tree, and when the inquisitor asked her to name her demon-lover she said: I do not know his specific name because when we want him we call … him with this name of ‘demon’ and he appears at the window in the form of a beast, or billy-goat or donkey or horse or other and it is necessary that we undress naked and then we tell him that he must take us there and bring us back in so many hours, three or four or more or less and then we ride him and he takes us to a place called the walnut of Benevento. Battista is referring to a well-known and well-spread folk tradition attested up and down Italy from the fifteenth century making Benevento – provincial capital of the region Campania – the official land of the witches’ meetings – tregenda – under its famous walnut tree. It is safe to say that in the Italian tradition of the sabbat, Benevento and its walnut tree is the equivalent of the Swedish Blåkulla or the German Blocksberg. This early modern tradition of Benevento Walnut Tree as a gathering place for the witches’ sabbat derives from the circulation, combination, and reinterpretation of three more ancient, fascinating mythical kernels: 1) The first one and probably the more ancient one seems to be connected with the species of tree itself, the Juglans Regia, noce in Italian. In antiquity, probably going back to Aristotle, the tree had an ill reputation due to the alleged paralyzing powers of its damp humors. The reputation of its toxicity was carried on and amplified during the Middle Ages by a spurious etymological interpretation of the Italian name noce, as derived from the Latin nocere (to harm), and by folklores of religious nature like the tale of St Francis miraculously healing a poor man who fell asleep under a walnut and woke completely paralyzed because of the damp of the tree infecting the man’s brain.15 2) The second one seems to be related to the widespread cult of the snake connected to the Goddess Isis, which was historically venerated in Benevento where a temple dedicated to her was erected during the reign of the Roman Emperor Domitian. The discovery of an urn dedicated to Isis with a lid adorned with an image of the sacred snake in 1903 led scholars of the time to believe that indeed the ancient people of Benevento worshipped snakes through the Goddess Isis.16 3) The third one is connected to the hagiography of St Barbato, a document written after the ninth century entitled Vita Barbati Episcopi Beneventani,

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relating some of the miracles of the first bishop of Benevento (AD 663–682) who, among many things, convinced the fierce duke of Benevento, the Lombard Romuald, to abandon his pagan ways in exchange for victory over the Byzantine armies that besieged Benevento in AD 663.17 In the Vita Barbati it is said that the Lombards – a Germanic tribe who took control of almost all the Italian peninsula from AD 568 to AD 774 and kept the control of Benevento and its province till the eleventh century – pagan at heart, would periodically carry out a specific ritual to show the bravery of the warriors. The ritual would see the Lombard warriors galloping towards their sacred tree – not a walnut – at speed in order to grasp a piece of the snake skin hanging from the branches and then eat the piece of skin showing bravery and courage. The bishop promised Romuald victory over the Byzantines in exchange for renunciation of the pagan rite; Romuald agreed, and the sacred tree was uprooted by the saint. Although the Vita Barbati presents factual and chronological discrepancies, Benevento was indeed a Lombard duchy until the eleventh century, and from archaeological records it seems that pagan Lombards (before St Barbato’s time) had indeed a cult of the viper. The earliest connection between the walnut tree and witches in the Benevento area seems to be in a document highlighting land-borders on the way from Benevento to the region of Puglia dated 1273.18 Of the Benevento hinterland is said: Iusta Nucem dicta ianaram referring to the walnut of the witches called, still today, in the local dialect ianare. In the early fifteenth century, we have the first connection between Benevento and the witches’ sabbat – but not the walnut tree – in the sermons of St Bernardino of Siena,19 and in 1428, during the trial of Matteuccia di Francesco from Todi (Umbria region) accused of maleficia and murder, we have the first full description of the sabbat under the Walnut Tree of Benevento – which includes the anointing with a magic potion and the chanting of the spell: Unguendo unguendo, mandame alla noce de benevento. Supra acqua e supravento et supra ad omne maltempo.20 (Salve, salve/Send me to the walnut of Benevento/ Over water and over wind/and over all bad weather). From this point forward the myth of the sabbat and the walnut of Benevento became part of learned and popular culture. In c. 1470, Giordano from Bergamo wrote in his Quaestio de Strigis that “because the dampness of the tree is wellsuited to our brain which is damp, and thanks to the devil, the witch’s humors can become mixed-up and her fantasy will create illusions.” Almost a century later in 1536, Paolo Grillando, Italian Papal judge in witchcraft trials and observer of confessions, wrote an account of cases based on his personal judicial experience. This work, titled Utilissimus tractatus de sortilegiis eorumque poenis, became a standard text on witchcraft and demonology. Here, he stated that the most important

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location for the gathering of the witches of Southern Italy was indeed under a walnut tree in the hinterland of Benevento where regularly a large multitude of men and women would gather to honour the devil. In 1599 Spanish Jesuit and demonologist Martin DelRio, famous for his 6-volume opus magnum Disquisitiones Magicae (1599–1600), also mentioned in his work the Benevento Walnut Tree (book 2, fol. 195). By the beginning of the seventeenth century this legend was well known and well spread up and down Italy, in court cases, theological dissertations, demonological treaties, and art and literature. The final transformation of the original legend of the Walnut Tree of Benevento – place of gathering of witches – into a fully developed demonic sabbat was finalized with the work of a medical doctor from Benevento – Pietro Piperno – who in 1635 published De nuce maga Beneventana. Piperno’s work consolidated the legend in its typical elements: the identification of the sacred tree of the Lombards with the walnut tree and the demonic character of the tree connected with the witches gathering around it, along the River Sabato. Finally, the full description of the sabbat under the Walnut Tree of Benevento, sealing all the elements together, appeared in a nineteenth-century poem from Naples entitled Storia della Famosa Noce di Benevento, in which we have a large snake twisted around a large walnut tree under which the witches’ sabbat will take place and during which the witches will plot in doing evil, protected from the profane by Satan. This tradition appealed to all levels of society so much so that – in almost its original format – it has survived into modern times. The famous chant used by the early modern witches to f ly to Benevento seen above has survived in modern folklore and – in a slightly modified format, changing Benevento with a local village called Buonconvento and not referring to the sabbat but to a dance – it was remembered in the folk tales collected in Maremma (South Tuscany) in the 1980s.21 The circulation, exchange, and re-adaptation of ideas, legends, and folk traditions seen above shows patterns which are well identifiable throughout the Italian witchcraft narratives. Another example of these patterns is given by the witch-figure called masca, identified in the witchcraft trials of north-eastern Italy between 1430 and 1740.22 In the dialect of the Piedmont region (north-west Italy) and occasionally in the dialect of Liguria, a masca is a witch but also a spirit, and the shadow of the dead. This figure, well attested during the great European witch hunt, survived into the nineteenth century as attested by the murder of a woman accused of being a masca carried out in 1828, and, most importantly, is still well attested today in the folk tradition of Piedmont. It is a very popular figure, featuring in thousands of early modern and modern folktales and nowadays is also a tourist attraction, sold as the most unique character of the Piedmont region.23

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The earliest account of the word masca dates to AD 643. It appears in fact in the edict of the Lombard king Rothari. This was the first written codification of Lombard Laws, originally 388 chapters, written in Latin with frequent Lombard words.24 It is clear that the compilers knew Roman law but drew upon it only for methodology and terminology as the document presents Germanic law in its purity derived from oral tradition.25 In clause 197 of the edict we read: Of the wicked crime. If he who possesses the mundium [guardianship/ protection] of a free girl or a woman accuses her of being a witch (strigam), that is a masca, unless it is her father or her brother, he shall lose her guardianship.26 And in clause 376 we read: No one may presume to kill another’s man aldia or female slave as if she was a witch (strigam), which the people call masca, because, for the Christian mind is neither credible nor possible that a woman can eat a living man from within.27 In this edict the word masca has the same meaning of the Latin word striga. So, like the Latin striga, the masca is an evil spirit devourer of men with a dark overall sexual connotation, or as shameful as a prostitute.28 Despite the etymology of this word still being a mystery, the figure itself belongs to a well-attested medieval witch-figure of Germanic and Scandinavian origins,29 and as such circulated across time and space in both learned and popular traditions. Moving to England and almost 50 years after Rothari’s edict, the word masca – with the meaning of spirit/spectre – was used by Aldhelm, Abbot of Malmesbury Abbey and Bishop of Sherborne in his probably most famous work: De Laude Virginitatis, treatise on virginity written between AD 700 and AD 706.30 The word masca – meaning witch and lamia – was also used in later documents. Of particular interest is Gervasius of Tilbury’s work Otia Imperalia, a sort of encyclopaedic assemblage written in 1212 for the Holy Roman emperor Otto IV.31 The reality of the beliefs in the masche and the survival and circulation of these beliefs into modern time have caused a great interest in the academic world, specifically in the folklore and social anthropology studies, starting from the 1950s.32 The bulk of the legends and tales collected during decades of field surveys represent rural oral traditions and folk beliefs of pre-industrial nineteenthcentury Piedmont, and the majority were collected from oral sources.33 Of all the characteristics representing a masca, the most feared ones by the people (until very recently) were the use of metamorphosis and the capacity to exit their own body in spirit form and harass people like a ghost. These were exactly (minus the sin of apostasy and – strictly speaking – the pact with the devil) the

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same characteristics a “so-called witch” would be accused of during the witches’ trials five or six hundred years earlier. The witches tried in Piedmont in the early modern period were in fact women who were believed to f ly across the night sky to join the devil up on a mountain.34

Conclusions In the case studies above we can see how witchcraft-related ideas and motifs circulated not only chronologically and geographically, but also between different social groups, between learned and popular spheres. They also show how motifs identified in legal documents became part of the folk tradition and, vice-versa, folk motifs became part of the learned witchcraft tradition. These examples have shown how a careful analysis of witchcraft trial documents allowed us to see how accusers and accused reinterpreted more ancient myths, legends, and folktales in order to explore the ways in which they perceived abstract concepts like the mythology of the sabbat, and the way they perceived the idea of what a real witch should be and how she should behave. They have also shown how important is the input of folklore in the circulation of witchcraft narratives – as long as a lore or belief is attested both in the pre-modern and modern period, and as long as the context of the folklore narrative is clear. The context is everything, as the importance of folklore in history is determined by the ability of the historian to understand the narratives behind the tales, the social and cultural circumstances giving life to the narratives, and framing them in order to understand the pattern of their subsequent circulation and adaptation. These narratives can only be read if the conventions of the specific social group these narratives belong to are understood by the researcher. The folk tradition is a symbolic representation of what was important and urgent in everyday life and these symbols of a past popular culture cannot be fully perceived solely from the trial records. It is also important because when the tradition is attested in modern times as well, we can see the changes in the perception of those symbols through time, as well as how they circulated, and how they were transformed to fulfil their role. Folklore studies of the Finnish school, and specifically the work of folklorist Lauri Harvilahti, perhaps best summarized in his book The Holy Mountain: Studies on Upper Altay Oral Poetry, have presented remarkable evidence for the continuity of some folkloric elements through time. This work was the final result of a project carried out between 1996 and 1998 entitled “Ethnocultural Identity in Asia” – based on material collected from the mountainous areas of the Altay Republic – and aimed to achieve an overall interpretative synthesis to be used as a base for the structure and models of performance: the linguistic, stylistic-poetic, and structural devices used to produce mythical and epic cultural tradition. This work underlined the antiquity of the living epic traditions among the Turkic and Mongolian people and, in the specific study of the metrical and poetical features of Altay oral poetry,

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Lauri Harvilahti pointed out their essential role as “Ethnocultural substratum,” indicating “archaic features long preserved in a tradition.” He specifies that these features form: a concise whole, used in different genres and actualised on different occasions, and in some cases revitalised in favourable cultural situations. The ethnocultural substrates serve as dynamic mental models for forming a mental network of fundamental elements of the ethnocultural characteristics of particular traditions.35 The concept of ethnocultural substrata could be adopted as a tool for the study of traditions as long-term continuities – within a specific regional group of people or culture – and the impact of these continuities upon the cultures maintaining these ancient traditions through time and the interpretations given to them through the semiotics and cognitive filters of these evolving cultures. In the specific case of witchcraft mythologies, they could survive as ethnocultural substrates in later cultures, but with different meanings, because they went through the interpretation process connected to the changing and evolving of the cognitive maps of social groups throughout time. Traditional elements, if still preserving relevance to a specific social group, will be maintained throughout time.36 To be able to understand the ultimate function of these traditions/elements/ substrates, we must understand the cultural backgrounds within which they were originated and retained throughout time and understand why they still had relevance.37 In the history of witchcraft and magic, the help of folk traditions – their circulation, exchange, and adaptation – is essential as long as there are no generalizations, and each belief is analyzed within its own regional folklore traditions. It is only after an almost micro-historic interpretation of each belief that we can allow generic overviews across time and space: from the general, to the specific and back to the general in order to see the patterns in their circulation. A generic theory of witchcraft beliefs’ pattern spread across Europe can only be supported by a region-by-region analysis of primary sources such as trial records and a region-by-region analysis of inherent folk traditions. Only after this region-specific survey, generic mythology trends and patterns across space and time can be identified through cross-cultural comparisons.

Notes 1 C. Ginzburg, Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method (Baltimore, London: John Hopkins University Press, 1989), 156. 2 Simon J. Bronner, “Introduction,” in Creativity and Tradition in Folklore: New Directions, ed., Simon J. Bronner (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1992), 1–38; Robert Layton, “Folklore and the World View,” in Archaeology and Folklore, ed., Amy GazinSchwartz and Cornelius Holtorf (London, New York: Routledge, 1999), 24.

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3 Peter Burke, “History and Folklore: A Historiographical Survey,” Folklore 115:2 (2004), 133–9. 4 Ronald Hutton, “Anthropological and Historical Approaches to Witchcraft: Potential for a new Collaboration?,” Historical Journal 47:2 (2004), 421. 5 H. C. Erik Midelfort, Witch Hunting in Southwestern Germany (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1968); Alan Macfarlan, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England: A Regional and Comparative Study (London: Routledge and Paul Kegan, 1970); Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London and New York: Scribner, 1971); E. William Monter, Witchcraft in France and Switzerland: The Borderlands during the Reformation (London: Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976); Robert Muchembled, La Sorcière au village (XV–XVIII) siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1979). 6 Luisa Muraro, La Signora del gioco. Episodi della Caccia alle streghe (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1976); Franco Cardini, Magia, Stregoneria, Superstizioni nell’Occidente Medievale (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1979); Fabio Troncarelli, Le streghe (Rome: Newton Compton, 1983); Piniccia Di Gesaro, Streghe (Bolzano: Praxis 3, 1988); Franco Cardini, ed., Gostanza, la Strega di San Miniato (Bari: Laterza, 1989); Paolo Portone, Il Noce di Benevento. La stregoneria e l’Italia del Sud (Milan: Xenia, 1990); Giovanni Romeo, Inquisitori, esorcisti e streghe nell’Italia della Controriforma (Florence: Sansoni, 1990). 7 Burke, “History and Folklore,” 133. 8 Michael. D. Bailey, ed., Historical Dictionary of Witchcraft (Maryland, Oxford: The Scarecrow Press, 2003), 110; Brian P. Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe (London, New York: Routledge, 2006 digital edition), 825, 1006, 1017–31, and 1143. 9 Debora Moretti, The Witch and the Shaman: Elements of Paganism and Regional Differences in Italian Witches’ Trials, (PhD diss., University of Bristol, 2018), 35. 10 Andrea Del Col, L’Inquisizione in Italia. Dal XII al XXI secolo (Milan: Mondadori, 2006), 201. 11 Diane Purkiss, “Sounds of Silence: Fairies and Incest in Scottish Witchcraft Stories,” in Languages of Witchcraft: Narrative, Ideology and Meaning in Early Modern Culture, ed., Stuart Clark (Basingstoke, London, New York: Macmillan Press, 2001), 83; Diane Purkiss, The Witch in History. Early Modern and Twentieth-century Representations (London, New York, 2005), 145–6 and 153. 12 Debora Moretti, “Angels or Demons? Interactions and Borrowings between Folk Traditions, Religion and Demonology in Early Modern Italian Witchcraft Trials,” Religions 10 (2019), 328. 13 ACDF (Processi 8) 29, fos. 398–543; Appendix 1; Transcribed and translated by DM. 14 ACDF (Processi 8) 29, fo. 425r. 15 Portone, Il Noce di Benevento; Paolo Portone, “Benevento,” in Dizionario Storico dell’Inquisizione, eds. Adriano Prosperi, Vincenzo Lavenia and John Tedeschi, vol. III, (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2010), 179. 16 Ibid., 179. 17 Marina Montesano, “La ‘Vita Barbati’. Culti Longobardi e magia a Benevento,” Studi Beneventani 4–5 (1991), 39–56. 18 Archiepiscopal archive of Benevento filsa 4, fol. 59. 19 Marina Montesano, “Supra Acqua et Supra ad vento”. “Superstizioni”, Maleficia e Incantamenta nei Predicatori Francescani Osservanti (Italia, sec. XV) (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo-Nuovi Studi Storici 46, 1999), 152. 20 Domenico Mammoli, Processo alla strega Matteuccia di Francesco 20 marzo 1428 (Todi: Res Tudertinae, 1972), 31. 21 Moretti, The Witch and the Shaman,” 79–87. 22 Ibid., 88. 23 Ibid., The Witch and the Shaman, 90. 24 P. Toschi, Le origini del teatro Italiano, vol. 1 (Turin: Universale Bollati Boringhieri, 1955), 169–70; G. Bonomo, Caccia alle Streghe. La credenza nelle Streghe dal sec. XIII al XIX con particolare riferimento all’Italia (Palermo: Palumbo, 1971), 480; G. Köbler,

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Wörterbuch des althochdeutschen Sprachschatzes (Paderborn, Munich: Scöning, 1993), 765. S. Gasparri, La cultura tradizionale dei Longobardi: Struttura tribale e resistenze pagane (Spoleto: Panetto&Petrelli, 1983), 95. C. Azzara and S. Gasparri, Le Leggi dei Longobardi. Storia, memoria e diritto di un popolo germanico (Milan: Editrice la Storia, 1992), 56; Translated from Italian to English by DM. This translation is based on Katherine Fisher Drew’s translation (1973, 126–7) with adjustments made by the author of this thesis based on the translation from Latin to Italian done by Azzarra & Gasparri (1992, 101). Moretti, The Witch and the Shaman, 97. Ronald Hutton, The Witch. A History of Fear from Ancient Times to the Present (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2017), 159–60. Sancti Aldhelmi Schireburnensis Episcopi – Poemata, sive Ejus Operum Pars Tertia – De Laudibus Virginorum. www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/1815-1875,_Migne, _Patrologia_Latina_03_Rerum_Conspectus_Pro_Auctoribus_Ordinatus,_MLT_A .html#Aldhelmus_Schireburgenensis_Episcopus, 288.B. Moretti, The Witch and the Shaman, 99. Andrea Norsa, Nell’antro della strega: La magia in Italia tra Racconti popolari e ricerca etnografica (Pessano: Editrice Liberamente, 2014 digital edition), 2155. Moretti, The Witch and the Shaman, 91. Ibid., 92. Lauri Harvilahti, The Holy Mountain: Studies on Upper Altay Oral Poetry (FF Communications 282; Helsinki: Academic Scientiarum Fennica, 2003), 91. Anna-Leena Siikala, Mythic Images and Shamanism (FF Communications 280; Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 2002). Vesa-Pekka Herva and Timo Ylimaunu, “Folk beliefs, special deposits, and engagement with the environment in early modern Finland,” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 28 (2009), 234–43.

4 BETWEEN HELL AND PARADISE The legend of the soul of the Emperor Trajan Vincenzo Tedesco

A medieval hagiographical narrative The aim of this chapter is to detail how the perception of a well-known legend changed across a number of times and places, from its origin as an element of early medieval Christian hagiography to its becoming, a millennium later, a heretical proposition for the early modern Catholic Church. The legend concerns the soul of Roman Emperor Trajan (Marcus Ulpius Nerva Traianus, 53–117 AD), second of the Nerva-Antonine dynasty, who ruled from 98 until 117. Upon his death, the pagan Emperor’s soul was doomed to eternal damnation; but some centuries later, Pope Gregory I (Saint Gregory the Great) – moved by stories of Trajan’s virtues, which continued to circulate in Rome during his pontificate (590–604 AD) – interceded, praying for Trajan’s soul, that it might be raised to paradise.1 Jacobus de Voragine’s late-thirteenth century telling of this legend, given in the chapter of his Golden Legend which deals with the life of Gregory, begins with an account of the virtuous actions attributed to Trajan: Once when the Roman emperor Trajan was hurrying off to war with all possible speed, a widow ran up to him in tears and said: ‘Be good enough, I beg you, to avenge the blood of my son, who was put to death though he was innocent!’ Trajan answered that if he came back from the war safe and sound, he would take care of her case. ‘And if you die in battle,’ the widow objected, ‘who then will see that justice is done?’ ‘Whoever rules after me,’ Trajan replied. ‘And what good will it do you,’ the widow argued, ‘if someone else rights my loss?’ ‘None at all!’ the emperor retorted. ‘Then wouldn’t it be better for you,’ the woman persisted, ‘to do me justice yourself and receive the reward, than to pass it on to someone else?’ Trajan,

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moved with compassion, got down from his horse and saw to it that the blood of the innocent was avenged. We also read that one of Trajan’s sons was galloping his horse recklessly through the city and ran down the son of a widow, killing him. When the grief-stricken mother related this incident to Trajan, he handed over his own son – the one who had done the deed – to the widow, to replace the son she had lost, and endowed her liberally besides.2 The particular virtue being attributed to Trajan in these accounts is fairness: he secures justice for a widow after the loss of her son, and is even willing to surrender his own son as recompense for a homicide. In reality, we have no evidence that these incidents occurred. Indeed, we know that Trajan had no biological children (his heir, Hadrian, was a cousin whom the Emperor adopted), so we can be certain that the second tale is invented. The two examples have elements in common: both concern a widow seeking justice following the murder of a son, and both are resolved quickly by the Emperor. It is not unreasonable, then, to infer that these are, in fact, two different versions of the same tale which diverged over the intervening centuries and were later recorded by Jacobus de Voragine as separate events. In any case, it is noteworthy that the image of the Roman Emperor transmitted by this hagiographical literature is extremely positive, overshadowing the sins committed by him as a pagan and persecutor of Christians – events documented in Trajan’s correspondence with the governor of Bithynia, Pliny the Younger, for example.3 The next part of Jacobus de Voragine’s account is focused on the actions of Pope Gregory I: One day many years after that emperor’s death, as Gregory was crossing through Trajan’s forum, the emperor’s kindness came to his mind, and he went to Saint Peter’s basilica and lamented the ruler’s errors with bitter tears. The voice of God responded from above: ‘I have granted your petition and spared Trajan eternal punishment; but from now on be extremely careful not to pray for a damned soul!’ Furthermore, John of Damascus, in one of his sermons, relates that as Gregory was pouring forth prayers for Trajan, he heard a divine voice coming to him, which said: ‘I have heard your voice and I grant pardon to Trajan.’ Of this (as John says in the same sermon) both East and West are witness.4 God was inclined to heed Gregory’s prayers for the salvation of this soul. Of Trajan the man, little more remained than the majestic forum he had ordered be built – still operational and central to Roman life at the beginning of the seventh century – and a few apocryphal anecdotes about his commitment to justice.5 Yet the pope had done something quite out of the ordinary, here, for not only is trying to intercede on behalf of a damned soul a typically fruitless endeavour, it is also a grave sin. It is for this reason that God’s admonition of Gregory to be

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“extremely cautious in not praying for a damned soul” in the future is reported, even in a hagiography. In fact, even though his intercession was successful, the pope incurred a punishment for his audacity. As Jacobus de Voragine continues, We are told, moreover, that the angel also said: ‘Because you pleaded for a damned person you are given a dual option: either you will endure two days of torment in purgatory, or you will certainly be harassed your whole life long by infirmities and pains and aches.’ Gregory chose to be stricken throughout his life by pains rather than to endure two days in purgatory, and so he was constantly struggling with fevers or coping with gout or shaking with severe pains or racked with excruciating stomach cramps.6 The aim of his account is not to stress those virtues of Trajan which attracted the extraordinary privilege of the pope’s admiration; rather, it is to emphasize the merits of Gregory himself, a saint whose prayers were listened to and granted by God – even despite the appeal casting beyond the prevailing dispensation, which bore no provision for releasing a soul from Hell to Paradise. It is not surprising to note, then, that the earliest sources of the story are exclusively linked to hagiographical writings on Gregory I. Giuseppe Zecchini, who has traced the formation of the legend from the early seventh century through to the beginning of the eighth, observes that written accounts have come to us in three similar but independent versions: namely, the Lives of Gregory the Great, written by an anonymous author from Whitby (eighth century), Johannes Hymonides (ninth century), and Paul the Deacon (ninth–tenth century). In the twelfth century, the story came to John of Salisbury, and through his writings was spread widely in the medieval world.7 The legend is also mentioned in Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica, in a passage which would prove important for subsequent theologians. Aquinas reasoned that as Trajan had been a pagan and had persecuted his Christian subjects, he would certainly be in Hell. After some ref lection, he concludes that prayers cannot redeem damned souls (even if they might spare them the suffering of being forgotten by the living) and that, in this particular case, it must be that the Emperor had been pardoned of punishment and recalled to life, to then die again, this time deserving of Paradise. As such, Aquinas argues, it follows that Trajan’s soul had only ever been condemned to temporary, not eternal, damnation.8 It should be particularly noted that, in this inf luential consideration of the episode – a popular, albeit bizarre one, given that it posits the bodily resurrection of Trajan sometime in the second half of the sixth century or the early seventh; that is, in Gregory’s lifetime – there is no direct passage from Hell to Paradise. Aquinas’ conclusion evidences a categorical problem: the impossibility of conceiving a direct translation from the place of the blessed to that of the damned. The problem can likely be ascribed to the belief that, unlike Purgatory – which from the end of the twelfth century is affirmed as a place of temporary suffering – both Hell and Paradise are understood to be inhabited eternally.9

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The legend of Trajan’s ascension enjoyed widespread fame during the Middle Ages, especially in the thirteenth century. As well as featuring in Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend, it is also reported in John of Wales’ Breviloquium de virtutibus,10 in Fiore di filosafi e d’altri savi e d’imperadori,11 and in Novellino.12 In Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, a marble bas-relief on Purgatory’s first terrace depicts Trajan granting justice to a widow; but the Emperor’s soul is in Paradise – granted entry, it should be noted, after returning to life for a short time.13 Of these various sources, Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend is of particular note: not only for the reasons examined above, but also philologically. The volume circulated widely in manuscript form, and still further after the invention of the movable-type printing press, being reprinted many times during the Renaissance. Then something strange happens: from the end of the sixteenth century, the story of Trajan’s soul no longer appears in new editions. In the Venetian edition of 1571, published by Geronimo Polo and translated by the Venetian Nicolò Manerbio, the tale of Trajan’s redemption is included in the pages on the life of Saint Gregory14; yet in a later Venetian edition, produced by the press of Fioravante Prati in 1588, all references to the eternal soul of the Roman Emperor have been removed.15 But why? What happened in those years that led to the legend of Trajan being deleted from a well-established hagiographical tradition? To answer this question it is necessary to step back to the middle of the sixteenth century when, for the first time, opinion on the legend began to shift.

A clash among erudites It was in Spain that dissenting voices first began to criticize the tale of the passage of Trajan’s soul from Hell to Paradise. In a period characterized by the breaking up of religious unity in Western Europe, and by strong antagonism between the different creeds, a number of Catholic theologians were attempting to systematize the doctrinal corpus of the Roman Church. In their minds, the eternal nature of damnation was one of the cornerstones of Catholic eschatology, and it admitted no exceptions; the legend of Trajan’s soul could not be credited. The first two theologians to bring into question the fate of Trajan’s soul were both Dominicans from the school of Salamanca: Domingo de Soto and Melchor Cano.16 Soto, in his In quartum sententiarum commentarii (1555–1556), observed that, if the version of the legend reported by Thomas Aquinas were true – that following his resurrection to life from Hell Trajan merited entry to Heaven – it would follow that eternal damnation did admit some privileged exceptions. Furthermore, for Soto, it was unthinkable that a well-educated pope like Gregory I would ignore the prohibition against praying for damned souls – and just as improbable that he would not know that Trajan was in Hell. Expressing his perplexity, Soto concludes that, “on the story of Trajan I cannot deny that it is hard for me to believe it.”17

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In the chapter “De historiae humanae in Theologiam utilitate” of the Loci theologici (1563), Cano criticizes the legend from an historical-philological point of view. He argues that one of the main sources is John of Damascus, who had lived almost a century after the death of Gregory; moreover, John had been a Christian monk who wrote in Greek and, for Cano, it was strange that a “Greek” had been able to popularize a legend that all the Latin historiography had ignored. Cano’s conclusions are markedly more scathing than Soto’s, as he straightforwardly asserts that the story should not be believed nor should those who consider it a mere fable ( fabula) be condemned.18 Nonetheless, the arguments put forward by Soto and Cano were not universally accepted – after all, the legend of Trajan’s soul had been handed down for nearly a millennium. The most important response to their arguments came from a scholar with particular expertise in the life of Trajan: the Dominican Alfonso Chacón, who has been described as “among the most important Spanish humanists of classical and Christian antiquity.”19 In 1576, Chacón published a short essay on the legend of the soul of Trajan, dedicated to Pope Gregory XIII and entitled “Historia ceu verissima a calumniis multorum vindicata Quae refert Traiani animam precibus Divi Gregorij Pontificis Romani a tartareis cruciatibus ereptam,” which established him as the spokesman for those who wanted to defend the veracity of the hagiographic miracle.20 Chacón openly criticized Soto and Cano, stating his disagreements whilst recognizing both of these fellow Dominicans as very learned men. Against Soto, Chacón argued that Trajan’s soul could have already been destined for salvation and that the prayers of Gregory were simply the means by which the will of God came to be fulfilled. In response to Cano, Chacón condemned two mistakes, one attributable to insolence and the other to ignorance: Cano had been insolent in his denigration of “most holy men” – those antecedents in the church who had believed in the miracle – and he had betrayed his ignorance by suggesting that no “Latin” scholars had referred to the legend, when in fact it had been reported by many such men evidently unknown to Cano.21 For Chacón, the legend of the salvation of Trajan was a story of truth and faith that highlighted a capacity for intercession proper to every one of St Peter’s papal successors; moreover, it was a legend that had long been maintained by authors who continued to be venerated by the Church.22 Chacón’s essay enjoyed a certain popularity, especially in Italy where it was reprinted in the original Latin in Venice in 1583, and later translated into Italian by the Camaldolese monk Francesco Pifferi, who printed it in 1595 in Siena.23 The essay’s popularity was not only broad, then, but – with it still reaching new readers after nearly two decades – also long-lasting. If the earliest criticisms of the legend of Trajan surfaced in the late 1550s and 1560s, the question would remain contentious throughout the following decades. Some intellectuals fought to prove its veracity and many people continued to passionately believe in the legend – a fact attested to by the dedication carried in Pifferi’s 1595 edition of Chacón’s book, in which the translator recalls the

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enthusiastic reception of a homily on the subject delivered in Colle val d’Elsa (near Siena) the previous year. The theological controversy around the legend also had repercussions at a local level, as seen, for example, in records of the trials held by the Inquisition, the institution appointed by the Apostolic See to control religious dissent.24 On 12 April 1574, the patrician Marcantonio Cosimi from Siena reported Ludovico Buzzelli, doctor of law, to the Sienese court of the Inquisition over a theological disputation that had occurred in Buzzelli’s home of Massa (today Massa Marittima), a small town in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. At the Palazzo dei Priori (the public Palace) Buzzelli had argued openly with friar Antonio da Messina following a sermon in which the friar had preached that Christ could release a damned soul from Hell and had indeed done so, citing the example of Trajan. Buzzelli had replied that it couldn’t be true because, as the same Catholic Church taught, “in inferno nulla est redemptio” (there is no redemption in Hell). The discussion had continued for long time, drawing the attention of the townspeople, some of whom had intervened in the debate. Achille Gieri, one of the witnesses, testified that the two men had thrown insults and accused each other of heresy, while another individual – unnamed – had warned Buzzelli to be careful, because even in Rome it was believed that the soul of Trajan was redeemed by the prayers of Saint Gregory.25 Ludovico Buzzelli was imprisoned by the Sienese court of the Holy Office, which extended its jurisdiction across all of Southern Tuscany, and carried out its inquiries with the help of the episcopal vicar (for the occasion deputized to the post of vicar of the Inquisition). After some months the trial ended without a judgement and the accused was released without any further explanation. Whilst it was not unusual for the Inquisition to interrupt or abandon a trial before any verdict was decided – not least when the charges were found to be inconsistent, or sufficient evidence was lacking – this case in particular raised a number of important questions which were left unresolved: for example, should Catholic doctrine condemn Buzzelli’s opinions? Or were his arguments against Messina’s sermon reasonable? If the latter, does it follow that the friar was being heretical? To answer these questions, it is fitting to start with the words of that anonymous bystander who had interjected to the debate between the doctor and the friar, saying “in Rome it is believed that the soul of Trajan was taken out of Hell through the prayers of Saint Gregory.”26 As it happened, at the time that doctor Buzzelli and friar Messina were ardently debating the truthfulness of the legend of the soul of Trajan in Massa, the position of the Church in Rome was hardly more clear. There had been no official refutation of the hagiographical tale and, as discussed above, the story was still regularly published in various books, from the Golden Legend (ed. 1571) to Alfonso Chacón’s essay (1576); yet, equally, there were important Catholic theologians like Domingo de Soto and Melchor Cano who argued that the tale was no more than a fable. It is probably because of this ongoing uncertainty that the trial against Buzzelli did not come to a definitive conclusion. Not many years

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later, however, the altering perceptions of the centuries-old hagiographic miracle would take another turn, and the legend would become a forbidden, heretical proposition.

From hagiographic miracle to heretical proposition The change in perception of the legend of Trajan’s soul came towards the end of the sixteenth century, led by a number of inf luential Cardinals of the Roman Church. First among these Cardinals was Cesare Baronio, undoubtedly the most inf luential Catholic historian of the post-Tridentine age. His view of historia sacra promoted an idea of historical continuity throughout the Roman Church and aimed to strengthen the faith through identification with the “heroic” past of the early Christians.27 The most complete expressions of this view are his Martyrologium Romanum and the Annales ecclesiastici a Christo nato ad annum 1198, which Baronio worked on – alongside his efforts to reform both the Christian calendar and the liturgy – from the late 1570s until his death in 1607.28 Baronio used his writings to support the power of the popes against the denominational divisions of the day. To this end, his thousand-year history of the Church makes some significant exclusions, such as denying the historical veracity of both the Donation of Constantine and the existence of Pope Joan.29 His dismissal of the legend of Trajan should be understood in this context. Baronio’s Annales ecclesiastici includes the longest published refutation of the legend of the soul of the Roman Emperor. He begins his argument by discrediting the tales of Trajan’s virtues, and shows that, even at the time, the Emperor’s “most base morals” (moribus turpissimus) were widely reported by Greek and Latin writers alike (“scriptori Graecorum et Latinorum antiquorum testimonio omnium”). Baronio goes on to defend the pious reputation of Gregory I, arguing that the pope would never have prayed for a damned soul. He concludes his argument by analyzing some incongruities in the historical transmission of the legend.30 If Baronio analyzed historical sources without expressly mentioning contemporary authors, Roberto Bellarmino was far more explicit. In the second book of Disputationes de controversiis christianae fidei adversus hujus temporis haereticos, he affirms the arguments of Melchor Cano and Domingo de Soto, and openly criticizes Alfonso Chacón.31 Put brief ly, Bellarmino’s statement is based on the erroneous attribution of a passage to John of Damascus, the absence of a “Latin” tradition of the legend (he made the same mistake as Cano, who had ignored sources like the “Roman” Johannes Hymonides). Like Baronio, he argues that Gregory I would never have offered prayers for a damned soul, and certainly not for Trajan. In closing, Bellarmino makes a lengthy and detailed criticism of Chacón’s essay.32 The inf luence that the writings of Baronio and Bellarmino – who shared not only ideas, but also a strong friendship33 – had over the view of the past of the Roman Church and over the Catholic doctrine, respectively, is well known. But there is another aspect to their work which must be considered in this particular

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case: both men were important members of the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition, the institution appointed to control the religious integrity of the faithful. The Cardinals of the Congregation were appointed to study and judge the numerous cases which arrived in Rome from the provincial courts, and they thus fulfilled an important role in defining what was “Catholic” and what must be condemned as “heretical.” Due to their positions in this Ministry of the Holy See, Bellarmino and Baronio were able to promote and enforce their points of view from a privileged place at the beating heart of the Roman Curia. The success of Bellarmino and Baronio’s attempts to shift opinion can be gauged by the reception of a work by the Venetian scholar Benedetto Benedetti (of whom relatively little is known), an apologia on the legend of Trajan. In 1602, Bendetti submitted to the Sienese Inquisitor the Imprimatur of a manuscript entitled Apologia pro Traiano Imperatore optimo contra quosdam Animae eius liberationem ab inferno Divi Gregorij Pontificis magni precibus miarbiliter obtentam negantes, et impugnantes. The appointed “judge of faith” in Siena, Franciscan Friar Felice Pranzini da Pistoia, disapproved of the text and sent it on to Rome for further scrutiny.34 The essay was entirely dedicated to criticizing the writings of Soto, Bellarmino, and Baronio in order to affirm the legend of the salvation of Trajan’s soul. In Rome, the book was discussed amongst the Congregation of Cardinals, and the pope himself – Clement VIII – forbade its publication.35 In 1603, Benedetti wrote another, shorter manuscript which summarized the core arguments of the first essay. He attempted publication in Perugia, and even obtained the Imprimatur; but word reached Rome, and the pope admonished the local Inquisitor, forbidding the book’s circulation “sub poena triremium” (under penalty of a period as a galley slave).36 What happened in the following years shows how much the prestige of cardinals Baronio and Bellarmino affected the stance of the Roman Church with regard to the soul of Trajan, and contributed to the suppression of any form of dissent from that position. Neither of Benedetti’s censored manuscripts were placed in the proper archive – which at this time would have been either that of the Congregation of the Holy Office or the Congregation of the Index – but were, rather, sent to Cesare Baronio’s personal collection. After the cardinal’s death in June 1607, Benedetti wrote to Pope Paul V with a plea for the return of his “unlucky works.”37 But, rather than returning the manuscripts to their author, the pope “sent [someone] to the heirs of Baronio to recover the sample of the Apologiae pro liberatione animae Traiani […] and to store it in Holy Office”38: Benedetti would never again see the fruits of his labour. The censorship of Benedetto Benedetti’s work is early evidence of a change that would be increasingly policed by the Roman Inquisition. By the first years of the seventeenth century, any assertion affirming the salvation of Trajan’s soul was forbidden and could be reported to the nearest court of the Holy Office. This was exactly what happened in 1607 to the Dominican friar Santi Bartalini from Monterotondo. During a sermon in Siena, the friar spoke of the soul of

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Trajan having been “freed from Hell for merits and prayers of St. Gregory”; he was immediately reported to the Sienese Inquisitor.39 The complainants were fellow friars with a grievance against Bartalini, eager to get back at him at the earliest opportunity.40 It is not important, here, to summarize the trial, which ended quickly because of the dubious reliability of the witnesses’ testimony. The relevant point is that the story of the salvation of the soul of the Emperor Trajan was by now commonly perceived as heretical. In conclusion, we have seen that a medieval legend – born between the seventh and eighth centuries and regarded for centuries as a hagiographic miracle – had, by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, become the subject of theological controversy. The debate and the change in perception it heralded happened in a very particular moment, when the rise of religious divisions was being met with a rigorous theological systematization of Roman Catholicism and the reappraisal of many centuries-old traditions, shoring up church doctrine against “heretics.” In a certain sense, it can be said that the miracle of the salvation of Trajan was sacrificed by the Roman Church in order to absolutely reassert the doctrines of the eternity of infernal damnation and heavenly bliss.

Notes 1 For the historiography on the subject, see Gaston Paris, “La légende de Trajan”, Mélanges de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes 35 (1878): 261–98; Manlio Pastore Stocchi, “Traiano”, in Enciclopedia Dantesca, dir. Umberto Bosco (Roma: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, 1976), vol. V, 685–6; Gordon Whatley, “The Uses of Hagiography: The Legend of Pope Gregory and the Emperor Trajan in the Middle Ages”, Viator. Medieval and Renaissance Studies 15 (1984): 25–63; Giuseppe Zecchini, Ricerche di storiografia latina tardoantica (Roma: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 1993), 140– 3; Giuseppe Antonio Guazzelli, “Cesare Baronio and the Roman Catholic Vision of the Early Church”, in Sacred History. Uses of the Christian Past in the Renaissance World, eds. Katherine Van Liere, Simon Ditchfield, and Howard Louthan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 52–71; Id., “Gregorio Magno nell’erudizione ecclesiastica della seconda metà del XVI secolo”, in Gregorio Magno e le origini dell'Europa. Atti del Convegno internazionale (Firenze, 13–17 maggio 2006), dir. Claudio Leonardi (Firenze: SISMEL–Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2014), 601–17 (in part. 612–3). The legend is also mentioned in reference to the destiny reserved for pagan souls in late medieval literature in Chiara Franceschini, Storia del limbo (Milano: Feltrinelli, 2017), 85–8. 2 Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. William Granger Ryan, with an introduction by Eamon Duffy (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2012), 178. 3 Pliny the Younger, Epistulae, X, 96–7. See Pliny the Younger, Complete Letters, trans. P. G. Walsh (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 278–9. 4 Jacobus de Voragine, Golden Legend, 178. 5 Maria Elena Bertoldi, Ricerche sulla decorazione architettonica del Foro Traiano (Roma: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 1962), 4; Roberto Meneghini, “Il foro di Traiano nel Medioevo”, Mélanges de l'École française de Rome. Moyen-Age 113, no. 1 (2001): 149–72 (particularly 154). 6 Jacobus de Voragine, Golden Legend, 179. 7 Zecchini, Ricerche di storiografia latina tardoantica, 141.

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8 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, pars III, suppl., q. 71, art. 5. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 3 vols. (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947), vol. III, 6407–10. 9 See Jaques Le Goff, La naissance du Purgatoire (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1981). 10 Michele Barbi, La leggenda di Traiano nei volgarizzamenti del “Breviloquium de virtutibus” di fra Giovanni Gallese (Firenze: G. Carnesecchi e Figli, 1895). 11 Anonymous, Fiori e vita di filosafi e d'altri savi e d'imperadori, XXVI. For an analysis of the text, see Fiori e vita di filosafi e d'altri savi e d'imperadori, ed. Alfonso D’Agostino (Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1979), 33–9. 12 Anonymous, Novellino, LXIX. cf. Novellino, ed. Valeria Mouchet (Milano: Rizzoli, 2008). 13 Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy, Purgatorio, canto X, vv. 73–93; ibidem, Paradiso, canto XX, passim (particularly vv. 43–8, 106–17). See The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, trans. Charles Eliot Norton, 3 vols. (Boston and New York: Houghton, Miff lin and Company, 1892), vol. II (Purgatory), 61–6; vol. III (Paradise), 130–5. 14 Legendario delle Vite de Santi, composto in latino per il R.mo Padre Fra Iacobo de Voragine Arcivescovo della città di Genova, del sacro ordine de’ Predicatori: et tradotto in volgare per il R. P. Don Nicolò Manerbio Venetiano. Et di nuovo revisto & emendato diligentemente: ornato ancora di bellissime figure, le quali come in un specchio rapresentano la vita di ciascun Santo: con la tavola de ciascuna legenda, preposta per ordine d’alfabeto (Venezia: per Geronimo Polo, 1571), 56r, 57v–58r. 15 Legendario delle Vite de’ Santi; Composto dal R.P.F. Giacobo di Voragine dell’Ordine de’ Predicatori, & Tradotto già per il R. D. Nicolò Manerbio Venetiano. Aggiuntovi di nuovo molte Legende, & accomodata ad ogni giorno la vita di alcun Santo. Con la Tavola delle Legende; & di vaghe figure ornato, e con somma diligenza corretto, & ristampato (Venezia: Presso Fioravante Prati, 1588). From a comparison with the 1571 edition, the passages on Trajan were supposed to be on pages 236 and 241. 16 On Domingo de Soto (1494–1560) see: Jaime Brufau Prats, El pensamiento político de Domingo de Soto y su concepción del poder (Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad Salamanca, 1960); Juan Belda-Plans, “Domingo de Soto y la reforma de la Teología en el siglo XVI”, Anales Valentinos 21 (1995): 193–221. On Melchor Cano (1509–1560) see: Fermín Caballero, Vida del Illmo Sr. D. Fr. Melchor Cano, del orden de Santo Domingo, obispo de Canarias (Madrid: Imprenta del Colegio Nacional de Sordo-Mudos y de Ciegos, 1871) (anastatic reprint: Tarancón: Deputación Provincial de Cuenca– Ayuntamiento de Tarancón–Editorial Olcades, 1980); Joaquin Tapia, Iglesia y teología en Melchor Cano (1509-1560). Un protagonista de la restauración eclesial y teológica en la España del siglo XVI (Roma: Iglesia Nacional Española, 1989). 17 Domingo de Soto, In quartum sententiarum Commentarii (Medina del Campo: 1581) (first published 1555–1556), vol. II, distinctio 45, quaestio 2, art. 2 (Utrum suffragia pro defunctis oblata quibuscunque defunctis prodesse valeant), 475–80 (esp. p. 478). The quotation in Latin is: “de historia Traiani diffiteri non possum mihi fieri creditu durissimam.” 18 Melchor Cano, Locorum theologicorum libri duodecim (Köln: 1574) (first published: Salamanca: 1563), book XI, chapter II (De historiae humanae Theologiam utilitate), 284v–285r. “Nec vero historiam ego illam probo […] sint ergo fabulae, non repugno, ea quae de Traiano & Gregorio referuntur.” 19 Thomas James Dandelet, Spanish Rome: 1500–1700 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001), 82; Id., The Renaissance of Empire in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 174. 20 Alfonso Chacón, Historia ceu verissima a calumniis multorum vindicata Quae refert Traiani animam precibus Divi Gregorij Pontificis Romani a tartareis cruciatibus ereptam, Apud Franciscum Zanettum & Bartholomaeum Thosium socios (Roma: 1576). 21 Ibid., Ivi, passim. 22 Ibid., 5. 23 Alfonso Chacón, Historia ceu verissima à calumnijs multorum vindicata, quae refert M. Ulpii Traiani Augusti animam precibus Divi Gregorii Pontificis Romani à tartareis cruciatibus

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25 26 27

28 29

30 31

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ereptam. Quod D. Hieronymus Stridonensis S. R. E. Presbyter fuerit Cardinalis tractatus duo, alter locupletior Secundo, alter nunc primum editus (Venezia: Apud Dominicum Nicolinum, 1583); Istoria del M. R. P. Fr. Alfonso Giaccone, Nella quale si tratta esser vera la liberazion dell’Anima di Traiano Imperatore dalle pene dell’Inferno, per le preghiere di S. Gregorio Papa. Fatta volgare, & aggiuntovi alcuna cosa intorno alla medesima materia, dal M. R. P. Maestro Don Francesco Pifferi, Monaco Camald. (Siena: nella stamperia del Bonetto, 1595). As it is not possible to provide an exhaustive overview of the vast bibliography currently available on the Inquisition (especially the Roman Inquisition, which we are referring to here), this list is limited to a number of the more general studies: John Tedeschi, The Prosecution of Heresy. Collected Studies on the Inquisition in Early Modern Italy (Binghamton: Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1991); Francisco Bethencourt, The Inquisition. A Global History, 1478–1834 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011) (first published: 1995); Adriano Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza. Inquisitori, confessori, missionari (Torino: Einaudi, 2009) (first published: 1996); Andrea Del Col, L’Inquisizione in Italia. Dal XII al XXI Secolo (Milano: Mondadori, 2009) (first published: 2006); Christopher F. Black, The Italian Inquisition (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009); Dizionario Storico dell’Inquisizione, dir. Adriano Prosperi, with the collaboration of Vincenzo Lavenia and John Tedeschi (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2010), 4 vols.; Thomas F. Mayer, The Roman Inquisition. A Papal Bureucracy and Its Laws in the Age of Galileo (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013); Id., The Roman Inquisition at the Stage of Italy, c. 1590–1640 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014); Katherine Aron–Beller, and Christopher F. Black, eds., The Roman Inquisition. Centre versus Peripheries (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2018). Vatican City, Archivum Congregationis pro Doctrina Fidei (from now on ACDF), Archivum Inquisitionis Senensis (from now on Siena), Processi, vol. 19, ff. 403r–568r. Ibid., f. 568r: “ci fu uno, […] che si voltò al detto Dottore et disse avertite che questo non si può negare, poiche si tiene in Roma che l’Anima di Troiano fusse tratta del inferno per le preghiere di Santo Gregorio.” On the concept of historia sacra as it developed over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (and taking into account its basis in a rich earlier tradition), see Simon Ditchfield, “What was Sacred History? (Mostly Roman) Catholic Uses of the Christian Past after Trent”, in Sacred History. Uses of the Christian Past in the Renaissance World, eds. Katherine Van Liere, Simon Ditchfield, and Howard Louthan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 72–97. As regards Baronio’s vision of sacred history cf. Albano Biondi, “La storiografia apologetica e controversistica”, in Id., Umanisti, eretici, streghe. Saggi di storia moderna, ed. Massimo Donattini (Modena: Archivio storico del Comune di Modena, 2008), 555–74 (esp. pp. 561–7); Simon Ditchfield, “Baronio storico nel suo tempo”, in Cesare Baronio tra santità e scrittura storica, eds. Giuseppe Antonio Guazzelli, Raimondo Michetti, and Francesco Scorza Barcellona (Roma: Viella, 2008), 4–21; Giuseppe Antonio Guazzelli, Cesare Baronio and the Roman Catholic Vision of the Early Church, 52–71. Cesare Baronio, Martyrologium Romanum. Notationes atque Tractatio de Martyrologio (Roma: 1586); Id., Annales Ecclesiastici, 12 vols. (Roma: 1588–607). Vincenzo Lavenia, “Baronio, Cesare”, in Enciclopedia italiana di scienze, lettere ed arti. Il Contributo italiano alla storia del pensiero. Ottava appendice. Storia e Politica, dir. Giuseppe Galasso (Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2013), 252–8. Baronio refused the Donation of Constatine, arguing that the Holy See held power not because of Constantine, but because its privileges were given by Christ himself to Peter, and from him to his successors. Cesare Baronio, Annales ecclesiastici (Venezia: 1607), vol. VIII, 136–42. Disputationum Roberti Bellarmini Politiani e Societate Iesu, S. R. E. Cardinalis de controversiis christianae fidei, adversus hujus temporis haereticos (Lyon: 1609), vol. I, lib. II, cap. VIII, coll. 1392–3: “ideò magis perpendeo in sente[n]tiam Melchioris Cani, qui […]

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simpliciter improbat hanc historiam, ut confictam, & Dominici à Soto, qui […] dicit, hanc historiam sibi creditu durissimam esse, non obstante Apologia Alphonsi Ciaconi, pro hac historia ante hoc triennium edita.” Ibid., coll. 1393–4. See Stefano Zen, “Bellarmino e Baronio”, in Bellarmino e la Controriforma, atti del simposio internazionale di studi (Sora, 15-18 ottobre 1986), eds. Romeo De Maio et al. (Sora: Centro di Studi Sorani “Vincenzo Patriarca”, 1990), 277–321. Vatican City, ACDF, Siena, Processi, vol. 19, ff. 905r–6v, 917v. Vatican City, ACDF, Archivum Sancti Officii Romani (from now on ASOR), Stanza Storica (from now on St. St.), Decreta 1602, f. 459. Vatican City, ACDF, ASOR, St. St., O 2 m, fasc. 10, f. 174r. Ibid., ff. 176r, 180v. Ibid., Ivi: “mandavit recuperari ab heredibus Cardinalis Baronii exemplum apologiae pro liberatione animae Traiani […] [et] conservari in sancto officio.” The transcript of the 1607 trial of Santi Bartalini can be consulted in Vatican City, ACDF, Siena, Processi, vol. 24, ff. 240r–66v (the quote is from f. 247v). Bartalini had already been reported by his confreres in 1601 over some suspicious propositions about divine grace, but the trial had ended in 1602 with a complete absolution from the charges. In his brilliant defence, Bartalini had shown a clever and cultivated mind, but also a proud and pedantic character which had irritated his fellows. The 1601–1602 trial is in Vatican City, ACDF, Siena, Processi, vol. 18, ff. 510r–67v.

PART II

Cultural exchange among Christian, Islamic, and Jewish communities

5 ARTIFICIAL CREATION OF HUMAN LIFE Ibn Waḥšiyya as a source of the Futūḥāt al-makkiyya Michele Petrone

Introduction The possibility of artificially creating a creature able to mimic life or that is effectively alive has been largely discussed from late antiquity to the early modern period by esotericists and occultists belonging to diverse traditions, while not everyone admits this possibility. In the Muslim context, some narrations open the road to similar speculations. In the Qur’ān, for instance, the story of Abraham and the birds (2:260) is a clear example of how sacred texts offer materials for speculations in the direction of artificial creation of life. In this episode, the patriarch asks God to show him how He brings bodies back to life to calm down his heart (li-taṭma’ina qalbī ). He is then instructed to dismember four birds and put their parts on the surrounding mountains. Abraham then called them back and they returned to him, alive.1 Nonetheless, the most famous iteration of this discussion has been developed by Jewish thinkers. Moshe Idel, in his Golem masterpiece, has reconstructed the origins and the formation of this idea.2 He mentions, as possible antecedents of the legend of the golem, the story of Prometheus and his apprentice Dolus creating two female anthropoids, one called Truth and the other Mendacity. Only the former was able to walk, while the latter, being a copy of the one realized by the master, was not.3 An analogous story is the one of Simon Magus being able to create an anthropomorphic figure by “a series of transformations of the air,” as reported in the Clementinae Recognitiones.4 In Jewish literature the Sefer Yetsirah5 is credited as the source for a different approach to the operation, where a creature made of clay is vivified by the writing of the letters of the word Truth (‘emeth) on its forehead.6 This approach reminds one of the story of Prometheus, based on the power of letters and their ability to convey spiritual powers, and it is different from one of Simon Magus, who bases his ability on his own power, derived from his very nature.

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Despite its diffusion, this idea has been, to my knowledge, always considered outside the boundaries of the literature produced by Sufis, the people who adhere to a more inner and spiritual vision of Islam,7 also of those texts and authors who show a more occultist penchant. In most cases, practising magic or alchemy has been seen as a deviation from the true aim of the spiritual path, which is purification of the self in order to get a form of divine knowledge. Nonetheless, the doctrinal premises for occult and spiritual sciences share a similar background. ʻIlm al-ḥur ūf (science of letters or lettrism) has a practical application in magic squares, where the sum of the numeric value of the letters found in each line is constant and, because of this, carries specific properties and can be used for protection, healing, or harming someone. The same concept is used by Sufis to highlight, for instance, the relation between one of God’s 99 Beautiful Names and some verses of the Qur’ān or some invocations.8 This quite simplistic example is but one of many others where concepts usually attributed to disciplines like alchemy or realization of talismans are used in a more spiritual fashion, considering their practical application a mere consequence of the intrinsic nature of, in our example, letters, seen as archetypes of the manifestation of God in the world.9 Artificial creation of life is a complex matter in a religious context like the Islamic one, where also the representation of living beings is formally prohibited, as it could be seen as challenge to the creative power of God.10 The possibility of takw īn (lit. bringing to existence), intended as engendering a creature that shows signs of life, is not discussed at all in theological or jurisprudential literature, being dismissed in its premises as a form of širk, association of other beings to God. In this case, theologians refute the possibility for a human being to imitate God’s creative power, that sees its apex in the creation of man.11 This point of view radically differs from one of Jewish Kabbalists, who see in the achievement of this ability the confirmation of having reached the highest degree of spiritual realization.12 “While recognizing the sublimity and superiority of the divine creator, the magician would strive to taste also the creative experience,” as Moshe Idel puts it.13 Sufis are, in most cases, scrupulous observers of Islamic law and, therefore, admitting a practice that explicitly challenges God’s omnipotence and unity cannot be considered as part of their doctrines, at least seen from this point of view. On the other hand, assuming that Sufism and occult sciences do not entertain any form of relation would be incorrect. Idel, in a passage immediately preceding the one quoted above, says that “we can define the subject of the study [i.e. the golem] as the magical component of mystical literature; the context of the appearance of these discussions mitigated the more practical possibilities inherent in this type of operations.”14 These words can also be used to describe the context of the discussion of magic and occult sciences in which Ibn ʻArabī, known also as al-Shaykh al-Akbar, “The Greatest Master,” wrote his Meccan Openings. His figure has been essential in the definition of Sufi doctrines that have been elaborated in the following centuries. The al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, his magnum opus, are a compendium (in four large printed volumes) of all the exoteric and

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esoteric disciplines related to Sufism, from Islamic law to science of letters, interpreted in the light of Ibn ʻArabī’s own illuminative perspective. As an example, one may recall the Chapter 352 of the Futūḥāt, devoted to the “Talismanic visual secrets designed according the Mu ḥammadan presence.”15 Here the word ṭillasm, obviously indicating a talisman, is interpreted according to a procedure of ištiqāq (derivation) based on the permutation of the letters (inversion of the radicals): Know, may God help you that talismans are called this way because of the inversion of its radical letters ( Ṭ L S M), because it is empowered over (musallaṭ ʻalā ) everything put under its control.16 This definition is closely related to the one that can be found in the famous Ġāyat al-Ḥakīm (translated in Latin as Picatrix) and composed by Maslama al-Qur ṭ ubī (d. 964).17 The text reads: The real essence of the talisman (radicals Ṭ L S M) relies its reversed name, i.e. ‘empowering’ (musalliṭ, radicals S L Ṭ, with an additional morphological M), as it is among the essential constituents of subjugation and power over the others acts according its set in it of overcoming and subjugation.18 This at least shows a certain continuity not only in the terminology, but also in the conception of the fundaments of magic. A direct connection between Ibn ʻArabī’s and al-Qur ṭ ubī’s passage cannot be established only on the basis of this analogy and further studies on this topic are required to shed light on the place occupied by occultism in Andalusī Sufi thought. From what we can read in the Futūḥāt, the reception of these ideas, however, was not passive and went through a complex elaboration in the light of Ibn ʻArabī’s metaphysics. In the prosecution of the chapter from which the quotation above is taken, he describes different forms of talismans, intended as both means to attain knowledge of the ultimate reality and, at the same time, as something that veils man from it.19 His interest for the occult can be seen also at the end of Chapter 335 of al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, where we read: In [the knowledge of brotherhood] there is also the science of the levels of human creation in the world. The things created by men in the lower world exist in it under different degrees. How should be called the human being created by men? Is he a man or an animal in the shape of a man, considering the form of his body? And what is impeding the manifestation of the rational soul in this creature? Is it for the lack of preparedness, so that it was established for the one who shaped the creature impossibility of acceptance [in the created form] of the rational soul from the Universal Soul? Or this impediment comes from God’s will, because creation is something enormous? It is, anyway, well-known that something alike happened, and it is mentioned in the Nabatean Agriculture that some

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savants in natural sciences generated [a creature] in form of a man from human semen through a specific putrefaction, made according to defined proportions, times and places. This creature lasted one year, it was able to open and close its eyes, but it could not speak. It did not take any nourishment over what was already [in its body]. It lived one year, and it died; and I am not able to say if it was a mute man or an animal in the shape of a man.20 The source for this passage is al-Filāḥa al-nabaṭiyya (The Nabatean Agriculture), a work allegedly translated by Ibn Wa ḥ šiyya (d. 948) from “ancient Syriac” (al-sūriyānī al-qadīm).21 The work is a collection of texts that report the agricultural wisdom of ancient populations who inhabited regions of Mesopotamia, identified with the Chaldeans (kasdāniyyūn).22 The Nabatean Agriculture is of paramount importance as a source for later Arabic agronomical literature, but it contains also scattered cosmological, religious, and magical doctrines and notions. The latter have been used by Maslama al-Qur ṭ ubī in his Ġāyat al-ḥakīm, which quotes verbatim some passages about the production of talismans. The text circulated widely, reaching also al-Andalus, as we know of a later epitome.23 But before turning to it as a source of the Futūḥāt, it is necessary to analyze in detail what Ibn ʻArabī reports and the context of his mention of the creation of artificial man.

The context of the mention in the Meccan Openings Ibn ʻArabī, despite some criticism he received by figures like Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328),24 can be considered an exponent of Sunnism, the major current of Islam.25 Nonetheless his cosmological views cannot be equated to the ones of speculative theologians (mutakallimūn, exponents of the kalam). In his doctrine God is identified with the one and only existent that manifests Himself to Himself through the creation of the cosmos, whose existence is only a ref lection of the one of Allāh. This doctrine has been epitomized in the expression waḥdat al-wuǧūd, “unity of existence,” or “of being.”26 The process of manifestation of the One in the multiplicity of the cosmos is described under different points of view, all based on an emanationist model echoing the neo-platonic one, but in a remarkable Islamic lore. The unique Essence of God (al-ḏāt) manifests itself to itself through the diverse modalities of being that appear as Allāh’s Most Beautiful Names (asmā’ Allāh al-ḥusnā ). They are also subdivided in diverse categories, like asmā’ al- ǧalāl and asmā’ al- ǧamāl, “Names of Majesty” and “Names of Beauty.” The former manifest God’s wrath and destructive power, while the latter are those of mercy and forgiveness. Names are conceived by Ibn ʻArabī as aspects of the Unique Existence that belong only to Allāh and are, therefore, intimately interrelated. Al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya is a ponderous work that covers a wide range of topics in Islamic esoteric and exoteric sciences. It includes spiritually enlightened

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interpretations of the Qur’ān, discussions of the Science of Letters (ʻ ilm al-ḥur ūf ), diverse representations of the cosmos, and a comprehensive description of the modalities of the manifestation of God in the world. Chapter 335, called F ī maʻ rifat manzil al-uḫuwwa wa huwa al-ḥaḍra al-muḥammadiyya wa al-mūsawiyya, “On the knowledge of the mansion of brotherhood, which is the Mu ḥammadan and mosaic presence.”27 The chapter is one of the most arduous for the reader who is not prepared for the convolutions of the language and the intricate symbolism that the author is using to illustrate through the idea of brotherliness (uḫuwwa). The cue is given to Ibn ʻArabī by the numerous verses of the Qur’an in which it is asserted that believers are like brothers:28 “The believers indeed are brothers; so, set things right between your two brothers, and fear God; haply so you will find mercy.” (Qur’ān 49:10). Brotherhood is intended here as solely grounded in the common faith, as a Muslim cannot inherit from a non-Muslim brother.29 The image of the two brothers is used also to describe two modalities of accessing knowledge: through spiritual unveiling (coupled with revelation), and through intellectual inquiry, in a way similar to the one found in Chapter 167 on the alchemy of happiness.30 In the context of Chapter 335, Ibn ʻArabī discusses the ability of the perfect saint, who received his knowledge from God, to perceive Him in the various forms in which He manifests Himself through taǧalliyāt (sing. taǧallī, descent), while the one founding his knowledge on his reasoning is bound to the limits of his own intellect. Nonetheless, everyone knows God in the measure of his istiʻdād (preparedness), following the saying ʻaǧz ʻan dark al-idrāk idrāk, “inability of achieving understanding is [in itself a form of ] understanding.”31 Ibn ʻArabī elaborates on this basic notion of brotherhood, applying it to different formal and informal domains. The discourse on artificial generation is but the conclusion of a long discourse of the relations among Divine Names. The whole chapter discusses the aspects of affinity among the asmā’ (Names) and how this is ref lected on different levels of Divine manifestation. In a crucial passage, Ibn ʻArabī states that the similarity of the creatures in this world is not due to the brotherliness between the permanent essences and the creation, but to the function of viceregency played by the creation. In the same way, the spirit takes the shape of the body to manifest the specific dispositions of the Divine Names.32 This implies that the relation of brotherhood is possible only among things that belong to the same level of manifestation. In this sense should be intended the saying “The believer is a mirror for his brother.”33 In the same way the image of the Truth that creatures represent in the lower world is nothing but a relation (nasab). This is the ref lection of the relation among Names that are not opposed to each other by their essences. Continuing his elaboration on the concept of inheritance, Ibn ʻArabī stresses that God inherits the heavens and Earth (being al-W āriṯ, lit. “the Inheritor”) only because the manifested world contains the spirits and the bodies of the prophets, who, being humans, are created in His image (ʻalā ṣūratiHi).34 The relation of resemblance in a derived image appears to be then the central notion of the chapter, exposed from different perspectives.

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The rest of the chapter enumerates the different sciences (ʻ ulūm) that derive from the knowledge of the brotherhood of the Names. Most of these sciences are just mentioned, without describing the process of derivation. For instance, in the knowledge of the secret of brotherhood resides the science of the creation of things by the hand of God and not by the hand of any creature. If one of the images derived from the permanent essences is manifested through the creatures, it is only because the latter borrow this function, not because they possess it.35 Resemblance can be also the result of imitation, which is a key notion in alchemical and magical operations, that, anyway, is not described in this chapter, except for the creation of a human-like being. It seems that, more than this aspect, what lays behind Ibn ʻArabī’s reference to the Nabatean Agriculture is the resemblance between God and humans. It is only because of this that a man is theoretically capable of creating a human-like creature. This perspective seems to be quite close to the one of the Sefer Yetzirah, but here the attainment of spiritual perfection does not imply the ability of imitating God. This perspective, however, is not the one presented in the Filāḥa Nabaṭiyya.

Artifcial creation in the Nabatean Agriculture Pinella Travaglia, Jakko Hämeen-Anttila, and Liana Saif have already discussed the work of Ibn Wa ḥ šiyya and artificial creation comparing it to the Asclepius, the Ǧābirian corpus, and other Arabic texts where a similar procedure is mentioned.36 Ibn Wa ḥ šiyya is mainly known to Western scholarship as the one who attempted deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs37 and as an expert of poisons and toxicology.38 In the Nabatean Agriculture he presents himself as Kasdanian, i.e. of Chaldean ascent.39 The work is highly stratified. The original on which Ibn Wa ḥ šiyya worked was already a compilation and discussion of earlier sources made by the mysterious Qūṯā m ā, who mentions a plethora of unidentified authors of his past, identified as prophets, sages, and magicians. Given the nature and the history of this text, it is often – if not always – difficult to reconstruct coherent opinions about single points. Nonetheless, following the discourse of Qūṯā m ā, it is possible to retrace how he builds his opinion through a plethora of often anonymous quotations. The discussion of the artificial creation of life starts with a terminological statement. The text reports three different terms that define the process, starting from plants, which is the easiest and most diffused kind. In this case it is called tawlīd, which can be translated both as procreation or simply as generation.40 The term, in Arabic, is strictly connected to the idea of childbirth (walad means “son,” both of animals and humans). Others, the text says, call the same process taʻ f īn, indicating putrefaction, or takw īn, “shaping, origination, formation,” which includes the meanings of all the three terms.41 The three words allude, according to the author of the text, to different processes that may concur to the production of an artificial living being. Plants and animals can be generated according to a process of tawkīn or of tawlīd, or by a combination of the two. The author is keen to point out that,

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while the process of takw īn is the same for plants and animals, the two processes of tawlīd are different, but similar (al-tawlīdān mutašākilān).42 The Filāḥa, being a work on agriculture, is mainly concerned with the generation of plants, which seems to involve the basic process that becomes more articulated with the creation of animals.43 Only the ancient magician (sāḥir) ʻAnkabūṯā described the generation of a human being in his “Book on generation” (Kitāb al-tawlīd).44 As reported also by Ibn ʻArabī, this artificial man, while complete in his parts, was unable to speak or to understand.45 ʻAnkabūṯa was also able to combine (awṣala) with the body of the creature what was necessary to survive for one year.46 Travaglia devoted much attention to the alleged source of this passage, the Kitāb asrār al-šams (“The Book of Secrets of the Sun”) attributed to Asqūlūbiyā, identifiable with the Asclepius, the disciple of Hermes.47 This text describes “how the Sun creates the Cosmic Man (kayfa kawwana al-šams al-insān al-kawnī ) that is not generated as it is usual for men.”48 The passage can be read as the Sun is just the provider of heat that causes the fermentation at the basis of the generation of life, a view that finds confirmation in the rest of the text, as it will be shown later. In this case the expression al-insān al-kawnī can be interpreted “man of the cosmos” or “created man,” following Hämeen-Anttila, who reads “how the Sun had generated the Generated Man who was not born according to the normal pattern.”49 This creation may also allude to the spontaneous generation of the first man, a theory attested already in the Kitāb sirr al-ḫalīqa attributed to Apollonius of Thyana.50 The Kitab asrār al-šams, according to the author of the Filāḥa is a magical text, reporting detailed information about how to construct talismans, whose art is more complex and refined than the one of artificial generation. Despite these rather naturalistic considerations, the Kitab asrār al-šams, according to the author of the Filāḥa, is a text about magic, reporting detailed information about how to construct talismans, whose art is more complex and refined than the one of artificial generation. And all the other occurrences of this title in the Filāḥa seem to confirm this statement. Asclepius himself is considered as a semi-divine figure, echoing the characteristics proper to the Greek and Roman divinity of medicine. In a passage of the Nabatean Agriculture it is reported that the Rasūl al-Šams described all sorts of medicaments, whose healing power does not come from the substance itself, but from Asclepius’ own power ( fa-sirr hāḏihi al-quwwa allatī ta’tīhi min Rasūl al-Šams lā min fiʻ l al-dawā’).51 So, these two figures (ʻAnkābūṯā and Asclepius) are for Qūṯā m ā, respectively, a magician and a semi-divine healer, who discussed and accomplished the difficult task of artificial generation of life. This magical/supernatural perspective is embraced in other places of the text, where the Filāḥa asserts the importance of the position of the stars for the artificial generation of plants, the main topic of this section discussed here. Some operations to reproduce daffodils, for instance, should be carried out on Friday.52 Others require a specific position of the moon, safe from the inf luence of Mars and Saturn (the two malefic planets), and with the Tails (of the Dragon) in a favourable position.53

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Nonetheless, in the same long section about artificial generation, the author of the Filāḥa describes artificial generation, comparing it with spontaneous generation and based on the natural phenomenon of putrefaction (taʻ f īn), which is one of the three terms introduced at the beginning of the discussion. First, he reports of wondrous places in India or Ceylon (Sarandīb) where spontaneous generation of creatures that resemble human beings occurs. In China there is also a mountain near two springs, made of rock mixed with red soil, where lumps of clay roll down and end up in stagnant water. At the end of spring these lumps crack open and limbs or entire human bodies appear. These creatures look like humans but are unable to speak or move. Sometimes it is possible to hear cries and tumult, but in the text the two phenomena are not clearly interrelated.54 This episode is used to remark that the procedure of generation is just a consequence of the natural processes. In China people sometimes take this clay and let it putrefy to obtain a human-like figure that survives only for one day, without any physical or intellectual ability. This, the text stresses, is possible only in specific places, where soil and clay replicate the conditions of human womb,55 based on a process of imitation of laws of nature.56 The discussion about the putrefactions seems to depend on two books allegedly composed by Adam,57 the Kitāb al-tawlīdāt, “Book on generations,” that arrived admittedly confused (mušawaš )58 and the Kitāb asrār al-Qamar, “The Book of the Secrets of the Moon,” transmitted by Seth and his party.59 All these sources appear to be, unfortunately, unidentifiable. The question of the transmission of the texts of Adam by the Sethians can be also read in a more partisan way, as Qūṯā m ā often criticizes them for not having respected the legacy of Adam, perverting his teaching and abandoning the cut of the idols.60 He also deems them as powerful magicians to be feared, possibly as a consequence of their abandoning the proper path of Adam.61 This can be viewed as a reason for the personal attempts made by Qūṯā m ā in reproducing artificial creation according to Adam’s instructions.62 Because of the scarce reliability of the texts of Adam, Qūṯā m ā had to resort to experiments (taǧriba) in order to verify the reliability of the procedures described in it. He commissioned the generation of some plants to people who were already versed in such arts and observed that only part of them worked, following the instructions found in the book.63 These instructions are focused on the constructions of pits for putrefaction, in a process that does not involve the use of semen (being human or animal) to accomplish the task. The process is also summarily reported in two variants: Adam described how to construct a pit for putrefaction as a troublesome and odious work, being more a more difficult and long [task to accomplish] than the one described by the Apostle of the Sun in the Book of the Secrets of the Sun, on the practices of the sacred secrets. And I think that Adam’s description is the right one.64 The necessity of constructing a pit testifies to the fact that, for Qūṯā m ā, the process of artificial generation has to involve putrefaction, as explicitly declared in

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another passage, with reference to his trials based on the books of Adam.65 He also expresses his preference, possibly based on his experience, for Adam’s version of the pit over the one attributed to Asclepius, despite it being more complicated. Considering that Asclepius is, for him, a semi-divine figure, we can also infer that Qūṯā m ā is here considering more valuable what we have called a naturalistic perspective that resorts back to the reproducibility of a process, based on given instruction and experimentation. It is then possible to retrace two diverse positions in the Filāḥa regarding the way in which artificial generation can be effectively reproduced. One that adopts practices that are closer to magic, for which very few details are provided. The other, more naturalistic, which sees the spontaneous or artificial generation of life as similar processes obeying laws of nature and happening in specific conditions. Qūṯā m ā seems to maintain a position comparable to the one found in the Ǧābiryan corpus, where the creation of artificial life is based on the imitation of nature, where the putrefaction is seen as the basic procedure for spontaneous generation.66 In this framework, magic is seen as a form of imitation of nature that also encompasses heavenly bodies. When looking at the definition of talisman found in the Filāḥa, this holistic approach seems to be more evident. It echoes the one found in the Futūḥāt and in the Ġāyat al-Ḥakīm, i.e. a reference to the connection between the root Ṭ L S M and the idea of being empowered over something, which works only during specific moments of time and under certain configurations of the sky. The same phenomenon, however, is first related to certain kinds of weeds like esparto and other plants that suffocate the others in the area where they grow. This specific property of overpowering makes it, according to the text of the Filāḥa, a talisman67 that, like the most common object identified as such, operates only in specific times, like a defined season or moment of the day.68 Artificial creation, as emerged from the words of Qūṯā m ā translated and elaborated by Ibn Wa ḥ šiyya, seems to be based on a wholesome conception of the cosmos, where the process of putrefaction is central for the generation of life. Magic, when called into cause, is a clever and complex way of reproducing natural processes that also include the inf luence of the planets.

Artifcial creation of life in the Futūḥāt One of the central issues raised by Ibn ʻArabī in the passage about artificial generation regards the question of whether the being created by ʻAnkabūṯā was alive or not. The way of production of this creature reminds one of Jesus’ miracles, often reported in Islamic sources, of bringing to life clay birds.69 In the Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam (Bezels of Wisdom), another fundamental work of Ibn ʻArabī, he addresses this issue in the chapter devoted to Jesus.70 Here the episode sees Jesus, being generated by the Spirit of God, insuff lating the birds with his own breath that, symbolically, transfers the r ūḥ to clay, making it alive. In another episode narrated in the Fuṣūṣ, the Sā mir ī, lit. “the Samaritan,” rebelled against Moses and built

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a golden calf idol71 which was not able to move or speak. Then, asked by Moses what he was doing, the Sā mir ī answered “‘I beheld what they beheld not,’ he said, ‘and I seized a handful of dust from the messenger’s track, and cast it into the thing.’” 72 The messenger is the Archangel Gabriel, who is called also al-r ūḥ al-amīn, the Faithful Spirit. Walking on the sand the latter imbibed it with his own spirit, giving it the faculty of animating the golden calf, which was able to produce its verse. These two episodes, involving the vivification of artificial beings, have some traits in common with the creation of a homunculus as described in the Nabatean Agriculture and could have worked as a background for Ibn ʻArabī’s acceptance of its narrative as plausible. The main difference between the two is the presence of the spirit (r ūḥ) as the element animating the artificial creature, coming from outside the immediate context of composition of the body (the breath of Jesus or the sand from Gabriel’s footsteps). For Ibn ʻArabī the two represent different modalities of creation of life, that can be counted among the miracles and not as a form of magic. As for the artificial creation of a human-like being, the modality he is focusing on is entirely human, without any intervention of the Divine, being in the form of an angel or of a prophet. This modality is defined with the expression al-ḫalq al-insānī f ī’l-ḫalq (human creation in the lower world). It recurs in two places in the Futūḥāt. One is the passage quoted above. The other is in Chapter 305 (“On the succession of the spiritual states in the hearts of men coming from the Mu ḥammadan Presence”).73 The topic of this chapter (belonging to the same long section on manāzil as Chapter 335) is closely linked to the theme of creation, as it discusses the knowledge of the spirits that control bodies (al-arwāḥ al-mudabbira li’l-aǧsām).74 However, the expression is here referred to the createdness of humankind, not to the thing men create by themselves. This stresses the unicity of the passage about artificial life as it is one of the few, if not the only passage, to explicitly deal with this topic. Nonetheless, this chapter is important as it comments on the famous Prophetic saying “I was a prophet when Adam was between water and clay” that recurs also in the wording “and Adam was between spirit and body.” 75 Put in these terms, the creation of Adam resembles more closely the vivification of the birds or of the calf than the one of the human-like being presented in the Nabatean Agriculture, as the latter, again, does not involve the spirit. The episodes mentioned in the Fuṣūṣ share some similarities with the one presented in the Ǧābirian corpus, which is based on the construction of a miṯāl, a model of the body using clay or similarly malleable materials.76 Ǧābir distinguishes between different modalities of artificial creation. The artificial creation of a human being is described as based on the use of a metallic sphere imitating the motions of the spheres.77 This apparel is described as being made of glass, stone, or crystal, in which should be put all the ingredients for the preparation of the body, including red soil from Kirm ān and Mukr ān, or organic material of the being the performer of the action wants to create, being it semen78 or f lesh.79 The use of red soil coming from the East cannot but remind one of the story reported in the Nabatean Agriculture. In both cases the use of a specific kind of terrain is

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crucial for the success of the operation, despite the fact that the process described in the Ǧābirian text does not necessarily involve putrefaction, being closer to the automata of Egyptian and Greek tradition80 than to a naturalistic process of generation. In all the versions of this process, from the one of the Nabatean agriculture to the automata, however, there is no intervention of the spirit. Only in the miracle of Jesus do the birds appear to be alive. In all other cases the result is limited to an animated body that, regardless of its constitution, is able to perform very basic actions. Ibn ʻArabī, when considering the artificial creature, is explicitly referring to a being possessing, at least, blood and f lesh. Nonetheless he shows his doubts about it being fully human, or only in its shape. The passage of the Futūḥāṭ, in its scantiness, can be read at least in two ways. One is that the creation of this being starts from organic materials in a broad sense: collecting the bones, f lesh, and organs of animals, the body comes out as a puzzle of different parts. The other way is the use of a single animal, whose body is partially or totally transformed during the process. Ibn ʻArabī could simply refer to the nature of the creature generated: it is said to be an animal in the sense that it is animated, moving its body, but without the ability of speaking or understanding. In this sense, the body of the humanly created man can be also considered as constituted by parts, being then closer to the automata of Ǧābirian tradition or the golem of the Jewish one. This impression is supported by the question following the one analyzed above. Ibn ʻArabī is asking what is preventing the ritual from functioning, i.e. from giving the creature a human soul. It also implies that, in his eyes, the ritual is expected to work. The lack of intervention of the Divine insuff lating the body with the spirit appears to be crucial if we consider the case of the miracle of Jesus or the golden calf of the Sā mir ī. Ibn ʻArabī, however, identifies this in other elements that are not related to the intervention of the r ūḥ (spirit). He is focusing on the preparedness of the creature, which is not apt to receive a rational soul (nafs nāṭiqa). This situation is said to have been possibly decreed (yuqḍā ), thence it is not a consequence of the acts of the officiant, but it is established by God. This soul should be accepted by the creature and it should come from the Universal One. The use of the expression nafs al-kull (the spirit of the universe) instead of the more common al-nafs al-kulliyya (the Universal spirit) recurs less than 10 times in the Futūḥāt and it is rather unusual in his writings. Five of these occurrences are found in a single passage in Chapter 371,81 known for its cosmological diagrams.82 This chapter describes the heavens that compose the cosmos and their characters. It seems possible that, considering the topics of the quotation above and of Chapter 371, Ibn ʻArabī in both cases relied upon sources using the same lexicon. The expression nafs al-kull is also present in Ibn ʻArabī’s earlier works composed when he was still in al-Andalus.83 If we consider that the topic of Chapter 371 is presented also in Ibn ʻArabī’s Kitāb inšā’ al-dawā’ir (Book of the Production of Circles),84 an earlier work of Ibn ʻArabī, it is possible to argue that these discourses could have been based on readings made in his Andalusī period.

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The use of such a peculiar terminology and the absence of clear sources leads also to think that this passage contains Ibn ʻArabī’s own questions. The shift to the theological argument could confirm this impression. Ibn ʻArabī recognizes the enormity of such an act, but he also feels forced to recognize that this creation should have happened. This is a crucial passage. Ibn ʻArabī says that it is clear that this happened because it is stated in the Nabatean Agriculture, making it an authority in the matter of creation of artificial human life. Here it should be noted that Ibn ʻArabī refers to a specific kind of generation, that is nor spontaneous, nor related to animals. The scope of Ibn ʻArabī’s interest in this phenomenon is limited to the possibility of producing a body similar to the human one, able to accomplish simple actions, like opening and closing eyes. Putrefaction plays a fundamental role in the process of artificial and spontaneous generation of life in both the Filāḥa and the Futūḥāt and it seems to be the basis for Ibn ʻArabī’s consideration of the Nabatean Agriculture as a reliable source. Ibn ʻArabī seems to recognize two steps in the creation of life, starting from Adam himself, one in the preparation of the body, and another in the insuff lation of the spirit. The rays of the stars’ lights reach the elemental world, and it transmits the rays to the elements able to produce in themselves the generation (takw īn). This hastens the putrefaction (taʻ f īn) in the elements, due to the presence of heat in the lights and of water and air in humidity. In this way the essences of the engendered beings are manifested. God made the clay of Adam ferment with his hand, and fermentation (taḫmīr) is a form of putrefaction.85 This same concept is repeated elsewhere in the Futūḥāt, with reference to plants86 and to wondrous animals generated by the heat of the rays of the Sun hitting the humid and cold winds of certain mountains.87 In the same way as in the Filāḥa, this heat is provided by the Sun, directly or through its rays illuminating the other stars. More precisely, this approach seems to be directly dependent on what the Filāḥa reports from the Kitāb asrār al-Šams (Book of the Secrets of the Sun) and the creation of the insān al-kawnī, the “generated man.” This expression does not recur in the Futūḥāt but may be seen as corresponding to the body of Adam before the insuff lation of the spirit, at least in Ibn ʻArabī’s own point of view. This connection is highly hypothetical and, at this stage of the research, is impossible to prove. What remains is a strong continuity in the conception of generation of life and a close resemblance between the spontaneous process and the artificial one, both imitating the nature in its process of putrefaction/ fermentation. An element of discontinuity between the two approaches is the presence of the semen in Ibn ʻArabī’s account of ʻAnkabūṯā’s operation that is not present in the Filāḥa. This is anyway mentioned in the Ǧābir īan corpus and, most importantly, in similar operations reported in the Ġāyat al-ḥakīm, as shown by Liana Saif.88 The scanty account found in the Futūḥāt does not offer any element to establish a

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direct relation between the process of ḥiḍāna (incubation) reported in the Picatrix and the one of fermentation accepted by Ibn ʻArabī. Other similarities, however, like the one in the definition of the meaning of the word talisman, may imply that Ibn ʻArabī knew the work of Maslama al-Qur ṭ ubī. It is also possible that he had access to the passage about artificial creation taken from Nabatean Agriculture through a third text that had already included in its account the mention of the semen as part of the process. Despite the doubts that this difference may raise, which only further inquiries in the history of texts and ideas in al-Andalus may try to dissipate, the formal and intellectual continuity between Qūṯā m ā and Ibn ʻArabī seems to be indisputable.

Instead of a conclusion Such a preliminary study, based on a single reference, can be considered just a premise for a work that remains to be done in the field of understating the position occupied by magic and the occult in the works of Ibn ʻArabī. There are two elements that seem to be evident and that could be taken as leads for future research. The first is the fact that a complex and delicate process such as the artificial generation of a human-like being is carried out following a natural process like fermentation. This implies that also the magical aspect does not exceed the boundaries of nature, excluding the approaches based on the use of letters and formulas found in the Jewish tradition. The other element, directly derived by the first, is the fact that also astral inf luences, both for Ibn ʻArabī and Qūṯā m ā, are intended as natural. The inf luence of the stars, at least in the process of fermentation, is not spiritual, but simply a form of transmission of the heat from the Sun to Earth. Also in the case of a subtler relation between the planets and human life, all seem to be considered as part of a shared cosmic space, which has nothing of the supernatural and obeys rules that include different domains, spiritual and physical alike. Proceeding in this direction it is possible to see how occult rituals apparently breaking the Islamic rule that imposes one to avoid the imitation of the Creator, are an imitation of nature itself. In this sense uḫuwwa, the brotherliness in whose framework Ibn ʻArabī inserted the quotation from the Nabatean Agriculture, is but an allusion to the similarity between the two processes, the natural and the artificial.

Notes 1 The same episode is mentioned in Genesis 15:10. 2 Moshe Idel, Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artificial Anthropoid, SUNY series in Judaica (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990). 3 Ibid., 4. 4 Clementine Recognitiones, Book II, chapter 9. (See Clemens and Silvano Cola, I ritrovamenti (Roma: Città nuova, 1993), 120.

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5 The authorship and dating of this text are quite debated. For a preliminary introduction, see Aryeh Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah: The Book of Creation In Theory and Practice, Revised edition (Boston: S. Weiser, 1997), 1–15. 6 A. Peter Hayman, Sefer Ye ṣira: Edition, Translation and Text-Critical Commentary, Texts and studies in ancient Judaism 104 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 102. 7 With a successful expression Annemarie Schimmel defined Sufism as the “Spiritual dimension of Islam.” Sufis gather around a spiritual master and are often, but not always, organized in orders. The main characteristic differentiating them from Catholic monasticism, is that Sufi are regular Muslims, with a family and a job. For a general introduction to the topic, see William C. Chittick, Sufism: A Beginner’s Guide (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2008). Despite the esoteric nature of a large part of Sufi teachings, they produced an enormous amount of literature, both in prose and poetry, that is still being explored by scholars. 8 For a presentation of the topic, see Michael Muhammad Knight, Magic in Islam (New York: Tarcher, 2016); Noah Gardiner, “Stars and Saints: The Esotericist Astrology of the Sufi Occultist A ḥ mad Al-Būn ī,” Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 12, no. 1 (2017), pp. 39–65; Matthew Melvin-Koushki, “Magic in Islam Between Religion and Science,” Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 14, no. 2 (2019), pp. 255–287. 9 On this, see Noah Gardiner, “Esotericism in a Manuscript Culture – Ahmad Al-Buni and His Readers Through the Mamluk Period by Noah Gardiner” (PhD, University of Michigan, 2014); Denis Gril, “La Science Des Lettres,” in Les Illuminations De La Mecque – Al-Futuḥāt Al-Makkiyya: Textes Choisis, Présentés Et Traduits De L’arabe Sous La Direction De Michel Chodkiewicz Avec La Collaboration Del Cyrille Chodkiewicz Et Denis Gril, ed., Michel Chodkiewicz (Paris: Albin Michel, 1997). 10 This is a disputed topic that deserves a specific study of the idea of similarity between God and man. See Oleg Grabar, “From the Icon to Aniconism: Islam and the Image,” Museum International 55, no. 2 (2003); for some provocative thoughts about this, see Gianroberto Scarcia, Il volto di Adamo: Islam / la questione estetica nell’altro Occidente (Venezia: Il cardo, 1995). 11 Under this respect it is relevant the prohibition (systematically ignored, at least in Persian lands) of representing the figures of living beings with drawings, sculptures, or even (in modern times) photography. This prohibition has many exceptions, like the one allowing the representation of humans and animals with drawings and allowing children to play with puppets. 12 See Moshe Idel, “Golems and God: Mimesis and Confrontation,” in Mythen der Kreativität: Das Schöpferische zwischen Innovation und Hybris, eds., Oliver Krüger, Refika Sariönder, and Annette Deschner (Frankfurt am Main: Lembeck, 2003). 13 Ibid., 228. In this article Idel describes diverse attitudes towards the perspective of challenging God’s creative power as a form of utmost illumination or based on the ability of discovering the occult meaning of letters, like in the Sefer Yetzirah. Despite the similarity between Ibn ʻArabī’s doctrine of the science of letters and the one found in the Sefer Yetzirah, and in commentaries such as those of Saadia Gaon (d. 942, see Saʻadiyya ben Yosef, Mayer Lambert, and René Lévy, Commentaire sur le Séfer Yetzira [Lagrasse: Verdier, 2001]) and Judah Ben Barzilai (d. beginning of 12th century), the process described by Ibn Wa ḥ šiyya and Ibn ʻArabī does not show any similarity (theoretical or practical) with the one alluded to in the Jewish mystical cosmology of the 11th–13th centuries. Therefore, this aspect of the doctrine of the Golem has been only alluded to, without any further development of the inquiry. 14 Idel, “Golems and God,” 228. 15 Ibn ʻArabī, Al-Futūḥāt Al-Makkiyya, with the assistance of ʻAbd al-ʻAzīz Sulṭā n al-Man ṣūb, ed., 12 vols. (Tar ī m: Wiz ā rat al-Ṯaqā fa - al-Ǧumhūriyya al-Yamaniya, 2010), VIII 391. 16 Ibid. 17 The Arabic text has been first edited by Ritter and then by Ashe: see Maslama b. A ḥ mad al-Ma ǧ r īṭī and Hellmut Ritter, Pseudo-Maǧr īṭī Das Ziel Des Weisen: Ġāyat

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20 21

22 23

24 25 26

27 28 29

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Al-Ḥakīm Wa Aḥaqq Al-Natīǧatayn Bi’l-Tadqīm, Studien der Bibliothek Warburg (Leipzig, Berlin: B. G. Teubner, 1933); Maslama b. A ḥ mad al-Majr īṭī and Steven Ashe, Picatrix: Ghayat Al-Hakim The Goal of the Wise (In Sorcery): Ġāyat Al-Ḥākīm Wa-Aḥaqq Al-Natījatayn Bi’l-Taqdīm (Glastonbury: Glastonbury Books, 2007) The Latin text has been edited by Pingree: see David Pingree, Picatrix. The Latin Version of the Ghāyat Al-Ḥakīm: Text. Introduction, Appendices, Indices (London: The Warburg Institute, 1986). For the attribution of the text, see Maribel Fierro, “Bāṭ inism in Al-Andalus. Maslama B. Qā sim Al-Qur ṭ ubī (D. 353/964), Author of the “Rutbat Al-Ḥak ī m” and the “Ghāyat Al-Ḥak ī m (Picatrix),” Studia Islamica, no. 84 (1996). al-Ma ǧ r īṭī and Ritter, Pseudo-Maǧr īṭī das, 7. I would like to thank here Liana Saif for pointing my attention to this similarity and to the one, mentioned below, with the text of the Nabatean Agriculture. This gnoseological discourse finds its core in the idea that man is a talisman for himself because of his idea of self-subsistence (qayyūmiyya), which veils him from his essential dependence from God. Ibn ʻArabī refers here to another nuance of the root Ṭ L S M, that of lowering one’s eye, looking at the ground. See Edward William Lane, An Arabic–English Lexicon (London: Williams and Norgate, 1863), 1867. Ibn ʻArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, VIII 118. Ibn Wa ḥ šiyya and Toufic Fahd, “Al-Fil āḥa Al-Nabaṭ iyya,” 5; vol. 2 di 2; Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila and A ḥ mad ibn ʻAl ī Ibn Wa ḥ sh īyah, The Last Pagans of Iraq: Ibn Waḥ shiyya and His Nabatean Agriculture, Islamic history and civilization 63 (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2006), 94. For a discussion of the possible languages corresponding to this expression, see Hämeen-Anttila and Ibn Wa ḥ sh īyah, The last, 89–91. Hämeen-Anttila and Ibn Wa ḥ sh īyah, The last, 16. For a discussion about its authorship, see Fierro, “B āṭinism in” Mourad Kacimi, “Nuevos datos sobre la autoría de la Rutbat al-ḥakīm y la Ġāyat al-ḥakīm Picatrix” eHumanista/IVITRA 4 (2013). It is Ibn al-Raqqā m’s Kitāb khulāṣat al-ikhtiṣāṣ f ī ma‘rifat al-qūwā wa’l-khawāṣṣ. Its author was born some ten years after the death of Ibn ʻArabī and died in 1315. The fact that an earlier author like Maslama al-Qur ṭ ubī had already had access to it could suggest that in the time span between two figures, the Nabatean Agriculture circulated in al-Andalus. For Ibn al-Raqqā m, see “The Astronomical Tables of Ibn AlRaqqā m a Scientist of Granada.” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 11 (1977); Julio Samsó, “Ibn Al-Raqqā m,” in Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures, ed., Helaine Selin, 2nd ed., (Berlin, Heidelberg, New York: Springer, 2008); Julio Samsó, Las Ciencias De Los Antiguos En Al-Andalus (Almería: Fundación Ibn Tufayl, 2011), 564–9. It is Ibn al-Raqqā m’s Kitāb khulāṣat al-ikhtiṣāṣ f ī ma‘rifat al-qūwā wa’l-khawāṣṣ. For Ibn al-Raqqā m see “1977 Samsó,” “Samsó 2008,” Samsó, Samsó 2011, 564–9. See Alexander D. Knysh, Ibn ʻArabi in the Later Islamic Tradition: The Making of a Polemical Image in Medieval Islam, SUNY series in Islam (New York: SUNY Press, 1998), 88–112. For a thorough discussion of the topic, see the still-valuable Michel Chodkiewicz, An Ocean Without Shore: Ibn ʻArabî, the Book, and the Law (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993). Toshihiko Izutsu, Creation and the Timeless Order of Things: Essays in Islamic Mystical Philosophy (Ashland: White Cloud Press, 1994); William C. Chittick, The SelfDisclosure of God: Principles of Ibn Al-ʻArabī’s Cosmology, SUNY series in Islam (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998). Ibn ʻArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, VIII 108. The Idea is already present in Ibn Qasī and Mu ḥammad al-Amr ā n ī, Kitāb Khalʻ Al-Naʻ layn (Rabāṭ: IMBH, 1997), 238. Ibn ʻArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, VIII 108–9.

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30 Ibn al-ʿArabī and Stephen Hirtenstein, The Alchemy of Human Happiness (F ī Maʿrifat K īmiyāʾ Al-Saʿāda), Mystical treatises of Muhyiddin Ibn ʻArabi (Oxford: Anqa Publishing, 2017). 31 Ibn ʻArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, VIII 109. This should be intended in the light of Ibn ʻArabī’s idea of talisman reported above. 32 Ibid., VIII 116. 33 Ibid., 113–4. 34 Ibn ʻArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, VIII 117. On this topic, see also Chittick, The Selfdisclosure, 294–300. 35 Ibn ʻArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, 114–5. 36 Pinella Travaglia, “Asclepio e la produzione artificiale della vita nella Agricoltura Nabatea,” in Hermetism from late antiquity to humanism = La tradizione ermetica dal mondo tardo-antico all’umanesimo: Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi, Napoli, 20–24 novembre 2001. Eds., Paolo Lucentini, Ilaria Parri, and V. P. Compagni, Instrumenta patristica et mediaevalia 40 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003). 37 Ahmad Ibn Wahshiyah and Pforzheimer Bruce Rogers Collection (Library of Congress), Ancient Alphabets and Hieroglyphic Characters Explained With an Account of the Egyptian Priests, Their Classes, Initiation, and Sacrifices (London: Printed by W. Bulmer and Co. and sold by G. and W. Nicol, 1806). 38 Ibn Wa ḥ šiyya, A ḥ mad b. ʻAl ī Levey, Martin, Medieval Arabic Toxicology: The Book on Poisons of Ibn Waḥ shīya and Its Relation to Early Indian and Greek Texts, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series vol. 56, pt. 7 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1966). 39 Hämeen-Anttila and Ibn Wa ḥ sh īyah, The last, 16, 26n. 40 Ibn Wa ḥ šiyya and Toufic Fahd, Al-Filāḥa Al-Nabaṭiyya, vol. 1 (1 di 2), 1317 See also Liana Saif, “The Cows and the Bees: Arabic Sources and Parallels for Pseudo-Plato’s Liber Vaccae (Kit āb Al-Nawā m īs),” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 79 (2016): 10. 41 Ibid. This tripartition echoes the one made by Ǧābir b. Ḥayyā n for the artificial creation of animals and humans; see Paul Kraus, Jābir ibn Ḥayyān, contribution à l’histoire des idées scientifiques dans l’Islam. Volume I, Le corpus des écrits jābiriens, Mémoires présentés à l’Institut d’Égypte (Al-Qā hira (Le Caire): Institut français d’archéologie orientale, 1943), 103. The Filāḥa makes clear that “Men have not the power of inventing creating from nothing (iḫtirāʻ ), or of bringing it to existence (īǧād) in the sense of taking it out (iḫrāǧ ) from non-being (ʻadam) to being (wuǧūd)” (Ibn Wa ḥ šiyya and Toufic Fahd, al-Filāḥa al-nabaṭiyya, 1317). This assertion, while closely resembling the one made by the Ǧābirian text mentioned by Kraus, uses a lexicon that seems to be more theological in the terminology it uses, like the reference to creatio ex nihilo and to inventio as a form of creation. 42 Ibn Wa ḥ šiyya and Toufic Fahd, al-Filāḥa al-nabaṭiyya, 1317. Referring again to Ǧābir, it seems difficult to make a parallel with the idea of the two creations Kraus describes, one belonging to God and the other, imitating the first, to men. Kraus, Jābir ibn Ḥayyān, 102. 43 Ibn Wa ḥ šiyya and Toufic Fahd, al-Filāḥa al-nabaṭiyya, 1318. 44 The book is not extant, and its alleged author is one of the names that HämeenAnttila considers cyphered by Ibn Wa ḥ šiyya or by Quṯā m ā himself, in order to protect the secrets of the Nabateans. On this, see Hämeen-Anttila and Ibn Wa ḥ sh īyah, The last, 19–21 Nonetheless, it seems possible to retrace a certain logic in the names, like Qūṯā m ā could be based on the biblical quthamim, a group of Samaritans from the city of Qutha. It should be also noted that the text here employs the term kawwana (same verb and same form from which derives the term takw īn) to indicate the process of artificial generation enacted by ʻAnkabūṯā. It should be noted that a book with the same title is attributed to Adam (Adam ā) in the following pages, dealing with the topic of artificial generation of plants.

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45 Ibn Wa ḥ šiyya and Toufic Fahd, “Ibn Wa ḥ šiyya et al.” 1318; Travaglia, “Travaglia 2003,” 323. 46 Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila, “Artificial Man and Spontaneous Generation in Ibn Wa ḥ shiyya’s Al-Filāḥa an-Nabaṭ iyya,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 153, no. 1 (2003): 42 The verb awṣala indicates “to connect to” or “to combine with.” It seems possible that, in this case, in the materials used for the preparation of the body of the creature Apollonius and ʻAnk ābūṯā inserted composts to nourish it. The author of the text says that he could not find out the stratagem used by his predecessors to accomplish this. 47 The issue of this Hermes has been discussed by Ibid., 41 no. 21. 48 The whole passage has been translated and discussed in Saif, “The Cows,” 15–8 Saif reads this passage as it is Asclepius who created the cosmic man. 49 Hämeen-Anttila and Ibn Wa ḥ sh īyah, The last, 292 It should be noted that the Hermetic book dedicated to Asclepius refers to the creation of an “ousedes man,” an essential or existential man that only later is covered with f lesh and bones in order to act in the creation; see Ilaria Ramelli, A. D. Nock, and A.-J. Festugière, Corpus Hermeticum: Edizione E Commento Di A. D. Nock E A.-J. Festugière. Edizione Dei Testi Ermitici Copti E Commento Di I. Ramelli, with the assistance of Corpus Hermeticum, Il pensiero occidentale (Milano: Bompiani, 2014), 524. Nonetheless, the passage in the Hermetic corpus lacks any reference to the Sun. 50 See Kraus, Jābir ibn Ḥayyān, 121 no. 4. 51 Ibn Wa ḥ šiyya and Toufic Fahd, “Ibn Wa ḥ šiyya et al.” 1383–4. 52 Ibid., 1332. 53 Ibid., 1331; Saif, “The Cows,” 14–15. 54 See Ibn Wa ḥ šiyya and Toufic Fahd, al-Filāḥa al-nabaṭiyya, 1323–4; Hämeen-Anttila and Ibn Wa ḥ sh īyah, The last, 356–8. 55 In this passage the use of bright red clay is also mentioned (ṭīn aḥmar ḫalūqī ). This material is called also “Pure red clay” (ṭīn aḥmar ḥurr). The red colour can be read as a reference to the redness of Adam, as alluded to in Rabbinic literature (Adam seen as a derivation of dam, blood); see Leigh N. B. Chipman, “Mythic Aspects of the Process of Adam’s Creation in Judaism and Islam,” Studia Islamica, no. 93 (2001): 16, doi:10.2307/1596106. It should be also noted that the fact that this phenomenon happens at the end of spring puts it in relation to astronomical cycles, even though the process does not involve magic. A similar procedure is described in Ibn Wa ḥ šiyya’s Kitāb al-sumūn (Book of Poisons; see Saif, “The Cows,” 37–8). In this case red soil is fed to a cow (mixed with other minerals) to prepare it to give birth to a creature different from a calf: “the head of a human but it is tall, big and wild. It has two feet like a cow’s feet with [hoofs like] a cow’s hoofs, and two feet as a cow’s without hoofs but one f lesh part only. It has a delicate tail as if on the rump of a sheep, but this tail is on its face as the extremity of a sheep’s rump. It eats and lives; it does not have a hump like that of a cow and its colour is a whitish yellow and has a good set of hair of that colour, if its smells the odour of wine it gets extremely agitated. This [animal] kills by being looked at but only after seven days of its birth and emergence.” Saif, “The Cows,” 37. 56 Ibn Wa ḥ šiyya and Toufic Fahd, “Ibn Wa ḥ šiyya et al.” 1325. 57 In this case I simply translate the word kitāb, which may have different meanings in a religious context in Arabic, not last a revealed book. The Kitāb asrār al-qamar, for instance, is explicitly said to be the result of a direct revelation of the Moon to Seth; see Ibid., 1335. 58 Ibid., 1334. 59 Ibid., 1326. 60 Ibid., 993; Hämeen-Anttila and Ibn Wa ḥ sh īyah, The last, 170–1). 61 Ibn Wa ḥ šiyya and Toufic Fahd, “Ibn Wa ḥ šiyya et al.” 322. 62 Ibid., 1335. 63 Ibid., 1333–4. 64 Ibn Wa ḥ šiyya and Toufic Fahd, “Ibn Wa ḥ šiyya et al.” 1335.

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65 “the fundament of the generation of all bodies composed by the four elements is putrefaction of humidity through heat and dryness.” Ibid., 1326. 66 See Ibn Wa ḥ šiyya and Toufic Fahd, al-Filāḥa al-nabaṭiyya, 1321; Saif, “The Cows,” 9, 14. 67 Knowing the language of the originals on which Ibn Wa ḥ šiyya 68 Ibn Wa ḥ šiyya and Toufic Fahd, “Ibn Wa ḥ šiyya et al.” 1465. 69 The episode is reported in Qur’ā n 3:49 and 5:110. For a general perspective, see Mary Dzon, “Jesus and the Birds in Medieval Abrahamic Traditions,” Traditio 66 (2011); Neal Robinson, “Creating Birds from Clay: A Miracle of Jesus in the Qur’ā n and in Classical Muslim Exegesis,” The Muslim World 79, no. 1 (1989). A similar episode, with more complex eschatological implications is the one of Jesus and the speaking skull; see Roberto Tottoli, “The Story of Jesus and the Skull in Arabic Literature: The Emergence and Growth of a Religious Tradition,” 28 (2003). 70 This work includes 27 chapters, each one devoted to the figure of a prophet (recognized as such by Islamic tradition) and to a specific aspect of the spiritual or cosmological doctrines that is related to him. See Mu ḥammad ibn ʻAl ī Mu ḥy ī al-Dī n Ibn al-ʻArabī and Binyamin Abrahamov, Ibn Al-ʻArabi’s Fuṣuṣ Al-Ḥikam: An Annotated Translation of “The Bezels of Wisdom,” Routledge sufi series 16 (London, New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2015). 71 This episode is reported in Qur’ā n 2:51–54; 7:148–53; Ṭa-Ha 20:83–97. 72 Qur’ā n 20:96, A. J. Arberry, The Holy Koran (New York: Macmillan, 1953), 140. 73 Ibn ʻArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, VII 396. 74 Ibid., VII 396–7. 75 Ibid., VII 399. This tradition circulated widely with the wording Kuntu nabiyyan wa Ādam bayna al-mā’ wa al-ṭīn. References to a similar wording can be found in Musnad Ibn Ḥanbal, 17150 (wa Adam munǧadil f ī ṭīnatihi). Al-Suy ūṭī considers this wording unsound and gives preference to wa Ādama bayna al-r ūḥ wa al- ǧasad, see Ǧalā l al-Dī n al-Suy ūṭī, Al-Durar Al-Muntaṯira F ī Al-Aḥādīṯ Al-Muštahira (al-Riyāḍ: ʻIm āda Šu’ūn al-Maktabāt), 163, no. 331 This status of unfinishedness could easily remind of the Hebrew term golem, a human creature of clay that seeks to imitate God’s work. Golem connotes exactly the unfinished human being. See Ibn ʻArabī, Al-Futūḥāt Al-Makkiyya, 9 vols. (Bayr ūt: Dā r al-kutub al-‘ilmiyya, 1999), V, 34. This tradition circulated widely with the wording Kuntu nabiyyan wa Ādam bayna al-mā’ wa al-ṭīn. References to a similar wording can be found in Musnad Ibn Ḥanbal, 17150 (wa Adam munǧadil f ī ṭīnatihi). Al-Suy ūṭī considers this wording unsound and gives preference to wa Ādama bayna al-r ūḥ wa al- ǧasad, see al-Suy ūṭī, al-Suyūṭī, 163, no. 331. See also Idel, Golem, 232. 76 Kraus, Jābir ibn Ḥayyān, 103–12. This notion clearly echoes the generation of a golem in Jewish tradition, for which see, for general reference, Idel, Golem Kraus, Jābir ibn Ḥayyān, 103–12. 77 I am here referring to Kraus’ reconstruction of the Kitāb al-taǧmīʻ . The topic of the relation between the Ǧābirian corpus, the Nabatean Agriculture on one side, and the Sufi occult tradition on the other needs a separate study to be properly addressed. Here I will limit myself to some brief considerations about the artificial creation of human life and the different processes that could lead to it. See Kraus, Jābir ibn Ḥayyān, 109. 78 In another passage it seems that semen is necessary only to produce beings able to emit a verse or speak (nāṭiq). See Kraus, Jābir ibn Ḥayyān, 116. 79 Ibid., 111–2. 80 Ibid., 113–4. 81 I want to thank Sophie Tyser for sharing with me an early version of her study on the diagrams of this chapter of the Futūḥāt. See Sophie Tyser, “Visualizing the Architecture of the Universe: Ibn al-ʿArabī’s Diagrams in Chapter 371 of the Meccan Openings,” in Visualizing Sufism (1200–1600), Islamicate Intellectual History Series, ed., Giovanni Maria Martini (Brill, forthcoming in 2021).

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82 Ibn ʻArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, IX 337. This passage is part of a large quotation that Ibn ʻArabī says comes from Ḫuṭba f ī naḍad al-ʻālam (sermon about the layer of the created world), an otherwise unknown work. This could have been an earlier work, as the presence of similar terminology in the Kitāb al-isf ār would suggest. In the same passage occurs also the expression al-r ūḥ al-qudsī al-kull that resonates with al-nafs alkull and would suggest an alternative use of al-kull instead of the more usual al-kullī in the early writings of Ibn ʻArabī. 83 Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi and Angela Jaffray, The Secrets of Voyaging: Kitab Al-Isfar ‘an Nata’ij Al-Asfar, 1st ed., Mystical Treatises of Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Ara (Oxford: Anqa Publishing, 2016), 100. In this passage of the Kitāb al-isf ār, the term is referred to the metaphorical figure of a woman welcoming the Intellect, represented as a slave of the Supreme Master. 84 Ibn ʻArabī, Paul Fenton and Maurice Gloton, La Production Des Cercles: Kitāb Inshā’ Ad-Dawā’ir Al-Ilāhiyya, Philosophie Imaginaire 30 (Paris: Editions de l’Eclat, 1996), Text arabe etabli par H. S. Nyberg. 85 Ibn ʻArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, IV 183–4. 86 Ibid., 148. 87 Ibid., 184. Here Ibn ʻArabī tells something about the generation and existence of a white f lying snake, resistant to fire and found in certain areas of Western al-Andalus. This animal is called by Ibn ʻArabī šalmandār, that would immediately recall the salamander, that is called in Arabic samandar/samandal. For a possible Eastern origin of some of the elements of this story (that deserves further inquiry) see Gianroberto Scarcia, “Leucippidi E Dioscuri in Iran: 1. Samand E Hing – 2. Zur E Arzur,” Annali di Ca’ Foscari, 1970. 88 See Saif, “The Cows,” 12, 43–4.

6 FRAGMENTS OF A JEWISH MAGICAL TRADITION IN THE LIBRARY OF GIOVANNI PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA Flavia Buzzetta

Introduction Vultivoli are those who, in order to manipulate the moods of men, shape the image of those they try to ruin in a malleable material such as wax or silt […] Imaginarii are those who fabricate images, as if they were subjecting them to the power of spirits, in order to know uncertain things.1 In commenting on a passage by Varro on the various types of divination, John of Salisbury used these words to introduce two categories of practitioners who exercise their arts through plastic or pictorial “effigies.” The simulacra used in these techniques are magical artefacts capable of conditioning and harming the people represented based on the sympathetic bonds that link the visible and invisible worlds, the human and spiritual worlds. Used since ancient times in different forms of magic, especially in love and aggressive magic, these original artefacts take on different functions in various traditions depending on the purpose: domination, enchantment, punishment, or death. Evidence of these objects can also be found in the Renaissance and in particular in the Christian Kabbalah, whose origins must be traced back to the cultural exchanges between Jews and Christians at the end of the fifteenth century.2 Re-elaborating various elements taken from the Jewish esoteric tradition in a Christian perspective, this current of thought collected and transmitted various magical and Kabbalistic themes unknown to the Latin world of the fifteenth century. By placing them in a new speculative context, it favoured their diffusion and knowledge by a public that was not Jewish only. The “magical and kabbalistic” encounter between Jews and Christians was favoured by cultural mediations and linguistic conceptual interpretations by Jewish intellectuals, sometimes

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converts, the best known of whom was Flavius Mithridates, translator and collaborator of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, historical founder of the Christian Kabbalah.3

Liber de homine and Sefer Malachim Among the manuscripts feverishly written by Flavius Mithridates in a short span of time to introduce Pico to the “mysteries” of the Jews, there is one that contains several references to the magical practice linked to the use of the wax figurines and the wall drawings.4 This is the codex Vat. Ebr. 189, which provides a selection of mystical texts imbued with magical and folkloric elements, traceable to the Ashkenazi Hasidic movement that emerged in Germany between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries around the figures of Yehuda he-Ḥasid and his student Eleazar of Worms.5 Divided into several sections that correspond to as many treatises of a not better identified Liber de anima,6 the codex Vat. Ebr. 189 contains references to the technique of the wax figurines in the tenth treatise entitled Liber de homine.7 The Liber de homine or Decimus liber de anima, according to the titles given in ff. 398r and 400v, respectively, presents itself as a non-systematic, at times inhomogeneous treatise,8 which collects various magical-ritual and mystical-religious materials from, inter alia, Graeco-Hellenistic magic and medieval German folklore, rabbinical literature, Aramaic Targumim or the Hekalot, and Merkavah literature. The text presents remarkable similarities with the Sefer Malachim or “Book of Angels,” as I could see through the comparison with the critical edition edited by Inbal Gur Ben Yitzhak.9 This study allowed me to identify the sections of the Liber de homine that appear to be accurate translations of the Sefer Malachim, including those related to the technique of the wax figurines.10 This is a text that collects angelomagical material, according to the fortunate expression used by Moshe Idel to describe some Ashkenazi works.11 As indicated in the Hebrew title, in fact, this treatise focuses on angels, malachim in Hebrew, who are attributed not only the task of transmitting divine messages, but also of carrying out magical actions.12 The various references to celestial creatures are often placed in the context of specific magical and divinatory practices, which make it possible to consider these entities as assistants of magicians engaged in the success of such operations. The angelic deputies or memunim operate in the technique of the wax figurines, as mediators of magical action and supernatural helpers of the magician similar to the Greek parhedroi.13

Imagines, demut, wax fgurines, and memunim The technique described in the Liber de homine is a form of “envoûtement” practised through the wax figurines and drawings of anthropomorphic creatures.

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The term “envoûtement,” or enchantment in English, precisely designates a type of magic that, according to a mimetic process, affects the specific individuals through the action on the vultus “faces, images, statues.”14 The magicians who practised this type of magic were called vultivuli or imaginarii in the medieval Latin tradition, as mentioned above, as producers of images and faces. The first passage of the Liber de homine in which this technique is used associates the image with a name and a memuneh/angelic deputy, elements that contribute to defining the distinctive traits of the individual to whom the magical action is directed: the name as an expression of the person’s nature and the memuneh as his heavenly twin and guardian. The passage reads: In fact, the sorceresses, with the art of magic, make a wax figurine with the name of a man. And depending on what they do to that image, they harm the man and this happens for his name. This is certainly because there is an archangel in charge of that image or idea, and although it is written: ‘To whom will you compare God? [Is 40, 25] Will you compare to Him this image or idea? ’. This happens because they would attribute divine virtues to that image which they made with the name of some man and would call it in the name of God, and they would damage that image, they would strike it to cause damage above.15 The magical action is mediated by the name which structurally corresponds to what it refers to and returns its essence.16 Since the very essence of things, in this case of man, lies in their name, it is possible to use the name as a means to recall their nature. This aspect is also brought to light in the Sefer Malachim, source of the Liber de homine, where we read that the sorceresses/‫ מכ שפות‬make an image in wax/ ‫ דמות בש עווה‬with the name of a man and by striking the image they cause him harm, as it is written:

17

The sorceresses make an image in wax with the name of a man, and what they do to the image will harm the man created in his likeness. The passage of the Liber de homine that literally translates the Hebrew text18 then specifes that the fgurine, imago/‫דמות‬, made by the sorceresses has a divine virtue connected to the divine name, which, we could say, draws its power from what Elliot Wolfson considers “the spiritual paradigms or archetypes of mundane realities” of which it is a reproduction.19 As a copy of what exists linked to the archetypal-ideal world, it too has a memuneh, archangelus in the Latin text, which governs it as happens with every other aspect of our world.

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It is a transposition into a magical context of Platonic idealism, as well as of Neoplatonic demonology, which considers the cosmos as being governed by daimones, guardians of every aspect of nature, lords, principals, ministers, governors, prefects, superintendents, or even servants of various parts of the world.20Memunim, like daimones, ensure continuity between the divine world and the various planes of reality, also presenting themselves as personal attendants of individuals that are linked to their fate.21 The wax figurines fall within this context, presenting themselves as double materials of ideal and spiritual entities in consonance with a typical vision of the German pietists whose piety, according to Josef Chajes, can be considered a prelude to magical activity.22

Wax fgurines, vengeance dolls, and voodoo dolls The wax figurines or dolls are mainly used as a weapon that can damage but also cause death according to specific rituals. Thus considered, it presents itself as a doll of revenge,23 of which there are several literary testimonies in the Jewish magical tradition, for example in the Ḥarba de-Moshe (The Sword of Moses),24 but little iconographic material.25 In the medieval world we come across several references to these objects that could also be used as evidence in trials or for charges. An example of this is the accusation of murder against the Jews of Trier as alleged authors of a doll that was believed to have caused the death of Archbishop Eberhard,26 or the case of the Bishop of Mende “envoûté” by Etienne Pépin in the mid-fourteenth century.27 This vindictive function of the wax figurine is expressed in the second passage of the Liber de homine, which reads: The sorceresses will model at wax figurine resembling a man, they will cast a spell on it and what happens to the figurine happens to the man. In fact, if you prick the figurine in some parts, similarly the man [will be pricked]. If it is buried, the man will die, and he will be buried [and this] happens by his name.28 As in the passage above, the wax fgurines are made by sorceresses to do harm through a ritual that involves the recitation of magical formulas. This aspect indicated in the Liber de homine, with the expression loquantur sermone is also highlighted in a passage of the Sefer Malachim, where reference is made to the sorceresses/‫ מכ שפות‬that model a wax fgurine ‫ דמות צורה בש עווה‬on which they pronounce spells. It is written:

29

The sorceresses make an image modelled in wax only by talking, and what they do to the wax figurines will be done to man.

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The spell pronounced by the sorceresses in both texts (‫דיבור מדברים‬, sermone loquantur) seems to refer to formulas of ritual consecration that bind the fgurines to the person represented. In the passage from the Liber de homine, unlike the Hebrew versions, it is specified that harm can be done using a sharp object like a nail that pierces the figurines, hurting the person at the same time; in some cases, death can also be caused by burying the figurine. The reference to nails and burial, which could be interpolations of Flavius Mithridates, allows linking the figurine in the Liber to the category of “voodoo dolls” created by Christopher A. Faraone to classify some magical objects of classical antiquity.30 The purpose of these nails is not only to wound organs but also to prevent the proper use of certain faculties such as memory, sight, speech, “nailing down” the opponents.31 An example can be found in Sophronius, in the life of Saints Cyrus and John, where the cause of a paraplegic’s illness is attributed to a figurine with hands and feet pierced by nails.32 The dolls or the figurines have been used since ancient times in magical rituals, as evidenced by literary sources, inscriptions, papyrus recipes, and objects found in excavations, as in the sanctuary of Anna Perenna.33 These dolls operate according to the principle of the similia similibus,34 as the dagys (δαγύς) of Greek love rituals,35 among which we recall the one reported in the second Idyll of Theocritus’s Pharmakeutriai (II, 110)36 and the best-known spell for binding a lover in PGM IV, 296 – 466.37

Wall drawings The third reference to a ritual image is found in a further passage of the Liber de homine which reads: And similarly one draws on a wall the image of a thief suspected of theft and then pricks the eye of that figure with a nail and the eye of the thief will suffer. And this happens because the prefects of the image and the prefects of the magician will go to the prefect of the thief, they will tell him the crime and the prefect of the thief will make him suffer.38 In the text the author alludes to the creation of a wall drawing to which the same magical function is attributed as wax figurines. In fact, it appears to be a punitive instrument whose use is justified within a particular form of justice exercised through magic. In the case of the cited passage, it is supposed to punish thieves. This imago in muro corresponds to the ‫ הכותל על הצורה‬of the Sefer Malachim cited in a passage that presents remarkable similarities with the Liber ’s text. It reads:

39

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And draws an image on the wall and strikes it in the eye and the thief ’s eye hurts because the memuneh in charge of the painter and the memuneh in charge of the image go to the thief and tell him and he hurts the thief. Painting as well as figurines are used in a ritual that involves the use of a pointed object, in this case a nail,40 as a weapon in a process that sees the memunim act as intermediaries and at the same time advocates of magical action. In fact, in addition to functioning as stated in the sympathetic magic in a sort of occult correspondence between man and his replica, the painting recalls the authority of the angelic guardians and prefects in charge of punishment. Instead of subverting justice, an accusation that was usually levied against sorcery, in the Liber as well as in the Sefer Malachim, the magic exercised through these images accomplishes it.41 The summoned memunim preside over the practitioner, the thief, and the image from which the magical process originates, respectively, through interangelical communication: the deputy of the magician notifies the punishment to the deputy of the thief, through the mediation of the deputy of the image.42 Alternatively, the success of this technique, which, according to Joshua Trachtenberg, was more widespread than wax figurines,43 should be attributed to the parting of the memunim, as specified in the Liber a few lines later: But it should also be noted that hir and cadish announce the superior decrees and report to the recipient of the magical action what has been said above: a magician will exercise the magical art against a given person on this day or in that month, so prefects of this person, get away from him.44 In a deterministic vision, in which even magical action takes place by divine decree, the interruption of the angels’ protection harms men, leaving them at the mercy of magicians and their spells. This type of magic is coercive, in that it acts by forcing angels to leave their posts, and disabling, because it causes physical infirmity or psychological conditioning in humans.

Conclusion This study showed how the translations allowed a particular magical technique to be transmitted. Though common to different traditions, it nevertheless presents elements typical of Ashkenazi Hasidic esoteric thought. Fruit of syncretism and hybridization, the wax figurines technique is presented to the Christian Kabbalistic world and in particular to Pico, who commissioned the manuscripts, as rich in meanings that are well integrated within the Pichian notion of magic.45 In fact, it features elements that link it both to licit and illicit magic, of which Pico speaks in his works.46

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As a form of legitimate magic, the wax figurines technique has its ontological foundation in the doctrine, of essentially Stoic and Neoplatonic origin, of the universal “sympathy” well described by Pico as the principle of the effectiveness of natural magic (magia naturalis). According to this theory, nature presents itself as an organic and unitary whole in which its multiple levels are coordinated according to links of similarity, in a complex and coherent dynamic system of mutual relationships, hidden harmonies, sympathetic correspondences, and discordant contrasts. The wax figurine technique involves a synergy between higher and lower realities that the magician can exploit through rituals that Pico, a lover of classical antiquity, called iugghes.47 These enchantments create a marriage between earth and sky and a link between the earthly plane and the celestial plane of nature, joining realities that seem to be separate and different. In this context, the image of agricola (farmer) described by Ficino48 and attested in ancient times in Ovid’s Amores and Catullus’ Carmina, is taken from Pico to explain the procedures of magic that act according to the laws of “amorous” attraction.49 The fatidicae sorceresses/50 ‫ המכ שפות‬of the Liber replace the Renaissance priest magicians who, according to their knowledge, can act both on a vertical plane, joining powers (virtutes) located at different levels of nature, and on a horizontal plane, joining powers belonging to the same plane of nature.51 The hierarchical structuring of reality presupposes communication between the levels of being, a “dialogue” between the higher and lower powers, whose mediator and intermediary messenger of the creatures is man, through the use of natural magic.52 Secondly, the wax figurine technique, through the intervention of spiritual entities and acting mainly in a harmful way, has a sulphurous dimension that makes it part of the magical practices that Pico defined as illicit. In fact, it can be likened in some aspects to those forms of ceremonial magic that owe their effectiveness to the intervention of beneficial or evil supernatural creatures and the use of special magical and ritual instruments, such as images and seals. These “natural” and “ceremonial” elements, while distinguishing themselves in principle, end up coexisting in various ways in the magical practices described, manifesting that “ambiguous” nature of magic rightly underscored by Paola Zambelli and contrasted by Jean-Marc Mandosio to a recurring tendency to consider magic as a unique and unchanging notion over time and in different cultures.53

Notes 1 Ioannes Saresberiensis, Policraticus, I, 12: “Vultivoli sunt qui ad affectus hominum immutandos, in molliori materia, cera forte vel limo, eorum quos pervertere nititur effigies exprimunt […] Imaginarii sunt, qui imagines quas faciunt, quasi in possessionem praesidentium spiritum mittunt, ut ab eis de rebus dubiis doceantur”.

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2 On the Christian Kabbalah I will simply refer to François Secret, Les Kabbalistes Chrétiens de la Renaissance (Paris: Dunod, 1964); Gershom Scholem, “Zur Geschichte der Anfänge der Christlichen Kabbala”, in Essays presented to Leo Baeck on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, ed. Leo Baeck (London: East and West Library, 1954), 158–93; Wilhelm SchmidtBiggemann, Geschichte der christlichen Kabbala, 4 vol. (Leinen: Friedrich Frommann Verlag Gunther, 2013–2015); Jean-Pierre Brach, “Umanesimo e correnti esoteriche in Italia: l’esempio dell’inizio della qabbalah cristiana” (XV–XVII secolo)”, in Storia d’Italia. Annali. 25: Esoterismo, ed. Gian Mario Cazzaniga (Turin: Einaudi, 2010), 257–88. 3 Some Mithridates’ translations are being published in The Kabbalistic Library of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, a project promoted by the Freie Universität and the Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, whose latest publication is Four Short Kabbalistic Treatises, ed. Saverio Campanini (Castiglione delle Stiviere: FPBPFondazione Palazzo Bondoni Pastorio, 2019). See also Gersonides’ Commentary of Song of Songs, ed. Michela Andreatta (Gersonides, Commento al Cantico dei Cantici nella traduzione ebraico-latina di Flavio Mitridate. Edizione e commento del ms. Vat. Lat. 4273 (cc. 5r–54r) [Florence: Olschki, 2009]. 4 On this codex see Chaim Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola’s Encounter with Jewish Mysticism (Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 1989), 11; Flavius Mithridates, Sermo de Passione Domini, ed. with Introduction and Commentary by Chaim Wirszubski (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences, 1963), 49–59, and Saverio Campanini, El‛azar da Worms nelle traduzioni di Flavio Mitridate per Pico della Mirandola, in Flavio Mitridate mediatore fra culture nel contesto dell’ebraismo siciliano del XV secolo.Atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Caltabellotta, 30 giugno-1 luglio 2008, eds. Mauro Perani, Giacomo Corazzol (Palermo: Officina di Studi Medievali, 2012), 47–79. 5 On Haside Ashkenaz, see the studies of Joseph Dan; a full list is available on www.j osephdan.com/english/articles.asp?cat=2&page=1. 6 On the titles of the manuscript’s books, see Campanini, El ‛azar da Worms nelle traduzioni di Flavio Mitridate per Pico della Mirandola, 53. 7 This work was edited by Flavia Buzzetta, Liber de homine. Edizione del Ms. Vat. Ebr. 189, ff. 398r–509v (Lavis: La Finestra, 2015). 8 This style is common to other Ashkenazi writings and, according to Inbal Gur Ben Yitzhak (The Book of Angels Attributed to Rabbi Judah the Pious: A Critical Edition and Study of its Editorial Tradition in Manuscripts, vol. 1 [Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2020] 5 [Hebrew]), was deliberately adopted by the authors to develop a personal doctrine based on different traditions. 9 Chaim Wirszubski and Joseph Dan reported the relationship between ms. Vat. Ebr. 189 and ms. Oxford, Opp. 540 (Neubauer 1567), which contains a version of this treatise, as described by Dan in Iyyunim be-Sifrut Ḥaside Ashkenaz (Ramat Gan: Masada 1975), 134–47. In this regard see Id., “The Book of Divine Glory by Rabbi Judah the Pious of Regensburg”, in Studies in Jewish Manuscripts, eds. Joseph Dan and Klaus Herrmann [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999], 8–9) in which the author states that, together with Wirszubski, he conducted a comparison between the second section of the Oxford manuscript, Opp. 540 (Neubauer 1567) and the Latin version of ms. Vat. Ebr. 189, noting similarities. In his study and in the edition of the Sefer Malachim (The Book of Angels Attributed to Rabbi Judah the Pious, vol. I, 65–6, no. 183) Inbal Gur Ben Yitzhak continued the research of the two scholars not identifying, however, the Latin translation corresponding to the Hebrew treatise, namely the Liber de homine. 10 Some passages of a lost version of the Sefer Malachim, mentioned by Moritz Güdemann in Geschichte des Erziehungswesens und der Kultur der Abendländischen Juden, 3 vol. (Vienna: Alfred Hölder, 1880–1888) had already allowed me to note the close relationship between the Liber de homine and the Jewish treatise. See in this regard Liber de homine. Edition of Ms. Vat. Ebr. 189, 21. 11 See Moshe Idel, “On Angels and Biblical Exegesis in Thirteenth-Century Ashkenaz”, in Scriptural Exegesis: The Shapes of Culture and the Religious Imagination: Essays in

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14

15

16

17 18 19

20 21

22 23 24

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Honour of Michael Fishbane, eds. Deborah A. Green and Laura S. Lieber [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009], 211–44, especially 213. On Sefer Malachim, see Joseph Dan, The Esoteric Theology of Ashkenazi Hasidism ( Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute 1968), 58 e 64 [Hebrew], and the comprehensive study of The Book of Angels Attributed to Rabbi Judah the Pious, vol. I. On these figures see Anna Scibilia, “Supernatural Assistance in the Greek Magical Papyri. The Figure of the Parhedros”, in The Metamorphosis of Magic from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period, eds. Jan N. Bremmer and Jan R. Veenstra (Leuven-ParisDudley (Ma): Peeters, 2002), 71–86. In this regard Kati Ihnat and Katelyn Mesler, “From Christian Devotion to Jewish Sorcery: The Curious History of Wax Figurines in Medieval Europe”, in Entangled Histories. Knowledge, Authority, and Jewish Culture in the Thirteenth Century, eds. Elisheva Baumgarten, Ruth Mazo Karras, and Katelyn Mesler (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), 134–58, especially 152, note that this notion first appeared in the Laws of Henry I (rn 4–18) “in which one canon addresses murder by potion, spell, sorcery, and invultuatio”. On the word envoûtement see also Charles Du Cange, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis (Niort: L. Favre, 1885), t. IV, 120. Liber de homine, ms. Vat. Ebr. 189, f. 401v: “Nam phathydice per artem magicam disponunt unam imaginem de cera nomine alicuius hominis. Et secundum quod faciunt illi imagini ita evenit nocumentum illi homini per cuius nomine fit. Et hoc quidem quod est arcangelus prefectus super imagine aut idea et quamvis scriptum sit ad quem assimilabitis deum? Et quam similitudinem aut ideam equabitis ei? [Is 40, 25] Hoc est quod attribuebant virtutem divinam illi imagini quam faciebant nomine alicuius hominis et vocabant eam nomine divino et nocebant illi imagini et ledebant eam ut idest inferretur nocumentum superius”. In this regard, Joshua Trachtenberg ( Jewish Magic and Superstition: A Study in Folk Religion and Superstition [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004 (1939)], 78–9) notes that, sometimes in Ashkenazi tradition, “a man’s name is his person […] his soul”, so the knowledge of the name “is to be privy to the secret of its owner’s being, and master of his fate”. Ben Yitzhak, The Book of Angels Attributed to Rabbi Judah the Pious, vol. II, 231. See also Güdemann, Geschichte des Erziehungswesens und der Kultur der Abendländischen Juden, 207, no. 2. Ben Yitzhak, The Book of Angels Attributed to Rabbi Judah the Pious vol. II, 231. Elliot R. Wolfson notes (Through a Speculum that Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994, 216) that the Haside Ashkenaz use the notion of “image” in an innovative way, with reference to an ontological dimension, that can be apprehended by the imagination. The Liber de homine adopts terms taken from military vocabulary to describe the angels. In this regard, see my introduction to the book Anges et Démons d’Orient et d’Occident (Paris: éditions Kimé, 2017), 3–9. This theme is present in classical antiquity, for example in the De deo Socratis in which Apuleius describes a kind of demon that binds itself to individual men by following them in all aspects of their lives; see Apuleius, De deo Socratis, XVI, 154–6, in which, inter alia, the personal demon is presented as privus custos, singularis praefectus, domesticus speculator, proprius curator, individuus arbiter. Among the studies, see the extensive presentation of the theme in Andrei Timotin, La démonologie platonicienne. Histoire de la notion de daimōn de Platon aux derniers néoplatoniciens (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2012), 243–322. See Josef H. Chajes, “Too Holy to Print: Taboo Anxiety and the Publishing of Practical Hebrew Esoterica”, Jewish History 26 (2012): 247–62, especially 250. I am referring to the notion of Rachepuppe used by Richard Wünsch in “Eine antike Rachepuppe” Philologus 61 (1902): 26–31 according to which the doll was made for “einem Gegner schäden” (Ibid., 28) in consonance with the author’s thirst for revenge. In this regard see a passage cited by Yuval Harari in “The Sword of Moses ( Ḥarba de-Moshe): A New Translation and Introduction”, Magic, Ritual and Witchcraft 7, no.

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27 28

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1 (2012): 58–98, especially 89) in which a ritual to kill a person through figures is described. Aspect noticed by Gideon Bohak in Ancien Jewish Magic. A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) 280–1. A recurring accusation against the Jews concerned, as Trachtenberg notes ( Jewish Magic and Superstition, 9), the possibility of “effecting the death of their enemies by means of waxen images baptized in their names”. On this topic, see Ihnat, Mesler, From Christian Devotion to Jewish Sorcery, 153. The proceedings of the trial of Etienne Pépin are reported in Edmond Falgairolle, Un envoûtement en Gévaudan en l’année 1347 (Nimes: Catélan, 1892). Liber de homine, ms. Vat. Ebr. 189, f. 456v: “magae mulieres facient imaginem formatam de cera instar huius aut illius hominis nec aliud in ea facient quam quod sermone loquantur illud quod fit imagini de cera fit homini. Si enim pungitur ei aliquis ex suis membris et similiter homini. Si tandem sepulitur et homo moretur et sepelietur per eius nomine fit”. Ben Yitzhak, The Book of Angels Attributed to Rabbi Judah the Pious, vol. II, 238. See also Güdemann, Geschichte des Erziehungswesens und der Kultur der Abendländischen Juden, 207, no. 2. According to Christopher A. Faraone (“Binding and Burying the Forces of Evil: The Defensive Use of ‘Voodoo Dolls’ in Ancient Greece”, Classical Antiquity 10, no. 2 (1991): 165–205, especially 200), figurines that show two or more of the following characteristics fall into this category: “1. The arms (and occasionally the legs) have been bound, or twisted behind the back as if they were bound; 2. Nails have been hammered into the doll; 3. The head, the feet, and occasionally the entire upper torso have been twisted unnaturally around, so that the chin and the toes point in the same direction as the buttocks; 4. The doll has been deposited in a container with a tight-fitting cover; 5. Some part of the doll has been inscribed with the name of the victim; 6. It was discovered in a grave, a sanctuary, or a body of water”. Ibid., 193. Patrologia Graeca, t. LXXXVII, 3546. György Németh collected in the article “Voodoo dolls in the classical world”, in Violence in Prehistory and Antiquity, ed. Eduard Nemeth, (Kaiserslautern: Parthenon Verlag, 2018), 179–94, the literary testimonies of the Graeco-Roman world and described the objects found in excavations regarding this particular type of magic. This principle is found in sympathetic magic whose rituals can be considered according to the expression used by Stanley J. Tambiah and taken up by Christopher A. Faraone, i.e., “persuasively analogical” (“The Agonistic Context of Early Greek Binding Spells”, in Magika Hiera. Ancient Greek Magic and Religion, eds. Christopher A. Faraone, Dirk Obbink [Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 1991], 3–32, especially 8). If these figurines are recurrent in Greek love magic, the same cannot be said of Jewish love magic in whose corpus studied by Ortal-Paz Saar, Jewish Love Magic: From Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages (Leiden, Boston: Brill 2017), 147 only a few recipes have survived. As noted by Gow (Theocritus, ed. with a translation and commentary by A. S. F. Gow, vol. II [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1973 (1950)], 55), the dagys (δαγύς) is a waxen doll. In the Greek world the dolls were called by different names such as korai, nymphai, koroplastai, plaggones (κόραι, νύμφαι, κοροπλάσται, πλάγγονες). These also include the dagys (δαγύς) which in this specific context means, as Thompson D’Arcy Wentworth reported (“Games and Playthings”, Greece and Rome 2, no. 5 [1933]: 71–9, especially 73) “witch’s doll, to work enchantments by”. Papyri Graecae Magicae. Die Griechischen Zauberpapyri, Herausgegeben und Ubersetzt von Karl Preisendanz, I, (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1973), 82–8; The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation Including the Demotic Spell, ed. Hans Dieter Betz (Chicago-London: The University of Chicago Press, 1992 [1986]), 44–7.

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38 Liber de homine, ms. Vat. Ebr. 189, f. 456v: “Et similiter formatur imago in muro ipsius furis de quo suspicio furti habita est et percutietur cum clavo oculus illius imaginis et dolebit oculus furis et hoc quidem quia prefecti super imagine et prefecti super illo qui pingit imaginem ibunt ad illum prefectum qui preficitur super fure et indicant ei rem hanc et prefectus super furem faciet furem dolere”. 39 Ben Yitzhak, The Book of Angels Attributed to Rabbi Judah the Pious, vol. II, 238 and Ibid., vol. I, 147–8 in which the scholar compared this passage with a portion from the Ḥokmat ha-nefesh by Eleazar of Worms, highlighting the elements that distinguish the vision of this author. See also the cited passage in Güdemann, Geschichte des Erziehungswesens und der Kultur der Abendländischen Juden, 207, no. 2. 40 Nails were usually used in defixiones or curse-tablets, which as David R. Jordan notes in “Survey of Greek defixiones not included in the special corporation”, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 26 (1985): 151–97, especially 155 “are inscribed pieces of lead, usually in the form of small, thin sheets, intended to inf luence, by supernatural means, the actions or the welfare of persons or animals against their will”. 41 Sorcery is often used to change the course of justice, as Yuval Harari notes, who in this regard cites a passage from the Tosefta in Jewish Magic before the Rise of Kabbalah (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2017), 367. A similar function is attributed to the defixiones iudiciariae (according to the classification established by Auguste Audollen in Defixionum tabellae [Paris: Albert Fontemoing, 1904]) attested since classical antiquity and coming mainly from Germany. In this regard see Daniela Urbanová, Pierluigi Cuzzolin, “Some linguistic and pragmatic remarks on the tabellae defixionum”, Journal of Latin Linguistics 15, no. 2 (2016): 313–45. 42 Trachtenberg ( Jewish Magic, 71) who identified this technique in the Ḥokmat hanefesh 16d, 18a, 29d, and in the Zyiuni 5c, describes it as: “The familiar device of fashioning an image of one’s enemy out of wax, or of drawing his portrait on a wall, and by piercing it with pins or nails causing him to suffer in a corresponding part of his body, operated along similar lines. The magician’s ‘deputy’ transmitted the blow to the victim’s angel, who in turn inf licted it upon his human charge; sometimes a third intermediary was introduced into the process, the ‘deputy’ of the image or picture”. 43 Ibid., 125. 44 Liber de homine, ms. Vat. Ebr. 189, f. 456v: “Est autem aliud verbum ad dicendum quod hir et cadish proclamant decreta superiora et dicunt illi cui decretum est ut fiat ars magica contra eum proclamatum precedenter talis mulier maga faciet artem magicam contra talem in die hac aut illa mens scilicet huius aut illius removeamini de super eo prefecti. Et prefecti audientes illud removentur ab eo”. The text is a translation of Ben Yitzhak, The Book of Angels Attributed to Rabbi Judah the Pious, vol. II, 238. 45 On magic and kabbalah in Pico see my Magia naturalis e scientia cabalae in Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (Florence: Olschki, 2019). 46 Pico resorts in the Oratio (Discorso sulla Dignità dell’Uomo, ed. Francesco Bausi [Varese: Guanda, 2014 (2003)], 104) to the terms goeteia (γοητεία) and magheia (μαγεία) to distinguish between a demonic and a natural magic that represents the perfect and highest wisdom (perfecta summaque sapientia). In this regard, it should be noted that in Greek sources the two terms are often used as synonyms and, usually, they do not make the clear distinction between magical arts that Pico aims to affirm, but it is traceable in Neoplatonic sources and in later Byzantine documents that probably refer to them. 47 The term iunx (ἴυγξ ), which also occurs in a refrain from Theocritus’ Idyll mentioned above, indicated a small bird described by Aristotle in Historia Animalium II, 12 (504a). It was used in practices of love magic, tied to a wheel as in Jason’s iunx described by Pindar in Pyth., IV, 380–90. See Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge, “L’Iynge dans le discours mythique et les procédures magiques”, Kernos 6 (1993): 277–89, especially 283; Christopher A. Faraone, Ancient Greek Love Magic (Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 1999), 55–69 and Manuel García Teijeiro, “Il secondo Idillio di Teocrito”, Quaderni

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Urbinati di Cultura Classica New Series 61, no. 1 (1999): 71–86. The term also goes on to indicate, more generally, the spell and magical enchantment. See Marsilii Ficini, Opera quae hactenus extitere et quae in lucem nunc primum prodiere omnia (Basel 1576), I, 574 [anast. reprint, Turin: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1962; other reprint Paris: Société Marsile Ficin, 2000]. See Discorso sulla Dignità dell’Uomo, 112–6. The fateful term, which also occurs in the description of the manuscript written by Jacques Gaffarel in the Codicum cabalisticorum manuscriptorum quibus est usus, Ioannes Picus comes Mirandulanus index [Parisiis 1651], 46 (reprinted in J. Ch. Wolf, Bibliotheca Hebraea, 4 vol. (Hamburgi-Lipsiae 1715), I, 12–20 of the appendix), is used by Virgil in the Aeneid X 198, 200 with reference to the sorceress Manto. In Jewish tradition, as Josef H. Chajes notes (“Jews, Witchcraft, and Magic”, in Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition, Richard M. Golden, vol. 2 (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2003), 592–5, especially 594): “Women were consulted as healers, diviners, dream interpreters, and mediums. While some were described as enjoying natural gifts of clairvoyance and preternatural senses, many women were clearly expert practitioners of mantic techniques and ‘folk’ medicine”. One can suppose that in his translation Flavius Mithridates takes into account the divinatory dimension that the biblical term recalls. The Renaissance magician, and for Pico in particular, is a wiseman according to the Persian origin of the term (Orat., 104–6 and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Apologia. L’autodifesa di Pico di fronte al Tribunale dell’Inquisizione, ed. Paolo Edoardo Fornaciari [Florence: SISMEL, 2010], 162). This positive image of a magician who has access to ancient knowledge is contrasted with a negative image of “female practitioners” originating in the Graeco-Roman world, as noted by Naomi Janowitz in Magic in the Roman World. Pagans, Jews and Christians (London-New York: Routledge, 2001), 88. Orat., 4. See Paola Zambelli, Magia bianca, magia nera nel Rinascimento (Ravenna: Longo, 2004), 271 and Jean-Marc Mandosio, “Problèmes et controverses: à propos de quelques publications récentes sur la magie au Moyen Âge et à la Renaissance”, Aries. Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 7 (2007): 207–25, especially 220.

7 PARALLEL BELIEFS Cultural exchange between Jews and Christians on magic and witchcraft, and the concerns of the Inquisition Marina Caffero

Introduction With few exceptions, studies on witchcraft, magic, and sorcery in the modern age, though recently revived and renewed in Italy, have not focused on the connection between such practices and Judaism, nor the reasons behind the evident interest of the judges – in particular those of the court of the Inquisition – towards Jewish magic and witchcraft. Regarding the nexus of Judaism-magicsorcery, overlooking this issue and the existing interactions has produced an interpretative weakness that arises from ignoring one of the elements at play in matters of magic. Instead, the magical practices of the Jews – real or supposed – seem to also represent a relevant factor for understanding Christian practices, as well as the choice and the modalities for the persecution of both. Moreover, taking Jewish inf luence into account in the sphere of the magicJudaism connection leads us to consider the explanation, which attributes the constant interest of the Inquisitors in these magical aspects to mainly “pedagogical” goals, anti-superstition, and almost anthropological curiosity, to be reductionist. Ultimately, these aspects were considered as residual, innocuous, and irrelevant. In the course of sixteenth-century court proceedings initiated by the Roman Inquisition, the aspects of commingling, exchanges, and alliances between Jews and Christians in the sphere of spells and magic stand out clearly, and are highlighted by the judges. These records provide today’s historian with valuable information on cultural exchanges between the two groups. Furthermore, how and to what extent was the insistence on the greater magical experience and competence of the Jews used to demonize religious diversity, and even to assimilate it into heresy? And, therefore, was it employed for the purposes of growing anti-Semitism?

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The Abbot, the Jew, and the Priest Preserved in the Italian archives are various traces of Jews and Christians getting together for the purpose of performing magical rites, spells, and incantations together, despite the constantly reiterated prohibitions against these practices. Similarly, a great deal of evidence can be found of the intrinsically magical properties of the Hebrew tongue; its letters as well as words. Above all, the Inquisition’s documents confirm what the famous Venetian rabbino Leon Modena (1571–1648) relates in his book Historia de’ riti hebraici (Venezia 1638), the first book written by a Jew in Italian to illustrate the customs of his people to a Christian audience. In his autobiography Modena explicitly recalls having written and sold books of spells, and having taught the use of “sorcery” and amulets to Christians as well as Jews. He also says that he sought out four astrologers, two Jews and two Christians, for his own horoscope, and that his son Mordechai had learned “the art of alchemy” from a Catholic priest, in whose home they had experimented with obtaining pure silver.1 In 1695, one of the many cases of “sortilegium a Christianis una cum Haebreo” was heard at the Holy Office in Rome. The main suspect was the Genovese Abbot Abbondio Rezzonico, who was 28 years old and a resident of Rome, living in the palazzo of Duke Livio Odescalchi. The Abbot was accused of performing rites “to investigate things in the future,” together with the Roman Jew Simone Narni (or da Narni), who was 50 years old and a jeweller by profession, and with the assistance of a secular priest, Don Giulio Proli, 39 years of age. Rezzonico, who appeared voluntarily at the tribunal of the faith to confess his heresy (that is, he was sponte comparens) and to denounce his accomplices, thus easing his own position as provided for by procedure, claimed to have recently met the Jew Simone. Simone had confided that he had a secret for guessing the future, but that in order to “make this secret work” he needed a young virgin girl. The secret to be revealed was related to a decision that Abbot Rezzonico faced concerning whether to stay in Rome or leave. The Abbot reported that several days after this meeting the Priest Proli – it is unknown by whom he was contacted – brought a young girl of about six or seven years of age, named Dorotea, with him to the Rezzonico home; the Jew coated the palm of her left hand with a “paste made of common olive oil and soot” and had her hold a small candle between her ring and middle finger. Then he drew close to the aforementioned girl’s ear, and he spoke some secret words neither understood by nor apparent to her; nor by the aforementioned Proli. After this the aforementioned girl said that she saw two small children in the palm of her hand, the Jew had her implore them in the name of her own virginity, that they be seated, and that they should get out the Book of the Law, and profess, but the girl having responded that she did not want to obey, the secret was ended without anything being discovered.

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The meeting between the three and the “experiment” itself took place in Rezzonico’s residence, in the palazzo of Livio Odescalchi, who was Duke of Bracciano (1652–1713) and nephew of Pope Innocent XI. The event is of great interest given Duke Odescalchi’s reputation as a man who was devoted to esoteric and magical practices.2 Even though Rezzonico, in order to reduce the sacrilegious severity of the guilt and accusation of blasphemy, was quick to clarify that neither the candle nor the oil were blessed, as was instead called for in magical rituals, all of the widely used and current paraphernalia for a magical operation are present here: the young virgin girl – but it could also be a boy – the unguent, the lit candle, the secret, hidden words, the evocation of demons, and especially, the request for the Holy Book. The absolute protagonism of the Hebrew language, written and spoken, in these rituals also emerges from the fact that the plaintiff added that the Christian accomplice, the Priest Proli, had possessed a copy in writing of the secret words spoken by the Jew in the ear of the young girl. Evidently having become aware of the charges, the Priest also voluntarily presented himself to the tribunal in order to avoid greater trouble, given that the penalties for those who voluntarily confessed were much lighter. He fully confirmed Abbot Rezzonico’s account, as well as the fact that the Jew had given him a sheet bearing the words he had spoken in writing, but testified that after having read them he had destroyed it, and that he remembered only one word: “Medante.” It is likely that the three had agreed in advance to appear in court, because immediately after Proli, the Jew Simone appeared as well, also voluntarily, and he, too, confessed to and confirmed the version of events given by the first two. However, he added something new, because he also divulged the words that he had put in the child’s ear, transcribed by the court clerk as “Nunt, Casisso, Mesisso, Medante, Netare, Ja, Meiú, Asuar.” He said that he did not know the meaning of these nonsense words, but assumed they were Hebrew “because he had seen them written in Hebrew, when he was taught the aforementioned secret by a Jew named Boncompagno, now deceased.” The secret had been taught to him 20 years earlier in Livorno. We do not know if the Jew Simone was fully aware of the fact that the use of “unknown characters or words, meaningless in any language” fell, according to the Inquisition’s manuals, within the official definition of spells.3 In any case, he further confirmed the importance of the use of Hebrew in magical rituals when, pressed by the Inquisitor’s questions wanting to know if he had practised “secrets” on any other occasions, he confessed to having facilitated childbirth for Jewish women many times by employing a secret taught to him by his father, who was now deceased, which consisted precisely of speaking some Hebrew phrases, which he spoke in Hebrew and then translated in Italian, in the ear of the woman in labour. When the practices of the midwives were not enough to ease the pain and difficulty of childbirth, the powers of sacred Hebrew words, used in an exorcistic and apotropaic sense, would intervene. However, Christian amulets could also be used to aid Jewish women in labour, especially objects bearing the image of the Madonna, such as Venetian coins that

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were inscribed with this image, whose use is recounted by the convert Giulio Morosini in his book Via della fede of 1683.4 Thus formulae in Hebrew, or presumed to be so, the meanings of which were apparently unknown even to the Jew who pronounced them, were considered to be inherently valid and effective by Christians and Jews alike solely by virtue of being believed to be in Hebrew, and mysterious. If what distinguished the symbolic system of magic was precisely the fact of being hidden and not understood, then exotic and incomprehensible words, secret and lacking any meaning, had to be magic and thus effective. All the more so with Hebrew expressions or those presumed to be such, emerging from a cultural universe seen not only as close, but as saturated with and embodying magic. By virtue of their voluntary confessions and the right to a summary procedure that this granted, the three – the Abbot, the Jew, and the Priest – were set free with an admonition, after a so-called de vehementi (mid-level) abjuration and an injunction for “penitenze salutari,” which normally consisted of prayers, visits to the church, and fasting for the Catholics, and alms and fasting for the Jews.5 Naturally, the benevolence of the court towards those who were sponte comparentes was known. Therefore we can ref lect on this use of the more favourable procedure by those being investigated or who are suspects, even for serious crimes. This reveals a notable awareness and understanding of legal practices and their consequences, as well as the ability to manipulate these to their own advantage, even at the lowest strata of the population, as well as among the Jews.

Judaism and magic: A connection overlooked by historians The episode of the Roman “experiment” – one of the many that emerge from the documentation of the Inquisition6 – introduces us to the question of the connections and exchanges between Jews and Christians in the sphere of magic, spells, and witchcraft. Jewish belief in astrology, understood as the study of the inf luence of the stars on the life of people, with its resulting use for knowing the future and making predictions, but also for activating practices of magic and witchcraft, was widely shared by the Christian world, where they did exactly the same things. But that did not prevent the birth of what has been called “the legend of Jewish witchcraft.” 7 Because of their rites and customs, and due to being the objects of hostility, Jews were considered to be wizards and necromancers par excellence: not too paradoxically, however, Christians turned to them precisely because of this reputation when they needed experts and mediators in magic. In much the same way, they used Jewish doctors, who were reputed to be highly skilled, despite the prohibitions on doing so constantly repeated by the Popes, and the rumours and fears of being poisoned by them. Moreover, even the accusations of the ritual murder of Christian children or the profanation of hosts, with the related miracles of an effusion of blood revealing both the infamy perpetrated and its authors, fell into the category of the witchcraft, and the magical, diabolical practices of the Jews who, in fact, were commonly thought to use

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the blood of Christians or consecrated host wafers for their rituals. The latter, according to the accusations, were violated and despised to the point that Jews made Christian wet nurses who had just taken communion and were nursing their children throw their milk in the lavatories so that they would not contaminate the blood of the infants.8 But there was no need to arrive at these very serious charges and their violent and disastrous consequences for the Jews, even and especially in the long term. The most widespread and common accusations against them actually concerned daily life, as denounced in bulls and edicts: there were minor magical practices and “superstitions,” spells and rituals, prayer formulas aimed at finding objects or presumed treasures, the assembly of love potions and amulets, the practice of folk medicine, or divination of future events. Testimony exists, starting from the 1500s, of cases of Jewish sorcerers who counted many Christians and even ecclesiastics as clients. Such is the case of Gioseffo, who practised his arts at Imolo, and who in 1580 was condemned by the Inquisition to the berlina and a public lashing, and was ultimately banned from all of the Papal States.9 On the other hand, Christians and Jews performed spells and magical rituals together, fully sharing the same culture, and demonstrating how also in this arena the reality of exclusion and repression did not prevent these exchanges, relations, and networks of contacts. Meanwhile, the old tradition of the Jews’ specialization and superiority in the area of magic was spurred on by the peculiarity and exoticism of Hebrew, the language in which Scripture was written, and the only language, according to some exegetics, that was understood by the angels. An incomprehensible idiom for Christians, it was believed to be very effective for magical formulas precisely for its characteristics of obscurity and secrecy, often mangled and so of uncertain meaning. The grammar of the occult sciences was written in Hebrew characters, whether real or imaginary. Even the procedure for building and then deactivating the Golem, the android defender of the Jews, called for, among various acts, the use of a formulary taken from a particular book, and a specific use of the Hebrew language and alphabet. This not only represented a typical example of Kabbalistic ritual, but built a precise magical-esoteric procedure in which the word/writing was the protagonist.10 That the Jews should be persecuted for their familiarity with the magical arts was a conviction long held by Christians in general, theologians, the ecclesiastical authorities, and also the Popes. In the modern age of the Counter-Reformation an established legal base existed which, through papal statutes, targeted the magical practices attributed to the Jews and established the methods with which to proceed on the matter.11 More generally, regarding spells performed by anybody, not only by Jews, and in particular for the practices of astrology and divination, Papal and Inquisitorial law was precise and clear, as were the penalties, which were very severe. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the climate surrounding matters of astrology and magic had already changed compared to the world of humanists

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fascinated by Jewish culture and Kabbalah. The bull Coeli et terrae of 1586,12 issued by Sixtus V (Felice Peretti), sanctioned the doctrinal turning point in progress. The decree was directed against judicial astrology and cultured magic, and in particular against those who collected and read books on any kind of divination. Coeli et terrae also specified that the Inquisitors would be responsible for socalled “simple superstitions”; that is, less serious and more widespread books and magical practices that involved “abuse of sacred objects and words.” The papal document was reiterated and expanded the following year by the constitution promulgated by the same Pope, Immensa Aeterni Dei, which established an end to the jurisdictional distinction between heretical spells and simple spells, both of which became only and exclusively the Inquisition’s responsibility, defeating the jurisdictional claims of the secular judges. As a result this also sanctioned the end of clear differentiations between the various types and degrees of crimes – more or less serious – due to the progressive extension of the category of heresy. When the court that was assigned to cases involving “heretical depravity,” that is, the Inquisition, also had to handle all the varieties of sorcery and the entire universe of magic, the consequence was that these spheres were incorporated without distinction into the dimension of heresy. Likewise, the Jews who practised these arts became part of it too. The Jews, who were not heretics, became heretics, or at least came to be treated as such solely by dint of being placed under the jurisdiction of the Holy Office concerning matters of faith.13 The Sixtine constitution Coeli et terrae condemned astrology as a whole, along with every other form of divination. All of the divination arts, from scholarly astrology all the way to the most vulgar evocations of the devil in mirrors and pitchers full of water, to the casting of lots, were thus included under the charge of superstition and magical arts, and defined as works of the devil. The bull, which called for the sequestration and surrender of incriminating books, was directed at the whole world of astrology in general, and did not explicitly name the Jews; however, it could not have escaped anyone’s notice the extent to which Christian culture and Jewish culture blended and shared a common basis in the sacrilegious practices so accurately described by the papal decree. Moreover, one cannot help but note the chronological coincidence between the Papal provisions emanated explicitly and specifically against Jewish magic, such as the bull of 1581 (Antiqua Iudaeorum improbitas), and the more general ones of 1586 (Coeli et terrae), which were directed at everyone. As has been said, with the passage of time the distinction between criminal sorcery, that is, acts involving a pact with the devil, and simple practices ended up being blurred in the perceptions of doctrine into a general and common definition of heresy. The types of crimes subject to investigation by the Inquisition increasingly became those involving blasphemy, abuse of the sacraments and sacred objects, sorcery of various types, rituals suspected of an implicit pact with the devil, “superstitious” prayers, and prayers formulated for specific purposes. This was true to the extent that the successful Inquisitorial manual from the late 1600s, the Regole del tribunale del Sant’Officio (four editions from 1683 to 1702), drawn up for Ferrara by local

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Inquisitor Tommaso Menghini, indicated precisely these subjects as the most frequently encountered and worthy of attention from the Judges of the Faith.14 But even earlier, in 1606, the celebrated jurist Prospero Farinacci had already insisted on the crime of “abuse of sacred objects” and the mixing of sacred and profane, defining them as heretical crimes. Shortly afterwards, in the first decades of the seventeenth century, chapter 8 of the Prattica written by Desiderio Scaglia, which is dedicated to sorcery, offers a description of criminal sorcery involving a pact with the devil; however, it also ends up involving all types of sorcery in the category of heresy, with the same penalties. The practices of greatest concern were those that involved the use and abuse of sacred objects and the mixture of sacred and profane, as well as incursions on the monopoly over the sacred claimed by the Church and clerics. However, it was not only a matter of examining the expressions of popular culture and folklore, and cataloguing the practices of magic and witchcraft revealed by illicit behaviours and superstitious books to be requisitioned and destroyed. The presence, in sequestered works or in the minutes of interrogations, of angels and demons, amulets, of protective papers full of strange signs and incomprehensible characters, of dreams, of specific rituals such as that involving a pitcher, otherwise referred to as “inghistara,” the invocation of devils, and booklets like the Clavicule of Solomon15 evoke a magical universe, not only popular, characterized by a quite dangerous and suspect cultural mingling between Christians and Jews. It is a mix that perhaps should not be overlooked in interpreting the phenomenon of magic, and which makes it difficult to reduce this phenomenon to simple folk – or female – matters which required cautious intervention by the Inquisitorial authorities, primarily to educate and obtain information, according to the theory of “inquisitorial pedagogy.”16 In short, once the heresy of the Reform was eradicated, to what degree were the diabolical perception of Jewish magic and the fear of a dangerous alliance part of the Roman Inquisition’s persistent attention to the magical-ritual dimension? And to what extent did it inf luence the anti-Jewish specialization increasingly being taken on at the time by the Inquisition itself, as demonstrated by the amount of documentation conserved in the archives of the Holy Office on the subject of controlling this threatening “diversity,” assimilated as heresy?17 Studies on witchcraft, magic, and sorcery in the modern age, though recently revived and renewed for Italy, primarily on the level of the analysis of procedures and jurisdictional competences, have not dwelled on the links between these practices and Judaism, or on the clear interest of the judges in Jewish magic and witchcraft. In addition, the almost institutionalized separation between the history of the Jews and the general history of the peninsula that exists in Italy – two histories that barely interact – indicates, in the first place, a historiographical problem for this field, which is to say a lack of understanding of the historical interaction of these two histories, and the persistence of this approach.18 What is more serious, however, is that the paradigm of separateness leads to an interpretive weakness in matters of magic, which arises from ignoring or

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forgetting one of the elements in play. Instead, the magical practices of the Jews, real or supposed, seem to present information relevant to understanding those of Christians, as well as the choice and methods of persecution of both groups. In order to reconstruct a more articulated and complex picture of the question of witchcraft/magic and its repression, it is first necessary to analyze the littleknown documentation related to trials for witchcraft involving Jews, perhaps with Christian accomplices, and not focus solely on the much better-known documentation regarding only Christians. Demonological beliefs survived well beyond the 1500s, up to at least the heart of the Age of Enlightenment, even when the repression of witchcraft had long since eased starting with the “moderate turn” of the late sixteenth century.19 The maintenance of careful control over these beliefs – held by Jews and Christians – by the ecclesiastical authorities, and in particular by the Roman Inquisition, to which the peripheral courts were required to send cases of sorcery and divination for adjudication, as well as the typology and morphology of the events subjected to examination, raise some new historiographic and methodological questions upon which we should ref lect. On one hand, the chronological relationship that can be established between the end of the obsession with witchcraft and the resumption of a more virulent anti-Semitism emerges. This passage from the repression of witchcraft to that of sorcery and divination can be considered to represent a crucial change for the persecution of the Jews, who had become the sole recipients of the fears and anxieties of society.20 On the other hand, the wide circulation of the esoteric and magical culture of the Jews in the Christian world was a concern that pushed the Inquisitors towards an increasing demonization of Jewish diversity. Finally, we must also take into account the participation of members of the repressive institutions themselves in the secular demonological paradigm they were investigating, and from which they received confirmation of Jewish diabolism, which in turn ref lected on the perception of the entire universe of magic, including Christian.21 Seen through the lens of the magic-Judaism connection, the activity of control and punishment of sorcery, “superstitions,” and “popular” magical rituals seems to take on a somewhat stronger significance than just the reduction of practices and beliefs to survival and marginality, to pure information collected and catalogued by the Inquisitors as a “secondary function,” almost as though motivated only by their enthusiasm for the investigation, inventory, categorization and description of the “curious,” rather than for repression.22 Moreover, it seems possible to believe that the Inquisition’s careful examinations of divinatory practices and beliefs, in addition to and perhaps more than the fear of ancient pagan divination or remote pre-Christian cults, referred to manifestations that were less distant in time and closer in space, as they were the customs and behaviours of Jews living in the heart of Christian society. Suspicions regarding the survival of ancient pagan beliefs went hand in hand with the much stronger and current mistrust regarding contemporary Jewish practices, which were shared by Christians.

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Sources and new questions In the course of judicial proceedings in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for which broad documentation can be found in the records of the Holy Office, conserved in the Archive of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the aforementioned aspects of social mixing, exchanges and alliances between Jews and Christians in the arena of sorcery and magic stand out clearly. This source, still scarcely examined for this aspect, allows one to work only on trials that had been sent to Rome by the local Inquisition offices who initiated them, for various reasons previously indicated by a selection of documents made in loco. However, this involves only a small part of the trials heard locally: those that arrived in Rome do not cover what is, or was, contained in the Inquisition or Diocesan archives scattered around all of Italy. Often this documentation was not complete, but consisted only of summaries of the trials and interrogations. In the majority of cases they were requests for opinions, directives, decisions from the Roman congregation, especially regarding particular events. But it remains difficult to understand why those cases were sent to Rome and nothing else, and based on what logic some of these local trials arrived at the centre while others no. The logic was likely casual enough, according to the sensibility of the local Inquisitor and the seriousness of the crime. In any case, notwithstanding all of the source’s limitations, the documents found relative to trials against Jews for magic seem to constitute a corpus that is substantial and sufficient enough to suggest ref lections and new paths. Moreover, it is worth noting the fact that the charges concerning events involving magic and sorcery come from cities and States of Central-Northern Italy in which the demographic, cultural, and economic impact of the Jewish community was very high: such as, for example, in Ferrara and Ancona, in the Papal States, and in the Duchies of Mantova, Modena and Reggio, Parma and Piacenza. These files offer us the opportunity to closely observe the beliefs of the Jews who were being tried along with those of their Christian accomplices, placing them both in their broader cultural context. They also provide details about the procedures used by the Inquisitors to mitigate sins and punishments – in particular, the institution of spontanea comparitio, which obliged the judges to issue moderate sentences – as well as the circularity of the different levels of culture between the accused and the judges, who were well acquainted with the phenomena about which they had to make decisions. It is not really possible to believe that on the subject of magic and sorcery we find ourselves confronted by an intra-ecclesiastical and intra-juridical conf lict between those who did not believe in practices held to be popular, illusory, and superstitious, and those who instead believed that they were real and punishable as heresy. Even the judges – good Catholic Christians – not only obviously believed in the existence of the devil, as demonstrated by the widespread practice of exorcism, but also thought that the Jews were the most capable both of evoking it as well as teaching others to do so. In every case, however, the scepticism, prudence, and moderation

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employed in the judgements and final decisions made in these trials coexisted with hardline theological assertions and definitions that very often included the category of heresy. Therefore it does not seem possible to reduce these trials to the simple collection of information, almost anthropological in nature, or to a “vast census, only partially aimed at well-defined punitive actions.” And it seems similarly difficult to assert that the materials collected were seen by the Inquisitors as only “superstitions” and were reduced “to the state of a senseless fragment, without a recognized place in official religion: a more or less malignant remnant, maybe even innocuous, but still residual,” useful for research by future historians and anthropologists.23 The attention given to Jewish magical practices, and the rituals performed in complicity with Christians do not have, in my opinion, the physiognomy of innocuous and unimportant residue, especially when the trials, searches, and denunciations are seen in relation to contemporaneous harsh treatises about the superstitions and diabolical rites practiced by Jews, as well as to the mounting of anti-Jewish laws, in particular those which sought to prevent any relations with Christians. Ultimately, we can ask ourselves if it can be supposed that the condemnation and repression of magical phenomena, divination, and sorcery ordered in Papal bulls also had something to do with the suspicion of Judaizing or even of pernicious Jewish inf luence on Christians. On the other hand, as clearly emerges from treatises by contemporary polemicists, and most of all from the accusations of converted Jews, there is the question of to what degree and in what ways was the insistence on the Jews’ greater experience and competence in magic used for the purposes of demonizing religious diversity, and even its equation with heresy? And thus used for the ends of growing anti-Semitism? These are all inquiries and questions that tend not to be raised by the prevailing historiographical theory. According to this theory, once the hunt for witches was abandoned, the ecclesiastical authorities moved to the fight against “superstitions” which they actually believed in very little. This sketches the scenario of a rational and sceptical court which, however – for reasons that are not understood – continued to occupy itself with these matters. The insertion of the variant “Judaism” within the analyses of the magic-witchcraft-superstition universe, and evaluation of the theoretical and practical actions of the Inquisitors in this sphere can introduce, it seems to me, a new perspective on the whole subject in general in light of the growing importance of anti-Jewish repression in this period. This variant, moreover, also conditions the level of procedure, which historians today are looking at with great attention, as well as the chronology of the phenomenon of magic and witchcraft in general.

Notes 1 Leon Modena, The Autobiography of a Seventeenth-Century Venetian Rabbi: Leon Modena's Life of Judah, ed. and trans. by Mark R. Cohen (Princeton: Princeton

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2 3

4

5

6

7

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University Press, 1988); Italian translation (cited here) Vita di Jehudà. Autobiografia di Leon Modena rabbino veneziano del xvii secolo (Torino: Zamorani, 2000), 69, 71, 82, 116, 120. On Leon Modena, see The Lion Shall Roar. Leon Modena and His World, eds. Robert Bonfil and David Malkiel ( Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2003); Yaacob Dweck, The Scandal of Kabbalah: Leon Modena, Jewish Mysticism, Early Modern Venice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011). The depositions of the three under investigation are in Città del Vaticano, Archivio della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede (ACDF), S.O., St.St., CC2–e, cc. 95rv–104r. In the famous manual for the Holy Office, the Prattica per provvedere nelle cause del tribunale del Sant’Officio written by the Inquisitor and Cardinal Desiderio Scaglia and dating from the first two decades of the 17th century, in Chapter VIII, De i sortileghi, there is a precise description of the experiment with the virgin and the palm of her hand coated with oil in which small illustrations appear: Prattica per provvedere nelle cause del tribunale del Sant’Officio. De i sortilegij, cap. VIII, in Sortilegi amorosi, materassi a nolo e pignattini. Processi Inquisitoriali del XVII secolo fra Bologna e il Salento, eds. Umberto Mazzone and Claudia Pancino (Roma: Carocci, 2008), 164–70 (transl. Gian Luca D’Errico). Giulio Morosini, Via della fede mostrata a’ gli ebrei da Giulio Morosini venetiano, 3 vols. ( Roma: Stamparia della Sacra Congregazione de Propaganda Fide, Roma 1683). There is no monograph about Morosini. Regarding the dispute with his wife, who remained Jewish, see Marina Caffiero, “Le disgrazie della conversione. Un memoriale inedito di Giulio Morosini sul ripudio della moglie ebrea e la restituzione della dote (1676)”, Itinerari di ricerca storica, a. XXX, n. 2, nuova serie, (2016): 127–38. Regarding the procedures of the Roman Inquisition, Giovanni Romeo, L’Inquisizione nell’Italia moderna (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2001), 40–56. Regarding the “sommaria” procedure and its simplest modalities compared to the formal process, Andrea Del Col, “Alcune osservazioni sui processi inquisitoriali come fonti storiche”, Metodi e ricerche, n.s., vol. XIII (1994): 87–8 and Id., L’Inquisizione in Italia. Da XII al XXI secolo (Milano: Mondadori, 2006), 126, 768–9. Abjuration had three levels and could be de levi or de vehementi suspicione and de formali: this was the most serious and was used for heretics and apostates where there was certainty of the crime and not only suspicion. Other examples are in Marina Caffiero, Legami pericolosi. Ebrei e cristiani tra eresia, libri proibiti e stregoneria (Torino: Einaudi, 2012). The whole question of the nexus of magic-witchcraft-Judaism is addressed extensively in this volume, which reports the events of various trials, including the one narrated above. We still lack thorough studies on the relationship of Jews-witchcraft-magic, especially for Italy. Still, see the essays in From Witness to Witchcraft. Jews and Judaism in Medieval Christian Thought, ed. Jeremy Cohen (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1996), and, remaining in the Middle Ages, the ref lections of Carlo Ginzburg, Storia notturna. Una decifrazione del sabba (Torino: Einaudi, 1989), 36–61; Hugh Trevor-Roper, “La caccia alle streghe in Europa nel Cinquecento”, in Id., Protestantesimo e trasformazione sociale (Bari: Laterza, 1976), 133–240. Still very useful on the diffusion of magic among the Jews and the demonological paradigm are the works of Joshua Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition. A Study in Folk Religion (1939) (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008; Reprint of 1939 Edition), 249–59 and Joshua Trachtenberg, The Devil and the Jews. The Medieval Conception of the Jew and Its Relation to Modern Antisemitism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1943). On astrology, see David B. Ruderman, Kabbalah, Magic and Science. The Cultural Universe of a Sixteenth-Century Jewish Physician (Cambridge – London: Harvard University Press, 1988) and Moshe Idel, “Jewish Magic from the Renaissance Period to Early Hasidism”, in Religion, Science and Magic: In Concert and in Conflict, eds. Jacob Neusner, Ernest S. Frerichs and Paul Flesher (New York – Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). The “legend of Jewish witchcraft” is discussed in Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition, 1–10. Caffiero, Legami pericolosi, 104.

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9 John Tedeschi, “Ebrei e giudaizzanti negli archivi dispersi dell’Inquisizione romana”, in Le Inquisizioni cristiane e gli ebrei, Atti dei Convegni dei Lincei, n. 191 (Roma: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 2003), 200–1. 10 On the Kabbalistic myth of the Golem, Gershom Scholem, “La rappresentazione del golem nei suoi rapporti tellurici e magici”, in Id., La Kabbalah e il suo simbolismo (Torino: Einaudi, 1980), and Moshe Idel, Golem. Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artificial Anthropoid (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990). 11 We recall the Constitutions Hebraeorum gens of Pio V, from 1569, Antiqua Iudaeorum improbitas of Gregorio XIII, from 1581, and especially the Cum Hebraeorum malitia of Clemente VIII, from 1593. Regarding these, see Caffiero, Legami pericolosi, 102–6. 12 Bullarum Diplomatum et Privilegiorum Sanctorum Romanorum Pontificum (Torino: Sebastiano Franco,1863), vol. VIII, 646–50. The edition printed in Italian was published in Rome and Bologna in the same year of 1586 on the initiative of Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti, and was able to reach a large public. Cfr. Vincenzo Tedesco, “‘Non già l’huomo per le stelle, ma le stelle son fatte per l’huomo’. La repressione dell’astrologia giudiziaria a Siena negli anni dell’emanazione della bolla Coeli et terrae (1586)”, in Magia e stregoneria tra mediatori culturali e circolazione delle credenze (tardo medioevo- inizio età moderna), eds. Marina Caffiero and Marina Montesano, a monographic issue of Rivista di Storia del Cristianesimo 2/2020 (in print) 13 On the definition of Jews as heretics, Caffiero, Legami pericolosi, 5–43, Chapter I: “Gli ebrei sono eretici?”. 14 Adriano Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza. Inquisitori, confessori, missionari (Torino: Einaudi, 1996), 397, and Del Col, L’Inquisizione in Italia, 772. 15 Federico Barbierato, Nella stanza dei circoli. “Clavicula Salomonis” e libri di magia a Venezia nei secoli XVII e XVIII (Milano: Sylvestre Bonnard, 2002). 16 Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza, 400–11. 17 Regarding the growing anti-Jewish specialization of the Roman Inquisition once the anti-heresy phase had concluded, see Marina Caffiero, Battesimi forzati. Storie di ebrei cristiani e convertiti nella Roma dei papi (Roma: Viella 2004), 17. The English translation of this book is Forced Baptisms. Histories of Jews, Christians, and Converts in Papal Rome (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012). 18 On the historiographical paradigm of the separation between the history of the Jews and general history, see Caffiero, Legami pericolosi, IX–XVI. 19 As Vincenzo Lavenia has noted, “Formerly in mixed court”. “Inquisizione, stati e delitti di stregoneria nella prima età moderna”, in Inquisizioni: percorsi di ricerca, 9, ed. Giovanna Paolin (Trieste: EUT, 2001), 40. The moderate turn was directly connected to the expansion of the Inquisition’s oversight and to the resulting extension of sorcery to the heretical category indicated in the Bull of Sixtus V. 20 This is Pierre Birnbaum’s thesis, Un récit de «meurtre rituel» au Grand Siècle. L’affaire Raphäel Lévy. Metz, 1669 (Paris: Fayard, 2008). 21 On the long history of the demonization of Jews, see Trachtenberg, The Devil and the Jews. Note the date of publication (1943) and the link made by the author with contemporary anti-Semitism. 22 Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza, 391–3. 23 Ibid., 391–2.

PART III

Preachers as mediators

8 SOME REPORTS OF MAGIC, SUPERSTITION, AND WITCHCRAFT IN THE MEDIEVAL MIRABILIA LITERATURE Christa Agnes Tuczay

Introduction We say nothing new when we say that secular medieval fiction discusses the uncanny, magical, and mundane, and that – with some reservations – it can also be used as a source for folk and lay culture. Since the appearance of the French medievalists and the emergence of a dichotomous, later dynamic model1 of folk and scholarly culture in recent decades, the focus of folk culture research has shifted to miracle and above all exemplary stories. Alltagsgeschichten and miracle stories2 were narratively developed into mirabilia in ecclesiastical and monastic exemplary literature, in miracula and in scholarly texts. The term miraculum refers both to an event and an account that describes an event or experience. Miracles are by definition a “fixed literary form of an answer to prayer.”3 In contrast to the saintly legends, the protagonists of miracle stories are not extraordinary but rather common people who experience a miracle. Whereas the legend tells a story of an extraordinary person, a saint, the miracle story explains that it can make sense and above all be advantageous to venerate a saint. The narrative usually revolves round a good, pious person who strays from the path of righteousness due to circumstances. He is helped by a saint or, since the emergence of Marianism, St. Mary, who frees him from his hopeless situation and the covenant with the devil he thoughtlessly entered into. The central experience, figurative in character, is a story of the conversion and purification of an average layperson. This is true not only of vernacular miracle stories, but also of Latin exempla. Whereas Le Goff4 unequivocally attributes the themes and motifs of so-called secular literature to popularity, that is, to folklore, and hence also proposes a classification based on Stith Thompson’s motif-index,5 Tubach’s Index exemplorum by no means records all the motifs found in the exempla, especially since, for instance, he was able to use only

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excerpts of Caesarius’ work, as the historical-critical edition was published only in 2009.

Exempla in miracle and mirabilia literature The extraordinary event is textually embedded as exemplary mostly in homilies, and not only does it mark the text type or literary form in a narrower sense, it also represents a functional element.6 The exemplum is best understood as a variable element of Christian discourse, and is defined as a minimal narrative form which is explaining the theoretical meaning of a text. “The goal of using the exemplum is to demand, on the basis of its persuasive potential (persuasio), that one align oneself with the exemplary role model (imitatio).” 7 We should mention, above all, the exampla collections and miracle stories by Peter the Venerable (died 1156) and the Dialogus miraculorum by Caesarius von Heisterbach (died 1240), which go beyond the usual hagiographic narrative.8 An important element for the analysis is the time and the form in which an example was used in the homilies.9 Recent studies have shown that in the thirteenth century, new theological concepts, as well as anti-heretic propaganda and criticism of superstition were communicated to laypersons in the form of exemplary stories. Jean Claude Schmitt10 and Claude Lecouteux11 analyzed the dynamics of the proliferation of popular ideas in the exempla and produced a wealth of publications. The answer to the opposite question as to how the propositions of the scholars were received and reinterpreted by the people can arguably be grasped from the early modern period and in this case in the witch, werewolf, and treasure hunter trial records.12 With exempla, the sharp separation between the folk and elite ideas causes difficulties. While it is proven that the exempla in the homily were considered particularly suitable for dissemination among uneducated laypeople, the persuasive exemplum was not aimed, at least not exclusively, at laypeople. The monastic tradition of miracle literature, which did not serve the purpose of instructing the people, subsequently shifted directly to the collections of exempla. The cultural exchange worked in between different audiences: in addition to the monastic audience, the exempla could also be addressed to the nobility. But in this case the focus was not on instruction, but on entertainment. Walter Map intended to amuse the English royal court, and he served it with his De nugis curialium (Courtier’s Trif les) (1140–1209)13 and by sprinkling exempla in scholarly publications such as Policraticus by John of Salisbury (before 1170)14 and the travel writing of Gerald of Wales,15 which were written for the instruction of the clergy. The court clerics William of Newburgh,16 a canon of the Augustinian priory at Newburgh, Walter Map, and Gervase of Tilbury,17 in the service of Henry II and Otto IV, but were equally at home in a courtly and an ecclesiastical milieu.

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In contrast to the monastic miracle reports, exempla and mirabilia stand in a different communicative context, since they have no inherent didactic or instructive intention, and they are understood as entertainment, historiography, or travel writing. The proto-ethnographic reports of court clerics render popular narratives accessible and make a contrastive view of pre-Christian pagan ideas possible. Indeed, their miracle stories belong to the “fringe of the miraculous in Christianity”;18 however, they remain in a Christian collective context precisely because they – in the absence of other possibilities to explain unusual events – locate the astonishing phenomena in the sphere of the divine or magical-diabolical. The cultural-anthropological perspective of the last decades of the twentieth century adopted by ethnology as well as social history and the history of mentalities, understood superstition, magic, and belief in miracles as belonging to the domain of scholarly culture which was dichotomously separated from the archaic vernacular culture but undermined the dominant Christian high culture. The equation of the miraculous with the popular was long widespread and was found equally in French history of mentalities, that is, in the works of Jacques Le Goff 19 and Aaron Gurjewitsch, as well as in German ethnography, for instance in the works of Dieter Harmening.20 The initial definition of miracles and belief in miracles as an expression of a primitive mindset of a rural milieu has long been obsolete. The romantic-naive positive attitude towards miracles, mirabilia, and exempla as evidence of an unjustly concealed or even prohibited culture also falls short. Jean-Claude Schmitt and Hans-Jörg Gilomen 21 present a substantially more nuanced categorization, but they, too, have been subjected to criticism. An examination of clerical folklore, i.e., the use of exempla in medieval scholarly literature, remains by and large a highly desirable research topic, although in recent times several treatises have been published 22 which take the dynamics of interaction, the cultural exchange between the masses and the elites, the clergy and laypeople, and the related transformation processes into consideration. The philological perspective sees superstition and the belief in miracles as a conglomeration of literary motifs, as products of authors schooled in literature who construct paragons by reproducing popular motifs and discourses. An important catalyst for more recent text-critical research was above all the function of the embedded motifs, intertextuality, and self-referentiality.23 Hagiography can therefore be seen as a self-generating and replicating genre with an indeterminate degree of factual content, since we can only grasp the levels of meaning which the scholars gave to the stories related to them by the people. Before analyzing selected topics related to superstition, we must first look into the modes of perception of interpretative processes, out of hermeneutical interest in the process in which a (real) event is transformed into a narrative. In medieval perception, the stories that were told were not mere figments of the imagination in the modern, often disparaging, sense of the word, but rather historia,24 truthful accounts of past events. In the historia, eyewitnesses occupied a place of distinction. As a rule, they were the authors themselves, or especially persons of high

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standing, mostly men of advanced age and high social status, members of the clergy. They guaranteed the witnesses’ auctoritas and therefore the veracity of the report. With the advent of the Middle Latin Bible exegesis, the authors benefited from a recognized interpretative instrument which was also considered suitable for interpreting secular narratives. As pertains the factuality or fictionality of the stories, the perspective of the research was broadened based on works of anthropology of memory and script pragmatics,25 thereby revising the older, radical reductionist positions, such as those espoused by Ernst Robert Curtius26 or, especially in connection with mystical authors, Ursula Peters.27 This is because neither affirmation and verification strategies nor testimonials about mystical experiences per se can be assigned exclusively to the realm of the topic, thus denying any credibility they may have.28 These assignments, which can rightfully be considered obsolete, are indeed set in contrast to the naive popular notions of the supposedly genuine documentary value of the miracle report.29

Magic in miracle stories and mirabilia The question of whether or not magical f light is possible plays a key role first and foremost in penitentials, Papal bulls and late medieval and early modern treatises. In Caesarius’ example of the astonishing speed which makes it possible to cover great distances in a short period of time, the question arises as to whether the magical ride should be assigned to miracle stories or to mirabilia. If the criterion of intent to instruct or astonish is applied, it becomes obvious that the story about this miracle, in which a pious pilgrim named Winand, making his way back from Jerusalem, is the only one to attend all the services at Easter and is thus late for his pilgrim ship, is intended to be didactic-instructive – God rewards his extraordinary zeal by sending the pilgrim an angel who brings him home quickly.30 The exempla afford a different treatment to the f light of Holde and Unholde, rumoured since Regino of Prüm (ninth century) and Burchard of Worms (tenth century).31 The notion of f lying in the wake of the Goddess Diana was dismissed by the two as old wives’ dreams and punished with penance. John of Salisbury labelled both notions, the Holde and the Unholde, dreams of the uneducated in general,32 while Walter Map33 seeks to prove that the night f lyers are not the women who sleep in their beds and later claim to have taken f light. They are demons who take on the appearance of such women and commit evil deeds. He gives an example in which a demon in the form of an old lady strangles three children. When he goes after the fourth, he is confronted with its likeness and escapes through an open window.34 In Gervase of Tilbury’s Otia Imperialia (1209–1214),35 the notion had an ambivalent character: on the one hand, he assumes that the dominae nocturnae and the lamias he mistakes them for are un-human, and hence demonic, creatures that can pose a threat to humans. Elsewhere, he repeats the subsequently often retold story about the failed f light of a woman he knew who uttered Christ’s name and

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crashed into the Rhône.36 Therefore one has to assume that there are two groups and also two narrative traditions of night f lyers – demonic and human. A content-based comparison reveals that the motifs of the magical ride or f light and the breaking of a taboo are on the one hand instructive, and on the other seen by court clerics as astonishing events. The increasing tendency to declare that the f light is demonic and steered by demons recontextualizes the story. While in Caesarius’s examples of f light intertextual evidence is interwoven in the dialogue with the novice, the court clerics discuss the possibility and scope of demonic inf luence. Gervase of Tilbury proves that in his lifetime the unholy night f lyers have turned into beasts, a subject of great importance in the subsequent witch narrative: Scimus quasdam ( feminas) in forma cattarum a furtiva vigilantibus de nocte visas ac vulneratas in crastino vulnera truncationesque membrorum ostendisse.37 While in the early Middle Ages paganism and its archaic belief system had been a popular topic, from the eleventh century onwards the new Marianism, the piety movement and Saint cult, but also heretic movements and their new seductive ideas, came into focus and therefore in discourse. Gregory of Tours claimed to have observed in his own experience the political as well as the much-feared rabble-rousing inf luence of a self-proclaimed saint who disposed of a large cross and some relics38 which he offered to Gregory for the church of St. Martin. Infuriated when Gregory declined the offer, he went to Paris, where he gathered around himself commoners, prostitutes, and women from the lower classes,39 which greatly upset the bishop of Paris. The bishop asked him to participate in the Mass, which he rejected with curses and the bishop had him locked up. All kinds of roots, mouse teeth, and animal claws were found in his travel bag, obviously intended for magical purposes. Even his cross was taken away, after which he built himself a new one and carried on with his business until he was thrown in the tower. He managed to escape, got drunk, and fell into the hands of Bishop Gregory. He was released without punishment and sent to his master, who was in the meantime recognized as a runaway slave.40 Caesarius’s report on the heretics of Besançon was considered authentic in the Middle Ages. Heretics living in Besançon supposedly performed numerous miraculous deeds in order to prove that theirs was the only true faith. They were able, for instance, to walk across a f loor sprinkled with f lour without leaving footprints, to walk on water, and it was alleged that not even fire could harm them – this impressed the inhabitants of the city, who converted to the heretic faith in droves. The desperate bishop then resorted to counter-magic, assigning a priest familiar with the magical arts to discover the heretics’ secret. The priest refused at first, as he had renounced magic, but the bishop was afraid he would be stoned to death and ordered the priest, in view of his past sins, to obey him in this matter. According to the report, the priest then summoned the devil and promised he would serve him again and call him if he revealed the secret. The devil

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agreed and, with his help, it was found out that the heretics had contracts with the devil sewn under their armpits which enabled them to work all those miracles. When the contracts were found, they were cut from their skin and the heretics lost their magical powers. The disappointed citizens had them burnt alive.41 Although the heretics’ pact with the devil is discussed at length, the one entered into by the priest who revealed the secret is omitted. The conclusion: “Thus, by the grace of God and the bishop’s zeal the spreading heresy was stamped out and the spell-bound and deceived populace was purified through repentance.”42 It is historically proven beyond doubt that false saints, and in most cases also false prophets, appeared especially often in times of economic downturn, as Gregory of Tours stresses in his report about a false Christ, with a reference to failed harvest and famine. This man was chopping wood when he was attacked by a swarm of f lies,43 which he interpreted as the work of evil forces and began preaching, dressed in animal skins. In addition, he supposedly had the gift of prophecy, which Gregory sees as diabolical inf luence. In the area of Poitiers, the man, now accompanied by a woman, started calling himself Christ and the woman Maria. The people accepted him eagerly, more than 3,000 followed him, as he gave away his possessions to the poor. After a while he had nothing left to give away, so he stole and gave away the spoils. Those who did not want to worship him he threatened with death. The bishop of Puy en Velay had him arrested and killed, and the false Mary tortured. She confessed to using magic tricks.44 If Gregory was all about false saints, in several persuasive exempla by Caesarius of Heisterbach45 we have diabolical conspiracies and evidence of demonic inf luence.46 In three interconnected narratives he outlines the profile of a priest by the name of Philipp, who was schooled in magic and used drastic examples to illustrate the dangers of ritual magic, the magical arts in general, and demonic inf luence. A knight who did not believe in demons was put right in a drastic manner by the priest. At noon, when the demons are as powerful as they are at night, the priest drew a circle47 on the ground with a sword, and told the knight to step into it, making sure not to stretch any part of his body out of the circle. A large number of demons soon appeared before the knight, followed in the end by the biggest, most fearsome of them all, the devil himself. The devil first demanded the knight’s cloak as a token of favour. When the knight refused, he demanded his belt, then a sheep from his f lock and finally a chicken. The knight refused adamantly every time, whereupon the devil tried to pull him out of the circle, but Philipp came to his aid and the devil had to f lee. In another story,48 the same Philipp put a priest in a magic circle, and the devil appeared immediately and terrified the priest so much that he was able to pull him out of the circle before Philipp could step in. The priest died of the consequences of the abuse he had suffered at the hands of the devil. In a third story Caesarius relates Philipp’s youth49 in Toledo with other students of magic. According to Philipp’s account, the students asked their teacher for a practical demonstration of an invocation, which the teacher granted. He drew a circle on the ground in an open field and warned them not to step out of it under any

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circumstances, and not to promise or accept gifts. He summoned demons, who appeared in the form of knights and engaged in jousts, with a view to getting the students out of the circle. When this failed, they tried in the form of beautiful young girls. One girl slipped a ring50 onto one student’s finger and pulled him out of the circle. The student vanished, together with the triumphant demons. The teacher heard their cries and rushed to them, and told them they would never see their fellow student, who had disregarded the warning, again. Enraged, the students demanded that he bring the vanished man back, or they would kill him on the spot. The teacher again summoned the devil, using all his powers of persuasion, and listing his merits. The devil let a tribunal of demons decide, and it released the young man. “The rescued showed more by example than by words how godless and damnable that science was. He left Toledo and became […] a monk in a monastery.”51 It is not only this concluding remark that puts the story unambiguously in the category of the didactic exemplum. Caesarius skilfully sketches the development of a trained sorcerer and talks about the oft-cited College of Magic in Toledo, the “evidence” of the existence and danger posed by the demons, but also the possibility of negotiating with them. A small anonymous poem known as the Vorauer Novelle52 also tells about the dangers of a pact with the devil and the penalty it carried. The Alemannic poet, presumably a clergyman, tells the story of two young men who were bound for the clergy and sent to a monastery as small boys. A critique of strict monastery discipline rings out when the poet talks about the upbringing of the boys who were broken by the inhumane discipline and ran away from the monastery. Their goal was the College of Magic in Toledo. There they enter into a contract under which their teacher of magic gives them everything they want by using a magic book. Then they part ways and devote themselves to the good life. When one contracts a fatal disease, he calls his friend to his deathbed. In spite of his friend’s prayers and supplications he dies before he reconciles with God. Shaken by this experience, he repents and can be readmitted to the Christian community. Ottokar of Geul53 (ca. 1260–ca. 1319), in his Reimchronik, writes about a pact with the devil entered into out of poverty. The story, originating from the thirteenth century, is titled Der Bürger von Verdun (The Citizen of Verdun): The poor citizen’s go-between is an old lady who summons the devil, who immediately makes far-reaching demands of the man. He has to renounce Christ and all the sacraments, for which he will receive a bag of gold. After a while, the devil comes for him. The man says good-bye to his children and friends, and vanishes. His sons want to discover their father’s fate, which they eventually manage to do with the old woman’s help. She summons those demons who took the man. One of the sons even goes to hell with her, where he witnesses the punishment of his father. When he touches him, he burns his hand and arm to the elbow. It is too late for help, as the father has also renounced the Passion of the Christ.

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Protective circles and rituals in delimited, enclosed spaces appear in courtly literature as well as in mirabilia and chronicles. The magic circle longknown to Jewish magic came in use in Christian ritual magic by the late thirteenth century and soon illustrated the stereotypical image of the magician. This emblematic motif of medieval ritual magic was inf luenced by four traditions: clerics in astral magic texts, the seals and pentacles of Solomonic magic, protective circular amulets and the thirteenth century scholastic understanding of the cosmos.54

Magic, Witchcraft, Heresy – Parallels and cultural exchange in courtly literature In the Old French adventure novel Amadas et Ydoine,55 written between 1190 and 1220, a marriage to an unloved suitor is prevented. The eponymous heroine engages the services of three sorceresses, whose versatile skills come at an opportune moment. Not only are they able to squeeze through doors and windows like smoke, but they can also paralyze the count and his men. That is how they prepare the shocked count for their appearance in the form of the three Fates, who then prophesies that a marriage with Ydoine will only bring misfortune and death. Of interest are their diverse skills, such as nocturnal f light, weather and elemental magic, the seeds of which they sow: fertility spells, waking the dead, having humans take on the shape of animals; they are mistresses of animals and practise dream spells. This description matches the Holde described in Burchard of Worms’s Canon Episcopi and Corrector (see above). These are among the few literary records that reproduce this complex of ideas in so much detail. In summary, it should be said that the late medieval notion of the witch is not identical to the sorceress or the sorcerer, although some common points can be observed. There is a definite, clearly defined set of attributes connected to the term “witch”; these attributes stem from the older notions of magic and superstition, as well as other areas of folk belief, but also from the theologians’ system of definitions. The ancient motif of the pact with the devil which became a prominent issue in witch trials is not only a legendary motif like in the Theophilus story by Hroswitha of Gandersheim,56 but an attribute to Roaz the heathen magician in Wigalois,57 as well as a characteristic to Morgana the fairy in Arthurian romance. The aspect of heresy plays a significant role as well, especially in the development of the concept of the heretical Sabbath into the witches’ Sabbath. The equation sorceress = witch does not hold up. The latter is a cumulative term that consists attribution of magical f light, shape shifting, dances, a pact with the devil, organization in a group (Witches are also distinguished from sorcerers, who operated individually, by the element of a covenant – witches were organized as a sect in secret societies), etc.

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Two cases described in courtly literature could illustrate the paradigm shift from sorcery to witchcraft. The courtly love novel Friedrich von Schwaben,58 probably written after 1314, tells the story of the conviction of Angelburg, who is accused by her evil stepmother Flannea, of blinding the king by magic and is punished by her transformation: she has to live in animal form as a stag, unless she is redeemed by the protagonist Friedrich von Schwaben. In Johannes von Soest’s59 much later and little-noticed 1480 principal work Kinder von Limburg (Children of Limburg),60 the protagonist Margaretha is also unjustly accused of sorcery, but the punishment is quite in accordance with the contemporary legal opinion and procedure: she is thrown into a dungeon, and is to be burnt. The head of village takes her to the execution site, along with a confessor and the evil executioner. Her protestations of innocence are described in detail, in a frighteningly realistic manner. The girl rejects the charge that she cast a love spell on young Count Echites to get him to love her and want to marry her. The countess orders that fire be stoked up immediately, as she considers her not only a witch, but also someone of lower birth insinuating herself into the nobility.

Summary Homiletic and exempla literature treat Alltagsgeschichten and matters of faith differently. Examples conveying similar content in miracle literature and mirabilia have an instructive and moral, or entertaining or informative character. The topics presented, such as night f light, pact with the devil, belief in witches, and love magic, anticipate much later scholarly debates of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and a proper revision of Tubach’s and similar catalogues of exemplas could give this type of literature the status of a source, which it indeed deserves. Courtly fiction also contains didactic elements; however, they are nothing more than isolated occurrences and remain deep in the background for the sake of delectare. Whilst, for instance, the pact with the devil in the short narrative Vorauer Novelle leads to damnation, in Erec and Wigalois, for instance, it is mentioned only as an attribute of the sorcerer or sorceress but has no repercussions. The contemporary debate about witches also has some inf luence on late medieval fiction, but it is modified and adulterated to fit the genre. In summary, it should be said that unlike courtly literature, mirabilia can be located closer to the historical reality of the author, as he enriches and updates his traditional examples with contemporary ones.

Notes 1 For a more detailed discussion, see Hans-Jörg Gilomen, Volkskultur und ExemplaForschung, in Joachim Heinzle, ed., Modernes Mittelalter. Neue Bilder einer populären Epoche (Frankfurt a. M./Leipzig: Insel, 1994), 165–208. 2 “However, certain descriptively obtained properties of what is considered a homiletic exemplum are not disputed: it does not necessarily refer to a famous historical figure,

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but rather, in most cases, to a ‘small man’, an anonymous quidam, an everyday person who stands for all of mankind.” Peter von Moos, Geschichte als Topik. Das rhetorische Exemplum von der Antike zur Neuzeit und die ›historiae‹ im »Policraticus« Johanns von Salisbury (Hildesheim: Olms, 1988), 115. Ingo Schneider, Art. Mirakel, in Enzyklopädie des Märchens (Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 1984), vol. 9, 1999, 682–91, 684. Jacques Le Goff, Phantasie und Realität des Mittelalters (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1990), 121–4. Stith Thompson, ed., Motif-Index of Folk-Literature. A Classification of Narrative Elements in Folk-Tales, Ballads, Myths, Fables, Mediaeval Romances, Exempla, Fabliaux, JestBooks, and Local Legends. 6 Bde (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1955–1958). Numerous indices were based on Stith Thompson’s model, including our own cataloguing of secular Middle High German fiction: Helmut Birkhan, Karin Lichtblau, Christa Agnes Tuczay et al., eds., Motif-Index of German Secular Narratives from the Beginning to 1400. 7 vols. (Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 2006). Rudolf Schenda, “Stand und Aufgaben der Exempelforschung”, Fabula 10 (1969) 69–85; Gerd Dicke, “Art. Exemplum”, Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft 1 (2007) 534–7; Markus Schürer, Das Exemplum oder die erzählte Institution. Studien zum Beispielgebrauch bei den Dominikanern und Franziskanern des 13. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Lit, 2005), 51–66. Christoph Daxelmüller, Art. Exemplum, in Enzyklopädie des Märchens vol. 4, 1984, 627–59, 627. Caesarius von Heisterbach, Dialogus Miraculorum – Dialog über die Wunder, ed., Nikolaus Nösges and Horst Schneider. Lateinisch-Deutsch. 5 vols., FC 86 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), and Petrus Venerabilis, Les Merveilles de dieu, trans. Jean-Pierre Torrell and Denise Bouthillier (Fribourg – Paris: Editions universitaires – Le Cerf ). Cf. the detailed discussion in Hans-Jörg Gilomen, Volkskultur und Exempla-Forschung, in Modernes Mittelalter, Neue Bilder einer populären Epoche, ed., Joachim Heinzle (Frankfurt am Main/Leipzig: Insel, 1999), 165–208. Jean-Claude Schmitt, Die Wiederkehr der Toten. Geistergeschichten im Mittelalter (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1994). Claude Lecouteux has a broad spectrum of research topics. Since 2003 his studies about ghosts, vampires, werewolves, elves and fairies, grimoires, etc., have been translated into English and are therefore well received. Willem de Blécourt, ed., Werewolf Histories (London: Palgrave 2015); Johannes Dillinger, Magical Treasure Hunting in Europe and North America (London: Palgrave 2011). Walter Map, De nugis curialium. Courtier’s Trifles, transl. by M. R. James (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983); Walter Map, Die unterhaltsamen Gespräche am englischen Königshof. De nugis curialium, introduction, transl., and commentary by Elmar Wilhelm, Bibliothek der Mittellateinischen Literatur 12 (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 2015). Johannes von Salisbury, Policraticus. Eine Textauswahl. Lateinisch-Deutsch, selection, transl., and introduction by Stefan Seit (Freiburg/Breisgau: Herder, 2008). Cf: von Moos, Geschichte als Topik, 144–502. Giraldus Cambrensis, Beschreibung von Wales. Eine völkerkundliche Beschreibung aus dem Mittelalter von Giraldus Cambrensis, ed. and transl. Philipp M. Schneider (Berlin: Frieling & Huffmann, 2008); Giraldus Cambrensis, The History and Topography of Ireland (Topographia Hibernica), ed. and transl. John J. O’Meara (London: Penguin 1985). Wilhelm von Newburgh, Historia rerum anglicarum, ed. and transl. Claude Hamilton. 2 vols. (London: Sumptibus Societatis, 1856); William of Newburgh, The History of English Affairs, ed. and transl. P. G. Walsh/M. J. Kennedy (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 1988). Only the first volume has been published. Gervasius von Tilbury, Kaiserliche Mußestunden. Otia imperialia, transl. Heinz Erich Stiene. 2 Bde, Stuttgart 2009; Gervasius von Tilbury, Otia imperialia. Recreation for an Emperor, eds., S. E. Banks and J. W. Binns (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

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18 Aaron Gurjewitsch, Das Weltbild des mittelalterlichen Menschen (Dresden: Verlag der Kunst 1978), and Id., Mittelalterliche Volkskultur. Probleme zur Forschung (Dresden: Verlag der Kunst 1986); Jacques Le Goff, Die Geburt des Fegefeuers. Vom Wandel des Weltbilds im Mittelalter (Munich: Taschenbuch Verlag 1990, and Id., Phantasie und Realität. 19 Ibid. 125–42. 20 Aaron Gurjewitsch, Das Weltbild; Dieter Harmening, Superstitio. Überlieferungs- und theoriegeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur kirchlich-theologischen Aberglaubensliteratur des Mittelalters (Berlin: Erich Schmidt 1979), and Id., Wörterbuch des Aberglaubens, Art. Prodigium (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2009), 348. 21 Jean-Claude Schmitt, Heidenspaß und Höllenangst. Aberglaube im Mittelalter (Frankfurt am Main: Campus 1993), 53; Id, Die Wiederkehr der Toten; Id., Der Mediävist und die Volkskultur, in Peter Dinzelbacher/Dieter R. Bauer, eds., (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1990), 29–40, 31; Jean-Claude Schmitt, “Menschen, Tiere und Dämonen. Volkskunde und Geschichte”, Saeculum 32 (1981), 334–48, 334; Gilomen, Volkskultur und Exempla; Wolfgang Brückner, “Popular Culture. Konstrukt, Interpretament, Realität. Anfragen zur historischen Methodologie und Theoriebildung aus der Sicht der mitteleuropäischen Forschung”, Ethnologia Europaea 14 (1984), 14–24. For a critique of the approach of Le Goff and Schmitt, cf. John Van Engen, “The Christian Middle Ages as an Historiographical Problem”, American Historical Review 91 (1986), 519–52; Frantisek Graus, Hagiographie und Dämonenglauben – zu ihren Funktionen in der Merowingerzeit, in Santi e demoni nell ‘alto medioevo occidentale. Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo (Spoleto: CISAM 1989), 93–120, 96; Peter Burke, Helden, Schurken und Narren. Europäische Volkskultur in der frühen Neuzeit (Stuttgart: Klett Cotta, 1981). 22 Axel Rüth, Imaginationen der Angst. Das christlich Wunderbare und das Phantastische (Berlin/Boston MA: De Gruyter 2018). 23 Cf. Uta Kleine, Gesta, Fama, Scripta. Rheinische Mirakel des Hochmittelalters zwischen Geschichtsdeutung, Erzählung und sozialer Praxis, Beiträge zur Hagiographie 7 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2007), 47–54. 24 For the history of the term, see Joachim Knape, Historiae in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit, begriffs- und gattungsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen im interdisziplinären Kontext, Saecula Spiritualis 10 (Baden-Baden: Koerner 1984). 25 On memory research, cf. Guy P. Marchal, Memoria Fama, Mos Maiorum. Vergangenheit in mündlicher Überlieferung im Mittelalter, unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Zeugenaussagen von Arezzo von 1170/1180, in Jürgen von Ungern-Sternberg, Hansjörg Reinau, eds., Vergangenheit in mündlicher Überlieferung, Colloquium Rauricum 1 (Stuttgart: B. G. Teubner, 1988), 289–320; cf. Karin Fuchs, Zeichen und Wunder bei Guibert de Nogent. Kommunikation, Deutungen und Funktionalisierungen von Wundererzählungen im 12. Jahrhundert. Pariser historische Studien. Band 84 (München: Oldenbourg, 2008). 26 Ernst Robert Curtius, Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter (Bern/München: A. Francke Verlag, 1993). 27 Ursula Peters, Religiöse Erfahrung als literarisches Faktum. Zur Vorgeschichte und Genese frauenmystischer Texte des 13. und 14. Jahrhunderts, Hermaea. NF 56 (Tübingen: Niemeyer 1988). 28 Cf. in detail Kleine, Gesta, Fama, Scripta, 47–54. 29 Ibid., 50, no. 131. 30 von Heisterbach, Dialogus Miraculorum, vol. IV, 10, 2, 1897–1900. 31 See in detail Patrick Hersperger, Kirche, Magie und ‚Aberglaube‘. Superstitio in der Kanonistik des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts (Köln: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010), and Werner Tschacher, “Der Flug durch die Luft zwischen Illusionstheorie und Realitätsbeweis. Studien zum sog. Kanon Episcopi und zum Hexenf lug”, Zeitschrift der Savigny–Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte 16 (1999), 225–76. 32 von Salisbury, Policraticus, no. 93, 408–11. 33 Map, Die unterhaltsamen Gespräche, II 14, 107 f.

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34 Joseph Hansen, Zauberwahn, Inquisition und Hexenprozeß im Mittelalter und die Entstehung der großen Hexenverfolgung (München: Eichborn Verlag, 1964), 137. 35 von Tilbury, Otia imperialia, 408–11. 36 Ibid., 139 f.; Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Scriptores rerum Brunsvicensium illustrationi inservientes, antiqui omnes et religionis reformatione priores, (Hannover: Nicolai Foersteri 1701), vol. 1, 3 chap. 93. This piece of writing, dedicated to King Otto IV, mixes the lamias from the ancient world with the Alp (mare) that can press down on the chests of men and women but can also dismember a person and rearrange their limbs. 37 von Salisbury, Policraticus, no. 93, 408–11. Latin cit. Joseph Hansen, Quellen und Untersuchungen 139 f. 38 Cf. the standard work on relics: Arnold Angenendt, Heilige und Reliquien. Die Geschichte ihres Kultes vom frühen Christentum bis zur Gegenwart (München: C. H. Beck, 1994). 39 It is stressed over and over again that women are supposed to be more easily transfixed by these miracle workers. 40 Gregor von Tours, Zehn Bücher Geschichten, 2 vols. based on the translation by Wilhelm Giesebrecht, revised by Rudolf Buchner (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft), 1955/1956, vol. II, book 9, no. 6, 232–7. 41 von Heisterbach, Dialogus Miraculorum, 5, 18, vol. 3, 1009–15. 42 Ibid. 43 Satan = “the Lord of the Flies”, after Luther’s translation of “Baal Sebub” in the Bible. 44 von Tours, Zehn Bücher Geschichten, vol. II, 10, 25. 45 Maryvonne Hagby, man hat uns fur die warheit … geseit. Die Strickersche Kurzerzählung im Kontext mittellateinischer ›narrationes‹ des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts, Studien und Texte zum Mittelalter und zur frühen Neuzeit 2 (Münster et al.: Waxmann 2001), 274–80. 46 von Heisterbach, Dialogus miraculorum, vol. III, 5, 2, 953–9. 47 The magical circle is well used in Jewish magic and surely has inf luenced ceremonial medieval magic. See Joshua Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition. A Study in Folk Religion (New York: Athenaeum, 1939), 121sq. Trachtenberg mentions Honi the Circle drawer who lived in the first century BCE. See Judah Goldin, “On Honi the Circle-Maker: A Demanding Prayer”, Harvard Theological Review 56 (1963), 233–7. 48 Von Heisterbach, Dialogus Miraculorum, vol. III, 5,3, 959–61. 49 Ibid., 5, 4, 961–7. 50 This passage is reminiscent of a story related by William of Malmesbury, in which the Roman sorcerer priest Palumbus is able to rescue a youth who had frivolously put his wedding ring on a statue of Venus from the goddess’s claims to him, William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum vol. 1, ed. and transl. R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson and M. Winterbottom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 256–8. Cf. in detail Walter Pabst, Venus und die missverstandene Dido. Literarische Ursprünge des Sibyllen- und des Venusberges (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1955), 117–31. 51 Von Heisterbach, Dialogus Miraculorum, vol. III, 5, 4, 961–7, here 965. 52 From one of the manuscripts from the Augustinian Canons monastery, Vorau, Eastern Styria. Cf. Anton E. Schönbach, Studien zur Erzählliteratur des Mittelalters. 2. Teil: Die Vorauer Novelle (Wien: Verlag der Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1902); Cf. Klaus Zatloukal, “Vorauer Novelle”, Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters. Verfasserlexikon vol. 10 (Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter 1999), cols. 523–5. 53 Author of the Steirischen Reimchronik, composed ca. 1301–131. Cf. Helmut Weinacht, “Ottokar von Steiermark”, Verfasserlexikon vol. 7 (Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter 1998), cols. 238–45. 54 Sophie Page, Medieval Magical Figures. Between Image and Text, in Sophie Page, Catherine Rider, The Routledge History of Medieval Magic (London: Routledge 2019), 432–57, 445.

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55 J. R. Reinhard, ed., Amadas et Ydoine (Paris: Honoré Champion,1926), vv. 2007– 2310; Jean-Claude Aubailly, trans., Amadas et Ydoine, Roman du XIIIe siècle (Paris,: Honoré Champion, 1986), 42 f. 56 Hroswitha von Ganderheim, Lapsus et conversio Theophili vicedomini. Roswitha von Gandersheim: Leben und Werk, ed., Kurt Kronenberg (Gandersheim: Hertel, 1962). 57 Wirnt von Grafenberg, Wigalois, Text der Ausgabe von J. M. N. Kapteyn übersetzt, erläutert und mit einem Nachwort versehen, Sabine Seelbach und Ulrich Seelbach (Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 2014). 58 Friedrich von Schwaben, Bibliotheca Suevica 14, ed. Sandra Linden (Konstanz: Isele, 2005); Cf. Dieter Welz, “‘Friedrich von Schwaben’”, Verfasserlexikon vol. 2 (Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter 1980), cols. 959–62. 59 Cf. Gesa Bonath, “Johann von Soest”, Verfasserlexikon vol. 4 (Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter 1983), cols. 744–55. 60 Manfred Klett, ed., Johannes von Soest: die Kinder von Limburg, ediert nach Cod. Pal. Germ. 87 (Wien: Karl M. Halosar, 1974) (=WAGAPH 4).

9 “DIABOLICAL SORCERIES” Vicent Ferrer’s preaching and the emergence of the witchcraft construct(s) in early fifteenth-century Europe Pau Castell Granados

Introduction It has been commonly accepted that the new crime of witchcraft emerged in Europe during the first decades of the fifteenth century, combining several ingredients taken from the fields of sorcery, heresy, maleficent magic, anti-Judaism, demonology, and a series of folkloric materials about magical f lights, nocturnal wanderings or infanticidal spirits. Such multiplicity of components would have contributed to the variety of appellatives employed to designate the alleged new sect – and its members – during the first decades of the witch-craze, even generating different “mythologies of witchcraft” that co-existed and inf luenced each other. The similarity of some of the literary descriptions and of the judicial charges brought against suspects from across a vast geographical area, have also suggested the existence of shared notions, contacts, and exchanges between the first judges, inquisitors and theologians facing this new menace.1 In this context, the role played by mendicant preachers in the construction of witchcraft has been a subject of discussion among scholars during the last decades. Underlined for the first time by Franco Cardini, some of the main results have come from Italian researchers Marina Montesano and Fabrizio Conti, who have demonstrated the inf luence of some Observant Franciscans in the emergence of a specific witchcraft mythology in fifteenth-century Italy, and beyond.2 The subject has also been solidly approached by other specialists such as Kathrin Utz Tremp, Martine Ostorero, Michael Bailey, or Ludovic Viallet, focusing essentially on the so-called arc alpin, a crucial geographic area between France and the Empire hosting some of the first witchcraft trials as well as various learned treatises describing the new heretical sect of devil-worshipers already in the 1430s.3 The current results point to the inf luence of some late medieval preachers, especially those connected to the Observant reform, in the processes of cultural

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exchange leading to the reshaping of folkloric material into a demonological framework. A few of them would have also played a decisive role in some of the first legal and judicial actions undertaken against the alleged crime of witchcraft. A paramount example is that of Bernardino of Siena (1380–1444), the most inf luential popular preacher of medieval and Early Renaissance Italy, whose sermons instigated the trial and execution of several women accused of witchcraft during the 1420s, and contributed to intensify the climate of fear and suspicion against that new diabolical sect at the very dawn of the European witch-craze.4 Another one of the main figures of late medieval preaching, Valencian Dominican Vicent Ferrer (c. 1350–1419), has not yet received the same amount of scholarly attention from that very perspective. During the Western Schism, Ferrer travelled across most of the lands under Avignon’s obedience announcing the imminence of the apocalypse and underlining the need for moral reform. Followed by hundreds of companions in public penitential processions, he achieved an immense reputation as a charismatic preacher with thaumaturgic capacities, and was even considered by many of his contemporaries as a “living saint” capable of performing miracles, as stated in the inquests leading to his 1458 canonisation.5 Like Bernardino of Siena and other charismatic preachers, Ferrer moved away from traditional rhetoric and applied a series of mechanisms and resources taken from popular literature, such as humour, onomatopoeic language, theatricality, or music. Unlike Bernardino, Ferrer’s call for a moral reform was intimately connected with his apocalyptic visions. The menacing proximity of the Final Judgement fuelled the preacher’s attacks on sins touching several aspects of fifteenth-century society, such as sorcery, blasphemy, gambling, prostitution, disregard of Christian liturgy, simony, usury, contact with Muslims and Jews, vanity, lust, and a long etcetera. The sermons delivered by Ferrer during his twenty-year apostolate across southern Europe have been often portrayed as a primary example of late medieval preaching, although his inf luence as a moral reformist is still to be fully assessed. Some scholars have already underlined the place of sorcery and divination in Ferrer’s sermons, a recurrent topic in the friar’s preaching and one of the main targets in his call for moral amendment.6 Furthermore, Vicent Ferrer’s homeland was also the scene of some of the first actions against diabolical witchcraft during the 1420s, only a few years after the friar’s death. And the same can be said about some of the other regions he visited during his apostolate, namely the French Dauphiné or the Duchy of Savoy.7 This coincidence is not enough to imply a direct cause–effect explanation, but it can be taken as a legitimate reason for a specific approach on Ferrer’s attacks against sorcery and divination, especially through his well-documented sermons delivered across the Iberian kingdoms and south-eastern France. The recent edition of new collections of sermons allows us to revisit the content of his preaching and its effect among his contemporaries, with the aim of identifying some elements that could have contributed to the emergence of diabolical witchcraft during the decades immediately following his death.

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The preacher and the scribes Born in the city of Valencia around 1350, Ferrer joined the Order of Preachers at a young age and followed the Dominican educational system, which brought him to the Studium of Lleida, then to Barcelona, and finally to Toulouse, from where he returned to Valencia as a Master of Theology having already authored some minor treatises on logic based on the postulates of moderate Thomism. After being appointed prior of the Dominican house at Valencia, he would also issue a polemical treatise about the papal schism that had erupted in 1378, to support the legitimacy of pope Clement VII. The Western Schism had a great impact on the friar’s career, since in 1394 he became the confessor of Clement’s successor, Pope Benedict XIII – formerly Aragonese Cardinal Pedro de Luna – and settled in the papal city of Avignon. In October 1398, during a severe illness, Ferrer experienced a vision that would deeply mark his life and that of his contemporaries. He proclaimed himself to be “Christ’s legate” and spent the rest of his days as an itinerant preacher, moving constantly through the towns and cities of southern Europe and delivering his sermons daily, sometimes more than once a day, in front of increasingly vast audiences. Since the beginning of his intense missionary activity, starting in Avignon in 1399, Vicent Ferrer crossed geographic, politic, and linguistic boundaries. During the first decade of his apostolate, the ancient track of the Via Domitia brought him across the regions of Provence, Dauphiné, and Savoy, before reaching the lands of Liguria, Piedmont, and Lombardy. He spent several years in northern Italy, even making some back-and-foth travels north of the Alps to visit the lands of Valais, Vaud, and the regions of Fribourg and Lyon. He then made the reverse journey and returned to his homeland as an already reputed and charismatic preacher. In 1408 he was preaching in Montpellier and then in Perpignan, from where he crossed south of the Pyrenees to develop a vigorous pastoral activity in the Iberian kingdoms of Valencia, Murcia, Castile, Aragon, and the Principality of Catalonia between 1409 and 1416. In the years that followed, the preacher crossed the Pyrenees again towards Languedoc and this time continued heading north until he reached the lands of Burgundy, before ending his journey in the Atlantic shores of southern Brittany, where he passed away in 1419.8 Only a small fraction of Ferrer’s sermons survives today in the form of written reports (reportationes) made by his usually anonymous listeners, or as schematic versions summarising its content and structure. The main goal of these reports – many of which were already copied and printed during the fifteenth century – was to be used by other preachers as the basis for their own sermons. First, the scribes that were present at the sermon took notes that were later rewritten and expanded as a fair copy, sometimes collating various reports in the process. Then, the text was edited – with varying degrees of respect for the original – by stripping away materials considered of no use to other preachers, etceterating some passages, and adding new elements such as identifications of biblical quotes,

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lists of topics, or cross-references to other sermons. With that same purpose, some scribes translated the original sermons into Latin, so those preachers less acquainted with the vernacular Romance languages would also be able to understand and use them in their preaching.9 Thanks to this particular process of “reportation,” Ferrer’s sermons constitute today an invaluable historical source that has already been approached by several generations of scholars. Along with the critical editions published during the last century, hundreds of new sermons have come to light in recent decades, mainly within the source collection edited by the Valencian Foundation Sant Vicent Ferrer (see infra “primary sources”).10 This monumental work allows us today not only to access Ferrer’s preaching but also to identify many of the times and places where his sermons were delivered. Regarding the first decade of his apostolic life, the only surviving reports are currently the ones preached at and near Fribourg in March 1404, together with a number of brief notices in local chronicles and fiscal accounts. There is also his response sent in 1403 to the Master General of his order, uneasy about the apocalyptic message of Ferrer’s sermons, in which the preacher reassured him by explaining his success in the fight against heresy in many of the regions he had visited. A more systematic accounting of Ferrer’s sermons started in 1407, with the first compilation of schematic versions currently held at Perugia, followed by the reports of the sermons preached at and near Montpellier in November and December 1408. But it was Ferrer’s subsequent preaching across the Iberian kingdoms, between 1409 and 1416, which has left us the greatest amount of reportationes. While some of these reports were Latinized, most of them were left in their original Catalan version, and can therefore be considered closer to the actual sermons preached by the friar. They often include exclamations, onomatopoeic words, asides, or references to contemporary conditions and events, as well as imprecations aimed at the people and the local authorities of certain towns and cities.11 About 400 of these sermons in vernacular have been edited during the last century, thus offering a huge amount of material, together with the Latinized reportationes, for an analysis of Ferrer’s preaching and its role in the emergence of the crime of diabolical witchcraft in the early fifteenth century.

Against sortilegia, divinationes, and fetillas The reports of Ferrer’s sermons show a strong condemnation of a series of popular beliefs and practices, amalgamated under the Latin terms sortilegia and divinationes. For the most part, they correspond to common practices of folk magic for healing certain diseases in children and adults, finding lost objects, stimulating fertility among couples, restoring the love of violent husbands, preventing storms, or avoiding misfortune. Explicit references to such magical practices and beliefs can be found in roughly 80 of the extant sermons, either in vernacular or in Latin.12

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This corpus can be divided into two basic categories, depending on the target of the preacher’s attacks. On the one hand, Ferrer criticized a series of common “superstitious” practices which he often designated with the Catalan term sortilleries (sorceries), and especially with the untranslatable term fetillas or fetillerias (i.e. sorceries, spells, charms, enchantments). The sermons delivered in his native tongue across Catalonia, Valencia, Aragon and Castile provide us with a colourful description of such practices, many of which were prevalent among Ferrer’s contemporaries.13 On the other hand, the second and main target of the Valencian preacher were the individuals considered to be sort of specialists in these kinds of activities; men and women whose services were regularly employed by a vast number of people. Those magical practitioners are designated in Ferrer’s sermons with the terms “sorcerers” (Catalan sortillers; Latin sortilegos), “conjurers” (Cat. conjuradors; Lat. coniuratores), “poisoners” (Cat. metziners; Lat. veneficii), and “charmers” or “enchanters” (Cat. encortadors; Lat. incortatores, incantatores). But the two main appellatives used by the friar are clearly those of “diviners” (Cat. adevins/nes; Lat. divinos/as), and “ fetillers” (a vernacular term with no clear Latin equivalent, usually recorded in its original Catalan form).14 The recurrence of this last epithet in Ferrer’s sermons – often in its feminine version fetillera – and the fact that it was usually left in vernacular in the Latin reports, suggests that the word was probably understandable for most of his listeners and/or readers. In fact, it appears to have been quite common among the Romance languages (i.e. Italian fattuchiera; French fachurière; Gascon faithillera; Castilian fechizera; Portuguese feiticeira, etc.).15 This could have also contributed to the translators’ choice, after giving up the search for a proper Latin equivalent. As with the generic term fetilla, the appellative fetiller/a did not have a univocal translation – and still doesn’t – given the variety of competences attributed to the individuals designated as such. For instance, the Statuta sinodalia issued in 1342 by bishop Guillaume of Béziers, enforced the excommunication of “charmers, augurs, sorcerers and sorceresses, diviners and maleficent individuals of all status and gender, which we commonly call fachillners.”16 This broad-meaning term is also well attested in Vicent Ferrer’s homeland during the late medieval centuries, being often used in its feminine version. One of Ferrer’s contemporaries, Catalan humanist Bernat Metge (c. 1340–1413), wrote in 1399 about the widespread custom among women to seek and follow the advice of such fetilleres and diviners, “especially those who have been many times incarcerated and punished for their activities.”17 Women are indeed portrayed as the most inclined to this kind of un-Christian behaviour in Ferrer’s preaching. As it can be read in a sermon preserved at Perugia: “behold the sin of divination and superstition, which touches especially the women.”18 In one of his first recorded sermons, delivered in Payerne in March 1404, Ferrer was already advising the crowd against the common resort to such specialists when wanting to find lost objects, and he blamed specifically the consultation of those “old female diviners” (vetulas divinas) by mothers in search of

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a cure for their sick children. He recommended instead to rely on God and the Blessed Virgin, and menaced the trespassers with the damnation of their souls in the imminent Final Judgement: It has been proved by authority that the world will end soon. […] For in the primitive Church, men were very eager and dedicated to God, and in all their physical and spiritual needs they turned only to divine help, by saying: ‘God help me’. But what about nowadays? Surely they do nothing but the contrary, because they turn to the devil and to male and female diviners, for the eternal damnation of their souls. If then, mister, you lost something, why can’t you resort humbly to God, kneeling devoutly in front of Him, for He will gladly help you. […] Likewise, if someone’s child gets sick, she immediately turns to old female diviners; and why not to the Holy Virgin, by saying: ‘Oh, blessed Virgin, your son gave me a child, I beg that thou wouldst preserve him’. (17 March 1404)19 This kind of admonition became recurrent in Ferrer’s preaching. Not only did he denounce the popular resort to such diviners and fetilleres, but he also pointed out the betrayal inherent in said act, as it implied breaking the covenant with the Lord by turning to His enemies. Instead, the preacher offered his audience a better remedy for their ailments; that is, to use the name of Jesus Christ and the sign of the cross, to turn humbly to God and to the Blessed Virgin.20 In fact, Ferrer didn’t deny the effectiveness of certain magical procedures performed by those evil individuals, but he attributed their success to God’s will, who spoke through the diviners’ mouth only to test people’s faith through temptation.21 The preacher reinforced this message by using a series of biblical exempla, taken mainly from the passage about the Chananean woman whose son was cured by Christ, and from the story about the barrenness of Joachim and Anne, who, “despite not being able to have children, they didn’t go to male or female diviners, herbalists, nor fetilleres, as you all do; since all the demons in hell cannot create son nor daughter.”22 In his attempt to drive people away from those diviners, sorcerers, and fetilleres, Ferrer insisted repeatedly on their diabolical nature, “since everything they do, they do it by the work of demons.”23 Inf luenced by the general process of demonization of magic, the preacher often portrayed those individuals as “invokers of demons,” “performers of demonic deeds,” “enemies of Jesus Christ,” “devil’s servants,” “false gods,” “sons of the devil,” or even “demons.” In this regard, a careful review of Ferrer’s preaching shows that his moralizing diatribes were often organized following a recurrent pattern, in which the so-called “diabolical sorceries” ( fetilleries diabolicals) seem to occupy a preeminent place. This pattern consisted in a list of five items, corresponding to the main vices or sins in need of amendment. Leaning on the scriptural Decalogue, these main sins were usually presented by the friar in the exact same order; that

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is, diabolical sorcery, blasphemy, gambling, disrespect for Sundays, and sexual debauchery or prostitution.24 The list was occasionally reduced to the first three, or expanded with an additional sixth sin of “bad company,” regarding the contact with Muslims and Jews. This same catalogue of moral deviations appears in a great number of Ferrer’s sermons, mostly in its five-item version. It has survived, with only minor variations, in both its vernacular and its Latin reportationes, including their schematic versions.25 The frequency of this preaching model suggests the existence of a consistent program of moral reform, in which, “as a hand has five fingers, so the hand of power and knowledge must amend five sins” – the first one being invariably the diabolical fetilleries.26 By leaning on the Decalogue’s first commandment “thou shalt have no other gods before me,” Ferrer opened most of his attacks on moral degradation by focusing on diviners and fetilleres, advising the crowd to avoid them in order to keep God’s wrath away from the community; particularly in the context of a – nearby – Final Judgement. In this regard, the preacher didn’t just stress the devilish nature of such individuals, but he also posited their very existence into an eschatological framework characterized by the impending arrival of the Antichrist and his followers.

Waiting for the Antichrist As it has been pointed out, some of the vivid eschatological scenes depicted in Ferrer’s sermons seem to recall certain aspects of the forthcoming sabbat imaginary, with elements such as the rejection of sacraments, the apostasy, the homage paid to the devil, the riches given to his followers, or the sexual intercourse with human-shaped demons. A well-known example, underlined by specialist Kathrin Utz Tremp, is provided by one of Ferrer’s early sermons, preached in Fribourg in 1404: On the question of the Final Judgment we must be aware of the four calamities that are about to come. The first one is the Antichrist, who is coming to destroy the Church or the Catholic faith. […] Be aware that the Antichrist will make abjure God, the blessed Virgin, all the saints, the articles of the faith and all the sacraments of the Church, and will cause great tribulation to all men. […] When he arrives, Lucifer and all the devils will serve him, and all the treasures of gold, silver and gemstones will be opened and presented before him by the demons, and he will then distribute them among those wanting to join him, per his own will and desire. And when he gives such precious presents, all those following him will pay him reverence and homage as a king. […] The demons will take human shape turning themselves into incubi and succubi, making men believe they possess beautiful women which will be nothing but demons, and vice versa. […] What is the reason for the coming of the Antichrist? […] We offend severely the king [ Jesus Christ] because we take away His city, this

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is, that we do not care about the sacraments of the Church; we even break the faith that we promised Him in baptism by saying ‘I renounce Satan’, etc., insomuch as we fall into the sins of His adversary, that is the devil, as do male and female diviners invokers of demons, the haughty, the greedy, etc. All of them are the devil’s sons, deniers of Christ, His Holy Mother and all the saints. […] They belong to this society all the perjures, blasphemous, gamblers, etc. […] and we must give the Sunday to God, this is, to go to church and stay there mindfully and devoutly, not to visit tavern or other vanities; because all those aren’t paying tribute to God, but to the devil. (Fribourg, 10 March 1404) 27 Aside from the eschatological – and almost sabbatical – descriptions, we can also identify in this last passage most of the items of Ferrer’s list of main sins – and sinners. They seem to be even displayed in the exact same order: demon-related diviners ( fetilleries diabolicals), perjurers and blasphemers, gamblers, as well as those not keeping the Sunday holy, and those who give themselves to conspicuous “other vanities” – the tavern being one of the common places for prostitution, as Ferrer himself criticized in many of his sermons. It appears as if the fundamental structure of Ferrer’s moralizing sermons was already in place at an early stage of his apostolic career, connecting his eschatological admonitions with the f lagging of a series of unfaithful and dangerous individuals, all of them portrayed as a malignant “society” (societate) integrated by those “sons of the devil and deniers of Christ” ( filii dyaboli Christum negantes). In some occasions, Ferrer would also designate such individuals as members of a “diabolical fraternity” ( fraternitas diabolicalis) united by sin, especially when talking about those “demons and sorcerers” people consulted to find lost objects or to recover their health.28 In this regard, many of Ferrer’s sermons on the coming of the Antichrist and on the Final Judgment reserve a special place for sorcerers and diviners. For instance, in sermon 360 of Perugia’s register, devoted to the theme “The Antichrist, why is he allowed to come,” the friar relied on one of his “similarities” to develop an allegorical story about a king (God Our Lord) who built a city and made it a rich and prosperous capital, only to be betrayed by his own citizens. They conspired against the king, banned him from the city, delivered him to his enemies, insulted and expelled the queen, split in two the king’s only son, and replaced all his symbols by those of his enemies. When developing the allegory, Ferrer identified the first treason (proditio) with people’s resort to diviners and those of their ilk, by citing the passage from the Deuteronomy about Moses and the breaking of the covenant.29 Also, in one of his sermons preached in Valencia during Lent 1413, when talking about the Christ being both judge and witness, Ferrer built on Malachi’s prophecy about the coming of the Lord to judge His people, focusing on the “seven secret sins” mentioned in the Scripture. The first one, the friar argued, was that of “the malefactors, from [the Latin original] maleficis,” then explaining the meaning of such term: “Malefactor, this is a diviner or fetiller, who hurts the entire city; that’s why it [the Scripture] says malefici; and this

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sin is perpetrated in secret, and for that it must be pursued to death.”30 In another sermon devoted to the 12 necessary conditions for securing access into the celestial city, Ferrer defined the seventh requirement as the “execration of maleficent people” (execratio maleficorum) by relying on the passages of Exod 22:18 and Ps 14:4. Even though this last sermon has only been preserved in its schematic version, it still includes a synthetic explanation of the Psalms’ term malignus, which reads: “This is, a diviner or enchanter, devastator of the land: Note the sinking in Savoy.”31 This last note refers to another of Ferrer’s exempla he fully developed in some of his sermons, starring a diabolical diviner from the Chartreuse mountains of lower Savoy. The preacher brought it up on various occasions to warn “those women who seek regularly the advice of sorcerers and invokers of demons,” and to convince local authorities to act decisively against the latter: For it happened in Savoie Propre, where there was a certain diviner having a pythonic spirit (spiritum habens fitonicum), and since the people and the authorities didn’t care to correct such crime, God allowed the said demon to create a great rock avalanche, so destructive, that it sank twelve parishes. Therefore, this must not be permitted. For that God sent us the ancient Law: ‘The man or woman having a phytonic or divinatory spirit, must die by stoning’ (Leviticus, 20:27). And in the end, they must die without mercy, not by hanging or beheading, nor executed by a single man, but all the people must stone them. (Lleida, 1414) 32 This last exemplum reveals one of the main features of Vicent Ferrer’s preaching: his constant call to secular authorities urging them to extirpate those malignant individuals whose activities could have real and terrible effects on their communities. Since their sins had damaging consequences for all, all should be involved in their punishment; especially considering the impending arrival of the Antichrist, whose sons on Earth were already planning and awaiting. In his later sermons, Ferrer would insist on these eschatological claims by asking the crowd and the local authorities for decisive action against sorcerers and diviners, and even demanding the promulgation of new legal statutes and the burning of the members of that devilish society.

A call to action During the last decade of his preaching, Ferrer started advising his listeners not just to move away from sorcerers and diviners, but to report and expel them from their communities. The preacher often addressed himself directly “to you, the aldermen of towns and cities, so you start correcting such notorious sins with good penances.” He occasionally pointed out certain individuals, as in 1412, when he urged the town rulers of Tordesillas to punish the notorious diviners in

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their community, “since I hear that there is some Jewish woman here who is a diviner and a conjurer.”33 A case in point is that of Valencia, Ferrer’s home city, where two days after delivering a sermon, in January 1413, the local authorities issued a new legal statute against sorcery and divination following the preacher’s advice. Two months later, Ferrer insisted on the importance of its compliance. He did so by relying once again on the exemplum of the Chananean and deploying all his rhetorical skills: Behold [the story of ] the Chananean woman. […] Her daughter being sick, she turned only to Jesus Christ. There we have some doctrine: that if we have needs, we must not go to diviners nor fetillers, but only to Jesus Christ. And consider this: that woman was pagan and infidel, but still she abandoned all conjurations and sorceries ( fetilleries) and went to Jesus Christ. […] The aldermen [of Valencia] have already well provided in this matter, but now we need to enforce it. Do it, because if you don’t, God says He will, and by that, He will take everything down. So, do your search, and if there are some of those in the city, take care of it. If you don’t, God will. May God Our Lord help us if He must do it! Thus, let’s avoid the wrath of God. Many said to the Chananean to go to sorcerers, fetillers and conjurers. And she said ‘God forbid’! […]. Many crazy women, wanting to have children, they go to conjurers and moors. Oh, such madness! And what is the example here for the aldermen? Nothing but the law that’s been passed. If they know of a man or a woman who doesn’t meet the law, expel them. Banish them all. […] Let’s see, is there someone who is acting against these ordinances? Out! And punish them more than the rest. […] If you go to some fetiller, they will say: ‘You go to such man, and he is the devil’s son!’. […] In this city they have already provided against fetillers and diviners: now it is time to comply. […] So, by the love of God, as much as the end of the world approaches and so does that traitor the Antichrist, the more we must escape from the evil diviners, conjurers and sodomites: therefore, if you know some, do accuse. (19 March 1413) 34 The effect of this kind of preaching is well documented in the extant municipal sources, showing the emergence of accusations for diabolical sorcery or the adoption of new legal and judicial measures in many towns and cities, right after the preacher’s passage. This dynamic is particularly visible in the Principality of Catalonia, where the extant sources allow us to follow the trail left by the Dominican. For instance, in 1413, a man from Barcelona expelled his lover from his house and accused her of being “a poisoner and a fetillera” after hearing a sermon preached by “master Vicens.” The woman was judged and ultimately banished after suffering public scorn.35 Two years later, a series of sermons preached by Ferrer in the Pyrenean town of Puigcerdà were immediately followed by the

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promulgation of new legal statutes concerning both the Jewish population and a series of public sins such as sorcery ( fetilleria), blasphemy, gambling or prostitution. The first and longest chapter of the statutes dictated a fine of 100 sous against “ fatilyers or fatilyeres, male or female diviners, male or female conjurers” and against those who consulted them, while establishing the summary procedure and the condemnation of the culprits “both in body and assets” at the discretion of the secular judge.36 Another example is provided by the municipal records of the city of Tarragona, where after the sermons delivered by master Vicent in 1409, the councilmen legislated against a series of popular sins following the preacher’s advice. They eventually derogated the statutes, but a decade later, after the harsh sermons delivered by one of Ferrer’s disciples, friar Pere Cerdà, the councilmen decided to legislate anew against “ fatillers, fatilleres, men and women conjurers, blasphemers, gamblers, pimps, and other public sins,” by promulgating legal ordinances “like the ones currently adopted in Vic and other cities.”37 The appearance of these new legal measures under the inf luence of Ferrer’s preaching – or that of his followers – invites us to reassess another one of the often-overlooked aspects of his sermons. This is, that along his calls for decisive action against devilish sorcerers and diviners, the Dominican often advocated, explicitly, for their public burning. As he stated in a 1414 sermon in the city of Saragossa, “it would be better, so much better to burn or to quarter ten or twelve persons than to see the city in so much havoc, because for each one that would be burned, a thousand more would amend themselves.”38 Several sermons contain direct exhortations in that sense, which considering the mentioned legal and judicial dynamics, could be read in a somewhat sinister light: Do not resort to diviners and divinations in your need, since those who resort to them are damned. Thereby, rulers and lords of the community, extirpate diviners if you don’t want God’s wrath to come upon this town. […] And burn them, because firewood is made for that purpose; or otherwise expel them from your district, etc. (Hellín, 22 April 1411) 39 That we must resort to Christ, not to sorcerers, who cannot give you anything but hell. […] And expel the sorcerers, because to allow them or to consult them is terrible to God. And for this end, do not lack firewood, since, once the truth is known, they must be burned. (Lleida, 1414).40 Now you already know that when Adam had sinned, he suffered right away diseases, bad toils, pain, tribulations. […] This is, to you, the aldermen of towns and cities, so you start correcting such notorious sins with good penances: if someone goes to the diviners, punish him harshly, and burn the diviners. (Albi, 10 June 1416) 41

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“Malignant”, almost “evil fire” (malignus – male igneus), because they are not only bad for themselves but for the whole land, namely sorceries, divinations and the like. And when you allow that kind of people, the wrath of God is upon the land, and even one of them suffices for all the land to be destroyed. And for that, such malignant people must be burned.42 A few years after Ferrer’s death in the city of Vannes, the first trials for diabolical witchcraft emerged in several territories across southern Europe. From the 1420s onwards, men and women were burned along the Franco-alpine region – from the lands of Dauphiné and Savoy up to Vaud, Fribourg, and Valais – accused of being hérétiques, vaudois, gazarii or fachuriers.43 Simultaneously, women started to be executed in some central and northern Italian cities for being streghe, maliarie or fattuchiere, often with the assistance of some mendicant preachers such as Bernardino of Siena.44 Soon the central Pyrenees would also be the scene of some judicial prosecutions against Gascon faithillèras and posoèras, and against their Aragonese counterparts, the murderous fetilleras and ponzoñeras.45 Nearby, in the ancient land of the troubadours, from Barcelona to Toulouse and as far north as Millau, both secular and ecclesiastical authorities were already dealing with a new sect of devil worshippers, whose members – called sorcieras, mascas and poisonnièras in Occitan or French, and bruxas e metzineras in Catalan – had been killing infants and paying homage to a goat-shaped devil since at least 1419.46 These territories surrounding the Western Mediterranean basin, from the Pyrenees to the Alps and down to the central Apennines, appear then as the main setting featuring the emergence of sabbatical witchcraft. Some of the early witch hunts in this large area were related to the action of certain preachers, and they were also sometimes accompanied by new legal or judicial measures. A known example is the legal chapter “About the punishment of enchanters and sorcerers” (De pena incantatorum et facturariorum), promulgated in the Italian town of Todi after the sermons delivered by Bernardino of Siena in 1426, and followed two years later by the condemnation of Matteucia di Francesco as a “notorious enchanter, sorceress, evildoer and witch” (publicam incantatricem, facturariam et maliariam et stregam).47 It is also the case of the Catalan statutes of the Àneu valley, which in 1424 condemned those “men and women gathering at night to pay homage to the Devil in the form of a he-goat (Boc de Biterna), taking him as their lord, abjuring the faith and blaming the name of God, […] as it has been proven by the confessions of the accused.” Those Pyrenean statutes also provided the use of torture and forbade appeals to other foreign courts. The statutes mentioned the “enormity” of the crime, considering that those evil people were allegedly killing infants and provoking sickness and barrenness through various kinds of maleficia and magical poisoning (metzines), for all which they ought to be publicly executed and “their body reduced to ashes.”48 North of this triangle, in the alpine lands of the Valais, the communities of Loèche (1428), Morel (1430) and Rarogne (1434) would soon legislate against certain individuals that were hurting people, cattle and properties by using “the arts of sorcery, pythonesses,

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enchantments, and similar things,” leading to a well-documented witch hunt with hundreds of trials.49 One of the central areas in this “witchcraft cradle” was undoubtedly the Franco-alpine arc connecting the French Dauphiné with the lands of Savoy and up to Fribourg. In 1430, the Statuta Sabaduie promulgated by duke Amadeus VIII of Savoy, devoted one of his first chapters to the extirpation of some “pestiferous sects” integrated by “heretics, sorcerers, diviners, invokers of demons and other supersticious individuals” who were comitting “heinous crimes,” thereby commanding all the officials in the duke's domains to collaborate with the inquisitors in their capture and punishment.50 As regards the Dauphiné, large-scale witch hunts had already aroused between 1415 and 1420, partly because of recent efforts to fully Christianize the area. As specialists Pierrette Paravy and Kathrin Utz Tremp have already noted, the coincidence between Ferrer’s preaching and the emergence of some of the first massive European witch hunts in these territories is, at least, hard to ignore.51

Heresy and witchcraft in Ferrer’s path The chronological and geographical coincidence between some of the first European witch hunts and Vicent Ferrer’s itinerary across southern Europe should not make us forget that the actual content of his sermons – or at least its extant reports – does not include some of the crucial ingredients of the witchcraft construct. The new demonological ref lections combining heresy, maleficent magic, and certain folkloric materials, became a central aspect of the emergence of sabbatical witchcraft in fifteenth-century Europe, as attested in the judicial and literary sources from many of the regions previously visited by the friar. But his exact contribution to such reshaping – if any – is not easy to assess through the current evidence, as attested by Utz Tremp’s cautious suggestions. Aside from Ferrer’s allegorical mentions about groups of devilish people (societas, fraternitas), explicit references to heretical sects are hard to find in Ferrer’s preaching. Despite the letter sent in 1403 to the Master General of his order, in which the friar assured having spent the last two years fighting Waldensians, Cathars, and other heretics in the lands of Dauphiné, Savoy, and Lombardy, the few sermons preserved in Fribourg and Perugia contain almost no references to the subject of heresy, heretics, or heretical sects.52 And still, the Dominican’s alleged success in cleansing those “valleys full of heretics” became an important component of his fame. During his later preaching, Ferrer would indeed refer to these past encounters with heretics in various occasions. In a sermon preached in Saragossa in November 1414, the friar launched an invective against all social strata when developing the sermon’s theme “What state is the world in.” After condemning the moral degradation of the clergy, the nobility, the burghers and the merchants, Ferrer blamed the peasants’ disrespect of the Church’s ordinances as well as the women’s sexual debauchery, then advising his audience that “the heresy of the gatzaros, some heretics that I have encountered, is already starting.”53

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The term gazaros is attested in the anti-heretical literature of the Late Middle Ages. Recorded for the first time in the Constitutions of Melfi, issued in the early thirteenth century by emperor Frederick II (Authen. post Cod. 1.5.19), its original meaning was maybe related to the medieval place-name Gazaria, designating the colonies of Crimea and the Black Sea owned by Genoa between 1266 and 1475. This strategic point in the western marches of the Silk Road was originally populated by the khazars (gazarii), characterized by their religious syncretism combining Tengrism, Judaism, Christianism and Islam. Under the Genoese administration, Gazaria was governed by its own laws contained in the so-called Liber Gazarie, and was ruled by Genoese magistrates relying on a strong Franciscan missionary network.54 Leaving aside its origin, the term gazaros would be employed during the fourteenth century as an alternative designation for the Cathars or Waldensians in some northern Italian regions, and was one of the heretical sects mentioned by Ferrer in his 1403 letter when stating that, in Lombardy: “I found many valleys of heretics, both Waldensians and the wicked Gazari (gazariorum perversorum).”55 This would also be the appellative chosen by Franciscan inquisitor Ponce Feugeyron to designate the adepts of diabolical witchcraft in his 1436 demonological treatise Errores gazariorum seu illorum qui scobam seu baculum equitare probantur (Errors of the gazarii, namely those who are proven to ride on a broom or a staff ). It should be noted that Feugeyron was commissioned in 1409 to act against the “new sects of Christians and Jews” performing anti-Christian rituals over a vast territory that stretched from Avignon to Savoy, including his native Val d’Aosta and the Dauphiné.56 In this regard, the main interest of Ferrer’s mention lies on his depiction of the gatzaros as a new heresy, as in one that was just starting. He even needed to clarify to his Iberian audience that those were “some heretics” (uns heretges) which he had already “met” or “found” during his journey.57 Still, this only mention in all of Ferrer’s recorded sermons does not allow us to imagine the friar as actively preaching about the emergence of new sects of broom-riding heretics – nor any other kind of night-f lying sorcerer for that matter. Besides the presence of heresy in Ferrer’s sermons – or rather the lack of it – the friar did not actively engage in the reshaping of folkloric material about magical ointments, nocturnal f lights, infanticidal spirits, or diabolical gatherings, as other preachers would. One of the few examples of this sort of material is Ferrer’s moralizing story about the magical travel of a Lombard squire, who descended to hell at the request of his lord’s widow. Two versions of the same story are preserved in Ferrer’s sermons, one in Catalan and another in its Castilian translation. Both explain that the lady, wanting to know the whereabouts of her recently deceased husband, “a great lord of Lombardy,” commissioned her esquire Xabro or Xabrerol to bring him a letter. In the Castilian version, the woman seeks the advice of certain “diviners or enchanters” (adevinos o encantadores) who convince her to send the esquire. The latter accepts the mission out of love for his lady, and “when he was outside the city, he found a big dog and he rode on it, and he got swiftly to hell.” According to the Catalan version, it was two “necromancers”

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(nigromàntichs) who “made the letter, and gave the squire a black dog, big as a donkey, and they also gave him three teachings: the first one, not to cross himself: `Because if you do, you will fall from the dog’; the second one, not to utter the name of Jesus or the Virgin Mary; the third one, not to talk to anyone.” The squire found his master in a rich and beautiful chamber, only to be burned by his master’s contact (or by his sweat) and to discover that all those beauties were a false vision created by hell’s fire.58 Some aspects of this episode recall the passage from Gervais of Tillbury’s Otia Imperialia (1212) about those women who believed to f ly at night with the lamiae while leaving their husbands in a deep sleep, and who risked falling off if the name of Christ was pronounced during their f light. It also reminds us of the passage from Bocaccio’s Decameron (c. 1350) about the night-ridings of Bruno and Buffalmacco. Both members of a secret society led by a great necromancer, they advised an unwary applicant wanting to partake in their sexual and gastronomical feasts to fearlessly await the appearance of “a black and horned creature,” to ride on it, and to neither think about God nor the saints at risk of being thrown off.59 Despite those similarities, Ferrer always ended his Lombard story with a crucial instruction: “Now, don’t think that Xabrerol could really enter Hell, only God wanted to show him to give us an example.”60 But the most compelling feature regarding the friar’s approach to folkloric material is probably his allusion to the vernacular term bruxa; that is, the Catalan word for “witch.” Derived from the Indo-European root *bhreus (i.e. to bruise, crush, or break), the term bruxa was originally employed in Ferrer’s homeland to designate a malignant spirit capable of entering closed houses at night, taking food and wine from the cellars, and crushing or suffocating children and adults. This original meaning, attested in written sources from the thirteenth century onwards, corresponded to a local version of some nocturnal spirits already mentioned – and reshaped – by medieval authors such as William of Auvergne, Stephen of Bourbon, or Gervais of Tilbury. As with the Italian strix-strega, the vernacular bruxa would become the main appellative to designate the members of a new diabolical sect, from the 1420s onwards, in all Catalan-speaking lands (and then also in Spanish and Portuguese); a new sort of evildoers characterized by their ointment-fuelled f lights to Biterna’s he-goat, their nocturnal visits to kitchens and cellars, their suffocating attacks, and their tendency to abduct or kill little children, often their own ones.61 The few occasions in which Ferrer explicitly mentioned these night-f lying bruxas was to brand them a superstitious belief and a diabolical illusion, in line with the opinion of the Canon Episcopi and that of most of his learned contemporaries. In some of his sermons, the friar specifically addressed the common belief in such malignant figures and the rituals employed by women wanting to counter their attacks, which consisted in placing certain objects on doors or hanging their husbands’ underpants on the rooftop. Despite Ferrer’s use of his native bruxa, some of his translators employed occasionally the term masca as its equivalent:

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Against those who, out of fear of witches (timore bruxarum), put stakes on the door, or hang the underpants on the rooftop. Note that witches (mascas) are nothing but demons in man or woman shape who make some old hags dream that they go around and enter houses, and that they’ve seen bowls or other things at your home; and sometimes they say the truth only to deceive you and to make you put your faith in them.62 And yet, in one of his apocalyptic sermons, Ferrer would advise those same listeners performing protective rituals for fear of the infanticidal bruxas that, very soon, when the Antichrist and his followers arrive, “woman-shaped demons will suffocate and abduct their own children at night.”63

Conclusions It is not an easy task to fully assess the role played by Vicent Ferrer in the long and complex process that led to the emergence of sabbatical witchcraft in fifteenthcentury Europe. The path followed by the Valencian friar during his twenty-year apostolate seems to match, at least partially, the geography of the first European witch hunts; the central axe of his itinerary coinciding with the track of the ancient Via Domitia connecting Hispania and Italy through the Alps – from the Pyrenees to Narbone and then to Nîmes, until reaching the Piedmont through Embrun and Briançon. Far from being the main person responsible for the emergence of the witchcraft imaginary in those territories, Ferrer was probably just part of a much wider phenomenon, to which he himself would have also contributed. Although the exact scope of this contribution is still to be assessed, it seems that his inf luence did neither lie in the reshaping of folkloric material nor in the merging of heresy and sorcery into a new cult of night-f lying devil-worshippers. His sermons sometimes echoed the belief in the emergence of new sects, as the gazarii, but they scarcely touched the subject of heresy and even less its relation with demonolatry or maleficia. Nor did he give credibility to the nocturnal attacks of his homeland bruxas, those infanticidal spirits about to become the Catalan version of the sabbatical witches. Instead, one of the most consistent features of Vicent Ferrer’s preaching in connection with the new crime of witchcraft would be his renewed assault on sorcery and divination and his constant call for legal and judicial punishment against the diabolical fetillers. As an essential part of his program of moral reform, the friar built a moving eschatological scenario in which some devilish sinners were hurting entire communities by provoking the wrath of God. This was an issue with severe consequences both in this world and in the afterlife, as their mere existence was dangerously jeopardizing to people’s salvation. Thereby, those individuals had to be isolated and purged without sparing any legal measure or quantity of firewood. Ferrer’s apocalyptic and almost sabbatical admonitions about the imminent arrival of the Antichrist and his followers, as well as his

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advocacy for the public execution of diviners and fetilleres, may have paved the way for some of the first legal and judicial measures against sabbatical witchcraft in the regions he visited. From this perspective, the Valencian friar could perhaps be considered as one of the “missing links” in this fascinating network connecting the Pyrenees with the Franco-alpine arc and to northern Italy; three of the main regions conforming “ground zero” of the European witch-craze.

Notes 1 See, among others, Norman Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons: The Demonization of Christians in Medieval Christendom, rev. ed. (London, 1993); Carlo Ginzburg, Storia notturna. Una decifrazione del sabba (Torino: Einaudi, 1989); Richard Kiekchefer, “Mythologies of Witchcraft in the Fifteenth Century”, Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 1 (2006): 79–108. 2 Franco Cardini, “La predicazione popolare alle origini della caccia alle streghe”, in La strega, il teologo, lo scienziato. Atti del convegno ‘Magia, stregoneria e superstizioni in Europa e nella zona alpina’ Borgosesia, 1983, ed. Maurizio Cuccu and Paola Aldo Rosso (Genoa: ECIG, 1986), 277–93; Marina Montesano, “L’Osservanza francescana e la lotta contro le credenze magico-superstiziose: Vecchie e nuove prospettive di ricerca”, Quaderni medievali 41 (1996): 138–52; Ead., Supra acqua et supra ad vento. ‘Superstizioni’, maleficia e incantamenta nei predicatori francescani osservanti (Italia, sec. XV) (Roma: Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, 1999); Ead., “Preaching, Magic, and Witchcraft: a Feedback Effect?” in From Words to Deeds: The Effectiveness of Preaching in the Late Middle Ages, ed. M. G. Muzzarelli (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 153–67; Fabrizio Conti, “Preachers and Confessors against ‘Superstitions’. Bernardino Busti and Sermon 16 of His Rosarium Sermonum”, Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft (2011): 62–91; Ead., Witchcraft, Superstition, and Observant Franciscan Preachers. Pastoral Approach and Intellectual Debate in Renaissance Milan (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015). 3 L’imaginaire du sabbat. Edition critique des textes les plus anciens (c. 1430–c. 1440), ed. Martine Ostorero et al. (Lausanne: CLHM, 1999); Franck Mercier and Martine Ostorero, L’énigme de la Vauderie de Lyon. Enquête sur l’essor de la chasse aux sorcières entre France et Empire (1430–1480) (Florence: Sismel-Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2015); Martine Ostorero, “Comment communiquer et diffuser le ‘crime’ de sorcellerie et le sabbat au XVe siècle? L’exemple des ‘Errores gazariorum’ et du ‘Flagellum hereticorum fascinariorum’ de Nicolas Jacquier”, in Hexenwissen. Zum Transfer von Magie- und Zauberei-Imaginationen in interdisziplinärer Perspektive, ed. Heinz Sieburg, Rita Voltmer, Britta Weimann (Trèves: Paulinus-Verlag, 2017), 61–83; Michael D. Bailey, Battling Demons. Witchcraft, Heresy and Reform in the Late Middle Ages (Philadelphia, The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003); Ludovic Viallet, Les sens de l’observance. Enquête sur les réformes franciscaines entre l’Elbe et l’Oder, de Capistran à Luther (vers 1450–vers 1520) (Münster, Lit Verlag, 2014); Ead., “Sous le soleil de Satan. Mouvements réformateurs mendiants et genèse de la chasse aux sorcières au XV siècle, in Prêcher dans les espaces lotharingiens. XIII–XIX siècles, ed. Stefano Simiz, 63–88 (Paris: Garnier 2020); Catherine Chène, “Démon et réforme dans la prédication observante du xve siècle: l’exemple de la Fourmilière de Jean Nider”, in Chasses aux sorcières et démonologie. Entre discours et pratiques (xive–xviie siècles), ed. Martine Ostorero, Georg Modestin, Kathrin Utz Tremp (Florence: SISMELEdizioni del Galluzzo, 2010), 155–67. See also the ongoing project “La répréssion de la sorcellerie en Pays de Vaud” (SDS-VD-D1): https://www.ssrq-sds-fds.ch/en/proj ects/ongoing-projects/vaud-vd/ 4 For an English account of Bernardino’s role in the witchcraft trials, see Franco Mormando, The Preacher’s Demons. Bernardino of Siena and the Social Underworld of Early Renaissance Italy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).

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5 See Alfonso Esponera, ed. Proceso de canonización del maestro Vicente Ferrer OP (Valencia-Friburg: Facultad de Teología San Vicente Ferrer / Studia Frigurgensia, 2018). 6 Rafael Narbona, Pueblo, poder, y sexo. Valencia medieval 1306–1420 (Valencia: Diputació de València, 1992), 79–121 (esp. 91–7); Ead., “Tras los rastros de la cultura popular. Hechicería, supersticiones y curanderismo en Valencia medieval”, Edad media 1 (1998): 91–110 (esp. 93–5); Pedro M. Cátedra, Sermón, sociedad y literatura en la Edad Media. San Vicente Ferrer en Castilla 1411–1412 (Salamanca: Junta de Castilla y León, 1994), 236–51; Josep-Antoni Ysern, “Sant Vicent Ferrer: Predicació i societat”, Revista de filologia romànica 2 (2003): 73–102 (esp. 93–8); Oriol Catalan, La predicació cristiana a la Catalunya baixmedieval (Barcelona: Unpiblished Phd Thesis, 2013), 263–9; Philip Daileader, Saint Vincent Ferrer, His World and Life: Religion and Society in late Medieval Europe (London-New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 85–7. 7 On the role of Ferrer’s preaching in the emergence of witch hunts in his homeland, see Pau Castell, “‘De crimine heresis maxime de bruxa’. L’aparició del crim de bruixeria a Catalunya en el context baixmedieval europeu”, in Creences a l’època medieval: Ortodòxia i heretgia, ed. Karen Stoeber (Lleida: Pagès Editors, 2018), 170–4. For his role in the emergence of witch hunts in the Franco-alpine arc, see Pierrette Paravy, “Remarques sur les passages de Saint Vincent Ferrier dans les vallées vaudoises (1399–1403)”, in Croyances religieuses et sociétés Alpines (Gap: Société d’Etudes des Hautes Alpes, 1987), 143–55; Ead., De la chrétienté romaine à la Réforme en Dauphiné. Evêques, fidèles et déviants (vers 1340– vers 1530), 2 vols. (Rome: École française de Rome, 1993), 1: 353–4; Kathrin Utz Tremp, “Hérétiques ou usuriers? Les Fribourgeois face à saint Vincent Ferrier (début du XVe siècle)”, Mémoire dominicaine, 7 (1995): 117–37; Jean-Daniel Morerod, “Les étapes de Vincent Ferrier dans le diocese de Lausanne”, in Mirificus praedicator. A l’occasion du sixième centenaire du passage de saint Vincent Ferrier en pays romand, ed. Paul-Bernard Hodel and Franco Morenzoni (Rome: Istituto Storico Domenicano, 2006), 259–84. 8 For a comprehensive account on Vicent Ferrer’s life and preachings, see Daileader, Saint Vincent Ferrer, passim. See also de foundational work of Pierre-Henri-Dominique Fages, Histoire de Saint Vincent Ferrier. 2 vol. (Louvain and Paris: A. Uystpruyst / Picard, 1893–1901). 9 On the process of reportation of Ferrer’s sermons, see Josep Perarnau, “Algunes consideracions entorn dels tres primers passos dels sermons de sant Vicent Ferrer”, Arxiu de Textos Catalans Antics 18 (1999): 455–77; Albert Hauf, “Alguns aspectes interessants de la predicació vicentina”, in El fuego y la palabra. San Vicente Ferrer en el 550 aniversario de su canonización, ed. Estela Callado (València: Biblioteca Valenciana 2007), 145–60; Francisco M. Gimeno, “Modelos de transmisión textual de los sermones de san Vicente Ferrer: la tradición manuscrita”, Anuario de Estudios Medievales 49, no. 1 (2019), 237–69. 10 A preliminary catalogue of Ferrer’s sermons was published by Josep Perarnau “Aportació a un inventari de sermons de Sant Vicenç: temes bíblics, títols i divisions esquemàtiques”, Arxiu de Textos Catalans Antics 18 (1999): 479–811. A complete account of the manuscripts containing Ferrer’s sermons and those of other Hispanic preachers can be found in Oriol Catalán’s digital catalogue: http://predmed.upf.edu/catalogue.html. 11 For an account on Ferrer's extant sermons, see Daileader, Saint Vincent Ferrer, 191-9. 12 Sermons I, 21, 96, 114, 155, 181, and 236 (May-June 1416); Sermons II, 26, 62, 91, 97, 122, 147, and 264 ( June-July 1416); Sermons III, 29, 101, 111, 181, 206, 224, 247, and 299 (unknown date, probably 1412); Sermons IV, 37, 116, 171, and 238 (OctoberNovember 1416); Sermons V, 10, 18, 19, 43, and 134 ( January 1416); Sermons VI, 107 (May 1415); Avignon 146, 222, 232, 240, 470, 590, 782, 906, and 1170 (SeptemberDecember 1413); Clermont I (361), IV (391), VII (410) and IX (437) (1416); Corpus 43, 86, 90, 165, 177, 184, 385, 431, 460, 504, and 786 (February 1411 - January 1412); Chabàs 304 and 325; Castilla 235-39, 291, 334, 439, 551–58, and 584 ( June-September 1411); Fribourg, 57 and 103 (March 1404); Perugia, 14, 97, and 360; Quaresma, 43, 85, and 213 (March 1413); Ayora f.12v, 19r, 77v, and 125v (1414); Aestivales: Dominica in Albis, III; Dominica II post Octava Pasche, I; Dominica infra Octava Ascensionis,

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17 18

19

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V; Dominica III Post Festo Trinitatis, III; Dominica IX Post Festo Trinitatis, V; Dominica XIII Post Festo Trinitatis, III (unknown date). See for instance Sermons I, 96 (3 June 1416) and 117 (5 June 1416); Sermons II, 26 (27 June 1416) and 147 (17 July 1416); Sermons III, 101 (unknown date), 181 (29 August 1412) and 247 (8 September 1412); Sermons VI, 107 (6 May 1415); Corpus, 90, 184; Chabàs 304 and 325; Castilla 558. For other examples of this kind of beliefs and practices in Ferrer’s homeland, see Josep Perarnau, “Activitats i fórmules supersticioses de guarició a Catalunya en la primera meitat del segle XIV”, Arxiu de Textos Catalans Antics 1 (1982): 47–78; Narbona, “Tras los rastros de la cultura popular”, 91–110; Pau Castell, “Sortilegas, divinatrices et fetilleres: les origines de la sorcellerie en Catalogne”, Cahiers de Recherches Médievales et Humanistes 22 (2011), 217–41. For instance: malignus, id est divinus seu incantator (Perugia 14); adevins e adevines, sortillers e sortilleres (Sermons I, 21); venefici, scilicet adevini etc. (II, 147); no façats fetilles ne anets a fetilleres (II, 265); adevins o fetillers o conjuradors falsos (III, 111); aní al conjurador (III, 206); no anaven a adevins ne a adevines, ne a erbolaris ne fetilleres (III, 249); no anets a adevins ne adevines, sortillers, etc., car malaïta és la terra on se sosté adeví ne sortiller, encordador ne conjuradors falsos (IV, 37); Item veneficis, çò és, fetillers (IV, 103); E menau-lo a tal adeví o a tal erbolària, etc. (IV, 239); adevinos e adevinas, e conjuradores e conjuradoras (Castilla, 334); vas al sortero, […] al adevino o adevina o escantador (Castilla, 551); aquellos que van a los adevinos o adevinas o fechizeras (Castilla, 584); li deyen que anàs a sortillés e fetillés e a conjuradors, […] han provehit contra fetillés e adevins (Quaresma, 85); malfeytor és dit adeví o fetiller (Quaresma, 213); acceditis ad divinos et ad divinas, et coniuraciones, etc., qui omnia faciunt cum incantationibus demonum. […] hic est quedam iudea divina et coniuradora (Corpus, 791); veneficiis, id est venenum facientibus aut dantibus, scilicet medecinas. [...] Ydolatre, adivini, sortilegi, quia cum demone faciunt sua opera, ideo sunt excommunicati, et etiam recurrentes ad eos excommunicati sunt (Avignon 222); divinos vel sortilegos (Avignon 232); aliquo homine sortilego seu incantatore (Avignon 470); divinationes, mezinarias et similia (Clermont-Ferrand, 361). On the later use of this term in demonological litterature, see Martine Ostorero’s ref lections in Sorcières et démons, 15e –17e siècles (Firenze: SISMEL-Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2016), 49–50 and 332; cf. Ostorero and Mercier, L'énigme de la Vauderie, 107–9. Constit. Synodal. Guill. Episc. Biterrens., ann. 1342, c. 40: Item incantatores, augures, sortilegos et sortilegas, aruspices vel divinatores et maleficos, cujuscumque conditionis vel sexus existant, quos vulgariter fachillners appellamus, magistros et magistras artis magicae et artem illam profitentes, et eos qui ab eis petunt consilium seu juvamen. Lo somni, book 3, chap. 10: consulten e han fort cars los astròlegs, nigromàntics, e les fetilleres, e los devins; e especialment aquells qui moltes vegades són estats presos e punits per divinar, los quals enriqueeixen dels béns de llurs marits. Perugia, 97: Ecce peccatum divinationum et superstitionum, quod specialiter tangit mulieres. Also in Aestivales, Dominica II post Octava Pasche, I: Item mulieres bene sciunt incantationes et sortilegia et coniurationes, sed non sciunt Credo in Deum etc.; and in Avignon 470: O, quot sunt latrones furando Deo honorem divinum et dyabolo oferunt! Dicatur etiam contra mulieres, que tot faciunt sortilegia, etc. Fribourg, 103: Probatur secundo auctoritate quod mundus sit in brevi finiendus. […] Nam in primitiva Ecclesia homines fuerunt multum devoti et ardentes erga Deum, et in omnibus necessitatibus corporalibus et spiritualibus semper habuerunt recursum solum ad auxilium divinum, dicentes: “Auxilium meum a Domino”. Sed quid modernis? Certe faciunt totaliter per contrarium, quia recurrunt ad dyabolum et ad divinos et divinas in animarum suarum perpetuam dampnationem. Si, ergo, miser, perdidisti aliquam rem, quare non potius recurris humiliter ad Deum, devote coram eo pro re perdita genuflectendo, et ipse te libenter iuvaret? […] Item, si filius alicuius infirmatur, statim recurrit ad vetulas divinas: et quare, non potius ad beatam Virginem, dicentes: “O Virgo benedicta, Filius tuus dedit mihi hunc puerum, rogo ut ipsum conservare digneris”. See for instance Sermons I, 21, 114, 155, and 181; Sermons II, 62, 91, 97, 147, and 264; Sermons III, 29, 101, 111, 206, 224, 249, and 303; Sermons IV, 37, 116, 134, 169,

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23 24

25

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27

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and 238; Sermons V, 10 and 43; Avignon 146, 222, 232, 240, 470, 590, 782, and 906; Corpus 43, 86, 177, 386, 431, and 791; Aestivales, Dominica infra Octava Ascensionis, V, Dominica IX Post Festo Trinitatis, V, Dominica XIII Post Festo Trinitatis, III; Castilla 291, 551; Clermont I (p.361), IV (391), VII (410), and IX (437); Ayora f.12v, 19r, 77v, and 125v. Sermons III, 29 (unknown date): Item per cosa perduda aniràs a l'adeví e trobar-la t'a. Lo dimoni no pot dir veritat per açò, más Déu, per boqua de l'adeví, farà dir veritat per temptar-te. Lo que deus esquivar, ans deus dir “Més o am perdre”. Sermons III, 249 [8 September 1412]: Bé que coneguesen que no podien haver fills e eren desesperats, […] no anaven a adevins ne a adevines, ne a erbolaris ne fetilleres, axí com feu vosaltres. Com tots quants dyables ha en infern no poden crear fill ne filla. Cf. Perarnau, “Aportació”, nº 122: “Ecce mulier Chananea”, and nº 372, 373, 377, 378: “Habebitis fructum vestrum in sanctificatione”. Sermons I, 236 (14 June 1416): Anave a adevins e adevines, a dimonis, que tot quan fan aquells, ho fan ab obra de dimonis. On the replacement of the traditional moral system based on the Seven Capital sins by the much more precise prohibitions issued from the Ten Commandments, see John Bossy, “Moral Arithmetic: Seven Sins into Ten Commandments”, in Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern Europe, ed. Edmund Leites (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 214–34; Peter A. Morton, “Superstition, Witchcraft, and the First Commandment in the Late Middle Ages”, Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 13, no. 1 (2018): 40–70. For other instances of this list of five main sins, see: Sermons I, 114 (5 June 1416), 155 (8 June 1416) and 181 (10 June 1416); Sermons II, 97 (5 July 1416); Sermons III, 111 (unknown date) and 306 (14 September 1412); Sermons V, 43 (21 January 1416); Castilla, 334 (16 August 1411) and 584; Corpus, 90 (3 March 1411), 165 (19 April 1411), 177 (22 April 1411), 385 (19 July 1411), 431 (31 July 1411), 460 (9 August 1411) and 791 (17 January 1412); Quaresma, 43 (March 1413); Aestivales, Dominica in Albis, III (date unknown), Dominica secunda post Octava Pasche, I (date unknown), Dominica tertia Post Festo Trinitatis, III (date unknown). Corpus, 165–6 ( Jumilla, 19 April 1411): Et ita, sicut manus habet V digitos, ita ista manus potencie et sciencie debet corrigere V peccata, et ita mitentur in latus Christi. Et sunt hec: Primo, extirpare adivinos sive fetellerias diabolicales; IIº blasfemias divinales; IIIº rupimientos festivales; IIIIº tafurerias humanales; Vº corrumpimientos personales. Fribourg, 53–7: Et ideo, circa Extremum Iudicium notantur quatuor mala que ventura sunt: Primum est antichristus, qui veniet in destruccionem Ecclesie seu fidei catholice. […] Notatur quod antichristus faciet abnegare Deum, beatam Virginem, omnes sanctos, articulos fidei ac omnia ecclesiastica sacramenta, et infert cunctis hominibus magnam tribulacionem. […] Quando venerit, Lucifer et omnes dyaboli servient sibi, et omnes thesauri auri et argenti, lapidum preciosorum, etc. sibi per demones aperientur et presentabuntur, et ille distribuet cuilibet adherere volenti, iuxta appetitum et desiderium suum. Et quando tam preciosa munera sic habundanter dabit, quilibet sequetur eum faciet sibi reverenciam et homagium tanto regi. […] ubi demones accipient formas humanas facientes incubos et succubos, credentes igitur viri se habere mulieres pulcras habebunt demones et econtrario. […] Propter quam racionem Antichristus veniet? […] Quem regem acriter offendimus, dum sibi civitatem suam substrahimus, id est de sacramentis ecclesiasticis non curamus. Cui eciam fidem, quam sibi in baptismo promisimus dicentes “Abrenuncio Sathano”, etc. frangimus, tociens quociens peccatis suo adversario, scilicet dyabolo, nos subdimus, prout faciunt divini et divine, demones invocantes, superbi, avari, etc. Omnes tale sunt filii dyaboli Christum negantes, eius sanctissimam matrem et omnes sanctos. […] De hac societate sunt omnes periuri, blasphemi, lusores, etc. […] Et septimus, id est diem dominicam, debemus dare Deo, id est ire ad ecclesiam et ibi stare attente et devote, non ire ad tabernam et alias vanitates, quia tales non reddunt censum Deo, sed dyabolo. See Utz Tremp, “Hérétiques ou usuriers?”, 117–37. For instance, Avignon 146–8 (Mallorca 1413): Dico quod tertia fraternitas est, et ista est mala, demonial, et ista venit per culpam et peccatum. […] Moraliter hic contra demones et sortilegos;

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et caveatis ne recuratis ad eos, sed ad Christum Dominum. Cf. Perarnau, “Compilació”, nº 435: “In domo patris meo habeo quinque fratris”. Perugia, 360: Antichristus quare permittetur venire. […] Primo proditio fit recurrendo ad divinos, etc., Deut 32, [20]: “Generatio perversa est, et infidelis”, etc. Quaresma, 213 (Valencia 1413): Lo proffeta Malachies ho declare: “Accedamus in judicio, et erunt testes in hiis”; nomena VII peccats secrets, ço és, malfeytós, de “malefficis”, adúlters, perjurs […]. Malfeytor és dit adeví o fetiller, que fa mal a tota la ciutat, per tal és dit “malefici”; e aquest peccat fa·s secret: per ço se deu perseguir fins a la mort. Perugia, 14: Septima, execratio maleficorum, ibi [Ps 14, 4]: “Ad nihilum deductum est in conspectu eius malignus”, id est divinus seu incantator, patrie devastator. Nota de abisso Sebaudie, Ex 22 [18]: “Maleficos” etc. Ayora, f.19r–20v: Unde vos mulieres habetis consilium, que itis multociens pro malo filiorum ad sortilerios et ad illos qui invocant demones. […] Et hoc rectores civitatis debent cavere, si notorie fit, […] et est magnum periculum civitatis et comunitatis. Nam contigit PropeSavoya, ubi erat quidam divinus spiritum habens fitonicum, et quia gentes vel rectores crimen illud non curarunt corrigere, permisit Deus quod ille demon derroquà unes grans roques et fecit tantum malum que XII parròquies abisà. Et ideo ne sustineatur. Propterea mandavit Deus antiqua Lege: Vir sive mulier in quibus phytonicus vel divinaciones fuerit spiritus, morte moriantur, lapidibus obruent eos, Levici, XX, 27. In fine moriatur sine misericordia, non ad suspendium vel decapitandum, ne a mort que faça un hom sol sed omnis populus lapidet eum. On the connection between this exemplum and the 1248 rock avalanche of Mount Granier, see Jacques Berlioz, “L'effondrement du Mont Granier en Savoie ( fin 1248). Production, transmission et réception des récits historiques et légendaires (XIIIeXVIIe siècles),” Le Monde alpin et rhodanien. Revue régionale d’ethnologie, 1.2 (1987): 7–68. Sermons I, 181 (10 June 1416): Açò és, a vosaltres, regidors de viles e ciutats, que vullats corregir peccats notoris ab bones penes: si negú va a adevins, punir-lo fort, e cremar los adevins. Corpus, 787 (Tordesillas, 17 January 1412): Et ideo, rectores istius communitatis, provideatis ut notorii divini etc. non sustineantur, quia audio quod hic est quedam iudea divina et coniuradora. Et ideo, cum bona pena puniatis eos, si vultis ut ira Dei etc. Quaresma, 85: Ecce mulier cananea. […] Havent sa filla malalta, vench a Jhesu Xrist tant solament, havem doctrina, que si havem necessitats, que no anem a devins ne fetillés, mas a Jhesu Xrist tant solament. E considerau que aquella dona era paguana e infel, e dejà totes conjuracions e fetelleries e anà a Jhesu Xrist. […] Los jurats ja hi han provehit bé, mas no reste sinó la execució que·s faça. Si la feu, si no, diu Déu que ell la farà e metrà·u tot per terra. Axí encerquats [e] si n'i ha nengú en la ciutat, provehits-hi, sinó Déu ho farà. Nostre senyor Déu nos guart que no u haja a fer! Axí, guardem-nos de la ira de Déu. A la cananea molts li deyen que anàs a sortillés e fetillés e a conjuradors. E ella deya “No plàcia a Déu”... […] Moltes dones folles, per haver fills, van a conjuradós e moros. O gran follia! […] E quin exemple han ací los regidós? Que la ley que és feta. Que si saben que y haje hom o dona que no tingua la ley, gitarlo'n. Axí foragitats-ho tot. Vull-vos avisar de una cosa: que quant se fa una ley, primo se deu ordenar en la sala; axí, allí deu començar la correcció. Vejam, ha·y nengú que face contra estes ordinacions? Fora! E punir-los més que als altres. […] Si vas a algun fetiller, drian: “Anau a tal hom, e és fill del diable”. […] E axí, en esta ciutat hi han provehit contra fetillés e adevins: mester és que·s serve. […] Axí, per amor de Déu, tant com més se acosta la fi del món e de aquell traydor Antixrist, tan més devem escapar dels mals adevins e conjuradós e sodomites: axí, si·n sabets, accusats. Arxiu de la Corona d’Aragó (ACA), Processos en quart, 1424: Interrogatus dixit […] era gran metzinera e fetillera, e que de fet la havia treta de casa sua per aquesta rahó. […] A son vijares quan temps la tenia per amiga? E dix que no li recorda, mas que la ha tenguda fins que mestre Vicens fou vengut en la dita vila, e açò li ha dit lo dit Guillem. Arxiu Comarcal de la Cerdanya (ACCE), ACCE, Fons Ajuntament de Puigcerdà, CU 94 (7 fols.); see Pau Castell, “Ordinacions de Puigcerdà promulgades l'any 1415 arran d'una prèdica de Vicent Ferrer”, Acta Historica et Archaeologica Mediaevalia (in press).

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37 Arxiu Històric de Tarragona (AHT), Concilium, 1421–1422, s.n.: Sobre les ordinacions qu·el venerable prehicador frare Pere Cerdà en sos sermons e en altra manera ha prehicat e amonestats los honorables cònsols e consell que sien fetes per esquivar fatillers, fatilleres, conjuradors e conjuradores, juradors, despitadors e renegadors, jugadors, logrés, alcavots e altres pecats públics, […] sien fetes ordinacions segons en la ciutat de Vich e en altres parts se són fetes. The following year the statutes were ratified except on the chapter that forbade gambling, considered “very harmful to the city” given that it made the tax collection decrease and stopped the arrival of new citizens (AHT, Concilium, 1423–1424, f.8r). Some earlier examples, though without any explicit reference to diabolical sorcery, are the 1403 statutes issued by prince Ludovico of Acaia dictating a fine of twenty sous for the blasphemous and those who didn't respect the Sunday, as well as the first chapters of the statutes issued that same year by count Amadeus VIII of Savoy, condemning blasphemy, misuse of Christian sacraments, contact with Jews, prostitution and disrespect for Christian feast days. See Pietro Luigi Datta, Storia dei principi di Savoia del ramo d’Acaia, signori del Piemonti, 3 vols. (Turin: Stamperia Reale, 1832), 2: 285–7; Laurent Chevailler, “Une source in édite du droit savoyard: Les ‘Antiqua Sabaudiae Statuta’ d’Amédée VIII de 1402–1404,” Bulletin philologique et historique (jusqu’ à 1610) du Comit é des Travaux Historiques et Scientifiques (1960): 368–71. 38 Sermons VI, 164 (28 November 1414): Més valrie, més valrie cremar e esquarterar X o XII persones que aquesta ciutat no sie en tanta destrucció, car per hun que fos cremat, mil dels altres se castigarien. 39 Corpus, 177: Et ideo non accedere pro aliqua necessitate ad divinos et divinitates, nam dampnati sunt qui accedunt. Et ideo, rectores et domini comunitatum extirpetis divinos, et si vultis ut ira Dei non veniat in istam villam. […] Et comburatis eos, quia lignum est datum pro hoc, vel expellatis de termino, etc. 40 Ayora, f.18v: Quod debemus recurrere ad Christum, non ad sortilegos, qui non possunt tibi dare nisi Infernum. […] Et dimittatis sortilegos, quia gravissime est Deo ad eos ire nec eos sustinere, et ideo ne habeatis carenciam lignorum, sed, scita veritate, comburantur. 41 Sermons I, 181: Ara ja sabeu que quan Adam hac peccat, tantost hagué’n malalties, affanys, dolors, tribulacions. […] Açò és, a vosaltres, regidors de viles e ciutats, que vullats corregir peccats notoris ab bones penes: si negú va a adevins, punir-lo fort, e cremar los adevins. 42 Clermont, VII (410): “Malignus”, quasi “male igneus”, quia non solum malus sibi sed toti patrie, sicut sortilegia, divinationes et similia; et quando tales persone sustinentur, ira Dei est in patria, et pro uno sufficiens est quod tota patria destruatur. Ideo debent tales persone maligne comburi. 43 L’imaginaire du sabbat, ed. Ostorero et al., passim; Niklaus Schatzmann, Verdorrende Bäume und Brote wie Kuhfladen. Hexenprozesse in der Leventina 1431–1459 und die Anfänge der Hexenverfolgung auf der Alpensüdseite (Zürich: Chronos, 2003); Silvia Bertolin and Ezio Emerico Gerbore, La stregoneria nella Valle d’Aosta medievale (Musumeci, 2003); Silvia Bertolin, Processi per fede e sortilegi nella valle d’Aosta del Quattrocento (Aosta: Tip. Valdostana, 2012); Frank Mercier, La Vauderie d’Arras. Une chasse aux sorcières à l’Automne du Moyen Âge (Rennes: PUR, 2006); Inquisition et sorcellerie en Suisse romande. Le registre Ac 29 des Archives cantonales vaudoises (1438–1528), ed. Martine Ostorero and Kathrin Utz Tremp (Lausanne: CLHM, 2007); Ostorero and Mercier, L'énigme de la Vauderie, passim. 44 Domenico Mammoli, Processo alla strega Matteuccia di Francesco, 20 marzo 1428 (Todi: Res Tudertinae, 1969), 32–40; Ugolino Nicolini, “La stregoneria a Perugia e in Umbria nel Medioevo: con i testi di sette processi a Perugia e uno a Bologna”, Bollettino della Deputazione di storia patria per l’Umbria 84 (1988): 5–87; Montesano, “Supra acqua”, 122–41; Mormando, The Preacher’s Demons, 52–77. 45 François Bordes, Sorciers et sorcières. procés de sorcellerie en Gascogne et Pays Basque (Toulouse: Privat, 1999); Ead., “Regards sur quatre siècles de sorcellerie en Pays Basque et Navarre (XIVe–XVIIe)”, Heresis 44–45 (2006): 207–22. 46 Nicolas Ghersi, “Tragique expédition punitive contre Katherine, la sorcière de Béziers (1440)”, Heresis 42–3 (2005), 101–20; Jacques Frayssenge, “Le sabbat des sorcières. La

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répression de l'hérésie sorcellaire à Millau au XV siècle”, Heresis 44–45 (2006): 189–206; Nicolas Ghersi, “Poisons, sorcières et lande de bouc”, Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes 17 (2009): 103–20; Castell, De crimine heresis, 157–60. For a comparative approach on the Pyrenean area, see Pau Castell, La cacera de bruixes a Catalunya (Barcelona: Fundació Noguera, in press). Bernardino da Siena, Prediche volgari sul Campo di Siena 1427, ed. Carlo Delcorno (Milano: Rusconi, 1989), 1007–9; Mammoli, Processo alla strega, passim. Ferran Valls i Taberner, Privilegis i ordinacions de les valls pirinenques: vall d’Àneu, Vallferrera i vall de Querol (Barcelona: Impremta de la Casa de la Caritat, 1917); JeanJoseph Saroïhandy, “El boque de Biterna en los fueros catalanes del Valle de Aneu”, Revista de filología española 4 (1917): 26–49. Jean Gremaud, Documents rellatifs à l'histoire du Vallais (Lausanne: Georges Bridel, 1875–1884), docs. 2790, 2791, 2809, and 2833: certarum personarum utriusque sexus, ut saltim presumitur, artis sortilegii, fetonissarum, incantacionum et huiusmodi, ex qua presumunt ipsam communitatem et singulares personas palam et occulte multa opprobria, dampna et gravamina sustinere et multipliciter in ipsorum personis, animalibus et bonis (Rarogne, 1434); cf. Chantal-Ammann Doubliez, “La première chasse aux sorciers en Valais (1428-1436?),” in L’Imaginaire du sabbat, 63–97. Martine Ostorero, “Amédée VIII et la répression de la sorcellerie démoniaque: une hérésie d’État”, in La loi du prince. La raccolta normativa sabauda di Amedeo VIII (1430), ed. Franco Morenzoni (Torino: 2019), 317–56. Paravy, De la chrétienté romaine, 1: 353–4; Utz Tremp, “Hérétiques ou usuriers?”, 124. Kathrin Utz Tremp, “Les vaudois de Fribourg (1399–1430): État de la recherche”, Revue de l’histoire des religions, 217 (2000): 129–30; Paul-Bernard Hodel, “D’une édition à l’autre. La lettre de saint Vincent Ferrier à Jean de Puynoix du 17 décembre 1403,” in Mirificus Praedicator, 189–203. See also Kathrin Utz Tremp, Von der Häresie zur Hexerei. ‘Wirkliche’ und imaginäre Sekten im Spätmittelalter (Hannover: MGH, 2008). Sermons VI, 155–6 (27 November 1414): Més, si anau als llauradors, los uns se enganen als altres. Si n’i ha hu simple, tots los destroexen. E ja no paguen bé los delmes, etc. Les dones, axí com a cans fan lo matrimoni; a les primeres paraules, no han cura de la ordenació de la Església. E comença ja la heretgie dels gatzaros, uns heretges que yo he trobats. Cf. Perarnau, “Aportació”, nº 830. For other instances of Ferrer mentioning his fight against heresy, see Corpus 504 (6 December 1411). See Szilvia Kovács, “A Franciscan friar's letter from the Crimea (1287),” Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungarica 69 (2016): 157–64. Hodel, “D’une édition à l’autre,” 200–2: In partibus vero illis ultra montanis quamplures inveni valles hereticorum, tam valdensium, quam gazariorum perversorum, percurri in diocesi Larinensi. [...] item de gazaris haereticis in valle Pontis, quomodo a suis abominationibus conversi sunt. Martine Ostorero, “Itinéraire d’un inquisiteur gâté: Ponce Feugeyron, les Juifs et le sabbat des sorciers”, Médiévales 43 (2002): 103–18; Ead., Le diable au sabbat. Littérature démonologique et sorcellerie (1440–1460). (Florence: Sismel-Ed. del Galluzzo, 2011), 88–105. The Catalan verb trobats can be translated both as “found” and also as “encountered” or “met”. Sermons III, 225: En Lombardia se esdevench que hun gran senyor morí, e la muller amava·l molt, e fahye-li molt de bé per l'ànima. […] Veus que vingueren-li dos nigromàntichs e diguerenli: “Si en infern és, nosaltres ho sabrem”. “E com?” dix ella. “Vejats si havets hun scuder que vaja ab letra, e ab la companyia que li darem, que no tem res”. Dix ella: “yo he hun scuder”. Apella Xabrevol. […] E feren la letra e donaren-li hun ca negre, tan gran com hun ase, e donaren-li tres doctrines: la primera que no·s senyàs: “Que, si·t senyes, cauries del ca”; la IIª que no nomenàs lo nom de Jesús ne de la Verge Maria; la IIIª que no parlàs ab degú. […] Quan fo cavalcat, de continent fo lla a la porta de infern. […] E entrà avant en la VIª presó en una bella cambra, e véu aquí son senyor en la cadira e bell llit de parament. “Oo senyor! ma senyora ne haurá plaer, que tan bé estau”. “Xabrerol, tot és foch”. Castilla 293: E como salía fuera de la çibdat, falló un grant perro e cavalgó en él, e en un punto fue al infierno. […] E, finalmente,

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fue a la sesta prisión e falló una casa muy fermosa, según que le a él paresçía. A similar story can be found in the Golden Legend, in the story of the Commemoration of All Souls (f.139r), where a certain magister Silus demands the state of a dead fellow, who appears before him, and his sweat pierces through the magister’s hand. Gervasius Tilburiensis, Otia Imperialia, ed. Felix Liebrecht (Hannover: Rümpler, 1856), III, 86; Giovanni Bocaccio, Decameron, a cura de Vittore Branca (Milano: Mondadori, 1995), VIII, 9. Sermons III, 225: Ara, no cregats que Xabrerol entràs en infern, mas Nostre Senyor Déus li·u volchs axí mostrar. Castilla 293: Non pensedes que podiesse entrar en el infierno, mas demóstrolo por dar enxienplo a nosotros. Fabian A. Campagne, “Witch or demon? Fairies, vampires and nightmares in Early Modern Spain”, Acta Ethnographica Hungarica 53 (2008): 381–410; Pau Castell, “‘Wine vat witches suffocate children’: The Mythical Components of the Iberian Witch”, eHumanista: Journal of Iberian Studies 25 (2014): 170–95. Avignon, 1698–1699: Item contra illos qui timore bruxarum ponunt verum ad portam, vel las brayas al cap del bech. Nota quod mascas non sunt nisi demones in forma hominum vel mulierum qui faciunt sompniare aliquas vetulas quod vadunt per domos, et in domo vestra viderunt scutellas vel alia, et aliquotiens dicunt verum ut decipiant vos et detis fidem. See also Avignon, 1170. Sermons VI, 233: Sapiats, bona gent, que Antechrist farà axí com lo pescador o brillador […] Los dyables se tornaran donzelles, axí com en lo temps de Noè, e emprenyar-se han e cuydar-s’an tenir fills, e seran dyablets, e offegar-los han de nit e portar-los-se’n han de nit.

Cited sources [Castilla] = Cátedra, Pedro. Sermón, sociedad y literatura en la Edad Media. San Vicente Ferrer en Castilla (1411–1412). Salamanca: Junta de Castilla y León, 1994. [Chabàs] = Chabàs Llorens, Roc. “Estudio de los sermones valencianos de San Vicente Ferrer.” Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos 6 (1902): 1–6, 155–68; 7 (1902): 131–42, 419– 39; 8 (1903): 38–57, 111–26, 291–5; 9 (1903): 85–102. [Corpus] = Gimeno, Francisco and Mª Luz Mandingorra, eds. Sermonario de san Vicente Ferrer del Real Colegio del Corpus Christi de Valencia. València: Ajuntament de València, 2002. [Perugia] = Gimeno, Francisco and Mª Luz Mandingorra, eds. Sermonario de Perugia: (Convento dei Domenicani, ms. 477). València, Ajuntament de València, 2006. [Fribourg] = Gimeno, Francisco and Mª Luz Mandingorra, eds. Sermones de Cuaresma en Suiza, 1404 (couvent des cordeliers, ms. 62). València: Ajuntament de València, 2009. [Avignon] = Gimeno, Francisco and Mª Luz Mandingorra, eds. Sermonario de Aviñón (Avignon. Bibliothèque Municipale, ms 610). València: Universitat de València, 2019. [Clermont] = Perarnau, Josep. “La (darrera?) quaresma transmesa de sant Vicent Ferrer: Clarmont-Ferrand, BMI, ms. 45.” Arxiu de Textos Catalans Antics 22 (2003): 343–550. [Ayora] = Robles, Adolfo, ed. San Vicente Ferrer: Colección de sermones de Cuaresma y otros según el manuscrito de Ayora. València: Ajuntament, 1995. [Quaresma] = Sanchis, Josep, ed. Quaresma predicada a València l’any 1413. Barcelona: Institució Patxot, 1927. [Sermons I–III] = Sanchis, Josep, ed. Sermons, 3 vol. Barcelona: Barcino, 1932–1934. [Sermons IV–VI] = Schib, Gret, ed. Sermons, 3 vol. Barcelona: Barcino, 1975–1988. [Aestivales] = Beati Vincentii … Sermones Aestivales … eisdem denuo … per D. Daminaum Diaz … recognitis, luculentae adnotationes in margine accesserunt. Lugduni: apud haeredes Iacobi Iunctae, 1558.

10 CIRCULATION OF MAGIC AND FOLKLORIC TRADITIONS IN THE TIMES OF ANTONINO OF FLORENCE AND BERNARDINO OF SIENA Fabrizio Conti

We know how relevant the role of the mendicant friars was in combining Classical literary themes – through the mediation of medieval authors – and folkloric traditions, thus contributing to shaping the phenomenon of belief in witchcraft in the fifteenth century.1 Far from living and operating outside of the world in seclusion within their convents, the friars, especially in the wake of the more stringent Observant morals, were on the contrary interested about the world and its different cultures and societies, which they aimed to change and reshape according to those morals. This paper aims at analyzing some of the main passages through which the work of transmission of cultural patterns occurred within the context mentioned above, and how the polemic against magic fitted into that, as part of the friars’ specific pastoral and reforming goals. Bernardino of Siena (d. 1444) and Antonino Pierozzi of Florence (d. 1459) are central figures in their respective Franciscan and Dominican orders, although, as it has been pointed out, in the historiography the Dominican has been overshadowed by his Franciscan near-contemporary colleague, possibly because of the greater accessibility of Bernardino’s vernacular sermons.2 Both Antonino and Bernardino were also strongly motivated to transform social reality and to transmit cultural and pastoral traditions, which had often been relied upon by others in the following periods. If, with Bernardino – as Antonino himself also recognized – we have one of the most celebrated reformers and preachers of the whole Italian peninsula of his own times, with Antonino we are in the presence of a theologian and an intellectual, the author of sums of moral theology and history, besides the works of pastoral care, and someone who was very active in political and cultural circles, first but not only, those pivoting on Cosimo de’ Medici and the celebrated humanists of Florence. The Dominican even climbed some important steps of the ladder of the ecclesiastical career, holding the post of auditor general in the Roman Rota at the Papal Curia in the 1430s, becoming

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close to Pope Eugenius IV when he transferred the Ecumenical Council from Ferrara to Florence, and eventually being chosen by the same pope as the archbishop of Florence in 1446.3 The consideration of themes related to magic, “superstition” (employed by these sources as a category for disapproving such practices), and witchcraft was for both Antonino and Bernardino part of the comprehensive engagement with society they displayed through pastoral and reformative tools. Suffice it to refer here to the use of Bernardino’s preaching skills for the reform of city statutes, within a triangulation with the city powers and the targets of often concerted processes of political restauration – as in the case of the witch Matteuccia of Todi burned in 1428 – or Antonino’s efforts, through his episcopal constitutions, to regulate the behaviours of clerics – sometimes superstitious ones – or instructing the clergy in its duties toward the laity, or again exerting a stricter control on lay confraternities and the orthodoxy of their members.4 The aim of this paper is to analyze the understanding of these friars in relation to the problem of magic and superstition, and to see how elements, traces, and ideas pertaining to these domains circulated within the specific cultural contexts the friars were or might have been close to. For all their efforts at defending orthodoxy and condemning superstitious practices, the boundaries between the licit and the illicit were so thin that not even Bernardino could avoid stumbling on them. The vicissitude of the devotion of the Holy Name of Jesus spread by the Sienese preacher, shows how easy it was to slide towards practices seen as suspicious, and also, how the attention on orthodoxy did not make exceptions for the clergy. As we know, in 1426 Bernardino was summoned by Pope Martin V because of his JHS devotion, although the preacher was soon acquitted by Martin himself and later on again by Pope Eugene IV. In his Summa historialis, Antonino of Florence recalls Bernardino’s case, and describes how the Holy Name of Jesus, inscribed or depicted on large tablets, was displayed to the faithful and even held by other Franciscan friars before the cross to head processions. This would trigger a debate between those in favour and those opposing the use of that table. The problem probably was – Antonino notices – that the faithful seemed to venerate the object more than what it actually represented.5 Antonino concludes by describing how Bernardino “humbly accepted and entirely respected the order” received by the Pope of not displaying the JHS table any longer, and in doing so the Dominican highlights the good faith of the Franciscan preacher. After all, before telling of Bernardino’s vicissitudes in relation to the JHS issue, Antonino shows all his esteem for the Franciscan preacher. The Dominican speaks highly of Bernardino, whom he describes as a “distinguished preacher” of “venerable life and outstanding fame” preaching through towns and castles with such a grace that churches and squares filled up completely with his audience.6 These are not the only f lattering words that Antonino employs to talk about Bernardino. In another passage of the Summa historialis, while recording the canonization of the Franciscan friar – by

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Pope Nicholas V in 1450 – the Dominican describes the Franciscan as an “outstanding and fruitful preacher, who had travelled across the cities and the castles of all Lombardy and Tuscia, evangelizing every day and spreading the word of God everywhere with the greatest participation of public.” 7 This is certainly in tune with what is said elsewhere with regard to the huge crowds gathering to attend Bernardino’s preaching events. Graziani’s chronicle says that 3,000 people attended Bernardino’s sermons in Perugia on Sunday, 23 September 1425, during which the preacher reproached women for using wigs and rouge, and men for their gaming tools, amulet scrolls (brevi), and enchantments (incanti). Needless to say, all those sinful objects were later burned in the public square in a fire so huge “that it couldn’t be said nor told.”8 A note from the Acta ser Francisci Nicolai gives the impressive numbers of 30,000 or even 90,000 people gathering for that same sermon by Bernardino.9 Magic and superstitious elements were part of a series of other tools considered as reproachable, and this is a concrete case showing the comprehensive moral context within which those elements were posited by the friar. From the intellectual point of view, a more specifically classificatory approach was sometimes employed by the friars. The Dominican Johannes Herolt’s Sermones discipuli, published around 1418, can be a good early example of this attitude, with its 24 categories of superstition classified in his sermon 41.10 Antonino shows the same attitude – which he also applies through a revived ad status consideration of the faithful – in his Summa theologica composed between 1440 and 1454. Here, unsurprisingly on the basis of Thomas Aquinas’ Summa theologiae, Antonino covers carefully the theme of superstition, splitting it into 14 categories: idolatry; divination; necromancy; the invocation of demons; astronomy or mathematics (astrology); divination by dreams; auguries; casting lots; notary art; enchantments for recovering health; enchantment of snakes and other animals; textual amulets; observance of times and days; women who believe they go riding at night along with Diana or Herodias.11 Magic could certainly be employed in innumerable daily situations, in times in which men and women needed to cope with the lack of technology or scientific advancements. The case of the enchantments employed for health purposes is characteristic from this point of view. Still relying on Aquinas, Antonino explains that it is not unlawful to use natural items for the effects they can naturally produce, such as if someone keeps on him/herself a jasper stone for lowering blood pressure; it becomes superstitious and illicit, however, if characters, unknown names, or vain observances that have no effect by nature are added.12 Speaking of incantations believed to have medical effects, in the Seraphim that he preached in Padua in 1423 Bernardino of Siena doesn’t want to be too airy-fairy. “Let’s get practical” – he writes – “have you heard of the incantation ‘Three friars went through a path / in front of the devil they met’, and so on?” He explains how such lullabies are used to enchant the bandage under which a wound is believed neither to rot nor to stink. For sure, he explains with a practical sense, in case such an incantation is apparently working, that is only due to the devil, as if it was due to God that would work

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in all other cases.13 Of note is the incantation reported in the vernacular, isolated from the Latin prose of the sermon, to highlight the socio-cultural provenance and the use of those words believed to have magic power. Antonino had already elaborated on the issue of superstition for his vernacular readers in the confessional handbook Omnis mortalium cura, published in 1429. Here, the Dominican deals with a series of issues strictly related to faith, starting with sin, a topic that is certainly central in a confessional, followed, in order, by unfaithfulness (infidelitas), paganism, Judaism, heresy, and finally, superstition. Antonino explains how superstition is not a monolithic object, but a sort of multifaceted infidelitas consisting of “several branches and modes.”14 Superstition is described here as being represented by different types of divinations and enchantments, which in turn are split into more subspecies. Thus, Antonino specifies, divination can be operated either through invocation of demons or without invoking them by simply observing nature, from the stars to the f light of the birds. Invocation of demons is something about which the friar is more concerned. Demons can be invoked in different ways, he explains, such as through the mediation of the dead, which is necromancy, or by means of dreams, which is divination properly speaking, and through a sort of demonic possession, the arte phitonica.15 Demons can also provide answers by using different means, such as, among the others, signs through stones, fire, or water, which are called geomancy, pyromancy, and idromancy, respectively. Antonino then goes on describing enchantments, which “are performed in innumerable ways and are all forbidden”; among these, the brevi are particularly dangerous when they “contain names that are unknown or diverse signs or characters.”16 This is something Bernardino certainly agreed on. In sermon 8 of his Seraphim, the Franciscan speaks of De mirabilibus malitiae diaboli and of how that malice unfolds through a series of practices. The selling and the writing of brevi, Bernardino warns, are forbidden when they contain strange names that can be those of demons, such as Astaroth, or other “characters that are the seals of the devil.” The Franciscan preacher also points his finger against those diviners inspecting hands and foreheads to see “how long you will live and with what fortune,” or gazing at phials, nails, or glasses using blessed candles in order to recover stolen objects. There was a circularity of views concerning the superstitious practices to be condemned among the friars and between different pastoral tools, from sermons to confessionals, and the more comprehensive summae. Certainly, as we saw in the case of the bonfire that Bernardino lit in Perugia, the friars were striving to wipe out superstitious practices and tools from the sight of the faithful, relying on moral patterns shared by the same friars through such a variety of written tools. There was, however, also a different type of circularity of superstitious practices, uncovering the transmission of magical elements between the popular and the clerical levels of society. Thus, in his Episcopal Constitution 56, Archbishop Antonino refers to those “unlearned clerics and priests” who not only avoid forbidding enchantments, brevi, and other superstitions, but make and use those same tools themselves. Antonino condemns those guilty of using such

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tools to pay three f lorins every time they are caught doing that, while the one who denounces such practices – who was probably supposed to have been also involved – would pay only one f lorin and have his name kept secret.17 Among all possible uses of magic, notary art and necromancy are among the most serious ones, as they entail the invocation of demons. Antonino explains how notary art, which uses figures and formulas in order to attain knowledge, is illicit as those figures are used as signs that are not divine but related to demonic pacts.18 Necromancy, Antonino remarks, is strictly speaking related to divination through the dead, although it is the work of demons to make it seem that the dead really appear while they are the demons to prophesize through them.19 Bernardino also condemns as devilish those uses and, besides notary art, he also mentions well-known learned traditions as those centred on the Clavicula Salomonis or The Key of Solomon with its pentacles or figures instructing how to perform magic rituals.20 Talking of those who “out of carnal desire and lust” make enchantments in order to obtain the love of some man or woman, the friar recalls the legend of saints Cyprian and Justina to show how devilish means cannot prevail over the power of God, interestingly by an example in which the poisoner and the “client” were men rather than women. The early Christian legend has it that a suitor of the beautiful virgin Justina asked Cyprian, by then a notorious magician, for a magic spell in order to arouse carnal passion in her. The spell, however, had no effect as Justina was holding firmly her faith in Christ and living a life of fasting and prayer. Seeing that his own magic was powerless against the sign of the cross, Cyprian converted himself to Christianity and entered the Church.21 We know how traditions related to and accusations concerning the invocation of demons, use of necromantic books, and asking for, or providing, love potions and spells were part of the repertoire of inquisitors active on the Tuscan soil in the later medieval period. Men were generally accused of invoking demons and practising necromancy, with the first known case of someone being burned at the stake in Tuscany for possessing “certain books or writings on necromancy” and for continuing “to practice daily, various divinations, malefactions, and acts of sorcery” as the one of Niccolò Consigli of Florence in 1384.22 A few more cases followed from the beginning of the next century, such as the one relative to Jacopo of Francesco of San Miniato, who was fined and had his necromantic books – which he had copied himself – burned in 1403. Women, on the contrary, were more generally associated with the casting of spells and the making of love potions, although also men – including the above-mentioned Niccolò and Jacopo – could be accused of the same. Giovanna, called Caterina of Francesco of Scarperia, for instance, was beheaded – not burned – in Florence in 1427 for poisoning several men with her potions aimed at causing lust.23 It was certainly the context of the invocation of demons and necromancy to account for a substantial part of the interest in magic practices during the first half of the fifteenth century, as they could include a variety of uses ranging from love magic to spells for causing harm or finding remedies for that, and divination.24

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The recently edited collection of magical texts, which had been translated from Latin into the Italian vernacular by 1446, seemingly at the request of someone close to the Milanese ducal court, offers from this point of view a compelling evidence.25 The 15 textual units included in the collection deal mainly with astrology, divination, and necromancy, this latter indicating by then simply magic, although as we saw, Antonino keeps the original etymological meaning of the term necromancy as divination through the dead.26 Among these texts, there is also the first Italian translation of the Clavicula Salomonis, and together, this collection as well as the Clavicula in particular, testify to the degree of interest for magical and divinatory rites, with scopes that were mainly practical, as shown by the numerous experimenta or magic operations present in the texts, such as the experimenti d’amore or rituals for securing someone’s love and the pentacles included in the Clavicula. Such texts seem to illustrate the core meaning of any form of magic, which is the need to imagine a world “in which it would become possible to modify reality according to one’s own desires.”27 These were needs and desires mediated by, and crystallized into, specific learned traditions, whose elements and echoes we find in the reprimands of the friars. All this testifies to a continuous circularity of themes directly related to such a persisting cultural substratum of – and interest in – magic. The condemnation of the friar becomes even more pressing when the sliding towards a manifest demonic involvement with magic practices pairs itself with one not acting against that: If a lord knows that anything like this is performed in his territory and does not punish that according to what is prescribed by the civil laws, so that those people are eradicated, he sins mortally. Everyone should accuse those individuals in order to have them punished.28 The Dominican reminds the secular authority of its duty to prosecute those involved in the invocation of demons and the perpetration of evil spells, as also common people are reminded of their own duties to denounce anybody they know of being involved into that. This is certainly along the lines of what Bernardino also urged his f lock to do more than once, with the difference that the Franciscan was rather giving shape to feminine targets, as when in Siena in 1427 he cried “Whether within the city or outside its walls, accuse her: every witch, every wizard, every sorcerer or sorceress, or worker of charms and spells.”29 At the beginning of his episcopate, the Florentine Dominican had given proof of how to deal with those guilty of such practices. A certain Giovanni Del Cane of Montecatini was burned at the stake in Florence in May 1450 after being condemned by Antonino for having being involved in necromantic practices, besides denying the immortality of the soul. Giovanni was seemingly active in a group. The Florentine Archbishop’s Constitution 1, issued in 1455, forbids out of concern of heresy, any layperson “in any company or gathering” – perhaps a reference to confraternities – to talk about matters of faith, urging anyone

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knowing a heretic to denounce him: a hypothesis has even been advanced that Antonino’s constitution was related to Giovanni’s case, since, after all, his burning had caused much public opposition.30 In the section of his Summa theologica dealing with the “other superstitions,” Antonino speaks of the bewitchment of children. In particular, he says, some individuals have evil eyes (“burning,” urentes) and can harm delicate babies by gazing at them and making them throw up and having nausea. The friar warns, however, that the effects of those spells do not give one the right to perform enchantments in search of remedies, “as women often do.”31 The hint to these practices opens a window towards behaviours linked to a social reality on the ground made of suspicion and fears, specifically related, as in that case, to the sphere of motherhood. Also, this points to the difficulties in finding solutions that would be made recurring to the remedies of those women unneeded. A woman who used to recur to the remedies of Benvenuta Benincasa, tried in Modena in 1370, told clearly to her confessor, who was trying to refrain her from doing so, that she didn’t have any alternative to heal her child.32 Still speaking of people who harm others, and again interestingly pointing to clerics, the Dominican condemns those who can perform, out of “private hatred,” rituals in order to produce harm, after having covered the altars with grievous blankets and extinguishing the lamps that are usually lit. Performing anything like that, Antonino warns, is a mortal sin.33 This is certainly again a reference to the “clerical underworld” of magic within which some priests were apparently active, as those prosecuted by the inquisitors of Tuscia, between 1458 and 1466, for making amulet scrolls and holding necromantic books. One priest was exiled for a year and suspended for good from his religious offices.34 In the same section of his Summa, Antonino deals with the famous belief of women who claim they go riding at night with Diana or Herodias and shapeshift into other creatures, who are linked to the mulieres referred to by the Canon Episcopi. These women are by Antonino called strigae, and this clearly allows the Dominican to connect the recent beliefs concerning witches to the old traditions recounted by the canon Episcopi, whose sceptical view is endorsed to describe the illusory nature of such beliefs. The same witches are by Antonino called ianuatice, thus reviving the tradition of folkloric nature concerning the janare – probably from dianaticae – spread in central Italy, especially in the area around Benevento, as it is also attested to by John of Capistrano, who besides calling the witches janae and stregae, adopts the term corsariae (from “andare in corso” or “those who think they f ly”).35 By considering witches as illusory, Antonino releases these women also from the worst accusations connected to them, which is one of fascinating and killing toddlers, often by sucking their blood. On the other hand, while also Bernardino marks as diabolic illusions those beliefs pointing to the shapeshifting and the night f light based on the canon Episcopi, with the related accusations of murdering children by sucking their blood, and at the same time, the Franciscan preacher also holds these women responsible for the crimes ascribed to them. Thus, in his Seraphim Bernardino

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explains that the belief of certain old women holding that they go with Zobiana – another name for Diana or Herodias – or f ly is totally false.36 Again, when preaching in Siena in 1425 the friar wonders: “Are evil spells real? Yes, they are! But not those attributed to the witches,” while in the sermon he preached in Padua in 1443 Bernardino affirms that “it is absolutely true that children are fascinated by diabolic old women,” and he even substantiates this conviction by recounting how once he heard the voices of babies fascinated and murdered by witches crying revenge (“vindictam, vindictam, vindictam”).37 The world of magic and superstition was one with almost no steady boundaries in social, cultural, and chronological terms. None knew this better than the friars. This is explained by their addressing and targeting magic beliefs and superstitious behaviours in the wider context of the different duties they held and of the texts they produced as preachers, pastors, reformers. The action of Antonino and Bernardino truly situates itself at the intersection of different traditions, of both popular and learned levels, as well as at the centre of different social interactions, with any social class being involved, from the villager to the cleric. This is also one more reason that shows how these friars contributed to circulate the magic traditions of various provenance that they aimed at contrasting, each one giving to these same traditions slightly different emphasis and room according to their own specific audiences, sensibilities, and purposes.

Notes 1 Cf.: Fabrizio Conti, “Notes on the Nature of Beliefs in Witchcraft: Folklore and Classical Culture in Fifteenth Century Mendicant Traditions”, Religions 10, 576 (2019). 2 Peter Howard, Creating Magnificence in Renaissance Florence (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2012), 21. 3 Peter Howard, Beyond the Written Word: Preaching and Theology in the Florence of Archbishop Antoninus 1427–1459 (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1995), 227–30; Ezra Sullivan, “Antonino Pierozzi: A Locus of Dominican Inf luence in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Florence”, Angelicum 93 (2016), 345–58. 4 See: Paola Monacchia, Maria Grazia Nico, Gli Osservanti e la legislazione comunale in Umbria nel secolo XV, in I Frati Osservanti e la società in Italia nel secolo XV, Atti del XL Convegno internazionale Assisi-Perugia 11–13 Ottobre 2012 (Spoleto: Cisam, 2013), 281–304; Maria Clara Rossi, Vescovi e confraternite (secoli XIII–XVI), in Marina Gazzini, ed., Studi confraternali. Orientamenti, problemi, testimonianze (Florence: Firenze University Press, 2009), 125–65 (esp. 150 and ff.); Letizia Pellegrini, Predicazione osservante e propaganda politica: a partire da un caso di Todi, in La propaganda politica nel basso Medioevo: Atti del XXXVIII Convegno del Centro di Studi sulla spiritualità medievale. Todi 14–17 ottobre 2001 (Spoleto: CISAM, 2001), 511–31; Richard C. Trexler, “The Episcopal Constitutions of Antoninus of Florence”, Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken 59 (1979), 244–72. 5 “Sapientes arbitrabantur ydolatriam vel saltim superstitionem tendere, cum populi magi venerarent illas literas quam significatum per eas, scilicet Jesum Christum. Imitati sunt eum aliqui predicatores ordinis minorum tales tabulas cum illo nomine in processionibus ferentes et cruci que de more antefertur preferentes. Hinc orte sunt magne in populis contentiones, aliis factum commendantibus, aliis reprobantibus cum etiam aliqua ad exaltationem illius nominis predicando Bernardinus proferret que veritati non videbantur inniti”: Antonino of Florence, Summa historialis, sive Chronicon (Anton Koberger: Nuremberg, 1484), t. XXII, c. VII, § V, f. CLIX.

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6 “Eo tempore, quidam fuit ordinis minorum frater Bernardinus nomine, Senensis natione, venerabilis vite et fame preclare. Egregius predicator, quotidie post missarum celebrationem populis predicabat, discurrens per civitates et oppida Tuscie, et Lombardie, et Ducatus spoletani, et cum tanta gratia ut ecclesias et plateas audientibus implerit”: Antonino, Summa historialis, t. XXII, c. VII, § V, f. CLIX. 7 “Frater Bernardinus de Senis oriundus […] predicator egregious et fructuosus qui per civitates et castella totius Tuscie et Lombardie discurrerat, evangelizando quotidie, et verbum Dei ubique seminando cum maximo concursu auditorum, et tandem in civitate aquilana in Domino requiescens, ascriptus fuit cathalogus sanctorum cum magna solemnitate per Nicolaum papam”: Antonino, Summa historialis, t. XXII, c. XII, § III, f. CLXXVIII. 8 “Alli 23 de Setembre, in domenica, ce fu alla ditta predica, per quanto se iudicava o stimava, più de 3,000 persone […] poi comenzó a reprendere le donne delli strisci e concime del viso, delli capilli posticci e contrafatti, et de ogni lasciva portatura; et similmente li homini de’ tavolieri, carti, dadi et facce contrafatte et simil cose brievi [et] incanti. […] El ditto frate Bernardino fece recare tulle le ditte cose diabolice in piaza, et li fece fare como uno castello de legniame […] et poi ce fece ataccare el fuoco […] et fu sì grande el fuoco che non se poria dire nè acontare”: Ariodante Fabretti, Francesco Bonaini, Filippo Luigi Polidori, “Cronaca della città di Perugia dal 1309 al 1491 nota col nome di Diario del Graziani secondo un codice appartenente ai Conti Baglioni”, Archivio Storico Italiano, vol. 16, No. 1 (1850), 69–750: 314. 9 “Fr. Bernardinus multum populum perusinum reduxit et extimatum fuit quod in die dominico in platea fuerunt XXX miliaria personarum. Post deinde iudicatum fuit per multos quod in tali dominicali fuerunt LXXXX miliaria personarum”: Antonio Fantozzi, “Documenta perusina de S. Bernardino Senensi”, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 15 (1922), 107–8. 10 These are: the Egyptian days; observing dreams; the use of the ordeal; recourse to female seers (phitonissae); belief that one is destined to a bad death due to the time one was born; observing augury; necromancy; working spells or love potions; lotcasting; worshiping the moon or the sun; lore concerning pregnant women, the vetulae who can make women sterile, or those who can advise on how to kill a foetus; vain superstitious rites involving holy water or candles on pregnant women or newborn babies; textual amulets; incantations over people or beasts; sortilegia by means of sacraments such as during the elevation of the host at Mass; believing in apparitions of spirits at night; the belief in the train of Diana and the host of the dead; chiromancy; believing that, in a married couple, the one who falls asleep quicker will die first; believing that it is a sign of bad luck for the whole day to meet an old woman on the road at dawn, as well as taking by chance the left shoe at the moment of waking up, or putting on one’s shirt inside out; not placing trust in God but in creatures; valuing any object more than God. Cf. Fabrizio Conti, Witchcraft, Superstition, and Observant Franciscan Preachers: Pastoral Approach and Intellectual Debate in Renaissance Milan (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 167. 11 Antonino of Florence, Summa theologica (Venice: Francesco Renner de Hailbrun and Nicola Francifordia, 1474), Pars II, tit. XII, c.1, ff. 345ra–348vb. A similar model scheme is followed in the Summula confessionalis (Defecerunt) in the section about the First Commandment. Cf. Conti, Witchcraft, Superstition, and Observant Franciscan Preachers, 170. 12 “Dicit Thomas secunda secundae Q. 96 quod in his que fiunt ad aliquos effectus inducendos, considerandum est si ista habent vel putantur habere virtutem naturalem ad producendum illos effectus, et tunc non erit superstitiosum nec illicitum, uti talibus causis, puta si quis teneat super se iaspidem pro restrictione sanguinis et huiusmodi. Si autem non videatur, quod illa possint naturaliter illos effectus causare, sed per adiunctionem aliquorum characterum vel nominum ignotorum, vel alicuius vane observantie expectatur ille effectus, erit superstitiosum et illicitum”: Antonino of Florence, Summa theologica, Pars II, tit. XII, c.1, ff. 348rb-va. Cf.: Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, IIa IIae, Q. 96 a. 2 ad1. 13 “Veniamus ad practicam: audisti incantationem illam? Tre fra per una via andava / Innanzi dal diavolo se incontrava, etc. Sic in praecantula lanae succidae, quia dicunt quod plaga illa nunquam foetet, nec etiam marcescit, quando est incantata illa lana. Estne hoc miraculum Dei,

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an diaboli? Certe miraculum diaboli est. […] Si est Dei, tu poteris cum eisdem verbis omnia alia miracula facere, quia Deus non plus in uno laborat quam in alio […]. Unde si non potes omnia facere cum meo, nisi ad plagam […] stat quod est diaboli et non Dei”: Bernardino of Siena, Seraphim, Sermo VIII, p. 176b. Cf. Giovanni Battista Bronzini, Le prediche di Bernardino e le tradizioni popolari del suo tempo, in Bernardino predicatore nella società del suo tempo, XVI Convegno internazionale di studi, Todi, Accademia tudertina, 9–12 Ottobre 1975 (Spoleto: Cisam, 1976), 111–52, 146–7. “Non altro vitio se trova ne li Christiani che se chiama superstitione et sortilegio et è quasi una infidelita, et ha molti rami et molti modi”: Antonino of Florence, Omnis mortalium cura (Venice: Cristoforo Pensi, 1500), f. 3va. “Et quando li demonii chiamati pronunciano alcuna cosa per operatione o parlamento de persone morte, se chiama nigromantia; se pronunciano per vivi in somnio se chiama divinatione; se pronuncia o per persone in li quali abitano essi demonii vivi e vigilanti se chiama arte fetonica”: Antonino, Omnis mortalium cura, f. 3va. Cf. Conti, Witchcraft, Superstition, and Observant Franciscan Preachers, 185. “De li incanti i quali se fanno per modi innumerabili, tutti sono vietati da la sancta madre giesia […]. I brevi quando contengono in se […] nomi che non se intendeno o diversi signi o caracteri”: Antonino, Omnmis mortalium cura, f. 5va. “Item abbiamo inteso con molta displicentia d’animo che alchuni cherici e sacerdoti ingnoranti non solamente non vietano, come debbono, incanti, brevi, sortilegii, e altri superstictioni, ma essi sono quelgli che lgli fanno e usano, contra omgni ordinatione della sancta chiesa. E perciò chiascuno tale condenpnamo in fiorini III per ongni volta ch’è trovato in fare tali superstictioni. E il terzo della pena si darà al dinunctiatore, e sarargli tenuto sacreto”: Trexler, “The Episcopal Constitutions of Antoninus of Florence”, 271. “[Ars notoria] utitur quibusdam ad scientiam aquirendam […], sicut inspectione quarumdam figurarum et prolatione quorumdam ignotorum verborum at aliis huiusmodi; et ideo huiusmodi ars non utitur his ut caussis, sed ut signis, non autem ut signis divinitus institutis […] unde relinquitur quod sint supervacua signa, et per consequens pertinentia ad pactacum demonibus”: Antonino’s Summa theologica, Pars II, f. 347vb. “De necromantia, ubi expresse demones invocantur ad manifestandum futura. Nota, quod demones […] aliquando expresse [invocati] per suscitationem mortuorum prenuntiant futura, non quod vere suscitent mortuos, sed opere demonum videntur aliqui suscitati, ex quibus prenuntiant. Et dicitur stricte necromantia”: Antonino’s Summa theologica, Pars II, f. 346ra. “Illi qui credunt in libris de arte notoria, in clavicula et pentaculis Salomonis, quae est clavis diaboli: in omnibus enim istis diabolus conatur supplantare fidem”: Bernardino of Siena, Seraphim, Sermo VIII, 178a. On the Clavicles, see Elizabeth M. Butler, Ritual Magic (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1949; repr. 1998), 47–80; Cf. also Marina Montesano, ‘Supra acqua et supra ad vento’: Superstizioni maleficia e incantamenta nei predicatori francescani osservanti (Italia, sec. xv) (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo, 1999), 165. “Multi quaerunt propter desideria carnis et luxuriam, facere incantationes ad amorem alicuius mulieris vel viri, et facere sibi portari aliquam foeminam sicut Cyprianus, qui per incarnationes misit diabolum ad S. Justinam […]. Si persona est bene confessa et sine peccato mortali, et est in gratia, diabolus non habet potestatem super eam, sicut non profuit Cypriano mittere daemonem ad Justinam, quia erat in gratia Dei, et nihil praevaluit contra eam”: Bernardino of Siena, Seraphim, Sermo VIII, p. 178a. Cf. Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, Book V: https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/goldenlegend/goldenlegend-volume5.asp #Justina (accessed 19 December 2020). The Society of Renaissance Florence: A Documentary Study, ed., Gene Brucker (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1971), 262, 264. See: Dinora Corsi, Diaboliche, maledette e disperate. Le donne nei processi per stregoneria (secoli XIV–XVI), (Florence: Firenze University Press, 2013), 62–5; 77–84; Brucker, The Society of Renaissance Florence, 260–73. In the trial records there are interesting hints to the ingredients collected and used by sorcerers and sorceresses to produce their philters or to prepare magic items and

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31

32 33 34 35

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images. On the actual availability of such ingredients, Cf. Gal, Boudet, MoulinierBrogi, Vedrai mirabilia, 101–4. The texts are in the ms. it. 1524 of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. See: Florence Gal, Jean-Patrice Boudet, Laurence Moulinier-Brogi, Vedrai mirabilia. Un libro di magia del Quattrocento (Rome: Viella, 2017). Ibid., 65–6. Ibid., 101. “Il signore sel cognosce nel suo territorio farse queste cose e non punisca come voglienole lege seculare finché tal gente sieno estirpate pecca mortalmente, e ciascheduno dovrebbe accusare tale gente acio che fusseno puniti”: Antonino, Omnmis mortalium cura, f. 5ra. Bernardino da Siena, Prediche volgari sul Campo di Siena 1427, Sermon 35, ed., Carlo Delcorno, 2 vols (Milan: Rusconi, 1989), vol. ii, 1006–7. English translation in Kors and Peters, Witchcraft in Europe 400–1700, 136. “Commandiamo che nessuno layco in nessuna compangnia overo adunanza di persone presumma disputare dell’ articoli della fede overo sacramenti della chiesa […], commandando strettamente che chi sa di certo alchuno essere hereticho, ce llo debba manifestare acciò si proceda contro a esso”: Trexler, “The Episcopal Constitutions of Antoninus of Florence”, 256 (especially 248–9); the hypothesis is in John N. Stephens, “Heresy in Medieval and Renaissance Florence”, Past & Present 54 (1972): 25–60 (47). Cf. Rossi, Vescovi e confraternite, 154 ff. “Nota de fascinatione parvulorum […] sunt enim aliqui qui habent oculos urentes qui respicientes parvulos teneros ledunt ita ut cibum ex stomacho ejiciant et nauseam patiantur. […] Non tamen facienda est aliqua incantatio vel superstitio ad hoc removendum, ut faciunt mulieres et frequenter”: Antonino, Summa theologica, Pars II, f. 348vb. Corsi, Diaboliche, maledette e disperate, 61. “De illis vero clericis, qui altaria induunt lugubribus vestibus vel consueta luminaria extinguunt, et huiusmodi: si faciunt hoc ad imprecandum alicui malum propter privatum odium, mortaliter peccant”: Antonino, Summa theologica, Pars II, f. 348vb. See Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 151–6; Corsi, Diaboliche, maledette e disperate, 81–2. Antonino speaks “de mulieribus […] quae vulgariter dicuntur strighe vel ianuatice”: Antonino, Summa theologica, Pars II, f. 348va. John of Capistrano mentions the janae in his Tractatus de confessione (Cod. XVII, Friary of Friars Minor, Capestrano, c. 304v). See: Marina Montesano, Classical Culture and Witchcraft in Medieval and Renaissance Italy (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 155–9 (quote at 155). “Sunt enim aliquae vetulae quae credunt se ire cum Zobiana, vel in cursu […] et erunt illusiones diabolicae”: Bernardino of Siena, Seraphim, Sermo VIII, 178a. On Zobiana Cf. Montesano, Classical Culture and Witchcraft, 155–6. Quotes in Montesano, Classical Culture and Witchcraft, 157, 165.

PART IV

The cultural interpretation of objects

11 THE BODY OF CHRIST Exchanges and cultural upheavals in early-modern Italy Matteo Al Kalak

Introduction Among the cultural exchanges that involved rituals, symbols, and objects of social use, a special place is occupied by the history of the Eucharist. From the Late Middle Ages to the end of the eighteenth century, the sacrament of the altar strongly characterized European Christianity, inf luencing the minority groups with which it came into contact in various ways. This paper aims to outline an itinerary to ref lect on the sacrament in its dimension as a physical object. The following pages will attempt to answer certain questions in order to investigate the Eucharist’s central role as part of an intense process of cultural circulation. Firstly, I will consider how the Eucharist can be understood and treated as an object, the characteristics of its materiality and the problems that arise from the physical dimension of this sacrament within Catholic doctrine and practice. Secondly, I will examine the exchanges and phenomena of cultural sharing related to the Eucharist-object, in other words those episodes which, outside the official religious institutions, drew on the same belief that the body of Christ is truly present in the Eucharist. Finally, I will illustrate a third form of exchange, namely the subversion of models and stereotypes related to the sacrament. The examples presented in this last part will ref lect on the imitation of cultic, liturgical, and devotional models that are not based on the sharing of a belief, but on the desire to challenge it by ridiculing or exaggerating the physicality of the host-object. The analyzed cases are in the context of Catholic Italy, with special attention to the period between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the era of the application and dissemination of the decrees of the Council of Trent (1545–1563). Significantly, the importance of the Eucharist and the doctrine of the real presence were recognized in the Council and Italy was one of the

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geographical areas in which, more than elsewhere, the papacy was committed to affirming Eucharistic piety. These centuries were marked by the consolidation of Catholicism in Italy, characterized by the strengthening of ecclesiastical mediation and pontifical primacy. In many respects, the sacrament of the Eucharist also encapsulated and conveyed these meanings. The host – bread in which the divinity of Christ was present thanks to the mediation of ministers of the Church – was hailed by some as proof of the truth of Catholicism and regarded by others as a symbol of idolatrous and deceitful practices conducted by a hierarchy that was far-removed from the Gospel. This led to a clash that called into question the materiality of the sacrament, a distinctive feature of a religiosity that viewed the Eucharist as one of its cornerstones.

The Eucharist as an object: Materiality and transcendence At the time of the rift between Catholics and Reformers, the Eucharist was the sacrament that provoked the most heated debate. It was not only a subject of contention between the Catholic Church and the Protestant world: there were also divergent positions among the reformers who embraced Luther’s ideas. In attempting to brief ly reconstruct the various stances, it should be noted that the cause of the main divisions was the actual presence of the f lesh and blood of Christ in the host and the chalice. Although there was no shortage of debate between Catholics and Protestants regarding the liturgy or the language used to celebrate Mass, it was aspects related to the materiality of the sacrament that set them in radical opposition. What was in the host after its consecration? How did the divinity ensure its presence while the faithful gathered to commemorate the Last Supper? The answers to these questions varied considerably.1 The Catholic position followed what had been the traditional doctrine, codified by theology, especially since the early thirteenth century. In 1215 the Fourth Council of the Lateran had sanctioned two fundamental principles regarding the Eucharist. Only one priest, ordained according to the rite established by the Catholic Church, could “prepare” the sacrament (in Latin “conficere,” a verb that evoked physical production and material manufacture); secondly, the Council precisely defined what happened to the bread and wine when they were consecrated.2 Following the doctrines developed by Thomas Aquinas, the phenomenon involving the host was called transsubstantiatio (transubstantiation).3 What occurred was a change of substance: the bread and wine retained their chemical properties, but their substance was transformed into the f lesh and blood of Christ. This definition of the real presence, understood as a mysterious equilibrium between a perceptible dimension (bread and wine, perceived by the body’s senses) and a substantial dimension (f lesh and blood, visible only with faith) was supported by the papacy which, in 1264, with the Transiturus bull, extended a feast dedicated to the real presence, Corpus Christi, to all Christianity.4 The complex doctrinal elaboration of the Middle Ages, only brief ly outlined here, was resumed during the Council of Trent, which reaffirmed the salient features

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of the traditional doctrine: a decree issued on 11 October 1551 confirmed that, after the consecration formula, Christ made himself present in the Eucharistic elements “vere, realiter ac substantialiter” (truly, really, and in substance).5 The Council’s pronouncements were in response to the doctrines which, in those decades, had been elaborated by the Reformers in opposition to Rome. Regarding the real presence, as previously stated, the theses of the various Protestant churches soon conf licted.6 In his early writings, Luther railed against the Catholic Church’s treatment of the Eucharist. In Prelude on the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520), he particularly contested the obscurity of the doctrine of the sacrament: in his view, it was enough to assert that Christ was present in the host with His f lesh and blood, not replacing or transforming the bread and wine, but rather, as it were, accompanying them. It was not a process of transsubstantiation, but of consubstantiation (not a transformation, but the co-presence of different substances). Luther, therefore, had no intention of abandoning the real presence, which he considered a fundamental fact; rather, he confirmed it with a less complex doctrinal formula.7 Others, however, expressed different opinions about the body and blood of Jesus in the host: for example, Karlstadt, an early follower of Luther who had distanced himself from his teacher and denied the real presence, was in favour of a spiritual conception of the presence of Christ in the sacrament.8 The greatest opponent of the doctrines of transubstantiation and consubstantiation was Huldrych Zwingli. For the Reformer from Zurich, the celebration of the Eucharist was a simple reminder of the Last Supper: Christ had offered himself once for all and the communities that gathered around the altar commemorated him. Efforts to settle the differences between the parties proved fruitless: an attempt to reach an agreement between Luther and Zwingli at a meeting in Marburg (1529) came to nothing. Nonetheless, John Calvin and Zwingli’s followers managed to arrive at a unified position. In the Calvinist vision, bread and wine conveyed God’s grace to the faithful through a spiritual presence. In May 1549, following various negotiations, the Calvinist and Zwinglian churches agreed on a shared definition that ultimately sanctioned a symbolic concept not too far removed from Zwingli’s original teachings. In this complex series of events, as mentioned earlier, what emerges is the importance of the material dimension of the Eucharist: the divisive issue was the value attributed to its substance, poised between physical components (f lesh, blood, bread, and wine) and the transcendent dimension (the real, spiritual, or symbolic presence of the divinity). Catholicism asserted itself as a strenuous defender of the real presence, paying increasing attention to materiality and the bodily dimension in devotional practices, which was already recorded throughout Europe between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.9 The Eucharist-object, as it will be defined below, became the focus of changes in buildings, architecture, and rituals: the churches changed their plans to glorify the tabernacles that enshrined the body of Christ, the Eucharist became the fulcrum of liturgies, and art was required to celebrate the triumph of the host. Through that object, which

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could be touched, seen, tasted, and smelled, Jesus manifested his presence, and God, mysteriously, enclosed his creative power in a piece of bread.

The problems of materiality: Advantages and disadvantages The materiality of the host, understood as the object in which the f lesh and blood of Christ were hidden, was one of the bedrocks of Tridentine Catholicism. The physicality of the real presence, as noted, was extolled in many ways within the devotion promoted by the Catholic Church and numerous initiatives placed the Eucharist-object at the centre of liturgies, decorations, and architecture. This subject has been extensively studied and it is sufficient to refer to certain essential aspects. Based on late-medieval models, furnishings were added to churches whose function was to show believers the consecrated bread so that they could worship it. The ostensories (from the Latin “ostendere,” meaning ‘to show’) were among the most characteristic objects of the Western Christian tradition: while in Orthodox churches the Eucharistic elements were consumed during Mass and in Protestant churches other beliefs were affirmed, Catholicism exalted the real presence even beyond the celebration of the Eucharist. Ostension thus took on a role similar to the representation of God offered by the sacred images, with the not inconsiderable difference that the host really and effectively contained the divinity of Christ. “The ostensory with the white piece of bread in the middle,” one author observes, “represents the presence of God while at the same time depriving the viewer of a true visualization of God in an image, a new and unforeseen consequence of the Second Commandment, that makes visible the invisibility of God.”10 It was not only individual objects that enriched the furnishings of Catholic churches: entire buildings underwent transformations in which increasing importance was given to the tabernacles and spaces were adapted to accommodate the Eucharist. One of the most significant achievements in this regard was the tabernacle in the Sistine Chapel in Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome: dedicated to the virgin birth of Mary, which was disputed by the Protestants, the work was commissioned by Sixtus V (1585–1590). There is a monumental altar in the centre in which four life-size angels support a tabernacle in the shape of the chapel. Consequently, there were churches within the churches and other chapels within the chapels: a mise en abyme that featured, inside the buildings, places and “abitazioni” (dwellings) reserved for the body of Christ.11 On special occasions, sacred spaces were temporarily remodelled: such was the case for the celebration of the Forty Hours’ Devotion, a prolonged period of adoration of the Eucharist at certain times of year, for which choreographies and stage machines were prepared. Sacred buildings offered plays of light created by the total or partial darkening of windows and the placement of lights to produce an astonishing effect. In this setting, the sacrament was exhibited in ephemeral structures, often designed by famous artists such as Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Luca da Cortona.12

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Leaving the churches, the host also travelled the roads of the world: in the solemn rituals of the Corpus Christi processions, which “deconstruct” the liturgy, or in the viaticum brought to the bedside of the sick, the Eucharist and its materiality emerged from theological discussion to make their way into everyday life, inspiring the behaviour and imagination of the faithful. Preachers, spiritual guides and devotional books taught that we should be hungry for consecrated bread, smell its spiritual and physical scent, and taste its f lavour. Synaesthesia of the senses and interweaving between the transcendent and earthly dimensions constantly appear in rhetoric about the Eucharist and the materiality of this object sui generis became one of the foundations of the religiosity of modern Italy.13 However, the physicality of the sacrament, which had been so extolled and defended, implied that the host was subject to the same constraints that affect earthly things. The “bread of angels” was exposed to weathering, mould, and maggots. To protect and preserve its materiality, the Church took careful measures in order to show that the emphasis placed on the physicality of the host involved prudence and care that a symbolic conception or production and consumption during Mass would not entail. There were, for example, detailed provisions with which bishops endeavoured to adapt the places where the host was preserved after its consecration. In a world in which there was often a lack of preparation of the clergy and care for sacred places, bishops dedicated ample time in their pastoral visits to the inspection of altars and tabernacles to check how the sacraments are conserved. Between 1565 and 1572, Charles Borromeo, the bishop of Milan and a model of pastoral governance, issued numerous directives for the manufacture and maintenance of tabernacles.14 The sacraments had to be housed in an elevated position, on the high altar. To construct them, wood, metal, or non-perishable materials in general could be used, lined with a silk fabric that served both to protect them and to signal the importance of the object stored within. The doors to close it had to be well-fitting and strong, covered with fabric to absorb any moisture that formed. The damaging effects of water were one of the main concerns for the proper conservation of the host, to the extent that Borromeo even suggested the types of wood that should be used. At the same time, in areas that were not affected by damp it was necessary to prevent the sacrament from spoiling over time: to avoid mould, maggots, and other signs of decay, it was decreed that the sacramental bread in the tabernacle should be replaced every eight days and that the number of hosts should be limited to five, thereby ensuring its ventilation and conservation. The physicality of the sacrament ultimately raised other, murky questions about the fate of the host when it came into contact with the human body: the f lesh and blood of Christ, His sublime divinity enclosed in a piece of bread, were chewed by man, kneaded by his tongue, swallowed, entering the bowels, and digested by gastric juices. That encounter between two bodies, human and divine, was a source of unease and raised all kinds of doubts. The Eucharist was the only sacrament that penetrated into the bowels and its spiritual effects

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followed the pathways of human physiology: in the debate among doctors and theologians, the grace of the Eucharist could only fully manifest itself when divine and human f lesh perfectly merged through digestion.15 These processes, however, had less clear and more distressing implications when people considered what happened to Christ if the host, once ingested, was vomited; what became of the consecrated bread and wine if they spoiled, generating insects and larvae, or the fate of the f lesh of Jesus once it entered the stomach. If Christ was in the host with his body, he would be assimilated into the mechanisms of nature. It is therefore hardly surprising that certain Protestant polemicists capitalized on the paradoxes of materiality to accuse Catholics of being cannibals and defecators of God: “nous avons tous les jours certaines nouvelles des theophages, et (qui pis est) des theochezes” (we hear news every day about theophages [God eaters], and (worse still) theochezes [God defecators]), declared Henri Estienne.16 Unspeakable words that demonstrated the extent to which the real presence divided souls and consciences, astonishing some and scandalizing others.

A magic object The Eucharist-object, understood as the Eucharist-food and Eucharist-f lesh of Jesus, was defined in Catholicism as one of the places – perhaps the most important – of God’s presence on earth. Although the Church, since the time of the Fourth Lateran Council, had entrusted the production and use of the host to its clergy, there were many other social groups (often marginal groups) in modern Italy who made use of the sacrament. Underlying these alternative practices, which not infrequently competed with the official versions, were shared beliefs and cultural convictions. The host-object was a portion of matter – bread – that mysteriously contained the generative and creative power of Jesus which, precisely because of His voluntary subjugation to the hands of man, could be manipulated, directed, and guided. One group that, more than others, looked to the sacrament as a resource to use, were those (mostly women) accused of witchcraft. This subject has been studied extensively and this is not the place to consider the processes of analogy or subversion with which the magic operated with regard to the official religion. Rather, I wish to focus on the use of the host as an integral part of magic rituals, due to the belief – shared by the Church and practitioners of magic – that God was really present within the elements of bread and wine. This shared belief – whose testimonies, we must remember, derive from inquisitorial sources in which the perspective of the accused can often be attributed to the conceptual categories of the judges17 – was expressed, broadly speaking, in three ways: first, witches adopted the Eucharistic liturgy as a model that provided inspiration for their rituals; secondly, the formula and consecration of the bread and wine were perceived as a moment that gave objects – not only the Eucharistic elements – magical properties; finally, the sacrament was one of the most important ingredients in witchcraft rituals.

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In Counter-Reformation Italy there were numerous trials against witches and defendants who wrongfully appropriated objects and formulas which the Catholic hierarchy claimed to be only legitimate within liturgies codified by the Church. This growing friction between religious authorities and practitioners of magic (whether lay people or members of the clergy) has been observed in the work of various inquisitorial courts.18 According to the testimonies provided by the trials, witches and sorcerers often recited prayers that were similar to those of the Mass: objects of all kinds (amulets, magnets, wax dolls, etc.) were “consecrated” and, on some occasions, focaccia bread was made that was no different from the concept of food, such as the host, which conveys a supernatural power. A typical magic preparation for love consisted of mixtures with ingredients that included bodily f luids and menstrual blood, elements that were intended to evoke generative force and sexual potency. Moreover, in popular culture the power that f lowed into bread and wine could be captured by objects that came into contact with the table where the sacrament was celebrated.19 According to the manual for inquisitors written by Cardinal Desiderio Scaglia, some witches/prostitutes tried to attract customers by breaking their will through a ritual that took place during the Mass: they would weave strings during the celebration, uttering indecent words against the sacrament. The key moments were the consecration and the elevation, when the divine power descended on the altar and, indirectly, permeated the entire sacred space.20 Finally, sometimes it was the sacrament itself that was used as a magic object. In 1588 Paolina di Rossi was tried by the Inquisition of Venice for having procured a host from a priest, Don Felice, in order to win the love of a man, Gian Battista Giustinian. Use of the sacrament was justified with a simple analogy: as the consecrated host became the body of Christ that ingested cemented love for God in the communicant, so too the host consecrated by Don Felice became the body of Paolina and cemented Gian Battista’s love for her by being ingested by him.21 However, the Eucharist was not always used for the purposes of love: in the legislation of various Italian dioceses, great emphasis was placed on misappropriation of the hosts (whether consecrated or not) in fear that they would be desecrated.22 Communion bread could be easily hidden under the tongue instead of being swallowed or it could simply be bought from members of the clergy, in exchange for money or sexual favours. Even when the host was stolen to be desecrated and mocked, the theft was motivated by the firm belief that it contained the body of Christ. In 1539 the young Agnese, the daughter of the strix (witch) Orsolina da Gaiato, confessed to the Inquisition of Modena that she had received a host from her mother and that she had thrown it into a cauldron in the presence of the Prince of the Sabbath. With this gesture, the sacrament revealed its intimate nature and took the form of a large focaccia that resembled bread on one side and

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f lesh on the other.23 In such circumstances, the desecration did not question the theological conception of the Eucharist-object, but confirmed its essence with the aim of challenging the divinity of Jesus enclosed in the bread. Such episodes were used in the teachings of famous preachers, such as Paolo Segneri, to confirm the doctrine of the real presence. In one of his most successful works, Il cristiano istruito (1686), the Jesuit recounted the famous case of a priest from Marseilles, Louis Gaufridy, who, after learning necromancy, made a pact with the devil. Having been elected prince of all the sorcerers in Europe, he celebrated Mass to honour the devil, trampling on the consecrated host and sprinkling the other participating sorcerers with wine from the chalice. This sprinkling was accompanied by sinister words that echoed the curse of the Jews who had crucified Jesus: “May Christ’s blood be upon us.”24 This sensational event, which culminated in Gaufridy being condemned to burn at the stake (1611), was presented to the faithful as proof of the infinite love of Christ, who had not refrained from instituting the sacrament even though he had foreseen such wicked deeds. From a simple love potion to desecration during the Sabbath, the Eucharist proved to be a place of special interaction between God and mankind, in which the f lesh and blood of Jesus were delivered into the hands of humanity. In this respect, there is a final aspect regarding the conceptions of the hostobject that deserves a mention, which is only partly connected to those referred to above. Some regarded the Eucharist as a drug, with a therapeutic value on the boundary between the magical and the sacred. By ingesting the host it was possible to heal physical and spiritual ailments (which were closely related), as was revealed, for example, when the sacrament was used during an exorcism. At a time in history when religion and medicine were taking different paths, it was observed that the Inquisition of Venice punished members of the clergy who administered substances for ingestion to the faithful, considering this behaviour to be the prerogative of doctors. In 1581 a friar, Fabrizio Aldiverti, was accused of having administered pieces of bread similar to hosts during his exorcisms. The Holy Office discussed whether or not these were consecrated hosts: in the first case, the use of the sacrament outside Mass would have been completely improper; in the second, undue interference in the medical profession would have required a penalty. Whatever the nature of the bread used, however, it is evident that behind this practice lay an invocation of the power that emanated from the Eucharist: the direct contact between the possessed body of man and the ingested body of Jesus would have caused the evil spirit to depart and the believer, helped by the f lesh of Christ, would finally be freed.25

A derided object The material dimension of the Eucharist and its physicality were not only shared by different socio-cultural groups, but there were also many who openly mocked the emphasis that Catholics placed on the real presence, subverting the cultural conceptions that underpinned the sacrament. This process of subversion usually

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manifested itself in two ways: in some cases, the process was emulative, involving a formal similarity to which, as a sign of derision, an opposite sense was attributed; in others, it consisted of an explicit desecration that ridiculed or debased the alleged content of the sacrament (i.e., the f lesh and blood of Jesus). With regard to emulation, we can note how, while the witches mentioned in the previous paragraph imitated the Eucharistic ritual to exploit or defy the supernatural power of God contained in the host-object, others imitated the ritual to turn it into a scornful parody. The fake masses staged by the Jews are a notable example of this. A systematic study of the trials held by the Modena Inquisition between 1598 and 1638 revealed that at least a quarter of the cases against defendants of Jewish faith concerned accusations of blasphemy, desecration of images, or abuse of the sacraments.26 Defiling the sacred images – stabbing, defacing, or soiling them – was not so different from desecrating the host: both behaviours, as has been observed, related to the charge of ritual murder and indicated non-acceptance of the messianic nature of Christ.27 There were, however, incidents that explicitly targeted the Mass and, as mentioned, certain Jews staged the ritual in ways that caused immediate alarm among the religious authorities. The Eucharist was central to the parody, both in the form of bread and the chalice. In 1697, the rich Jew Moisè Franco had invited over 40 fellow believers to his vineyard in Pisa, most likely in the presence of Christian servants. During lunch, the rabbi Giacob Campos had emulated a ritual that recalled the sacrament: He took a slice of bread and lifted it with both hands, remaining seated, as priests do with the host; he then ate the slice of bread with meat […] All the diners, or most of them, laughed and so did he.28 Some witnesses also reported that Campos had done the same with a glass, raised to heaven like the chalice of Mass. This incident, examined by the congregation of the Holy Office of Rome, left no doubt about the intentions of the rabbi who, as far as we know, was already responsible for offenses against the ceremonies of the Catholic Church. This subversion was based on ridiculing belief in the real presence and used the evidence of materiality – bread and wine – to mock those who believed that it contained the body of the Son of God. Similar scenarios also occurred during the clash between Catholics and Reformers in the mid-sixteenth century, when many clandestine communities were formed in Italy and subsequently dispersed by inquisitorial repression. The heterodox groups of the Emilia area were characterized by an early and clear-cut opposition to the real presence and instead tended towards a symbolic conception of the Eucharist. One of the ways in which dissent towards Catholic doctrine manifested itself was the distortion of the Eucharistic liturgy. On 21 March 1568, the Modenese heretic Natale Gioioso reported an episode to the judges that testified to the possible extent of the protest. One day, an orphan showed up at his house to whom a woman had given three coins for the celebration of a Mass. The

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child had expressed a wish to buy chestnuts with this money, rather than handing it over to the friar for whom it was intended. Natale reassured him: “Go ahead and buy them: I’ll celebrate the mass myself.” Content, the little boy went to buy chestnuts. Gioioso pretended to say Mass, taking a sack (probably the chestnut sack) and raising it to heaven “as if it were the chalice.” At that time – he admitted to the judges who interrogated him – he believed that “the consecrated host was like a slice of bread.”29 There was equally frequent criticism of the real presence through overt desecration. There are numerous examples and, again, they involve the social categories that have been previously discussed: Jews, the heterodox, and witches. Predictably, it was the heretics who, more than others, emphasized the materiality of the Eucharistic elements in order to subvert the traditional conception. In the vocabulary of religious dissent, descriptions of the host emerged that centred on its materiality, as opposed to any supposed transubstantiation: the recurrent terms are bread, dough, and other expressions that refer to the limited ingredients of the sacrament. From north to south, most of the heterodox considered the Eucharist to be devoid of supernatural content, and even when heretical communities decided to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, they regarded the rite merely as the spiritual presence of Christ.30 Catholic devotions were rejected as idolatry: bowing before the sacrament that passed during the Corpus Christi processions or kneeling at the moment of elevation was tantamount to worshiping a created entity that evoked ancient pagan idols. Although it involved similar acts, the desecration carried out by the witches differed to that of the heretics. As previously mentioned, their mockery of the Eucharist was interpreted by the judges as a desire to oppose the presence of Christ in the host, which they believed in and challenged, to confirm their servitude to the devil. However, there were also cases in which certain practitioners of magic declared that they did not believe in the real presence, using arguments similar to those of heterodox groups. In 1559, from Bologna, Bishop Giovanni Campeggi informed the Holy Office that a witch had admitted to receiving the communion “as simple bread.” According to the woman, the devil had taught her to attend Mass as follows: when the priest asked the faithful if they believed that the host contained the true body of Christ, she had to nod, but in her heart she did not have to consent because “the host was f lour and water without any other substance.”31 This kind of diabolical nicodemism (professing with the mouth, but inwardly refusing) showed how cultural categories applied to the materiality of the Eucharist could manifest themselves in peculiar ways: the devil, usually honoured with acts of contempt towards the body of Christ, could become a master of unbelief and teach that the host was nothing more than a piece of bread. These incidents are not easy to interpret: perhaps they were inf luenced by the heterodox groups that were widespread in those years or, more likely, by a generic popular materialism. In both cases, the physicality of the Eucharist was defeated and the divine bread was reduced to an earthly state stripped of all supernaturality.

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Conclusions: Some remarks In Counter-Reformation Italy the Catholic authorities’ efforts to assert the importance of the Eucharist in its material dimension were on the whole successful. On the one hand, the physicality of the sacrament was ref lected in the architecture and rites of the official Church, as well as in magic culture, which embraced belief in transubstantiation, reusing it within formulas and acts that strayed from the permitted liturgies. On the other hand, those who wanted to challenge the doctrine of the Eucharist understood that the identity of the sacrament, subverted and ridiculed, was based on the presence of Jesus, with His f lesh and blood. The cultural circulation that I have attempted to describe therefore followed three different routes: a spread of the cultic and doctrinal models developed by the ecclesiastical hierarchy among large swathes of the population; a claim to use of the host – understood as the body of God prepared by the Catholic clergy – outside of official rituals; finally, a protest against the materiality of the sacrament, which involved an attack on the hierarchy that proposed this notion and on the religiosity that it embodied. The exchanges and subversions outlined thus make it possible to investigate one of the characteristic components of the “religion of the Italians”: the faith of Italy’s inhabitants – and even more so their behaviour – was repeatedly measured against the body of Christ, perceived as the tangible presence of the divinity of Jesus and the mediation of His Church in daily life. While the majority of men and women of the early modern age could see the effects of the Eucharist-object in the buildings where they went to pray, in the streets that the sacrament interrupted with solemn processions, or even on a bed where a priest, accompanied by devout lay people, came to give the viaticum to those who were about to die, there were also many alternative uses. The power contained in the host was sought and used by those who were convinced that, through magic, the f lesh of Christ could inspire love, reawaken sexual vigour, or find treasures. In some cases it was even abused and insulted in order to exalt the power of an infernal hierarchy – according to the reports of the trials and inquisitors – that was opposed to the Church. The judges, defendants, majority of worshippers, and (presumed) minority of magic practitioners were united by a common belief: that the body and blood of Christ were concealed in the guise of a piece of bread and a chalice of wine. The impact of this shared vision can also be seen in the choices of those who opposed the prevailing conceptions. For those who considered Jesus an impostor (the Jews) or regarded the Catholic Church as the incarnation of the Antichrist (the heterodox), the Eucharist was a prime target for controversy. The physicality of the sacrament was attacked as one of the cornerstones of Catholic spirituality, in the knowledge that the Church’s cultural, economic, and political hold on society depended on this doctrine. The affirmation of this model and its subversion thus ref lected the full significance of a sacrament which, in addition to nourishing the conscience, sought to mould the affections and behaviour of those who ate it.

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Notes 1 For an introduction to the history of Eucharistic doctrine from a long-term perspective, see Helmut Hoping, My Body given for you. History and Theology of the Eucharist (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2019; or. ed. 2015). 2 “Corpus et sanguis [Iesu Christi] in sacramento altaris sub speciebus panis et vini veraciter continentur, transsubstantiatis pane in corpus et vino in sanguinem potestate divina […] Hoc utique sacramentum nemo potest conficere, nisi sacerdos qui fuerit rite ordinatus secundum claves ecclesiae”: the body and blood of Jesus Christ are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar in the elements of bread and wine; by divine power the bread is transubstantiated into His body and the wine into His blood […] No one can officiate this sacrament except a priest who has been duly ordained by the power of the Church. Conciliorum Oecomenicorum Decreta (Basilea, Barcellona et al.: Herder, 1962), 206. 3 Summa theologiae, III, quaestio 75, art. 2–8. 4 On the feast, its meaning, and its links with late-medieval spirituality, see the overview in Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi. Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 5 The citation is taken from Conciliorum Oecomenicorum Decreta, 669–74. On this subject, see: Joseph Wohlmuth, Realpräsenz und Transsubstantiation im Konzil von Trient: eine historisch-kritische Analyse des Canones 1–4 der Sessio XIII (Bern: Lang, 1975) and, for a more concise overview, John O’Malley, Trent: what happened at the Council (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013), in particular 145–8. 6 Below, I will simply suggest a few concise points of reference. For more detail, see Lee Palmer Wandel, ed., A Companion to the Eucharist in the Reformation (Leiden– Boston: Brill, 2014), with previous bibliography. Unless otherwise stated, the following information is taken from here. 7 See Basil Hall, “Hoc est corpus meum: The Centrality of Real Presence for Luther,” in Luther: Theologian for Catholics and Protestants, ed., George Yule (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1985), 112–44. 8 Amy Nelson Burnett, Karlstadt and the Origins of the Eucharistic Controversy. A Study in the Circulation of Ideas, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 9 Caroline Walker Bynum, Christian Materiality. An essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe (New York: Zone Books, 2011). 10 Eckhard Nordhofen, “Sacral Image-Scripture-Body-Art: On a Fundamental Media Theory of Mono-Theism,” CrossCurrents, 63 (2013): 9–25, qtd. here 17. 11 Steven F. Ostrow, Art and spirituality in Counter-Reformation Rome. The Sistine and Pauline Chapels in S. Maria Maggiore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 12 Mark S. Weil, “The Devotion of Forty Hours,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute, 37 (1974), 218–48; Hiske Lulofs, “Heavenly Images in the Churches of Rome. Stage Scenography for the Forty Hours Devotion during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century as Spectacular Alternative to the Street Theatre of Carnival,” in The Power of Imagery. Essays on Rome, Italy and Imagination, ed., Peter van Kessel (Rome: Istituto Olandese-Nederlands Instituut te Rome, 1992), 163–72. 13 On the deconstruction of the liturgy in Corpus Christi processions, including through a reorganization of sensory perceptions related to the Eucharist, see Massimo Leone, “Transcendence and Transgression in Religious Processions,” Signs and Society, 2 (2014): 314–49. 14 I deduce the following data from Constitutiones et decreta sex provincialium synodorum Mediolanensium (Venice: de Franciscis, 1595), 107–10. 15 The matters discussed here have been investigated by Piero Camporesi, La casa dell’eternità (Milan: Garzanti, 1987), 224–42. 16 The allusion is to Henri Estienne, L’introduction au traité de la conformité des merveilles anciennes avec les modernes, ou, traité preparatif à l’Apologie pour Herodote, ([Genève: Estienne], 1566). 17 One of the most famous examples of this clash between different interpretative categories is that of the trials against the “benandanti” (Good Walkers), on which

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21 22 23 24

25 26

27 28

29 30

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see Carlo Ginzburg, The Night Battles. Witchcraft & Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth & Seventeenth Centuries (London: Routledge, 2015; or. ed. Turin: Einaudi, 1966). See, for example, the case of Modena studied by Matteo Duni, Under the Devil’s Spell. Witches, Sorcerers, and the Inquisition in Renaissance Italy (Florence: SUF, 2007), in particular 49–51. See Robert W. Scribner, Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany (London: Hambledon Press, 1987), in particular pp. 39–40, 260–1. For the rite described by Scaglia, see John Tedeschi, “The Question of Magic and Witchcraft in Two Unpublished Inquisitorial Manuals of the Seventeenth Century,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 131 (1987): 92–111, in particular 100. This episode has been illustrated by Guido Ruggiero, Binding Passions. Tales of Magic, Marriage and Power at the End of the Renaissance (New York-Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 94. See, for example, the synods of Emilia and Romagna in the seventeenth century, which have been examined by Giuliana Zanelli, Streghe e società nell’Emilia e Romagna del Cinque-Seicento (Ravenna: Longo, 1992), in particular pp. 94–6. The process has been illustrated by Marina Romanello, ed., La stregoneria in Europa, 1450–1650 (Bologna: il Mulino, 1975), 119–31. I would like to thank Grazia Biondi, who is investigating the history of Orsolina, for bringing this case to my attention. Paolo Segneri, Il cristiano instruito nella sua legge (Florence: in the Stamperia di Sua Altezza, 1686), III, 106–8. On the Gaufridy case, see Brian P. Levack, The Devil Within: Possession and Exorcism in the Christian West (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 195 ff.; Michelle Marshman, “Exorcism as Empowerment: a New Idiom,” Journal of Religious History 23 (1999), 265–81. For the Aldiverti case and its contextualization, see Jonathan Seitz, Witchcraft and Inquisition in Early Modern Venice (Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), in particular 128. I am basing this on the figures presented in Katherine Aron-Beller, “Disciplining Jews: The Papal Inquisition of Modena, 1598-1630,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 41 (2010): 713–29, in particular 720, which records 24 trials for blasphemy, 5 for desecration of images, and 2 for abuse of sacraments, out of a total of 119 trials examined. For a more complete overview, see Katherine Aron-Beller, Jews on Trial. The Papal Inquisition in Modena, 1598–1638 (Manchester-New York: Manchester University Press, 2011). See Petra Schöner, “Visual Representations of Jews and Judaism in Sixteenth-Century Germany,” in Jews, Judaism, and the Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Germany, eds., Dean Phillip Bell, Stephen G. Burnett (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2006), 357–91. The episode and the quotation are in Marina Caffiero, Legami pericolosi. Ebrei e cristiani tra eresia, libri proibiti e stregoneria (Turin: Einaudi, 2012), 202–3. This is the document’s original text: “Prese una fetta di pane e l’alzò stando a sedere con tutte e due le mani, come fanno i sacerdoti con l’ostia, e poi mangiò la fetta di pane con la carne […] Tutti i commensali, o la maggior parte, ridevano et egli ancora rideva.” The episode and the quotations taken from the trial against Gioioso are reported in Matteo Al Kalak, L’eresia dei fratelli. Una comunità eterodossa nella Modena del Cinquecento (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2011), 168–9. For an overview of the beliefs of the Italian heterodox communities, including on the subject of the Eucharist, see the summary in Salvatore Caponetto, The Protestant Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Italy (Kirksville: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1999; or. ed. Turin: Claudiana, 1997). This case has been reconstructed by Guido Dall’Olio, “Tribunali vescovili, Inquisizione romana e stregoneria. I processi bolognesi del 1559,” in Il piacere del testo. Saggi e studi per Albano Biondi, ed., Adriano Prosperi (Rome: Bulzoni, 2001), 63–82. The quotations are taken from the trial documents listed here.

12 THE NATURAL AND THE SUPERNATURAL Collecting, interests, and trials of the nuncio Francesco Vitelli in Venice, 1632–1643 Marco Albertoni

Spells and remedies in Venice during the plague of 1630 In the winter between 1632 and 1633, before the tribunal of the Holy Office in Venice, in San Domenico, a trial was held against Paolo Bortignon, a 34-yearold priest from Bassano, who had been assigned to the church of Conselve in the diocese of Padua. The accused had been charged with practising witchcraft and for this he was in prison awaiting a verdict. On February 15 a witness testified that don Paolo had been instructed by the sacristan of the convent of San Nicolò in Chioggia who had taught him “Diversi secreti naturali e sopranaturali […] per la febbre quartana et alcuni ad amorem” (“various natural and supernatural secrets […] to cure quartan malaria and some for love”).1 The plague had only recently ravaged Venice2 and the two men had made the claim that in order to cure quartan fever one had to trace out the shape of a heart on a parchment and then write a magical-curative formula inside the figure aligned in a column: “alladrabra alladrabr alladrab alladra alladr allad alla all al” (see Figure 12.1). This article then had to be tied under the stomach of the patient directly over his or her skin and left there for nine days. Over a period of nine consecutive days (a “novena” for Catholics) nine Our Father’s and nine Hail Mary’s had to be repeated every day in dedication to the nine choirs of angels. At the end of the period the fetish had to be cast into the fire.3 In a similar fashion, those who turned to don Paolo to requite their desires for love were instructed by him to clutch a laurel leaf in their left hands while reciting a series of spells: Io ti scongiuro foglia d’edera, per Dio vero, per Dio santo, et per Dio immacolato, il quale ti ha creato et ti fece et benedisse […] che ogni homo o donna che toccherà con te foglia d’edera debba amarmi et consentire al mio volere et diletto carnale et la mia

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Photograph of trial documents of don Paolo Bortignon showing the drawing of the magical-curative fetish he recommended. Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Savi all’eresia, busta 89, fol. 34 verso, 35 recto.

volontà […] et Spiritus Sancti Amen (I entreat you, ivy leaf, by the true God, by the holy God, and by the immaculate God, he who created you, and made you and blessed […] that any man or woman who touches with you an ivy leaf must love me and consent to my wishes and carnal desires and to my will […] et Spiritus Sancti Amen).4 Clearly what we have here is an intermingling between the sacred and the profane, between Catholic culture and archaic beliefs,5 a blend that constituted the kind of popular culture that suffused the narrow, crowded alleyways of a city like Venice, a crossroads for different peoples and different kinds of knowledge, out of which so many concocted their own private syncretisms.6 Indeed, even the Sacred Scriptures more than once mention the magical and medicinal powers of certain plants.7 In the early 1630s in Venice many people sought out those who claimed access to supernatural forces, so that they could save their lives or alter its course, with the result that there were also a great many offering their supposed skills in exchange for money and gifts. Between 1630 and 1631 the city had been severely stricken by the plague which had reaped thousands of victims from all walks of life. One of these had been the above-mentioned sacristan of the convent of San Nicolò di Chioggia, which was the reason why the trial was only concerned with Paolo Bortignon,

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with a convent of nuns who were his followers (including one of his lovers) and with the podestà of Chioggia, who in turn had been instructed by don Paolo.8 On January 1, 1632, the plague also claimed the life of Giovanni Battista Agucchi, a member of the high clergy and nuncio to Venice. The churchman had unsuccessfully sought to save himself on the tiny island of Motta dei Cunicci, also in the Venetian Lagoon but situated at some distance from the city. Between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the nuncio was an important and special kind of figure. Sent out by the Holy See to represent the pope abroad, he was akin to an ambassador, though he also had to perform pastoral duties in the country he resided in.9 With the Council of Trent, the nuncio was given the job of surveilling the bishops abroad. The latter, in turn, were responsible for overseeing the good conduct of the clergy inside their individual dioceses. It was, therefore, the nuncio more than anyone else, who was expected to ensure that the Tridentine dictates were being complied with, also outside the borders of the State of the Church. However, in Venice his assignment was a particularly delicate and difficult one. The job of managing the clergy was burdensome due to the great size of the Venetian territory and the high number of dioceses (17 in the seventeenth century) and a corps of priests who were by and large ill-disciplined.10 In addition to this there were the delicate legal functions the nuncio was entrusted with. In fact, besides running an ecclesiastical appeals court – the nuncio’s tribunal11 – he also presided over the tribunal of the Inquisition. Sitting on this latter court were also the inquisitor, the patriarch, and three lay members appointed by the Republic, who comprised the so-called “Tre savi all’eresia.”12 In 1547 the pope and the doge had reached the compromise of a mixed tribunal composed, in part, of members appointed by Venice (the Savi and the patriarch) and, in part, of members appointed by Rome (the inquisitor and the nuncio). This was only five years after the relaunch and reorganization of the Roman Inquisition in 1542, an initiative that laid the foundations for a bitter and lengthy jurisdictional dispute between Rome and Venice over which courts, either lay or ecclesiastical, had the authority to try crimes of faith, as well as common crimes that violated Catholic precepts.

Francesco Vitelli in Venice: Nuncio, head of the inquisition, natural and supernatural expert After nuncio Agucchi’s death, his secretary temporarily occupied the seat of the papal nuncio for several months while waiting for the plague to subside. Then in September 1632 the bishop of Salonicco, Francesco Vitelli, was installed. It was Vitelli who presided over the entire trial of the priest-witch don Paolo Bortignon. At the end of the final session, after having heard both testimonies confirming that “che detto sagrestano fosse un gran stregon et havesse libri d’incantesimi” (“the abovementioned sacristan had been a great witch and had possessed books of incantations”)13 – and after Paolo’s own partial admission of guilt – a sentence was passed. Bortignon was forced to abjure and was confined to prison for two years, to be

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followed by a further year of suspension a divinis (during which time he would not be allowed to perform his priestly functions). In addition, various forms of penitence were imposed on him (prayer, fasting on the eves of Christmas and the feast of the Assumption, confessions at regular intervals) to be repeated regularly over three years.14 During his long term in office (1632–1643) Vitelli presided over 250 inquisitorial trials. Of these, nearly 100 were for magic, necromancy, casting spells, and witchcraft. Among the accused there were other clergymen like don Paolo. In spite of his official position and while attempting to conceal his interests, the nuncio was very much fascinated by the occult, especially by the connections that existed – according to certain books – between the natural and supernatural in medicine.15 In fact, when at the end of June 1643 he finally had to abandon Venice, he had amassed 30 crates of books, some of which he was required to send on to the Holy Office for inspection. Vitelli had probably already been careful in making his selection and had kept out the works that were most compromising. Thus, it is unlikely that the boxes he submitted contained even works by Pietro Aretino, an author he admired.16 Vitelli was an omnivorous bibliophile and his agents found books for him in the city or he had them sent directly from Germany, Poland, Flanders, and Spain.17 The nuncio was also an art collector and over time he was able to take advantage of Venice’s lively artistic and cultural scene and collect important paintings (Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese, Pordenone, Paul Bril),18 maps, statues, medallions, and ancient coins. He was also so fascinated by natural marvels and curiosities that, in addition to books about them, he even kept animals: a dog which appears with him in a portrait by an unknown painter and a chained bear which one day killed a child.19 In his official residence located at Palazzo Gritti, near San Francesco della Vigna, he set up a veritable Wunderkammer which he was particularly proud of. It was endowed with unique and hard to obtain decorations and furnishings. One of his biographers, Nicolò Serpetro, who was also his servant and whom I will discuss later, wrote that Vitelli’s home was constantly being frequented by painters, sculptors, and men of letters whom he also supported as a patron.20 The nuncio himself had also authored unpublished works and translated from French into Italian a medical book on geriatrics: Il Tesoro della vecchiezza by André du Laurens.21 Vitelli was thus a man of vast culture and for this reason was also held in high regard by other educated men, both clergy and laymen. He received dozens of public dedications in printed books and corresponded with passionate churchmen of various kinds of erudition like Angelico Aprosio (who was also interested in the occult), Giovanni Ciampoli, and the future Pope Alexander VII (Fabio Chigi).22 His prestigious book collection grew enormously while he was in Venice, a large part of it ending up years later as a donation to the eccentric Queen Christina of Sweden, while part returned to Italy.23 The collection was made possible by a group of servants and aides (known as the nuncio’s “ family”) who

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scoured Venice’s alleyways in search of information to send to Rome or books that he wanted. The nuncio was so skilful at deploying his network of contacts to track down rare books that even his direct superior in Rome, Cardinal Nephew Francesco Barberini, often wrote to him to look for books (even prohibited ones) and would specify the particular details and format of the edition he wanted. Vitelli’s interest in nature was well known in cultivated milieus and among collectors. In fact, he was the recipient of the dedication to the lavishly illustrated 1638 edition of De Piscibus Libri V et de Cetis Liber Unus by the late Ulisse Aldrovandi, the posthumous first edition of which had appeared in 1613.24 In some way these interests of his are also confirmed by his enemies. The libertine monk Ferrante Pallavicino, whom Vitelli himself and the Barberini had executed in Avignon in 1644, often mocked him in his libellous attacks and aimed his satiric darts at this very passion of his. He claimed that the bonds between the Vitelli family (vitelli in Italian means male calves) and the papal family of the Barberini whose emblem depicted bees, had been founded in manure. This was because at the time it was widely believed that bees were generated in cattle dung.25 To this, Ferrante added that the nuncio, who was now in his sixties, could not be considered a calf but an ox, since calves could never grow so old.26 But what was the origin of these unusual interests for a clergyman who, in any case, must have been subjected to a rigorous catholic indoctrination and who successfully rose in the ranks of the cursus honorum? It is very likely that the milieu he spent his childhood and youth in exerted a certain inf luence over his later years. In fact, we must remember that Vitelli was born in 1582 in Bomarzo and that he lived in the Palazzo Orsini which looked out onto the “Sacro Bosco” (Sacred Grove).27 Originally commissioned by Vicino Orsini, the late father-in-law of Porzia Vitelli (eldest daughter of Decio and wife of Marzio Orsini), the Palazzo and the Sacro Bosco had been conceived as places permeated by Renaissance hermetic culture. Scholars have shown that the idea behind the Sacro Bosco was inspired by the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili28 a visionary and dream-like work written by Francesco Colonna (translated literally “The Amorous Combat of Polyphilos while Dreaming”). Today in the park we can still admire sculptures of battles of giants and monstrous statues, products of a mythological imagination that are accompanied by mysterious inscriptions. We know much less about what was going on inside the Palazzo Orsini, where Vitelli lived. Today this is a place that has not been well preserved or appreciated but is one that vibrates with hermetic allusions. It took on this character following a series of alterations that Vicino Orsini had commissioned so that the building would serve as a complement to the park. For example, on the north wall of the terrace facing south-west the inscription stands out: BENE VIVERE ET L(A)ETARI (“Live well and rejoice” a quote from Ecclesiastes 3:12) which spans three doors below it and the underlying arch. Beneath the left door and the right door two inscriptions are visible that have opposite meanings, as if to say that whoever reads them must make a choice in order to

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access the secret of the good life: E(DE) B(IBE) E(T) LUDE POST MORTEM NULLA VOL(UPTAS) (“eat, drink and be merry, for after death there is no pleasure”), an invitation to hedonism; and the other: SPERNE TER(RENA) POST MOR(TEM) VERA VOL(UPTAS) (“Despise the things of the world, true pleasure comes after death”), an exhortation to submit to privations, since delight will come to us after we are dead and in paradise – at least for those of us who have earned it. Above the middle door we read a motto taken from the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: MEDIUM TENERE BEATI (“Happy are they who have kept a middle course”) where the U has been graphically transcribed as a V, quite separate from the rest of the letters and placed in the centre of the arch, in such a way as to symbolize an arrow pointing to the choice to be made (TEN V ERE). The meaning is clear: in order to live the good life – BENE VIVERE ET L(A)ETARI – the middle road must be taken and both hedonism and asceticism shunned.29 Other inscriptions of similar import adorn the lintels of doors throughout the Palace, whose rooms create a highly evocative atmosphere. It is not clear if the fresco of the gigantomachy that Vicino Orsini commissioned to Annibal Caro was ever painted as no trace of it remains today.30 In spite of his descent from a noble family of Città di Castello, Vitelli grew up with his sister in Bomarzo because he had lost his father in the first year of his life. The documents don’t indicate how many years of his childhood he spent in the Palazzo Orsini. But studies have shown that his sister Porzia had a stormy relationship with the family of her husband Marzio Orsini (the family who owned the Palace and the Park) especially after his death in 1586.31 In any case, from a tender age Francesco found food for his wide-ranging curiosity which had probably first been whetted in Bomarzo and which he later cultivated for the rest of his life. In 1632 when he arrived in Venice he was nearly in his fifties and had amassed a baggage of desires and curiosities to satisfy: from this perspective the city represented an ideal place to reside in while exercising his powers.

Trials, forbidden books trade, and sly confscations To return to the trials of the Venetian Holy Office, Vitelli was also presiding over the court when in 1636 the tailor Francesco Viola was accused of possessing various books of spells.32 One of these was a compact handbook of magical remedies for the most various circumstances and to compass the most ardent desires: to destroy a city; to make oneself immune from spells; to reconcile with an enemy; to save a condemned person from the scaffold; to walk many miles without growing tired; to seduce a woman by looking at her in the face, etc. The title of the small, hand-copied book is unknown, but it begins with the words: “Per haver uno spirito familiare che ti serva” (“How to have a familiar spirit who serves you”).33 In addition to this, Viola also possessed a manuscript copy of one of the various versions of the Clavicula Salomonis. According to legend, the book had been written by none other than the king of Israel himself. Inside, the contents dealt

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with the methods of conjuring spirits as well as providing magical-astrological information on the inf luences between the spirits and the planets. In the trial dossier against the accused we can still read the book’s pages dotted with letters from the Hebrew alphabet accompanied by incomprehensible esoteric symbols (see Figures 12.2, 12.3, and 12.4).34

FIGURE 12.2

Photograph of a version of the Clavicula Salamonis owned by Francesco Viola, an annex in the trial. Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Savi all’eresia, busta 93, dossier Viola Francesco.

FIGURE 12.3

Photograph of a version of the Clavicula Salamonis owned by Francesco Viola, an exhibit in the trial. Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Savi all’eresia, busta 93, dossier Viola Francesco.

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Photograph of a version of the Clavicula Salamonis owned by Francesco Viola, an exhibit in the trial. Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Savi all’eresia, busta 93, dossier Viola Francesco.

Vitelli very likely already knew about the book but it must have made a strong impression on him when he saw it physically, though we don’t know whether this was the first time. The fact is that in 1637, only a few months after Viola’s trial, a certain Francesco Pagnoni (archdeacon of the patriarchate of Venice) died. Towards the end of his days, Pagnoni had decided to unburden his conscience and had for some time been confessing his sins to the friar Ignazio Verigola, who was probably a member of the nuncio’s family.35 Pagnoni had complete faith in Verigola, to the extent that he entrusted him with a series of manuscripts and printed books and gave him a letter to deliver to Vitelli. We don’t know the contents of this letter but we can easily surmise that it had do with his books because

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in Vitelli’s reply the nuncio invited him to hand over the volumes to Verigola who would later bring them to him in person. Some time later, Verigola delivered an enormous consignment of books to Vitelli which took no less than four days to transport. Among these was a manuscript copy of the Clavicula Salomonis which Vitelli had seen a few months before during the trial of Viola. Verigola had not kept the consignment a secret and in his convent there were many who were persuaded that both the friar and the nuncio were devoting themselves to the magic arts. Later, however, Verigola defended himself from such suspicions by arguing that he would never have been so foolish as to give books like that (besides the Clavicula, we don’t know exactly which) to an apostolic nuncio. He explained that he had been forced to deliver them “con titolo d’obbligazione” (“as a matter of obligation”). Thus, it had been the nuncio who had ordered to have the Clavicula and the other works.36 As soon as the Cardinal Nephew, Francesco Barberini heard about Pagnoni and how extensive a library he was leaving behind, he wrote to the nuncio for more details about the titles it contained. Vitelli replied that he was compiling an inventory but that at first sight the works seemed to be “ordinary.” As Verigola later confessed, the reason for this was probably because in spite of the great number of volumes, he had got rid of the more compromising works before delivering them to the nuncio, selling them to the highest bidder.37 When reading through the decades-long correspondence between Francesco Barberini and the nuncio, one can quickly see that both men were so interested in the collection not so much because they wished to confiscate dangerous titles as to obtain interesting items for their own bookshelves. Manuscript works were even more desirable as they came in highly dissimilar versions, some with fascinating and unique symbols and drawings. In fact, during these same years, Francesco Barberini had often requested the nuncio to hunt up copies of rare works for him on the Venetian book market, in specific editions and formats.38 In this way, the two often negotiated, successfully and unsuccessfully, transactions involving both classic works (Aristophanes, Tertullian) and more recent, prohibited titles that could only be found on the clandestine market: the reformed legal scholar Alberico Gentili (specifically his De Nuptis, 1601) and even transcriptions of a series of lectures given privately by Cesare Cremonini to one of his students in Padua and in which he is likely to have discussed the mortality of the soul, one of his most famous and dangerous theories.39 Compared with the freedom the nuncio and the Cardinal-Nephew indulged themselves in, the case of Don Paolo Bortignon and the friars Francesco Pagnoni and Ignazio Verigola shows once again the disparity that existed between the higher and lower echelons of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, between those who were subject to control and those who exercised control. The nuncio and the cardinal represented the defensive bulwarks of orthodox Catholicism and, theoretically speaking, they ought simply to have ensured that the works had been confiscated and burnt. And yet for various reasons they avidly searched through

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the inventories. Their motivation was not only to prevent less educated persons (ecclesiastics and others) from possessing these works, but to acquire the books for themselves and study their secrets (not all of which were necessarily to be rejected outright), or simply as a pure exercise in erudition. All of which suggests that for men of wide-ranging interests like Vitelli, the inquisitorial trials for magic, witchcraft, necromancy, and superstition were more than just an arena for them to exercise authority and coercive power, but also an opportunity for learning. An opportunity to learn about that cultural and religious undergrowth that sprung out of the soil of fear, the fear of being stricken by mysterious illnesses like the plague and quartan fever. Indeed, this was a period when it was all too easy for the sick to believe they had fallen victim to magic spells and the evil eye. These were legitimate fears of men and women who had little possibility of accessing treatments, which were in any case of dubious efficacy.40 Most were people whose lives were aff licted by everyday problems, from the pain of unrequited love to more serious calamities, problems they sought to alleviate as much through prayer and votive offerings, as through incantations and the supernatural and with the help of those who claimed to wield these powers. As Federico Barbierato has shown, the Clavicula was a widely circulated text in Venice between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.41 But the point I wish to make here is that it was also a very much sought-after item among friars and ecclesiastics.42 And in addition to the cases that have already been published, further documents may be found in the archives of the Holy Office of Venice. One of these has to do with Fra’ Lorenzo da Tolmezzo who in 1635, in the presence of Vitelli and the rest of the Venetian inquisition, confessed that he had extracted a promise from a bookseller in Padua (who later died) that he would procure for him the desired grimoire.43 There was also a certain Fra’ Antonio da Belluno who had desperately tried to obtain the Clavicula from his trusted bookseller but, having no success, was forced to settle for a volume that transmitted the secrets of necromancy through cryptic circles inspired by the teachings of Pietro d’Abano.44 We do not know whether yet another clergyman tried by Vitelli in 1636 for witchcraft, don Giovanni Pica, owned the Clavicula. What is, however, certain is that, in spite of the serious charges (he performed rites using hosts he had removed from the church and stepped on them), the trial was suddenly interrupted when Francesco Barberini intervened, who without any motivation, ordered the proceedings to halt.45 On January 14, 1642, another friar, don Girolamo Sanella, presented himself spontaneously to the Holy Office and confessed that some years earlier he had aided a young man, Antonio Todeschini, in an attempt to cast a spell against the father of his beloved so that he would die. In order to do this he had availed himself of a small manuscript which contained instructions on how to kill someone without touching them by cooking eight ingredients in a pot that included sulphur, black pitch, and beeswax.46

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The indications suggesting that the nuncio was very much interested in magic and the supernatural and that there were a number of clergy who abetted him in this singular inclination of his may be again traced back to the circle of his collaborators in Venice. Between 1639 and 1640 the Inquisitorial tribunal in Palermo tried the priest Nicolò Serpetro, who at the time was living in the house of the nobleman Nicolò Placido Branciforti.47 Serpetro was accused of practising magic and of having used a small magical-astrological treatise that he himself had written: De horis et virtutibis planetarum. During the course of the proceedings (which concluded with an act of abjuration and a sentence of three years banishment from Palermo) the accused confessed to the judges that he had perfected his knowledge years earlier: first in Padua, where as a student he had had occasion to read several books of necromancy, then later in Venice, where he lived from 1635 to 1639 and where for some years (it is not clear if this was for his entire five-year sojourn) he was the servant of the nuncio Francesco Vitelli. In the city he had had occasion to form relationships with several members of the Accademia degli Incogniti,48 but also to gain a deeper knowledge of the magical arts, though during the trial he never stated explicitly what role the nuncio had played during these years of his apprenticeship in the occult.49 Serpetro also claimed that he had been a disciple of a giant like Tommaso Campanella.50 In the years that followed, Serpetro remained particularly grateful to Vitelli, so much so that when the nuncio died in 1646, he wrote the work Eroi di casa Vitelli, a biography of the leading members of the House.51 Later, again thanks to interests he shared with the nuncio (and which perhaps he had inherited from him), in 1653 Serpetro published Il mercato naturale delle maraviglie della natura, overo Istoria Naturale, the Italian translation (with edits to the content) of the Thaumatographia Naturalis by the Pole Jan Jonston, a work highly inf luenced by hermeticism and dealing mainly with the use of plants and minerals for medicinal purposes. Published in Amsterdam in 1632 the book was promptly included on the list of prohibited works.52

A double standard: Culture of the supernatural as status privilege Thus, the Clavicula also circulated widely among friars and ecclesiastics and was also very much in demand by them. For example, in 1628 a set of unusual circumstances had even led one friar – Bonaventura da Piacenza – to introduce roughly a hundred prohibited titles into the Venetian book market, many of which dealt with topics of magic. Among these were various works by Pietro d’Abano (the Geomanzia, another work only referred to only as “Magia” – probably the Heptameron first printed in 1559 – and a copy of the Lucidarium), as well as the usual Clavicula Salomonis. They circulated clandestinely in the city along with dozens of other works of the same type, but their origin was only discovered later. Bonaventura da Piacenza had formerly been a vicar of the Inquisition of Padua and he had taken the tomes from the storeroom of confiscated books.

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After he was promoted to the inquisitor of Belluno he went to Venice to offer these books to the bookseller Salvatore de’ Negri. In addition to the books, he also offered the latter his services as an expert consultant: clients on the lookout for books of spells or amulets, or those who wished to know more details about magical rites could come directly to him.53 One might suppose this was a clever ruse for entrapping transgressors. But refuting this theory and confirming that the whole operation was just about making money is the fact that de’ Negri (later condemned to a year of house arrest and a fine of 100 ducats) himself admitted that the two men had not been able to arrive at an agreement over the sale of the entire batch of volumes. This was because the price the friar was asking for some of the works was too high. In fact, only shortly before, Bonaventura had also tried to make a deal in Padua with a bookseller whose shop was near the Studium, an area highly frequented by potentially curious purchasers like professors and students.54 For the less aff luent classes, owning a book of magic in seventeenth-century Venice – even a hand-copied one – meant having an instrument that guaranteed a small source of supplementary income.55 This was even more the case for the regular clergy who often lived in dire poverty and for whom taking the habit had been more a matter of survival than vocation. For this reason there were many who were quite ready to run the risk of being hauled up before the Holy Office. We should also bear in mind that, generally speaking, over the course of the seventeenth century the Holy Office in Venice became less severe with transgressors. Nevertheless, it continued to be stricter with men than with women, especially clergy.56 From our perspective, however, the fact that an apostolic nuncio with unconcealed career ambitions57 should possess certain books, has quite another meaning. There were still economic motives behind this, but the kind that concerned someone with a very high rank. As we have seen, Vitelli was a collector and an enthusiast with a wide range of erudite interests. Owning books like this, assembling a chamber of curiosities and showing off every sort of rare object in order to impress his illustrious guests was probably not just an innocent narcissistic pastime. It was rather an attempt to build a reputation that would guarantee him a place in high society and a promotion to the cardinalate. Vitelli narrowly missed this objective when he was appointed cardinal in pectore while he was still in Venice, though the decision was never officially formalized because of the death of Pope Urban VIII (in 1644). After a posting that lasted 11 years (a very long term for a nunicature), Vitelli was forced to abandon Venice in 1643 as a result of the break between Rome and the Serenissima with the first war of Castro. During the last three years of his life Vitelli held a series of other offices including governor of Rome and archbishop of Urbino, although these did not lead to the qualitative career leap he had been hoping for. Venice remained the place where he had been able to grow his mobile (books, statues, paintings, medallions, furnishings) and immobile patrimony.58 But it was also a place where he had continued to satisfy his

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transgressive curiosities. The tribunal of the Holy Office, which he attended every Tuesday and Thursday for 11 years, represented a classroom for him where he could learn about the cultural features of the common masses, people whom he never personally interacted with.59 These turned out to be a blend of ancient knowledge, fragments of scholarly culture, medical art and popular medicine, combined with fanciful superstitions. The Holy Office had, however, also been a place from which to discover the obscure channels of the black market of books. This was how Vitelli was able to confiscate and appropriate the best specimens for himself, or examine their contents, so that he could send out his sleuths to hunt up the most piquant titles.

Notes 1 Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Savi all’eresia, busta 89, pages not numbered. 2 Carlo Maria Cipolla, Fighting the Plague in Seventeenth-Century Italy (Madison: The University of Wisconsin press, 1981); Paolo Ulvioni, Il gran castigo di Dio: carestia ed epidemie a Venezia e nella Terraferma, 1628–1632 (Milano: Franco Angeli, 1989). 3 Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Savi all’eresia, busta 89, fogli 34 verso, 35 recto. 4 Ibid., busta 89, foglio 37 recto-verso. For the use of ivy in magical-curative practices, see Stefania Malavasi, Piante magiche, segreti arcani. Simbologia e proprietà delle piante: erbari, libri di segreti, incanti delle streghe (Padova: CLEUP, 2017), 201; more generally on the representation of plants for medicinal purposes, Sachiko Kusukawa, Picturing the Book of Nature. Image,Text and Argument in Sixteenth-Century Human Anatomy and Medical Botany (Chicago–London:The University of Chicago Press, 2012). 5 See the discussion in Euan Cameron, “Theological Cultur as Minority Culture: Intellectuals and the Popular View of the Supernatural (15th–16th centuries)”, Bollettino della Società di Studi Valdesi 194 (2004): 13–23; on the contamination between religious knowledge and superstition also see Michaela Valente, Superstitione, heresia, ignorantia. Teoria e prassi inquisitoriale in alcuni casi di maleficia, in Prescritto e proscritto. Religione e società nell’Italia moderna (secc. XVI–XIX), eds. Andrea Cicerchia, Guido Dall’Olio, Matteo Duni (Roma: Carocci, 2015), 65–83. 6 Giuseppina Minchella, Pratiche di magia nella Repubblica di Venezia in età moderna, in Magia, superstizione, religione, una questione di confini, ed., Marina Caffiero (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2015), 67–99; Jonathan Seitz, Witchcraft and the Inquisition in Early Modern Venice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), whose interpretative limitations should be taken into account, as pointed out by Valente, review of Witchcraft and the Inquisition in Early Modern Venice, by Jonathan Seitz, Bruniana & Campanelliana, 18 (2012), no. 2, 662–3; Vincenzo Lavenia, “Superstizione, medicina, malattie sacre. L’Inquisizione romana e il dibattito tra il Cinque e Seicento”, in Magia, superstizione, religione, una questione di confini, ed., Marina Caffiero, (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2015), 33–66; Andrea Del Col, L’Inquisizione in Italia: dal XII al XXI secolo (Milano: Mondadori, 2006), 566–619; Stefania Malavasi, Eretici, maghi e streghe nel Veneto del Cinque-Seicento (Rovigo: Minelliana, 2005); Ruth Martin, Witchcraft and the Inquisition in Venice 1550–1650 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989); Marisa Milani, ed., Streghe e diavoli nei processi del S. Uffizio: Venezia 1554–1587 (Padova: Centro stampa Palazzo Maldura, 1989). 7 Marina Montesano, Caccia alle streghe (Roma: Salerno Editrice, 2012), 23–4. 8 Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Savi all’eresia, busta 89, pages not numbered. 9 I simply refer the reader here to the brief syntheses by (Roma: Salerno Editrice, 2012); Bernard Barbiche and Ségolène de Dainville-Barbiche, Bulla, legatus, nuntius: études de diplomatique et de diplomatie pontificales, XIIIe–XVIIe siècle (Paris: École des

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13 14 15

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

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Chartes, 2007); Stefano Andretta, Le nunziature in Italia nei secoli XVI e XVII, in Kurie und Politik. Stand und Perspektiven der Nuntiaturberichtsforschung, ed., Alexander Koller (Tubingen: M. Niemeyer, 1998), 17–34. Michele Mancino and Giovanni Romeo, Clero criminale: l’onore della Chiesa e i delitti degli ecclesiastici nell’Italia della Controriforma, (Roma–Bari: Laterza, 2013). Giuseppina Roselli, ed., L’Archivio della Nunziatura di Venezia, sezione II (an. 1550– 1797). Inventario, (Città del Vaticano: Archivio Vaticano, 1998). Paul F. Grendler, “The Tre Savii Sopra Eresia 1547–1605: A Prosophographical Study”, Studi Veneziani, nuova serie, III (1979), 283–342; Claudia Donadelli, “Nunziature apostoliche”, in Dizionario Storico dell’Inquisizione, eds., Adriano Prosperi, Vincenzo Lavenia, John Tedeschi (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2010), 1119–24. Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Savi all’eresia, busta 89, pages not numbered. Ibid., busta 89, pages not numbered. On the interconnections between medicine, exorcisms, and inquisition in printed debates I simply refer the reader here to Lavenia, Superstizione, medicina, malattie sacre, 33–66; on the same topic but from the practical point of view and only with regard to the situation in Venice, see Federico Barbierato, “Il medico e l’inquisitore. Note su medici e perizie mediche nel tribunale del San’Uffizio veneziano fra Sei e Settecento”, in Alessandro Pastore, Giovanni Rossi, eds., Paolo Zacchia. Alle origini della medicina legale, 1584–1659 (Milano: Franco Angeli, 2008), 266–85. Federico Barbierato, Nella stanza dei circoli: Clavicula Salomonis e libri di magia a Venezia nei secoli XVII e XVIII (Milano: Sylvestre Bonnard, 2002), 209. Carmelo La Mancusa, Eroi di casa Vitelli. Trascrizione di un Manoscritto di Nicolò Serpetro (Cosenza: Pellegrini, 2013), 29. Liletta Fornasari, “Il collezionismo ad Arezzo nel Seicento e nel Settecento. Le collezioni Albergotti e Fossombroni”, in Annali aretini, XI (2003), 53–86, part. 57. Nicolò Serpetro, Il mercato naturale delle maraviglie della natura, overo Istoria Naturale (Venezia: Tomasini 1653), 311. La Mancusa, Eroi di casa Vitelli, 29. André du Laurens, Discours des maladies mélancoliques (1594), ed., Radu Suciu (Paris: Klincksieck, 2012); Marco Albertoni, “Vitelli, Francesco Anselmo Decio”, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani – Volume 99 (Roma: Treccani, 2020) 754. Ibid., 754; on the relationship with Chigi see Kybal, Vlastimil and Incisa della Rocchetta, Giovanni. La Nunziatura di Fabio Chigi (1640–1651) (Roma: Tip. Ist. Grafico Tiberino, 1943), 595–7. Albertoni, “Vitelli, Francesco Anselmo Decio”, 754. On the work ,see Giuseppe Olmi and Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi, De piscibus: la bottega artistica di Ulisse Aldrovandi e l’immagine naturalistica (Roma: Edizioni dell’Elefante, 1993). Raffaello Urbinati, Ferrante Pallavicino: il flagello dei Barberini (Roma: Salerno editrice, 2004), 117; on naturalistic beliefs Francesco Redi, “Esperienze intorno alla generazione degli insetti”, in Maria Luisa Altieri Biagi, ed., Scienza del Seicento (Milano: Rizzoli, 1969), 351. Barbierato, Nella stanza dei circoli, 209. Horst Bredekamp, Vicino Orsini e il Bosco Sacro di Bomarzo: un principe artista ed anarchico, transl. Franco Pignatti (Roma: Edizioni dell’Elefante, 1989); Maurizio Calvesi, Gli incantesimi di Bomarzo, Il Sacro Bosco tra arte e letteratura (Milano: Bompiani, 2000). Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, eds. Marco Ariana – Mino Gabriele. (Milano: Adelphi, 1998). Calvesi, Gli incantesimi di Bomarzo, 90. Clare Robertson, “Annibal Caro as Iconographer: Sources and Method”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 45 (1982), 160. Bredekamp, Vicino Orsini e il Bosco Sacro di Bomarzo, 35. Barbierato, Nella stanza dei circoli 243–6, 253–5; see also Joseph Peterson, The Secrets of Solomon: A Witch’s Handbook from the Trial Records of the Venetian Inquisition (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2018). Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Savi all’eresia, busta 93, dossier Viola Francesco.

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34 Ibid., busta 93, dossier Viola Francesco; on symbols reproduced in some versions of the Clavicula Salomonis see Caffiero, Marina. Legami pericolosi. Ebrei e cristiani tra eresia, libri proibiti e stregoneria (Torino: Einaudi 2012), 131–3. 35 Barbierato, Nella stanza dei circoli, 210. 36 Ibid., 208–11. 37 Ibid., 211. 38 On the situation in Venice and the use of sales catalogues, see Marco Cavarzere, “Commercio librario e lettori nel Seicento italiano. I cataloghi di vendita”, Rivista di Storia del Cristianesimo 9 (2012), 363–84. 39 Marco Albertoni, La missione di Decio Francesco Vitelli nella storia della Nunziatura di Venezia. Dai primi incarichi alla guerra di Castro (1485–1643) (Città del Vaticano: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 2017), 245–7. 40 Alexandra Bamji, “Medical Care in Early Modern Venice”, Economic History Working Papers, 188 (2014), www.lse.ac.uk/Economic-History/Assets/Documents/Working Papers/Economic-History/2014/WP188.pdf. 41 Another case involving the possession of the Clavicula is that of the soldier Francesco De Bernardini in December 1632. The trial was presided by nuncio Vitelli but I will not discuss it here because it did not concern a clergyman, in Barbierato, Nella stanza dei circoli, 173, 279. 42 On the connection between ecclesiastics and magical rites already in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance see Marina Montesano, “‘Supra acqua et supra ad vento’, ‘Superstizioni’, maleficia e incantamenta nei predicatori osservanti (Italia secolo XV)”, (Roma: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo, 1999); also see, as an example, the case in Modena reported by Matteo Duni, Tra religione e magia: storia del prete modenese Gugliemo Campana (c. 1460–1541) (Firenze: Olschki, 1999); more in general also Mary R. O’Neil, “‘Sacrdote overo Strione’: Ecclesiastical and Superstitious Remedies in XVI Century Italy”, in ed., Steven L. Kaplan, Understanding Popular Culture: Europe from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century (Berlin–New York–Amsterdam: Mouton, 1984), 53–83. 43 Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Savi all’eresia, busta 92, dossier fra Lorenzo da Tolmezzo. 44 Barbierato, Nella stanza dei circoli, 276. 45 Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Savi all’eresia, busta 92, dossier Pica Don Giovanni; the case is also mentioned by Barbierato, Nella stanza dei circoli, 204–5. 46 Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Savi all’eresia, busta 98, dossier Sanella Girolamo. 47 On Serpetro see Santi Lo Giudice, Scritti su Nicolò Serpetro, ed., Franco Capelvenere (Cosenza: Pellegrini, 2015). 48 Monica Miato, L’Accademia degli Incogniti di Giovan Francesco Loredan, Venezia (1630– 1661) (Firenze: Olschki, 1998); Davide Conrieri, ed., Gli Incogniti e l’Europa (Bologna: I libri di Emil, 2011). 49 Melita Leonardi, “Nicolò Serpetro a Venezia, nota su un manoscritto dell’archivio diocesano di Città di Castello”, Bruniana & Campanelliana, 17 (2011), no. 1, 257–62; Id., “Nicolò Serpetro. Ermetismo e magia nella Sicilia spagnola”, Quaderni storici, nuova serie, 115 (2004), no. 1, pp. 217–40. 50 Melita Leonardi casts considerable doubt over this claim, which was likely nothing more than a relationship of acquaintance. Leonardi, “Nicolò Serpetro. Ermetismo e magia nella Sicilia spagnola”, 224–5. 51 La Mancusa, Eroi di casa Vitelli. 52 Serpetro, Il mercato naturale delle maraviglie della natura. 53 Federico Barbierato, “Attraverso la censura. La circolazione clandestina dei testi proibiti nella Repubblica di Venezia fra oralità e scrittura (secoli XVII–XVIII)”, Rivista di Storia del Cristianesimo, 9 (2012), 2, 393–4. 54 On this episode see Federico Barbierato, «La rovina di Venetia in materia de’ libri prohibiti». Il libraio Salvatore de’ Negri e l’Inquisizione veneziana (1628–1661) (Venezia: Marsilio, 2008). 55 Minchella, Pratiche di magia nella Repubblica di Venezia in età moderna, 95.

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56 Ibid., 97–9; Valente, Superstitione, heresia, ignorantia, 76; see also the discussion on the greater number of trials for witchcraft of women than of men as pointed out by Urbinati, Ferrante Pallavicino; Michaela Valente, “‘Per uno stregone che si vede, se ne veggono dieci milla donne’. Caccia alle streghe e questioni di genere”, in Germana Ernst – Guido Giglioni, eds., I vincoli della natura. Magia e stregoneria nel Rinascimento (Roma: Carocci, 2012), 239–51. 57 Albertoni, La missione di Decio Francesco Vitelli, 13, 242–3. 58 Vitelli’s patrimony on the eve of his death is listed in a document housed in the Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Fondo Rondinelli Vitelli, filza 38, serie 22, pages not numbered. Part of this document I have already published in Albertoni, La missione di Decio Francesco Vitelli, 234–6. 59 By Vitelli’s own admission he never walked anywhere but always took gondolas, so that even after living for years in Venice he confessed he had no knowledge of the town at all. Barbierato, Nella stanza dei circoli, 209.

13 THE WITCH UNRAVELLED How Pieter Bruegel the Elder developed a visual code to depict witchcraft and sorcery Renilde Vervoort

Introduction Pieter Bruegel the Elder (died 1569) codified and articulated the cumulative idea of witchcraft – the warrant for the most destructive “epidemic” phase of the great European witch-hunts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.1 He created the visual code to represent witches and sorcerers in his pair of Saint James prints (Figures 13.1 and 13.2). Until then there had not been a conventional way of depicting them. The renowned print-publisher and -dealer Hieronymus Cock (1518–1570) issued both engravings in 1565 in Antwerp, thus disseminating Bruegel’s visual language on an international scale. These prints, to be read as a sequence, played a crucial role in the development of witchcraft representations in the seventeenth century: Bruegel’s inf luence is still echoed in images of sorcery and witchcraft until this day.2 The development of the cumulative witch-concept and the rise of witchtrials are complex topics. They spread slowly and asymmetrically across Europe from the earliest fifteenth-century origins in the southern and eastern Frenchspeaking areas of Europe (Savoy, Valais, Lyon).3 Traditional Canon law however prohibited belief in sorcery and magic. This had to be overcome. Relying on folkloric and ancient beliefs and fears, a mostly orally transmitted body of knowledge, the authors of demonological treatises, lawmakers, inquisitors, and theologists – promoted ideas about a new Devil-worshipping sect of witches and sorcerers, a new evil that had to be eradicated at all costs. Demonologists and inquisitors, upon hearing these ancient beliefs, incorporated them gladly in their theories, since these helped them prove that the Canon law was wrong.4 While “translating” the new Devil-worshipping witches, male and female, into images that were readily comprehensible to his public – the treatises were mostly written in Latin, and besides these books were not available to most

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FIGURE 13.1

After Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Saint James at the Magician’s Realm, engraving, 1565 (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum).

FIGURE 13.2

After Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Saint James and the Fall of the Magician, engraving, 1565 (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum).

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people – Bruegel made use of these underlying folkloric or ancient beliefs, which must have been more commonplace still during the sixteenth century. Bruegel’s new imagery was entirely based on the demonological theories that insisted on persecution: his two engravings are in fact a demonological treatise encapsulated in a visual form. His innovation and merit consist in highlighting precisely those elements and motifs his public was already familiar with, so that there was no need for a written explanation.

The diptych-prints The first print (Figure 13.1) places James the Greater in the realm of the magicians and witches, the dark, sinister, and chaotic world of the Devil, while the second print (Figure 13.2) is set in the civilized world of God, inside the city walls in front of a church.5 Amidst all the turmoil, seemingly calm and unperturbed by the chaos surrounding him, Saint James raises his right hand in a gesture to ward off evil. The first engraving can be divided into three sections: the bottom half is the world of the male magicians and the top half the world of the female witches. The hearth at the right side, the only part of the ruin still standing, serves both: their worlds converge here. The demons attacking the magician in the first print, are seen in the second print overturning his chair so the magician will fall, head-first, on the ground. A few citizens, wealthy ones in the church portal and others at the window at the left top corner, are looking at the spectacle. All sorts of performers, tricksters, ropewalkers, contortionists, and magicians – in the sense of illusionists – populate the foreground and the left portion of the print. Both prints belong together as shown by the presence of the Saint and the magician – including his chair – on both prints. The text in the margin continues: “DIVVS IACOBVS DIABOLICIS PRAESTIGIIS ANTE MAGVM SISTITVR” (“Saint James is placed in front of the magician by diabolical deception”) and “IDEM IMPETRAVIT A DEO VT MAGVS A DEMONIBVS DISCERPERETVR” (“The same prayed to God to have the magician torn to pieces by the demons”). It is quite exceptional to find two prints that belong together: prints are usually created as an independent work of art or part of a series of four, seven, etc. It is also remarkable that Bruegel intentionally altered the course of the legendary meeting between the magician Hermogenes (not named) and Saint James: the magician instructed his demons to bring him the Saint, but they were incapable of doing so. Instead, the demons brought the magician to the Saint, who forgave his sinful behaviour and converted him.6 On the prints, Saint James is “placed in front of the magician by Devilish deception.” The happy ending from the legend gets a sinister turn: the demons will tear the magician apart. Three distinct groups emerge here against the backdrop of this legendary meeting: witches, magicians, and prestidigitators. In our contemporary views, they seem quite distinct; however, in the sixteenth century they had a lot more in common.

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The magicians Nowadays, it is hard to believe that people f lew on sticks, brooms, or monsters to a distant place in the dead of the night to devour infants, worship the Devil, or have sex with him. No historical evidence has been found that such a sect ever existed. Diabolical witches are a pure fabrication, an illusion in the minds of their persecutors. But unlike witches, magicians really did exist. In the course of the twelfth century supposedly lost Latin texts, Arabic and Jewish knowledge, and Greek scientific translations on magic were rediscovered in the Western world. Until then magic had not particularly constituted a threat to the Church, but now the tide began to turn.7 The main cause was the rise of various forms of learned magic, occult sciences such as astrology, alchemy, ritual magic, and necromancy that accompanied the development of the sciences in general. All these disciplines were seriously discussed at the emerging universities. This occult knowledge interested the scholarly elite and was spread by university students, scholars, and clerics who travelled from town to town. Astrologers, alchemists, fortune-tellers, and sorcerers were to be found in many aristocratic courts throughout Europe. Necromancy, a form of ritual magic, deliberately invoking demons through complex rituals and the use of the magic circle, contributed significantly to fears of a conspiracy of diabolic sorcerers that motivated the witches’ persecutions. These had multiple causes and one of them was beyond a doubt the actual practice of necromancy by members of the educated elite. Not only did necromancy explicitly evoke the Devil, it also made illicit use of Christian symbols and rites. The practice of necromancy helped to spark fears of a conspiracy and made a diabolic counterreligion seem plausible.8

Tricksters and magicians After an interruption between 1520 and 1560, perhaps owing to the advent of the Reformation, the second, most intense, and geographically most wide-ranging period of European witch-hunting began ca. 1560, ending around 1675. New demonological writings were being published and older works reprinted.9 The word praestigiis, which appears in the margin on the first print (Figure 13.1) is a key concept in demonology: praestigium means trickery, optical illusion, and delusion, as defined by scholastic theologians such as Alexander of Hales (died 1245) and Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274). According to the demonologists, tricksters, illusionists, and conjurers are more often than not being helped by the Devil who deceives the senses of the spectators. The earliest demonological treatises already connected praestigium with the Devil, the Master-Prestidigitator himself.10 The tricksters and illusionists of the second print are simply the witches and magicians of the first. Johannes Weyer opposed the witch-hunt in his book De praestigiis daemonum (On the Tricks of the Devils, 1563). He argued that the recent executions of witches

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FIGURE 13.3

Woodcut in: Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, 1584 (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France).

were a massacre of innocents. He attempted to explain that legerdemain is simply sleight of hand, optical illusion or banal deception, without any diabolical involvement. However, he harshly condemned magicians: they made a pact with the Devil and should be prosecuted as ordered by God. He believed deeply in demonic activities, hence the title of his book.11 The book, quickly opposed by forceful advocates of punishing diabolical witchcraft, aroused a storm of controversy.12 Demonologists placed magicians, witches, and illusionists on equal footing. They refuted Weyer’s attempt to exclude witches and tricksters from persecutions because: “This is how they can be recognized,” Jean Bodin – professor

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of law and a fierce opponent of Weyer – explained: “for he who dazzles the eyes and shows what is not, is associated with Satan” and: “One recognizes those who are in league with the Devil, by their conjuring tricks.”13 Reginald Scot (c. 1538–1599) wrote The Discoverie of Witchcraft in 1584, too late to inf luence the Bruegel prints, but nevertheless an interesting source. As an opponent of witches’ persecutions, Scot considered sorcery as “prestigious juggling,” deceptive sleight of hand. He described in detail the contemporary tricks so that his readers would see through the fraud. Thanks to Scot’s book we understand precisely what is happening on the second print (Figure 13.2). In the lower left corner lies a “decapitated” body on a table; the severed head is placed on a dish. This trick was known as the “beheading of John the Baptist,” an older version of our “magician-sawing-woman-in-half ” act (Figure 13.3). The tricksters use daggers to “pierce” their tongue or hand but in reality, the purpose-made knives did not pierce anything (Figure 13.4). The performers did their best to make people believe they used real magic: every trick had to be preceded by a spell, Scot explains. Therefore, many spectators suspected demonic interventions. In the prints Bruegel expressed the views of the demonologists: all of the acrobats and tricksters have demonic features, they are (partly) monsters

FIGURE 13.4

Woodcut in: Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, 1584 (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France).

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or have hollow eye sockets or look otherwise devilish. At the same time, Bruegel explicitly confirms the standpoint of Weyer: God wants to see the necromancers punished.14

Witches and magicians Another unique contemporary source, a theatre play, offers us further insight into the views upon witches and magicians held by the circle of Pieter Bruegel.15 The play was staged by the chamber of rhetoric of the Guild of Saint Luke, the Antwerp painters’ corporation, around the same time Bruegel was working on his prints. He might even have attended the performance and evidently knew all the members of the chamber, among them his publisher Cock. On Good Friday, 9 April 1563, during the entr’acte, a witch and magician make their appearance on stage.16 Both are in a sombre mood: their magic book is being burned in front of their eyes. The witch laments: “With this book I have often made the Devil appear.” The sorcerer answers: “[With this book] I can make women appear naked and find hidden treasures and money.” To which the sorceress replies: “[With this book] I was able to conjure up thunder and lightning and with it I have harmed many a young girl and boy.” A moralizing verse in “voice-over” finishes the scene: “Listen! This is why the Devils are so upset! Because their power has been abolished and destroyed. It is a deceitful writing that scandalizes people.” The spectators heard loud screams coming from the burning book. In the sixteenth century no distinction was made between witchcraft and magic,

FIGURE 13.5

Book of Ritual Magic, manuscript, 16th century (Ghent, University Library).

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it was all called “sorcery” (tooverye). A witch was called a “sorceress” (tooverersse), and a magician or wizard was a sorcerer (tooverer). The male and female sides of witchcraft are simply two sides of the same coin. In the play, the witch and the magician made use of the same book of magic, while Bruegel leaves the books exclusively in the hands of the men, because they practise learned magic, necromancy. On the left (Figure 13.1) a magician – presumably Hermogenes – is sitting in a chair. He searches frantically in his grimoire for a formula to ward off the attacking demons – which he had summoned himself – but they turned against him. The same three-legged stool standing in front of the sorcerer can be found in a unique, handwritten, sixteenth-century grimoire from the area of Ghent: the drawing of the magic circle contains the words puer (boy) and magister (teacher) and the stool standing in the middle (Figure 13.5). This ritual was supposed to evoke demons to help the necromancer discover a hidden treasure, just like the magician in the play. The owner of this manuscript was an intellectual with a thorough knowledge of languages and learned oriental magic. The above-mentioned book was found hidden in a chimney of a psychiatric hospital in Ghent, demolished in 1835, together with some other tools of the trade (now lost). Coincidence or not, in his print Bruegel put in front of the necromancer exactly the same three-legged stool as the one depicted in the magic book. Two others are consulting magic writings (Figure 13.1): at the left of the fireplace a necromancer is seated on a stool placed in a magic circle, his magic formula written on a piece of paper, leaning against a carcass in front of him. He bends forward trying to read the text, huddled in his coat, hoping the magic circle will protect him from the demonic orchestra that besieges him. One of the Devils is on the verge of hitting him with a stick, another summoning of Devils gone wrong. In the foreground, a wizard is digging up a corpse to get hold of body parts. He has also summoned the Devils, who are now fighting over the corpse, while he consults his magic book by the light of an oil lamp. He seems unaware of the big horned Devil looming over him. According to the grimoires all the rituals, such as making a dagger or collecting ingredients for potions, were described in minute details to be followed precisely and without fail, hence the hourglass in front of the naked man standing in a basin in the lower right corner. The basin was used to collect liquids, both in the liturgy and in the household. The sorcerer seems to collect the poison of the snake. Toads (one emerges from the basement) and snakes were notorious for being highly toxic animals, toad poison in particular being especially feared.17 The magician has a stole draped over his back. In the grimoire (Figure 13.5) the puer, a young virgin boy, had to wear a stole. It is unlikely that Bruegel had seen precisely this book, but he was clearly well-informed about the magic practices of his time. In later editions the cross on the stole was changed to the shape of the star by adding two fine lines. Perhaps someone had taken offense because the garment might suggest that the necromancer was a cleric.

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The hand of glory The stealing of hands and other body parts, preferably of executed criminals, did happen in practice, as we know from many trials and other sources. The belief in the magical properties of these stolen body parts dates back to antiquity. Usually these stolen body parts were simply buried under the threshold or hidden inside the house, in the hope that they would work their magic. However, books on ritual magic took this practice to a different level. In the middle of the chimney, resting against the mantelpiece, close to the drawing of a magic circle, stands a hand with burning fingers (Figure 13.1). This gruesome candle is known as a main de gloire, its preparation described in Le Petit Albert, a grimoire falsely ascribed to Albertus Magnus. A hand had to be cut off from a corpse hanging from the gallows and dried following a complex recipe, using human fat and hair to turn the dried hand into a candle. This candle had the properties of sending everyone in a house into a deep sleep and of opening locks.18

Weather magic In front of Hermogenes stands a tripod cooking pot on the three-legged stool (Figure 13.1). Even without a heat source, a strong vapour cloud escapes from it, turning into a tornado that shoots into all directions and creating havoc and ruinous hailstorms. Animals lie dead in the pasture, killed by the heavy hailstones. A big cauldron rests on the carcass of a large animal for support, a fire blazing under it. Witches cook up a storm and heavy rains, leaving a village f looded. Only the church is partly visible. To ward off the storm, people would ring the church bells, but an ape-like monster has broken off the spire. This cross from the church tower hangs upside down, as was customary on the witches’ sabbath according to the demonologists. A boat is shipwrecked in the distance, people are drowning. In the fireplace stands the fourth cauldron, a fire glowing under it. Here witches brew both f lying ointment and a hailstorm: a strong billowing vapour cloud rises from the pot, carrying the witches. The cloud carries gigantic hailstones that rip the leaves and the fruits from a tree, leaving it stripped and barren. The inclement weather might have destroyed the lair of the sorcerers: only the chimney with a fragment of the roof and a few low walls remain standing. The witch in the play used her magic book to conjure up thunder and lightning. On the print the main maleficia or evil acts of witchcraft (Figure 13.1) have overwhelmingly to do with weather magic. This is hardly surprising, since the impact of a climate change in Europe, known as the Little Ice Age, was felt in the late 1550s and early 1560s. A correlation between the climate change and the rise in witchcraft persecutions can be illustrated by two contemporary newsletters: one reported a terrible hail- and thunderstorm that hit Germany on 3 August 1562, destroying crops and vineyards, killing cattle that had been left unprotected in the pasture, and stripping off fruits and leaves from the trees. The

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second newsletter reported that those held responsible for the storm were burned at the stake. It was the first large-scale witch-hunt in Germany.19 These newsletters spread the news in Germany and further away. In other parts of Europe similar situations arose: the inclement weather triggered trials and unrest, even lynching. Accusations of weather magic ranked among the most important charges: storm at sea, cold summers, failing harvests, frosts in spring, f loods, lightning, hailstorms, and heavy snowfall. The fatal consequences of this cold and wet weather were felt soon enough: crop failures, rising food prices, hunger, economic downturn, starvation, and death. All this and the threat posed by the conspiracy of a Devil-worshipping sect must have fuelled unrest and fears, also in the commercial metropolis of Antwerp, which in Bruegel’s time was Europe’s foremost and richest trading centre. Here a large community of foreign merchants resided, all of them closely following and sharing news because it impacted upon their business ventures immensely.20

FIGURE 13.6

Les vaudoises, miniature in the margin of: Martin Le Franc, Le Champion des Dames, manuscript copied in Arras, 1451 (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France).

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The broom Since the 1420s, from the onset of the demonological witch theory and trials, it had been alleged that witches f lew at night to the sabbath, carried by Devils, riding on monsters or objects like brooms and sticks. The demonologists mentioned examples, like the legendary meeting between Saint James and the sorcerer Hermogenes, to prove their point: the f light and – in extenso – the participation at the sabbath was therefore real.21 The broom or stick was already mentioned in the title of one of the oldest demonological texts. The anonymous author considered this a distinctive feature from the other (older) heretics, such as the Cathars: Errores Gazariorum seu illorum qui scobam vel baculum equitare probantur.22 Some demonologists were convinced that the witches really f lew, while others thought it was a dream, a hallucination induced by the f lying ointment.23 Flying on sticks and brooms again has older roots. In the thirteenth century, Stephen of Bourbon wrote that the bonae res (good women) f lew on sticks but the malae res (bad women) rode on wolves. In the middle of the thirteenth century, a poet from Tyrol said he had been to all universities, but that no scholar ever taught about the Unholde who f lew at night on a calf, a broom, or a stick. In 1393 in Le Ménagier de Paris the link between a sorceress and a broomstick was already clear.24 The oldest representation of witches f lying on brooms or sticks can be seen in the margin of a manuscript of Martin Le Franc’s Champion des Dames, which was copied in Arras Cathedral in 1451 in the Burgundian Netherlands. Two little witches, each about 3 cm high, f ly on a broom and a stick (Figure 13.6). The illumination of this manuscript is attributed to the Master of the Missal of Paul Beye, possibly identifiable as Barthélemy Poignare.25 Bruegel chose the broom, unlike the German artists at the beginning of the sixteenth century who made the witches f ly on forked sticks. After Bruegel, the broom became the object of choice of the witches. Bruegel’s broom-f lying witches seem passive, as in a trance, faces hidden, in contrast to the naked witches f lying on monsters (Figure 13.1). This trancelike attitude connects with the idea of f lying ointment inducing hallucinations of f lying while being in a deep sleep.

The hearth The most iconic and powerful motive Bruegel created, was undoubtedly the fireplace, used by witches and magicians alike. The necromancer placed the main de gloire and a few candles on the shelf. A magic circle is drawn on the mantel, a magic dagger stuck into it. He performs his ritual close by. A witch is brewing a potion in the cauldron: she seems to be brewing a hailstorm and as well as f lying ointment. On the billowing steam the witches are f lying on their brooms, one entering and one exiting the chimney. Once outside, the cloud carries gigantic hailstones.

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Since time immemorial the chimney was considered an entrance for demons and evil spirits, and so it could also serve as an exit. Witches and sorcerers could enter or leave a house through the chimney, which was confirmed by demonologists since the beginning of the persecutions. One of the first mentions of the chimney-exit can be found in the French inquisitor Peter Mamoris’s Flagellum maleficorum (c. 1462), a demonological treatise in which the magician Hermogenes is also mentioned when the author talks about the damage magic can cause. Mamoris described how witches could leave a closed and locked house through the chimney to go to the sabbath.26 A few animals are warming themselves by the fire, a big cat stares at a toad. This cat is most likely a witch: witches were believed to transform themselves effortlessly into a cat and go out at night to penetrate into houses, kill infants in their cribs or do other harm, often associated with sexual impotence. Cats could also provide transportation to the sabbath and were a familiar disguise of the Devil himself. Metamorphosis of people into animals had a long tradition, predating the persecutions by many centuries. The (black) cat is still associated with witches today.27

Fairies and cannibalistic women The cooking or grilling of children was described in the first demonological texts and appears in early trials. According to Heinrich Kramer in his Malleus maleficarum (1486) witches were boiling infants in the cauldron (“in caldari”) until the meat fell off the bones and they prepared f lying ointment made from the fat of unbaptized infants – thus accusing witches of infanticide and cannibalism. These accusations were not new: in Roman times the strix, a night-owlish creature, was told to be keen on human blood and f lesh, she could f ly, and was during the day an old woman. This Roman belief can be traced, during the Middle Ages, from the Germanic tribes to the thirteenth century.28 There was also another popular belief of a very different nature about women who travelled at night in a supernatural way. They helped households where everything was neat and tidy and where food waited for them. Some, especially elder women, believed that they travelled in the company of these fairies.29 From these stories emerges a coherent picture of a traditional pre-Christian folk belief, like supernatural armed women that, with some variations, can be found throughout Western Europe. On the one hand, there was the belief in female, benign, and protective spirits or fairies roaming at night. On the other hand, there was another age-old belief in destructive and cannibalistic feminine creatures, again mainly travelling at night. Both groups were able to penetrate easily into closed houses. The inquisitors and demonologists, hearing about these women, saw no difference between the two groups, although these were clearly different in popular belief. The nocturnal benign company became gradually associated with the cannibalistic strix as early as the thirteenth century, as attested by this text in Middle Dutch:

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About the Night-Riders, and about Other Devils, Which Make Fire in the Sky Devils, which are in the air, and which often cause fright. They also know how to make fire which seems here to us like torches, which they shoot among themselves. Many things are said thereof. Night riders, they are called And they are Devils, that I tell you, haghetissen, and wandering women ‘goodlings’ [protective spirits] – beings also, indeed, cobalds, water-monsters, elves, maren, night-maren [nightmares] who make themselves known in the morning, and know well how to get fire. We call them night-maren here, Indeed, these are Devils all, Who brought us eagerly to the Fall. The Devil ponders night and day, How they can lead us astray, And bring us from faith, And test us with many things.30 The text comes from a poem known as De natuurkunde van het geheelal (The Physics of the Universe), an anonymous work dated around 1275 that originated in East Flanders. “Night-riders and others Devils who make fire in the sky which seem here to us like torches” seems to refer to the witch with the torch riding through the air on a he-goat (Figure 13.1). They are called “night riders, but in reality it is the Devil” the poet warns. Haghetissen (a forerunner of the word witch, related to the Old-English hægtessan, hag) and wandering women, also good women, cobalds (gnomes), water-monsters, elves, and nightmares are all part of the Devilish night riders. While witnessing auroras, many thought that battles were taking place in the air. It was considered an ominous sign, presaging disasters. Some were convinced that they themselves participated in these nocturnal battles, a belief that can be traced back to different parts of Europe. For example, in Friuli (north-east Italy) there operated the benandanti, a group of anti-witches who rode out at night to fight the evil strigae who wanted to destroy their crops, kill children, and sow infertility. The benandanti rode on pigs, dogs, or horses, animals that were present in the yards of their farms. The outcome of the battle determined if the following year was a year of abundance or famine.31 In the Bruegel print, the most likely explanation for the battling women riding on monsters through the air on the top of the print lies in this folk belief. Bruegel conceived a fight between the evil naked haghetissen, akin to the cannibalistic strigae, and the dressed, benign woman, the “goodlings” because “they shoot

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FIGURE 13.7

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Frans Francken II, Witches’ Kitchen, painting, oil on copper, 1604 (Switzerland, Private Collection).

among themselves.” The dressed woman, riding on a hog (a farm animal), uses a bow, the others attack her with a Devilish weapon: a bundle of poisonous snakes, f lying on dragon-like monsters. The battle is fierce and will determine the outcome of the harvest, a particularly important problem when the recent harvests had been destroyed by the effects of the Little Ice Age. The naked woman on the he-goat with the torch does not seem to be involved in this (uneven) battle, she could refer to lightning and the danger of burning houses or crops.

The publication Hieronymus Cock, the leading and internationally active print publisher in Antwerp, decided to publish a print about these witches and their misdeeds, as a response to current events and to satisfy the curiosity of his audience. Cock

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was known as an innovative dealer of expensive, quality prints. His prints were distributed and sold on the European art market.32 His international audience included the humanistic urban elite, the religious, cultural, and intellectual class, merchants, scholars, and artists. In these turbulent times of religious tensions and political turmoil, it was risky to market a print of a new heretical sect.33 Censorship was imposed indirectly through intimidation and harassment. Those who broke the law faced serious consequences.34 Cock had to make sure his print would not raise any controversy. Witchcraft was a learned topic, the details of which were published in Latin theological or legal treatises, not really accessible even for the literate layman. An authority, an advisor of impeccable reputation, would not only have duly informed the artist, but also provided extra security for the publisher, protecting him from the lurking dangers of ambiguity and misinterpretation prone to lead to problems with the Spanish authorities.35 He could have been a theologian, a cleric, or a jurist. He would provide the captions, using the word praestigium, further evidence of his familiarity with the demonological theories, written in Latin because the topic was deemed too sensitive to translate into the vernacular.36 He advised Bruegel about the view upon Saint James and Hermogenes as expressed in the demonological treatises.37 He was well aware of the contemporary debate, following the new wave of persecutions and the publication of Weyer’s book. Bruegel managed to balance the viewpoints of both Weyer as well as his opponents.

The legacy Pieter Bruegel’s visual code inspired artists to create witchcraft scenes. Before Bruegel, very few independent artworks (outside books) existed. Missing a written context, these earlier artworks remain difficult to grasp. A good example is Albrecht Dürer’s (1471–1528) Witch riding backwards on a goat. In spite of the many hypotheses that have been advanced, the print’s exact meaning is still eluding us.38 His Four Witches (1497), on the other hand, are not witches.39 This situation changed after the publication of the Bruegel prints because these offered the visual language necessary to represent witchcraft and sorcery. Artists from the Southern and Northern Netherlands used Bruegel’s visual code and made an impressive number of witchcraft artworks. A corpus of at least 150 paintings, drawings, and prints has now been established, a number that is still growing.40 No other region accounts for such an overwhelming number of witchcraft scenes in the seventeenth century. The most powerful and inf luential motif of the Bruegel prints is the hearth and chimney, through which the witches leave, f lying on their brooms. In the cauldron potions are being brewed, animals like cats or monsters are warming themselves by the fire. Spells written on pieces of paper or magic books are close by, with other paraphernalia such as the main de gloire, finding space on its mantel or shelf. This motif leads to many “Witches’ Kitchens,” with prominently placed hearths. Bruegel’s fireplace motif was “exported” to Germany, where it is seen

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used as an illustration in a book dating from 1593 and in a German newsletter dating from 1594. Frans Francken II was the first painter in the Netherlands to pick up Bruegel’s visual code. In 1603 the first and last witch was burned at the stake in Antwerp. This execution must have made an impression on the young artist, who painted his first Witches’ Kitchen in 1604 on copper (Figure 13.7). Just a few years later Jaspar Isac engraved this small painting, with the title Abomination des Sorciers (The Atrocities of the Sorcerers) published in Paris, spreading the hearth-motif even further and faster. The witches’ topic became a “best-seller” in the Francken studio: over 30 artworks have been identified so far, including drawings. The master created and painted the prototype and his assistants in his workshop produced copies with some slight alterations. Francken handed over the typical necromancer’s tools, such as the magic circle and the books of magic, to the witches. He incorporated the magicians by painting some famous names of necromancers on the mantel of the chimney: the three “arch-sorcerers”: Johann Faust, Joannes de Luna, and Christopher Wagener (Figure 13.8). Francken tried to develop some compositions without using the fireplace, but these were not so successful as proven by the lack of workshop-copies. The hearth-motif was simply too powerful.41 David II Teniers was also a very prolific painter of witchcraft scenes: over 40 artworks related to witchcraft have been accounted for. As in Francken’s workshop, the master himself painted the prototypes and his studio repeated these with slight variations. The fireplace appears left, right and center on his paintings. Teniers also attempted to move away from the hearth-motif by producing pendants, one set inside with the hearth and one outside, like the pair of paintings in Karlsruhe, Staatliche Kunsthalle. These pendants were engraved by Jacques Aliamet and published in Paris, further spreading Bruegel’s visual code. He also isolated a very distinctive witch with f lying hair brewing a potion as seen on his painting now in the New York Historical Society, and in the very similar composition shown here (Figure 13.9). This witch with f lying hair and a cauldron, without the chimney, is used in a few smaller paintings or set in a stone cartouche surrounded by poisonous plants (Hamburg, Kunsthalle). But the vast majority of the paintings again showed a scene with the fireplace. In the Northern Netherlands, Cornelis Saftleven combined both prints, showing the acrobats usually in the context of learned magic, as in Tymon the sorcerer (1660, Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst). A few enigmatic works appeared on the art market, one of these being Saint James and Hermogenes (Figure 13.10). All the paraphernalia in the vicinity of the fireplace are found in the first Bruegel print while the scaffold for ropewalkers in the background is inspired by the second print. In the foreground on the right stands Saint James in pilgrim’s garb, surrounded by dressed animals and monstrous creatures. On the left four men are kneeling before a crucifix standing on an altar. One of them is Philetus, the sorcerer’s apprentice, identified by his name on the cartellino next to him. We can assume Hermogenes is amongst these men. Another smaller painting sold on the

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FIGURE 13.8

Frans Francken II, Witches’ Kitchen, painting, oil on panel, 1606 (private collection, © 2012 Christie’s Images Limited).

art market shows the hearth; Bruegel’s naked magician with the snake becomes here a man with Devils’ feet.42 Jacques de Gheyn II was also familiar with the Bruegel prints. In his Witches’ Kitchen (1608) he repeated numerous motifs, including the fireplace with the f lying witch, the cauldron, the main de gloire, the toad, the cat, and the opening to the cellar with the corpse and the oil lamp (Figure 13.11). Artists from the Netherlands travelled to Italy and “exported” the topic. They place the witches’ sabbath in antique ruins and therefore the hearth is missing, as in this impressive work attributed to Sebastiaan Vrancx or Jacob Isaacz van Swanenburgh, Witches’ Sabbath in an Antique Ruin, c. 1600–1610 (Figure 13.12). Still, the artist somehow wants to show his familiarity with the Bruegel prints. In the top left corner small witches are f lying on a he-goat and a monster, they

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FIGURE 13.9

FIGURE 13.10

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After David II Teniers, Departure for the Witches’ Sabbath, painting, oil on copper, ca. 1640 (private collection, © 2012 Christie’s Images Limited).

Cornelis Saftleven (attributed), Saint James and Hermogenes, painting, oil on canvas, ca. 1650 (private collection, © Kunsthandel P. de Boer,Amsterdam).

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FIGURE 13.11

Jacques de Gheyn II, Witches’ Kitchen, drawing in ink on grey paper, 1608 (© Kupferstichkabinett der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz).

FIGURE 13.12

Sebastiaan Vrancx or Jacob Isaacz van Swanenburgh, Witches’ Sabbath in an Antique Ruin, ca. 1600–1610 (private collection).

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are both directly copied from the Bruegel print: traces of the charcoal dots still being visible on the painting.43

Conclusion The two Bruegel engravings are closely linked to contemporary events. The first, the climate change that resulted in extreme weather conditions and disasters. The second, the attempts to remedy this by executing the witches deemed responsible, resulting in the most “epidemic” phase of the great European witch-hunts, and finally, the debate amongst the learned elite about the responsibility for the disruptive weather and the controversy caused by Weyer’s book. The components of the cumulative witch-concept are to be found in the demonological writings. Bruegel carefully selected precisely those elements that made most sense to his public, avoiding the need for lengthy descriptions and explanations. The chimney, the cauldron, weather magic, the broom, the battling, f lying women, the toad, and the cat preceded the cumulative concept of witchcraft and were part of an existing body of knowledge. Bruegel was also well aware of the magical practices of his time: the main de gloire, the magic circles, the rituals, the book of magic, even the three-legged stool. The inclusion of the illusionists – tricksters, ropewalkers, and contortionists in the realm of the witches and sorcerers – rarely repeated in later works of art, shows Bruegel’s awareness of the contemporary debate. This overwhelming amount of information needed to be condensed into a visual form. Therefore, Bruegel designed not one but two prints, carefully balancing the different viewpoints to avoid controversy or worse. He created a visual code that was picked up by artists from the late sixteenth century onwards. The second print has been less inf luential, maybe because the topic was no longer debated; itinerant performers were rarely the subject of persecution. The first print was far more inf luential. The witches take over the scene, magicians become rare. The hearth became the most repeated motive, figuring as a pars pro toto for the witch. We recognize Bruegel’s witch even today: a cauldron, a cat, a hearth, and an old hag f lying away on her broom through the chimney.

Notes 1 The beliefs that inspired the persecutions of witches were recorded in demonological treatises, but the concept was far from homogeneous. It developed over time, inf luenced by rumours, accusations, and trials, the public reading of the confessions, the newsletters reporting on the misdeeds, etc. All this “evidence” was incorporated into the demonological writings, spreading further the beliefs about witches, especially after those treatises became available in print. The cumulative concept of witchcraft is a notion that originated in the work of Joseph Hansen at the beginning of the twentieth century: Brian P. Levack (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook

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of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America (Oxford: University Press, 2013), 3. Renilde Vervoort, Bruegel’s Witches. Witchcraft Images in the Low Countries between 1450 and 1700 (Bruges: Van de Wiele Publishing, 2015). This book was published in connection with the exhibition “Bruegel’s Witches” jointly organized by Museum Catharijneconvent Utrecht (2015–2016) and Musea Brugge (2016) where I was the exhibition curator. The content of the exhibition and this book are based on my doctoral thesis, published in Dutch as: “Vrouwen op den besem en derghlijck ghespook.” Pieter Bruegel en de traditie van hekserijvoorstellingen in de Nederlanden tussen 1450 en 1700 (Nijmegen: Stichting Nijmegen Kunsthistorische Studies, 2011). This book can be consulted online: https://repository.ubn.ru.nl/handle/2066/87160. The concept of sorcery can be found at all times and in all places. In contrast, the ‘cumulative concept of witchcraft’ originated in the late Middle Ages and was further developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. This theory, spread through demonological treatises mostly written in Latin, reached the learned elite, magistrates and judges, resulting in waves of persecutions and executions. In its fullest form, the cumulative concept of witchcraft held that there was an organized sect of devilworshippers, a pact with the devil, harmful magic, sexual intercourse with the devil and f lying to nocturnal meetings: Dries Vanysacker, “Prosecution for Sorcery and Witchcraft in Europe” in Vervoort, Witches, 11–12. A good example is the Canon Episcopi, which dismisses the idea that women could follow the Devil and ride at night upon beasts: Marina Montesano, Classic Culture and Witchcraft in Medieval and Renaissance Italy. Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic (Cham: Palgrave, 2018), 90–1; The authors of demonological writings were perturbed by the Canon Episcopi, as therein is expressly stated that the f light was only a diabolical illusion, while the demonologists considered the f light as real and truthful. But the Canon was (erroneously) regarded as a text dating from the Council of Ancyra (314), nearly as old as the Church itself, and was therefore extraordinarily authoritative. They had to find an explanation why they claimed the opposite. Vervoort, Witches, 117; Vervoort, Vrouwen, 122–4. Renilde Vervoort, “Hekserij als omgekeerde wereld” Millennium 22, no. 2 (2008): 172–85. The only confrontation between Saint James and a magician is the legendary meeting with Hermogenes, first described in the Passio Magna, a sixth-century Hebrew text from Palestine, and can be traced throughout history until the middle of the fourteenth century where it appeared in the Passionael, the Middle Dutch translation of the Legenda aurea. All the versions tell the legend in a similar way and it was also well known in the Low Countries. Bruegel altered the story intentionally and took a much harsher stance: Vervoort, Vrouwen, 57–61. Vervoort, Witches, 52. William Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature. Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture (Princeton: University Press, 1994), 38–9; K. Jolly, C. Raudvere, E. Peters, Witchcraft and magic in Europe. The Middle Ages, in B. Ankarloo, S. Clark (Ed.), (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 208–13. Gary K. Waite, “Ritual Magic” in Richard M. Golden (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition (Santa Barbara, ABC-CLIO, 2006), 961–4; Edward Bever, “Magic, learned” in: Golden, Encyclopedia, 700–4. Vanysacker, “Prosecution” in Vervoort, Witches, 12; Brian P. Levack, “Chronology of Witchcraft Trials” in Golden (Ed.), Encyclopedia, 187–90. The early demonologists such Johannes Vineti in 1450, Johannes Nider in 1470 and Heinrich Kramer in 1486, based their views on scholastic ideas as developed by Alexander of Hales or Thomas Aquinas. Demonologists also defined witches’ power as praestigium: Vervoort, Vrouwen, 104–7. George Mora (Ed.), Witches, Devils and Doctors in the Renaissance. Johann Weyer, De praestigiis daemonum (Tempe, Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1998), 93–9, 485, 525.

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12 Johann Weyer, a physician to the duke of Cleves, became the first major advocate of Europe’s witches—the first who opposed the witch hunt with a combination of philological, philosophical, scientific, and legal arguments and who dared to expose his ideas in print. His adversaries such as Bodin, King James VI of Scotland, and his fellow physician Thomas Erastus, struggled because Weyer asserted that God had ordered Christians to prosecute magicians but not witches Michaela Valente, “Weyer, Johann (1515–1588)” in Golden (Ed.), Encyclopedia, 1193–6. 13 Bodin’s De la démonomanie des sorciers (1580) is cited here as an example of the kind of criticism the proponents of the persecutions would have expressed during the debates following the publication of Weyer’s book: Vervoort, Vrouwen, 104–11. 14 The proponents of the persecutions were theoretically also in favour of punishing necromancers; however, in practice, because of their social status, they were often left alone: Bever, “Magic” in Golden, Encyclopedia, 700–4; Waite, “Ritual” in Golden, Encyclopedia, 961–4. 15 Witchcraft and sorcery were associated with the devil according to the law: the Antwerp jurist Willem van der Tanerijen (died 1499) wrote in his law book (1474–1476) that sorcery and necromancy are diabolic, the people engaging in these activities will be executed, and their books will be burned: Joseph Hansen, Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Hexenwahns und der Hexenverfolgung im Mittelalter (Hildesheim, Georg Olms, 2003 [1901]), 251–2. 16 G. J. Steenbergen, “Willem van Haecht, Die Apostelspelen” (Master Diss., K.U. Leuven, 1945), 2, 40–8. 17 Renilde Vervoort, “The Pestilent Toad. The Significance of the Toad in the Works of Bosch” in Jos Koldeweij, Bernard Vermet (Ed.), Hieronymus Bosch. New Insights into His Life and Work (Ghent: Ludion 2001), 145–51. 18 Vervoort, Witches, 106. 19 Wolfgang Behringer, Witches and Witch-Hunts. A Global History (Cambridge: Polity, 2004), 83–9; Wolfgang Behringer, “Climatic change and Witch-Hunting. The Impact of the Little Ice Age on Mentalities” Climatic Change 43 (1999), 335–51. 20 Vervoort, Vrouwen, 80–2, Id., Witches, 36–9. 21 The earliest trials and treatises already mentioned the f light on monsters or objects, such as brooms and sticks. The full-page miniatures in the three copies of Jean Tinctor, Invectives contre la secte de vauderies show different ways of f lying: Vervoort, Witches, 115, 64–6, fig. 42–4. 22 “On the errors of the heretics [Cathars] or those who claim to ride a broom or a stick”: M. Ostorero, A. Paravicini Bagliani, K. Utz Tremp, C. Chène (Eds.), L’imaginaire du sabbat. Edition critique des textes les plus anciens (1430 c.–1440 c.) (Lausanne, Cahiers lausannois d’histoire médiévale 26, 1999), 289–99, 304. 23 Vervoort, Vrouwen, 143–145. 24 Montesano, Classic Culture, 131; Vervoort, Witches, 119. 25 Ibid., 62; B. Bousmanne and T. Delcourt (Eds.), Vlaamse Miniaturen 1404–1482 (Leuven: Davidsfonds, 2011), 385–387. There are some older representations in monuments: Vervoort, Vrouwen, 126. 26 Martine Ostorero, Le diable au sabbat. Littérature démonologique et sorcellerie (1440–1460), (Firenze: Sismel, 2011), 515–40. 27 Ovid’s Metamorphoses are an example from antiquity. Werewolves were the frightening male version of the female cat: Renilde Vervoort, “De zaak van de gestolen fallussen” Millennium, 22, 1 (2008), 58–9. 28 Montesano, Classic Culture, 85–6; Vervoort, Witches, 115. 29 Vervoort, Witches, 115. 30 The original text dating from ca. 1275 and the English translation can be found here: Alaric Hall, The meanings of elf and elves in medieval England (PhD diss., University of Glasgow, 2004), 177–8. This dissertation can be consulted online: http://theses.gla.ac .uk/4924/1/2004Hallphd.pdf. 31 Vervoort, Witches, 117.

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32 Jan Van der Stock, “Hieronymus Cock en Volcxken Diericx, prentenuitgevers in Antwerpen” in Joris Van Grieken, Ger Luijten & Jan Van der Stock, Hiermonymus Cock. De renaissance in Present (Brussels: Mercatorfonds, 2013), 12–21. 33 In 1566 the Iconoclastic Fury or Beeldenstorm swept over the Low Countries and in 1568 the Eighty Years’ War, the revolt against Philip II of Spain, started: Vervoort, Witches, 50. 34 All printed material was severely controlled, because this relatively new medium could be used to very quickly spread opposing religious or political views. The printers exercised self-censorship. Some were convicted and even executed: Vervoort, Witches, 46. 35 The choice of Hermogenes instead of Simon Magus has puzzled art historians. Simon Magus would have been the more obvious choice, since a legend about his downfall, not his conversion, existed. Had Peter and Simon been chosen, there would have been no need to deviate from the original storyline. But Saint James the Greater was above all Sant Iago, el Patrón de España, the patron saint of Spain and therefore of the Spanish crown. The saint’s importance for Spanish monarchy cannot be overestimated and should be seen as an “insurance” not to be misunderstood. Vervoort, Witches, 49–50. 36 Joost de Damhouder (1507–1581), a jurist from Bruges, introduced witchcraft into the juridical system of the Low Countries. In 1554 he published his Praxis rerum criminalium. Abridged versions of the Praxis appeared in Dutch (1555), French (1554), and German (1565), but only in the Latin version did he elaborate on witchcraft, because he considered the subject inappropriate for editions in the vernacular. Vervoort, Witches, 34–5. 37 Vervoort, Vrouwen, 90–2, 97–9. 38 Ibid., 69, 71. 39 And represents Superbia instead, the title dates from 1675: Jeroen Stumpel, “The Foul Fowler: On a Key Motif in Dürer’s “Four Witches” Simiolus 30, 3/4 (2003), 143–60. 40 The catalogue published in Vervoort, Vrouwen has been updated and extended. 41 A good example is the Witches’ meeting in Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum. This seems to have been a commissioned work, carefully executed by the master himself. Vervoort, Witches, 87–9. 42 Ibid., fig. 63. 43 This is called a pouncing technique which involves pricking tiny holes into an image, in this case the Bruegel print, so that charcoal can be pushed through to create a dotto-dot copy. The artist used a small muslin bag filled with powdered charcoal and this was patted over the holes in the drawing. The tiny holes in the original drawing leave behind small dots still visible on the painting.

PART V

Trading ideas about witchcraft

14 IGNORANTIA AND SUPERSTITIO A discussion among theologians and inquisitors in the sixteenth century Michaela Valente

Introduction Between the late twelfth and mid-thirteenth centuries, in order to check, limit, and, if necessary, repress protest movements, the Church of Rome undertook its struggle against heresy by instituting the inquisitorial tribunal which it entrusted to the bishops. This decision should have been accompanied by a clear definition of orthodoxy in matters of doctrine and behaviour.1 Initially, while jurisdictional conf licts remained unresolved, Church and State forged a reinvigorated alliance, thanks to which it was possible to defeat heresy and thus, benefit political and social development in Europe. However, this alliance between temporal and spiritual power, which had originally been created to face a common enemy, began to fray.2

Claims of reform As is always the case, a variety of intertwined questions arose which had the effect of complicating the picture: against a backdrop of ongoing jurisdictional disputes, theological debates, clashes over political prerogatives, urgent social demands, appeals continued to be made for a fundamental renewal as well as fervent protests against corruption and moral degradation. Calls arose from various quarters for a reform in capite et in membris. In many respects, the clergy did not project an irreprehensible image of themselves. Similarly, the faithful lived immersed in a world superstition, either ignoring Christianity or interpreting it as they pleased. In the absence of knowledge or clear indications on how to resolve everyday problems, people turned to whoever could promise facile solutions through superstitious remedies.3 As Bailey and Cameron have shown, magical therapies and cures throve on ignorance and popular superstition and

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forced theologians to address the topic.4 The battle was not conducted according to a strategy that had been prepared at the drawing board but was nevertheless waged from writing desks and pulpits.5 One prominent voice in the choir was that of the Camoldolesi monks Querini and Giustiniani from Veneto and their Libellus ad Leonem X in which they called for decisive pastoral action to combat ignorance among the clergy.6 The two monks identified and denounced the evils aff licting the Church both in its head and in its body: “The two evils of which we have spoken, ignorance and superstition, originate among religious, and from those who ought to have cure they spread to the people.” To defeat superstition and ignorance had to be the first and main point: “these two plagues are corrupting not only religious, but practically the entire Christian people, men and women, nobles and commoners; and each of these plagues, like lethal cancer, becomes more malignant and less curable, the further it travels from its source.” 7 The diagnosis was clear: everything arose out of ignorance: From ignorance, which is the mother of all evils, rises superstition; thus from a wicked mother comes a daughter who is worse. And just as nothing in human life is better and more sacred than true religion, nothing is worse, or more impious and wicked, than superstition, which learned men have defined as the vice contrary to religion.8 Thus, they argued, once ignorance had been dispelled, true religion could assert itself. According to Querini and Giustiniani, superstition manifested itself in three ways: “divination, healing and the abuse of religious ceremonies.” Only the pope could put an end to this degeneration. The Libellus was, perhaps, one of the best-known calls for reform, one that was shared by a number of others. From a practical standpoint, only a more active and deeply rooted presence in the various dioceses could lead to regaining control over pastoral duties.9 For first half of the sixteenth century, reports by numerous reforming bishops have left us with a detailed description of the superstitions that permeated to all levels of society. Confusion between what was permitted and not permitted produced strange hybrids between the sacred and the profane, so that magical practices could take the guise of prayer recitations.10 The case of don Guglielmo Campana is an excellent example of this world. Parish pastor and exorcist in one of the leading churches in Modena, Campana practised every sort of magic (which earned him both respect and fear) and it was not until 1517 that he was brought to trial and condemned.11

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A response was beginning to be formulated: so while the Master of the Sacred Apostolic Palace, Tommaso Badia, reasserted that it was impossible to explain the difficilia fidei to the vulgar masses, in 1532 Gian Pietro Carafa, later Pope Paul IV, denounced the spread of heresy for which he blamed several Conventual Franciscans.12 Many things changed after 1542 with the setting up of the Holy Office and with a coordinated counteroffensive that was led by Rome and not by the various dioceses.13 In fact, the Reformation and the spread of heresy had the effect of delaying and slowing the battle against superstition, and the issue only regained its central importance for the ecclesiastical hierarchies in the second half of the sixteenth century, though there had been timid attempts made by individual bishops. In my view, this action must be viewed within the wider context of a critical phase in the relationship between State and Church and as part of a process of reform and reorganization within the Church itself.14 Pastoral visitations and various testimonies left by several Jesuits and other missionaries to our Indies paint a picture of the dramatic social, political, economic, and cultural conditions they found in various dioceses, places where the message of the Gospel had been forgotten or completely swept aside, leaving the “valiant Christian soldiers” disconcerted and indignant.15 Faced with this situation, the Church deployed catechesis and repression, but the result was already embedded in the premises.16 Giovanni Romeo, after digging into inquisitorial documents in Pisa, uncovered this pithy contemporary formulation: the Church was attempting to “straighten the owls’ beaks,” an expression which gives a good idea of how the initiative turned out.17 But before one starts to repress, one needs a definition, and this is where we find a situation that is much more complex and f luid. For as a result of their efforts to define, theologians, jurists, and inquisitors came to adopt more f lexible views, an elasticity that, while necessary, is certainly also arbitrary. A constantly expanding definition of heresy favours and legitimizes the inquisitorial tribunal’s control over various aspects of daily life. Faith and practice, belief and behaviour come under close scrutiny: one is a heretic not just because of what one believes but also in how one behaves.18 While inquisitorial theory evolved in a more or less continuous line from the twelfth to the seventeenth centuries, the great energy and zeal of persecutions of heresy and superstition typical of the sixteenth century were something new, and the reasons behind them must be sought in the historical process that runs through the relationship between spiritual power and temporal power. Just as Luther’s doctrines drew on the past, but asserted themselves thanks to the unprecedented political support they received, so repressive theories that were based on an established tradition, from Augustine’s De doctrina christiana, through Aquinas up to eighteenth-century inquisitorial tracts, found ready listeners and resonated with the current political situation.19

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Cases of maleficium and witchcraft lend themselves particularly well to studying how theory and practice were applied to the category of heresy, and then, to that of superstition and ignorance: theologians, inquisitors, and judges thought that in order to obtain supernatural effects it was necessary to resort to Satan, an act which by itself implied apostasy. Nevertheless, only a small number of the accused really had any intention of abandoning God and devoting themselves to the Devil. From Augustine on, the term superstition was used to refer to any residue of paganism and then gradually thereafter to any rite or belief that was held to be the fruit of a compromise between Christianity and the old religions.20 With the emergence of the problem of heresy during the course of the thirteenth century, the concept of superstition began to be viewed as a voluntary error or improper cult, though a variety of nuances and positions remained. After the Lateran Council of 1215 the themes of superstition and heresy became intertwined and overlapped so that someone charged with heresy was often also accused of superstition, and the relationship became closer after 1231 when the Inquisition was instituted. Later in 1258 Pope Alexander IV repeated that inquisitors should not deal with superstitions “nisi manifeste haeresim sapiunt” (unless they concern heresy).21 Until the second half of the fourteenth century, most theologians (with a few exceptions) considered witchcraft to be a manifestation of superstition and therefore not equivalent to heresy. In any case, learned magic represented the greatest cause for concern because this was a superstition that was not born out of ignorance or simplicitas, but was itself an art.22 In the Summa Theologica Aquinas had gone deeply into the question of heresy, error, and superstition (II. II. q. 92), performing a theoretical analysis (which completely excluded the practice of superstitious cults) that over the coming centuries made it the main source of authority on the question, though it was sometimes interpreted and adapted to meet the views of individual theologians.23 In the Directorium inquisitorum (written in 1376 by Nicolau Eymerich and revised by the Spanish canonist Francisco Peña in the second half of the sixteenth century), Saint Thomas is the undisputed auctoritas.24 A few years later, Jean Gerson went so far as to condemn Christian superstitions as being more serious than pagan ones, and this was followed by the Conclusio (a condemnation of magic) issued by the Faculty of Theology of the Sorbonne in 1398. Later the papal bull Summis desiderantes affectibus (1484), equated witchcraft and maleficium with heresy, and these were included among the crimina excepta. A few decades after that, the Dominican Tommaso De Vio, one of Luther’s most authoritative opponents, declared that without a shadow of a doubt, maleficium, because it invoked demons, was always related to heresy.25 Another one of Luther’s opponents, Silvestro Mazzolini, also held the view that demonic devotion was heresy.26 But what then is heresy? Clearly any estrangement or deviation from orthodoxy, accompanied by obstinacy. Eymerich made a distinction between heresies and errors, pointing out how sometimes the latter cannot be traced to heresies,

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while he condemned superstition as an abuse and refusal of the precepts.27 However, ignorance is no excuse for errors in doctrine or practice, especially for Peña,28 who expressed the principle to meet the changed circumstances of the sixteenth century, so that Eymerich’s works could be used for inquisitorial activity and when dealing with the heretical phenomena of the day.29 In any case, the hesitations by most theologians to give precise definitions arose out of the need to ensure that inquisitors always had room for manoeuvre.30 Various tracts define ignorantia as ruditas and insipientia but how far is this admissible and justifiable? Eymerich held that a knowledge of the Ten Commandments was indispensable and so anyone who violated these precepts, which they ought to know, was a heretic. Peña, for his part, insisted that conscious awareness was a distinctive feature of heresy.31 The question is complex and we do not find any clarity or unanimity: some decades later, Eliseo Masini, in the Sacro Arsenale which draws on the author’s inquisitorial experience in dealing with cases neglected by theory, admitted the possibility of punishing ignorance with penalties different from those in place for heresy.32 While during the first half of the sixteenth century, the Dominicans De Vio and Mazzolini condemned and persecuted heresy and superstition without distinguishing between the two, Masini, at the beginning of the seventeenth century acknowledged the need for clemency when dealing with the semplici (uneducated). Before entering the labyrinth of assorted definitions of heresy, superstition, and ignorance, we would do well to remember an important legacy that comes down to us from humanistic and philological tradition, that form of curiositas (intellectual curiosity) condemned by Saint Paul in his admonition: noli altum sapere,33 a dangerous curiositas (desire for knowledge) that had led even the ignorant to venture with unheard of boldness into matters of theology. After the Council of Trent this resulted in the paradox of catechisms being introduced to quell the ignorance of the faithful, while at the same time insisting that interpretation should be left to the Church. While categories were being discussed, from the mid-1560s, the jurisdictional dispute commenced. Sixtus V’s bull of 1586 effectively annulled the distinction between simple and heretical superstitions and attributed all jurisdiction in these matters to the Inquisition, a decision that was confirmed by Gregory XV with Omnipotentis Dei in 1623.34

From theory to practice From theory to practice: a study of inquisitorial documents reveals an extremely variegated world of beliefs where, in most cases, it was the concerns of daily life that led to the use of magic and which rarely implied demonic intervention. 35 Aware of this state of affairs, the Church entrusted the Inquisition with the task of reining in these different practises and rites: jurisdiction over cases of sorcery was given to the bishops, while inquisitors intervened only when the sorcery was not deemed to be simple but heretical.36 What contributed to making sorcery heretical was never clearly defined, so that the inquisitors managed to

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appropriate most of the cases for themselves.37 Similarly, the definition of ignorance as an attenuating factor in trials was shrouded in uncertainty, notwithstanding the fact that several inquisitorial tracts dealt with the topic. However, from the second half of the seventeenth century, theologians and inquisitors were reluctant to admit that anyone could be ignorant of the basic tenets of faith after all the pastoral and evangelical efforts that had been made, and in view of the obligation to attend mass where fundamental precepts were imparted in various ways.38 It is, however, interesting to observe how in different cases the accused sought to defend themselves by pleading ignorance or by claiming that they had arrived at certain conclusions “through fantasy.”39 Some asked that “my ignorance” should be taken into account and argued that they had not erred out of “malice, because I am a good Christian.”40 Thus it appears that some defendants were using ignorance as a defensive strategy and certainly inquisitors, at least from the 1560s on, were paying closer attention to those accused of maleficium, since in spite of its theoretical equivalence with heresy, it was the most common charge. Even after the Council of Trent an attitude more inclined to moderation seems to have prevailed whenever the ignorance of the accused was a mitigating factor, a reason for which it was thought more appropriate to mete out instruction rather than punishment. One clear instance of this may be seen in the opinion expressed by the cardinals of the Holy Office with regard to a case of 1577 when a pedagogical intervention was recommended instead of persecution, as the persons involved were “simple and ignorant.”41 Once the accused’s ignorance had been established, his or her faith had to be restored through instruction. An example: in 1602 the bishop of Scala closed an investigation in which he declared that he had found no magicians, but only a few humble women who had used incantations for the purpose of healing, reconciling a husband and wife, making someone fall in love, and that they “had rather sinned out of simplicity and ignorance than out of malice.”42 In one case in 1577 the Holy Office suggested looking not just at the confession but the “quality of the person” (if the person was educated or not, for instance) accused in order to determine whether “they were really ignorant.”43 Sometimes other details lay behind a claim of ignorance. In June 1588 a man was charged with buying and possessing books by Machiavelli and of having expressed the view that “everyone who observes the faith and law of where he was born can be saved.” The accused defended himself by asserting that he “had fallen into the said error out of ignorance.” Along with giving a series of procedural indications it was decided that he should be made to confess that he had knowingly expressed these ideas for which “ignorance was not a likely [cause], nor excusable, as it is an article of faith that ought to be known and manifest to all Christians, as has been said.”44 Invitations to exercise prudence and to take into consideration the qualità of the accused clearly derive from the now wider scope of the Inquisition’s activities: inquisitors, unlike confessors, needed to verify the veracity of accusations

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and confessions45: if the invoker is an “intelligent and learned person,” there can be no doubt: he must be made to abjure de vehementi.46 In practice, many cases of this can be found. On 10 April 1589, the cardinals of the Holy Office judged the practices performed by a woman to retrieve some lost objects as superstition and not heresy.47 There is also no lack of curious and even daring retorts like that given by an accused witch from Siena in 1588 who, exasperated by the inquisitor’s pressing interrogation, exclaimed: “Oh are you mocking me? If I had had intercourse with the Devil, or had given myself to the devil, he would have [at least] provided me with things, I who am a poor woman.”48 With her irritated reply she intended to draw the inquisitor’s attention to the fact that, had she really been able to count on the Devil’s support, her material circumstances would certainly have been easier. Ultimately her intemperance gave way to a more subdued attitude and she ended up admitting her guilt and attributing it all to “simplicity and ignorance.”49 The trial concluded with her abjuring de vehementi. We find greater strictness when it came to clergy who were expected to be role models and also for accused men: on 15 February 1591 the cobbler Fabrizio Grasso was convicted of apostasy and crimes of necromancy and the verdict was published in order to serve as an example.50 For these kinds of crimes, it appears the Inquisition was inclined to be more intransigent when it was dealing with the clergy, while it treated common crimes more leniently, as studies by Mancino and Romeo have recently shown.51 An important curb on the persecutions of witches was the decision of 1588 in which the Holy Office excluded denunciations of third accomplices in trials, a decision that suggests an attitude of greater procedural caution adopted in response to constant calls to avoid uproar and scandals.52 Naturally, the impossibility of finding a corpus delicti as well as other problems connected with maleficium, insofar as it was a crimen exceptum, favoured so-called moderate verdicts in the persecution of witchcraft and superstition. The question we need to ask ourselves is what was the reason for this? Inquisitors were men of the law and of faith and, as such, they reaffirmed the defence of their jurisdiction, and out of a sort of professional ethic they rejected abuses and derogations on the basis of law, preventing the innocent from being executed. Moreover, there was also the examination of the accusations in order to avoid any inconsistency or abuse. Nonetheless, the theory that the Holy Office wished to protect the accused from poorly conducted legal proceedings does not bear out. Rather the aim was to reassert the Church’s monopoly over the sacred which those who practised magic threatened.53 Inquisitorial action, intended to promote a concise and necessarily general vision, was guided by a realism that sought to control religious life, while the aim of extirpating ancient and superstitious practises appears to have been only of secondary importance. In this way, superstition was not defeated but only bent to aims the Church held to be more useful. This does not mean that there weren’t other participants in the battle who were motivated by authentic evangelical zeal,

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but the results clearly show who emerged victorious.54 Inquisitors ensured for themselves freedom to manoeuvre by gradually extending their scope of action. An example of this is the use of confession as an instrument of investigation, which was an area of conf lict between confessors and inquisitors.55

Conclusion Thus, the war against superstition waged by the Holy Office and the Church was aimed at bringing beliefs and practices back within the orbit of orthodoxy and not at eradicating abuses and false beliefs: cults and practices were approved only if they were useful for devotions considered to be legitimate, regardless of the level of superstition they contained.56 Thus, the equation of heresy and sorcery that had begun in the fourteenth century gave way to the cautious distinctions of the sixteenth century, until the seventeenth century when, the struggle against heresy having been won, maleficia and witchcraft were treated by the inquisitorial courts following the directives contained in the Instructio pro formandis processibus in causis strigum. Unrelenting devotion to the supernatural expressed a world of needs and yearnings that sprang from the lower reaches of society, a strong and constant demand to which the Church could have responded. The Holy Office, in wishing to prevent magical practices for healing or falling in love, had two aims: to bring numerous lost sheep back into the Church’s fold and to suggest – and then impose – orthodox remedies. Thus, a strategy was deployed that supported the campaign against translations into vernacular Italian, in particular, reading translations of the Bible was prohibited in order to strengthen the Church’s teaching. Both actions were aimed at asserting the Church’s monopoly over the sacred. A pedagogy was imposed that controlled both the lower and upper strata, effectively depriving the faithful of the ways and tools of reading and interpreting reality.57 Cases of ignorance and superstition were checked and governed as they arose, and sometimes they were also combatted. In this way the question spilled over its theological-religious boundaries to fully assume its political dimension: it was much more important to defend the inquisitorial monopoly in these cases, to seek to spare Italy from condemning innocents to death, but not to renounce combatting superstitions and, finally, to restrain, but not too loudly, the excesses of bishops and inquisitors.58 The long history of superstitious practices in Italy is not so much about their survival as their fortunate life.59

Notes 1 Irene Bueno, Defining Heresy. Inquisition, Theology, and Papal Policy in the Time of Jacques Fournier (Leiden: Brill, 2015); Giovanni Grado Merlo, Contro gli eretici: la coercizione

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4

5 6 7

8 9

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all’ortodossia prima dell’Inquisizione (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1996); Id., Inquisitori e Inquisizione nel Medioevo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008), 17; Ovidio Capitani, Medievistica e medievisti nel secondo Novecento: ricordi, rassegne, interpretazioni (Roma: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2003), 117; Wolfram Hoyer, ed., Praedicatores, inquisitores. I. The Dominicans and the Mediaeval Inquisition (Roma: Institutum Historicum Fratrum Praedicatorum, 2004); Marina Benedetti, Inquisitori lombardi del Duecento (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura 2008); Giovanni Romeo, L’Inquisizione nell’Italia moderna (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2004); Andrea Del Col, L’Inquisizione in Italia. Dal XII al XXI secolo (Milano: Mondadori, 2006); Christopher Black, The Italian Inquisition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009); Lucy Sackville, Heresy and Inquisition in the Middle Ages 1 (York: York Medieval Press, 2011); Katherine AronBeller and Christopher Black, ed., The Roman Inquisition. Centre versus Peripheries (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2018); Donald S. Prudlo, ed., A Companion to Heresy Inquisition (Leiden: Brill, 2019). Gigliola Fragnito, Cinquecento italiano: religione, cultura e potere dal Rinascimento alla Controriforma, eds., Elena Bonora and Miguel Gotor (Bologna: Il Mulino 2011), 18 and ff. See Michaela Valente, Superstitione, heresia, ignorantia. Teoria e prassi inquisitoriale in alcuni casi di maleficia, in Prescritto e proscritto. Religione e società nell’Italia moderna (secc. XVI–XIX), eds., Andrea Cicerchia, Guido Dall’Olio, and Matteo Duni (Roma: Carocci, 2015), 65–83, and Vincenzo Lavenia, “Superstizione, medicina, malattie sacre. L’Inquisizione romana e il dibattito tra il Cinque e Seicento,” in Magia, superstizione, religione, una questione di confini, ed., Marina Caffiero (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2015), 33–66. Michael D. Bailey, “The Disenchantment of Magic: Spells, Charms, and Superstition in Early European Witchcraft Literature,” American Historical Review 111 (2006): 383–404, and Id., “Concern over Superstition in Late Medieval Europe,” in The Religion of Fools? Superstition, eds., Stephen A. Smith, A. Knight (Past and Present 199, supplement 3) (Oxford-New York: Oxford Journals, 2008), 115–33; Euan Cameron, Enchanted Europe: Superstition, Reason and Religion, 1250–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). See also Marina Montesano, “Supra acqua et supra ad vento.” Superstizioni, maleficia e incantamenta nei predicatori francescani osservanti (Italia, sec. XV ) (Roma: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1999); Karen Jolly, “Medieval Magic: Definitions, Beliefs, Practices,” in The Athlone History of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe, eds., Karen Jolly, Catharina Raudvere, and Edward Peters (London: The Athlone Press 2002), 3 (The Middle Ages): 30–53; Jeffrey R. Watt, “Love Magic and the Inquisition. A Case from Seventeenth-Century Italy,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 41 (2010): 675–89. Giorgio Caravale, L’orazione proibita. Censura ecclesiastica e letteratura devozionale nella prima età moderna (Firenze: Olschki, 2003); Stefano Dall’Aglio, Savonarola and Savonarolism (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2010). Eric Constant, “A Reinterpretation of the Fifth Lateran Council Decree ‘Apostolici Regiminis’ (1513),” The Sixteenth Century Journal 33 (2002): 353–79. Paolo Giustiniani, Pietro Quirini, Libellus addressed to Leo X, Supreme Pontiff, ed., Stephen M. Beall, Introduction by John J. Schmitt (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press 2016), 180. See Vincenzo Lavenia, “La lotta alle superstizioni: Obiettivi e discussioni dal “Libellus” al Concilio di Trento,” Franciscan Studies 71 (2013): 163–81. Giustiniani, Quirini, Libellus, 171. Jennifer Mara DeSilva, “Pluralism, Liturgy, and the Paradoxes of Reform: A Reforming Pluralist in Early Sixteenth-Century Rome,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 43 (2012): 1061–1078. See John S. Ott and Anna Trumbore Jones, eds., The Bishop Reformed: Studies of Episcopal Power and Culture in the Central Middle Ages (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). Maria Pia Fantini, “Tra poesia e magia: antiche formule di scongiuro (secoli XVI–XVII),” Studi Storici 46 (2005): 749–69.

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11 Matteo Duni, Tra religione e magia: storia del prete modenese Guglielmo Campana (1460?– 1541) (Firenze: Olschki, 1999); Id., “Magia, esorcismi e cultura popolare nel primo Cinquecento nei processi dell’inquisizione modenese,” in Per il Cinquecento religioso italiano. Clero cultura società, eds., Maurizio Sangalli and Adriano Prosperi (Roma: Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 2003), 2: 501–12, and Id., Under the Devil’s Spell: Witches, Sorcerers, and the Inquisition in Renaissance Italy (Syracuse, Syracuse University Press, 2007). See Giovanni Romeo, Inquisitori, esorcisti e streghe nell’Italia della Controriforma (Firenze: Sansoni, 1993), 68 and ff., and Stephen Bowd, “‘Honeyed Flies’ and ‘Sugared Rats’: Witchcraft, Heresy and Superstition in the Bresciano, 1454–1535,” in The Religion of Fools? Superstition, eds., Stephen A. Smith, A. Knight (Past and Present 199, supplement 3) (Oxford-New York: Oxford Journals, 2008), 134–56. 12 Andrea Vanni, “Fare diligente inquisitione.” Gian Pietro Carafa e le origini dei chierici regolari teatini (Roma: Viella, 2010). 13 Paolo Simoncelli, “Inquisizione romana e Riforma in Italia,” Rivista Storica Italiana 100 (1988): 5–125, and Elena Bonora, “Il ritorno della Controriforma (e la Vergine del Rosario di Guápulo),” Studi Storici 57 (2016): 267–96. 14 Massimo Firpo La presa di potere dell’Inquisizione romana, 1550–1553 (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2014), 16; Thomas F. Mayer, The Roman Inquisition. A Papal Bureaucracy and Its Laws in the Age of Galileo (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013); Id., The Roman Inquisition on the Stage of Italy, c. 1590–1640 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). See Michaela Valente, “Nuove ricerche e interpretazioni sul Sant’Uffizio a più di dieci anni dall’apertura dell’archivio,” Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia 66 (2012): 569–92. 15 Alessandro Guerra, “Per un’archeologia della strategia missionaria dei gesuiti: le indipetae e il sacrificio nella ‘vigna del Signore’,” Archivio Italiano per la Storia della pietà 13 (2000): 109–91. 16 Mary R. O’Neil, “‘Sacerdote ovvero Strione’: Ecclesiastical and Superstitious Remedies in XVI Century Italy,” in Understanding Popular Culture. Europe from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century, ed., Steven L. Kaplan (Berlin-New York-Amsterdam: Mouton 1984), 53–83, and Ead., “Magical Healing, Love Magic and the Inquisition in Late Sixteenth-Century Modena,” in Inquisition and Society in Early Modern Europe, ed., Stephen Haliczer (London: Croom Helm, 1987), 88–114. 17 Romeo, Inquisitori, esorcisti e streghe nell’Italia della Controriforma, 170–1. 18 John Tedeschi, The Prosecution of Heresy. Collected Studies on the Inquisition in Early Modern Italy (Binghamton-New York: Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1991), and Romeo, Inquisitori, esorcisti e streghe nell’Italia della Controriforma, 73. See Kathrin Utz Tremp, Von der Häresie zur Hexerei: “Wirkliche” und imaginäre Sekten im Spätmittelalter (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2008). 19 Dieter Harmening, Superstitio: überlieferungs- und theoriegeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur kirklich-theologischen Aberglaubensliteratur des Mittelalters (Berlin: E. Schmidt, 1979). 20 Marina Montesano, Classical Culture And Witchcraft In Medieval And Renaissance Italy (London-New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). 21 Michael Tavuzzi, Renaissance Inquisitors Dominican Inquisitors and Inquisitorial Districts in Northern Italy, 1474–1527 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 150. 22 Edward Peters, The Magician, the Witch, and the Law (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978), 15. 23 See Christian Trottmann, “Studiositas et superstitio dans la Somme de Théologie de Thomas d’Aquin: enjeux de la défiance à l’égard des ‘sciences curieuses’,” in Ratio et superstitio. Essays in Honor of Graziella Federici Vescovini, eds., Giancarlo Marchetti, Orsola Rignani, and Valeria Sorge (Louvain-La Neuve: Fédération internationale des instituts d’études médiévales, 2003), 137–54, and Richard Kieckhefer, “Witchcraft, necromancy and sorcery as heresy,” in Chasses aux sorcières et démonologie: entre discours et pratiques (XIVe –XVIIe siècles), eds., Martine Ostorero, Georg Modestin, and Kathrin Utz Tremp (Firenze: Sismel, 2010), 133–53. 24 Albrecht Burkardt, “Superstizione,” in Dizionario storico dell’Inquisizione, edited by Adriano Prosperi, with Vincenzo Lavenia and John Tedeschi (Pisa: Edizioni della

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28 29 30 31 32

33

34

35

36 37 38 39

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Scuola Normale, 2010), 3: 1549–1551; Claudia Heimann, “Quis proprie hereticus est? Nicolaus Eymerichs Häresiebegriff und dessen Anwendung auf die Juden,” in Praedicatores, inquisitores. I. The Dominicans and the Mediaeval Inquisition, ed., Wolfram Hoyer (Roma: Institutum Historicum Fratrum Praedicatorum, 2004), 594–624. Vincenzo Lavenia, “Stregoneria, Italia,” in Dizionario storico dell’Inquisizione, 3: 1523– 1530. See Adriano Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza. Inquisitori, confessori, missionari (Torino: Einaudi, 1996), 368 and ff. Michael Tavuzzi, Prierias. The Life and Works of Silvestro Mazzolini da Prierio (1456– 1527) (Durham-London: Duke University Press, 1998). Nicolau Eymerich, Directorium inquisitorum, cum commentariis Francisci Pegnae (Venetiis: apud Marcum Antonium Zalterium, 1595), 236; Jane K. Wickersham, Rituals of Prosecution: The Roman Inquisition and the Prosecution of Philo-Protestants in Sixteenth-Century Italy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 61–2. Agostino Borromeo, “A proposito del Directorium Inquisitorum di Nicolás Eymerich e delle sue edizioni cinquecentesche,” Critica Storica 20 (1983): 499–547. Eymerich, Directorium inquisitorum, 369; Wickersham, Rituals of Prosecution, 80. Borromeo, “A proposito del ‘Directorium Inquisitorum’,” 521–2, Andrea Errera, ‘Processus in causa fidei’. L’evoluzione dei manuali inquisitoriali nei secoli XVI–XVIII e il manuale inedito di un inquisitore perugino (Bologna: Monduzzi, 2000), 110. Bruno Neveu, L’erreur et son juge. Remarques sur les censures doctrinales à l’époque moderne (Napoli: Bibliopolis, 1993), 268. Eymerich, Directorium inquisitorum, 61; Wickersham, Rituals of Prosecution, 132–5. Andrea Errera, “Le diverse tipologie di sinossi per inquisitori in età moderna, con particolare riferimento alla disciplina della difesa professionale dell’inquisito,” in Praedicatores, inquisitores. III. I domenicani e l’Inquisizione romana, ed., Carlo Longo (Roma: Istituto Storico Domenicano, 2008), 55–103. Carlo Ginzburg, Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1992); Edward Peters, “The Desire to Know the Secrets of the World,” Journal of the History of Ideas 62 (2001): 593–610; Paul Harrison, “Curiosity, Forbidden Knowledge, and the Reformation of Natural Philosophy in Early Modern England,” Isis, 92 (2001): 265–90. Vincenzo Lavenia, “‘Anticamente di misto foro’. Inquisizione, stati e delitti di stregoneria nella prima età moderna,” in Inquisizioni: percorsi di ricerca, ed., Giovanna Paolin (Trieste: Edizioni Università di Trieste 2001), 35–80. See Tamar Herzig,“Witchcraft Prosecutions in Italy,” in The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America, ed., Brian Levack (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 249–67. For Bologna, see Guido Dall’Olio, Eretici e inquisitori nella Bologna del Cinquecento (Bologna: Istituto per la Storia di Bologna, 1999), and Id., “Tribunali vescovili, Inquisizione romana e stregoneria. I processi bolognesi del 1559,” in Il piacere del testo. Saggi e studi per Albano Biondi, ed., Adriano Prosperi (Roma: Bulzoni, 2001), 2:63–82, and now Gian Luca D’Errico, “I sortilegi,” in Sortilegi amorosi, materassi a nolo e pignattini. Processi inquisitoriali del XVII secolo fra Bologna e il Salento, eds., Umberto Mazzone and Claudia Pancino (Roma: Carocci, 2008), 119–70, and Id., L’ Inquisizione di Bologna e la Congregazione del Sant’Uffizio alla fine del XVII secolo: analisi e ricerche (Roma: Aracne, 2012). For Parma: Luca Ceriotti and Federica Dallasta, Il posto di Caifa. L’Inquisizione a Parma negli anni dei Farnese (Milano: FrancoAngeli 2008). For Modena: Matteo Al Kalak, L’eresia dei fratelli. Una comunità eterodossa nella Modena del Cinquecento (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2011), 200 and ff. See David Gentilcore, From Bishop to Witch: the System of the Sacred in Early Modern Terra d’Otranto (Manchester: Manchester University press, 1992). Lavenia, ‘Anticamente di misto foro’, passim. Wickersham, Rituals of Prosecution, 124. John Martin, Venice’s Hidden Enemies. Italian Heretics in a Renaissance City (Berkeley: University of California Press,1993), 83, 145. See Jonathan Seitz, Witchcraft and the Inquisition in Early Modern Venice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

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40 Wickersham, Rituals of Prosecution, 369. 41 Vatican City, Archivum Congregationis pro Doctrina Fidei (ACDF), Archivum Sancti Officii Romani (ASOR), Stanza Storica (St. St.), Q 3 d, f. 91. See Simon Ditchfield, “Innovation and its Limits: The Case of Italy (ca.1512–ca. 1572),” in La Réforme en France et Italie: Contacts, Comparaisons et Contrastes, eds., Philip Benedict, Silvana Seidel Menchi, and Alain Tallon (Roma: École Francaise de Rome 2007), 145–60. 42 ACDF, ASOR, St. St., LL 3 a, c. n. n. 43 ACDF, ASOR, St. St., Q 3 d, f. 91. 44 ACDF, ASOR, St. St., Q 3 d, f. 91–2. 45 Alfonso Mirto, “Un inedito del Seicento sull’Inquisizione,” Nouvelles de la République des Lettres 6 (1986): 99–138. 46 Ivi, 115. 47 ACDF, ASOR, St. St., Q 3 d, f. 258. 48 ACDF, ASOR, Archivum Inquisitionis Senensis (Siena), Processi, vol. 9, 592v. For Siena, Oscar Di Simplicio, Autunno della stregoneria. Maleficio e magia nell’Italia moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino 2005), and Id., ed., Le lettere della Congregazione del Sant’Ufficio all’Inquisizione di Siena (1581–1721) (Trieste: Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2009). 49 ACDF, ASOR, Siena, Processi, vol. 9, f. 622. 50 Pierroberto Scaramella, ed., Le lettere della Congregazione del Sant’Ufficio ai Tribunali di Fede di Napoli, 1563–1625 (Napoli: Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici, 2002), 93 and in 1597, ivi, 223. 51 Michele Mancino, Giovanni Romeo, Clero criminale. L’onore della Chiesa e i delitti degli ecclesiastici nell’Italia della Controriforma (Roma-Bari: Laterza 2013). 52 ACDF, ASOR, St. St., Q 3 d, f. 267v. See Giovanni Romeo, I processi di stregoneria, in Storia dell’Italia religiosa, eds., Gabriele De Rosa, André Vauchez, and Tullio Gregory (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1994), 3 (L’età moderna): 189–209. For the inquisitorial strategy towards female mysticism, see Adelisa Malena, ”L’inquisizione romana e il controllo del misticismo femminile,” in A dieci anni dall’apertura dell’Archivio della Congregazione per la dottrina della fede: storia e archivi dell’inquisizione (Roma, 21–23 febbraio 2008) (Roma: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 2011), 225–41. 53 Marina Caffiero, Legami pericolosi. Ebrei e cristiani tra eresia, libri proibiti e stregoneria (Torino: Einaudi, 2012), 123. 54 Romeo, Inquisitori, esorcisti e streghe, 203–16. 55 Giovanni Romeo, Ricerche su confessione dei peccati e Inquisizione nell’Italia del Cinquecento (Napoli: La Città del Sole, 1997); see Roberto Rusconi, L’ordine dei peccati. La confessione tra medioevo ed età moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2002), and Adriano Prosperi, L’Inquisizione romana. Letture e ricerche (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2003), passim. 56 Romeo, Inquisitori, esorcisti e streghe, 245. 57 Gigliola Fragnito, La Bibbia al rogo. La censura ecclesiastica e i volgarizzamenti della Scrittura (1471–1605) (Bologna: Il Mulino 1997), and Ead., Proibito capire. La Chiesa e il volgare nella prima età moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino 2005). See Xenia von Tippelskirch, Sotto controllo. Letture femminili in Italia nella prima età moderna (Roma: Viella, 2011). 58 Giovanni Romeo, “Inquisitori domenicani e streghe in Italia tra la meta del Cinquecento e i primi decenni del Seicento,” in Praedicatores, inquisitores. III. I domenicani e l’Inquisizione romana, ed., Carlo Longo (Roma: Istituto Storico Domenicano, 2008), 309–44; Id., “Inquisizione, Chiesa e stregoneria nell’Italia della Controriforma: nuove ipotesi,” in “Non lasciar vivere la malefica.” Le streghe nei trattati e nei processi (secoli XIV–XVII), eds., Dinora Corsi and Matteo Duni (Firenze: Firenze University Press, 2008), 53–64. 59 Federico Barbierato, Nella stanza dei circoli. ‘Clavicula Salomonis’ e libri di magia a Venezia nei secoli XVII e XVIII (Milano: Sylvestre Bonnard, 2002); Id., “Political Astrologers and the Secret Wheels of Providence Prophecies, Astrology, and Pragmatic Futurologies in Seventeenth – and Eighteenth – Century Venice,” Mediterranea. Ricerche storiche 39 (2017), 9–38.

15 THE MP AND THE ASTROLOGER Rival cultures of witchcraft in the East Anglian witch-hunt Danny Buck

Introduction The early modern conception of astrology’s place is divided between those who saw it as a helpful science, a form of demonic conjuring, or as a means to con yokels. These three cultural responses to astrology were part of the witchcraft trial of Mark Prynne during Great Yarmouth’s 1645 witch-hunt. The witch-hunt in Great Yarmouth began in April 1645 with accusations from town residents against their neighbours which were brought before the September borough sessions. The town’s corporation supported the hunt by inviting Matthew Hopkins and paid for midwives to search those accused of witchcraft for marks. The Great Yarmouth corporation summoned Hopkins for “discovering [and] finding out of witches … to make search for such wicked p[er]sons if any be here.”1 Prynne was brought before the borough sessions court in 1645, accused of practising sorcery by finding lost objects as he had in 1638, and the more dangerous crime of maleficia against the goldsmith John Howlett and his son.2 The Great Yarmouth witch-hunt is one of the best-documented and contextualized witch-panics in the wider Hopkins hunt, allowing a deeper interpretation of how witchcraft fears were understood within urban communities. Research on witchcraft accusations during periods of political instability has shown how astrologers and healers became vulnerable to reforming elites seeking to cleanse their society, who in the process recast white magicians as witches.3 The professionalization of popular magic such as healing, divination, and counter-witchcraft led Stuart Clark to argue that “churches were probably correct to think they were being challenged by a rival institution,” which stood in the way of “complete pastoral hegemony.”4 The 1645 East Anglian witch-hunt saw a concerted effort by urban communities to pursue witchcraft accusations against members of their

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community, and these accusations ref lected the urban elites’ attitudes to witchcraft and magic. Culture, religion, and politics divided Great Yarmouth during the Stuart period, with diverging responses to astrology. The town’s economy was divided between the fishermen and industries that supplied them, and merchants who traded across the North Sea and beyond.5 The largely puritan, or strict protestant, merchants provided the membership of the town’s governing corporation, meaning the governors had differing interests to most of the town’s residents.6 The corporation’s assembly provided a space where faction and dissent developed over political, religious, and financial interests.7 Members of the corporation sought to control the town’s parish church and ministry, but were challenged by the conformist ministry that followed the guidance of the Laudian church and the presence of nonconformist congregations between 1625 and 1650.8 Religious and political allegiance inf luenced individual’s approaches to astrology. The Great Yarmouth 1645 witch-hunt brought together three visions of astrology as science, conjuring, and con trick, which had been part of the town’s cultural life for at least the previous 50 years. To discuss the differing responses to astrology, this chapter initially examines the almanacs, astrological guidance on lost objects, and a medical practice providing evidence of popular demand for astrology, which Mark Prynne catered to. The chapter then moves to show why Miles Corbet prosecuted the astrologer Mark Prynne in 1638. It shows how Corbet’s strict religious beliefs led him to condemn Prynne, and how Prynne’s connections to government-backed Conservative minister made him a target. Finally, the chapter looks at how, during the 1645 witch-hunt, Corbet once again supported allegations that Prynne was a conjurer. In response the poet John Taylor used the minister Thomas Cheshire’s defence of Prynne to portray Prynne’s astrology as a mere confidence trick and mocked Corbet’s superstition. The 1645 hunt brought to the surface three visions of astrology in conf lict with one another.

Astrology’s place in an urban community Astrology was an acceptable part of many people’s lives in Great Yarmouth during the first half of the seventeenth century, a way for the town’s residents to gain some certainty in their futures through almanacs, readings, and medical diagnosis. The continued interest and profitability of astrology during this period show the town population’s acceptance of astrology. The La Neve family produced an almanac for the town continuously from the beginning of the seventeenth century to the early 1660s. The publication of almanacs was supplemented by astrological readings, which were based on established practice of astrology, and the astrologers in Yarmouth relied on printed volumes that cited classical and Islamic authors. The readings were employed by the astrologers in helping residents seeking to recover lost property and as the basis for medical treatment. The

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success of Mark Prynne’s amateur practice shows how popular astrology was among the town’s citizenry. Astrology had a place in early modern cosmology as either a white magic, art, or science. The first half of the seventeenth century to the British Civil Wars was a golden age for astrologers, including the puritan minister John Booker, Nicholas Culpeper, William Lilly, Richard Saunders, John Tanner, George Wharton, and Vincent Wing. The astrologer William Lilly was described as “the first astrological republican” during the Civil Wars, and he had been taught by the father of Great Yarmouth’s puritan minister John Brinsley senior.9 During the British Civil Wars both the royalist George Wharton and parliamentarian William Lilly were producing rival almanacs, and the leading generals of the New Model Army consulted astrological predictions to inform their military strategy.10 Some astrologers had national prestige and inf luence. However, even in Great Yarmouth they had a major role. Great Yarmouth’s astrological tradition can be traced back to the sixteenth century. The earliest report of astrological interest in Great Yarmouth is from a sixteenth-century court case in which William Wicherly admitted that he “did conjure at Yarmouth in the great circule, with the sworde and ring consecrated” and that “Thomas Owldring, of Yarmouth, is a conjurer, and hath very good bookes of conjuring.”11 However, the La Neve family who provided the most clear evidence of the town’s support for astrologers. Geoffrey Le Neve compiled a series of annual almanacs published in the town from 1604, in which he described himself variously as a physician, a student of mathematics, and a gentleman. After Geoffrey’s death in 1613, his nephew Jeffrey Le Neve continued the almanacs until the corporation dismissed him from his political role in the town in 1626, and his cousin John Neve took over writing the almanac between 1626 and 1661.12 Almanacs were a popular form of astrology that was accessible to the public, where the astrologers laid out the year’s predictions. They were sold unbound on cheap paper, and relied on dynastic astrologers to maintain a readership, such as the Wing, Gadbury, and Le Neve families.13 Astrological predictions promoted The Le Neves and their almanac was acceptable to the stationer’s company and to the locals who purchased their almanac for half a century, making astrology a handy guide to their life. Unlike the La Neves, Mark Prynne was an amateur astrologer, using his skills to supplement his income. While little information survives on Prynne’s family and background, we know that he was an educated man, and a practised practitioner of astrology as a tool for discovering lost objects and for medical treatment. Prynne was notable for his collection of “Theologicall, Historicall, and Phylosophicall” books.14 Prynne’s skill in conjuring was ascribed to his use of Moulsons Almanack, a “breefe of the fam’d fabulous Sheperds,” a fifteenth-century almanac that provided guidance on astrology, and a “book of circles.”15 Local residents employed Prynne to find lost objects such as hats and pillows, or according to the satirist John Taylor “lost Cowe, Calfe, Horse or Cart, or silver spoone, or Bodkin, Knife or Ring, or Milstone, Windmill, Corke.”16 His astrological skills were also applied to medicine

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and the corporation recorded paying him 30s in 1645 for curing “one Tills a distracted man in Bridwell of the malady w[hi]ch was upon him.”17 Prynne’s medical treatment was comparable to astrological medical practitioners such as Jeffrey Le Neve or Richard Napier and Simon Forman, and effective enough for him to be paid handsomely.18 Prynne was an amateur astrologer, but he provided a skill that was in demand from local residents and the Great Yarmouth corporation. Great Yarmouth’s astrologers were successful ableto make a living in the town from their predictions, performing a helpful art. Writing almanacs, providing astrological readings, and performing medical care provided an income that supported the Le Neves and Mark Prynne. The almanacs were profitable and popular enough to survive the vicissitudes of the British Civil Wars, continuing right the way through to the Restoration. Local people found the service useful and convincing enough to seek out Prynne, and even the town’s corporation used his medical services. Astrology was a normal part of people’s lives, conducted by respected individuals within Great Yarmouth. However, the town’s astrologers had a history of court patronage and ties to the town’s conformist minister that left them vulnerable to the vicissitudes of local politics and growing fears of witchcraft, as Prynne would discover in 1638 and 1645.

Puritan scruples In 1638 the corporation brought Mark Prynne before the town’s court, due to accusations that Prynne was conjuring and using harmful magic. The town’s strict puritan recorder Miles Corbet sought to use Prynne’s astrological knowledge as evidence of Prynne’s use of damnable magic. It was Miles Corbet’s puritanism that brought him into conf lict with the amateur astrologer since Prynne was a tenant of the town’s conformist minister Matthew Brooks who had challenged Miles Corbet over his support for puritan nonconformity. Corbet’s prosecution of Prynne represented a puritan attempt to cleanse Great Yarmouth of magical beliefs previously thought conformable. By 1638 Great Yarmouth was dominated by a group of truculent puritans who made up much of the town’s governing corporation. Puritans were strict protestants who sought a “purer” faith based on the Bible alone and they opposed the domination of the Church of England by the Laudian clergy who sought to make the Church more decorative and ceremonial. The town’s minister Matthew Brooks had pushed through Laudian reforms to the town’s Church since 1635, which included moving the pulpit and added stained glass to the church.19 In 1637, Brooks investigated the smuggling of seditious books into Great Yarmouth by the nonconformist Jeremiah Burroughs and William Greenhill to individuals linked to the conventicle and Miles Corbet.20 Brooks’s militant support for Laudianism polarized the town’s citizenry, leading to tension between the ministry and the town’s corporation. Miles Corbet was the second son of Sir John Corbet, a baronet from Sprowston. He matriculated at Christ’s College, Cambridge in 1612, attended Lincoln’s Inn

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in 1615, and was called before the bar in 1623.21 Corbet had become the town’s recorder in 1625, a role that encompassed that of town clerk, legal expert, and judge.22 He also undertook this role for the King’s Lynn’s and Aldeburgh’s corporations.23 He was chosen as one of the town’s MPs for Parliaments between 1628 and 1660, becoming one of the regicides in 1649. Corbet had highly reformed religious sensibilities and showed support for both the town’s puritan elite and to more radical Congregationalists in the Netherlands and Great Yarmouth.24 Corbet was accused during the British Civil Wars of being a “most stiffe Cathedrall hater,” a utopian of “no religion,” and whose “fir’d zeal” lead to his cruelty to toothless, aged ministers.25 His godly faith led him to pursue Mark Prynne through the town’s courts. In January 1638 Prynne faced charges of using charms to locate goods lost by the sailor John Sparke.26 The Tolhouse was the town’s gaol and court, and was situated to the south-west of Yarmouth, overlooking the haven and the main trading quays. It was a building that sought “authority and control” and the power of the town’s corporation was represented symbolically through control of space.27 The building itself was 400 years old in 1625 and was originally a two-storey high merchant’s house. The corporation had renovated the Tolhouse between 1619 and 1622 in a more elegant Jacobean style, with a finely built f lint frontage and limestone edging over brick. To make the building more suitable for meetings of the assembly and for the borough sessions the corporation had installed a raised dais.28 The Tolhouse’s ground f loor acted as the town’s gaol and on the day of their trial the accused were transferred to the court on the first f loor. Miles Corbet, as the recorder, was crucial to good government as “one discrete man learned in the law of England” who acted as the town’s chief legal adviser and magistrate in court cases.29 The town clerk assisted Corbet in this role. These two made up a quarter of the town’s eight justices of the peace, along with the current and previous year’s bailiffs, and two other aldermen. These would act as the bench during the twice-yearly borough sessions held in the Tolhouse, supporting a jury of eight freemen drawn from members of the town’s corporation.30 The officers of the court were also drawn from the members of the town’s puritan elite, giving a friendly audience to Corbet’s puritan argument that Prynne was conjuring. According to the poet John Taylor, Corbet had “no proof but a Book of Circles found in his [Prynne’s] Study, which Miles said was a Book of Conjuring.” Corbet’s allegation of conjuring was a vital attack on Prynne because he was stating that the art of astrology was a form of demonic magic, which was punishable by death. The book of circles Corbet referred to was “an old almanac,” likely The Greater and Lesser Keys of Solomon or The Picatrix.31 The connection made between astrology and witchcraft was nothing new. The contemporary astrologer John Gadbury blamed “pretenders” for critics connecting astrologers to magicians and necromancers. William Lilly sought to reject the “darke Sentences of Oracles” being put on astrologers.32 Corbet sought to argue that Prynne’s power to prognosticate emerged from the “conjuring” of spirits. In 1645 Corbet read the use of

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astrological terms as a summoning of demons. Corbet described the almanac as “damnable and dangerous” because of its astrological content. Corbet described regular astrological terms including “each Celestiall House” and “pictures of the Bull, Beare, Goat and Lyon” and the “names of Lucifer, and of Oryon” as demonic, showing how Corbet was ignorant of the stars and constellations. More controversial were the “names Albumazer, Copernicus, Rombombonax, and Mephostophilus.” Abumazer was the Persian astrologer Abu Ma’shar, Copernicus was a noted astronomer, although with limited interest in astrology, and the devil Mephistopheles, mixing astrological and demonic references to create the image of a “conjurer.”33 The demonic connection Miles Corbet made was dangerous because it was accusations of conjuring that made astrology a crime. In 1645, he was accused of practising sorcery by finding lost objects and the crime of maleficia or harmful magic against the goldsmith John Howlett and his son, as well as consorting with spirits.34 The 1563 witchcraft act stated that the “use, practise, or exercise [of ] any Witchcraft, Enchantment, Charm, or Sorcery, whereby any person shall happen to be killed or destroyed” was a felony punishable by death.35 Therefore allegations sought to prove that those accused had caused harm using “malas diabolicas Artes Anglice vocat witchcraft.”36 The Witchcraft Act of 1604 added the “practise or exercise [of ] any Invocation or Conjuration of any evill and wicked Spirit to or for any intent or purpose” as a felony worthy of death.37 Prynne was accused of using diabolical spirits, which fell under the purview of the 1604 act and which could be evidenced in court.38 There were further accusations specifically against Mark Prynne that his use of “charms, incantations and sorceries were criminal.” It was also criminal that his customer John Sparke travelled south to the nearby town of Gorleston in search of a felt hat due to Prynne’s advice.39 These accusations were serious, and if Prynne was convicted he would face the death penalty. The accusations against Prynne were in part a response to Prynne’s close connection to the town’s Caroline conformist ministry.40 Prynne’s tenancy had been granted by Matthew Brooks.41 Brooks had long struggled against the town’s puritans since his arrival in Great Yarmouth in 1630. In December 1631 Brooks had marched into town’s church and read the 1627 injunctions against puritan minister Brinsley, leading to Brooks’s arrest by the members of the town’s corporation Henry Davy, Thomas Greene, Ezekiel Harris, and the recorder Miles Corbet.42 In January 1632 Brooks sent a petition against Brinsley to King Charles, which was supported by the dean and chapter of Norwich. When it was brought before the king in March of that year, the king sided with Brooks and ordered Brinsley’s dismissal, the closing of the town’s Dutch chapel where Brinsley had preached, and the arrest of those who had arrested Brooks, including Miles Corbet.43 In 1637 their feud deepened as Brooks attacked Miles Corbet for harbouring two émigré nonconformist ministers smuggling illegal pamphlets into the town.44 The conf lict between Corbet and Brooks was responsible for Corbet’s willingness to see Prynne as a spiritual threat. This shows how political and religious concerns could inf lect accusations, as they had in Rye where a similar political

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and religious struggle had led to witchcraft accusations against a fortune teller.45 Prynne’s connection to Brooks made him a target for the zealous Corbet. Miles Corbet’s prosecution of Mark Prynne shows how astrology had a complex place in puritan understanding. Corbet connected astrology to conjuring by alleging that Prynne’s esoteric knowledge was evidence of his communing with demons. Prynne’s practice of judicial astrology for the discovery of lost items was the initial source of the accusation, but the knowledge contained within Prynne’s almanac Corbet felt was the strongest argument that Prynne was conjuring. Corbet’s support for the accusations was grounded in fears that royal court-connected individuals were corrupted. However, despite Corbet’s position and his deployment of the evidence of the almanac, the town’s conformist ministers rescued Prynne from prosecution as the jury found Corbet unconvincing. However, in 1645 Corbet would once more attempt to convict Prynne as a witch, this time during a wider witch-panic.

The 1645 witch-hunt The goldsmith John Howlett accused Mark Prynne on 22 April 1645 of bewitching Howlett and his son John.46 This was part of the much larger witch-hunt in Great Yarmouth, where 11 people were accused of witchcraft. Once again, Miles Corbet was acting as recorder and sought to prosecute the case against Prynne. However, the Water Poet John Taylor used the case to castigate Miles Corbet for treating astrology as a demonic menace rather than a con trick. Taylor used the case and Miles Corbet’s role in it as part of a wider polemical attack on Corbet’s competence. In the seven years following the initial accusation, Great Yarmouth had been transformed by the British Civil Wars. With the collapse of the episcopate, the Laudian minister Matthew Brooks was removed and replaced by the puritan John Brinsley. However, when the war erupted, Great Yarmouth was not immune from its effects. The country divided between royalists who backed the king, and parliamentarians who backed Parliament. Puritan towns like Great Yarmouth backed Parliament and Miles Corbet represented the town in both short and long Parliaments, gaining his reputation as a stiff cathedral hater. The conf lict divided Great Yarmouth as religious radicals and economic distress divided the town. Witchcraft accusations over the summer of 1645 came when the town’s elite was under strain from economic distress and religious divisions. The British Civil wars unsettled urban communities. The success of Fairfax’s New Model Army came at the cost of the inf luence of local associations who had been previously been a vital part of the Association system and could not resist demands for increased funding to maintain the New Model. The impoverishment of Great Yarmouth’s fishermen to privateering and the consequent difficulties in collecting taxation and supplying charity undermined the authority of the town’s corporation. In February 1645, members of the corporation ordered the creation of a list of ships lost by the town since the “Towne and Inhabitant[es] are

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greatly impoverished by losses at Sea.”47 The fear of separatist and independent congregations worried the town’s ministers and members of the corporation, who sought to quash nonconformity. The corporation’s support for the witchhunt shows how members of the corporation perceived investigating and punishing witchcraft as a means of healing the divisions within Great Yarmouth. The town’s magistrates could prove their authority over the demonic forces, which for Miles Corbet included Mark Prynne. Miles Corbet’s attempt to convict Prynne was infamous enough to be included as part of John Taylor’s broadside A Briefe Relation of the Idiotismes and Absurdities of Miles Corbet, Esquire, Councellor at Law, Reorder and Burgesse for Great Yarmouth, published in 1646. The poet and wit had long been a feature of London life, but the civil wars radicalized his writings, leading to a series of political squibs or short satirical poems in support of the king and decrying Parliament.48 John Taylor was a former London waterman and had been ill-disposed towards Corbet ever since Taylor had been arrested and interrogated in November 1642. Taylor was interrogated by both Corbet and the Lord May of London for seditious words against the five members.49 This, along with Taylor’s subsequent career producing polemical and satirical royalist squibs aimed at parliamentarian hypocrisy meant that Taylor was keen to challenge Miles Corbet, notably in a satirical speech attributed to Corbet.50 Taylor attacked Corbet’s legal expertise and character, showing how he could make the “guiltlesse guilty, guilty guiltlesse.”51 Taylor sought to undermine Corbet’s authority because he disliked Corbet personally and due to his role within the parliamentarian regime in London. Corbet not only chaired the committee that had prepared a bill against scandalous ministers in 1641, but also the committee for examinations, and the committee that drew up charges against Archbishop Laud.52 Taylor’s cynicism regarding astrology was likely a product of the first civil war. During the war he “damned the parliamentary astrologers’ for their role in decreeing Parliament’s success had ordained by the stars, and he had contested parliamentarian almanacs in print.53 A Briefe Relation of the Idiotismes and Absurdities of Miles Corbet, Esquire, Councellor at Law, Reorder and Burgesse for Great Yarmouth is an 18-page pamphlet poem that lists 11 “idiotisms,” of which Corbet’s prosecution of Mark Prynne is the sixth. Taylor initially described Miles Corbet’s character, his religious views, and allegations of political corruption.54 Taylor’s list of Corbet’s “idiotisms” included having a dog presented to the sessions to accusing a man of stealing his own goods.55 Corbet’s attack on Mark Prynne provided an example of the recorder’s injustice, credulity, and ignorance that Taylor deployed to make the MP look ridiculous and ridicule the recorder’s puritan beliefs. In 1645, Miles Corbet made a serious effort to convict Prynne, going further than he had in 1638 to ensure the astrologer’s conviction for witchcraft. Corbet arrested Prynne ahead of the trial and collected evidence by searching Prynne’s library for dangerous books. Taylor believed that Corbet had personally committed Prynne to gaol ahead of the borough sessions and sought evidence of Prynne’s guilt through a search of Prynne’s study.56 When the searchers discovered a copy

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of Moulsons Almanack, “A Book of merry fortune telling, with the formes of Dice, Starres, etc.” they brought it to Corbet. According to Taylor, Corbet declared that “this is the Book the knave doth conjure by, this wicked book shall help him to a check, that at this Sessions now will break his neck.” Prynne’s astrological knowledge was a threat to his survival, his knowledge deployed to prove that Prynne was conjuring. Rather than accept Prynne as a legitimate astrologer or a demonically inspired conjurer, Taylor instead argued that he was a con man. According to Taylor, Prynne was a “juggling cunning man of fame, a nick-named conjurer” whose skills in astrology were used to “many folks to cheat” through his ability to recite the technical terms and jargon of astrology including “fiends and planets,” “wherefore the Country Folkes admir’d his Art.”57 Cynicism had been part of the response to astrology throughout the early modern period, but here satire was part of the process of deriding both Prynne’s career and Corbet’s beliefs, condemning astrology and puritan witchcraft beliefs as superstition to denigrate both.58 Taylor explained that “an understanding man,” the minister Thomas Cheshire, countered Corbet’s argument. As mentioned above, Thomas Cheshire had been Matthew Brooks’s assistant during the 1630s, and both had suffered “contempt and disgrace” from the town’s puritan “Bailiffes and Governo[urs].”59 During his time as an assistant minister between 1630 and 1638 bailiffs and governors had accused Thomas Cheshire of having a “debauched and disorderly life,” and leading puritan alderman, Henry Davy, accused Cheshire of being a scurvy or salty fellow.60 Cheshire had allegedly been caught in Yarmouth’s narrow rows, the short streets than ran up and down Great Yarmouth, by women and other townsfolk, where they “many tymes jostled him and runn their elbowes against his backe and spit.”61 This campaign of intimidation proved effective and Cheshire was “forced to desist” and left Great Yarmouth in 1638.62 His return to speak on behalf of Mark Prynne meant he was a loud antipuritan voice speaking against Miles Corbet and arguing against the belief that Prynne’s astrology had power was a means to undermine Corbet. Thomas Cheshire stood up in court to defend Prynne by arguing for the mundane nature of Prynne’s collection. Cheshire did “the substance of the book did strait explaine” as not possible for magic use, and so appealed to the jury to find Prynne innocent.63 Taylor said that Cheshire showed that “the substance of the book … to be as farre from Maister Corbets talke as Oatmeale is from egges, or cheese from chalk” because it was insufficient to allow conjuring.64 As a result Prynne was found not guilty and “escap’s a Popham Check” and Taylor sarcastically remarked that “there the learn’d Recorder gain’d much credit.” Here, Taylor used the failure of the trial and Prynne’s fake astrology to undermine Corbet’s reputation in contrast to the educated Cheshire. The 1645 trial of Mark Prynne highlights the point at which three approaches to astrology met and challenged one another. For Prynne and his customers, astrology was part of wider historical and medical knowledge with practical outputs. Despite the second set of accusations against him, Prynne continued

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to work as an astrologer, and even the corporation used his skills as a medical expert. However, for Corbet, Prynne’s astrological and esoteric knowledge was a sign of his ability to conjure. The almanacs and astrological guides were evidence of a nefarious and demonic purpose. Finally, for the satirist John Taylor, Prynne was nothing but a con man, his knowledge a means of tricking Norfolk rustics of their wealth. In Taylor’s eyes, Corbet’s credulity was another sign of his backwardness and idiotic nature, his work looking forward to the more cynical takes on witchcraft and the ridiculing of witch-finders of Samuel Butler in Hudibras.

Conclusion The accusations against Mark Prynne represent a dramatic expression of the differing approaches to astrology seen in the late Caroline period and the British Civil Wars. Despite the two failures of accusations against Prynne, he falls from the records. His place in history remains the intersection of different visions of astrology and the controversies that caused. For many residents of Great Yarmouth already reliant on almanacs, Prynne’s astrology provided a vital service, able to discover lost items and cure illnesses. During the 1630s witchcraft became an active part of the political discourse, used as a means of criticism of Charles I’s church.65 Astrology, as a white magic with a connection to the court, became a target for puritan reformers as a dangerous form of magic. In Great Yarmouth the recorder Miles Corbet repeatedly attacked Prynne in court for conjuring, tying Prynne’s esoteric knowledge to the summoning of demons. John Taylor’s repudiation of Corbet’s allegations by arguing that Prynne’s astrological ability was merely a fakery was used to demonstrate that Corbet was ill-educated and a fool. By rejecting Corbet’s allegations as fantasy, Taylor was rejecting the puritans’ claim to power over witches and their ability to exorcize the community. The cultural debate over astrology had become a part of the wider battle for England’s soul in the middle of the seventeenth century and prefigured the growing cynicism of the Restoration.

Notes 1 Norfolk Record Office, Norwich [hereafter NRO], Y/C19/7, f. 71. 2 NRO, Y/S1/2, ff. 194–6. 3 Annabel Gregory, “Witchcraft, Politics and ‘Good Neighbourhood’ in Early Seventeenth-Century Rye,” Past & Present 133 (1991): 31–66; Jonathan Lumby, The Lancashire Witch Craze: Jennet Preston and the Lancashire Witches, 1612 (Preston: Carnegie Publishing, 1995). 4 Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 458–9. 5 Robert Tittler, “The English Fishing Industry in the Sixteenth Century: The Case of Great Yarmouth,” Albion 9 (1977): 40–60.; A. R. Michell, “The Port and Town of Great Yarmouth and Its Economic and Social Relationships with Its Neighbours on Both Sides of the Seas 1550–1714: An Essay in the History of the North Sea Economy” (1978), unpub. PhD Thesis, University of Cambridge.

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6 NRO, Y/C2/12. 7 NRO, Y/C19/6, f. xii. 8 John Browne, History of Congregationalism and Memorials of the Churches in Norfolk and Suffolk (London: Jarrold And Sons, 1877), 73–7, 122–32. 9 William Lilly, Mr. William Lilly’s History of His Life and Times (London: J. Roberts, 1715), 12; Ann Geneva, Astrology and the Seventeenth Century Mind: William Lilly and the Language of the Stars (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), 47–9, 64–5. 10 Alison A. Chapman, “Marking Time: Astrology, Almanacs, and English Protestantism,” Renaissance Quarterly 60, no. 4 (2007): 1257–90; Paul Kléber Monod, Solomon’s Secret Arts: The Occult in the Age of Enlightenment (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 2013); Geneva, Astrology and the Seventeenth Century Mind, 47–9, 64–5. 11 John Gough Nichols, Narratives of the Days of the Reformation Chiefly from the Manuscripts of John Foxe the Martyrologist; With Two Contemporary Biographies of Archbishop Cranmer (London: Camden Society, 1859), 334. 12 Bernard Capp, ‘Le Neve, Jeffrey (1579–1653)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [hereafter ODNB]; Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS. Ashmole 418; Bernard Capp, Astrology and the Popular Press: English Almanacs, 1500–1800 (London: Faber And Faber, 1979), 371. 13 Capp, Astrology and the Popular Press, 42–3. 14 John Taylor, A Briefe Relation of the Gleanings of the Idiotismes and Absurdities of Miles Corbet (London: n.p., 1646), 8. 15 Capp, Astrology and the Popular Press, 27. 16 NRO, Y/S/1/2, ff. 194–6; Taylor, A Briefe Relation, 9. 17 NRO, Y/C19/7, f. 61. 18 Michael MacDonald, “The Career of Astrological Medicine in England,” in Religio Medici: Medicine and Religion in Seventeenth-Century England, ed., Ole Peter Grell and Andrew Cunningham (Aldershot, England: Scolar Press, 1996), 62–90. 19 Bodl., MS. Tanner 68, f. 15; NRO, Y/C19/6, f. 359. 20 Ibid., f. 283. 21 Chris Kyle, ‘Corbet, Miles (1595–1662), of Lincoln’s Inn, London and Great Yarmouth, Norf,’ History of Parliament Online, eds., Andrew Thrush and John P. Ferris, www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1604–1629/member/corbetmiles-1595–1662 (2010). 22 NRO, Y/C19/5, f. 336; Sarah Barber, ‘Corbett, Miles (1594/5–1662)’, ODNB; Doctor Williams’s Library, Harmer 76.3, ff. 193–4. 23 Nicholas Fenwick Hele, Notes and Jottings about Aldeburgh, Suffolk: Relating to Matters Historical, Antiquarian, Ornithological and Entomological (London: J. R. Smith, 1870), 42–4; Harmon Le Strange, Norfolk Official Lists from the Earliest Period to the Present Day (A.H. Goose: Norwich, 1890), 200. 24 Bodleian Library, MS. Tanner 68, f. 283; NRO, Y/C/19/7, f. 78; NRO, Y/FC31/1, f. 11. 25 Taylor, A Briefe Relation, 2, 7, 14. 26 NRO, Y/S/1/2, ff. 91–5. 27 Robert Tittler, Architecture and Power: The Town Hall and the English Urban Community, c. 1500–1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 89–128. 28 Henry Manship and Charles John Palmer, The History of Great Yarmouth (Great Yarmouth: Printed for The Editor, 1847), 60–1. 29 Perry Gauci, Politics and Society in Great Yarmouth, 1660–1722 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 49–50; Swinden, Yarmouth, 714. 30 NRO, Y/S2/1, f. 191. 31 John Taylor, Persecutio Undecima: The Churches Eleventh Persecution: Or, a Briefe of the Puritan Persecution of the Protestant Clergy of the Church of England: More Particularly within the City of London, (London, 1648), 17. 32 Geneva, Astrology and the Seventeenth Century Mind, 10.

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33 Taylor, Brief Relation, 9; Clark, Thinking with Demons, 459. 34 NRO, Y/S/1/2, ff. 91–5, 194–6. 35 Marion Gibson, “Witchcraft in the Courts,” in Witchcraft and Society in England and America, 1550–1750, ed., Marion Gibson (London: Continuum, 2006), 3–4. 36 NRO, Y/S1/2, f. 199. 37 Gibson, “Witchcraft in the Courts,” 6. 38 NRO, Y/S1/2, f. 199. 39 ibid, ff. 191, 193, 196. 40 NRO, Y/S/1/2, ff. 91–5. 41 Bodleian Library, MS. Tanner 68, f. 323. 42 Henry Swinden, The History and Antiquities of the Ancient Burgh of Great Yarmouth, in the County of Norfolk: Collected from the Corporation, Charters, Records, and Evidences, and Other Most Authentic Materials (Norwich: John Crouse, 1772), 849. 43 Swinden, Yarmouth, 848–850; The National Archives, PC2/41, 364–5, 379. 44 Bodleian Library, Tanner MS 68, f. 283. 45 Gregory, “Witchcraft, Politics and ‘Good Neighbourhood’,” 47–9. 46 NRO, Y/S1/2, f. 197. 47 NRO, Y/C19/7, f. 60. 48 Bernard Capp, ‘Taylor, John [called the Water Poet] (1578–1653), poet,’ ODNB. 49 Bernard Capp, The World of John Taylor the Water-Poet, 1578–1653 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), 150. 50 Capp, The World of John Taylor the Water-Poet, 180, 184; John Taylor, A Most Learned and Eloquent Speech, Spoken or Delivered in the Honourable House of Commons at Westminster, by the Most Learned Lawyer, Miles Corbet, Esq. Recorder of Great Yarmouth, and Burgess of the Same, on the Thirty-First of July, 1647 (London, 1681). 51 Taylor, Brief Relation, 3. 52 Barber, ‘Corbett, Miles (1594/1595–1662)’. 53 Capp, The World of John Taylor the Water-Poet, 179. 54 Taylor, Brief Relation, 2-4. 55 Ibid., 4, 6. 56 Ibid., 8. 57 Ibid., 9. 58 Keith Thomas, Religion and Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in 16th and 17th Century England (London: Weidenfeld And Nicolson, 1971), 352; Capp, Astrology and the Popular Press, 33. 59 House of Lords Record Office, London [Hereafter the HLRO], HL/PO/JO/10/1/60, f. 104. 60 Ibid., f. 106. 61 Ibid., f. 104. 62 Ibid., f. 105. 63 Taylor, Briefe Relation, 9. 64 Ibid., 7–9. 65 Peter Elmer, Witchcraft, Witch-Hunting, and Politics in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), chs. 3–4.

16 A WITCHCRAFT TRIANGLE Transmitting witchcraft ideas across early modern Europe Liv Helene Willumsen

Introduction This essay deals with the transmission of ideas about witchcraft within early modern Europe. The research question I pose is how the circulation of specific witchcraft ideas between three places in early modern Europe – the Trier region in Germany,1 Edinburgh in the East Lothian area of Scotland with the North Berwick trials, and Vardø in the district of Finnmark in Northern Norway – happened. These ideas about witchcraft were related to the learned European doctrine of demonology: the intellectual study of demons and their powers. This doctrine gained a foothold in Europe from the fifteenth until the seventeenth century. My hypothesis is that the first occurrences of demonological witchcraft trials in these three locations were inf luenced by demonological ideas transmitted from one area to another. Germany, Scotland, and Finnmark turned out to be extreme when it came to the intensity of witchcraft trials, as pointed out by Julian Goodare in his book The European Witch-Hunt.2 I argue that the transfer of demonological ideas from South-Western Germany to North Europe took place within a triangle constituted by lines drawn between Trier, North Berwick, and Vardø, as shown on the map (see Map 16.1). On this map, there are continuous lines and dotted lines. The continuous lines mark the direct connection between Trier, Edinburgh with the North Berwick trials, and Vardø: three European places of interest when it comes to the first appearance of demonological ideas in the early modern witch-hunt. A possible route for transmission of witchcraft ideas runs directly from Trier to North Berwick and is marked as number 1 on the map. Another possible route, marked with number 2 on the map, went from Scotland to Vardø directly. However, there are also other possibilities, and this is why the dotted lines are drawn and the numbers 3, 4, and 5 have been inserted. One possible route, marked with

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MAP 16.1

Map of a witchcraft triangle, with lines running between Trier in Germany, Copenhagen in Denmark, North Berwick in Scotland, and Vardø in Norway. © Liv Helene Willumsen.

numbers 3 and 4 and the dotted lines connecting these, runs from Trier to Scotland via Copenhagen. Another runs from Trier to Vardø via Copenhagen as well, marked by the number 5 and the dotted line. All these possibilities will be discussed in what follows. The three places were chosen because, in those three locations with surroundings, the first demonological ideas appear in witchcraft records. In that sense, they were “pristine” areas. Even if demonological witchcraft trials later took place, the aim of this essay is to trace the first occurrence of these ideas in the regions mentioned and examine their spread between the trial locations in question. In the Trier region, including the Prince-Abbey of St Maximin, severe witch-hunts strongly inf luenced by demonological ideas started around 1586.3 In Scotland, the first demonological ideas appeared in the North Berwick trials of 1590–1591 and in Vardø likewise in 1620–1621. Hence, in three European regions located far from one another, the same demonological ideas appeared within an interval of around 10 years between Trier and North Berwick and an interval of around 30 years between North Berwick and Vardø. The connection

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between these three areas is of great interest in understanding how the transmission of witchcraft ideas between these areas might have happened. By bridging South-Western Germany and North Europe, this essay contributes to a novel body of knowledge within the field of cultural exchanges related to demonological ideas about witchcraft, adding to research presented in Demonology and Witch-Hunting in Early Modern Europe.4

Methodology This essay will discuss how the circulation of demonological witchcraft ideas occurred in different levels of society, in written as well as oral form. I employ an interdisciplinary approach, combining transcultural and transnational history with close reading of court records from a linguistic and narratological lens. Macro- and micro-studies complement each other, shedding light on ideas’ paths of transference. Transcultural history deals with the transference of ideas, beliefs, and imaginations from one cultural area to another.5 This study concentrates on the intellectual production of demonological ideas. It highlights their appearance and route across Europe via printed books, diplomatic correspondence, and travelling individuals.6 In addition, demonological ideas related to the prosecution of witches will be studied, with a focus on linguistic findings and narrative discourse. The essay’s objectives are fourfold: first, to explore how demonological ideas about witchcraft were transmitted via printed literature. Second, to examine the royal and diplomatic correspondence between the countries in question related to ideas about witchcraft. Third, to study the activities of travelling individuals who took part in the transmission of demonological ideas. Fourth, to study the first occurrence of demonological ideas in witchcraft trials in Trier, Copenhagen, Edinburgh with the North Berwick trials, and Vardø. The objectives represent a meeting point between an ideological level, a level representing the personal factor, and a level representing primary judiciary sources. With regard to the first objective: for a reading European audience, laws, sermon books, witchcraft pamphlets, witchcraft narratives in printed books, and witchcraft tracts and broadsheets were available. Pamphlets, tracts, and broadsheets managed to reach many ordinary people who could not read. They were read aloud, and thus spread in places were people gathered. The content of this type of printed material thus entered into a niche of society where further oral transference was easy. As for transfer of ideas from Trier to Copenhagen, the sources are scarce, while from Copenhagen to Scotland to Vardø, the sources are rich. Royal and diplomatic correspondence, the exchange of letters provides a glimpse of the mindset and ideas and knowledge of officials related to royal and state circles: royals, councillors, diplomats, and envoys. State papers, unprinted material at the time, played a vital role in the transmission of ideas. Finally, travelling individuals transferred or retold a f low of ideas. The personal factor, or nexus of articulation, plays an important role in transference.

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Travellers might have been tradesmen, noblemen, other people belonging to the elite, vagabonds, soldiers, or pilgrims.7 Among other ways, the transmission of ideas happened with the help of people who moved from one place to another and could introduce ideas orally to the local communities they moved to. This directionality in transnational history is called histoire croisée.8 The close reading of court records will document the first occurrence of demonological ideas in the selected locations. My methodological approach is based on Gérard Genette’s works on narrative discourse,9 looking at voices, linguistic details, and the context of the trials.10

The beginning: Witchcraft trials in Trier From 1585 until 1596, an intense wave of witchcraft persecution took place in the Trier region and the nearby territory of the Imperial Abbey of St Maximin, in which around 400 people were executed.11 A first trial occurred in St Maximin in 1572, before the massive wave of persecution started well over a decade later. Das Hexenregister des Claudius Musiel documents 306 names of executed individuals, of whom 275 hailed from St Maximin.12 The confessions, stemming from the witch trials in St Maximin, included central demonological ideas. I have chosen for close reading the trial of Susanna Grethen Sundtgen from Fell because the records are rich and give access to central demonological ideas. In 1588, she was imprisoned for witchcraft.13 She initially denied and was handed to the executioner for light torture. Afterwards, she confessed that the devil had come to her in the shape of the man she cohabited with without being married. He differed from her partner in his feet, hands, and Natur, and he was wearing black clothes. He promised her money if she would follow him, and since she was a weak woman, she believed in him and renounced God Almighty and God’s mother, as the devil had demanded, and then submitted herself to him. Then, the devil with hairy hands scraped the Krisam, the baptism mark, off her forehead, and she had sexual intercourse with him. He gave her roses, which turned into dirt, and when she complained, he said that he had fooled many. He said that his name was Heβlic [the ugly one], and her name Rose. He came back to have his will with her. Susanna Grethen allegedly has been taken by the devil in the shape of a billy goat through the air, clinging to his hair, to a dance in Lonquicher Hagen. She sat on the left side of the billy goat and rode in the name of the devil. All those who came, turned to the left in the name of the devil. Many expensively dressed people from Trier had been present. A piper had played on a piece of wood. They had to give the piper a coin, and if they did not have one, they had to blow the piper in his rectum. They ate and drank from a silver cup, and the food was unsalted. The wine had come in a cask, and she did not know who filled it. Finally, they were content to destroy everything: wine, grain, fields, and other things. The richest had started, and the poorer followed, otherwise they would have been beaten. To perform evil deeds, they took the broom, dipped it in a

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smearing vessel in the devil’s name, and made cold, fog, rain, and weather. The first time the devil met Susanna Grethen, he had given her a black unguent, which she was to use when she wanted to go to a dance or perform witchcraft. She had burned her smearing vessel the day before she got arrested, because she had been warned she would be arrested. She had ridden on a broom several times to Hetzerauer Heiden and Lonquicher Hagen; she smeared the broom with the black salve and sat on the left side. At the Fronfasten,14 the participants had to gather at the dancing place, and they were content when they destroyed everything. Sometimes they were successful, other times not. If they could not come to the dancing place, they had to give their consent to all evil deeds which were planned at the witches’ meeting. Susanna Grethen had tried her black salve on her cat, which died. The devil had forbidden her to go to church and to confess, and when she did this, he beat her with his hairy hands. She should not receive the Lord’s Supper, but if she was forced to do it, she should not eat it, only put it in her smearing vessel. She had done this twice. She also said that when she recited this prayer: “Soul of Christ, hallow me, Body of Christ, salve me”, the devil could not come to her for three days, and do nothing with her, and every time she prayed this prayer, she could receive the sacrament; otherwise, she could not. Once she had been angry with a man and had given him a drink so that he should die; however, she did not succeed because he was blessed. She had given the same drink to her own cow, which died. She had also fulfilled the wish of another woman and created the weather on Marx’s Day, when hail stones fell from heaven in the city of Trier. With her were three other women. Susanna Grethen had also given a woman permission to kill a horse; when those who first tried did not manage, they killed a pig instead. Last Lent at the dancing place they had been content to have destroyed wine, grain, and fields; everything that the poor had asked for. At Lörscher Heiden, a woman played for them on a long piece of wood. She had often given a woman permission to perform evil. Four years ago, she had given the same woman permission to create bad weather on St Laurentius Eve. Susanna Grethen Sundtgen was accused in a witchcraft panic, successive trials during a concentrated period of time. She confessed after “light” torture and denounced 23 accomplices, who had been to witches’ dances. Further, she denounced all those from Lonquich and Kirsch who had been executed.15 Susanna Grethen was sentenced to execution “by fire from life to death”. In 1589, there was also a trial in the city of Trier against the former Stadtschultheiß Dr Dietrich Flade, who was executed.16 This is a St Maximin version of the demonological narrative, which was widespread in Europe and contains central demonological ideas: the devil’s pact, witches’ sabbath, and collective performance of witchcraft. The narrative is spiced up with fascinating details, facilitating transference, and numerous people were denounced. For example, Maria of Kirsch, who was denounced by Susanna Grethen, denounced 13 people.17 Georgen Engel of Lörsch denounced

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68 people.18 Torture was considered necessary to force a witchcraft confession, according to the emperor Charles V’s law code Carolina.19 Rita Voltmer provides the following factors as possible reasons for the panic in St Maximin: ongoing wars, a crisis scenario, existential distress, the impact of Counter-Reformation, the population’s willingness to persecute witches, and demonological ideas about people who had sworn allegiance to the devil.20 Voltmer emphasizes the effect of torture.21 In St Maximin, there was also a conf lict about immediate superiority22 related to the witch-hunt. Wolfgang Behringer points to dramatic climate change and famine in the 1560s and 1570s, plagues in the 1580s and 1590s, and a huge fear that grabbed hold of the European population.23 As early as the 1430s, during the Council of Basel, two scripts outlining the demonological witch emerged. One was the tract Errores gazariorum seu illorum qui scopam vel baculum equitare probantur, 1435, and the other Johann Nider’s work Formicarius, written in 1437 and published in Venice in 1475.24 A decade later, Heinrich Institoris’s Malleus Maleficarum, published in Speyer in 1486, became the demonological treatise par excellence. Voltmer and Behringer discuss the inf luential tract of Peter Binsfeld – the suffragan bishop of Trier – titled Tractatus de confessionibus maleficorum et sagarum, published in Latin in 1589, in two German translations in Trier in 1590, and twice in Munich in 1591/1592.25 Both emphasize the spread of ideas through the media.26 In 1589, the first news about the Trier trials circulated via the Fugger handwritten newsletter and the journal of Austrian Michael Aitzinger in Cologne.27 Johannes Dillinger likewise underlines the effect of tracts and pamphlets. The notorious cases from the city of Trier and the St Maximin district, due to the huge numbers of executed persons, helped to establish a paradigm of a new type of persecution inf luencing Northern Europe.28 In addition, trials from South-Western Germany, Switzerland and France, had an impact.29 Literature was also important, with Doctor Faustus published in 1587.30 The circulating printed material also found its way to Denmark.

From Trier to Copenhagen I would first like to have a look at the possible route of transference of demonological ideas from Trier directly to Scotland, marked 1 on the map above. Such a route, which might have passed the Low Countries, the Spanish Netherlands, and the Dutch Republic,31 is interesting because Jean Bodin’s inf luential demonology De la démonomanie des sorciers was published in Antwerp in 1586, after first having been published in Paris in 1580. By 1604, this work had been published ten times. However, demonological ideas never resulted in huge witchcraft panics in the Dutch Republic before 1590: there were three demonological trials in the port of Goedereede in 1585. Torture was used to force confessions.32 Contrary to the Dutch Republic, Flanders and Brabant witnessed a large-scale witch-hunt after 1585.33 Hans de Waardt states that the persecution was mild in both the Dutch Republic and England. The line that divided intense from milder

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witch-hunting was not located in the North Sea but in the Low Countries.34 Therefore, the route marked 1, traversing the Dutch Republic to England and further to Scotland, is less likely. I find the route marked 2 and 3 on the map above – via Copenhagen – the most likely for the transference of demonological ideas between Trier and Scotland. This route went via Cologne and Antwerp before reaching Copenhagen. Rita Voltmer has several times pointed to a vital link between Trier and Copenhagen, namely a tract printed in Cologne in 1589 and translated from German into Dutch in 1589 (Figure 16.1).35 This tract lifts forth the huge numbers of executed persons in the Trier and St Maximin witchcraft trials, however also trials from other Western German areas are mentioned, although in smaller numbers.36 The content of the tract was known throughout Germany and Holland in 1589, and had probably reached Denmark by this year.37 The tract, En Forskreckelig Oc sand bescriffuelse om mange Troldfolck, was published in Copenhagen in 1591.38 Louise Kallestrup has brief ly discussed this tract in an article, pointing to its publication in the wake of witchcraft trials in Copenhagen in 1590–1591.39 I would like to advance this discussion by looking more closely at the content of the tract and the ideas about witchcraft that appeared in the 1590 Copenhagen trials. The main text of the tract consists of 11 printed pages, plus two title pages and one page of illustrations.40 It ends with an inscription of “Stumme Peder’s” (Dumb Peder’s) grave. He is known as the werewolf of Bedburg near Cologne. On the very first text page, Trier is mentioned in relation to execution of men and women for witchcraft in 1589 and 1590. On page 3, the confessions of witches are described: they have entered into a devil’s pact and renounced God and his dear son, and all saints in heaven. In a row of exemplas, central demonological ideas are presented: the devil’s pact, witches’ sabbath with dance and sexual intercourse with demons, performance of collective witchcraft, destroying grain, wine, fruit, and fields. Objects used for witchcraft are dead (sic) bones, snakes, toads, unknown herbs, and witchcraft salve. Among other localities, both Trier and St Maximin are mentioned, and the number of executed emphasized. The favourable reader is told that, in the Kørførstedømme41 of ”Trier and Mosel” (sic), 27042 of this kind of people were burned. Among them was a doctor and lawyer who had been a wealthy man and one of the councillors of the Kørførsten of Trier. His name was Flade. The man had been imprisoned for six months, but when they proved that he was guilty of witchcraft, he excused himself and said that it was just Magia (in Danish): a black art that could not be considered witchcraft, thus he could not be punished for what he had used or done because it was natural and not idolatry. Therefore, he desired to be freed. But the judiciary maintained that he was a councillor for other witches, and therefore Flade was sentenced to be executed. In another village not far from the town of Trier, the document continues, they had burned heaps of such devilish people, both young and old, rich and poor, because they had performed a lot of evil and misery in a monastery called St Maximin on 1 May, so that they certainly destroyed both grain and wine,

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FIGURE 16.1

Title page of the tract Troldfolck, published in Copenhagen 1591 © The Royal Danish Library, Copenhagen. Hielmst. 4153.4ᵒ (LN 40).

which God would not allow, so he revealed it. An old woman, who picked and plucked all leaves that she could get, was found in a vineyard. She was arrested and asked why she did this, and she freely confessed that if she had succeeded, she would have made many a man sorry. She was sentenced and burned like the others.

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The narrator of the tract stresses that it is time to pray to God Almighty both day and night, and that he would give the authorities the heart, courage, and mind to persecute, destroy, and kill such devilish persons, because it would be a pity if hell’s Satan could not be countered. And still, his evil company should not sadden pious people any more. Towards the end of the tract, the narrator mentions that a small script was sent out, in which the devil complains that hell will be too small for him, and therefore he has sent out messengers to get hold of workers to make it bigger. The narrator believes without doubt that he has shown that in the year 1589, and the following years, many witch devils and witches would come. It is wished that God makes it so that the Evil Spirit shall have no place among the people on earth, but is placed in hell’s abyss, where a place is prepared for him and all his companions from the beginning of the world. Amen, the tract ends. The narrator of the tract comes to the fore as an “I” who approaches the reader directly and believes that the devil is no longer in hell but runs around in the world, causing harm. The exemplas are told in the third person and have clear narrative structures. Voice is delegated to the participants. A timeline is established, textual speed and frequency are exploited. Additive sentence structures predominate, and details – like dates and quarter days – are inserted. The narrator reveals a distinct attitude towards what is told. Core demonological ideas are similar to what we heard in the confession of Susanna Grethen Sundtgen. The tract appeared in a tense period. For instance, in Schleswig-Holstein, the persecution of witches notably increased from 1580 onwards. Rolf Schulte has called this a Europe-wide pressure to persecute.43 Behringer mentions the “groβen Angst” haunting the European people.44 Because of the failure of the Danish king’s f leet to take Princess Anne to her groom in Scotland, the atmosphere in Denmark was heated in autumn 1589. When witchcraft trials began in Copenhagen in 1590, rumours about witchcraft had existed for half a year, which can be seen in diplomatic correspondence in which evil omens are mentioned time and again.45 In my opinion, the printing in Cologne in 1589 of the pamphlet containing news about the Trier, St Maximin and Western German witchcraft trials, fuelled the Copenhagen 1590 trials. We also find Danish printed material about witchcraft intended for learned persons, namely Niels Hemmingsen’s Formaning om at sky Trolddomskunsten, published in Latin and Danish in 1575/1576 and in German ten years later.46 According to Hemmingsen’s teaching, witches were real, could cause rain and storms, and had a negative inf luence on male potency. He saw these evildoings as a result of an individual devil’s pact: a witch could not develop her own magical power but received it from the devil and was the devil’s servant. A person could not be a child of both God and the devil.47 Further, he believed that Satan could perform his deeds on earth through witches, and that women, due to their lesser ability to believe in God, were easily tempted by the devil. There is no doubt that Hemmingsen’s doctrine was founded on demonological grounds. However, he denied the witches’ sabbath as well as witches’ ability to f ly, thus following

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Luther. In his interpretation, there was no hidden army of the devil’s accomplices on earth. Hemmingsen advocated for the death sentence for all witches, using the Old Testament citation – a witch should not be allowed to live.48 The treatise was inf luential for decades, as Hemmingsen was Professor of Theology at the University of Copenhagen from 1553 until 1579, when he was dismissed due to diverging theological views, among others on the Lord’s Supper. The many paths of ideas are summarized by Rita Voltmer: Sermons, catechisms, chronicles, travelogues, private and official letters, missionary reports, and many kinds of scientific and literary texts contributed to the circulation of knowledge. Finally, learned, popular, and mixed concepts about the witches’ crimes were transmitted through spoken word, personal contexts, and travelers.49 An interesting example of oral spread is Jens Chr. V. Johansen’s study on the motif of beating a glass drum with two fox tails, originally confessed to in Ribe witchcraft trials. The motif travelled from Barntrup in Germany to Ribe in Denmark, no less than 468 kilometres.50 Several possible transmitters are suggested: merchants, soldiers, oxen drovers, and children. The witchcraft trials in Copenhagen started in April 1590 with Ane Koldings. Eight women were denounced in confessions. The court records or content of the confessions of five trials are preserved.51 Because the court records were archived in the wrong place, they have not been accessible for some time, but I rediscovered them in 2016.52 The accused confess to gathering on Michaelmas in 1589, raising a storm against the Danish royal f leet in the North Sea to prevent Princess Anne from reaching Scotland, and use of personal demons, Apostles, who were sent out to the ships in beer barrels.53 Maren Mads Bryggers confessed to having conferred with the other women “in counsel and deed” at Karen Vævers’s house. Asked what art they intended to perform with the aid of some clay vessels, she responded that she believed they were to bewitch the ships to make sure they would never reach Scotland. As torture was possibly used, Maren confessed that Anne Jespers, Kirsten Söndags, Ane Koldings, Karen Vævers, and herself had gathered in Karen Vævers’s house. There were clay vessels on the table, and they did not want the ships to reach Scotland on the first attempt. She swore to this on her soul and salvation. Several demonological ideas present themselves in the Copenhagen trials: demonic helpers, witches’ gatherings, and collective witchcraft. The demonic helpers, also known from other countries,54 were given to the woman who entered into the devil’s pact, so they are a sign of such a pact. Witches’ gatherings and the performance of collective witchcraft are ideas that were also heard in the confession of Susanna Grethen Sundtgen. The emphasis on the demonic in Copenhagen trials is distinct, but inf luenced by the Danish context. I argue that the witchcraft trials in the city of Trier and in the district of St Maximin in the late 1580s impacted the Copenhagen trials, not only because demonological

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ideas were activated, but also because of the intensity of the Trier trials, which was inf luential around 1590.

From Copenhagen to North Berwick The transference of demonological ideas from Denmark to Scotland is represented by line 4 on the map above. Two calamities were used as evidence that witchcraft was performed in a joint project of witches in Denmark and Scotland: a ferry accident in Scotland and the failure of the Danish f leet. Between autumn 1589 and summer 1590, royal and diplomatic correspondence between Denmark, Scotland, and England repeatedly mentioned witchcraft. There was a feeling of fear and anxiety that something evil was at work. Moreover, a number of travelling messengers helped transmit these ideas.55 One important person who was also a traveller, was King James VI. After a wedding ceremony in Oslo in November 1589, he stayed in Denmark for the winter, leaving for Scotland in April 1590 with knowledge about the ongoing Copenhagen trials. In Denmark, he had met Niels Hemmingsen and the astronomist Tycho Brahe. Hemmingsen’s book on witchcraft had impressed James when he was a boy.56 However, the only topic known from their conversation was the doctrine of predestination.57 The king was very impressed by Tycho Brahe and wrote a poem of praise for him.58 Historians of Scottish witchcraft have studied printed literature on demonology in Scotland before 1590. Christina Larner (née Ross) addresses the theological background in her PhD thesis.59 She mentions awareness of demonological ideas in the early 1500s: John Major being conscious of demonological beliefs in 1521, Boece’s history book with a translation by John Bellenden in 1527/1536, appendices to Pinkerton’s History of Scotland dated 1540, and a catechism by John Hamilton, Archbishop of St Andrews, in 1552.60 Julian Goodare argues that John Knox, the leader of the Reformation in Scotland 1560, was aware of the demonic pact.61 Goodare also states that in Aberdeen in the 1530s, William Hay provided a generally competent overview of demonological witchcraft, probably drawing on either Malleus Maleficarum or other Malleus-inf luenced works.62 A few years after the North Berwick trials, the Preface to James VI’s Daemonologie from 1597 mentions demonologists like Jean Bodin, Hyperius, and Niels Hemmingsen, but also sceptics like Cornelius Agrippa and Wierus.63 Scotland was well aware of Continental ideas. The North Berwick trials, named after an alleged witches’ convention, was held in Edinburgh in 1590–1591, starting with the pre-trial interrogations of Agnes Sampson and Geillis Duncan. These records show that the first question they were asked was about the cooperation between Danish and Scottish witches “in the middle of the firth.”64 This is a continuation of the narrative that emerged in the confessions of Danish witches during the Copenhagen trials in summer 1590, with the addition that Scottish witches participated. King James VI, who knew the Danish trials, was an interrogator during the North Berwick trials, and

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weather magic is initially emphasized. Thus, the king himself was an important travelling individual bringing demonological ideas from Denmark to Scotland. With regard to the court records of the North Berwick trials, the confessions display a Scottish version of the demonological narrative. After torture, Agnes Sampson confesses to renouncing her baptism, entering into the devil’s pact, dancing in the graveyard, digging up bones from the graveyard, and attending a gathering inside the North Berwick kirk with the devil on the pulpit.65 These ideas had never been heard in Scottish witchcraft trials before. During the trial of Agnes Sampson, “the Wise Wife of Keith” was turned into an evil witch, with the monarch of Scotland interrogating her and inserting leading questions. Demonological ideas f lourished and got a new wrapping. The Scottish confessions contained numerous details describing the Evil One and his power, the ritual of entering the devil’s pact – including the Scottish devilish promise “You shall never want” – sexual intercourse with the devil, and several witches’ gatherings with collective evil deeds performed. The mentioning of Michaelmas and quarter days strengthens the narrative’s connection not only to the Danish f leet crossing the North Sea, but also to Trier. Furthermore, political implications were part of these trials and were interwoven with ideas from demonology, traditional witchcraft, and healing, forming a complex discourse. News of the North Berwick trials quickly spread. The pamphlet Newes from Scotland, with information about the North Berwick trials, was published London in 1591. In the surroundings of North Berwick, people learned about dark happenings in their neighbourhood through oral transference. In the rest of Scotland, people learned about the danger of the devil’s snares. However, cultural exchanges also took place outside Scotland’s borders.

From Scotland to Finnmark The personal factor is of utmost importance when it comes to the transference of demonological ideas from Scotland to Vardø in Finnmark, marked with 2 on the map. Together with Arne Kruse, I have studied this transference through a close reading of Scottish and Finnmark court records.66 The ideas travelled with a Scottish person. John Cunningham from Crail in Fife, not far from North Berwick, must have heard about these trials as a young man. Born c. 1575, he was 15 years old when the North Berwick trials started.67 The young Cunningham knew King James VI, who wrote a letter of recommendation for him when he entered into the service of Danish-Norwegian king Christian IV in 1603. He was employed as a naval captain and captained one of the Danish ships on an expedition to Greenland in 1605. Cunningham was installed as district governor in Finnmark, Vardøhus district, in 1619.68 The following year, demonological ideas were heard in a Finnmark witchcraft panic for the first time. Individual witchcraft trials had already started. The period of witch-hunt in Finnmark was 1600–1692, and 91 persons were executed, whereof 84 per cent were women.69 Demonological ideas

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were incorporated in the legal definition of witches by a royal decree issued in 1617, wherein the “true” witches were defined as those who had attached themselves to the devil or who consorted with him.70 This might have inf luenced the Finnmark trials. However, demonological ideas had not been activated in Finnmark trials prior to Cunningham entering office. He took part in the interrogation of suspected witches, and the first woman sentenced to death was Karen Edisdatter in 1620. She was the first accused in a panic that lasted from 1620 to 1621, in which 12 women received death sentences.71 Karen denounced several other women. Demonological ideas appeared in the High North of Europe, echoing the confessions of Susanna Grethen Sundtgen and Agnes Sampson: renouncing the baptism, the devil’s pact, the devil’s mark, witches’ gatherings, and collective witchcraft, including the raising of storms and casting spells on humans and animals. The ideas of shape-shifting, witches’ f light, and a personal demon are found in the Finnmark confessions. Not present, however, is the idea of sexual intercourse with the devil. Cunningham knew about demonological ideas from Scotland. He also knew the Scottish as well as the Danish language. His role in the transference of ideas can be linked to the translation of particular words and expressions during courtroom interrogation, linguistic markers that can be associated with the ideology of the demonologists. Cognate words found in the source material on both sides of the North Sea offer direct evidence for the transmission of certain ideas linked to them. Direct oral transmission traces back to two people, namely the king of Scotland and the “king” of Vardøhus. John Cunningham’s Scandinavianized name rendered in the sources is a play on the word “king”: “Hans König, Hans Køningh, and Hans Køning”.72 The accusations during the 1620–1621 panic had to do with a storm on Christmas Eve in 1617, when 10 boats were shipwrecked and 40 men from the local villages drowned. The demonological ideas, shared by both “kings,” provided a new and learned explanation for the shipwreck tragedy. Two linguistic findings link the North Berwick and Finnmark trials. One is the naval term “admerall and maister man” in the Scottish sources, and “mester och Admiral” in the Finnmark sources.73 The same phrase is applied in the same legal context: the nouns are utilized in a very similar set phrase where only the word order differs, and in both cases the phrase is employed as a metaphor about a woman in charge of a group of witches casting storm over ships at sea.74 The other term is “Ballvollen,” which means a place where ballgames were played. This word is found in court records linked to witches’ gatherings in both Finnmark and Scotland. In the Finnmark sources, Ballvollen refers to a field near Vardø. In Scotland, the word “Ball-Ley” is documented in the trial of Barbara Bowndie, and refers to witches meeting at a field where ball was played.75 It is likely that Cunningham, who knew the word from his Scottish background, introduced “Ballvollen” to the Finnmark courtroom during the interrogation of Kirsten Sørensdatter, 1621, who confessed to the devil’s pact and witches’ gathering after having been threatened with torture and also having undergone

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the water ordeal. Cunningham asked Kirsten Sørensdatter whether she had met other women at “Ballvollen,” translating a word he was acquainted with. For the district governor of Vardøhus, it would have been natural to use his knowledge about where a meeting between witches could take place. The examples point to the importance of mental baggage for both “kings” who interrogated suspects during witchcraft trials in Scotland and Finnmark. Due to this baggage, a region far away from the Continent and the British Isles may contribute to the understanding of early modern European cultural transference.

Conclusion This essay has followed the route of the transference of demonological ideas from South-Western Germany via Denmark and Scotland to Vardø in Finnmark. I argue that information about the intense witchcraft trials taking place in the region of Trier and St Maximin in the last half of the 1580s and demonological ideas in these trials rapidly spread to Northern Europe and created an atmosphere conductive to initiating and intensifying witchcraft trials. Demonological ideas from South-Western Germany are echoed in witchcraft trials from Copenhagen, Edinburgh, and Vardø in Finnmark . The essay has shown that demonological ideas travel in various ways: by printed material, travelling people, diplomatic and royal correspondence, and ideas appearing in witchcraft trials. Through a methodological focus on transcultural history and a close reading of court records, this essay has given evidence for the speedy transference of demonological ideas from country to country. The essay has also pointed to linguistic elements in court records that support the transference of ideas. The essay has shown German, Danish, Scottish, and Finnmark versions of the demonological narrative. On the one hand, the essay promotes a strong argument for the role played by individuals when it comes to cultural transference within transcultural history. The study of the transmission process between countries shows that travellers carry ideas that play an important role in their activities when they enter a new place. When a man in a position of power enters a new office, his ideas have great impact, as we have seen in the case of John Cunningham. When a man with power introduces demonology in witchcraft trials and brings in leading questions during interrogation, this has an impact. On the other hand, cultural exchange happens in multiple other ways, written and oral, and we hear them in the confessions, told and retold in local communities. Trials are started and ideas are introduced by individuals within the judiciary. These ideas must be repeated in the local community’s oral realm in order to be retold as enforced narratives in confessions in new witchcraft trials. The path of demonological ideas, from South-Western Germany via Copenhagen and Scotland to Finnmark, is amazing because it shows how quickly ideas can travel far and wide. They are spread by people who travel with

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ideas as part of their personal baggage. They are spread by books and letters. And they are spread by uncountable retellings, crossing cultural and national boundaries.

Notes 1 The witchcraft persecution in the Trier region as used in this article comprise witchcraft trials in the Electorate of Trier and the Prince-Abbey of St Maximin. In the latter area, at least 400 persons were executed in a panic between 1586 and 1596. Julian Goodare, The European Witch-Hunt (London: Routledge, 2016), 181; Walter Rummel and Rita Voltmer, Hexen und Hexenverfolgung in der Frühen Neuzeit (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellscahft, 2008), 50, 63, 76, 77. 2 Julian Goodare, The European Witch-Hunt (London: Routledge, 2016), 28, 177. 3 These trials are inf luenced by demonological ideas stemming from the Lorraine area in France, which experienced intense witch-hunts between 1570 and 1630. Nicolas Rémy was the key figure in this persecution. Rita Voltmer and Maryse Simon, ‘Judge and Demonologist: Revisiting the impact of Nicolas Rémy on the Lorraine witch trials’, in Julian Goodare, Rita Voltmer and Liv Helene Willumsen (eds.), Demonology and Witch-Hunting in Early Modern Europe (Abingdon, England: Routledge, 2020), 189, 192; Robin Briggs, Witches and Neighbours: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft, 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell), 19–50. 4 Julian Goodare, Rita Voltmer, and Liv Helene Willumsen (eds.), Demonology and Witch-Hunting in Early Modern Europe (Abingdon, England: Routledge, 2020). 5 Heinz-Gerhard Haupt and Jürgen Kocka (eds.), Comparative and Transnational History. Central European Approaches and New Perspectives (New York: Berghahn Books, 2009); Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla, “AHR Conversation: On Transnational History,” American Historical Review 5 (2006): 30–50; Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla, “‘Localism,’ Global History and Transnational History,” Svensk Historisk Tidsskrift 4 (2007): 657–76. 6 Ida Bull, Project Beyond Borders. Transnational Movements through History (Trondheim: Department of History and Classical Disciplines, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 2010–2012). 7 Bénedicte Zimmermann and Michael Werner, “Beyond Comparison: Histoire Croisée and the Challenge of Ref lexivity,” History and Theory 45 (February 2006): 30–50. 8 Ibid. 9 Gérard Genette, Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, trans. Jane E. Lewin (published in 1972 as Discours du récit by Éditions du Seuil; Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983); Gérard Genette, Narrative Discourse Revisited, trans. Jane E. Lewin (published in 1983 as Nouveau discours du récit by Éditions du Seuil; Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988); Gérard Genette, Fiction and Diction, trans. Catherine Porter (published in 1991 as Fiction et diction by Éditions du Seuil; Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993). 10 Genette, Fiction and Diction, 55–6, 57; Liv Helene Willumsen, Witches of the North (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 29–37. 11 Rita Voltmer, “Einleitung,” in Rita Voltmer and Karl Weisenstein, (eds.), Das Hexenregister des Claudius Musiel (Trier: Spee Buchverlag, 1996), 31; Rita Voltmer, ‘St. Maximin, Prince-Abbey of ’, in Richard M. Golden, Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition (ABC CLIO: Santa Barbara, 2006), 1082–1083; ‘Trier, Electorate of ‘, in Golden, Encyclopedia, 1136; Johannes Dillinger, ‘Flade, Dietrich (1534–1589)‘, in Golden, Encyclopedia, 389. 12 Voltmer and Weisenstein, Das Hexenregister des Claudius Musiel, 111–288; Voltmer, “Einleitung,” 15, note 19.

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13 Landeshauptarchiv Koblenz, Bestand 211, no. 2222, Kriminalischer proceβ Grethen Sundtgen zu Fell, fos. 1–18. 14 Also called Quatemberfasten, three days of fasting repeated four times on a yearly basis. 15 Orig. ‘und alle, so hingericht von Lonquich und Kirsch’. Ref. Landeshauptarchiv Koblenz, Bestand 211, no. 2222, Kriminalischer proceβ Gretchen Sundtgen zu Fell, fo. 16. 16 Johannes Dillinger, “Böse Leute”: Hexenverfolgungen in Schwäbisch-Ôsterreich und Kurtrier in Vergleich (Trier, 1999), 113–17, 219–26, 261–64. 17 Landeshauptarchiv Koblenz, Bestand 211, no. 2223, pp. 1–51, at pp. 48–49. 18 Stadtarchive Trier, no. 1533/170, fos. 243–61, at fos. 255v–260v. 19 Voltmer, “Einleitung,” 23. 20 Ibid., 21. 21 Rita Voltmer, “The Witch in the Courtroom: Torture and the Representations of Emotions”, in Laura Kounine and Michael Östling (eds.), Emotions in the History of Witchcraft (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 99–102. 22 Orig. Reichsunmittelbarkeit. Voltmer, “Einleitung,“ 27. 23 Wolfgang Behringer, Hexen und Hexenprozesse in Deutschland (first published 1988; München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2010), 180; Wolfgang Behringer, Witches and Witch-Hunts. A Global History (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004). 24 Walter Rummel und Rita Voltmer, Hexen und Hexenverfolgung in der Frühen Neuzeit (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2008), 27–9; Rita Voltmer, “Hexenverfolgungen im Maas-Rhein-Mosel-Raum. Ergebnisse und Perspektiven,” in Franz Irsigler, (ed.), Zwischen Maas und Rhein. Beziehungen, Begegnungen und Konflikte in einem europäischen Kernraum von der Spätantike bis zum 19. Jahrhundert (Trier: Kliomedia, 2006), 153–87. 25 Rita Voltmer, “Debating the Devil’s Clergy. Demonology and the Media in Dialogue with Trials (14th to 17th century),” Religions 10, no. 12 (2019): 648, 15, https://doi.org /10.3390/rel10120648; ‘Demonology and anti-demonology. Binsfeld’s De confessionibus and Loos’s De vera et falsa magia’, in Jan Machielsen (ed.), The Science of Demons: Early Modern Authors Facing Witchcraft and the Devil ( London: Routledge, 2020), 149– 164; Behringer, Hexen, 181–82. 26 Behringer, Hexen, 180–84; Voltmer, “Debating the Devil’s Clergy,” 15. 27 Voltmer, “Debating the Devil’s Clergy,” 15. 28 Dillinger, Böse Leute, 359. 29 There were trials in Lothringen, Luxemburg, Alsace, and Osnabrück. Rummel and Voltmer, Hexen, 96 30 Behringer, Hexen, 183. 31 Also called the Republic of the United Provinces. Hans de Waardt, “Netherlands, Northern,” in Richard M. Golden (ed.), Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition, vol. III (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2006), 810. 32 Hans de Waardt, “Prosecution or Defense: Procedural Possibilities following a Witchcraft Accusation in the Province of Holland before 1800,” in Marijke GijswijtHofstra and Willem Frijhoff (eds.), Witchcraft in the Netherlands from the Fourteenth to the Twentieth Century (Rotterdam: Universitaire Pers Rotterdam, 1991), 80. 33 Dries Vanysacker, “Netherlands, Southern,” in Richard M. Golden, (ed.), Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, vol. III (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2006), 815, Table 1; Hans de Waardt, “The North Sea as a Crossroads of Witchcraft Beliefs: The Limited Importance of Political Boundaries,” in Jonathan Barry, Owen Davies, and Cornelie Usborne, (eds.), Cultures of Witchcraft in Europe from the Middle Ages to the Present (Cham: Springer International Publishing AG, 2018), 134–5. 34 De Waardt, “North Sea as a Crossroads,” 136. 35 Rita Voltmer, ‘Wissen, Media and die Wahrheit’, in Heinz Sieburg, Rita Voltmer, and Britta Weimann (eds.), Hexenwissen: Zum Transfer von Magie- unde ZaubereiImaginationen in intersisziplinärer Perspektive (Trier: Paulinus Verlag, 2017), 17; Rummerl and Voltmer, Hexen, 53,

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36 Among the trials mentioned in the tract are thirteen from Ellwangen, one from Morgenthal, nearly 300 from ‘Trier and Mosel’, in addition to Trierer Dr. Flade, ‘an unmentionable crowd’ from St Maximin, and one from Bedburg. 37 Printed in Cologne in 1589 by Nicolaus Schreiber; in Copenhagen in 1591 by Laurentz Benedicht; Voltmer, “Debating the Devil’s Clergy,” 15. 38 A copy of the original tract is kept in The Royal Library, Copenhagen. 39 Louise Kallestrup, “‘Kind in Words and Deeds, But False in Their Hearts’: Fear of Evil Conspiracy in Late-Sixteenth-Century Denmark,” in Jonathan Barry, Owen Davies, and Cornelie Usborne (eds.), Cultures of Witchcraft in Europe from the Middle Ages to the Present (Cham: Springer International Publishing AG, 2018), 139–42. 40 In a new edition from 1921, there are seven pages of background written by Emil Selmar. The title page is an image of a witch being burned in fire at the stake, while two horned devils are attending to the fire. 41 Kurfyrste, princeps elector imperii. 42 Orig. ‘tho hundrede oc halfftrediesinds tiue’; halvtredvesinds = 50. 43 Orig. ‘Europaweite Verfolgungsdruck’. Rolf Schulte, Hexenverfolgung in Schleswig-Holstein 16.–18. Jahrhundert (Heide: Boyens, 2001), 68. 44 Behringer, Hexen, 180. 45 Liv Helene Willumsen, ‘Trolldom mot kongens skip 1589 og transnasjonal overføring av idéer’, Historisk Tidsskrift (Denmark), 119, no. 2 (2019), 309–44; Liv Helene Willumsen, “Witchcraft against Royal Danish Ships in 1589 and Transnational Transfer of Ideas,” International Review of Scottish Studies (2020), 54–99. 46 Admonitio de superstitionibus magicis vitandis. 47 Louise Kallestrup, I Pagt med Djævelen (Copenhagen: Forlaget Anis, 2009), 85. 48 Schulte, Hexenverfolgung in Schleswig-Holstein, 23. 49 Rita Voltmer, “Demonology and the Relevance of the Witches’ Confessions,” in Goodare, Voltmer, and Willumsen, Demonology, 36. 50 Jens Christian V. Johansen, “To Beat a Glass Drum: The Transmission of Popular Notions of Demonology in Denmark and Germany,” in Goodare, Voltmer, and Willumsen, Demonology, 237; Jens Christian V. Johansen, Da Djævelen var ude … trolddom i det 17. århundredets Danmark (Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag, 1991). 51 Ane Koldings, Karen Vævers, Maren Mads Bryggers, Maren Mogens, Kirsten Søntags, Anne Jespers, Margrete Jacob Skrivers, and a farmer’s wife. Court records are preserved for Karen Vævers, Maren Mads Bryggers, Maren Mogens, Margrete Jacob Skrivers. Content of confession is known for Ane Koldings. National Archives of Denmark, A232, Danske Kancelli 1572–1660, Sjællandske Tegnelser 1588–1590. 52 I at once informed my Danish colleague Louise Kallestrup, who had been unable to locate these documents. 53 Ane Kolding’s Apostle was called Smuck, and Maren Mogens’ Apostle was called Pilhestskou. 54 Known in e.g., Germany as idol, trial of Anneke Rickers, Landesarchiv SchleswigHolstein, Abt. 7, no. 1758I, Anneke Rickers, fos. 6r–16v; Liv Helene Willumsen, Witches of the North (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 254. 55 Willumsen, “Witchcraft against.” 56 Jane Ridder-Patrick, “Astrology in Early Modern Scotland, ca. 1543–1726” (PhD diss., University of Edinburgh PhD, 2012), 151. 57 David Stevenson, Scotland’s Last Royal Wedding (Edinburgh: John Donald Publ., 1997), 49. 58 Ridder-Patrick, “Astrology,” 153. 59 Christina Larner (née Ross), “Scottish Demonology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries and Its Theological Background” (PhD diss., University of Edinburgh, 1962). 60 Larner, “Scottish Demonology,” 43–5, 52–3. 61 Julian Goodare, “John Knox on Demonology and Witchcraft,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 96 (2005): 221–45.

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62 Julian Goodare, “Witches’ Flight in Scottish Demonology,” in Goodare, Voltmer, and Willumsen, Demonology, 148. 63 King James VI, Daemonologie, in Forme of a Dialogue (Edinburgh, 1597), xv; Lawrence Normand and Gareth Roberts, Witchcraft in Early Modern Scotland (Exeter: Liverpool University Press, 2000), 356. 64 Normand and Roberts, Witchcraft, 136. 65 National Records of Scotland, JC2/2, fos. 201r–207r, at fo. 206r. 66 Arne Kruse and Liv Helene Willumsen, “Ordet Ballvollen knytt til transnasjonal overføring av idéar,” Historisk tidsskrift 93 (2014): 407–32; Arne Kruse and Liv Helene Willumsen, “Magic Language: The Transmission of an Idea over Geographic Distance and Linguistic Barriers,” Magic, Ritual and Witchcraft (Spring 2020): 1–32. 67 Liv Helene Willumsen, “Exporting the Devil across the North Sea: John Cunningham and the Finnmark Witch-Hunt,” in Julian Goodare (ed.), Scottish Witches and WitchHunters (Basingstoke, England: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013), 49. 68 Ibid.,” 50–1. 69 Liv Helene Willumsen, The Witchcraft Trials in Finnmark, Northern Norway (Bergen: Skald, 2010), 13. 70 Willumsen, Witches of the North, 234. 71 Willumsen, The Witchcraft Trials in Finnmark, 22–26. 72 Kruse and Willumsen, “Magic Language,” 6, 8. 73 The trial of Euphame MacCalzean 1591, National Record Office, Circuit Court Books, JC2/2, fo. 224r; the trial of Kirsten Sørensdatter, Regional State Archives of Tromsø, The Archives of Finnmark District Magistrate, no. 6, fo. 27r. 74 Kruse and Willumsen, “Magic Language,” 24. 75 Orkney Library and Archive, Orkney Presbytery Records, CH2/1082/1, p. 255.

17 THE SHAPE OF EVIL Shapeshifting in the witchcraft trials of seventeenth-century Finnmark1 Amber R. Cederström

Introduction In 1663, towards the end of one of the most intense witch panics of Finnmark’s seventeenth-century series of trials, a woman named Bodel Clausdatter gave a lengthy confession to the court in Vardø (Vardøhus Castle). Under questioning by the local governor himself, Christoffer Orning, she first explained that she learned witchcraft from a previously executed witch, who had given her a drink with witchcraft mixed in it. Drinking this made her feel tired and dizzy, and upon waking she noticed something “standing on the f loor beside her, something that resembled a cat, which ran up to her a few times and then went away.” A couple of days later, a man with claws approached her and asked her to serve him. After agreeing, she “tested [her craft] on one of her own sheep,” causing it to burst and die. She followed this narrative with a litany of her ill deeds: casting a spell in the shape of a gull on a merchantman’s ship; driving fish away from the shores with stalks of seaweed, possibly – based on the confessions of others involved – in the shape of a seal; approaching an imprisoned fellow witch in the shape of a crow and then as a cat; and attending an enormous gathering of witches at Vardøhus Castle, again as a crow, which from others’ confessions was the occasion of a devilish attempt on the governor’s life.2 Bodel’s confession is peppered with animal appearances and punctuated by accounts of shapeshifting, and she is not alone in this: of the 111 women and girls who were accused of witchcraft in Finnmark over the course of the seventeenth century, 37 confessed to shapeshifting, sometimes – as in Bodel’s case – more than once and sometimes into more than one type of animal, with cats and crows predominating. Suspected witches also accused others of shapeshifting, and described the Devil as appearing in animal form or as a man with bestial features. Their familiars (called “apostles” or sometimes “gods” in the records) also

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sometimes took animal form; the creature that resembled a cat in Bodel’s confession might be either her apostle or the Devil. In this chapter, I will examine shapeshifting in Finnmark’s trials, focusing particularly on the two most popular forms taken by the shapeshifting witches. I argue that specific forms like cats and crows are meaningful, drawing on particular characteristics of these species that ref lected anxieties shared and circulated widely across social and even international lines. An underlying “folk taxonomy” of what we might call diabolical animals is visible in the trial records, and this folk taxonomy reveals the contours of why witchcraft was so threatening, to both Finnmark’s general populace and the Danish authorities: the very familiarity of the majority of species named in the trials, in particular cats and crows, their proximity to people and liminal positioning between the ordered human world and the threatening wilderness, meant that they were perfect analogues to the constructed witch figure, herself liminal3 and a disguised threat.

The Finnmark trials Finnmark is Norway’s largest, northernmost, and easternmost province, and is also its most sparsely populated. During the seventeenth century, according to historian Liv Helene Willumsen, the population numbered only some 3,200 people.4 Some number of these were Indigenous Sámi, though estimates vary from 25 to 50 per cent of the total.5 I refer to the rest of the general populace as “Norwegian” for convenience, but this nomenclature is somewhat misleading. Thanks to fishing opportunities in the region many immigrants had arrived during the previous century, so that “By the seventeenth century, the population in Finnmark was increasingly becoming mixed with people from Scotland, Germany, the Netherlands, the Faroese Islands and Sweden.”6 Also, crucially, both secular authorities and those of the Lutheran church were Danish, since Denmark held the upper hand in a political union with Norway. This union had been formalized in 1537 and, over the course of the next two centuries, the state imposed rigorous control over both church and political infrastructure.7 Between 1600 and 1692, at least 135 people were accused of witchcraft in Finnmark, including 111 women and 24 men.8 Of the accused, 91 persons were killed, including several who died in prison or of torture.9 These figures are remarkable in the Norwegian context, which experienced fairly few witch trials overall. Finnmark, in contrast, has the unlucky distinction of hosting witch trials that far exceed the European average in intensity.10 The reasons why are complex, and have been investigated at length by Willumsen and Rune Blix Hagen, among others. They include particular adverse economic and social conditions, physical distance from Copenhagen, which permitted local officials to overstep their judicial charges, and the same officials’ belief in diabolical witchcraft, a Continental formulation that understood witchcraft as a type of heretical conspiracy aligned with a powerful Satan against both sacred and secular authority.11

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The concept of diabolical witchcraft, developed in the late medieval and early modern period by European elites, involved a mostly female conspiracy of potentially vast proportions: “The idea was that witches had joined with Satan in secret groups and represented a threat to both masculine patriarchy and the authorities, who ultimately derived their authority from God.”12 While most witch trials were sparked by accusations of maleficia – malicious but particular acts of magic, such as causing a child’s illness or making a neighbour’s cow run dry – dramatic, large-scale witch trials (witchcraft panics) could develop if locals or local authorities harboured suspicions of a sect of diabolical witches hiding in their midst. This was a recurring pattern in Finnmark, which in addition to numerous maleficia trials endured three panic periods, in the 1620s, 1650s, and 1660s. The link between gender and panics, as Willumsen notes, is clear, with only two men accused during panic periods.13 Once a woman was suspected of participating in witches’ gatherings (a hallmark of panic periods), she was pressured – and not infrequently tortured – to reveal the names of her fellow witches. Women and men were also accused of different crimes; most pertinently, nearly no men were accused of shapeshifting.

A genus of diabolical animals Rune Blix Hagen includes shapeshifting in a list of features of diabolical witchcraft that are found in the Finnmark trials, and it is certainly true that shapeshifting is not unique to the Nordic region.14 But shapeshifting is also found in native Scandinavian folk belief, and in Sámi shamanism as well. For instance, the medieval Historia Norwegiæ describes how a “wizard” of the “Lapps” (that is, the Sámi) sent an “unclean spirit” in the form of a whale.15 Nonetheless, despite the longstanding association of Sámi magicians with shapeshifting, Finnmark’s male witches – most of whom, 16 of the 24, were Sámi16 – are not accused of this crime.17 It is, however, a frequent part of the trials of Norwegian women. As mentioned above, 37 women confessed to shapeshifting. The vast majority seem to have preferred bird-shapes, which, as Table 17.1 indicates, show a great variety of species. Many women also ascribed animal forms to other witches, with a similar distribution of species. Several were also vague about the specifics; two, for instance, referred to being “in the sky,” which may indicate that they were in bird form, but given that witches f lew also on calves, sheep, and broomsticks, the identification is far from secure. One accused witch, Gundelle Olsdatter, suggests she appeared as an animal/human hybrid, telling the court that during one Christmas sabbath she “was shaped as a human, above her belt, but was not thus shaped below.”18 The evidence presented in Table 17.1 begs the question: why were birds so popular, and why was there so much more variety among the birds than any of the other animals mentioned? One significant factor in explaining the latter is likely the simple fact that the non-elite class, to which Finnmark’s witches belonged, would have been familiar with a large number of bird species in a way that they

268 Amber R. Cederström TABLE 17.1 Animal shapes claimed by accused witches

Animal

Subcategory

Count

Bird (total 34)

Crow Duck Raven Swan Falcon “Little” or “small” Seagull Unspecified Eagle Goose Pigeon Wagtail Wood grouse

10 5 5 5 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 8 5 1 1 1 1

Cat Seal Dog (total 3)

Whale

Unspecified Bitch Small black

were not familiar with the variety of dog breeds then available in Europe, and still less familiar with the much smaller number of cat breeds that had begun to emerge, among southern Europe’s upper classes, in the fourteenth century.19 Birds, on the other hand, whether wild (as in eagles and swans), or domesticated or semi-domesticated (as in ducks, pigeons, and geese), were omnipresent in coastal Finnmark, and the differences between species readily apparent. We should however be careful not to impose our post-Linnean assumptions onto the categorization of species represented in Table 17.1. It is entirely possible that the included birds were not grouped together as “birds” in the folk taxonomy of Finnmark, but rather that each species of bird was as distinct as, say, cats were from dogs. If this is the case, our evaluation should be revised to establish that crows (which appear ten times) were the most popular animal form taken by witches, followed closely by cats (eight times). As Dan Sperber explains, “folk taxonomies are often sophisticated and show a deep knowledge of the local environment”; though they do not follow the biological rigor of modern science, they “cannot be right or wrong,” in that folk taxonomies respond to the needs and worldview of their particular cultures in a way that scientific zoology does not.20 In the case of shapeshifting witches in Table 17.1, of course, the broadest category is simply “animal forms taken by witches”: we are looking at a kind of genus of animal in Finnmark’s folk taxonomy. It is worth noting here what the witches do not turn into: there are no fantastic creatures like dragons, no exotic biblical creatures like lions or camels, and

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– most strikingly, perhaps – no powerful wild carnivores like bears or wolves. The women instead confess to shapeshifting into ordinary, mostly innocuous creatures, who would have been unremarkable sights in and around most farmsteads, homes, and fishing sites. It is difficult to be sure if these particular shapes were spontaneously generated by the women or suggested by the interrogators, but presumably they were agreed upon by both parties as essentially reasonable shapes for witches to take. I suggest that this is because the common animal – and all of the species represented here were common to the local coast – appears to be just that, a harmless addition to and participant in the human-dominated landscape. And yet although such creatures would have been familiar, they also were designated as “Other,” and represented an opportunity for the Devil to infiltrate the human community.

Animals and humans Despite the apparently clear division between human and animal outlined in the Book of Genesis, humans were also recognized, from the early Christian period on, as an animal; indeed the Latin word animal expressed both human and non-human creatures in most learned texts until the fourteenth century.21 The recognition of similarity between human animal and non-human animal clearly made some medieval theologians uncomfortable, and as the Middle Ages wore on, the distance between humans and animals grew smaller.22 Simultaneously, the realms of the demonic and the animalistic were also moving closer together, resulting in an increasingly bestial Devil in artwork, theological writings, and other productions of the late Middle Ages.23 And yet while Finnmark’s Devil often showed up as a hybrid, that is, as a human male with bestial features, he is often described with rather nondescript terms, for instance as “medium-sized” or “dressed in black, just as any other Christian man would be.”24 When he appears as an animal, he shows up most frequently as a black dog, otherwise as a cat, crow, or sparrow (and only once as a goat).25 Like his witches, in other words, the Devil chose shapes, whether human or animal, that would not have immediately caused any alarm. In fact, nearly all of the animal species included in Table 17.1, even seals and whales, 26 would have been regular, familiar sights nearby human habitation and activity, and many of these animals – including cats, dogs, and some of the bird species, possibly including crows – would have been at least semi-domesticated. The most threatening animals, in other words, were not wild, but rather close, so close in fact that they disturbed the fragile boundary between animal and human. This was an old fear in Christian Europe. Speaking of medieval penances assigned to worshippers who ate forbidden animals, Joyce E. Salisbury notes how the degree of penalty increased as the eaten animal moved closer to human companionship; thus the penance for eating a dog was greater than that for eating a cat, which was greater than that for eating a mouse. “The most likely explanation,” Salisbury ruminates, “is that the greatest penance was

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assigned to the animal that lived closest to humans, and was thus most threatening to the boundaries that separated the two.”27 This helps explain why, despite the very real dangers posed by wolves and bears in rural northern Norway, demons and witches almost never take their forms, but rather infiltrate human habitation with essentially innocuous disguises. This indicates some of the same existential concern Salisbury detects: the closer an animal was to human life, the closer it might be to being human, and vice versa. Wolves and bears might threaten a person’s life, but dogs and cats threaten the category of humanity itself.

Cats and crows It is worth interrogating the two most frequently appearing creatures, crows and cats, more closely: why were these two animals in particular recognized as witches’ favourites? Like their fellow diabolical animals, cats and crows are common, familiar, and non-deadly creatures. If they behaved like their modern descendants, in fact, crows might in fact have been rare away from human dwellings in the North,28 and cats were working animals, kept on farms and in towns to control the vermin population. It is important to recall here that people who were accused of witchcraft were, similarly, known to their communities. As folklorist Timothy R. Tangherlini comments, “One can never be entirely sure that that a next-door neighbor, a friend or even one’s spouse is not a witch.”29 And indeed, the tangle of acquaintances and neighbors caught up in Finnmark’s panics reveals the extent to which the tiny communities of coastal Finnmark looked to their own when naming witches.30 Like the witch, then, who seemed to be a regular housewife, the sight of a cat or a crow would not arouse immediate suspicion; like the witch, they could – and did – infiltrate spaces where they were unexpected or not allowed. More than that, though, some features of crow and cat behavior could make them uncanny, in the Freudian sense, and allowed them to map easily onto the constructed stereotype of the witch.

A murder of crows As a species, crows have never been domesticated, but John M. Marzluff and Tony Angell have proposed that humans and crows have culturally coevolved together, in a fashion similar to our millennia-long relationship with domestic animals.31 Known for their intelligence among both folk traditions and ornithologists, crows are highly opportunistic and adaptable to humans, even more so than other corvids. They will beg food from pliable people and steal it without compunction; in seventeenth-century Finnmark, crows were almost certainly frequent nuisances at fishing docks, farms, and elsewhere. Witches, similarly, made unpleasant neighbours, stealing food (sometimes directly from other peoples’ cows) and ignoring boundaries, whether imposed by social custom, religious strictures, or secular law.

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Crows will roost together, sometimes in shocking numbers, with correspondingly shocking noise: “Frenetically noisy displays … are a hallmark of crow behavior,” write Marzluff and Angell. “These displays catch our attention because they involve hundreds, thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of birds.”32 In Europe, such raucous roosts may have recalled the elite, Continental conviction that witches gathered in large numbers to worship the Devil. Bodel Clausdatter, whose confession opens this chapter, seems to have made the connection herself, explaining in 1663 that “she was with the great multitude of congregated witches who recently gathered at the Castle, in the likeness of a crow.”33 Since Bodel also confessed to taking on the likenesses of a gull and a cat on other occasions, her choice of crow at a large gathering of witches is suggestive. Nor was she the only accused person to confess to a crow shape at this large gathering. A child named Karen Iversdatter confessed to attending as a crow and accused three others of the same. Magdalene Jacobsdatter, Birgitte Olufsdatter, Karen Nilsdatter (another child), and perhaps Karen’s mother Barbra, also all specified crow forms at this gathering. One witch, Ellen Gundersdatter, was more ecumenical, accusing one child of attending the gathering as a sparrow and saying that the many other witches who attended were “in the shapes of various birds.”34 The purpose of this gathering was to kill Governor Orning, who was particularly active in the persecution of witches during his tenure.35 This kind of conspiracy against state-sanctioned authority was a major component of the kind of demonological witchcraft developed and feared by the elite, and was a driver of large-scale witch hunts. In this case, the successive confessions form an image of a huge number of screaming crows surrounding the castle. It is tempting to speculate that such an event actually happened, and was collectively reinterpreted in the context of the trials and perhaps the governor’s own paranoia 36 as evidence of witchcraft. Corvids, despite their adaptability, can nevertheless initiate interactions with humans that are alarming, or even downright frightening. Unlike most nondomesticated animals, for instance, crows can recognize individuals by sight. Ornithologists have documented cases of crows reacting to individuals based on those humans’ past actions, like capturing and banding them.37 Marzluff and Angell also note, however, that “occasionally crows seem to just have it out for some people for no apparent reason,” and dive on the unfortunate passers-by, sometimes pulling hair or slashing them.38 Such behaviour (whether warranted or no) could easily be taken for human-directed enmity; though again speculative, it is easy to imagine that witnessing corvid behaviour like this might have supported legends of malicious women shapeshifting into crows for the purpose of harming their enemies.39 Pre-existing and contemporary folk perceptions of corvids may also have played a role in supporting an association between witches and crows. Julian Goodare asserts that shapeshifting into birds of all types in Finnmark “was linked to the ancient idea of the soul wandering in the shape of a bird.”40 This was not always positive in connotation.41 In Scandinavian folk tradition generally, crows, along with ravens (another diabolical animal in Finnmark’s folk taxonomy, and

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a close relative of the crow), have negative connotations of death and damnation, connotations which certainly extend backward into the medieval period and resonate even with pre-Christian traditions.42 Neither tamed nor completely wild, sometimes perhaps displaying distressing or frightening behaviour, and with long-standing negative associations, these commonly encountered birds may have registered as uncomfortably liminal creatures between human, animal, and demon, particularly suited to the malevolent witch who favoured ambiguous disguises.

Liminal cats Cats present another example of a particularly liminal, and hence particularly alarming, animal, a species that “behaved in predatory and unpredictable ways, on the boundary between the domestic and the wild.”43 Cats indeed fall into an even more slippery gap, between what Juliet Clutton-Brock describes as “domestic” versus “domesticated” animals: Domestic animals are populations that through direct selection by man have certain inherent morphological, physiological, or behavioural characteristics by which they differ from their ancestral stocks. Domesticated animals, on the other hand, are individuals that have been made tractable or tame but whose breeding does not involve intentional selection. The cat, as Clutton-Brock explains, “does not really fall into either group but is intermediate between domestic and domesticated. Perhaps it should be called ‘an exploiting captive.’”44 More poetically, Katherine M. Briggs alights upon a similar conclusion when she notes “the cat’s policy of enlightened self-interest,” evinced in a popular British folk rhyme.45 Such a self-interested policy means that cats (like crows) are little concerned with human-imposed boundaries on house, yard, and even time; unlike most other domestic and domesticated mammals, cats are more likely to be crepuscular or even nocturnal than diurnal. They are thus most active when humans are not, lending their activities an aura of secrecy that is also, of course, a feature of witches’ activities. As small hunters of even smaller rodents, cats have a tendency to haunt crevices and out-of-the-way areas of the home and farm; the way they interact with space differs dramatically and in ways that are sometimes surprising and even unsettling to their human co-inhabitants. As will be discussed below, Finnmark’s cats were not pets, but they were part of the domestic sphere, and – again like crows – might well have initiated some interactions with humans that provoked alarm. For instance, in 1663 Karen Andersdatter told the court about a disturbing encounter with a cat. She explained that a previously convicted witch, Dorette Lauritsdatter, had fed her porridge while Dorette was looking after Karen in the latter’s confinement after childbirth, but this porridge had been tampered

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with in order to covertly induct Karen into the witch cult (eating or drinking witchcraft in this way had by mid-century become a standard part of Finnmark’s female witch trials). Subsequently, Karen continued, “three weeks after the end of her confinement, the wicked Sattan [Satan] came to her in the likeness of a cat and moved around her body from the very feet to her mouth, where he counted her teeth.”46 This is, of course, distinctly unusual behaviour for a cat, and the intimacy of his actions suggests an inappropriate level of familiarity with Karen’s body; still, it is certainly believable that early modern cats would occasionally invade a person’s space in the same way that modern cats do today. It is not altogether clear from the description if the animal was already known to Karen and possessed by the Devil, or if she was surprised by a completely unknown cat and interpreted it to literally be Satan in animal form, but, either way, his behaviour is clearly alarming and upsets the natural order, the divine hierarchy of human control over the animal world. Cats did not enjoy positive symbolism in Scandinavia, or Europe generally. On the Continent, cats had developed reputations for being poisonous or causing disease. They were also associated with (especially feminine) sexuality, the Devil, heresy, and Judaism.47 In late medieval Scandinavian church art, cats appear with similar overtones; thus a depiction of a woman being punished by demons in Marie Magdalene church in Ryomgård, Denmark, includes a cat licking its rear underneath her (and, not incidentally, one bird, apparently a swallow, pecking at her head and another – a magpie – just beyond her extended foot).48 As Stephen A. Mitchell says, “If ever we are presented with an image of what late medieval Scandinavia must have regarded as an ‘evil woman’ (ondh quinna), certainly this one is it.”49 The important point here is that the link between women’s bad behaviour, perhaps especially witchcraft, and cats (not to mention birds) seems to have been known in Scandinavia as well as the Continent. The behaviour of cats underlines their liminality. As even modern cat-owners can attest, cats are little concerned with human-imposed restrictions on where and when the animals can roam, and in medieval and early modern Europe tactics to keep cats on site ranged from charmingly bemusing, as when the fifteenthcentury Évangiles des quenouilles suggested that women should rub their cats’ paws with butter to prevent them from wandering off, to cruel, as when Albert the Great, among others, advised the amputation of cats’ ears to keep them indoors, on the apparent assumption that the mutilated animal would thereafter avoid rain.50 Anecdotally, cats seem distressed by closed doors, especially ones they have been previously allowed to pass through. In a symbolically similar way, witches are the boundary-crossers par excellence in European legendry, challenging the strictures of gendered behaviour in general and often by literally crossing thresholds that proper housewives should not cross. Mitchell points out that one Old Norse term for witch, tún-riða, literally means “hedge-rider,” suggesting the witch is one who crosses, operates at, or is otherwise associated with the hedge that marked the boundaries of the farmyard; in a footnote, he adds that similar terms exist in Old High German and Old English and notes that the same

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concept is enshrined in an Old Swedish law.51 The term directly implicates the boundary between inside/outside, home/wilderness, ordered space/disordered space, a boundary crossed regularly by liminal animals and witches both.

Uncanny animals It is worth noting here that Finnmark’s population was a relatively mobile one, composed largely of immigrants and their (recent) descendants.52 Willumsen calculates that nearly 20 per cent of the accused witches had immigrated from farther south,53 and many of them speak of having once served as maids in other women’s homes in the course of their confessions. The experience of both geographic and social mobility may have supported these women’s identification with animals like cats, whether self-expressed or imposed by others. We can imagine some discomfort as the idealized image of the Lutheran housewife ran into the lived reality of many of these mobile women; perhaps identification of witches with liminal animals like cats and crows expressed some of this discomfort. It may also have allowed the accused to express frustration with their confinement, either the general confinement produced by societal expectation or in the specific case of imprisonment. One accused child, for instance, Ingeborg Iversdatter, told the court that she and another accused witch, Solve (Solwe, in the records) Nilsdatter, escaped the prison at the castle in Vardø “and crawled under the gate in the shapes of cats.”54 Another accused woman, Sigri Olsdatter, told the court that the same Solve, plus two children from the castle’s prison, visited her while she was imprisoned: some cats appeared at the smoke vent of the turf hut on Friday night, scratching at the edge and wanting to join her. Those cats, she said, were Solwe and the two children … and they wanted her to come down to the cellar again.55 In the original, the cats are said not just to want Sigri to come with them – which would presumably involve her taking animal form herself, possibly also of a cat – but also to come down to her.56 The child Ingeborg confirmed this, telling the court that she, Solve, and another child, Maren, scratched at the smoke vent and were only prevented from getting Sigri out of prison because of the presence of other people.57 Bodel Clausdatter told the court about a similar episode, confessing that she visited an incarcerated witch in the shape of a crow, thereafter transforming into a cat.58 The witches of the 1662–1663 panic, as we have already seen, confessed to several attempts on the regional governor’s life. Solve Nilsdatter explained that she had been given a cat’s likeness and her co-conspirator Sigri a dog’s by the Devil and that “for their task they each had a pin with which to prick his foot and hand at night while he was sleeping in bed.”59 The suggestion seems to be that witches in such shapes as cats and dogs could gain access even to the bedroom of the governor, the highest secular authority in Finnmark. In other words, in this and all of these cases, the witches are able, by assuming small, innocuous, boundary-breaking

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forms like cats and crows, to thwart the will of the court and f lout the law, literally by scrambling under gates, visiting each other in prison, and even infiltrating the most private sanctum of the most powerful man in the province. Although animals like dogs and cats certainly were in and around homes, it is important to recall that the concept of a “pet” was, in all likelihood, quite foreign to the bulk of Finnmark’s inhabitants. Some members of Europe’s upper classes had been keeping what we would call pets since the medieval period, but the concept was still quite rare in the early modern period. In English, the word first appears in 1539, and, according to Bruce Boehner: appears to have referred primarily to lambs, specifically ‘cade’ lambs, cast off by their ewe and therefore raised by hand. Introduced into the household for their own survival, these animals could become an object of particular attention, care, and affection, entering thereby into a special relation to the human beings on whom they depended.60 That special relation could have been both powerful and, in an era that strove mightily to distinguish “human” from “animal,” powerfully disconcerting. We witness this in an iteration of the exact situation Boehner describes in the Finnmark trials, when an accused women named Sigri Olsdatter told the court in 1663 that another suspected witch, Guri: once came to her asking her and her husband to give her a small lamb that was kept inside the house and which she picked up and stroked over the back. They refused her, and when she did not get it, the lamb died some four days later. However, they did not know whether she was the cause.61 This small, inconclusive episode is parallel to another case that took place a decade earlier: in 1652, Baarne, Willands the Bell-Ringer’s wife, told the court that Smeld Anne gave her some witchcraft-infected porridge and asked her to pet Smeld Anne’s black cat, which she did while eating the porridge.62 In both cases, the opportunity to pet a creature inside the home was apparently memorable and noteworthy, and in both cases the interaction is associated – though not definitively – with the diabolical activity surrounding it. It is entirely believable that Smeld Anne had a particularly tractable or beloved cat in her household, willing to receive or even desirous of human contact. However, given that pets were unusual, it is also likely that interacting with an animal in this fashion – to no purpose beyond tactile and emotional pleasure – was a slightly unsettling event, easily woven by the accused Baarne in the established narrative of consuming witchcraft. As Bobis puts it, The fundamental problem posed by the pet, and particularly the cat, is the difficulty of distinguishing love that one might licitly bring to the creature, as a brother of man in God’s Creation, from that that one might illicitly feel for the creature.63

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Discomfort or even alarm could be heightened in the event of strange or unexpected behaviour by animals. Karen Andersdatter’s tooth-counting cat may be an example of an animal who showed unusual interest in a person – who was prone and therefore more vulnerable than usual – and whose behaviour could therefore be interpreted as diabolical in the freighted context of a witchcraft trial. It is incumbent upon us to remember that animals have agency, and the inability to completely control or even predict their actions might have been particularly provoking in the theological context outlined above. It is worth underlining that the animal forms taken by Satan in Finnmark, though slightly different than those taken by witches (far more dogs, for instance, and far fewer birds), are similarly common: a sparrow or even a dog is a far cry from the biblical dragon or the monstrous, huge hybrids of late medieval clerical thought. In other words, again, the shape of evil in Finnmark ref lected the anxiety of the uncanny, in the Freudian sense: the familiar made suddenly strange.

Conclusion: Domestic savagery Laurence Bobis, speaking of the medieval cat, notes:“Symbol of domestic savagery, the cat is the animal par excellence that evokes duplicity and treachery.”64 What better words could be applied to the witch, that duplicitous creature of savage domesticity? Animals like cats, crows, and other, not quite domesticated but not fully wild animals resonate with meaning in the confessions of accused witches in Finnmark. Some of these layers of meaning draw on shared and inherited – and ultimately theological – concerns about the boundaries of humanity itself, and the degree to which the animal world, which by the early modern period was imbricated with the demonic, could penetrate those boundaries. Domestic farm animals were often victims of witchcraft (as Bodel Clausdatter’s poor burst sheep), but do not appear on the list of animal forms taken by witches. Nor do dangerous wild creatures. Witches’ animals instead tend to fall somewhere on the slippery border between wild and tame; though not part of the household, they were still able to access the farmyard, home, and even official buildings, including the castle itself. In the Middle Ages, as Sophie Page writes, “the boundaries between God, animals, and demons were thus relatively firm,” but “the border between humans and animals was more fluid and hence a site of anxiety.”65 This existential crisis outlasted the medieval period and indeed seems to have worsened, as one of Page’s “firm” boundaries, that between demon and animal, also started to slip in the late medieval period.The crisis is visible in the confessions of accused witches in early modern Finnmark, where legends of shapeshifting highlighted the instability of such boundaries. Animals appear in witchcraft beliefs and legends as victims, accomplices, iconographic symbols, and alter egos. But not all animals are created equal in the semiotic system of Western witchcraft, and Finnmark’s folk taxonomy included a genus of animal that was familiar, but untrustworthy – not obviously or immediately dangerous, but a weak point in the boundaries between human, animal, and demon. The very commonality of the specific animals involved in these

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legends – cats, birds, dogs, and so on – is not simply a failure of imagination on the part of the legend-tellers, confessing witches, or learned judges, but rather ref lects a fundamental truth about witchcraft as a concept: the fear of witchcraft was not found in the wholly bizarre or completely unknown, but rather in the uncanny, the familiar made unfamiliar, the ordinary turned strange. It is found in the possibility that the witch might infiltrate and corrupt the divinely sanctioned but perilously bordered human community, using the mostly banal shapes of common but liminal creatures. One of the fundamental risks posed by witches was boundary-breaking, threatening the laws of God and men that upheld divinely sanctioned social order. These boundaries included, of course, regulations concerning gender, relationships between parents (especially mothers) and children, and – in a way most essential – distinctions between human and animal.The ideal binary outdoor/nature/chaotic/ demonic versus indoor/social/ordered/divine is frayed in the course of lived reality; for instance, vermin (outdoor) are found indoors, and require animals like cats to control them, but the compromise of the cat represents a small aperture through which the greater threat of the outdoors can find its way in. “Cats,” as Edward Bever comments, “symbolize the uncontrollable power of the wilderness, which lurks hidden within the village, the household, and ultimately within the human.”66 The realities of social life conspired to strip away the Scriptural assurance that people were not animals.The animalistic Devil naturally exploited this grey zone, and took his followers, the witches, into the breach with him. The strained boundary between indoor/outdoor, represented by animals too close to both wilderness and humanity, become symbolic of the witch: they are both inside and outside, seemingly friend but actually foe. The danger the witch poses is not just to her own soul but to her community, which she disrupts and corrupts by creating a different, demonic and animalistic, community. By including shapeshifting in the accusations of witchcraft that so often ended in convictions and executions, the male authorities of Finnmark attempted to reassert control over not just their province and a dangerously uncontrolled form of femininity, but over the ontological boundaries of humanity itself.67 That women shapeshifting into animals appears so regularly in the trials suggests that it was not only a folk motif but also a site of genuine concern on the part of the authorities; not only was it evidence that these misbehaving women could travel wherever they wanted, whenever they wanted, in essentially impenetrable disguises, but also spoke to a long-standing, theologically informed terror that the border between human and animal was porous, and vulnerable to demonic designs.

Notes 1 This chapter is an adaptation of a portion of my dissertation, Poisoner, Shapeshifter, Adulteress, Thief: Legends and Images of Witchcraft in Finnmark and Gotland. I am indebted to Liv Helene Willumsen for her invaluable comments on this chapter. 2 Liv Helene Willumsen, The Witchcraft Trials in Finnmark, Northern Norway (Bergen: Skald and Statsarkivet i Tromsø, 2010), 270–3.

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3 In the European imagination generally, witches were associated with wilderness and liminal areas between human habitation and the wild. A famous German woodcut by Hans Baldung Grien, for instance, shows several witches grouped around a steaming pot with vegetation and a dead tree signalling that they are somewhere in the wild. As another (non-visual) example, witches in Scotland – which maintained close cultural ties to Finnmark in this period – frequently met the Devil in liminal locations, between settlements and wilderness. See Laura Paterson, “The Witches’ Sabbath in Scotland,” Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 142 (2012): 392–3. 4 Willumsen, Witchcraft Trials, 223. 5 Liv Helene Willumsen, Witches of the North, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions 170 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 226; Rune Blix Hagen, “Female Witches and Sami Sorcerers in the Witch Trials of Arctic Norway,” ARV: Nordic Yearbook of Folklore 62 (2006), 124; Rune Blix Hagen, Ved Porten til Helvete: Trolldomsforfølgelse i Finnmark (Oslo: Cappelen Damm, 2015), 12. 6 Willumsen, Witches, 226; see also Hagen, Porten til Helvete, 108. 7 Norway’s formal induction into the union has been described as “a confirmation of a process which had been taking place over a long period,” and coincided with its initial acceptance of Lutheranism, although its actual adaptation of the new faith was fairly slow (E. I. Kouri and Jens E. Olesen, “Introduction” to 1520–1870, vol. 2 of Cambridge History of Scandinavia, eds., E. I. Kouri and Jens E. Olesen [Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016], 5; Ole Peter Grell, “Reformation in Denmark, Norway, Iceland,” in 1520–1870, vol. 2 of Cambridge History of Scandinavia, eds., E. I. Kouri and Jens E. Olesen [Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016], esp. 55–7). Both Willumsen and Hagen stress the significance of the Danish authorities in Finnmark’s witchcraft trials, in particular their acceptance of Continental demonology (see, e.g., Willumsen, Witches, 253–6; Hagen, “Female Witches and Sami Sorcerers,” 129–30, Ved Porten til Helvete, 23–7; 174–5). 8 The proportion of women to men is fairly close to the European average, as Willumsen notes. The figure 135 is also Willumsen’s (Witches, 246). Hagen counts 138 accused (Ved Porten il Helvete, 8), but Willumsen disputes his inclusion of two Sámi men accused in Utsjokk, Sweden, and another man who was brought to trial for adultery and violence, but not witchcraft – though one witness did mention it (Willumsen, Witches, 246n25). 9 Hagen, Ved Porten til Helvete, 8; see also Willumsen, Witches of the North, 246, 252. 10 See Table 2 in Julian Goodare, “The Finnmark Witches in European Context,” in Steilneset Memorial: Art, Architecture, History, ed., Laura Andreassen and Liv Helene Willumsen (Stamsund: Orkana, 2014), 59. 11 See, e.g., Willumsen, Witches of the North; Hagen, Porten til Helvete; Einar Niemi, Vadsøs historie, vol. 1: Fra øyvær til kjøpstad (inntil 1833) (Vadsø 1983), 217–30. 12 “Forestillingen gikk ut på at trollfolket hadde sluttet seg sammen med Satan i hemmelige grupper og representerte en trussel mot både det mannlige patriarkat og myndighetene, som i siste instans hadde sin legitimitet fra Gud” (Hagen, Porten til Helvete, 24). Translations are my own unless otherwise specified. 13 Willumsen, Witches, 248. 14 “Demonologenes heksebegrep kommer til uttrykk gjennom paktinngåelse, omskaping, nattflyvende hekser, hemmelige hekseselskaper og anvendelse av djevlekraften til å gjøre stor skade” (Hagen, Ved Porten til Helvete, 20) [Demonological witch-beliefs appear in the Devil’s pact, shapeshifting, night-f lying witches, secretive witch activities, and the use of the Devil’s power to do great harm]. For shapeshifting generally, see, e.g., Willem de Blécourt and Christa Agnes Tuczay, eds., Tierverwandlungen: Codierungen und Diskurse (Vienna: Francke Verlag, 2011). 15 Devra Kunin, trans., A History of Norway and the Passion and Miracles of the Blessed Óláfr, ed., Carl Phelpstead, Viking Society for Northern Research Text Series 13 (Viking Society for Northern Research, University College London, 2011), 6–7.

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16 Or, to use Hagen’s figures, 19 of a total of 27 accused men were Sámi. Hagen also believes that Sámi ethnicity is underreported in the records, and that more of the accused (of both sexes) were Sámi (Ved Porten il Helvete, 10). 17 On this and other grounds, Hagen questions whether we can use the Finnmark records of Sámi sorcerers to reassess the definition of “shamanism” (Rune Blix Hagen, “Witchcraft and Ethnicity: A Critical Perspective on Sami Shamanism in Seventeenth-Century Northern Norway,” in Writing Witch-Hunt Histories: Challenging the Paradigm, ed., Marko Nenonen and Raisa Maria Toivo [Boston: Brill, 2013]). 18 Willumsen, Witchcraft Trials, 43. 19 Esther Pascua, “From Forest to Farm and Town: Domestic Animals from ca. 1000 to ca. 1450,” in A Cultural History of Animals in the Medieval Age, ed., Brigitte Resl, Cultural History of Animals 6 (Oxford, UK: Berg, 2011), 102. 20 Dan Sperber, “Why Are Perfect Animals, Hybrids, and Monsters Food for Symbolic Thought?” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 8 (2), 160. 21 Brigitte Resl, “Introduction” to A Cultural History of Animals in the Medieval Age, ed., Brigitte Resl, A Cultural History of Animals 2 (Oxford, UK: Berg, 2011), 3; 10. 22 Joyce E. Salisbury, The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages (New York: Routledge, 1994), 2. 23 Robert Muchembled, A History of the Devil: From the Middle Ages to the Present (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2003), 21–7. 24 Willumsen, Witchcraft Trials, 230; 267. 25 The black dog was a favourite of the Devil in Europe generally, but the absence of goats is striking. The cat does “occasionally” appear as a form of the Devil (Willem de Blécourt, “Animal Shapeshifting: Between Literature and Everyday Life. An Introduction,” in Tierverwandlungen: Codierungen und Diskurse, eds., Willem de Blécourt and Christa Agnes Tuczay [Vienna: Francke Verlag, 2011], 8). 26 As Julian Goodare notes, the appearance of whales in Finnmark’s witchcraft trials ref lects their local importance and the community’s familiarity with and reliance on seafaring (“Finnmark Witches,” 61). 27 Salisbury, Beast Within, 68. 28 Derek Ratcliffe, Lapland: A Natural History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 79. 29 Timothy R. Tangherlini, “‘How Do You Know She’s a Witch?’: Witches, Cunning Folk, and Competition in Denmark,” Western Folklore 59, no. 3/4 (2000), 279. 30 See, for instance, Willumsen’s diagram of denunciations in the 1662–1663 panic (Willumsen, Witches, 276, Fig. 8). 31 John M. Marzluff and Tony Angell, In the Company of Crows and Ravens (New Haven: Yale University Press 2008), 24–5; 33. 32 Ibid., 154. 33 Willumsen, Witchcraft Trials, 273. 34 Ibid., 229; 266; 276; 268; 234–5. 35 Hagen, Porten til Helvete, 27. 36 Hagen, “Female Witches and Sami Sorcerers,” 130. 37 Marzluff and Angell, Crows and Ravens, 24. 38 Ibid., 180. 39 Edward Bever discusses one possible example of precisely this phenomenon in a witchcraft case from Tuttlingen, in which Jörg Ganßer accused two women of attacking him and knocking him down in the shape of black birds (“Hasen, Katzen und Vögel: Formen der Tierverwandlung im fruühmodernen Wuürttemberg,” in Tierverwandlungen: Codierungen und Diskurse, eds., Willem de Blécourt and Christa Agnes Tucazy [Vienna: Francke Verlag, 2011], 87–8). 40 Goodare, “Finnmark Witches,” 60.

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41 See, e.g., Tracey R. Sands, “‘Det kommo tvänne dufvor … ’”: Doves, Ravens, and the Dead in Scandinavian Folk Tradition,” Scandinavian Studies 73, no. 3 (Fall 2001): 349–74. 42 Sands, “‘De kommo tvänne dufvor …’” esp. 368, 371. 43 Goodare, “Finnmark Witches,” 60. 44 Juliet Clutton-Brock, A Natural History of Domesticated Animals (British Museum, 1989), 104–5. Italics in original. 45 Katherine M. Briggs, Nine Lives: The Folklore of Cats (New York: Dorset Press, 1988), 159. 46 Willumsen, Witchcraft Trials, 238. 47 Laurence Bobis, “L’évolution de la place du chat dans l’espace social et l’imaginaire occidental, du Moyen Age au XVIIIe siècle,” in L’Homme, l’animal domestique et l’environnement: du Moyen Age au XVIIIe siècle, ed., Robert Durand, Enquêtes et documents: Centre de recherches sur l’histoire du monde atlantique, Université de Nantes 19 (Nantes: Ouest Éditions, 1993), 76, 78–9; Sara Lipton, “Jews, Heretics, and the Sign of the Cat in the Bible Moralisée,” Word and Image 8 (1992). 48 Like other corvids, magpies are also bold birds who not infrequently build their nests close to human dwellings, and are generally of ill repute in European folklore. In modern Scandinavian legends, witches who transform into birds frequently take the form of magpies (Bodil Nilden-Wall and Jan Wall, “The Witch as Hare or the Witch’s Hare: Popular Legends and Beliefs in Nordic Tradition,” Folklore 104, no. 1/2 (1993), 72; Bengt af Klintberg, The Types of the Swedish Folk Legend, FF Communications 147, no. 300 [Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 2010], N36). Moreover, like sparrows, swallows will also roost indoors. Both species featured in Marie Magdalene church, in other words, transgress the boundaries of inside/outside, human/animal, in ways reminiscent of other bird species identified in the Finnmark trials. 49 Stephen A. Mitchell, Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 184–5. 50 Bobis, “L’évolution de la place du chat,” 74. 51 Mitchell, Witchcraft and Magic, 102, 250n149. 52 Willumsen, Witches, 226; Hagen, Porten til Helvete, 108. 53 Willumsen, Witches, 246. 54 Willumsen, Witchcraft Trials, 213. 55 Ibid., 206. 56 “… haffde wildt werit Neder til Hende” (Willumsen, Trolldomsprosessene, 206). 57 Willumsen, Witchcraft Trials, 214. 58 Ibid., 272. 59 Ibid., 226. 60 Bruce Boehner, “Introduction” to A Cultural History of Animals in the Renaissance, Cultural History of Animals 3 (Oxford, UK: Berg, 2011), 21. 61 Willumsen, Witchcraft Trials, 209. 62 Ibid., 110. 63 “Le problème fondamental posé par l’animal familier et, en particulier par le chat, est bien la difficulté de distinguer l’amour que l’on peut licitement porter à l’animal, frère de l’homme dans la Création, de celui, impur, de la créature” (Bobis, “L’évolution de la place du chat,” 77). Emphasis added. 64 “Symbole de la sauvagerie domestique, le chat est par excellence l’animal qui évoque duplicité et fourberie” (Bobis, “L’évolution de la place du chat,” 78). 65 Sophie Page, “Good Creation and Demonic Illusions: The Medieval Universe of Creatures,” chapter 1 of A Cultural History of Animals in the Medieval Age, ed., Brigitte Resl, A Cultural History of Animals 2 (Oxford, UK: Berg, 2011), 57. 66 “Katzen … symbolisieren die unkontrollierbare Macht der Wildnis, die innerhalb des Dorfs, innerhalb die Haushalts und am Ende innerhalb des Menschen verborgen liegt” (Bever, “Hasen, Katzen und Vögel,” 92). Thanks to Matthew M. Greene and Carol F. Rose for aid in the translation. 67 See also my forthcoming article from the Journal of International Folklore Research.

18 CIRCULATING KNOWLEDGE IN EUROPEAN ENLIGHTENED DISCOURSES Eberhard David Hauber and the Bibliotheca, sive Acta et Scripta Magica (1738–1745) Rita Voltmer Introduction At the end of the seventeenth century and with the dawning of the so-called Enlightenment, the belief in magic, witchcraft, and demonic possession, in ghosts, apparitions, and the walking undead witnessed spectacular revivals. This factum may seem surprising, but it was, among other things, a result of the growing media market, which promised publishers and printers profitable business. On one side, books, brochures, pamphlets, and journals helped the circulation of Enlightened debates. On the other side, the media market disseminated precisely those magical and so-called superstitious knowledge that was so opposed by learned men of the Enlightenment. News and narratives about occult machinations spread widely in Europe, crossing political, religious, and social borders.1 Moreover, witchcraft trials were continuing. For example, there were still isolated cases in the Holy Roman Empire, and in Hungary they reached their peak during the eighteenth century.2 In the shadow of the Enlightenment, thus, demonophobia still lurked – the fear of a mighty Satan, accompanied by evil spirits and witches in his service, with their physical, creaturely presence in the material, visible world, haunting and affecting humans’ lives, welfare, minds, and souls. Witnessing the ineradicable and growing public interest in news about prophesies, possessions, apparitions, witchcraft, and magic, men of letters3 judged their contemporary age to be misruled by “King Superstition,” whose tyranny had to be eradicated. In the name of reason, natural sciences should instead deliver the world from religious prejudices and bondage. Attacking superstition and witchcraft proved to be an effective strategy to achieve these goals.4 Ridiculing the simple as well as the educated people’s fearful superstitions and doubting the legitimacy of witch trials, however, did not entail the outright

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negation of the Devil’s power. Neither did scepticism lead directly to a disbelief in the existence of spirits. Towards the end of the seventeenth century and beyond, England and Scotland experienced a widening debate about the Devil, ghosts, and witches. Among the Cambridge Platonists, Henry More and Joseph Glanvill denounced so-called freethinkers as Sadducees, who criticized the Anglican Church and the literal reading of the Bible. For the Platonists, the real existence of witches and their devilish master had been proven by witch trials, thus giving an ultimate proof of God. The mocking scepticism of the Sadducees, consequently, signalled atheism. The English debate deeply inf luenced the parallel German debate between so-called demonists (Dämonisten) and anti-demonists (Adämonisten), triggered by the anti-demonological publications of Balthasar Bekker, Christian Thomasius, and others.5 Against the backdrop of these profoundly existential, spiritual, and transcendental discussions, the Lutheran church dean and polymath Eberhard David Hauber (1695–1765) designed his reform program. In 1738 he started to release a periodical publication that collected information to fuel the learned debates, arguing against mistaken popular and intellectual belief in the material powers of the Devil. His main purpose was to establish reason, science, knowledge, and truth. In unmasking the terrible horror of past and present witchcraft trials with their judicial murder of the innocent, Hauber stressed the essential dangers of demonology6 separating Christians from trusting in God’s providence and creation, whose well-constructed magnificence and glory might better be scrutinized with the instruments of natural sciences and knowledge. His Bibliotheca, sive Acta et Scripta magica7 belongs to the genre of encyclopaedic, miscellaneous, and bibliographical literature, with which men of letters filled the bookshops to bolster their competing discussions about science and religion. Hauber edited, commented, and reviewed texts of great variety. Medieval papal bulls concerning the heresy of witchcraft stood side by side with the repeal of the English witchcraft act (1736). Extracts from or comments on learned works like those of Jean Bodin, Martin Delrio, Friedrich Spee, Christian Thomasius, Balthasar Bekker or the discussion of Joseph Glanvill’s Saducismus triumphatus were mixed with current news, collected from journals, brochures, or pamphlets, about exorcisms, possessions, apparitions, soothsaying, vampires, oracles, prophecies, or treasure hunting. The timeframe of the Bibliotheca brought together texts and references from antiquity and pre-modern times up to Hauber’s present age. Geographically, it ranged from Italy to Scotland, from France to Poland, Hungary, and the Scandinavian lands. Using missionary reports, Hauber also quoted stories from China and East India. During the eighteenth century, Elias Caspar Reichard’s Vermischte Beyträge zur Beförderung einer nähern Einsicht in das gesamte Geisterreich (“Collection to promote a deeper understanding of the entire realm of spirits,” 1781 and 1788) attempted to continue the Bibliotheca after its ending in 1745. In the nineteenth century the early historiography of magic and witchcraft used the Bibliotheca extensively. Georg Conrad Horst included and continued it in his Zauberbibliothek (“Magic

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Periodical,” 1821–1826) and so did Johann Gräße (Bibliotheca magica et pneumatica, 1843). In the same year, Wilhelm Gottlieb Soldan published his wellknown Geschichte der Hexenprozesse (“History of the Witch Trials”), relying on Hauber’s collection. Henry Charles Lea studied the Bibliotheca to collect material towards his history of witchcraft but omitted to include Hauber’s discussion of the eighteenth-century English witchcraft debate.8 Lea died while he was working on Hauber’s last fascicle. George Lincoln Burr and Andrew Dickson White also drew on the Bibliotheca to assemble the witchcraft collection at Cornell University.9 The attention that Hauber had given, both to the Catholic sceptic Cornelius Loos and the notorious case of the executed male witch Dietrich Flade from Trier, inspired Burr to hunt successfully for the lost manuscript of Loos’ tract and Flade’s trial records.10 With the help of Lea’s transcriptions, some of the Bibliotheca’s source material has found its way into recent English witchcraft research. A thorough biography of Hauber noticed the relevance of the Bibliotheca,11 but it was Wolfgang Behringer who acknowledged its great importance in the early Enlightened debates. He called it a “witchcraft quarterly” which mainly argued with verve against witchcraft trials.12 The Bibliotheca has never yet been scrutinized entirely. Its analysis and contextualization still are a work in progress as part of my current research.13 The following paragraphs approach its enormous text corpus together with the underlying discourses and networks in an illustrative, exemplary way.

Eberhard David Hauber – A short biography Eberhard David Hauber was born in 1695 as the son of a Lutheran minister in Württemberg.14 He studied theology and mathematics at the universities of Tübingen and Altdorf (Nürnberg). After working brief ly as a tutor, he accepted a vicarage at the collegiate church in Stuttgart (1724). In 1728, he achieved a doctor’s degree in Lutheran theology at the university of Helmstedt and travelled to the Netherlands. Between 1726 and 1746, Hauber was church superintendent of the German county of Schaumburg-Lippe, which was Lutheran but ruled by a Calvinist dynasty. As senior pastor in Stadthagen, he co-founded an orphanage and a girls’ school. Through the intercession of his friend Jeremias Friedrich Reuß, court preacher to the Danish King Christian VI, in 1746 he received a call to the German Protestant congregation of St Peter’s Church in Copenhagen. After hesitating for a long time, he accepted the new position. One of his friends in Copenhagen was the poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock. Deeply interested in geography, Hauber published important works on contemporary maps; he is still called the father of modern cartography. A polymath, Hauber taught Greek, Chaldean, Syrian, geography, history, mathematics, trigonometry, and astronomy. As well as the ancient languages, he read English, French, and Italian. His library contained more than 20,000 books and manuscripts, several of them in the English language. The dowager countess of Schaumburg-Lippe,

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who had resided for fourteen years (1714–1728) at the English court, became his patron, and helped him to obtain newly published books from the English market. Hauber died in 1765 in Copenhagen, and his library was dispersed. During his lifetime, a network of literati praised Hauber as a highly learned polymath who strove to achieve a balance between all religious confessions. He should be characterized as a cosmopolitan rational Pietist, who developed a mastery of text-critical science, laying emphasis on the comparative, and close reading of first-hand source material. According to him, academic and learned debates should be free of preconceptions and prejudice, not dominated by religion, confessions, factionalism, or so-called traditions and authorities. Empirical evidence, experience, and reason should form the basis of well-balanced arguments. In this he followed one of his many correspondents, the Italian scholar Ludovico Antonio Muratori. In short, Hauber sought truth both as fact and as knowledge beyond mere religious prejudices. In evaluating experience, empirical evidence, and sound judgement, Hauber asserted the possibility that in learned debates more than a single truth existed. In the Bibliotheca, Hauber historicized and contextualized magical phenomena. No longer should they be perceived as God-given eternal entities. On the contrary, magic, and related beliefs and practices were by-products of human history; they were invented in the past, they changed through time and geographical space, and, according to his hope and endeavours, in the future they should vanish into oblivion. He provided solid arguments, both for God’s existence and for the non-existence of any demonic or magical manifestation in the material world, by scrutinizing sources with critical textual methods and by studying the world with the help of the natural sciences.

The making of the Bibliotheca and its purpose The full list of Hauber’s many theological, exegetical, and cartographical publications cannot be presented here; the gargantuan collection of source material in the Bibliotheca testifies to his untiring efforts in reading and learning. Between 1738 and 1745, the Bibliotheca eventually totalled 2,360 pages in its 36 fascicles. It contained 332 texts, translations, summaries, reviews, and annotations concerning so-called magic, witchcraft, superstition, possession, ghosts, prophecy, miracles, trickery, and delusion. Each fascicle usually included a copper-plate engraving, mostly annotated by Hauber. A dedication, usually to a prominent man of letters, introduced each of the fascicles. The 36 fascicles were eventually collected in three volumes, each containing an index and a list of errata. The first fascicle was published anonymously. Its subtitle unfolded the publication’s program: Detailed news and judgements of those books and actions, which concern the material power of the Devil. Published for the glory of God and in the service of mankind. The first twelve fascicles were then reprinted in 1738 as volume one of the complete Bibliotheca, still anonymously attributed to “the editor.” In 1739 a reprint of the first volume corrected some printing errors and added a second

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preface. This time, Lemgo as the place of printing, and the names of the court printer and publisher Johann Heinrich Meyer as well as Hauber himself were emblazoned on the f lyleaf with full name and title. Now he called himself “the author,” who also revealed the reasons why the Bibliotheca was initially printed anonymously, and why he had waited so long to publish it: the republic of letters was riven by personal rivalries and factionalism, particularly in the debates about the material manifestations of the Devil and the spirits. Here Hauber mentioned the polemical debates between the respective followers of Balthasar Bekker and Christian Thomasius, a controversy which had produced a f lood of pamphlets.15 Hauber stated that he wanted to maintain a neutral position in this quarrel. Nonetheless, he reviewed the writings of Christian Thomasius and Balthasar Bekker very positively. Even if he did not agree with all their arguments, he defended the latter against accusations of being an atheist. In seeking for a middle way of tolerance, he did not want to provoke the disapproval of those who still believed in demonic powers before they had read his journal and therewith found the truth by themselves. The vital question remains, why the publishing of the Bibliotheca had started. Wolfgang Behringer supposed that Hauber’s interest in witchcraft was “intensely local,” because he had discovered “extensive witchcraft trial records … especially of … Lemgo.”16 Yet, Hauber did not find one single trial record, nor did he publish any news connected with the seventeenth-century witchcraft trials in Lemgo. In the ninth fascicle (1739), he edited the Epistola (1583) of Wilhelm Adolf Scribonius, concerning the validity of the cold-water ordeal, which the latter had witnessed in Lemgo. According to Hauber, this tract had initiated the debate about the swimming test, and thus contributed to the deaths of many innocent people, wrongly executed as witches. After this, there are no more references to Lemgo in the Bibliotheca. Hauber himself gave at least two explanations of why he was publishing his journal. First, in the fifteenth fascicle (1740), he discussed a witchcraft trial retold in the miscellany Der Höllische Proteus (“Proteus from Hell,” 1690), which had allegedly happened 40 years ago. Hauber informed his readers that he had found this story many years ago. At that point he had not yet decided to write about witchcraft, but the trial’s story had affected him greatly, revealing the truth about the terrible injustice of the witch trials. In later fascicles, he added more information about the development of his thought. Since his youth he had experienced a social and mental milieu in which the fear of the Devil had predominated with devastating consequences, wherein the witch persecution, fuelled by Catholics as well as Protestants, had been the worst catastrophe. The erroneous belief in the Devil’s machinations had created a negative belief system of fear, whose phantasies caused mental sickness and corporal illness. Both mental hysteria and witchcraft trials still infested Christian society, as Hauber himself had recently to witness:17 in the years 1712–1720, an epidemic of demonic possession had swept Protestant Saxony, triggering the last witch trials in this region. The so-called “Annaberg Aff liction” (Annaberger Krankheit) was widely publicized in print.

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This inf luenced Hauber to begin a thorough and critical study of texts in magic and witchcraft.18 According to his report, the quest to understand the Devil’s material power was answered by God, who enabled him to find the truth for himself and – through the Bibliotheca – to publicize it for his readers: the belief in any material manifestation of the Devil, of demons and spirits, was a mere superstition, a delusion, a fraud. Almighty God alone ruled the material and immaterial world. Magical phenomena and devilish manifestations could be explained by four reasons: 1. the abilities of conjurers and acrobats to create delusions and frauds, 2. the torture in the witchcraft trials which created false confessions, 3. the ignorance of the simple people which created superstition, and 4. phenomena perceived as magic, which could now be explained as natural with the help of science and newly invented techniques. With the absence of any demonic inf luence, magic lost its meaning, and its impact. Thinking with demons had to wither away, and with it, the abhorrent witch trials, which still endangered innocent people all over the world. The Bibliotheca, however, does not stand at the end of the witch-hunts. This thesis must be rejected.19 On the contrary, Hauber used the Bibliotheca in his mission to fight the still-widespread fear of the Devil. He aimed to prevent any further disruptions of the Christian community, and in particular witchcraft trials, in the present and future. Hauber fought not only with words, but also with deeds. As church dean in Stadthagen he prohibited any further exorcisms, and the last witch trials in the duchy of Jülich, which had already cost two victims, were stopped through his personal intervention in 1739.20

Dedications and a networking correspondence From the start the Bibliotheca found a lively readership. Hauber designed it as a journal, in which not only he, but also other men of letters should publish their comments. He invited readers to send him reviews, manuscripts, and news about so-called magical phenomena. Asterisk annotations mark those texts sent to him by men of letters, who usually remained anonymous. Hauber probably maintained a correspondence network with some of them. I assume that with Hauber’s guidance an anti-magical and anti-demonological network of literati arose in Protestant northern Europe. In this respect, the Bibliotheca must be considered as a correspondence journal. Wolfgang Behringer has already pointed to the importance of the dedications which introduced every fascicle, addressing high clergymen, ministers, professors, doctors of both medicine and law, philologists, historians, or writers, the vast majority of whom belonged to the Protestant milieu.21 In Hauber’s eyes, all of them had achieved a special glory in the natural sciences, in theology, in medicine, or as reformers. Some of these men had their professional roots in Halle, Leipzig, and Jena, or in Hannover and Brandenburg. At least three of them were fellows of the Royal Society in London: Paul Gottlieb Werlhof, court physician

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of George II in Hannover; Lorenz Heister, professor of anatomy and medicine in Altdorf (Nurenberg), so-called father of the scientific discipline of surgery; Johann Georg Keyßler, founder of protohistory and archaeologist. Other dedications went to members of the universities in Göttingen or in Rinteln. Jakob Brunnemann and Johannes Harpprecht were among those already dead when honoured with a dedication. Some non-Germans, such as the famous François Gayot de Pitaval and Louis Bourguet, the Swiss polymath, geologist, and palaeontologist, were addressed with a dedication. Although Hauber valued scholarship and reason, he did not respect the universities, considering them the greatest repositories of superstitious thinking. In addition to representatives of high scholarship, there were also literary men who attracted Hauber’s attention with current publications, such as the Protestant pastor Georg Wilhelm Wegner who belonged to the Enlightened avant-garde. Wegner had published, under the pseudonym Tharsander, a three-volume miscellany to unmask so-called magic, witchcraft, and especially vampirism as forgery, illusion, and superstition. Of course, not everyone supported Hauber. The first fascicle was reviewed by a harsh critic, defending the orthodox belief in the material presence and impact of the Devil as well as the witches’ crimes. The review was picked into pieces on 25 pages in one of the following fascicles of the Bibliotheca.22

Circulating anti-demonological knowledge In argument, religious tolerance, and rationalism, Hauber relied on Pierre Bayle and the latter’s Dictionnaire historique et critique (“Historical and Critical Dictionary,” 1697) as well as the first volume of the Réponse aux Questions d’un Provincial (“Answer to the Questions of a Provincial,” 1704). In questions of magic and witchcraft, Hauber referred also to Bishop Francis Hutchinson, closely following the latter’s attempts to find a middle way between freethinking and scepticism to avoid the pitfalls of atheism.23 To fill the Bibliotheca, Hauber collected, read, and examined manuscripts, pamphlets, reviews, records, journals, and books, writing excerpts, comparing the narratives and respective references, listening to reports. As Behringer has aptly described it, Hauber conducted oral history and field research avant la lettre. He sharpened the weapon of philological source criticism to attack the propagators of demonology and witchcraft. The Bibliotheca combined various forms of textual representations. Some texts, like the papal bulls or the British witchcraft act, appeared as full editions, with the text in both its original language and in translation. Sometimes Hauber noted and translated the title of a newly published book, giving a summary of its contents. Sometimes he reprinted a pamphlet at length. Sometimes he collected news from current journals or missionary reports. He often annotated or commented, but on other occasions he left the reader to find the truth by himself. Whichever way he chose to present the texts, he separated the original clearly from the translation as well as from his own text-critical annotations or comments.

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In his analysis of so-called true stories about ghosts, witches, and demonic possession, he used close reading and contextualization to eviscerate their alleged truthfulness. In strengthening his critical method of source reading, he tried hard to trace back a narrative to its origins, to clarify its sources and the credibility of supposed eyewitnesses. In a certain sense, Hauber developed the skills of a book detective, a “Sherlock Holmes in the library.” He discussed the printing history of the tracts of Ulrich Molitor, Johann Weyer, or the Cautio Criminalis of Friedrich Spee.24 He took pleasure in revealing errors, faults, misconceptions, and contradictions in the arguments of the Malleus Maleficarum, Jean Bodin, or Martin Delrio. On the one hand, he emphasized the responsibility of papal bulls and the pre-Reformation witch-hunts for the widespread infection of Christianity with demonophobia. Without the endeavours of the papal inquisition, neither Bodin, Binsfeld, nor Delrio would have written their demonologies. On the other hand, in using the example of Benedict Carpzov, Hauber blamed Protestant theologians and jurists, who had relied and would continue to rely on Delrio, although the latter had clearly claimed in the preface of his Disquisitionum Magicarum Libri Sex that Protestant heresy and witchcraft were two sides of the same coin, and thus that Protestants were always witches. The witchcraft trials were a prominent target of Hauber’s attack, but by no means the only target. He discussed all kinds of oddities and curiosities which in the past and present had been labelled as magic, ghost apparitions, the evil deeds of witches, or devilish manifestations. To Hauber’s close reading, the Devil had been brought into the picture through torture in the witch trials, or the physical abilities of sleight-of-hand artists, acrobats, and swindlers. Scientific and technological revolution had explained other so-called magical phenomena with natural causes. Hauber described automata and semi-automata. He was the first to coin the term “android.” In addition to the debates about Balthasar Bekker and Christian Thomasius, Hauber presented more controversies to his readers. It was easy for him to learn of the current English debates on demonology, since prominent treatises had already been translated into German by Theodor Arnold at Thomasius’s prompting.25 However, Hauber also read the texts in their original language. His knowledge about these debates, including the arguments of Reginald Scot, Francis Hutchinson, or John Webster, inf luenced his own methodological approach. He praised Hutchinson’s allegorical argument with which the latter had tried to prove the faked nature of witchcraft narratives. An ass, disguised with a lion’s skin, would always reveal its true nature by its ear slipping out; likewise, witchcraft stories would always reveal their unreliable nature by a false or contradictory element in the narrative. Hauber looked for, and found, many such ass’s ears.26 He discussed Glanvill’s Saducismus Triumphatus extensively, first in a German translation by an anonymous author from 1701, and secondly, the English reprint from 1726. In the Bibliotheca, the publishing history of the different versions of Glanvill’s books was reconstructed, which defended the Devil’s material

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powers, witchcraft, ghosts, and apparitions, as ultimate proof of God’s existence.27 Hauber was the first to review Glanvill in the light of the latter’s relationship with Robert Hunt, a justice of the peace who had led some witchcraft trials in South-West England.28 Hauber even noticed the exchange of letters between James Hollow and Sir Edward Spencer on a manuscript concerning demonology.29 He doubted the probability of William Lilly’s prophecies about the fate of English monarchy, he mused about the Scottish seer Duncan Campbell (1726), and he annotated the English debates about Mary Toft and her fraudulent claim to have given birth to rabbits (1726).30 The Bibliotheca thus transmitted English debates about witchcraft, ghosts, and miracles directly into German Enlightened discourse. Hauber did not shy away from German debates. In 1731, the Monatliche Unterredungen von dem Reich der Geister (“Monthly Conversations about the Realm of Spirits”) had already been published in two volumes.31 This miscellany attacked Thomasius and his followers, presenting stories about ghosts and apparitions. Hauber labelled the anonymous author as the new Delrio and refuted some of the stories as unreliable and unproven. The anonymous author turned out to be the notorious Otto vom Graben zum Stein, originally a Servite monk in Sicily, who then became a writer of anti-papal tracts, and finally, after conversion to Protestantism, a vice-president of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. He was banned from publishing in 1731 after his involvement in the famous Leipzig “Vampire Controversy.” After ten years, von Graben, who had possibly acted as a spy at the royal court in Berlin, finally published the third volume of his ghost stories. In the nineteenth century the study of folklore grew fond of von Graben’s compilations, but Hauber dismissed them as vain superstition and Devil’s lore. The Bibliotheca aimed to stimulate reason to free Christians from demonophobia. It would be too short-sighted, however, to label the Bibliotheca solely as a platform for Enlightened discourses. On the contrary, Hauber dealt with witch trials past, present, and future, with the practical aim of preventing further trials. This was one of the reasons why he collected source material about recently ended or current witch trials, including Swedish witch trials (1668–1676, 1732), the child witches’ trials in Calw (1683/84), the “Annaberg Aff liction” (1712– 1720) or the witch trials in Szegedin, Hungary (1728).32 All of them had caused a sensation in the European-wide media market, including England and Scotland.

The aftermath of the Bibliotheca We do not yet know why Hauber closed the journal in 1745, although he had already announced his intent to do so in 1741. His interest in magical topics did not vanish, since he continued to order magical books up to 1764. In the Republic of Letters, the Bibliotheca was held in high regard.33 The Italian polymath Scipione Maffei, who in 1749 had published his own reckoning with magic and superstition, stated that the Bibliotheca had finally succeeded in proving the ineffectiveness of magic. Probably the greatest impact of Hauber’s Bibliotheca

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can be traced in the history of Balthasar Bekker’s Enchanted World.34 Hauber had rejected its first translation into German, made in 1693; instead, he had demanded a better one for the German public, communicating the knowledge of Bekker’s important statements concerning the material non-existence of the Devil. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, a keen reader of the Bibliotheca, took up the idea, and corresponded with Hauber, now in Copenhagen. However, Lessing’s idea remained unrealized. Not until 1781 did a new German translation of Bekker’s book appear, by Johann Moritz Schwager and Johann Salomon Semler, the so-called father of rationalism. Both were ardent readers of Hauber’s Bibliotheca, where they claimed to have found the most fundamental arguments against the material manifestations of the Devil. Semler admitted that his critical approach to the Bible as well as to other ecclesiastical texts and dogmas was highly inf luenced by the Bibliotheca. To the later professor in Halle, the Bible was a historical document, from which the Devil should be thoroughly eradicated. In the same direction pointed the ref lections of the late Hugh Farmer, who had interpreted biblical demonic possessions as natural diseases. Farmer’s writings were published with prefaces by Semler, who had played a vital role in controversies about current exorcisms. He strongly recommended the study of Hauber’s work to all those who still believed in the Devil’s power, in possession, and in exorcism. Semler’s assessment of Glanvill’s book followed Hauber’s verdict: it was bursting with superstition and intentional stubbornness. The reception of Hauber’s Bibliotheca reached far into the most famous polemics of the late eighteenth century about the material manifestation of the Devil, and about possession and exorcism.35

The Bibliotheca as a compendium of magical knowledge With his important contribution to Enlightened discourses Hauber had propagated a world ruled by trust in God, a purified theology, natural sciences, and new technologies. With his critical approach to historical texts including the Bible, he belongs in a row with Hugh Farmer, Balthasar Bekker, and Johann Salomon Semler. Yet, most of the Bibliotheca’s anti-demonological arguments seem to be rather well-known. Already the early sceptics of the sixteenth century had tried to weaken the belief in the Devil’s power with four arguments: the denial of biblical authority, the impact of torture on the confessions, the explanation of magical phenomena as either natural or fraud or delusion, and the ignorance of the unlearned.36 Hauber’s endeavour to unmask with historical arguments the contemporary lore in the occult as illusion, forgery, and abuse, combined with his solid method of source criticism and close reading, seems, however, to be a new approach. His immense geographical knowledge about diverse global religions and cultures had probably contributed to his habit of tolerance. In Enlightened debates, there were few participants who went as far as Hauber in refraining from factionalism, polemics, or anti-Popish or anti-Protestant arguments.

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Beyond elite discourses, Hauber’s Bibliotheca was not successful. In this perspective, “King Superstition” is still tyrannizing a belief system, wherein magic has not fallen into oblivion, and witchcraft trials have not vanished yet. Many questions about the Bibliotheca, its networks, its reception, and its text corpus have still to be examined.37 Whether Hauber followed any publishing agenda is neither known nor fully decoded. Instead, from fascicle to fascicle, the Bibliotheca seems to show a growing disorder, randomness, and disconnectedness. His interest focused, however, on the Protestant regions of Germany, the Netherlands, the British Isles, and Scandinavia without neglecting the Catholic propagators of witch-hunts, including their high-ranking male victims such as Guillaume Adeline, Cornelius Loos, Diedrich Flade, or Louis Gaufredy.38 Hauber possessed a great knowledge of past and contemporary anti-demonological and sceptical texts, but some eminent works like Bordelon’s Monsieur Oufle or satirical writings like those of Daniel Defoe are missing. Nevertheless, the Bibliotheca acted as an early modern media hub, which connected the past with the present and bridged to the future. With pastoral, scientific, and antiquarian zeal, Hauber had collected, visualized, and preserved magical knowledge to unmask the Devil’s lore and its supposed materializations as nothing but imagination, fraud, or natural phenomena. It is a caprice of history that he involuntarily created a corpus of demonological narratives, saving them from oblivion. Thus, in plain contrast to his intention, the Bibliotheca continues to be a compendium of magical knowledge.

Notes 1 Roy Porter, “Witchcraft and Magic in Enlightenment, Romantic and Liberal Thought,” in Witchcraft and Magic in Europe. The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, ed., Bengt Ankerloo, and Stuart Clark (London: The Athlone Press, 1999), 193–282; Sabine Doering-Manteuffel, and Stephan Bachter, “The Dissemination of Magical Knowledge in Enlightenment Germany,” in Beyond the Witch Trials. Witchcraft and Magic in Enlightenment Europe, ed., Owen Davies and Willem de Blécourt (Manchester: University Press, 2004), 187–206; Paul Kléber Monod, Solomon’s Secret Arts. The Occult in the Age of Enlightenment (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2013); Lizanne Henderson, Witchcraft and Folk Belief in the Age of Enlightenment. Scotland, 1670–1740 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). – On witchcraft and magic as early modern media bestsellers, see Rita Voltmer, “Debating the Devil’s Clergy: Demonology and the Media in Dialogue with Trials (14th to 17th Century),” Religions 10, no. 12 (2017) https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10120648. – I am grateful to Julian Goodare for advice and language editing. 2 Wolfgang Behringer, “Letzte Hexenhinrichtungen 1700–1911,” in Späte Hexenprozesse. Der Umgang der Aufklärung mit dem Irrationalen, ed., Wolfgang Behringer, Sönke Lorenz, and Dieter Bauer (Bielefeld: Verlag für Regionalgeschichte, 2016), 365–427; Rita Voltmer, “The Witch Trials,” in The Oxford Illustrated History of Witchcraft and Magic, ed., Owen Davies (Oxford: University Press, 2017), 97–133. 3 Men of letters as players in different Enlightened discourses fashioned themselves in multi-layered public debates. They were entangled in private feuds and rivalries, and political as well as religious conf licts. At universities and in the media, they struggled about dogmatism, social and financial profit, prestige, and legitimation. They used the terms “superstition” or “witch craze” as combat terms to ridicule or to

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defame their opponents. Whereas in England the debate was dominated by rivalries between Whigs and Tories, in Germany, France, or Italy confessional affiliations combined with political issues still played vital roles. In general, men of letters, with their strong interest in natural sciences, were neither free of thinking with magic and spirits nor did they fully reject the Devil’s material impact. The interwoven discourses on magic, superstition, and witchcraft between England, Germany, and further European regions cannot be discussed here in their fascinating multi-layered complexity. There is still a lack of broad-based research on the topic, hampered by the gargantuan mass of source material and by language barriers. Wolfgang Behringer, “Wissenschaft im Kampf gegen den Aberglauben. Die Debatten über Wunder, Besessenheit und Hexerei,” in Macht des Wissens. Die Entstehung der modernen Wissensgesellschaft, ed., Richard van Dülmen, and Sina Rauschenbach (Köln: Böhlau, 2004), 365–89. Michael Hunter, The Decline of Magic. Britain in the Enlightenment (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2020); Julie Davies, Science in an Enchanted World. Philosophy and Witchcraft in the Work of Joseph Glanvill (New York and London: Routlegde, 2018), 207–15, both without any reference to the Bibliotheca. Julian Goodare, “Connecting demonology and Witch-Hunting in Early Modern Europe,” in Demonology and Witch-Hunting in Early Modern Europe, ed., Julian Goodare, Rita Voltmer, and Liv Helene Willumsen (London: Routledge, 2020), 345–81. David Eberhard Hauber, Bibliotheca sive acta et scripta magica. Gründliche Nachrichten und Urtheile von solchen Büchern und Handlungen, welche die Macht des Teufels in leiblichen Dingen betreffen (Lemgo: Johann Heinrich Meyer, 3 vol., 1738–1745). Henry Charles Lea, Materials toward a History of Witchcraft, ed., Arthur C. Howland (London: Thomas Yoseloff, 1957), 417, 601, 647, 728, 747, 748, 799, 881, 912, 936, 941, 942, 1040, 1050, 1118, 1167, 1173, 1181, 1182, 1188, 1190, 1236, 1280, 1285, 1381, 1393, 1404–6, 1435, 1438, 1440, 1474, 1478, 1480. Rossell Hope Robbins, “Introduction,” in Witchcraft. Catalogue of the Witchcraft Collection in Cornell University Library, ed., Martha L. Crowe (New York: KTO press, 1977), xxxiii, lxix, lxxiii, lxxviii, xxc, xxciii, xxcvii. Rita Voltmer, “Ein Amerikaner in Trier. George Lincoln Burr (1857–1938) und sein Beitrag zu den Sammelschwerpunkten Hexerei und Hexenverfolgungen an der Cornell University (Ithaca/New York) sowie an der Stadtbibliothek Trier,” Kurtrierisches Jahrbuch 47 (2007): 447–89; Rita Voltmer, “Demonology and antidemonology. Binsfeld’s De confessionibus and Loos’s De vera et falsa magia,” in The Science of Demons. Early Modern Authors Facing Witchcraft and the Devil, ed., Jan Machielsen (London and New York: Routledge, 2020), 149–64. Ruthardt Oehme, Eberhard David Hauber (1695–1765). Ein schwäbisches Gelehrtenleben (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1976), 134–6. Hauber’s compendium was only used as bibliography by Martin Pott, Aufklärung und Aberglaube. Die deutsche Frühaufklärung im Spiegel ihrer Aberglaubenskritik (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1992), 249, and Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), xvi. Wolfgang Behringer, “Hauber, Eberhard David (1695–1765),” in Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition, ed. Richard M. Golden (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2006) 2:476–477; Behringer, “Wissenschaft,” 385–8. Hauber and his network, the contents of the Bibliotheca, and its reception are part of several forthcoming studies, which I am preparing. See Hauber’s full-length biography in Oehme, Hauber. Markus Meumann, “Die Geister, die ich rief – oder wie aus ‘Geisterphilosophie’ ‘Auf klärung’ werden kann. Eine diskursgeschichtliche Rekontextualisierung von Christian Thomasius’ De crimine magiae,” in Aufklärung und Esoterik: Wege in die Moderne, ed., Monika Neugebauer-Wölk, Renko Geffarth, and Markus Meumann (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2013), 645–80. Behringer, “Hauber,” 476.

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17 Hauber, Bibliotheca, vol. 3, fasc. 25, no. 215. 18 Hauber published many texts and pamphlets concerning the Annaberger Krankheit; Gabor Rychlak, Hexenfieber im Erzgebirge. Die Annaberger Krankheit 1712–1720 (PhD diss., University of Mainz, 2009), 41, 64, 76, 88, 92, 94, 95, 108, 285, 315, 377. 19 Guillaume van Gemert, “Das langwierige Ende des Hexenwahns in den deutschen Landen. Eberhard David Haubers Bibliotheca Magica, 1738–1745, als Versuch einer Schlussbilanz,” Lias 32, no. 1 (2005): 67–90. 20 Erika Münster-Schröer, “Tödliche Gelehrsamkeit. Der Düsseldorfer Hexenprozess 1737/1738,” in Späte Hexenprozesse. Der Umgang der Aufklärung mit dem Irrationalen, ed. Wolfgang Behringer, Sönke Lorenz, and Dieter Bauer (Bielefeld: Verlag für Regionalgeschichte, 2016), 36, 47–8. 21 Behringer, “Wissenschaft,” 385–8. 22 Hauber, Bibliotheca, vol. 2, fasc. 13, no. 103. 23 Hunter, Decline, 62–6. 24 See for example Guillaume van Gemert, “Friedrich Spee und das Ende des Hexenwahns. Zur Auseinandersetzung mit der Cautio Criminalis in Eberhard David Haubers Bibliotheca Magica (1738–1745),” Spee Jahrbuch 11 (2004): 47–70. 25 Behringer, “Wissenschaft,” 372–5. 26 Hauber, Bibliotheca, vol. 1, fasc. 6, no. 50. 27 Ibid., vol. 2, fasc. 20 and 22. 28 On Hunt, see Hunter, Decline, 15, 191. 29 Hauber, Bibliotheca, vol. 3, fasc. 33. 30 Ibid., vol. 2, fasc. 18; vol. 3, fasc. 29 and 30. 31 There are numerous references to this controversy in the Bibliotheca; Lea, Material, 1440, touches the controversy shortly. 32 Hauber, Bibliotheca, vol. 3, fasc. 28, 30, 32, 36. 33 Pott, Aufklärung, 248. 34 Annemarie Nooijen, “Unserm großen Bekker ein Denkmal?” Balthasar Bekkers Betoverde Weereld in den deutschen Landen zwischen Orthodoxie und Aufklärung (Münster: Waxmann, 2009), 154–5, 270–4, 278–80; Marianne Schröter, Aufklärung durch Historisierung. Johann Salomo Semlers Hermeneutik des Christentums (Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2012). 35 Behringer, “Wissenschaft,”; H.C. Erik Midelfort, Exorcism and Enlightenment. Johann Joseph Gassner and the Demons of Eighteenth-Century Germany (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005). 36 See with references to James Sharpe and Michael Hunter: Jonathan Barry, Witchcraft and Demonology in South-West England 1640–1789 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 264–7. 37 See footnotes 3 and 13. 38 See particularly Voltmer, “Clergy.”

INDEX

Note: Page locators in italics refer to figures. 1563 witchcraft act 240 1604 witchcraft act 240 Aberrant decoding 6 Abraham and the birds (Qur’ān) 73 abuse of sacred objects 109, 110 admerall and maister man 259 Agnes Hancock of Somerset 25 Agucchi, Giovanni Battista 184 Aitzinger, Michael 252 Aldhelm, Abbot of Malmesbury Abbey 54 Aldiverti, Fabrizio 176, 181n25 Aldrovandi, Ulisse 186 Alexander IV, pope 218n10, 226 al-Filaha al-nabatiyya (The Nabetean Agriculture) 76 Al-Futūhāt al-Makkiyya 74–7, 91n82 Aliamet, Jacques 213 almanacs 236–41, 244 al-Nafis, Ibn 37 al-Qurtubi, Maslama 75–6, 85, 87n23 Amadas et Ydoine 126 Amadeus VIII of Savoy 144, 153n37 Ami et Amile 39 Andersdatter, Karen 272, 276 Angell, Tony 270–1 animals: cats 209, 272–4; crows 265, 268, 270–2; humans and 269–70; pets 275; shapeshifting 267–9; uncanny animals 274–6 “Annaberg Aff liction” 285, 289

Antichrist 12, 138–41, 147, 151n27, 179 anti-demonological knowledge, Bibliotheca, sive Acta et Scripta magica (Hauber) 282, 287–9 Antonio da Belluno 191 Antonio da Messina 64 appropriation 5, 6, 46 Apuleius 25, 40–1, 100n21; Metamorphases 40–1 Aquinas, Thomas 24, 61–2, 158, 170, 201, 218n10, 225–6; Summa theologica 61, 158, 162, 226 Arnold, Theodor 288 artificial creation of life 73–6; Futūhāt 81–5; Meccan Openings 76–8; Nabatean Agriculture 78–81 astrology 107, 109, 235, 239–40, 243 Augustine, Saint 8, 28, 225–6 Badia, Tommaso 225 Ballvollen 259–60 Barberini, Francesco 186, 190–1 Baronio, Cesare 65–6, 69n27; Annales ecclesiastici 65 Barstow, Ann L. 29 Bartalini, Santi 66, 70nn39–40 Bayle, Pierre 287 Béatrice d’Estellin 27 “beheading of John the Baptist” 203 Behringer, Wolfgang 252, 255, 283, 285–7 Bekker, Balthasar 282, 285, 288, 290

296 Index

Bellarmino, Roberto 65–6 benandanti 180n17, 210 Benedetti, Benedetto 66 Benincasa, Benvenuta 162 Bernardino of Siena 12, 40–2, 52, 133, 143, 148n4, 156–63; Seraphim 158, 162–3 birds, shapeshifting 267–8 black bile 35 blood, human blood 35–40 blood-sucking 41–3 Boas, Franz 2 Bobis, Laurence 275–6 Bodin, Jean 202, 219n13, 252, 257, 282, 288 body of Christ see Eucharist body parts, stolen 206 Boehner, Bruce 275 Bogatyrev, Petr 3 Bonaventura da Piacenza 192–3 books, forbidden 189–93 Book of Ritual Magic 204 Borromeo, Charles 173 Bortignon, Paolo 182–4, 190 boundary-crossers, witches 273–4 Bowndie, Barbara 259 Brahe, Tycho 257 Briggs, Katherine 272 Brooks, Matthew 238, 240–1, 243 brooms 208 Bruegel, Pieter 13–14, 198–200, 203–5, 207–8, 210, 212–14, 217, 218n6, 220n43; legacy of 212–17; publication 211–12; Saint James and the Fall of the Magician 199, 200; Saint James at the Magician’s Realm 199, 200, 205–8 Brunnemann, Jakob 287 bruxa 143, 146, 147 Bryggers, Maren Mads 256, 263n51 Burke, Peter 5–6, 16–17n20, 47 Burr, George Lincoln 283 Burroughs, Jeremiah 238 Buzzelli, Ludovico 64 Calvin, John 171 Calvinists 15, 171 Campana, Guglielmo 224 Campbell, Duncan 289 Campeggi, Giovanni 178 Campos, Giacob 177 cannibalism 209–11 Cano, Melchor 62–5, 68n16 Carafa, Gian Pietro 225 Cardini, Franco 132 Carpzov, Benedict 288 Caterina of Francesco of Scarperia 160

Catherine de La Rochelle 32n70 Catholicism: Eucharist see Eucharist; materiality 172–4 cats 209, 272–4 Cauchon, Pierre 23 Cerdà, Pere 142 Chacón, Alfonso 63–5 Chajes, Josef 95, 103n50 Champion, Pierre 22 Chartier, Roger 5–6 Cheshire, Thomas 236, 243 chimney 206, 209, 212, 213, 217 Christian Kabbalah 92–3, 99n2, 102n45, 109 Christianity, miracle stories 121 Christians, cultural exchanges with Jews 105–8 Church of Rome 223; claims of reform 223–7; ignorance 227–30; sorcery 227–8 Cicero 7, 40 Clark, Stuart 235 Clarutia di Angelo 41 Clausdatter, Bodel 265, 271, 274–6 Clavicula Salomonis/Clavicule of Solomon 110, 160, 161, 187–92, 188, 189 Clementinae Recognitiones 73 Clerk, Marion 25 Clutton-Brock, Juliet 272 Cock, Hieronymus 198, 204, 211, 212 codex Vat. Ebr 189 93 Coeli et terrae (1586) 109 Colonna, Francesco, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili 186 conjurers 141, 237, 240, 286 Consigli of Florence, Niccolò 160 consubstantiation 171 Conti, Fabrizio 12, 13, 132 Copenhagen witchcraft trials 252–7 Copenhaver, Brian 36 Corbet, Miles 236, 238–44 Corpus Christi 170 Corpus Christi processions 173, 178, 180n13 Corpus Hermeticum 33–5 corsariae 162 corvids 271 Cosimi, Marcantonio 64 Council of Trent 169–70, 184, 227–8 courtly literature 126–7 Cremonini, Cesare 190 criminal sorcery 109–10 crows 265, 268, 270–2 cultural exchanges 7, 10, 15, 49, 92, 249, 258; in courtly literature 126; Eucharist 169; between Jews and Christians 105–11; miracle stories 120

Index

cultural hybridity 5 cultural transmission, stories about fairies from old to young women 24–8 culture 6; concept of 1–3 cumulative witchcraft 9 Cunningham, John 258–60 Cupid and Psyche 25 Curtius, Ernst Robert 122 damnation 62, 137; Trajan (Roman Emperor) 62–5 Davy, Henry 240, 243 De Luna, Joannes 213 De Luna, Pedro 134 De natuurkunde van het geheelal (The Physics of the Universe) 210 de vehementi 107, 229 De Vio, Tommaso 226–7 De Waardt, Hans 252, 262n32 Del Cane, Giovanni of Montecatini 160–2 DelRio, Martin 53, 282, 289 demonological beliefs 111, 257 demonological ideas 249, 252–61n3; Final Judgement 258–9 demonological witchcraft, witchcraft triangle 247–9 demonology 9, 52, 95, 132, 201, 247, 252, 257–8, 260, 282, 287–9 demon/demons 8, 15, 34, 48, 50–1, 100n21, 106, 110, 122, 124–5, 137–40, 144, 147, 151n27, 152n32, 159–61, 165n19, 200–1, 205, 226, 240–1, 244, 270, 276, 286 Denmark, Copenhagen witchcraft trials 252–7 depiction of witches 14 desecration of sacrament 176–8 devil 9, 143, 200–3, 209, 226, 229, 265–6, 269, 282, 284–8, 290 devil-worshipping witches 198–9 diabolical sorceries 137–8 diabolical witchcraft 133, 143, 145, 201, 266, 267 Dillinger, Johannes 252 divination 109, 159–61 divinationes 135–8 diviners 136–42 domestic animals 272, 276 d’Ourches, Albert 27 Duncan, Geillis 257 Dürer, Albrecht 212, 220n39 East Anglian witch-hunt 14, 235 Eco, Umberto 6 edict of the Lombard king Rothari 54

297

Edisdatter, Karen 259 enchantments 94, 98, 158–60 Engel, Georgen 251 envoûtement 93–4 Espagne, Michel 5 ethnocultural substrata 56 Eucharist 169–70, 179; magic objects 174–6; materiality 172–4; as an object 170–2; see also sacrament exchange 5 exempla, miracle stories 120–2 Eymerich, Nicolau 226–7 fairies 10, 13, 21–9, 31n58, 49, 209–11 fairy tales 25 fake masses 177 Farinacci, Prospero 110 Faust, Johann 213 Felice, Don 175 Felice Pranzini da Pistoia 66 Ferrer, Vicent 133–5; Antichrist 138–40; call to move away from magical practitioners 140–4; heresy 144–7; magical practitioners 136–8; superstitious practices 136; witchcraft 144–7 Festus 25 fetillers 136–8, 141, 143, 147, 148 Feugeyron, Ponce 145 Ficino, Marsilio 10, 33–43; De vita libri tres 10, 34–5, 37–8, 40, 42–3 Filāha 79, 81, 84, 88n41 Final Judgement 137–9 Finnmark: shapeshifting 267–9; uncanny animals 274–6; witchcraft trials 258–61n1, 265–7 Flade, Dietrich 251, 253, 283 f lying 162–3; miracle stories 122–6 folk magic 47, 135 folklore 3–7, 46–9, 53–5, 280n48, 289 folklore traditions 46, 56 forbidden books 187–92 Forty Hours’ Devotion 172 Fourth Council of the Lateran 170–1 Franciscans, Observants 40, 132–3 Francken II, Frans 211, 213, 214 Franco, Moisè 177 friars 40, 67, 156–9, 161, 163, 190–2 Friedrich von Schwaben 127 Futūhāt 75, 76, 81–5 Gadbury, John 239 Gaiato, Orsolina da 175 Garin, Eugenio 42 gathering in secret at night, witches (Italy) 48 Gaufridy, Louis 176

298

Index

Gazaria 145 gazaros 145 Geertz, Clifford 3, 6 Gentili, Alberico 190 Gerald of Wales 120 Gerson, Jean 226 Gervase of Tilbury 54, 120, 122–3; Otia Imperialia 122, 146 Gheyn II, Jacques de 214, 216 Giacomo della Marca 41 Gieri, Achille 64 Gilomen, Hans-Jörg 121, 128n9 Ginzburg, Carlo 4, 16n13, 16n16, 114n7 Gioioso, Natale 177–8, 181n29 Giordano from Bergamo 52 Giustinian, Gian Battista 175 Giustiniani, Tommaso, Libellus ad Leonem X 224 Glanvill, Joseph 282, 288–90; Saducismus Triumphatus 282, 288 Goet, Dominus Castri 36–7 Golem 73, 83, 86n13, 90n75, 108, 115n10 Goodare, Julian 247, 257, 271, 279n26, 291n1 Gräße, Johann 283 Gramsci, Antonio 4 Grasso, Fabrizio 229 Great Yarmouth, astrology 236–8 Great Yarmouth witch-hunt (1645) 235–8, 241–4 Greenhill, William 238 Gregory I, pope 10, 59–62, 65 Gregory of Tours 123–4 Grillando, Paolo 52 grimoires 191, 205–6 Guillaume of Béziers 136 Gundersdatter, Ellen 271 Gurjewitsch, Aaron 121 Hagen, Rune Blix 266, 267 haghetissen 210 hagiographic miracle, Trajan (Roman Emperor) 59–65 hagiography 51, 121 Harmening, Dieter 121 Harpprecht, Johannes 287 Harvilahti, Lauri 55–6 Hauber, Eberhard David, Bibliotheca, sive Acta et Scripta magica 282–91 Hay, William 257 hearth, witches 208–9, 212 Heister, Lorenz 287 Hell to Paradise, Trajan (Roman Emperor) 59–67

Hemmingsen, Niels 255–7 heresy 12, 14, 42, 64, 105, 109–10, 112–13, 126, 135, 144–7, 225–7, 230, 273, 282, 288 heretical depravity 109 heretics of Besançon 123–4 Herolt, Johannes, Sermones discipuli 158 Hollow, James 289 Homer, Odyssey 37 Hopkins, Matthew 235 Horst, Georg Conrad 282 hosts, sacrament 174–6 Howlett, John 235, 240–1 human blood 35–40 human milk 35–6 humanistic culture 8 Hunt, Robert 289 Hutchinson, Francis 287, 288 Hutton, Ronald 9, 47 ianuatice 162 Ibn ‘Arabī 11, 74–7, 79, 81–6n13; Fusus al-hikam (Bezels of Wisdom) 81 Ibn Wahšiyya 11, 76, 78 Idel, Moshe 73–4, 86n13, 93; Golem 73 ignorance 224, 227–9 Ilm al-huruf (science of letters or lettrism) 74, 77 imagines, Jewish magic 93–5 Immensa Aeterni Dei 109 incantations 158–9, 228 infanticide 209 Infessura, Stefano 39–40 infidelitas 159 inghistara 110 Innocent VIII, pope 40 Inquisition 104, 108–9, 184, 226–7, 229; Modena 176; Roman Inquisition 66, 104, 111–12; Siena (Tuscany) 47–8, 50, 64; Venice 175–7, 191 inquisitorial pedagogy 110 Institoris, Heinrich 252 Isac, Jaspar 213 Italy, witches 47–9 Iversdatter, Ingeborg 274 Iversdatter, Karen 271 Jacob, Dominique 27 Jacobsdatter, Magdalene 271 Jacobus de Voragine, Golden Legend 10, 59–60, 62, 64 Jacopo of Francesco of San Miniato 160 Jakobson, Roman 3 James VI 257, 258

Index

Jean d’Estivet 21, 22, 24, 28 Jesus, Eucharist see Eucharist Jewish magic 107–11; imagines, demut, was figurines and memunim 93–5; Liber de homine 93; menunim 97; vengeance dolls 95–6; voodoo dolls 95–6; wall drawings 96–7; wax figurines 95–6, 98 Jews: cultural exchanges with Christians 105–7; fake masses 177 JHS table 157 Joan of Arc 10, 21–32n70 Johansen, Jens Chr. V. 256 John of Capistrano 162 John of Damascus 60, 63, 65 John of Salisbury 61, 92, 120, 122 Judaism, magic and 107–11 Juglans Regia, noce 51 Kallestrup, Louise 253, 263n39 Karlstadt, Andreas 171 Kinder von Limburg (Children of Limburg) 127 Kitāb al-tawlīdāt (“Book of generations”) 80 Kitāb asrār al-Qamar (“The Book of the Secrets of the Moon”) 80, 89n57 Kluckhohn, Clyde 2 Knox, John 257 Koldings, Ane 256, 263n51 Kramer, Heinrich 209, 218n10, 252 Kroeber, Alfred 2 Ladies’ tree 21–4, 26 Larner, Christina 257 Lauritsdatter, Dorette 272 Le Franc, Martin, Champion des Dames 207, 208 Le Goff, Jacques 4, 119, 121, 129n21 Le Neve, Geoffrey 237 Le Neve, Jeffrey 237, 238 Lea, Henry Charles 283 Lecouteux, Claude 120, 128n11 Liber de homine 11, 93–7, 99n9, 100n20 Lilly, William 237, 239, 289 liminal cats 272–4 Loos, Cornelius 283 Lucrezia, Filippa 41 Luther, Martin 171, 225, 226, 256 magic 7, 9, 122–6; weather magic 206–7 magic circles 124–6, 201, 205, 208, 217 magic objects, sacrament 174–6 magical practitioners: call to move away from 140–4; Ferrer, Vicent 136–8

299

magicians 7, 35, 74, 79, 94, 201–5 Magus, Simon 73, 220n35 main de gloire 206, 208, 214, 217 Major, John 257 malefactors 139 maleficium/maleficia 7, 50, 52, 143, 206, 226, 230, 235, 240, 267 maligni spiritus 21, 23 Mamoris, Peter 209 Mandosio, Jean-Marc 98 Manerbio, Nicolò 62 Map, Walter 120, 122, 128n13 Maria of Kirsch 251 Marzluff, John M. 270–1 masca 53–4, 146 Masini, Eliseo 227 materiality 170–4, 178; Eucharist 170–2 Matteuccia of Todi 41, 143, 157 Mazzolini, Silvestro 226, 227 Meccan Openings 76–8 medieval mirabilia literature 12, 123, 126–7 Menghini, Tommaso 110; Regole del tribunale del Sant’Officio 109 Metge, Bernat 136 Middle Ages, women 25–6 milk, human milk 35–6 mirabilia 12, 119–26 miracle stories 119–26 miracles 120–6 miraculum 119 misappropriation of hosts 175 Mitchell, Stephen A. 273 Modena, Leon 105 Modena Inquisition 177 Montesano, Marina 132, 218n4 Morel, Jean 21, 22, 26, 27 Morosini, Giulio 107, 114n4 Muchembled, Robert 4 mulieres 162 Nabatean Agriculture 76, 82–4, 90n77; artificial creation of life 78–81 Narni, Simone 105–7 necromancy 159–61, 201 Neve, John 237 Nider, Johann 252 night f light 162–3, 208 night riders 210 Nilsdatter, Karen 271 Nilsdatter, Solve 274 North Berwick, witchcraft trials 257–8 notary art 160 Odescalchi, Livio 106 Olsdatter, Gundelle 267

300

Index

Olsdatter, Sigri 274–5 Olufsdatter, Birgitte 271 oral spread 256 Orning, Christoffer 265 Orsini, Vicino 186, 187 ostension 172 Ottokar of Geul 125 Ovid, Fasti 40 Owldring, Thomas 237 pacts with the devil 124–6, 176 Page, Sophie 276 Pagnoni, Francesco 189–90 Pallavicino, Ferrante 186 Paul IV, pope 225 Peña, Francisco 226–7 Peter the Venerable 120 Peters, Ursula 122 physicality of sacrament 173, 179 Pica, Giovanni 191 Picatrix 10, 34–5, 39, 42–3, 75, 85, 239 Piedmont region (Italy), witches 53–5 Pierozzi, Antonino 156–62; Omnis mortalium cura 159 Pietro d’Abano 191, 192 Piperno, Pietro 53 plagues 182–4, 252; Venice (1630) 182–4 Pliny, human blood 38 Polo, Geronimo 62 praestigiis 201 Proli, Don Giulio 105–6 protective circles 124–6 Protestants 288; Eucharist 170–1; materiality 174 Prynne, Mark 235–44 Purkiss, Diana 49 putrefaction 78, 80, 81, 83, 84, 90n65 Querini, Vincenzo, Libellus ad Leonem X 224 Qūtāmā 78–81, 85, 88n44 real presence 169–72, 174, 176–8 reform, Church of Rome 223–7 Reichard, Elias Caspar 282 religio 7 reportations 135, 149n9 Rezzonico, Abbondio 105–6 Richer, Edmond 22 rituals that harm others 162 Roman Inquisition 14, 66, 104, 111–12, 114n5, 115n17, 184 Romeo, Giovanni 225 Romuald, Lombard 52 Rossi, Paolina di 175

sabbat/sabbath 48–9, 52–3, 126, 138, 148n3, 153n43, 176, 206, 208, 209, 214–16, 251, 253, 255 sabbatical witchcraft 143–4, 147–8 sacrament: magic objects 174–6; subversion of 176–8; witchcraft 174–5; see also Eucharist Sacro Bosco 186 Saftleven, Cornelis, Saint James and Hermogenes 213–15 saga/sagae 36–7, 39–40, 42 Salisbury, Joyce E. 269 Sampson, Agnes 257–9 San Nicolò, in Chioggia 182–3 Saussure, Ferdinand de 3, 16n8 Scaglia, Desiderio 110, 114n3, 175 Schmitt, Jean-Claude 5, 120–1, 129n21 Schulte, Rolf 255 Schwager, Johann Moritz 290 Scot, Reginald 202, 203, 203, 288; The Discoverie of Witchcraft 202, 203, 203 Scotland 247, 248, 252, 253, 255–60, 266, 278n3, 282 secular literature 119, 122 Sefer Malachim (“Book of Angels”) 11, 93–7, 99n9 Sefer Yetsirah 73, 78, 86n13 Segneri, Paolo, Il cristiano istruito 176 Semler, Johann Salomon 290 Seneca 7 Serpetro, Nicolò 185, 192 shapeshifting 162, 265–9, 276; cats 270; crows 265, 268, 270–2; liminal cats 272–4; uncanny animals 274–6 Siena (Tuscany) Inquisition 47–8, 50, 64 Sienese region (Italy), witches 47–53 Silvestro, Battista di 50–1 Sisto, Mariana da S. 41 Smeld, Anne 275 Soldan, Wilhelm Gottlieb 283 sorcery 102n41, 109–13, 127, 133, 141–2, 147, 198, 203, 205, 218n3, 219n15, 235, 240; Church of Rome 227–8 Sørensdatter, Kirsten 259–60 sortilegia 135–8 Soto, Domingo de 62–5 Sparke, John 239–40 Spee, Friedrich 282, 288 speed, miracle stories 122 spells, Venice plague of 1630 182–4 Spencer, Edward 289 Sperberg, Dan 268 spontanea comparitio 112 St Maximin, witchcraft trials 250–2 stolen body parts 206

Index

strix/striges/strigae 10, 37, 40–3, 162, 175, 209–10 subversion of sacrament 176–8 Sufis 74, 86n7 Sundtgen, Susanna Grethen 250–1, 256 supernatural 13, 21, 23, 26, 28–9, 79, 93, 98, 102n40, 175, 177–8, 182–5, 191–3, 209, 226 superstitio 7–8 superstitio Romana 8 superstitions 109, 113, 121, 157–8, 224–6 superstitious practices 136, 157, 159 Tacitus 8 talisman/talismans 35, 37, 74–6, 79, 81, 85, 87n19 Tangherlini, Timothy R. 270 tawlīd 78–9 Taylor, John 236, 237, 239, 241–4 Teniers, David II 14, 213; Departure for the Witches’ Sabbath 215 Tertullian 8 Theodosian Codex 8 Thiesselin, Jeannette 22–3, 26 Thomas, Saint 226 Thomasius, Christian 282, 285, 288, 289 Thompson, Stith 119 Toft, Mary 289 Tolhouse, Great Yarmouth 239 Tolmezzo, Fra’ Lorenzo da 191 torture 50, 143, 250–2, 256, 258, 259, 266, 286, 288, 290 tracts, as a specification of torture 253–5 Trajan (Roman Emperor), legend of 59–67 transcultural history 249, 260 transmission of witchcraft ideas, witchcraft triangle 247–9 transubstantiation 170, 171, 178, 179 Travaglia, Pinella 78, 79 tree of the Bourlémonts 21–9 trees 52; Juglans Regia, noce 51; Walnut Tree of Benevento 51–3 tregenda 51 trials for diabolical witchcraft 143 tricksters 201–4 Trier, witchcraft trials 250–2 Trismegistus, Hermes 34 Troldfolck 254 Tubach, Index exemplorum 119 Tylor, Edward B. 2 uncanny animals 274–6 unfaithfulness 159 Utz Tremp, Kathrin 138, 144

301

Vævers, Karen 256 van Swanenburgh, Jacob Isaacz 214, 216 veglia 51 vengeance dolls, Jewish magic 95–6 Venice Inquisition 175–7, 191 Venice plague of 1630, spells 182–4 Verigola, Ignazio 189–90 Viola, Francesco 187–90 Vita Barbati Episcopi Beneventani 51–2 Vitelli, Francesco 13, 184–94 Voltmer, Rita 14, 252–3, 256 vom Graben, Otto 289 von Franz, Marie-Louise 25 von Heisterbach, Caesarius 120, 124–5 von Soest, Johannes 127 voodoo dolls, Jewish magic 95–6 Vorauer Novelle 125, 127 Vrancx, Sebastiaan 214, 216 vultivoli 92, 94 Wagener, Christopher 213 Waldensians 144–5 wall drawings, Jewish magic 96–7 Walnut Tree of Benevento 10, 48, 49, 51–3 Waterin, Jean 27 wax figurines, Jewish magic 11, 93–6, 98 weather magic 9, 126, 206–7, 217, 258 Werlhof, Paul Gottlieb 286 Western Alps region (Italy), witches 47–9 Weyer, Johannes 201–4, 212, 217, 219n12, 288 Wharton, George 237 White, Andrew Dickson 283 Wicherly, William 237 William of Newburgh 120; History of English Affairs 38 Willumsen, Liv Helene 14, 266, 267, 274, 278nn7–8 witchcraft narratives 48, 53, 55, 249, 288 witchcraft triangle 247–9; Copenhagen 252–7; Finnmark 258–60; North Berwick 257–8; Trier 250–2 witches: animals 209; blood 42; brooms 208; cannibalism 209; depiction of 14; Eucharist 174–5, 178; hearth 208–9, 212; Italy 47–9; magicians and 201–4; masca 53–4, 146; medieval mirabilia literature 123, 126–7; sabbat see sabbat/ sabbath; Scottish trials 49; shapeshifting see shapeshifting; Sienese region (Italy) 47–53; trees see trees; see also individual entries Witches’ Kitchen (Francken II) 211, 213, 214

302

Index

Witches’ Kitchen (Gheyn II) 214, 216 Witches’ Sabbath in an Antique Ruin 214, 216 women: blood-sucking 41–2; fairies see fairies; as magical practitioners 136–7; shapeshifting see shapeshifting

Zambelli, Paola 98 Zecchini, Giuseppe 61 Ziolkowski, Jan 25 Zwingli, Huldrych 171