Witchcraft, Superstition, and Observant Franciscan Preachers: Pastoral Approach and Intellectual Debate in Renaissance Milan (Europa Sacra) (Europa Sacra, 18) 9782503549194, 2503549195

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Witchcraft, Superstition, and O bservant F ranciscan P reachers

EUROPA SACRA Editorial Board under the auspices of Monash University General Editor Peter Howard, Monash University Editorial Board Megan Cassidy-Welch, Monash University David Garrioch, Monash University Thomas Izbicki, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey Carolyn James, Monash University Constant J. Mews, Monash University M. Michèle Mulchahey, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto Adriano Prosperi, Scuola Normale di Pisa

Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of the book.

Volume 18

Witchcraft, Superstition, and O bservant F ranciscan P reachers Pastoral Approach and Intellectual Debate in Renaissance Milan by

Fabrizio Conti

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

© 2015, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. D/2015/0095/139 ISBN: 978-2-503-54919-4 e-ISBN: 978-2-503-55812-7 DOI: 10.1484/M.ES-EB.5.106030 Printed on acid-free paper

To the memory of my grandparents To my parents

Contents List of Illustrations

ix

Acknowledgements xi Preface xiii

Part I. Preachers and Confessors at the End of the Fifteenth Century Chapter 1. The Franciscan Observant Tradition and the Friars of St Angelo’s in Milan: Bernardino Busti and his Colleagues Between the Medieval and the Modern The ‘Novelty’ of Franciscan Observance The Development of the Franciscan Observant Movement A Third Generation of Observant Franciscan Preachers

3 3 5 9 24

Chapter 2. Bernardino Busti’s Rosarium Sermonum and its Pastoral Context ‘The Tree and the Forest’, or the Importance of Situating Sources The Uses of the Sermon The Pulpit and the Nave

53 53 65 68

Chapter 3. Tallying Sins between the Thirteenth and Fifteenth Centuries: The Use of Classificatory Grids Confessing Sins, Preaching Confession The Process of the ‘Multiplication of Sins’ A Worldview Beyond the Grids for Hearing Confession

89 89 97 123

Part II. The First Commandment and Superstition Chapter 4. Superstition as a Problem of Divine Cult Sermon 16 of the Rosarium Sermonum, the Law, and the Cult Superstition as Perversion of Religion

131 133 149

Contents

viii

Chapter 5. Fifteen Ways to Transgress Against God: The (Re-)Development of a Model for Classifying Superstition A List of Superstitions for Pastoral Use Dominican Patterns Superstition in Fifteen Categories

159 159 166 172

Part III. From Superstition to Witchcraft Chapter 6. Busti and the Malefici, or How the First Commandment Can Affect the Other Commandments of the Decalogue 221 The Malefici Invokers of Demons 223 The Ludus Diabolicus 226 Invokers of Demons: Behavioural Patterns 229 Chapter 7. The Apparent Reality of Illusion: The Metamorphosis of Witches and the Ludus Dianae 247 Metamorphosis 249 Travelling to the Ludus Dianae on an Anointed Stick 255 In the Train of the Lady of the Game 264 Unveiling Demonic Illusions 271 The Misdeeds of the Strege 278 Chapter 8. Flying with Demons: Samuele Cassini’s Questiones lamearum and the Clash with the Dominicans Witchcraft as a Recent Phenomenon Samuele Cassini and the Unreality of the Sabbath Vincenzo Dodo’s Reaction

287 289 293 301

Conclusion: A Pastoral Way to Superstition and Witchcraft

305

Appendix One. Samuele Cassini’s Epigrams for Busti

311

Appendix Two. Bernardino Busti’s Ten Commandments in Vernacular Verses

313

Bibliography 315 Index

365

List of Illustrations

Figure 1, p. 29: Bernardino Luini (?), ‘Head of an angel’, Milan, early 16th century. Figure 2, p. 32: Anonymous, Francesco and Bianca Maria Sforza receive the bull from Pope Pius II to establish the Ospedale Maggiore (1458), Ca’ Granda, Milan, 1590–1610. Figure 3, p. 94: Ugolino di Prete Ilario, ‘Woman confessing her sins to a friar’, Cappella del Corporale, Orvieto, c. 1357. Figure 4, p. 96: Michele Carcano, Confessionale generale de la gran tuba (Venice: Agostino Bindoni, 1525), frontispiece. Figure 5, p. 260: ‘Witches flying on broomsticks’, from Martin Le Franc, Le Champion des dames, MS Fr 12476, fol. 105v (1451): miniature.

Acknowledgements

The idea for this book developed from my doctoral dissertation, which I wrote at Central European Uni­ver­sity in Budapest under the supervision of Gábor Klaniczay. He made important comments on the draft chapters of this book for which I am grateful. I would like to extend my debt of gratitude to Roberto Rusconi, to whom I turned in 2005 with my original research concept, which concerned the impact of friars upon religious beliefs as part of their effort to reform late medieval society. Tamar Herzig, external reader of my doctoral dissertation, offered insightful comments on fifteenth-century notions about beliefs in witchcraft, and Letizia Pellegrini, discussant of my dissertation, provided important suggestions at several stages during the preparation of this book. Rino Avesani gave me invaluable advice on several aspects of my book; Emma Condello, Carla Maria Monti, Renato Badalì, Marjorie Burghart, the late Fr Cesare Cenci and Fr Nazareno Mariani from the Collegio S. Isidoro in Rome, all provided me with perceptive insights into different elements of my work. Michael Bailey and Pietro Delcorno were kind enough to send me articles in manuscript form prior to their publication. I have benefitted greatly from presenting and discussing the progress of my research at different venues during the past few years. Patrick Geary generously arranged for me to discuss my research with students and with Teo Ruiz at UCLA in 2011, and Dávid Falvay invited me to participate in a roundtable discussion on Franciscan Observance together with Gábor Klaniczay and György Galamb at ELTE in Budapest in 2012. Attending the symposiums of the International Medieval Sermon Studies Society has been most beneficial, gave me the opportunity to exchange ideas with Silvana Vecchio and Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby in Brescia in 2012, and with Krzysztof Bracha, Nicole Bériou, Carolyn Muessig, George Ferzoco, and Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli in Cracow in 2014. Elsewhere, I benefitted from discussions with Ludovic Viallet and Anne Thayer at the Religious identity formation workshop at Radboud

xii

Acknowledgements

Uni­ver­sity in Nijmegen organized by Bert Roest in 2014, and in the same year, at the meeting of the Renaissance Society of America in New York, I received insightful feedback from Edward Muir and Matteo Duni. Most recently, in 2015, while a visiting lecturer in the Department of History at the Ohio State Uni­ver­sity in Columbus, I had the opportunity to discuss the manuscript in the Medieval History Seminar led by my colleague Alison Beach. A number of people made the task of researching this book much easier. Included among them, in what is only a partial list, Fr Gian Carlo Colombo, archivist of the Archivio Provinciale dei Frati Minori in Milan, who not only showed me several documents, but also introduced me to the relevant places pertaining to the friary of St Angelo; Fr Bogdan Fajdek, curator of the library at Collegio S. Isidoro in Rome; Borbala Lovas, from the CEU-ELTE Medieval Library; Laura Ciotti, from the Archivio di Stato of Ascoli Piceno; Chiara Milani, from the Biblioteca Comunale, Como; Leonardo Ciocca, from the Biblioteca Comunale, Velletri; Laura Andreani, from the Opera del Duomo, Orvieto; and Heino Hehmann, from the Gymnasium Carolinum, Osnabrück. I am also grateful for the help of the librarians at the following institutions: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Biblioteca Angelica, Biblioteca Nazionale di Roma, Biblioteca Corsiniana, Biblioteca Casanatense, Biblioteca Ariostea in Ferrara, Biblioteca Comunale in Perugia, École française de Rome, Deutsches Historisches Institut in Rom, ELTE library, CEU library, and Fordham Uni­ ver­sity library. I owe thanks to Charles Zika for his suggestion that I publish this manuscript, and to Peter Howard, editor-in-chief of the Brepols-Monash Uni­ver­sity Europa sacra series, for his trust in this project. Guy Carney, editorial manager at Brepols, has taken good care of the whole process of preparing this book; Claire Mabey, Michael Wright, and Rosalind Bonté provided an accurate revision of my English prose. Special thanks should go to the two anonymous peerreviewers who improved my manuscript with their insightful comments. Last but not least, I thank my family, who provided me with the support that only those who love can give.

Preface

Observant Franciscans and ‘Superstition’ as Part of a Broader Picture A mentality that is orientated towards magic and superstition has survived across the centuries. Raoul Manselli, writing on magic and witchcraft in 1976, noted that no social groups, whether those possessing only the simplest technology or those living ‘the triumph of technological progress’, can truly manage to eradicate magic from their own psychological make-up.1 Today, we see how prophetic these words were. Scholars have recently emphasized that despite the ‘disenchantment of the world’ predicted by Max Weber at the beginning of the twentieth century, superstition is still alive in contemporary societies.2 What seems to be of core importance, however, is the recognition of superstition as the product of an intellectual process discerning between what is considered licit or acceptable (in a word, orthodox) in matters of faith, and what is not. This understanding introduces a series of related issues, consisting primarily of the need to evaluate the nature, aim, and strategies of the actors involved in the process (or processes) of differentiation. The issue of shaping identity is also raised within this context, especially if we understand identity in line with Caroline Walker Bynum’s definition as ‘group affiliation’ — in this case affiliation to Christian society — and as part of the process of modelling the modern idea of persona in a Christian perspective.3 1 

Raoul Manselli, Magia e stregoneria nel medio evo (Turin: Giappichelli, 1976), pp. 1–7. Stephen Anthony Smith, ‘Introduction’, in The Religion of Fools? Superstition Past and Present, ed. by Stephen Anthony Smith and Alan Knight (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, 2008), pp. 7–55; Max Weber, ‘Science as a Vocation’, in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, 2nd repr. (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 129–56. 3  Caroline Walker Bynum, Metamorphosis and Identity (New York: Zone Books, 2001), p. 163. One of the starting points for the history of the Christian concept of persona was the 2 

xiv

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My aim is to analyse how the demarcation between the licit and the illicit took place from the privileged perspective of a number of Observant Franciscan friars — namely Bernardino Busti, Michele Carcano, Bartolomeo Caimi, Antonio da Vercelli, Angelo Carletti da Chivasso, and Samuele Cassini — who were active in the friary of St Angelo in Milan between the last two decades of the fifteenth century and the first decade of the sixteenth. Throughout this book, I focus on the writings of the friars, emphasizing particularly Busti and his views on the background of his confreres, as well as the sermons and confession-related texts of his peers, in order to demonstrate how they developed the understanding that superstition represented a set of beliefs that not only transgressed the First Commandment but also encompassed many of the same multi-layered beliefs that pertained to witchcraft.4 It is possible to trace an interesting scepticism with regard to certain beliefs in witches in the work of these preachers, and this is developed in full in the writings of Cassini. As often happens, a personal memory may have encouraged my interest in such a complex phenomenon as belief in witchcraft. I was just a child when my maternal grandfather told us how in his youth, he once found some barrels in his wine cellar broken and discovered that the mane of his mare had been completely braided. When I asked, surprised, who could have done all that, the reply came without hesitation: ‘le streghe!’ He explained further that witches like to make mischief in wine cellars, and he even had personal experience of this: once, at night, when hiding with a friend of his among the barrels, they heard one of the barrels receive a terrible blow, and were subsequently able to see the broken wood. The old heritage of tales and myths that I later chose to study in more detail amazingly appears to have remained vivid in the mind of a winemaker born in the first decade of the twentieth century in a small rural town not far from Rome. * * * pioneering essay by Marcell Mauss, A General Theory of Magic, trans. by Robert Brain (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1972), the original version of which was published in 1904 for l’Année Sociologique and appears to have been co-authored with Henri Hubert. See also Adriano Prosperi, ‘Battesimo e identità cristiana nella prima età moderna’, in Salvezza delle anime, disciplina dei corpi: Un seminario sulla storia del battesimo, ed. by Adriano Prosperi (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2006), pp. 1–65 (pp. 1–12); Jorge J. E. Garcia, ed., Individuation in Scholasticism: The Later Middle Ages and the Counter-Reformation 1150–1650 (Albany: SUNY Press, 1994). 4  On witchcraft as a multifaceted issue see Robin Briggs, ‘Many Reasons Why: Witchcraft and the Problem of Multiple Explanation’, in Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe: Studies in Culture and Belief, ed. by Jonathan Barry, Marianne Hester, and Gareth Roberts (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 1996), pp. 49–63.

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xv

The examination of superstition gained its profound meaning from the pastoral context within which it was examined by the Milanese friars, who were eager to build a doctrinal framework for instructing and checking their congregations by means of preaching and confession. Thus, in line with the pastoral texts of the Milanese Observant Franciscans, and as Bernardino Busti so clearly demonstrates, the ordered consideration of superstition and beliefs in witchcraft according to given classificatory categories followed a path that also dealt with a number of other issues. Money lending, the Jewish issue, the moral conduct of believers, the immaculate conception of Mary, and orthodoxy in matters of faith are just some of the topics that were considered by the friars to be particularly pressing within their overall efforts to reform civic life and the behaviour of the faithful. The discovery of what Carlo Ginzburg has defined as ‘a heretical humus more or less decomposed’, was progressively seen by these preachers as incorporating features that pertained to the domain of magic rather than that of heresy.5 In this regard, I refer to a point that has been sporadically highlighted by scholars but that has probably not yet been fully investigated in itself, namely the attention of the early modern Church(es) towards religious beliefs in the light of a more decisive process of defining the boundaries of licit and illicit practices started earlier than has generally been assumed.6 I believe the late fifteenth century Observant Franciscan preachers played a primary role in this regard. In order to avoid misunderstandings, I must make clear that this book is not focused on the actual preaching activity of the friars on the ground. While I do include this material when it is useful for my analysis, the main objective of this study is to trace the intellectual coordinates that constitute a specific type of framework according to which the friars aimed at instructing preachers and confessors in their pastoral duties. As a consequence, this study places itself at the intersection of three different but complementary areas of exploration: sermon studies, confession, and superstition with the emergence of a specific set of beliefs in witchcraft. The goal of the book is thus threefold and is accordingly divided into three parts: 5  Carlo Ginzburg, ‘Folklore, magia, religione’, in Storia d’Italia: I caratteri originali, ed. by Ruggero Romano and Corrado Vivanti (Turin: Einaudi, 1972), pp. 603–76 (p. 628). See also Marina Montesano, La cristianizzazione dell’Italia nel Medioevo (Rome: Laterza, 1997), p. 112 ff. 6  Charles Zika has stressed the continuity of the sixteenth-century Reformations with the developments of the late Middle Ages. See Charles Zika, ‘Introduction’, in No Gods Except Me: Orthodoxy and Religious Practice in Europe, 1200–1600, ed. by Charles Zika (Parkville: Uni­ver­sity of Melbourne, 1991), pp. 1–5 (p. 2); see also Euan Cameron, Enchanted Europe: Superstition, Reason, & Religion, 1250–1750 (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, 2010), p. 17.

xvi

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a) To highlight the place and the role of the preachers and confessors of St  Angelo’s within the development of the Observant Franciscan movement, the spread of printed pastoral literature, and a tendency to read human behaviour and social reality through a number of schemas for the classification of sin; b) To study and contextualize how the Milanese friars read superstition and witchcraft through a pastoral framework focused on one specific schema of sin classification, the Decalogue; c) To analyse the characteristic take of the Milanese friars concerning witchbeliefs and the way in which this understanding developed.

A Historiographical Note Scholars have recently been working on the issue of superstition in connection with topics such as reform and preaching.7 Still, besides studies focused on specific aspects and — primarily if not only — on Bernardino da Siena, traditionally little or no attention has been given to the contributions that the Observant Franciscan friars made concerning superstition and witchcraft. With the exception of Marina Montesano’s 1999 study, ‘Supra acqua et supra ad vento’, the approach of the Observant Franciscans to the issue of superstition does not have a systematic tradition of research behind it. Montesano herself expresses concerns about ‘the scanty attention that scholars have dedicated to the issue of the struggle against magical-superstitious beliefs and witchcraft conducted by Observant Franciscans. Apart from the numerous hints in many studies there is a lack of in depth research focused on this theme.’8 Her work was basically an attempt to fill this gap; however her study aimed at doing so by means of an analysis of the vocabulary concerning superstition as it was employed by some of the main and most studied figures of Observant Franciscans, namely Bernardino da Siena, Giovanni da Capestrano, Giacomo della Marca, and Roberto da Lecce (whom she incorrectly considers as an Observant).

7  I think especially of Karin Baumann, Euan Cameron, Krzysztof Bracha, Franco Mormando, and Michael Bailey (see Bibliography). 8  Marina Montesano, ‘L’Osservanza francescana e la lotta contro le credenze magicosuperstiziose: Vecchie e nuove prospettive di ricerca’, Quaderni medievali, 41 (1996), 138–51 .

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xvii

As Montesano notes, a few specific contributions have been written by historians belonging to the Franciscan Order as part of more general research on medieval preaching, such as the old study by Theodor Zachariae, or the research by Cleto Corrain and Pierluigi Zampini.9 Both essays focus on Bernardino da Siena, and are largely collections of information lacking any sort of critical analysis of the material; Maria Raciti, meanwhile, based her study exclusively on a single sermon, constituting an exercise in the collection of folkloric material.10 The most important contribution on the issue is without a doubt that of Giovanni Battista Bronzini who, in contrast to the other scholars, has rejected the dry extrapolation of data from various origins without attempting to place it within the wider context of the preacher’s activity. Bronzini rightly perceived the preaching of Bernardino da Siena to be a cultural product that could be considered as simultaneously individual and collective at the time of its creation: it was individual, in the sense that it was the preacher’s own work, but it was collective at the moment of reception and deployment.11 Although this is a rather interesting approach, Bronzini’s work focused too closely on the role of society and the external environment in the formation of key ideas such as the understanding of witchcraft, and he therefore neglected to give a more in-depth analysis of the features of the Observants’ approach to the problem. In a similar way, Febo Allevi has mainly studied the folkloric elements in the preaching of Giacomo della Marca, and appears to have been more interested in the folkloric situation of the Marche region than in the analysis of the traditions inherent in the sermons themselves.12 Most recently, Franco Cardini has dealt with the Observant Franciscans and their views on witchcraft, but he has not produced any large-scale study.13 9 

Theodor Zachariae, ‘Aubergläubische Meinungen und Gebräuche des Mittelalters in den Predigten Bernardinos von Siena’, Zeitschrift des Vereins für Volkskunde, 22 (1912), 101–22; Pierluigi Zampini and Cleto Corrain, ‘Spunti etnografici nelle opere di San Bernardino da Siena’, Palestra del clero, 15–16 (1965), 883–905. 10  Maria Raciti, ‘Il De idolatriae cultu di San Bernardino da Siena’, in Ricerca scientifica e mondo popolare: atti del Convegno di studi sul tema: ‘Aspetti e prospettive della ricerca demologica in Italia’, Messina, 19–21 gennaio 1970 (Palermo: Università degli Studi di Messina, 1973), pp. 365–89. 11  Giovan Battista Bronzini, ‘Le prediche di Bernardino e le tradizioni popolari del suo tem­po’, in Bernardino predicatore nella società del suo tempo: Convegno del Centro di Studi sulla spi­ri­­tualità medievale, Todi 9–12 ottobre 1975 (Todi: Accademia tudertina, 1976), pp. 121–34 (p. 115). 12  Febo Allevi, ‘Costume, folklore, magia dell’Appennino umbro-marchigiano nella predicazione di S. Giacomo della Marca’, Picenum Seraphicum, 13 (1976), 233–307. 13  See for instance Franco Cardini, ‘La stregoneria fra medioevo ed età moderna’, Studi

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What I propose to do in this book is something substantially different. On the one hand, by taking into consideration the important but little-studied figures of the friars who were active between the late Middle Ages and the early modern Period, I believe this study fills a chronological gap between studies of earlier generations of Italian preachers and research into the spread of the witch-hunt in modern Europe. On the other hand, by situating the understanding of superstition and witch-beliefs into their own pastoral and intellectual context (and thus by considering pastoral sources instead of the more traditionally employed trial records and demonological literature) I maintain that this study can shed light on a multidimensional piece of cultural history. * * * Unless otherwise indicated, all translations in this book are my own.

bitontini, 53–54 (1992), 7–22; Franco Cardini, ‘Giacomo della Marca e le streghe’, in Santi, monaci, contadini: La Marca tra agiografia e folklore. Atti del Convegno di studio (Ascoli Piceno 21–23 giugno 1991), ed. by Enrico Menestò (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1992), pp. 109–46; and Franco Cardini, Magia, stregoneria, superstizioni nell’Occidente medievale (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1979).

Part I Preachers and Confessors at the End of the Fifteenth Century

Chapter 1

The Franciscan Observant Tradition and the Friars of St Angelo’s in Milan: Bernardino Busti and his Colleagues

Between the Medieval and the Modern Italian society of the fifteenth century is rich in interest since it is a period that links the Middle Ages to the following era. In this century, the sense of novelty brought by Renaissance and humanistic approaches does not imply that the past was ignored; on the contrary, this age constitutes a continuum between old and new categories.1 The immediately preceding period, which has been called an era of crisis for political and religious universalism, lying between the onset of the Black Death in 1348, the Council of Constance (1414–18), and the pontificate of Martin V (1417–31), was a period of transition, although it is no longer seen as an era of decline or encroaching darkness.2 Still, that period opens a door on the core of the fifteenth century, with its social, political, economic, and religious novelties. Thus, the struggle among the city-states of the peninsula is balanced by the peace of Lodi in 1454: this would eventually favour the development of those cities towards a concept of the modern state and, through the new stimuli of 1 

See the recent collection of essays in Konrad Eisenbichler, ed., Renaissance Medievalisms (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2009). 2  Cf. Letizia Pellegrini, ‘Cultura e devozioni: i frati Predicatori, la politica e la vita reli­g iosa in Europa fra il 1348 e il pontificato di Martino V’, in Vita religiosa e identità politiche: Uni­ versalità e particolarismi nell’Europa del Tardo Medioevo, ed. by Sergio Gensini (Pisa: Pacini, 1998), pp. 403–22 (pp. 403–04).

4 Chapter 1

Humanism, in several instances they turned into Renaissance princely courts, with that alliance between culture and power described by Lauro Martines.3 Further, the fifteenth century is seen as the period of the development of a market economy. After 1450 especially, the increase in circulation of goods leads to the growth of international markets.4 Generally, that implied the need for investments and credit, and the development of new social and religious issues concerning the individuals managing these processes. From the point of view of the Roman Church, the major event of this period was indeed the end of the Great Western Schism in 1417 and the formal reunification of the Latin Church.5 This gave new vigour to papal authority. Its rebirth was signalled by the work of demolition and reconstruction of buildings in Rome promoted by Popes such as Nicholas V (1447–55) and Sixtus IV (1471–84), as well as by the definitive shift of the pope’s residence from the Lateran basilica to the Vatican, where the new basilica of St Peter — although completed only two centuries later — began to be planned and built at the expense of the original Late Antique one.6 This sort of vigour of the Church, however, has to be put beside opposite considerations: first of all the tensions between the Papacy and the Council, which at Basel led to the Schism of Amadeus VIII, duke of Savoy, elected pope in 1439 under the name of Felix V; second, the Jewish issue, which with remarkable moments — that I shall illustrate later — would fill the entire fifteenth century. Further, in 1453 Constantinople was conquered by the Turks. Their penetration into the heart of the Balkans was stopped in the battle of Belgrade in 1456 by the troops led by János Hunyadi; to the gathering of soldiers such a preacher as the Observant Franciscan Giovanni da Capestrano (d. 1456) had contributed with strenuous efforts.7 3 

Lauro Martines, Power and Imagination: City-States in Renaissance Italy (New York: Knopf, 1979). 4  Fernand Braudel, Afterthoughts on Material Civilization and Capitalism (Baltimore, MA: The Johns Hopkins Uni­ver­sity Press, 1977), pp. 24–25. 5  The schism was also an event of emotional crisis and prophetic inspiration. See Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Poets, Saints, and Visionaries of the Great Schism, 1378–1417 (Uni­ver­sity Park, PA: Pennsylvania State Uni­ver­sity Press, 2006). 6  On the transformations in renaissance papal Rome, see Bernhard Schimmelpfennig, Das Papsttum: Grundzüge seiner Geschichte von der Antike bis zur Renaissance (Darmstadt: Wissen­ schaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1987), pp. 266–90. 7  On Capestrano: Hélène Angiolini, ‘Giovanni da Capestrano’, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. lv (2001), pp. 744–59; Aniceto Chiappini, ‘Giovanni da Capestrano’, in

The Franciscan Observant Tradition and St Angelo’s in Milan

5

Altogether, these elements testify to the vitality and the contradictions of the period. This century bore the seeds for the spread of papal power on a larger scale than before. The presence of some signs of diverse developments that had been unimaginable until almost that moment has been exemplified by Adriano Prosperi in the consideration of the events that led to the recapture of the Kingdom of Granada by the Christians in 1492. That was the same year which saw the departure from Palos of the caravels led by the Genoese Cristoforo Colombo to find an alternative way to India in competition with Portugal. At the same time and in the same place the Jewish issue became active again, due to the expulsion of the Jews from the Christian Kingdom of Castile and León.8 Some of these motives and issues are the same as we will encounter in what follows. The expansion (or redefinition) of alleged boundaries, geographical or cultural, above all the issue of faith and moral reform, and the interrelation between political and religious factors, are the basic elements we discover at work — although in different contexts — through a careful examination of the pastoral sources under discussion.

The ‘Novelty’ of Franciscan Observance Against this background, the life and the pastoral activities of the Observant Franciscan friars are profoundly significant for an increased understanding of the major points of debate concerning that age. In some way, they can be considered a kind of litmus test for almost every type of social and political issue.9 Bibliotheca Sanctorum, vol. vi, cols 645–54; Johannes Hofer, Johannes von Capestrano: Ein Leben im Kampf um die Reform der Kirche. Neue bearbeite Ausgabe, ed. by Ottokar Bonmann (Innsbruck: Tyrolia, 1936; repr. Heidelberg, 1964–65); Alvaro Cacciotti and Maria Melli, eds, Giovanni da Capestrano e la riforma della Chiesa (Milan: Biblioteca Francescana, 2008); Filippo Sedda, ‘Giovanni da Capestrano a Perugia: il giudice, il frate, il predicatore’, in Giacomo della Marca tra Monteprandone e Perugia: Lo Studium del Convento del Monte e la cultura dell’Osservanza francescana, Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Monteripido, 5 novembre 2011, ed. by Fulvia Serpico and Luigi Giacometti (Florence: SISMEL, 2012), pp. 37–56. 8  Adriano Prosperi, Il seme dell’intolleranza: Ebrei, eretici, selvaggi: Granada 1492 (Bari: Laterza, 2011). 9  On Franciscan Observance, see Frédéric Meyer and Ludovic Viallet, eds, Identités Fran­ cis­caines à l’âge des réformes (Clermont-Ferrand: Presses Universitaires Blaise-Pascal, 2005); Le silence du cloître: l’exemple des saints, xive–xviie siècles. Identités franciscaines à l’âge des réformes, vol. ii, ed. by Ludovic Viallet and Frédéric Meyer (Clermont-Ferrand: Presses uni­ versitaires Blaise Pascal, 2011), pp. 53–55; Ludovic Viallet, Le sense de l’Observance: Enquête sur les réformes franciscaines entre l’Elbe et l’Oder, de Capistran à Luther (vers 1450–vers

6 Chapter 1

First it is necessary to clarify what Observance means, particularly with regard to the Franciscan Order. The term observantia (from observare, ‘to look at’ or ‘to observe attentively’) occurs for the first time with reference to monastic rules in Canon 12 De communibus capitulis monachorum of the Fourth Lateran Council.10 The phenomenon of the Observances spread after the Council of Constance and affected several religious orders aiming at returning to the purity of their original rules.11 The events of the Great Western Schism strengthened solidarity between the mendicant orders and the papacy. Thus, in the period following Martin V, popes tended to favour the reformed religious orders, and the mendicant friars acquired a privileged position in the administration of pastoral duties, mainly preaching and confession.12 All this has to be seen in the context of the institu1520) (Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2014); James D. Mixson, ‘Religious Life and Observant Reform in the Fifteenth Century’, History Compass, 11. 3 (2013), 201–14; Carl Schmitt, ‘Osservanti (OFM Oss)’, in Dizionario degli istituti di perfezione, vol. vi, p. 1022; Ludovico Brengio, L’Osservanza francescana in Italia nel secolo xiv (Rome: Pontificio Ateneo Antoniano, 1963), pp. 38–40; Mario Fois, ‘I Papi e l’Osservanza minoritica’, in Il rinnovamento del francescanesimo: l’Osservanza: Atti del Convegno della Società Internazionale di Studi Francescani e del Centro Interuniversitario di Studi Francescani, Assisi, 20–22 ottobre 1983 (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi Sull’Alto Medioevo, 1985), pp. 31–105; Duncan Nimmo, Reform and Division in the Medieval Franciscan Order (Rome: Istituto Storico dei Cappuccini, 1995), pp. 353–645; Raoul Manselli, ‘L’Osservanza francescana: dinamica della sua formazione e fenomenologia’, in Reformbemühungen und Observanzbestrebungen im Spätmittelalterlichen Ordenswesen, ed. by Kaspar Elm (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1989), pp. 173–87. 10  Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta, ed. by Giuseppe Alberigo and others (Bologna: Centro editoriale dehoniano, 2013), p. 241: ‘[…] in quo (canon) diligens habeatur tractatus de reformatione ordinis et observantia regulari.’ See also Mario Sensi, Dal movimento eremitico alla regolare osservanza francescana: l’opera di fra Paoluccio Trinci (Assisi: Edizioni Porziuncola, 1992), p. 11. 11  On the Observant reforms, see Bert Roest, ‘Observant Reform in Religious Orders’, in Christianity in Western Europe, c. 1100–c. 1500, ed. by Miri Rubin and Walter Simons (Cam­ bridge: Cambridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 2009), pp. 446–57; Kaspar Elm, ed., Reform­bemühungen und Observanzbestrebungen im spatmittelalterlichen Ordenswesen (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1989); Ivan Hlaváček and Alexander Patschovsky, eds, Reform von Kirche und Reich: zur Zeit der Konzilien von Konstanz (1414–1418) und Basel (1431–1449) (Constance: Uni­versitäts­ verlag Konstanz, 1996). See James Mixson and Bert Roest, eds, A Companion to Observant Reform in the Late Middle Ages and Beyond (Leiden: Brill, 2015); and Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby, Sally Cornelison, and Peter Howard, eds, Word, Deed and Image: Mendicants to the World (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015). 12  See Roberto Rusconi, ‘Manuali milanesi di confessione editi tra il 1474 ed il 1523’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 65 (1972), 107–56 (p. 110). For the historical con­text­ ualization, see Schimmelpfennig, Das Papsttum, p. 246 ff.

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tional expansion, both in religious and political terms, which characterized the fifteenth century and the early decades of the sixteenth century. Within this movement, the development of Franciscan Observance in midNorthern Italy coincided with an intricate relationship with the local princely courts: the friars seeking protection, and the lords spiritual patronage. 13 According to the traditional view of Kaspar Elm, Observant Franciscans clearly distinguished themselves from the other religious movements in the depth of their desire for reform.14 An entire historiographical tradition — one main representative of which was Zelina Zafarana — has pointed to a supposedly deep self-awareness of the Observant Franciscans as a group, centred around the pivotal role played by Bernardino da Siena. Giovanni da Capestrano summarized in 1451 the sense of renewal brought about by the Observant Franciscan friars in preaching as well as more generally with regard to the need of reforming society, when he wrote: Postquam officium praedicationis in Italia renovatum est per sanctum Bernar­dinum et tandem per me miserum peccatorem, tunc est renovata Italia cum praedicationibus.15 After the work of preaching in Italy was renewed through St Bernardino and eventually through me miserable sinner, Italy was thus renewed with preaching.

Yet, as has been pointed out, one should not follow literally and uncritically the assumption of an excessively smooth process of development of an observant self-awareness centred on Bernardino da Siena as opposed to the earliest phases of development of that religious movement. For instance, the signs of a tension 13 

See Paolo Prodi, ‘Introduzione’, in Strutture ecclesiastiche in Italia e in Germania prima della Riforma, ed. by Paolo Prodi and Peter Johanek (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1984), pp. 7–18; and Gabriella Zarri, Le sante vive: Cultura e religiosità femminile nella prima età moderna (Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1990), pp. 22–23. 14  Kaspar Elm, ‘Riforme e Osservanze nel xiv e xv secolo’, in Il rinnovamento del frances­ canesimo: l’Osservanza: Atti del Convegno della Società Internazionale di Studi Francescani e del Centro Interuniversitario di Studi Francescani, Assisi, 20–22 ottobre 1983 (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi Sull’Alto Medioevo, 1985), pp.  149–67 (p.  155); see also Montesano, ‘L’Osservanza francescana’, pp. 138–39. 15  Quote in Lucianus Łuszczki, De sermonibus S. Ioannis a Capistrano: Studium historicocriticum (Rome: Ed. Antoni­anum, 1961), p. 248. See Zelina Zafarana, ‘Bernardino nella storia della predicazione popolare’, in Francescanesimo e vita religiosa dei laici nel ‘200: Atti dell’VIII convegno della Società Internazionale di Studi Francescani (Assisi, 16–18 ottobre 1980) (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1981), pp. 249–78 (p. 250).

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regarding urban preaching were present already in the early stages of development of the movement, as the appearance of the observant friars in Perugia, with their strong anti-heretical character, as early as 1373 would show.16 Overall, the spirit of reform represented by the Observant Franciscans has been seen as coinciding with the aim of spreading particular religious values to the laity, often following a programme that was far stricter than that of their Conventual brothers, as for instance with regard to the feminine way of dressing. To Bernadette Paton: ‘the clothing recommended for young lay women corresponds closely to that worn by nuns and tertiaries, proving once more the Observant tendency to impose religious values onto the laity.’ The efforts of the observant friars concerning the moral reform of urban customs are undeniable. Yet, one may want to wonder with Richard Trexler to what extent that goal was pursued successfully; this would, though, require further investigation of the practical outcomes of preaching cycles.17 The Observant Franciscans following Bernardino da Siena seem to have been unequalled in the way they interpreted their role as urban preachers. They knew how to effectively use captivating means of social communication geared towards reforming the civic customs of their ever-increasing audience. Their message was also spread in writing, with the expansion of a reading public by the first decade of fifteenth century, the mass production of manuscripts in the central decades of the fifteenth century, and the blossoming of demand and supply for books after the introduction of printing with movable type or ars artificialiter scribendi.18 Print has been rightly seen as one of the most important technical innovations of that time. In Jessica Brantley’s words, ‘Gutenberg’s innovation more than anything else might be adduced to explain the perceived gulf between the medieval and the modern’, while Daniel Hobbins has urged 16 

Letizia Pellegrini, ‘Bernardino da Siena, il Minoritismo e l’Osservanza: ambiguità e ambivalenze. A partire da Monteripido’, in Giacomo della Marca tra Monteprandone e Perugia: Lo Studium del Convento del Monte e la cultura dell’Osservanza francescana, Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Monteripido, 5 novembre 2011, ed. by Fulvia Serpico and Luigi Giacometti (Florence: SISMEL, 2012), pp. 21–35 (pp. 34–35). 17  Bernadette Paton, Preaching Friars and the Civic Ethos: Siena, 1380–1480 (London: Centre for Medieval Studies, Queen Mary and Westfield College, 1992), pp. 325–26; Richard C. Trexler, Public life in Renaissance Florence (Ithaca: Cornell Uni­ver­sity Press, 1991), p. 54. 18  The period from 1350 to 1700 has been called ‘the great age of books’. See Daniel Hobbins, ‘The World’s First Media Revolution’, The Berlin Journal, 22 (2012), 32–35 (p. 35). See also Daniel Hobbins, Authorship and Publicity Before Print: Jean Gerson and the Trans­ for­mation of Late Medieval Learning (Philadelphia: Uni­ver­sity of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), pp. 7–9.

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us to ‘see more clearly the role of print not as the driver of demand for books, but as the product of a demand that had been gaining momentum for a century and that would continue until books blended into the fabric of human life’.19 The use of this technology enabled the Observant Franciscans to maintain a dynamic and productive relationship with their audience. Thus, ultimately, the ability to be effective mass communicators should be considered one of the reasons for their success in reinterpreting and renovating the role of preaching as a means to convey specific messages. After all, it has been pointed out that preaching can be recognized as the soul of pastoral care since it had the power, unlike liturgical means, to transmit to people concepts otherwise destined to remain hidden, thus functioning as an occasion of ‘linguistic mediation’ by being expressed in the language of the public.20

The Development of the Franciscan Observant Movement At this point, before speaking more specifically of a later developmental phase in Franciscan Observance, which saw the heyday of Bernardino Busti and his confrères, we may briefly outline the history of the development which led to that last phase. The origins of the movement can be traced back to the attempt of Giovanni delle Valli (d. 1351) to restore adherence to the genuine Franciscan ideals through an eremitic experience.21 It was during this primitive phase that the strict religious spirit was shaped which the Observants later tried to diffuse to the whole society, through a process that has been called a ‘restaurazione innovatrice’ (‘innovatory restoration’), which aimed at renovating the order and the

19  Jessica Brantley, ‘The Prehistory of the Book’, Publication of the Modern Language Asso­ci­ ation of America, 124. 2 (2009), 632–39; Hobbins, ‘The World’s First Media Revolution’, p. 35. 20  Letizia Pellegrini, I manoscritti dei predicatori (Rome: Istituto Storico Domenicano, 1999), p. 16. 21  Mariano da Firenze, ‘Compendium Chronicarum fratrum minorum’, in Archivum Francis­canum Historicum, 1 (1908), 98–107; 2 (1909), 626–41; and 3 (1910), 700–715; see p.  641: ‘Frater Iohannes de Vallibus sanctitate fulgebat, in Provincia Sancti Francisci precipuus zelator observantie regularis, qui a ministro Generali obtinuit asperrimum locum de Pisquia (San Bartolomeo di Brogliano), milliario 7 super Fulgineum, ubi cum Fratribus sibi adherentibus in pura et simplici seu litterali observantia Regule vixit in magna perfectione usque ad mortem, et ibidem sepultus assiduis refulsit miraculis. Ab isto enim fratre Iohanne propagata est, aut originem habuit, familia regularis observantie.’

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whole society by going back to the authentic origins of the Franciscan intuition.22 In 1334, together with four other friars, Giovanni settled in the peace and quietness of St Bartolomeo di Brogliano, a hermitage established in the wooded desert on the border between Umbria and the mark of Ancona, an area which is described by the Observant Franciscan chronicler Bernardino Aquilano (Ber­ nardino da Fossa) as ‘asperrimus et ab hominum habitatione valde remotus’ (‘very barren and extremely far from human settlement’).23 It has been noted that the beginning of Giovanni’s experience within the Observance coincided with a period of offensives against the Fraticelli (‘Little Brethren’) of MiddleItaly on the part of the pope, so that it has been wondered whether Giovanni’s search for such an isolated site in the Umber Valley should be connected with the need to find shelter from the persecution.24 On November 1323, in fact, Pope John XXII issued the bull Cum inter nonullos, which condemned the doctrine of the absolute poverty of Christ supported by the General Minister of the Franciscan Order, Michele da Cesena.25 Although a definite relationship between that first initiator of the Franciscan Observant movement and the entourage of Fraticelli has not yet been demonstrated, the suggestions of Lucas Wadding concerning a connection or friendship between Giovanni delle Valli and Angelo Clareno, spiritual leader of the Fraticelli, still remain.26 22 

See Grado Giovanni Merlo, Tra eremo e città: Studi su Francesco d’Assisi e sul francesca­ nesimo medievale (Assisi: Edizioni Porziuncola, 1991), p. 256. 23  Bernardino Aquilano, Chronica fratrum minorum observantiae, ed. by Leonardus Lemmens (Rome: Tipografia Sallustiana, 1902), pp. 8–9. For a characterization of this geo­graphical setting in the Observant view, see Letizia Pellegrini, ‘Le origini francescane nella storia e nella memoria dell’Osservanza minoritica’, Picenum seraphicum, 28 (2010), 177–96 (pp. 181–82). 24  The heirs of the most radical Franciscan view on poverty, generally known as de paupere vita. See Clément Schmitt, ‘Fraticelles’, in Dictionnaire de spiritualité: ascétique et mystique, doctrine et histoire, vol. v (1964), pp. 1167–88; Clément Schmitt, ‘Fraticelles’, in Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques, vol.  xviii (1977), pp.  1063–1108; Mario Sensi, ‘Movimenti di osservanza e ricerca della solitudine: focolai eremitici tra Umbria e Marche nel xv secolo’, in Identités Franciscaines à l’âge des réformes, ed. by Frédéric Meyer and Ludovic Viallet (Clermont-Ferrand: Presses Universitaires Blaise-Pascal, 2005), pp. 101–41 (p. 106 ff ). 25  For the bull, see Extravagantes D. Iohannis Papae XXII, XIV. 3, in Corpus iuris canonici, ed. by Emilius Friedberg, 2 vols (Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1879–81), vol. ii, pp. 1225–29. 26  Lucas Wadding, Annales minorum, seu trium Ordinum a S. Francisco institutorum, 29 vols (Florence: Frati Editori di Quaracchi, 1931–48), vol. vii, no. 168, p. 197. See Pacifico Sella, Leone  X e la definitiva divisione dell’ordine dei minori (OMin.): la bolla Ite Vos (29 maggio 1517), Analecta Franciscana: Documenta et Studia, 2 (Grottaferrata: Frati Editori di Quaracchi, 2001), p. 16. On the Franciscan Spiritual movement and its condemnation by

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Gentile da Spoleto (d. 1362), who succeeded Giovanni, obtained written approval for a primitive reform of this kind from Pope Clement VI in the bull Bonorum operum (13 December 1350), along with the cession of four other hermitages, including the famous ‘Le Carceri’ in Assisi.27 The small community went through a period of renunciation and total isolation, a far cry from future developments in the order. Some innovations introduced by Gentile, however, began to diminish the favour of the young reform movement in the eyes of the order. Their way of dressing was one cause of reprimand. These friars were dressed in a different and shorter robe compared to other Franciscans, and it is known what a large role the lack of uniformity could have played in the desire to introduce novae religiones or new ways of living religiously. A much greater problem was probably having given hospitality to friars suspected of being Fraticelli, or at least not having denounced them.28 For whatever reason, the reform gradually lost the support of the papal curia. On 18 August 1355, Pope Innocent VI annulled the concessions made by his predecessor to the friars, virtually breaking up the new family.29 That has been seen as a critical moment in the tensions that would arise in the debate on poverty, the main question being whether to shake things up from inside the Franciscan Order as well as in its relationships with the papacy.30

the pope, see Mario Sensi, Le osservanze francescane nell’Italia centrale (Secoli xi–xv) (Rome: Istituto Storico dei Cappuccini, 1985), pp. 1–17; David Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the Century after Saint Francis (Uni­ver­sity Park, PA: Pennsylvania State Uni­ver­sity Press, 2001). On Clareno, the classical reference is to Lydia Von Auw, Angelo Clareno et les spirituels (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1979). 27  Bullarium Franciscanum Romanorum Pontificum constitutiones, epistolas, ac diplomata continens, ed. by Giovanni Giacinto Sbaraglia, 7 vols (Rome: Sacra Congregazione De Propaganda Fide, 1759–1804), vol. vi, no. 558, pp. 245–46. 28  Wadding, Annales minorum, vol. viii, nos 103–04, pp. 121–22: ‘Comperit eos receptasse aliquos haereticos, vel in fide suspectos, sub spe tamen, ut illi asserebant, eos convertendi, sed in erroribus pertinaces vere abegisse, peccasse tamen, quod cum eis communicaverint in domo, mensa, lecto, et minime correctos, aut correptos dimiserint, neque ut oportebat, denunciaverint Inquisitoribus.’ On the relationships between Fraticelli and Observant Franciscans, see Sensi, ‘Movimenti di osservanza e ricerca della solitudine’. 29  Bullarium Franciscanum, ed. by Sbaraglia, vol. vi, no. 683, pp. 291–92 (p. 291): ‘Re­ primit exemptionem locis ord. Min. Carceris, Montis Luci, Eremitae et Iani dictis a Clem. VI concessam.’ 30  See Brengio, L’Osservanza francescana in Italia, p. 49; Sensi, Le Osservanze francescane, pp. 14–17; Sella, Leone X, p. 100.

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Here, Victor Turner’s famous theory of the opposition between ‘structure’ and ‘anti-structure’ or communitas finds an application. Turner employed this conceptual scheme to describe internal developments in the Franciscan Order. According to his thesis, following a common pattern in the development of social organizations in general, the Franciscan Order which came into being as a non-structured communitas, naturally developed into a structural system, since ‘spontaneous communitas is a phase or a moment, not a permanent condition’.31 In other words, the passage from the original fraternitas to a better developed religio was the natural outcome of a process of development rendering possible the survival of the order itself. Stanko Andrić has noted rightly that ‘in the Franciscan case the memory of the original communitas was constantly eroding the established structure. This memory was embodied in the Spirituals.’32 One should note, however, that such a memory of the original Franciscan communitas resided in the observation of both the Rule (1223) and the Testament (1226) literally and without interpreting them. This represented indeed the main issue, not only for the Spirituals but even for the first Observants led by Giovanni delle Valli and then by Paoluccio Trinci.33 Moreover, what Andrić, relying on Turner, calls a memory was, I believe, something more: it was rather a still topical and actual need to comprehend (or better, to live) fully the core of St Francis’s intuition without further intellectual explication. This was shown by St Francis himself, who in his Testament with regard to the words of the Rule wrote: ‘you should comprehend [the words] simply and without interpretation, and observe them through blessed deeds until the end.’34 As Mario Sensi has noted, the fact that the Spirituals linked ‘simpliciter et sine glossa’ to observing (observare) rather than to comprehending (intelligere) the Rule is actually at the core of the issue.35 That is exactly what makes the way of living the Franciscan ideal as a spontaneous communitas something more than just a ‘memory eroding the established structure’. In fact, it was really with the purpose of observing the Franciscan Rule in what was intended to be its authentic intention that some friars came to give shape to what would subsequently 31 

Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974), p. 140. 32  Stanko Andrić, The Miracles of St John Capistran (Budapest: CEU Press, 2000), p. 11. 33  See Sensi, Dal movimento eremitico alla regolare osservanza francescana, pp. 11–26. 34  Francesco di Assisi, ‘Testamentum’, in Opuscula sancti patris Francisci assisiensis, ed. by Caietanus Esser (Grottaferrata: Frati Editori di Quaracchi, 1978), p. 316: ‘Simpliciter et sine glossa intelligatis et cum sancta operatione observetis usque in finem.’ 35  Sensi, Dal movimento eremitico alla regolare osservanza francescana, pp. 11–12.

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become Franciscan Observance, still evidently getting inspiration from the same background as the Spirituals and other rigorists. From this point of view, as has been said, the Observant movement was about ‘a reform that restores’, as was generally the case in all medieval religious reformation movements, strongly inspired as they were by the idea of getting back to some form of supposedly uncorrupted origins.36 Nevertheless, at the same time, the progressive shift from the primitive Franciscan communitas or fraternitas to the structured order establishes the ground for the growing intervention of the friars in social life,37 therefore inevitably implying their detachment from the way of life of the early community of friars living in the presence of their founder. Thus, the initial observant experience, despite its almost immediate but only apparent failure, did nothing but stimulate the question of reform of the customs and ideals of the Franciscan Order. Giovanni delle Valli’s initial proposal was taken up again by Paoluccio di Vagnozzo Trinci.38 In 1368 Paoluccio got permission from the General Minister of the Order to readapt the old hermitage of Brogliano.39 Pivotal in the creation of Paoluccio’s Observance was the inquisition into Fraticelli promoted in Umbria in the same period he arrived in Brogliano and the protection provided by the bishops of Orvieto and Jaén to Spirituals and Fraticelli. So, this phase in the Observance’s development might be traced back to a period of flight for those who wanted to observe St Francis’s Rule and Testament in all the purity of their original message.40 Nimmo traces the turning point in Paoluccio’s success — as opposed to Giovanni delle Valli’s experience — in the loyalty he had displayed towards some point to the pope and the order, as when in 1374 he facilitated the ousting of the Fraticelli de opinione from Perugia, obtaining one of their chapels.41 Twelve more houses 36 

Pellegrini, ‘Le origini francescane’, p. 178. See Giacomo Todeschini, ‘Guardiani della soglia: I Frati Minori come garanti del peri­ metro sociale (xiii secolo)’, in I Francescani e la politica: Atti del Convegno internazionale di studio Palermo, 3–7 dicembre 2002, ed. by Alessandro Musco and Giuliana Musotto, 2 vols (Palermo: Officina di Studi medievali, 2007), vol. ii, pp. 1051–68. 38  Some doubts have been raised on the descent of Paoluccio from the Trinci family, which has been described as ‘a persistent literary tradition’ attested only by the works of friars of the mature Observant period. See Pellegrini, ‘Le origini francescane’, p. 179 note 2. 39  Wadding, Annales minorum, vol. viii, nos 209–10, pp. 246–47. 40  See Sensi, Dal movimento eremitico alla regolare osservanza francescana, pp. 24–25. 41  The ‘opinion’ was the absolute poverty of Christ, as it had been declared by Michele da Cesena at the General Chapter of the Order held in Perugia in 1322 through his Littera Capituli generalis, which was immediately followed by the condemnation of Pope John XXII that same 37 

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were soon added to the Observance. Given the unequivocally orthodox characterization of the Order, Paoluccio was recognized in the role of General Commissary for the reformed community in 1380.42 The common background that these early Observants shared with others who had a different fate, such as the followers of Angelo Clareno, however, should not be underestimated. The Observance, which has been described as a ‘reform from within’, might have basically represented the solution for those ‘heirs of the Spirituals’ who wished to observe St Francis’s Rule and Testament more closely without leaving the Order but living a totally contemplative life.43 Those friars ultimately affirmed themselves as rising above and — in a way — synthesizing the two initial antithetical movements embodied by Conventual friars and Fraticelli, the former fighting the latter in the name of a clearer characterization of orthodoxy.44 Giovanni da Stroncone succeeded to Paoluccio Trinci in 1391. Under his general vicariate the number of reformed friars increased further to approximately two hundred, leading to an initial growth in the reform that gradually spread to the central and northern Italian regions.45 It was at Camerino in a will dictated on 28 July 1390 by a noblewoman named Nanzia, that the Order was defined for the first time as Ordo de Observantia regulae: this denomination received year. Michele’s followers or Fraticelli de opinione spread especially over Central Italy, but also in France, Greece, and Armenia. See Clément Schmitt, ‘Introduzione allo studio degli Spirituali e dei Fraticelli’, Picenum Seraphicum, 11 (1974), 7–23; Raymond Creytens, ‘Manfred de Verceil O. P. et son traité contre les fraticelles’, Archivum fratrum praedicatorum, 11 (1941), 191–208 (see especially pp. 193 and 196 for terminology); Sensi, ‘Movimenti di osservanza e ricerca della solitudine’, pp. 106 and 123–24; Duncan Nimmo, ‘The Genesis of the Observance’, in Il rinnovamento del francescanesimo: l’Osservanza: Atti del Convegno della Società Internazionale di Studi Francescani e del Centro Interuniversitario di Studi Francescani, Assisi, 20–22 ottobre 1983 (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi Sull’Alto Medioevo, 1985), pp. 107–47 (p. 129). 42  Wadding, Annales minorum, vol. ix, no. 42, p. 49. 43  See Sensi, Dal movimento eremitico alla regolare osservanza francescana, p.  26. Cf. Anna Benvenuti, ‘L’Osservanza e la costruzione dell’identità storica del Francescanesimo’, in Il Francescanesimo dalle origini alla metà del secolo xvi: Esplorazioni e questioni aperte, ed. by Franco Bolgiani and Grado Giovanni Merlo (Turin: Einaudi, 2005), pp. 189–97. 44  Mario Sensi, Storia di bizzoche tra Umbria e Marche (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura. 1995), p.  353; Sensi, Le osservanze francescane, p.  53; Pellegrini, ‘Le origini francescane’, pp. 184–85. 45  Wadding, Annales minorum, vol. ix, no. 381, pp. 473–74. For preliminary survey of the dynamics of the spread of Franciscan Observance in Italy, see now Letizia Pellegrini and Gian Maria Varanini, eds, Fratres de familia: Gli insediamenti dell’Osservanza minoritica nella penisola italiana (sec. xiv–xv) (Pisa: Cierre edizioni, 2011).

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official recognition in a decree issued by the Council of Constance.46 At the same time, an important change in the nature of the Observance was about to occur, as would be signalled by two events that were more than symbolic. In 1418, at Mantua, Giovanni da Capestrano requested help in the fight against the Fraticelli de opinione from Pope Martin V, who was returning from the Council of Constance; and by 1415, as the inscription in the porch of the church testifies, work was completed on the friary of San Bartolomeo di Marano, which Ugolino Trinci, prince of Foligno, had begun for Paoluccio.47 The further development of the Observance is reflected in the fact that the friary of Marano was located near Foligno, as opposed to the old hermitage of Brogliano, which was hidden among mountains and woods. It was, however, only with the appearance of the ‘four pillars’ of the Observance — Bernardino da Siena (d. 1444), Giovanni da Capestrano, Giacomo della Marca (d. 1476), and Alberto da Sarteano (d. 1450) — that the reformed movement went through a new and distinct phase of detachment from the initial hermitic ideals, displaying a renewed missionary spirit reinforced by intense and systematic study.48 The development had already begun under the papacy of Martin V, with the gradual entrance of better trained friars into the movement. The hermitic-contemplative way of life and the usus pauper of goods were progressively replaced by friaries built much closer to the towns, by the usus moderatus of instrumen46 

Bernardino Feliciangeli, ‘Le memorie del Convento di S. Pietro di Muralto e l’origine dell’Osservanza Minoritica in Camerino’, Picenum Seraphicum, 7 (1916), 561–84 (p. 569): ‘[…] Uni ex aliis fratribus de dicto loco et ordine qui sit de observantia regule.’ See Bullarium Franciscanum, ed. by Sbaraglia, vol. vii, no. 1362, p. 493. Cf. Sensi, Dal movimento eremitico alla regolare osservanza francescana, p. 16, note 23. 47  See Sensi, Dal movimento eremitico alla regolare osservanza francescana, p. 184. 48  Mariano da Firenze, ‘Compendium Chronicarum fratrum minorum’, p. 707: ‘Hii qua­ tuor viri fuerunt firmissime columpne debilis et parve familie.’ For a preliminary orientation on these preachers, see, on Bernardino, Raoul Manselli, ‘Bernardino da Siena’, Dizionario Bio­ grafico degli Italiani, vol. ix (1967), pp. 215–26; Bruno Koroŝak, ‘Bernardino da Siena, santo’, in Bibliotheca Sanctorum, vol. ii, cols 1294–1315; and Zafarana, ‘Bernardino nella storia della predicazione popolare’; on Giacomo, see Carla Casagrande, ‘Giacomo della Marca’, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. liv (2000), pp. 214–20; and Renato Lioi, ‘Giacomo della Marca, santo’, in Bibliotheca Sanctorum, vol. vi, cols 387–96; San Giacomo della Marca nell’Europa del ‘400: Atti del Convegno internazionale di Studi, Monteprandone, 1994 (Padua: Centro Studi Antoniani, 1997); on Alberto, see Enrico Cerulli, ‘Berdini Alberto (Alberto da Sarteano)’, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. viii (1966), pp. 800–04; Riccardo Pratesi, ‘Giacomo della Marca, santo’, Bibliotheca Sanctorum, vol. i, cols 696–97; and Riccardo Pratesi, ‘Nuovi documenti sul b. Alberto da Sarteano (d.  1450)’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 53 (1960), 78–110; and on Capestrano, see note 7 above.

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tal goods, and by an increasingly important attention to active pastoral care.49 Preaching came to be at the core of the friars’ duties as opposed to the way of life previously led by Paoluccio and his companions, some of whom — according to an anonymous vita of Bernardino da Siena — had even thought that preaching was ‘quasi sacrilegium’.50 Study would progressively play a greater role in the intellectual characterization of the Observant Franciscan preachers certainly following a tendency that was already embedded in the Order.51 Soon after he had become Vicar General of the Cismontane Observance in 1438, Bernardino decided that in order to hear confessions friars had to become well trained in theology. At the same time, Bernardino began to give a course on moral casuistry at Monteripido, near Perugia, where he established the first Franciscan studium for the training of the friars. That decision concerning confessors had wide resonance and was not very well received by the friars. Bernardino Aquilano says that Bernardino’s injunction created so many scruples that from that point ‘it was barely possible to find someone among the friars disposed to hear confessions’, but the ‘Conventual’ Francesco da Rimini also writes that those ‘uneducated’ friars, thus deprived of the duty of hearing confession, ‘conspired against him and harassed him to death’.52 It seems clear, however, that initially, and mainly during the first half of the fifteenth century, a large proportion of the friars were still in disagreement with such an impulsion to study. The determined effort of Giovanni da Capestrano, who recommended study as an 49 

Bernardino explained his points in a circular letter addressed to all the Franciscan provinces. See Wadding, Annales minorum, vol. xi, nos 101–03, pp. 117–18. On this cf. Sensi, ‘Movimenti di osservanza e ricerca della solitudine’, p. 130. 50  Compendium vitae Sancti Bernardini, ed by F. M. Delorme, ‘Une esquisse primitive de la vie de s. Bernardin’, in Bollettino di studi bernardiniani, 1 (1935), 1–22 (p. 20). On this see also Sensi, Storia di bizzoche tra Umbria e Marche, p. 353. 51  For the place of learning and study in the Franciscan Order within the first century of its development, see Neslihan Senocak, The Poor and the Perfect: The Rise of Learning in the Franciscan Order, 1209–1310 (Philadelphia: Cornell Uni­ver­sity Press, 2013). 52  Bernardino Aquilano, Chronica fratrum minorum observantiae, ed. by Lemmens, p. 26. For Francesco da Rimini, see Celestino Piana, ‘Scritti polemici tra Conventuali e Osservanti a metà del ‘400 con la partecipazione dei giuristi secolari’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 71 (1978), 339–405 (p. 372); and A. G. Little, ‘Nota fr. Francisci Ariminensis O. M. Conv. De relatione S. Bernardini Senensis ad fratres Observantes’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 2 (1909), 164–65. On all this see Pellegrini, ‘Bernardino da Siena, il Minoritismo e l’Osservanza’, pp. 24–30. On the establishment of the studium at Monteripido, see also Ugolino Nicolini, ‘I minori osservanti di Monteripido e lo scriptorium delle clarisse di Monteluce in Perugia nei secoli xv e xvi’, Picenum seraphicum, 8 (1971), 100–30.

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essential instrument for success in preaching, has to be seen in this context.53 Another important step on the part of Capistrano was the decision, inserted into the Constitutions of 1443, to establish at least one or two studia in each religious province: following that decision observant studia were progressively founded in all the main Italian towns.54 The new emphasis on preaching was combined with a more precise attention to orthodoxy. All the ‘four pillars’ of the Observance were or had been fierce fighters against the Fraticelli and the so-called heresy of the Free Spirit in Central Italy, as is attested by Bernardino da Siena’s Lenten sermons.55 Those accused of professing this heresy (frequently also called beghards or beguines) wished to live an apostolic life half way between the religious and the secular, but without any religious rule and often de facto out of Church control.56 First of all, Pope Martin V had expressed his favour towards a petition from the Observants in 1418 in which they asked permission to combat Fraticelli de opinione. In 1420s the fights against Fraticelli followed one another in Central Italy, with several of their hermitages switched into the hands of the Observants. Martin V did not ignore the potential of preaching as an instrument of propaganda for orthodoxy; in 1428, during a crucial phase of the fight against the Fraticelli, the pope ordered the destruction of the castle of Maiolati in the Marche region and the burning of the accused at the stake. Significantly, at the same time, he also planned the presence of a vir religiosus to preach and to explain people the reasons for all that destruction.57 53 

See the letter dated 6 February 1444 in ‘S. Ioannis de Capistrano Sermones duo ad Studentes et Epistola circularis de studio promovendo inter Observantes’, ed. by P. Aniceto Chiappini, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 11 (1918), 127–31. On the relevance of studying, see Giovanni’s recently edited sermon for the feast of St Jerome of 1450: Filippo Sedda, ‘Renovavit sapientiam: un sermone inedito di Giovanni da Capestrano, summula della sua predicazione’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 104 (2011), 65–105. 54  See Bert Roest, A History of Franciscan Education (c. 1210–1517) (Leiden: Brill, 2000), pp. 160–65. 55  See Bernardino da Siena, Quadragesimale de christiana religione, Sermon 3, in Opera omnia, 9 vols (Florence: Frati Editori di Quaracchi, 1950–65), vol. i, p. 35; and Bernardino da Siena, Quadragesimale de Evangelio aeterno, Sermon 24: De sacra religione, in Opera omnia, vol. iii, p. 421. Cf. Sensi, ‘Movimenti di osservanza e ricerca della solitudine’, p. 128. 56  See Robert Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages (Los Angeles: Uni­ver­sity of California Press, 1972), pp. 36–37; Sensi, Dal movimento eremitico alla regolare osservanza francescana, p. 65 and note 157. 57  Bullarium Franciscanum, ed. by Sbaraglia, vol. vii, no. 181, pp. 701–02: ‘Et tempore demolitionis huiusmodi virum religiosum instituas ad praedicandum inibi verbum Dei, qui

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Franciscan Observant preaching appears to have been an instrument that in many ways lent itself very well to the need of the papacy to redefine its sphere of influence. Christendom in the fifteenth century was increasingly seen as an area to be defended not only from external enemies, such as the Turks (a phantom presence throughout the entire century) but also from a number of inner enemies: the Fraticelli among them, in good company with, first of all, Jews and later witches. It has been shown that the papal ‘investment’ in the Observants’ action against the Fraticelli and their model of poverty meant a legitimization of both the Observant friars’ ecclesiastical status and their choices concerning poverty. Their views of poverty had finally become ‘orthodox, compatible with the stance taken by the pope and of Catholicity in general’.58 Thus, it was no accident that towards the end of his life Bernardino da Siena indicated in the usus moderatus rather than in the usus pauper the correct observance of poverty. Further, it was around the question of poverty that also revolved the opposition between those who claimed that the friars had to devote themselves more thoroughly to study (Bernardino and his followers), and those who still adhered rather to the original hermitic-contemplative way of life, according to which study, and thus possessing books, would clash with poverty itself.59 Bernardino, eventually, managed to overcome the literal observation of the Franciscan rule promoted by fra’ Paoluccio, and in fact opened the way to a ‘mixed way of life’ in which preaching and confession soon emerged as central components, making cura animarum possible through an intense return to study.60 populos de causa demolitionis praedictae sapienter instruat et informet.’ See Sensi, ‘Movimenti di osservanza e ricerca della solitudine’, pp. 129–30; and 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: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2001), pp. 511–31 (pp. 520–23). 58  Pellegrini, ‘Predicazione osservante e propaganda politica’, pp. 521 and 524. 59  On this see Delorme, ‘Une esquisse primitive de la vie de S. Bernardin’, p.  20; and especially Bernardino’s circular letter of 1440, in Bernardino da Siena, Opera omnia, vol. vii, pp. 317–20. See Pellegrini, ‘Bernardino da Siena, il Minoritismo e l’Osservanza’, p. 26; see also Nimmo, Reform and Division, pp. 588–93. 60  Wadding, Annales minorum, vol. xi, nos 101–02, p. 117. On Franciscan poverty, see Sensi, Dal movimento eremitico alla regolare osservanza francescana, p. 67; Giacomo Todeschini, Ricchezza francescana: Dalla povertà volontaria alla società di mercato (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2004); John R. H. Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Order From its Origins to the Year 1517 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968); and Malcolm D. Lambert, Franciscan Poverty: The Doctrine of the Absolute Poverty of Christ and the Apostles in the Franciscan Order 1210–1323

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The distinguishing aspect of the Franciscan Observance lies therefore in this transformation from an ‘internal’ movement of reform to an independent religious order. In this regard, the promulgation by Pope Eugene IV of the bull Fratrum Ordinis Minorum on 11 August 1443 and of the bull Ut Sacra Ordinis Minorum Religio on 11 January 1446 — the texts of which were drawn up by Giovanni da Capestrano — had great importance.61 The bulls constituted a first attempt to guarantee a sort of autonomy for the Observant movement, although still without causing a real split within the Order. The leadership of the Order was reorganized through the ratification of the vicarial system which was already in use. Each of the two Observant branches, the Cismontane (which originally included only Italy) and the Ultramontane, were led by a Vicar General — the former was led since 1438 by Bernardino da Siena, and the latter was already developed in 1430 — who was responsible for the number of Vicariates into which their territories were organized.62 Furthermore, the individual Vicariates or Provinces also had their respective Vicars Provincial. The bull prescribed the acknowledgment of the authority of the Vicar General of the Observant family — elected with complete independence — by the General Minister of the Order. The fight, however, began in the 1450s, and became increasingly harsh during the second half of the century, finally causing a split, which Pope Leo X attempted to fix by issuing the bull Ite vos in 1517: only from that moment did the former Observant movement within the Order become a totally autonomous Order in itself, and its members were simply called Friars Minor, while the non-Observant friars called themselves Friars Minor Conventual.63 Related to these developments is the need to reconsider the history of the Franciscan Observance, and also to approach the figure of Bernardino da Siena, with a strong awareness of the ‘fluidity’ among different attitudes characterizing both of them. Elements such as the original hermitic spirit and the more recent opening towards preaching and urban affairs have been regarded as not too rigidly separated, whilst the pre-eminent factor, the shaping of an observant spirit (London: SPCK, 1961). For the shift of the friars to pastoral care, see Sensi, ‘Movimenti di osservanza e ricerca della solitudine’, p. 130. 61  Wadding, Annales minorum, vol. xi, nos 179–80, p. 205, and vol. xi, nos 250–53, pp. 287–91. 62  Abele Calufetti, ‘I Vicari provinciali dei Frati Minori della Regolare Osservanza di Milano dal 1428 al 1517’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 72 (1979), 3–36 (pp. 3–4). 63  See Sella, Leone X, pp. 301–12; Pellegrini, ‘Le origini francescane’, p. 179.

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opposed to the rest, has been regarded as more variable. Thus, Bernardino’s failure to back the election of the observant Alberto da Sarteano as General of the Order in 1443 in opposition to the Conventual candidate Antonio Rusconi, as well as his not choosing the observant friary of St Giuliano outside the walls in L’Aquila, but rather the non-observant friary of St Francis inside the city when he was about to die, although they might be justified with some contingent reasons, have been considered two examples of such a fluidity and the absence of too rigid a division within the Franciscan Order before 1517.64 It is certainly true that one should be careful not to bypass or avoid considering the puzzling and contradictory elements in the development of the Franciscan identities. Yet awareness concerning the ‘famiglia de observantia’ was certainly strong even in the fifteenth century, especially in the decades following Pope Eugene IV’s bull Ut sacra ordinis. When the bookseller and humanist Vespasiano da Bisticci (d. 1498), a non-Franciscan writer, described Bernardino da Siena among the characters he had known, he explained how: Truovò sancto Bernardino una nuova forma di predicare molto utile et necessaria a’ popoli. […] Più de’ frati della Osservanza di quello ordine seguitano lo stile di Sancto Bernardino.65 St Bernardino adopted a new form of preaching very serviceable and appropriate to his hearers. […] Many friars of the Observance of that order follow St Bernardino’s style.

Antonio da Vercelli (d.  1483), Observant Franciscan preacher based at St Angelo’s, bore seriously in mind the distinction between the observant and the conventual components in his order, when in a letter dated 1472 he made a plea to Ludovico Gonzaga to write to the Pope requesting that he Se degni de conservare e non infringere li privilegi della famiglia de observantia concessi per Papa Eugenio […] e quando questa famiglia se sottoponesse a conven­ tuali, credat mihi, Dominatio Vestra, che presto andaria al fondo.

64  See Pellegrini, ‘Le origini francescane’, pp. 182–83 and 190–92; Letizia Pellegrini, ‘Le linee della ricerca’, in Fratres de familia: Gli insediamenti dell’Osservanza minoritica nella penisola italiana (sec. xiv–xv), ed. by Letizia Pellegrini and Gian Maria Varanini (Pisa: Cierre edizioni, 2011), pp. 9–23 (p. 9). 65  Vespasiano da Bisticci, Vite di uomini illustri del secolo xv, I, ed. by Paolo d’Ancona and Erhard Aeschlimann (Milan: Ulrico Hoepli, 1951), p. 251. See Renaissance Princes, Popes and Prelates: The Vespasiano Memoirs: Lives of Illustrious Men of the xvth Century, trans. by William George and Emily Waters (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), p. 167.

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Would deign to preserve and not encroach upon the privileges of the Observant family conceded by Pope Eugene [IV] […] and if this family were submitted to the Conventuals, Your Lordship may trust me, that it would soon be sunk.66

It is really because of Giovanni da Capestrano’s efforts in promoting the Observant family — and also because of the successful preaching of his observant confriars — that numerous friaries switched to the Observance from the regular Franciscan obedience, and new foundations were established. Thus, the proclamation of specific behavioural models for society was first a supplement to the search for sanctity in retreat, and then a replacement for it, in the passage from a ‘first generation’ of hermitic Observant friars to a ‘second generation’ of urban missionaries increasingly involved with the city potentates.67 Grado Giovanni Merlo has seen this change as a renewal of the original Franciscan movement, representing it as a shift ‘dal deserto alla folla’ (‘from the desert to the crowd’), from hermitic solitude to the pastoral conquest of towns. In this regard, the first phase was well represented by the mountains between Foligno and Camerino, where the hermitage of Brogliano lay, while the second phase was reflected by the impressive figures of uncompromising urban preachers. As Merlo himself has emphasized, however, one should not see in such a development too rigid a division of the Observance into two distinct phases, but rather notice how the ‘dialectic between flight from the world and commitment towards the world proves to be intrinsic, from the origin, in the Franciscan experience’.68 The hermitic dimension is still undoubtedly pre66 

The letter is in the Archivio di Stato di Mantova, ‘Archivio Gonzaga’, file 2314. Cf. Anacleto Mosconi, Lombardia Francescana (Milan: [Convento dei Frati Minori], 1990), p. 89; Paolo Maria Sevesi, L’Ordine dei Frati Minori (Milan: San Giuseppe, 1942), p. 72. For an account of the tormented relationship between the two ‘souls’ of the Franciscan Order, see Celestino Piana, ‘Scritti polemici tra Conventuali e Osservanti a metà del ‘400 con la partecipazione dei giuristi secolari’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 71 (1978), 339–405; Celestino Piana, ‘Scritti polemici tra Conventuali e Osservanti a metà del ‘400 con la partecipazione dei giuristi secolari’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 72 (1979), 37–105. On Antonio, see Riccardo Pratesi, ‘Antonio da Vercelli’, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. iii (1961), pp. 580–81; Paolo Evangelisti, ‘Un non-umanista consigliere politico di Lorenzo il Magnifico: Etica politica ed “arte dello stato” nel Memoriale e nelle lettere di Antonio da Vercelli, osservante francescano (marzo-maggio 1478)’, in Ovidio Capitani, Quaranta anni per la Storia medievale, ed. by Maria Consiglia De Matteis, 2 vols (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003), vol. ii, pp. 167–87. 67  According to Merlo, Tra eremo e città, p. 146 the renewal of the Franciscan movement was based on the ability to develop a style of communication that could both involve the emotions of the crowd and fulfil the demands of political leaders. 68  Merlo, Tra eremo e città, p. 131.

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sent at the beginning of the subsequent stage of development: starting his religious career, Bernardino wanted to spend a period at the old hermitage called Colombaio, near Siena, led at that time by Giovanni da Stroncone.69 A heterogeneous model appears certainly in Observant Franciscan iconography, where the two themes of St Francis receiving the stigmata and St Jerome in the desert are combined during the first half of the fifteenth century producing a characterization that would reach its peak after the Council of Trent.70 The resumption of itinerant preaching was central to the activities of the friars, especially at the time of the ‘four pillars’, although it should be borne in mind how these tendencies can already be traced in the thirteenth century.71 It was particularly under the urging of Bernardino da Siena that the friars assumed a way of life in which the role of preaching gradually came to dominate. Sensi has pointed out how those reformers of civic customs were able to fill in the gaps in the pastoral care of their time due to their focus on preaching and confession. Their role as confessors for lay people, the female religious communities of bizzoche and the élites of the cities in which they held their preaching cycles, was linked to the close connections that they established with the local nobility, as the case of the Trinci family in the area of Foligno shows.72 In their urban preaching one finds a progressively growing interest in themes having social impact, directed in some way to the introduction of changes in the customs of the populace at large. Occasionally, after having delivered sermons on faith, preachers set out the so-called ‘bonfires of the vanities’. Among those promoted by Bernardino da Siena was one set after he had preached in Siena in 1425, where four hundred gaming and chess tables and other kinds of devices considered vain and immoral, such as female cosmetics and books of 69 

This is attested by the early vita of Bernardino written by Leonardo Benvoglienti; see Letizia Pellegrini, ed., Il processo di canonizzazione di Bernardino da Siena (1445–1450) (Grotta­ ferrata: Frati Editori di Quaracchi, 2009), p. 402. See also Pellegrini, ‘Bernardino da Siena, il minoritismo e l’Osservanza’, pp. 22–23. 70  See Fabio Bisogni, ‘Iconografia dei predicatori dell’Osservanza nella pittura dell’Italia del nord fino agli inizi del Cinquecento’, in Il rinnovamento del francescanesimo: l’Osservanza: Atti del Convegno della Società Internazionale di Studi Francescani e del Centro Interuniversitario di Studi Francescani, Assisi, 20–22 ottobre 1983 (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi Sull’Alto Medioevo, 1985), pp. 237–44 (pp. 234–36). 71  See Alberto Ghinato, ‘La predicazione francescana nella vita religiosa e sociale del Quattrocento,’ Picenum Seraphicum, 10 (1973), 25–98 (pp. 26–29); see also Mario Sensi, ‘La Predicazione itinerante a Foligno nel secolo xv’, Picenum Seraphicum, 10 (1973), 139–95 (pp. 141–44). 72  See Sensi, Dal movimento eremitico alla regolare osservanza francescana, pp. 108–15.

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magic, were burned.73 Decades after Bernardino, preachers were still engaged in similar activities. Thus, according to a chronicler, Michele Carcano (d. 1484) preached in 1474 in Ferrara on the Friday before Easter in front of 15,000 people; on the following Monday, he had gaming cards, chess tables, women’s wigs and hair-extensions, and masks collected to be burned in the square in front of the Cathedral. The following day, when he was on his way to take ship to Milan, Carcano was accompanied by some one thousand people ‘cum grandissima reverentia’ (‘with very great reverence’).74 A recent study has stressed what is called ‘a new phase’ in preaching practice: an effort to adapt the discourse to the audience, where the words became a medium to mark reality and educate the masses through a specific and characteristic way of preaching.75 This seems to be particularly true in the case of the Observant Franciscans, who touched upon every aspect of the complex social and moral life of the urban populace. Marina Montesano has underscored the closeness of Franciscan Observant pastoral care to the Dominican models of the Trecento, both mainly resting on didactic-moral themes. She adds that in the Observant Franciscans ‘the intensity with which such a campaign of evangelization is carried out reaches previously unknown heights, setting itself up as a project for total reform and redefinition of Christian society’.76 Franciscan Observance has been viewed as standing at the forefront of the process of civic 73 

The episode is described in Bernardino da Siena, Prediche volgari: Ciclo senese 1425, Sermon 35, ed. by Ciro Cannarozzi, 2 vols (Florence: Rinaldi, 1958), vol. ii, pp. 188–99 (p. 199). See Gábor Klaniczay, ‘The Bonfire of Vanities and the Mendicants’, in Emotions and Material Culture: International Round Table Discussion. Krems an der Donau, October 7 and 8, 2002 (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2003), pp. 31–59. On the bonfires promoted by Bernardino da Feltre and other Observants, see Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, Gli inganni delle apparenze: Disciplina di vesti ed ornamenti alla fine del Medioevo (Turin: Scriptorium, 1996), p. 189 ff. 74  Diario di Ugo Caleffini (1471–1494), ed. by Giuseppe Pardi (Ferrara: Premiata tipografia sociale, 1938), pp. 55–56. Carcano was born in Milan in 1427, and he preached in the main cities of Mid-Northern Italy, such as Mantua (1454), Florence (1455 and 1467), Milan (1460 and 1471), Perugia (1462), and Bologna (1464, 1469, and 1473). See Roberto Rusconi, ‘Carcano, Michele’, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. xix (1976), pp. 742–44; Roberto Rusconi, ‘Michele Carcano da Milano e le caratteristiche della sua predicazione’, Picenum Seraphicum, 10 (1973), 196–218; and Paolo Maria Sevesi, ‘Il Beato Michele Carcano da Milano O.F.M.’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 3 (1910), 633–63. 75  See Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, Pescatori di uomini: Predicatori e piazze alla fine del medioevo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2005), p. 11. 76  Montesano, ‘L’Osservanza francescana’, p. 139.

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reform, with the object of reaching a larger audience than ever before, and of having an impact on the life of the faithful through pastoral care and socio-political activity, being in a way the ‘new religious order’ of the fifteenth century.77

A Third Generation of Observant Franciscan Preachers A third generation of Observant Franciscan friars can be recognized in the preachers who died between the last two decades of the fifteenth century and the first decade of the sixteenth century. Names such as Cherubino da Spoleto (d. 1484), Bernardino da Feltre (d. 1494), Marco da Montegallo (d. 1496), and the Milanese group — on which this study is focused — belong to neither the first hermitic Observance that terminated almost straight away, nor to the second generation of the ‘major’ Observant friars dedicated to preaching and public commitment.78 Nevertheless, their social and pastoral efforts were not less sharp and successful than those of the previous generation. Some of these preachers could still have contacts with the elders of the second generation ‘pillars’ of the Observance, primarily Giacomo della Marca and Giovanni da Capestrano, thus constituting a sort of direct and living link with their tradition. Various reasons contribute to give these preachers a distinctive nature. First, as I shall show, they flourished in an age of transition between the traditional medieval schemes and the influence of new humanistic tendencies. As Andenna 77  Pellegrini, ‘Predicazione osservante e propaganda politica’, pp. 521–22; Pellegrini, ‘Cul­ tura e devozioni’, p. 409. 78  On Cherubino, see Roberto Rusconi, ‘Cherubino da Spoleto (da Negroponte)’, Dizio­ nario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. xxiv (1980), pp. 446–53; Paton, Preaching Friars, pp. 67–69; and Luciano Canonici, ‘Fra Cherubino da Spoleto predicatore del secolo xv’, Studi Francescani, 92 (1995), 107–25. On Bernardino da Feltre, see Giacomo V. Sabbatelli, ‘Bernardino da Feltre, beato’ in Bibliotheca Sanctorum, vol. ii, cols 1289–94; and Renato Aprile ‘Icono­grafia’, in Bibliotheca Sanctorum, vol. ii, cols 1293–94; Muzzarelli, Pescatori di uomini. On Marco da Montegallo, see Hélène Angiolini, ‘Marco da Montegallo’, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. lxix (2007), pp. 747–50; Silvano Bracci, ed., Marco da Montegallo (1425–1496): Il tempo, la vita, le opere. Atti del convegno di studio Ascoli Piceno 12 ottobre 1996 e Montegallo 23 agosto 1997 (Padua: Centro Studi Antoniani, 1999). Roberto da Lecce (d. 1495) is also one of the prominent preachers in this period, although he was rather a representative of the Conventual tendency. On Roberto, see Zelina Zafarana, ‘Caracciolo, Roberto (Roberto da Lecce)’, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. xix (1976), pp. 446–52; Oriana Visani, ‘Roberto Caracciolo e i sermonari del secondo Quattrocento’, Franciscana, 1 (1999), 275–317; Oriana Visani, ‘Giacomo della Marca e Roberto da Lecce: due grandi operatori culturali a confronto’, Picenum Seraphicum, 20 (2002), 33–47; and Serafino Bastanzio, Fra Roberto Caracciolo da Lecce: predicatore del secolo xv (Isola del Liri: Tip. Editrice M. Pisani, 1947).

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has pointed out, such an age has been viewed as carrying numerous seeds of decadence from the perspective of adherence to religious rules.79 The duties of the friars in many ways implied connections with the political affairs of the cities. Such a mutual interaction between friars and urban élites soon became a tangle of multifaceted religious, economic, and political instances, which can be viewed in light of what has been called ‘Minoritismo dominativo’.80 Bernardino Busti can be considered one of the most representative preachers of this late medieval Franciscan Observance, belonging to the Milanese group. The period of which Busti embodies some key features preceded directly a more complex age whose main challenges were represented by the need for an internal reform of the Church — at which the Fifth Lateran Council (1512–17) was a formal although ineffective attempt — as well as the need for another reform within the Franciscan Order during the first half of the sixteenth century, which led to the flourishing of the Capuchins. Yet, I do not want to fall into the inveterate attitude of considering this age as just a ‘precedent’ of what would follow. I believe the need to view and study the Franciscan Observant phenomenon of the fifteenth century in itself, with its own specific tendencies and characteristics, as pointed out by Merlo, can receive new impulses from an inquiry into the friars of the third generation, specifically those from the Milanese group who, due to their primary role in urban preaching and intellectual debate as well as to the proximity to political powers, can offer a laboratory for identifying some of the trajectories which have been generally recognized as connecting the friars to the peculiar religious, political and cultural realities of their century.81 All the preachers belonging to this third phase of development in the Franciscan Observant movement shared a similar approach to preaching as a didactic-catechetical medium, which often led to the production of pastoral works and the collection of sermons of a quite ‘encyclopaedic’ nature.82 The 79  See Giancarlo Andenna, ‘Aspetti politici della presenza degli Osservanti in Lombardia in età sforzesca’, in Ordini religiosi e società politica in Italia e Germania nei secoli xiv e xv, ed. by Giorgio Chittolini and Kaspar Elm (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001), pp. 331–71 (p. 371). 80  Grado Giovanni Merlo, ‘L’Osservanza come minoritismo dominativo’, in I Frati osservanti e la società in Italia nel sec. xv. XL Convegno internazionale di studi francescani, AssisiPerugia, 11–13 ottobre 2012 (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2013), pp. 57–75. 81  Grado Giovanni Merlo, ‘Conclusioni’, in Identités Franciscaines à l’âge des réformes, ed. by Frédéric Meyer and Ludovic Viallet (Clermont-Ferrand: Presses Universitaires Blaise-Pascal, 2005), pp. 501–07. See also Pellegrini, ‘Le linee della ricerca’, p. 16. 82  See Roberto Rusconi, L’ordine dei peccati: La confessione tra medioevo ed età moderna

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aim of this preaching was to address issues with the intention of having a strong impact on the social environment of the cities as well as on the behaviour of the faithful. We can describe these preachers with the words of Giuseppina Muzzarelli, as a ‘network of fishers of men’. The connection and mutual admiration among them was such that it could even happen that Michele Carcano would move aside to let Bernardino da Feltre speak in his place in a given square, as happened in Milan in 1480. Bernardino returned the compliment with Carcano in Mantua in 1481 and Cherubino gave way to Bernardino to allow him to preach to the General Chapter of the Order in 1484.83 To a certain extent, the preaching of all these friars was interchangeable because they shared the same themes and techniques. What I am suggesting here is the existence of a circulation of ideas and the sharing of a common background, in accordance with a general tendency already employed in preaching since the thirteenth century. This might be connected to the process that has been described by Augustine Thompson as the construction of a ‘network of human relations’, which ultimately indicates the existence of mutual influences between the preacher, the message and the audience, an issue that I shall address later.84 The Friars of St Angelo’s At this stage in the history of Franciscan Observance a significant role was played by a number of preachers and confessors who gathered around the friary of St Angelo in Milan. On 18 July 1421 a hut with a little church named after St Angelo’s outside Porta Nuova in Milan, probably built on an older chapel, and with room just for about fifteen people, was transferred from the parish priests of St Maria Fulcorina to the Observant Franciscan friars.85 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2002), p. 188; Roberto Rusconi, ‘La predicazione francescana sulla peni­tenza alla fine del Quattrocento nel “Rosarium Sermonum” di Bernardino Busti’, Studia Patavina, 22 (1975), 68–95. 83  Muzzarelli, Pescatori di uomini, pp. 72, 188–89. 84  Augustine Thompson, ‘From Texts to Preaching: Retrieving the Medieval Sermons as an Event’, in Preacher, Sermon, and Audience in the Middle Ages, ed. by Carolyn Muessig (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 13–35 (p. 18). 85  According to the list of Milanese churches compiled by Goffredo da Bussero in the thirteenth century, a little chapel dedicated to St Angelo was in the same place already before 1288. The document testifying to the transfer of the church to the Observant Franciscans is in the Archivio di Stato di Milano (Pergamene del Fondo di Religione, folder 356, file 157). See Goffredo da Bussero, Liber notitiae sanctorum Mediolani, ed. by Marco Magistretti

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Another legal instrument issued by Duke Filippo Maria Visconti on 16 May 1421, would possibly indicate that the Observant friars had already settled in St Angelo’s before that date.86 These documents do not reflect the supposed cause-and-effect relation between Bernardino da Siena’s visit in Milan in 1418 and the establishment of St Angelo’s. Yet, a bull issued by Pope Pius II in 1458 would attest to the presence and the favour of Bernardino with regard to that church.87 According to Wadding, Bernardino’s preaching encouraged many to embrace the habit of the Order. Soon after the Sienese had preached, he sent friars to Lombardy from Tuscany and Umbria in order to implement the Milanese Province.88 The friary was therefore one of those originating from the efforts of Bernardino in the age of the ‘four pillars’ of Franciscan Observance. Later, Michele Carcano himself seemingly decided to take the religious vows after listening to Alberto da Sarteano preaching in Milan.89 St Angelo’s was a church ideally linked to the town of St Francis, due to its original dedication to St Mary of the Angels in Assisi. Around the church a friary soon grew and expanded, showing architectural and artistic significance, in part due to the connections that in the meantime were created between the friars and the local powers. Yet, as a consequence of the events of the war distressing Northern Italy, the original friary had quite a short life. Already burned in 1516, it was damaged more seriously in 1527 by the troops of Charles V, and was finally destroyed in 1551 by Ferrante Gonzaga — Governor of Milan for Charles V between 1546 and 1554 — to be subsequently rebuilt from scratch in a safer position within the new walls of the city.90 The investigation of the original friary is made difficult due to these early destructions and also because of the fire that burned down the rich library of the friary (seemingly created on the impulse of Bernardino da Siena) during the eighteenth century.91 and Ugo Monneret De Villard (Milan: U.  Allegretti, 1917); Zelia Grosselli, ‘Documenti quattrocenteschi per la chiesa e il convento di S. Angelo di Milano’, Arte lombarda, 64 (1983), 104–08 (p.  106); Bernardino Burocco, Chronologia Seraphica: Principio e Felici Progressi de Frati Minori Osservanti della Provincia Milanese: Libro II, p. 4, no. 1 (Milan, Archivio Provinciale dei Frati Minori, MS 1716). 86  See Sevesi, ‘Il Beato Michele Carcano da Milano’, pp. 633–34. 87  The church is said to be built ‘Ipso sancto praesente et consensum, consilium, auxilium et favorem ad hoc praestante’: Bullarium franciscanum, ed. by Sbaraglia, vol. ii, no. 520, p. 278). 88  Wadding, Annales minorum, vol. xi, no. 240, p. 274. 89  Sevesi, ‘Il Beato Michele Carcano da Milano’, pp. 634–35. 90  Burocco, Chronologia Seraphica, p. 8, no. 11. 91  See Laura Andreozzi and Davide Mirabile, ‘Nuovi spunti di indagine su Sant’Angelo

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Nevertheless, some elements survive to give an idea of the appearance of the friary before 1527. Its sumptuousness must have appeared clearly to the eyes of the French engineer Pasquier Le Moyne, who in 1515 came to Italy along with King Francis I, and gave a description of the friary.92 By that time, St Angelo’s had extended on a site of approximately 40,000 square metres, had two more churches besides the original one, five cloisters, an infirmary provided with a refectory for the sick, gardens, and a thicket, which was donated by Duchess Bianca Maria Visconti.93 A modest edifice located within the city walls — which then became a small church called Santa Maria del Giardino — was donated to the friars in the 50s of the fifteenth century for the specific purpose of providing them with a base for delivering their sermons within the town. Two elements referred to by Le Moyne are particularly noteworthy. Describing the church, which according to the typical so-called ‘Bernardinian module’ was a single-nave edifice ‘quarante pas de longueur’, he mentions ten rich chapels at its sides containing remarkable burials, and the frescoed entrance to the choir.94 The mention of the chapels points to the habit of the nobles of requiring a burial ad sanctos.95 Several wills indicate how developed such a practice was in St Angelo’s, involving the representatives of the more illustrious families of the two main groupings which made up Milanese noble society of the time, the great Lombard nobility, and the rich cives of Milan, the former including lineages such as Visconti, Del Maino, Carcano, Sforza, and the latter Alciati, Vismara, Trivulzio. This highlights the role of nobles who were also protectors, founders, sponsors of friaries and nunneries.96 The presence of frescoes in Vecchio a Milano’, Solchi, 1–2 (2003), 82–85; and Anacleto Mosconi, Insediamenti francescani nella diocesi di Milano: Storia, Religione, Arte (Milan: Edizioni Biblioteca Francescana, 1988), p. 32. 92  Le Moyne’s report, published in Paris in 1525 is in Luca Beltrami, ‘Notizie sconosciute sulle città di Pavia e Milano al principio del secolo xvi’, Archivio Storico Lombardo, 30 (1890), 408–24 (esp. pp. 422–24). 93  The richness in gardens and woods earned the place the nickname of ‘Paradise of Milan’: Burocco, Chronologia Seraphica, p. 4. 94  Beltrami, ‘Notizie sconosciute’, p. 422. 95  The epitaphs from the chapels would prove that they were built ‘by various of the leading citizens of Milan’: Burocco, Chronologia Seraphica, pp. 10–46. 96  Del Maino was the family of Bianca Maria’s mother, Agnese. On the connections between the friary and the noble Milanese families, see Edoardo Rossetti, ‘Una questione di famiglie: Lo sviluppo dell’Osservanza francescana e l’aristocrazia milanese (1476–1516)’, in Fratres de familia: Gli insediamenti dell’Osservanza minoritica nella penisola italiana (sec. xiv–xv), ed. by Letizia

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Figure 1. Bernardino Luini (?), ‘Head of an angel’, Milan, early 16th century. © Chiesa di Sant’Angelo.

St Angelo’s has been evaluated in the light of the interesting technique of painting the partition walls that in Franciscan churches separated the choir from the nave, mainly with scenes from the life and passion of Christ. This practice became common from the 1470s within the Milanese Province of Friars Minor, which traditionally included five Custodies centred respectively on Milan, Monza, Brescia, Como, and Vercelli.97 The origins of that form of art have been Pellegrini and Gian Maria Varanini (Pisa: Cierre edizioni, 2011), pp. 101–33 (pp. 108–20); Marco Gentile, ‘Aristocrazia signorile e costituzione del ducato visconteo-sforzesco: appunti e problemi di ricerca’, in Noblesse et États princiers en Italie et en France au 16. siècle, ed. by Marco Gentile and P. Savy (Rome: École française de Rome, 2009), pp. 125–55; and Maria Nadia Covini, ‘Essere nobili a Milano nel Quattrocento. Giovanni Tommaso Piatti tra servizio pubblico, interessi fondiari, impegno culturale e civile’, Archivio Storico Lombardo, 128 (2002), 63–155. 97  See Bernardino Burocco, Descrittione Chronologica: Principii, Progressi, Santità e Dottrina della Provincia di Milano de Frati Minori Osservanti: Tomo I, p. 13 (Milan, Archivio Provinciale dei Frati Minori, MS 1717). Among the few surviving painted partition walls noteworthy are those in the church of St Bernardino in Ivrea, painted between 1485–93 by Martino Spanzotti; St Maria delle Grazie in Varallo, painted in 1513 by Gaudenzio Ferrari; and Santa Maria degli Angeli in Lugano, frescoed in 1529 by Bernardino Luini. See Alessandro

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compared with the Lenten use of hanging a Fastentüch or velum quadragesimale — a large canvas painted with scenes from the Passion of Christ — in front of the altar in the churches of the Alpine and sub-Alpine region.98 We do not know much of the cycles depicted at St Angelo’s. The representation of the Passion of Christ in the church was considered by Le Moyne as the most perfect work of that kind in Milan. Two of the cloisters were painted: one with stories from the life of St Francis, another with those of St Bernardino da Siena. The Last Supper frescoed in the refectory of the infirmary was regarded by the French engineer as enthusiastically as the other similar and later more famous depiction frescoed by Leonardo da Vinci in the refectory of the Dominican Santa Maria delle Grazie. Thus, everything confirms the idea of a richly decorated friary. Among the rare surviving examples of those decorations, one is still in the lobby of the sacristy of the church of the present St Angelo’s. It comes from a fresco that had been detached from the walls of the original church in which possibly Bernardino Luini — or another of the Lombard Leonardesque artists — represented the graceful face of a blond and blue-eyed angel (Figure 1).99 Art also spoke of the close relationship between the friary and the noble families. Very often, in fact, the decoration of cloisters and churches was made possible by rich endowments. Especially important for St Angelo’s was the involvement with the families ruling the Duchy of Milan, the richest court in Italy at that time.100 Duke Filippo Maria Visconti gave the Milanese Observant Franciscans a place to settle, but he was also the last Visconti to rule the Milanese duchy. After his death in 1447, an ephemeral republican government Nova, ‘I tramezzi in Lombardia fra xv e xvi secolo: scene della passione e devozione francescana’, in Il francescanesimo in Lombardia: storia e arte (Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana editoriale, 1983), pp. 197–214 (pp. 201–03); Adele Rovereto, Il convento di San Bernardino di Ivrea e il ciclo pittorico di Gian Martino Spanzotti (Ivrea: Priuli e Verlucca Editori, 1990); Edoardo Villata, ‘Gaudenzio Ferrari: Gli anni dell’apprendistato’, in Edoardo Villata and Simone Baiocco, Gaudenzio Ferrari, Gerolamo Giovenone: un avvio e un percorso (Turin: Allemandi, 2004), pp. 11–143; and Lara Calderari, ‘Lugano: Santa Maria degli Angeli’, in Il Rinascimento nelle terre ticinesi: Da Bramantino a Bernardino Luini, ed. by Giovanni Agosti, Jacopo Stoppa, Marco Tanzi (Milan: Officina Libraria, 2010). 98  Cf. Nova, ‘I tramezzi in Lombardia fra xv e xvi secolo’, pp. 209–10. 99  See Beltrami, ‘Notizie sconosciute’, pp.  421–23. See also Rossetti, ‘Lo sviluppo dell’Osservanza francescana e l’aristocrazia milanese’, p. 131. Because of his fine style, in the nine­teenth century Bernardino Luini was called ‘the Raphael of Lombardy’. See ‘Bernardino Luini’, in I leonardeschi: L’eredità di Leonardo in Lombardia, ed. by David Alan Brown and others (Milan: Skira, 1998), pp. 325–70. 100  See Martines, Power and Imagination, p. 226.

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lasted only until 1450. In the same year, Francesco Sforza managed to restore the duchy becoming Lord of Milan. He and his wife, the Duchess Bianca Maria Visconti, who was Filippo’s daughter, were personally committed to the friars of St Angelo’s and engaged in charitable activities. (Figure 2).101 The heyday of the friary thus occurred in the time of the first duchy of the Sforza, which ended in 1499 when Ludovico Sforza (il Moro) was defeated by Louis XII and the Milanese territory invaded by the French army. Those events led in turn to the creation of the first French duchy that lasted only until 1512.102 As everywhere else in Europe, these were times of fear and violence, in which dramatic changes in the political and social environment of a territory might happen quickly. And they could also affect the fate of the old friary, as we saw. Thus, during the first half of the fifteenth century St Angelo’s became a primary centre of the Milanese Observant Franciscan Province. It even hosted the Gen­eral Chapter of the Friars Minor in 1457, an event that — in the words of Bernardino Aquilano — appears to be a clear representation of the close relations of the friars with the Milanese court.103 The friars of St Angelo’s had looked for the protection of Francesco at the General Chapter, in order to prevent the Conventuals again refusing the dispositions of Pope Eugene IV, as had happened in 1442 at the General Chapter of Padua, where they even dis­avowed the Observant Alberto da Sarteano, named Vicar General by the pope.104 Everything went well, and the protection of the Duke proved useful. Further­more, in what Bernardino calls their ‘peculiaris amor et devotio’ (‘special affection and devotion’), the Duke, his wife the Duchess Bianca Maria, and a number of other dominae, even wanted to invite the friars to dine together, and thus made prepared tables in the grove of the friary.105 The friars were at 101  Martines, Power and Imagination, p. 140 ff; Andenna, ‘Aspetti politici della presenza degli Osservanti’, p. 351. 102  See Martines, Power and Imagination, pp. 226–27, 280 ff, and 291; Stefano Meschini, La Francia nel Ducato di Milano. La politica di Luigi XII (1499–1512) (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2006). 103  Bernardino Aquilano, Chronica fratrum minorum observantiae, ed. by Lemmens, pp. 82–85. See Giovanni Grado Merlo, ‘Ordini mendicanti e potere: l’Osservanza minoritica cismontana’, in Vite di eretici e storie di frati: A Giovanni Miccoli, ed. by Marina Benedetti, Grado Giovanni Merlo, and Andrea Piazza (Milan: Edizioni Biblioteca Francescana, 1998), pp. 267–301 (pp. 276–79); Giancarlo Andenna, ‘Gli Ordini Mendicanti, la comunità e la corte sforzesca’, in Metamorfosi di un borgo: Vigevano in età viscontea-sforzesca, ed. by Giorgio Chittolini (Milan: Franco Angeli Editore, 1992), pp. 145–91. 104  On this see also Nimmo, Reform and Division, pp. 628–30. 105  Bernardino Aquilano, Chronica fratrum minorum observantiae, ed. by Lemmens, pp. 85–89. Cf. Burocco Chronologia Seraphica, pp. 5–6, no. 4.

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Figure 2. Anonymous, Francesco and Bianca Maria Sforza receive the bull from Pope Pius II to establish the Ospedale Maggiore (1458), Ca’ Granda, Milan, 1590–1610. © Fondazione Federico Zeri, Bologna.

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ease with the élites, and linked to them by mutual trust. Friars were the nobles’ much favoured confessors and confidants, in some instances even in matter of administration and politics. Such was the case of the decision taken on 28 June 1467 with regard to the choice of Bianca Maria’s personal confessor, who would eventually become Friar Bonaventura Piantanida from St Angelo’s.106 The document for the appointment of the Duchess’s confessor is also relevant for us because it allows us to get to know the names of some friars who were certainly at St  Angelo’s at that time. Thus, among others, there were preachers and confessors who also were or had been Vicars General of the Cismontane family, such as Marco da Bologna (d. 1479), and Angelo Carletti da Chivasso (d. 1495), or Vicars Provincial of the Milanese Province, such as Antonio da Vercelli and Bernardino Caimi (d. 1499), the latter also guardian of St Angelo’s in 1477 and 1479.107 The case of Antonio may reflect the traditional closeness of those friars to centres of political power even beyond Milanese territory. Antonio was, in fact, a resident of St Angelo’s in the 1460s but acted as Lorenzo de’ Medici’s personal adviser, addressing to him at least three letters and a memorial treatise after the conspiracy of the Pazzi in 1478.108 Among the friars who are not mentioned in the list, but whose role was central in the intel-

106 

The document is held in the Archivio di Stato di Milano, Archivio Generale del Fondo di Religione (or, less properly, Fondo di Religione), folder 115 (or 953) ‘S. Angelo, Minori Osservanti’. Cf. Wadding, Annales minorum, vol. xiii, no. 410, pp. 472–73. See also Paolo Maria Sevesi, ‘La congregazione dei Capriolanti e le origini della provincia dei frati minori della regolare osservanza di Brescia’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 7 (1914), 108–21 (p. 109); Merlo, ‘Ordini mendicanti e potere’, pp. 290–94; and Andenna, ‘Aspetti politici della presenza degli Osservanti’, p. 352 ff. 107  See Calufetti, ‘I Vicari provinciali dei Frati Minori’. On Marco da Blologna, see Rosa Maria Dessì, ‘Marco da Bologna’, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. lxix (2007), pp. 737–40; and Celestino Piana, Il beato Marco da Bologna e il suo convento di San Paolo in Monte nel Quattrocento (Bologna: Nuova Abes, 1973). Angelo da Chivasso belonged to the Genoese Province of the Observants, of which he was even Vicar provincial. On him, see Sosio Pezzella, ‘Carletti, Angelo’, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. xx (1977), pp. 136–38; Pierre Michaud-Quantin, Sommes de casuistique et manuels de confession au Moyen Âge (xii– xvi siècles), Analecta mediaevalia Namurcensia, 13 (Louvain: Éditions Nauwelaerts, 1962), pp.  99–101; and Ovidio Capitani and others, eds, Frate Angelo Carletti osservante nel v centenario della morte (1495–1995): Atti del convegno: Cuneo, 7 dicembre 1996–Chivasso, 8 dicembre 1996 (Cuneo: Società per gli studi storici, archeologici ed artistici della provincia di Cuneo, 1998). On Bernardino Caimi, see Anna Morisi, ‘Caimi, Bernardino’, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. xvi (1973), pp. 347–49. 108  Evangelisti, ‘Un non-umanista consigliere politico di Lorenzo il Magnifico’, p. 175.

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lectual life of the friary, especially for the purposes of this study, are Bernardino Busti (about whom I speak below), his master Michele Carcano, Bartolomeo Caimi (d.  1496), famous confessor and the brother of Bernardino Caimi, guardian of the friary in 1466, Vicar Provincial in 1458 and 1466, and Samuele Cassini (d. after 1510), who was well-known for being versed in Aristotelian philosophy. 109 Cassini got personally involved in the numerous disputes between Dominicans and Franciscans, of which the controversy concerning Savonarola’s prophetism was but one. In De modo descernendi falsum prophetam a vero propheta inter reprobandum falsam prophetiam atque visionem fratris Rieronymi (1497) the Franciscan opposed Savonarola’s supposed prophetic virtues; with the Reseratio atque clarificatio falsarum solutionum Joannis Francisci Pici Mirandulani ad argumenta Samuelis Cassinensis que facta júerunt in falsam prophetiam Hieronymi Ferrariensis (1498), he replied to Giovanfrancesco Pico della Mirandola who had risen up in defence of Savonarola, showing a position aligned with the papal stance against the Dominican friar.110 With the probable exception of Cassini, who was primarily a philosopher, a teacher, and polemicist, all the friars of St Angelo’s were also actively involved in the social aspects of civic life due to the type of duties which led them to deal with various issues, such as reconciling hostile urban factions, founding hospitals, condemning usury, and sponsoring the Montes Pietatis (charitable pawnbroking ). The link between usury and the anti-Jewish controversy receives further stress through these preachers. It was precisely during the preaching in favour of the Montes, in fact, that the old polemical stereotypes concerning the Jews often reappeared. Thus, preaching in Perugia in 1462, the very 109 

The exact dates of Cassini’s birth and death are unknown. He was a native of Piedmont but no information is available on him after 1510. We are sure that Cassini was a resident in the friary of St Angelo for at least a few years after 1493 when he returned to Milan from France where he was teaching, as is indicated in the preface to his Liber ysagogicus, a handbook of philosophy and theology published in 1494. Most likely, Cassini also composed sermons. See Supplementum, ed. by Sbaraglia, Part iii, pp. 82–84 (p. 83); Michaela Valente, ‘Cassini (Cassinis), Samuel de’, in Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition, ed. by Richard M. Golden, 4 vols (Santa Barbara: ABC Clio, 2006), vol. i, pp. 172–73; Renzo Ristori, ‘Cassini, Samuele’, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. xxi (1978), pp. 487–89; Giovanni Zoppi, ‘Padre Samuele da Cassine e la stampa in Acqui’, Rivista di Storia, Arte e Archeologia per le provincie di Alessandria e Asti, 60–61 (1951–52), 204–07; and Wadding, Annales minorum, vol. xv, no. 166, p. 191. On Caimi, see Clara Gennaro, ‘Caimi, Bartolomeo’, Dizionario Bio­ grafico degli Italiani, vol. xvi (1973), pp. 346–47. 110  Supplementum, ed. by Sbaraglia, Part iii, pp. 82–83; Cassandra Calogero, Gli avversari reli­giosi di Girolamo Savonarola (Rome: Studium, 1935), pp. 101–04.

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year of the foundation in that town of what is considered the first ever Mons Pietatis, Carcano ‘preached in the square […] and preached against the Jews’, as the chronicler Pietro Angelo di Giovanni recorded. Pietro goes on to explain how Carcano’s preaching led the urban Council to withdraw all business licenses from the Jews, and finally the foundation of the Mons was approved.111 In the small Umbrian town of Spello, the building of the Mons in 1469 led shortly to a massacre of the local Jewish community, while in 1484, in Mantua, Jews were forced by the political authorities to attend a sermon preached by Bernardino da Feltre for the foundation of the Mons. On that occasion, according to Bernardino’s biographer, Jewish women were protected from hearing the preacher’s words through some cotton wool inserted in their ears by the males of their families.112 Nevertheless, already from the thirteenth century and mainly as a consequence of economic growth, also the number of Christians practicing usury increased dramatically generating competition with the Jews.113 Carcano himself represents such a tendency to social action, not only with regard to the Jewish issue or by promoting Montes, but also by taking part in the merging of small hospitals with the major ones in Milan in 1456, in Como in 1468, in Piacenza in 1471, and in Crema in 1479, and in the contested reform of the charitable Consorzio della Misericordia, originally managed by the Tertiaries and attached to the friary of St Angelo.114 As the recent study by Maria 111 

Oscar Scalvanti, ed., ‘Cronaca perugina inedita di Pietro Angelo di Giovanni, anni 1461–1494’, Bollettino di Storia Patria per l’Umbria, 9 (1903), 27–141 (p. 38). See Rosa Maria Dessì, ‘Usura, caritas e Monti di pietà: Le prediche antiusurarie e antiebraiche di Marco da Bologna e Michele Carcano’, in I Frati osservanti e la società in Italia nel sec. xv: Atti del xl Convegno internazionale di studi francescani, Assisi-Perugia, 11–13 ottobre 2012 (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2013), pp. 169–226; and Sevesi, I Sermones ed i casus conscientie del Beato Michele Carcano, p. 15 ff. On the Mons of Perugia, see also Ariel Toaff, Gli Ebrei a Perugia (Perugia: Deputazione di Storia Patria per l’Umbria, 1975); and Stanislao Majarelli and Ugolino Nicolini, Il Monte dei Poveri di Perugia: Periodo delle origini (1462–1474) (Perugia: Banca del Monte di credito, 1962), pp. 101–53. 112  Muzzarelli, Pescatori di uomini, p. 251. 113  On the Montes and the ‘Jewish issue’, see Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, Il denaro e la salvezza: L’invenzione del Monte di Pietà (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001), pp. 18–21. On Christian usury, see Jacques Le Goff, Your Money or Your Life: Economy and Religion in the Middle Ages, trans. by Patricia Ranum (New York: Zone Books, 1988), p. 37. 114  Burocco, Chronologia Seraphica, p.  416, no.  4. On this, see Giuliana Albini, ‘L’Osservanza francescana e la pratica della carità. Uno sguardo alle città dell’Italia centrosettentrionale’, in I Frati osservanti e la società in Italia nel sec. xv. XL Convegno internazionale di studi francescani, Assisi-Perugia, 11–13 ottobre 2012 (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto

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Giuseppina Muzzarelli has shown, Bernardino da Feltre particularly embodied the genre of preaching intended to produce a strong social impact, ranging from the foundation of new Montes Pietatis in Mantua in 1484, in Parma in 1488, and in Padua in 1491, to the restoration of the hospital of poveri esposti or illegitimate children in Pavia in 1493, to the spreading of Pope Innocent VIII’s pax romana over Umbria, devastated by the usual struggles among political factions.115 Angelo da Chivasso was also particularly active on the socio-economic side promoting the Montes from 1474 in Vercelli, Genoa and Savona, and in this last town most probably reforming the urban statutes. Angelo is also the author of an Anecdotum de contractibus, in which he deals with usury, proposing a doctrinal response to every moral doubt related to the issue.116 Overall, the spread of the Montes in the fifteenth century may be situated within the context of the definite recognition of a new social and economic paradigm that linked the value of time to the needs of production. The lender was said to sell ‘the time that elapses between the moment he lends money and the moment he is repaid’: according to the traditional thesis of Jacques Le Goff this is part of a process placing the emphasis on work and workers and therefore, in a way, introducing an idea of capitalism.117 The rethinking of Christian poverty, the aim of giving Christian society its own rules in opposition to the Jewish credit system as well as the Franciscan Observant economic thought favouring the establishment of the Montes Pietatis, have been seen as seeds bearing some of the essential requirements for a modern economy in the perspective of the longue durée.118 Economic worthiness was immediately associated with a moral meaning in Marco da Montegallo’s La tabula della salute (Venice, 1486), which is particularly representative in this regard.119 The salute or well-being of which Marco Medioevo, 2013), pp. 229–51 (pp. 235–42). See also Andenna, ‘Aspetti politici della presenza degli Osservanti’, pp. 334–39. 115  Muzzarelli, Pescatori di uomini, pp. 230–48. 116  The text was published posthumous only in 1768 in Milan by J. Marelli. See Pezzella, ‘Carletti, Angelo’; and Giacomo Todeschini, ‘Eccezioni e usura nel Duecento: Osservazioni sulla cultura economica medievale’, Quaderni storici, 131 (2009), 443–60. 117  Le Goff, Your Money or Your Life, pp. 39–42. 118  See Ida Magli, Gli uomini della penitenza: lineamenti antropologici del medioevo italiano (Padua: Franco Muzzio Editore, 1995), pp. 52–53; and Pellegrini, ‘Predicazione osservante e propaganda politica’, p. 525. 119  Along with the Libro delli Comandamenti di Dio, printed in the same year, the Tabula was specifically intended for instructing the laity. Both were reprinted in Florence in 1494.

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speaks is both physically and spiritually connoted, representing — even iconographically — the double meaning and the centrality of the Mons as a means for reaching heaven and thus salvation by acting charitably in life.120 The extent that usury should be put forward as a serious sin in preaching is well shown by Bernardino Caimi in an anecdote that he said was reported by his confrere Antonio da Vercelli, in which the devil even goes to recoup the host from the body of a usurer, who had died without returning his sinful gains but had evidently received communion before dying: Accidit in civitate Assisii quod quidam usurarius veniens ad mortem sine restitutione ablatorum, corpus dominicum recepit, deinde defunctus est et sepultus fuit in conventu nostro in quodam sepulcro novo pro ipso preparato, quod est ante ingressum ecclesie ipsius conventus, in qua ecclesia corpus beati patris nostri Francisci integrum, ut creditur, requiescit. Quo sepulto, circa mediam noctem quidam demon in humana forma accessit ad sacristam dormientem, et ipsum evigilans dixit: ego sum demon qui ex precepto Dei in hac forma ad te veni. Surge et veni mecum et noli timere. Sed indue te cotam et accipe calicem cum patena prebens michi luminaria accensa et veni mecum secure: qui attonitus hec omnia fecit. Accedens autem demon cum eo ad sepulturam predicti usurarii, solus per se revolvit lapidem ab hostio monumenti. Quo facto dixit sacriste ut supponeret calicem ori illius usurarii. Quod cum fecisset, accepit dyabolus caput usurarii per capillos et percutiens ipsum fortiter in occipite cum pugno clamavit fortiter dicens: O traditor usurarie, proice et emitte verum corpus quod indigne suscepisti, et cum ipsum in calicem evomisset demon portans luminaria accensa preibat sacristam deferentem sacramentum. Et, dum in sacristia fuissent, dixit sacriste: repone toto modo Cristi corpus reverenter et postea vade ad quiescendum. Tunc dyabolus accessit ad sepulcrum et asportavit corpus illud maledictum. Mane autem facto, accedens sacrista cum fratribus quibus omnia narraverat ad sepulturam illius usurarii, eam vacuam cum lapide revoluto invenerunt. Que sepultura usque in hodiernum diem remanet vacua, et dixit mihi p(ater) f(rater) Antonius de Vercellis hec audisse a fratribus illius conventus et etiam ab illis de civitate.121 It happened in the town of Assisi that a usurer came to die without having returned ill-gotten gains. He received the host and then died, and was buried in our friary, where a new tomb had been prepared for him in front of the entrance of the church 120 

See Muzzarelli, Pescatori di uomini, p.  72; Dessì, ‘Usura, caritas e Monti di pietà’, pp. 215–16. 121  Bernardino Caimi, Sermones de tempore, fol.  113 rb (Como, Biblioteca Comunale, MS 1. 3. 17). There is also a partial reference to this tale in Celestino Piana, ‘Il beato Bernardino Caimi da Milano. Un epigono della predicazione Bernardiniana nell’ultimo Quattrocento’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 64 (1971), 303–36 (p. 326).

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in the same friary. In the church the body of our blessed father Francis rests uncorrupted, as it is believed. When he had been buried, about midnight a demon in human shape approached the sacristan who was asleep and woke him up and said: ‘I am a demon who at God’s command comes to you in this form. Get up and come with me; do not be afraid. Put on your coat and take a chalice with a paten, hold the lights for me; do not worry, come with me’. He was astonished, but did all this. The devil, approaching with him the tomb of the aforementioned usurer, all by himself rolled the stone from the entrance of the tomb. That done, he told the sacristan to put the chalice under the mouth of the usurer. When he had done that, the devil grabbed the head of the usurer by hair and punching him in the back of the head gave a loud yell, saying: ‘You treacherous usurer, throw up and disgorge the true Body that you have received unworthily.’ When he had vomited it up into the chalice, the devil carrying the lights preceded the sacristan who was carrying the sacrament. Once they had arrived in the sacristy he said to the sacristan: ‘Put back the body of Christ with every kind of reverence and then go to bed.’ Then the devil went to the tomb and carried away that accursed body. In the morning, when the sacristan went to the tomb of the usurer with the friars to whom he had told everything, they found it empty, with the stone rolled away. The tomb remains empty up to the present day, and the father friar Antonio da Vercelli told me that he had heard those things from the friars of that friary and even from those from the town.

Moral reminders of this kind have to be seen within the context of the increasing spread of usury. They sound like calls to usurers to return their undeserved gains in order to earn absolution and peace in the afterlife. The exemplum, however, lets us imagine that the practice of restitution was probably not exactly a custom.122 Bernardino gives us the opportunity to introduce another important issue faced by these preachers: the Turkish threat endangering Europe. For Bernardino that was the origin of a devotion destined to great success. He had been a commissioner in the Holy Land after the guardian of Mount Sion had died in 1477, and founded one of the earliest Sacri Monti, the Sacro Monte of Varallo, in Piedmont, part of the Duchy of Milan, in 1493: a devotional site where, through the reproduction in different chapels of the places of the Holy 122 

Cherubino da Spoleto, Sermones quadragesimales (Venice: Giorgio Arrivabene, 1502), Sermon 64 De sanctissime confessionis, 328rb warns one that: ‘Non solum peccator debet dolere, sed etiam satisfacere.’ I have relied on the copy held in the Biblioteca Nazionale di Roma. On the relevance of returning undeserved gains, see Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby, Renaissance Florence in the Rhetoric of Two Popular Preachers: Giovanni Dominici (1356–1419) and Bernardino da Siena (1380–1444) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), p. 171 ff. Cherubino’s sermons were published almost twenty years after his death, which occurred in 1484. See Rusconi, ‘Cherubino da Spoleto’.

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Land, the faithful were provided with the possibility of making a virtual and safer pilgrimage to Palestine.123 The Milanese Observant Franciscans played a primary role in facing the Muslim advance towards Europe. Since the time the Ottomans had conquered Constantinople, Bernardino Caimi, Angelo da Chivasso, and Michele Carcano were much occupied in preaching the crusade against them.124 A particular case was the later preaching for collections to finance the crusades after the Ottomans had captured Otranto, between 1480 and 1481, and the danger seemed much more imminent. Nevertheless, on that occasion the economic interests of Ludovico il Moro, who at one point seemed to aim at keeping the money at his own disposal, appeared preponderant in the whole affair, thus putting the friars in a very delicate situation between two such huge personalities as Ludovico and Pope Sixtus IV, the former being probably more interested in the enormous amount of money the friars managed to collect, than in the Turkish threat itself.125 Bernardino Busti Some aspects of Busti’s biography and work may exemplify the figure of a third generation Observant Franciscan preacher, with his coherent trajectory from socially respected and well integrated family origins, to his commitment towards many aspects of urban affairs, passing through juridical and theological training, riddled by a typical humanistic-savoured desire for erudition. Ludwig Von Pastor, in his classic History of the Popes reports how Busti’s reputation led him to be invited to preach his sermons on many town squares in Northern Italy.126 123  Kathryn M. Rudy, Virtual Pilgrimages in the Convent: Imaging Jerusalem in the Later Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011); Annabel Jane Wharton, Selling Jerusalem: Relics, Replicas, Theme Parks (Chicago: Uni­ver­sity of Chicago Press, 2006), especially the chapter ‘Fabricated Jerusalem: Franciscans and Pius Mountains’, pp. 97–144. On Varallo, see Pietro Galloni, Sacro Monte di Varallo: Atti di fondazione (Varallo: Camaschella e Zanfa, 1909); Roberta Panzanelli, ‘“Hic Hierusalem videat…”’: Ipotesi per il progetto di Bernardino Caimi al Sacro Monte di Varallo’, Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa, 39 (2003), 409–40; and Villata, ‘Gaudenzio Ferrari’. 124  See Paolo Maria Sevesi, ‘Il B. Bernardino Caimi da Milano predicatore della Crociata’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 19 (1926), 297–300; and Rusconi, ‘Michele Carcano da Milano’, p. 201. 125  See Andenna, ‘Aspetti politici della presenza degli Osservanti’, pp. 361–71. 126  Ludwig von Pastor, Storia dei papi, 16 vols (Rome: Desclée, 1886–1930), vol. iii (1925), p. 127: ‘Dal Registro dei Predicatori, consultato dal Wadding e ora perito per la Rivoluzione francese in Roma, il nome del Busti figurava nella lista tutti gli anni, ovunque richiesto dalle

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It seems useful to recall briefly the major points in the preacher’s life. To begin with, there are very few certain biographical and chronological data on Busti, in strong contrast to the importance that was apparently attributed to him. Thus, we are neither sure about the name of Busti’s mother, nor even his own name: Bernardino was the name he assumed when he entered religious life, in honour of the more famous preacher Bernardino da Siena, whose example he wished to imitate.127 Despite this paucity of information it is relatively easy to reconstruct the main stages of his life. Busti was born in Milan around 1450 into a well-off, probably aristocratic family.128 His father, Lorenzo Busti, had been a judge-councillor and a member of the board of doctores of Milan for forty two years.129 Besides that, we know of a Bernardo Busti, a senator in Milan, and autorità ecclesiastiche o civili. In molte città d’Italia, quando si voleva ascoltare un predicatore rinomato e pieno di zelo apostolico, o per il tempo di Quaresima o per l’Avvento, veniva inviata una commissione speciale al Padre Generale dei Francescani, perché destinasse loro Bernardino de Busti.’ 127  Bernardino Busti, Mariale (Nürnberg : Anton Koberger, 1503), Part iii, Sermon 5, fol. [K3]vb: ‘Cuius gloriosi Patris vestigia sequi desiderans, sicut et nominis eius appellationem recepi, unde ad ipsum orationem quandam in exordio mee conversionis feci, dixi: Bernardine, tuum sumpsi sanctissime nomen. Fac mea sit gestis consona vita tuis; possum non immerito timere si scrutari velim nominis virginei dignitatem, ne ipsa Virgo mihi dicat verba thematis nostri.’ Busti’s closeness to the Bernardinian model and his role among the Renaissance disciples of the Sienese are already highlighted in Anscar Zawart, The History of Franciscan Preaching and of Franciscan Preachers (1209–1927): A Bio-Bibliographical Study (New York: Wagner, 1928), p. 318. On the Mariale, see Bernardino de Bustis e il Mariale ed. by Lia De Pra Cavalleri (Busto Arsizio: Comune di Busto Arsizio and Convento dei Frati Minori, 1982). 128  All sources report that Busti was born in Milan, yet as has been noted, the possibility cannot be excluded that his family was native to Busto (nowadays Busto Arsizio, Lombardy), as the etymological root of his surname seems to suggest. It is, in any case, rather difficult to trace definitively because the parish registers of the Milanese diocese are posterior to 18 July 1564 and the oldest one in the parish of Bellano only goes back to the year 1533, when Busti was already dead for twenty years. See Ambrogio Palestro, ‘Il recente riordinamento degli archivi parrocchiali della diocesi di Milano’, Archiva Ecclesiae, 18–21 (1978), 127–40. On Busti, see Antonio Alecci, ‘Busti (de’ Busti, de Bustis, de’ Bustis, da Busto), Bernardino’, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. xv (1972), pp. 593–95; Wadding, Annales minorum, vol. xv, no.  227, pp.  261–62; Supplementum et castigatio ad scriptores trium ordinum S.  Francisci a Waddingo aliisve descriptos, ed. by Giovanni Giacinto Sbaraglia, 3 vols (Rome: Attilio Nardecchia, 1908–36), vol. i, pp. 133–34; Nicholas Glassberger, ‘Chronica Ordinis Minorum Observantium’, Analecta franciscana, 2 (1887) 396–97; and Enrico Sedulio, Historia Seraphica (Antwerp: Heinrich Aertsl, 1613), p. 115. 129  Busti, Mariale, Part i, Sermon 19, fol. [D8]rb: ‘Unde, cum essem quodam die cum peri­ tissimo in utroque iure Laurentio de Bustis quondam patre meo, qui fuit de colle­g io doctorum Mediolani annis XLII [...].’ See also Filippo Argelati, Bibliotheca scriptorum Medio­lanensium, 2

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of another Bernardino, belonging to the Order of the Knights of Jerusalem, who were his relatives. What is more, it is known that since the twelfth century the Busti were given significant political responsibilities in the territory of Milan: in 1198 when Milan was split between the factions of nobili and popolo, the Busti were chosen as captains of the former. After having finished his early studies in his hometown, Busti moved to Pavia to study law.130 Finally, between 1475 and 1476, in the friary of St Angelo in Legnano, he was given the habit of the Observant Franciscan by the Vicar Provincial of the Order, Michele Carcano, to whom he owed much of his own work and whom he considered his role model.131 Carcano seems to have been particularly skilled in striking the right note to establish rapport with common people.132 It seems that Busti spent considerable time in the city where he was ordained, widening his theological knowledge and restoring the old library of the friary.133 Between 1482 and 1483 the preacher resided in Milan, becoming well known for his preaching and missionary spirit, and in 1488 he was the guardian of the friary of St Angelo. In addition, Busti is remembered as a propagator of the Third Order of St Francis, which at St Angelo’s in Milan had an important centre of diffusion especially due to the work of Michele Carcano, also a tireless defender of Montes Pietatis, as well as a decisive defender of devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus, to Mary, and to St Joseph. Not much more is known about him, except for the fact that while preaching in Modena in 1498 he was called to Reggio Emilia by vols in 4 parts (Milan: Società Palatina, 1745), vol. ii, part 2, p. 245; and Pio Bondioli, Storia di Busto Arsizio: dall’origine al 1470 (Busto Arsizio: La Tipografia Varesina, 1937), p. 37. 130  Busti, Mariale, Part i, Sermon 9, fol. Eiira: ‘Tempore quo ego legali studio operam dabam in civitate Papiensi.’ 131  Firmamentum Trium Ordinum (Paris: 1512), part  3, p.  39. The actual year of his admittance to the Franciscan Order has been questioned, since Galeazzo Maria Sforza, duke of Milan, irritated by the outcome of Carcano’s preaching activity, exiled him from the territory of Milan between the beginning of 1475 and 1478. Only after Galeazzo’s assassination could Carcano again enter Milanese territory. In the light of this, it seems possible that Bernardino was admitted into the Order no later than 1474. See Bernardino de Bustis e il Mariale, p. 9, notes 7 and 11. On Carcano as Vicar Provincial, see Calufetti, ‘I Vicari provinciali dei Frati Minori’. 132  See Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Part ii, Sermon 27. 133  Wadding, Annales minorum, vol. xiii, no. 441, p. 508: ‘Legnanum inter Mediolanum et Varisium situm est, populo frequens et agrum fertilissimum. Non longe distat Observantum Coenobium sub invocatione sancti Angeli […] in media quercea et amoenissima silva. […] Hic suscepit habitum Bernardinus a Busto, auxitque Bibliothecam, quae magna Fratrum incuria ex bene instructa ad nihilum ferme redacta est.’ On St Angelo’s in Legnano, see Paolo Maria Sevesi, ‘Il convento di S. Angelo di Legnano’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 1 (1928), 104–26.

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the College of the Elders in a letter dated 4 April to preach for the local Mons Pietatis.134 In 1513 he preached in Ravenna for the building of the convent of the Poor Clares dedicated to St Apollinare. He died between 1513 and 1515, and was buried in the friary of Santa Maria della Misericordia in Melegnano (Lombardy), soon acquiring a fame for sanctity within his order, and also at a local level in Busto Arsizio, where it endured until the seventeenth century.135 Busti has been described as a prolific author. It was actually in the collection and compilation of elements taken from various sources and traditions — as I shall show below — that one of the main features of the production of these late fifteenth-century friars can be recognized.136 Bernardino Busti’s literary work and his involvement in the major disputes of his time can exemplify the vast range of interests that was common to friars in his age, as well as give us an idea of his own personality. Some details will help us to catch both aspects. As a friar and then in the late 1480s as guardian of St Angelo’s, Busti attended to the compilation of his texts relying — sometimes literally — on intellectual traditions that were already fostered by the other preachers active in the same friary. After all, the use of ‘authorial precedents’ was a rather common practice in medieval literary elaboration and, as has been demonstrated, one that had a specific meaning for the work of the preacher.137 134  ‘Questo nostro Monte de pietade haueria bisogno de sussidio spirituale per poter anche conseguire il temporale; et hauendo noi per esplorato et prospecto de quanto adiutorio alias gli sia stata la paternità vostra cum le sue fervide prediche, pregamo di venire di nuovo a Reggio a predicare’ (‘Our Mons Pietatis would need spiritual sustenance, in order to obtain the sustenance of the world; and since we have understood and pondered how much help you managed to give to it by means of your fervent sermons, we ask you to come to preach again in Reggio’). Quote in Andrea Balletti, Il santo monte della Pietà di Reggio nell’Emilia: Ricerche storiche (Reggio nell’Emilia: Anonima Poligrafica Emiliana, 1930), p. 76. 135  See Burocco, Chronologia Seraphica, p. 176, no. 6. On the charisma of the preachers and their fama sanctitatis, see Ottó Sándor Gecser, ‘Preaching and Publicness: St John of Capestrano and the Making of His Charisma North of the Alps’, in Charisma and Religious Authority, ed. by Katherine L. Jansen and Miri Rubin (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 145–59 (pp. 149–52). 136  See Rusconi, ‘La predicazione francescana sulla penitenza’, p. 71 ff. In the prologus to his Summa Antonino da Firenze indicated the same process by speaking of ‘recollectionem facere’. Cf. Peter Francis Howard, Beyond the Written Word: Preaching and Theology in the Florence of Archbishop Antoninus 1427–1459 (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1995), p. 51. 137  See Howard, Beyond the Written Word, p. 43 ff; Alastair Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship (London: Scholar Press, 1984); and Bernard Guenée, Histoire et culture historique dans l’Occident medieval (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1980; repr. 1991), p. 129 ff.

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Thus, Busti followed the long-lasting Franciscan Observant approach to Marian theology, and within this the defence and spread of the Immaculate Conception, first and foremost by adhering to Michele Carcano’s thought, and through him to the thought of Bernardino da Siena. In particular, Busti supported the idea of Mary as a supreme mediator, according to which she acquired a sort of authority as a communicator of grace at the time when she had conceived Christ, being associated with the mission of Christ himself. Busti deals with these issues in the Mariale, a collection of sixty-three treatises in form of sermons — a number purposely chosen with the inspiration of Mary’s age in mind138 — the first part published in Milan by Ulrich Scinzenzeler in 1492, and the whole work in the following year. As Busti explains in this collection of sermons, by means of numerous and colourful exempla, the Immaculate Conception was among those issues particularly debated by friars in the fifteenth century, with the Observant Franciscans opposing those who denied it. Busti himself tells us how numerous ‘servants of God’ would willingly enter the fire in order to prove the Immaculate Conception. In an interesting autobiographical note, he also tells us that friars who were under his responsibility in Milan asked his permission to take part in an ordeal by fire along with opponents of the Immaculate Conception in order to demonstrate their point. Busti, however, did not want to allow the friars to undertake such a trial, although he recognized that the canonical prohibition against such practices would not constitute an obstacle for the friars ‘because those who are led by the spirit of God are not subject to the law’. 139 Busti supported the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary in the 138 

Busti, Mariale, Part ii, Sermon 5, fol.  Hiiva: ‘Quia enim deliberavi in numero predi­ cationum huius operis non preterire numerum annorum quibus vixit beata Virgo in hac vita mortali, scilicet lxiii.’ 139  Busti, Mariale, Part i, Sermon 9, fol. [D8]rb: ‘Pro hac vera opinione defendenda multi servi Dei ignem intrarent. Nam hoc anno dum quidam in hac urbe Mediolani impugnarent eam multi ex fratribus mee curie subiectis me instanter rogaverunt ut pro defendenda Beate Virginis innocentia eos in ignem cum predictis conceptionis adversariis intrare permitterem. Ego vero licet prefatis servis Dei non obstaret prohibitio canonica talium experimentorum de qua tractatur in c(apitulo) Consuluisti ii Q. iiii et per Thomam Secunda Secunde Q. xcv ar. viii, quia qui spiritu Dei aguntur non sunt sub lege, […] tamen, sciens quod beata Virgo Maria suam innocentiam et puritatem aliter defensaret cum adversariorum suorum confusione, item credens quod ipsi impugnatores immaculate conceptionis non acceptarent talem propositionem de intrando in ignem pro sua impugnatione affirmanda et quod si intrarent subito comburentur, imo quod forte ignis non expectaret eos intrantes sed preveniret, nolui aquiescere predictis fratribus meis. Sed consolatus sum eos dicens quod beatissima Virgo volebat suam magnificare

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face of opposition from both the Dominicans, who were decisively hostile to it, and even from the personal opinion of his father, who had agreed with the maculisti, the deniers of the Immaculate Conception.140 The Rosarium sermonum, a compendium of eighty Lenten sermons, was published in Venice in 1498 and it is the work of Busti that plays a central role in this book since it contains the model scheme for classifying superstition that I will be investigating later. For this reason I shall return to the Rosarium and describe it more thoroughly in the next chapter. In addition, Bernardino da Feltre encouraged Busti to write a Defensorium Montis Pietatis contra pigmenta omnia aemulae falsitatis, which was published in Milan in 1497 as a plea for the cause of the Montes Pietatis.141 Usury or money-lending at high interest rates was widespread in many Italian towns of the time, and the proposal of the Montes was intended to give an answer to the increasing need for money on more favourable conditions. Also, the text shows how the moral call against usury could join with the anti-Jewish attitude, since, as Busti indicates, the advantage of having a Mons was to obtain at the same time the removal of Jews and other money lenders.142 In this text, Busti defends the lawfulness of loans conceptionem talibus experimentis.’ Cf. Decretum Gratiani, II, C. 2, q. 5, c. 20 Consuluisti; Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, IIa, IIae Q. 95, a. 8: Utrum divinatio sortium sit illicita. 140  See Rosa Maria Dessì, ‘La controversia sull’Immacolata Concezione e la “propaganda” per il culto in Italia nel xv secolo’, Cristianesimo nella storia: Ricerche storiche, esegetiche, teologiche, 12 (1991), 265–93; Daniele Solvi, ‘Il culto dei santi nella proposta socio-religiosa dell’Osservanza’, in I Frati osservanti e la società in Italia nel sec. xv. XL Convegno internazionale di studi francescani, Assisi-Perugia, 11–13 ottobre 2012 (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2013), pp. 137–67 (pp. 157–61). See also Donna Spivey Ellington, From Sacred Body to Angelic Soul: Understanding Mary in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Washington, DC: Catholic Uni­ver­sity of America Press, 2001). 141  Busti, Defensorium, fol. 17v (Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, inc. 1320 bis): ‘Incipit Defen­sorium sacratissimi Montis pietatis […]: compositum fuit ad complacentiam beati patris fratris Bernardini feltrini eiusdem ordinis, qui sepius ipsum fratrem Bernardinum hortatus est ut aliquid in scriptis redigeret de iustificatione ac utilitate ipsius saluberrimi Montis, dicens ei: “Ego libenter video scripta vestra”.’ 142  Busti, Defensorium, Pars quarta, que dicitur probabilitatis, fol. 106v: ‘Pro nunc autem solum dico quod utile est communitati et populo habere Montem et eicere Iudeos fenerantes et omnes publicos usurarios, et non eis favere et privilegia illis facere. Qui nam sapiens princeps faceret statutum quod latrones vadant quo volunt?’ Studies touching on the theme of usury, the spread of the Montes, and its mixing with the Jewish issue include: Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, ‘Un’idea a lungo nuova: il credito ai poveri meno poveri e la creazione dei Monti di Pietà’, in I Frati osservanti e la società in Italia nel sec. xv. XL Convegno internazionale di studi francescani, Assisi-Perugia, 11–13 ottobre 2012 (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi

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conceded to the lenders on payment of minimum interest rates, following those — from Bernardino da Siena, to Bernardino da Feltre — who believed that a low interest rate was needed for the financial survival of the Montes, as opposed to the view expressed by Franciscans such as especially Marco da Montegallo, who on the basis of the Spiritual Peter John Olivi (d. 1298), represented a late Franciscan attempt to defend money lending without interest. Carcano, too, opposed the charging of interest on money lending.143 In contrast to this view, the Dominicans and the Augustinians especially considered lending even at low interest rates as a form of usury.144 The stark confrontation between the representatives of different religious orders backing different views can be caught in the fact that Busti’s Defensorium was written as a direct reply to the De Monte Impietatis, composed in 1496 by the Augustinian Niccolò Bariani as an attack against the Montes. The whole dispute concerning the interest rates in money lending only ceased in 1515 after the constitution Inter multiplices was issued by Pope Leo X at the Fifth Lateran Council.145 The Pope acknowledged sull’Alto Medioevo, 2013), pp. 341–57; Giacomo Todeschini, I mercanti e il tempio: La società cristiana e il circolo virtuoso della ricchezza fra medioevo ed età moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2002); Muzzarelli, Il denaro e la salvezza; Todeschini, La ricchezza degli ebrei: Merci e denaro nella riflessione ebraica e nella definizione cristiana dell’usura alla fine del Medioevo (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1989); Giacomo Todeschini, ‘Teorie economiche francescane e presenza ebraica in Italia (1380–1462 c.)’, in Il rinnovamento del francescanesimo: l’Osservanza: Atti del Convegno della Società Internazionale di Studi Francescani e del Centro Interuniversitario di Studi Francescani, Assisi, 20–22 ottobre 1983 (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi Sull’Alto Medioevo, 1985), pp. 193–227; Vittorino Meneghin, I Monti di Pietà in Italia dal 1462 al 1562 (Venice: L.I.E.F. Edizioni, 1986); Muzzarelli, ‘Un bilancio storiografico sui Monti di Pietà (1956–1976)’, Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia, 32 (1978), 153–80; and Leon Poliakov, Jewish Bankers and the Holy See: From the Thirteenth to the Seventeenth Century (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977). 143  Michele Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales de decem preceptis (Venice: Giovanni e Gregorio De Gregori, 1492), Sermon 57. See also Dessì, ‘Usura, caritas e Monti di pietà’, pp. 192–93; and Sensi, ‘Movimenti di osservanza e ricerca della solitudine’, p. 132. Carcano’s core sermons on usury are those from feria tertia to feria sexta after Passion Sunday (Sermon 57 De quiditate et entitate usure; Sermon 58 De reprobatione et criminatione usure; Sermon 59 De usurarum defensione, multiplicatione, satisfactione; and Sermon 60 De abominatione et detestatione usurarum). 144  See Muzzarelli, Pescatori di uomini, p. 231; Andenna, ‘Aspetti politici della presenza degli Osservanti’, pp. 336–37. 145  For Leo X’s bull, see Bullarum diplomatum et privilegiorum sanctorum Romanorum pontificum Taurinensis editio, 24 vols (Turin: Franco and Enrico Dalmazzo, 1857–88), vol. v (1860), pp.  621–23. See Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, ‘Il Gaetano ed il Bariani: per una revisione della tematica sui Monti di Pietà’, Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa, 16 (1980),

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the application of a minimal interest, justifying it by the need to cover operating costs thus backing de facto the point of view of the Franciscans. Those three texts are Busti’s major ones; the preacher also left a series of short devotional treatises and officii or booklets for the liturgy of the Hours and the Mass.146 Busti deals with the Jewish issue in Sermon 14 of Rosarium sermonum for the Friday after the first Sunday of Lent titled De reprobatione secte pagani, Machometi et Iudei, and more specifically in his Consilium contra Iudeos, which follows Sermon 14.147 Already the Sermon De reprobatione shows how Busti aligned the Jews with other groups (secte) considered major threats for Christians. In this, Busti seems to be aware of the Spanish tradition of doctrinal controversies. The Fortalitium Fidei by the Castilian Franciscan Alfonso de Spina, completed about 1460, was simply subtitled Contra Iudeos, Saracenos et alios Christiane fidei inimicos. It focuses on Jews — whose expulsion from Spain is demanded — and Muslims in the third and fourth parts of the book.148 As to the Consilium contra Iudeos, one must remember that it belongs to a specific literary genre employed to deal with particular issues of juridical or medical nature.149 Thus, for instance, Carcano was involved in the drafting of a consilium for the foundation of the Mons Pietatis in Perugia in 1462, although this is not part of a sermon collection.150 Its use by Busti, for an audience of 3–19; John Thomas Noonan, ‘Prestito professionale e istituzionale’, in L’etica economica medievale, ed. by Ovidio Capitani (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1974), pp. 189–208; and Muzzarelli, Il denaro e la salvezza, pp. 155–64. 146  Officium et Missa gloriosissimi Nominis Iesu, Officium et Missa Immaculatae Conceptionis Beatae Mariae Virginis, Officium et Missa de gaudiis Beatae Mariae Virginis, Officium et Missa Sanctae Crucis et Passione Domini, Officium de planctu Beatae Mariae Virginis. Wadding, Annales minorum, vol. xv, no. 227, p. 262. See Costanzo Cargnoni, ‘Frati minori osservanti e letteratura spirituale nel ‘400 e primo ‘500 fra pietà e devozione’, in Il beato Antonio da Stroncone: Atti delle giornate di studio. Stroncone, 4 maggio 1996 e 29 novembre 1997, ed. by Mario Sensi (Assisi: Edizioni Porziuncola, 1999), pp. 161–97 (pp. 182–83). 147  Busti, Consilium contra Iudeos, in Rosarium sermonum (Lyon: Jean Clein, 1506), fol. 102rb: ‘Post reprobationem secte iudaice non inconveniens erit subnectere consilium quod alias feci contra Iudeos.’ 148  See Yitzhak Baer, A History of the Jews in Christian Spain, 2 vols (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1966), vol. ii, pp. 283–99. See also Pierre MichaudQuantin, ‘La conscience individuelle et ses droits chez les moralistes de la fin du Moyen-Age’, in Universalismus und partikularismus im Mittelalter, ed. by Wilpert Von Paul (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1968), pp. 42–55. 149  Hobbins, Authorship and Publicity Before Print, p. 145. 150  It is the Consilium almi collegii doctorem utriusque iuris inclite civitatis Perusii, facti

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preachers, is noteworthy, and makes clear the type of juridical training he had had, as well as more generally, pointing to one area of preachers’ activity. Busti’s Consilium was composed on the occasion of an anti-Jewish trial that took place in Milan in 1488.151 That trial represented a crucial moment for the Jews living in Milanese territory, since it appears to have put an end to the generally respectful treatment they had been enjoying since the time of Filippo Maria Visconti and Francesco Sforza. In 1456 Duke Francesco had confirmed all the privileges that Jews had so far enjoyed for a further ten years.152 The events that ended in the trial of 1488 are reported by Busti himself at the beginning of the Consilium, thus attesting to his participation in the judgement itself. The case was apparently triggered by the complaint of a Jew newly converted to Christianity against thirty-eight Jews. According to the accusations, the Jews produced a series of blasphemies that were found in their books and pronounced during their religious assemblies (‘in synagogis suis’). Such improper formulas were said to target the name of Jesus and his Mother, the Trinity, and the Christians who, it was said, they were cursing in secret.153 It has been pointed out how ‘in an economy of violence’ the judicial apparatus could be often used as an instrument to attack an enemy, especially in case of minorities.154 This might well have been the case in Milan of a recently converted Jew, who finding himself in a sort of liminal status, might try to accelerate his full acceptance within the Christian community by pointing to supposed common enemies. The sentence was issued on 30 May 1488. Nine Jews were sentenced super Montem pietatis contra voraginem usurarum perfidorum ebreorum, which is transcribed in the ‘Codex Aldini’ 62 held at the Uni­ver­sity Library of Pavia, fol. 285r ff. See Paolo Maria Sevesi, I Sermones ed i casus conscientie del Beato Michele Carcano nel Codice Aldini 62 della R. Biblioteca dell’Università di Pavia (Florence: Vallecchi, 1931), p. 11 ff. 151  On the trial, see Hubert Elie, ‘Contribution à l’étude du statut des juifs en Italie au xv et xvi siècles: l’opinion de Bernardin de Bust’, Revue de l’Histoire des Religions (1952), 67–96; Anna Antoniazzi Villa, ‘Per la storia degli ebrei nel dominio sforzesco: un episodio di antisemitismo nel 1488’, Rassegna Mensile di Israel, 46 (1980), 323–39; Anna Antoniazzi Villa, Un processo contro gli ebrei nella Milano del 1488: Crescita e declino di una Comunità ebraica lombarda alla fine del Medioevo (Bologna: Cappelli, 1986); and Anna Antoniazzi Villa, ‘Appunti sulla polemica antiebraica nel ducato sforzesco’, Studi di storia medioevale e di Diplomatica, 7 (1983), 119–24. 152  See Anna Antoniazzi Villa, Gli ebrei nel Milanese dal medioevo all’espulsione (Milan: Sellino, 1993). 153  Busti, Consilium contra Iudeos, fol. 102ra. 154  See David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton Uni­ver­sity Press, 1996), p. 34.

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to death and the others condemned to exile. The personal belongings of all the condemned were confiscated. Yet, just a few days later, the death sentence and the confiscation of personal property were commuted into a fine of 19,000 ducats, while the expulsion was carried out by Ludovico il Moro only after 1492. Busti is concerned about the presence of Jews since they seemed to him extraneous and separate from the social context in which they live and therefore appear the possible cause of perturbation in civic life. In the Defensorium even before becoming money lenders, Busti considered Jews a vehicle of destabilization and a source of danger; for this reason expelling or imprisoning them would provide cities with an increased sense of security.155 Despite the accusations, however, Busti seems to adopt a somewhat moderated stance towards the Jews. The preacher, in fact, eventually approved only the expulsion and the confiscation of the property of the Jews, according to Vincent of Beauvais’s Speculum historiale, which pointed to similar penances applied in other regions of Europe such as Savoy, England, and France. Busti did not accept execution as desired by the doctores approving the document.156 A certain level of openness and respect is thus testified with regard to an important minority of the duchy. In defence of the Jews the Milanese preacher writes that they should not be harassed or distressed.157 He even goes on to explain that they should not be disturbed during their religious feasts, since that would not constitute proper Christian behaviour, nor should they be prosecuted except by just trial, nor prevented from restoring their old religious buildings. Ultimately, for Busti, they should not be killed, since they can still convert at the end of time. Both negative and positive stereotypes are thus deliberately adopted by the preacher, who adapts his views to the contingent situation and places the Jewish issue within his overall programme of reform of Christian society.158 On the whole, although in moderation, Busti seems to follow a traditional anti-Jewish approach based on rather common literary stereotypes: the Jew is a 155 

Busti, Defensorium, Pars quarta, que dicitur probabilitatis, fols 105v–107v. Busti, Consilium contra Iudeos, fol. 107va–vb: ‘Ego frater Bernardinus de Bustis Ordinis Minorum et in fidem premissorum manu propria me subscripsi: nullatenus tamen consentiens in aliquam penam corporalem dictis iudeis inferendam.’ 157  Busti, Consilium contra Iudeos, fol. 102va: ‘Ad defensionem igitur Iudeorum adduci potest quod secundum leges iudei non sunt gravandi vel exagerandi seu molestandi.’ 158  Hans-Martin Kirn. ‘Antijudaismus und spätmittelalterliche Bussfrömmigkeit: Die Pre­dig­ten des Franziskaners Bernhardin von Busti (um 1450–1513)’, Zeitschrift für Kirchen­ geschichte, 108. 2 (1997), 147–75; Miri Rubin, Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medi­eval Jews (New Heaven: Yale Uni­ver­sity Press 1999), p. 7. 156 

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possible source of evil like other ‘minorities’ such as Muslims, lepers, and witches.159 He might indeed have learned a lot from his master Michele Carcano, who had preached against the Jews in numerous occasions, sometimes with harsh results, as in Perugia in 1462 where after his preaching, the local Mons was established and the magistrates cancelled the rights of the Jews, or earlier in Florence in 1458, where his preaching — seriously disapproving the conduct of civic authorities as well as that of friars who connived with the Jews — caused antiJewish disturbances and eventually the preacher’s dismissal from the town.160 While Carcano was in Venetian territory, he became close to Johannes Hinderbach, the anti-Jewish bishop of Trent, thus getting involved in the affair of Simonino of Trent, the child whose murder was attributed to the Jews in 1475. To that case Hinderbach owed most of his fame. The bishop fought strenuously against the plan of Pope Sixtus IV to launch an investigation on the facts at Trent — which had culminated in the capital punishment of the supposedly guilty Jews — and also encouraged the beatification of Simonino. Carcano participated actively and preached to foster the cult of the murdered child.161 In fact, a letter of the doge of Venice Andrea Vendramin laments that Carcano had preached in Brescia in 1476 recalling the murder of Simonino, and urges the magistrate of the city to restrain him from attacking the Jews.162 The case of Simonino was seen as one of those ‘ritual murders’ of Christians — children in particular — through which, according to anti-Jewish propaganda, the Jews used to collect blood to be used in their rites for Passover. Simonino was not the only one. Among those who were considered to have been murdered by the Jews for ritual purposes were Andrea Oxner in 1463, Lorenzino Sossio in 1485, and many others, especially in the German lands.163 159 

Cf. Anna Antoniazzi Villa, ‘A proposito di ebrei, francescani, Monti di Pietà: Bernardino de Bustis e la polemica antiebraica nella Milano di fine ‘400’, in Antoniazzi Villa, Il Francescanesimo in Lombardia (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 1983), pp. 49–52. 160  On Perugia, see Scalvanti, ‘Cronaca perugina inedita’, p. 38; see also Dessì, ‘Usura, caritas e Monti di pietà’, pp. 195–200. 161  In 1476 Carcano wrote to the Bishop of Trent: ‘In B. Simonis defensando negotium et causam, Deus scit quam fideliter egi et amplius in posterum agam’. The exchange of letters between Carcano and Hinderbach is edited by Paolo Maria Sevesi, ‘Beato Michele Carcano O.F.M. OBS (1427–1484): Documenti inediti’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 33 (1940), 385–404 (p. 386). 162  See Andenna, ‘Aspetti politici della presenza degli Osservanti’, p. 337 ff. 163  See Ariel Toaff, Pasque di sangue: Ebrei d’Europa e omicidi rituali (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2007), especially pp. 60 ff and 77 ff. For a reconstruction of Simonino’s case and the

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On a more general basis, we have to note that exactly the implications of Carcano’s preaching concerning the Jews led him more than once to a stark confrontation with Galeazzo Maria Sforza, the son of Francesco and Bianca Maria; he was also regarded as not always totally loyal to the Sforza. The socalled crisis of the ‘Capriolanti’ may exemplify the case. The Capriolanti were the followers of Pietro da Capriolo, an Observant Franciscan from Brescia, who in 1471 broke the unity of the movement. Pietro basically aimed to constitute an autonomous religious province gathering together friaries from cities such as Brescia, Bergamo, and Crema, which were by that time under the authority of Venice. The dispute eventually resulted in the effective creation of the autonomous Franciscan Province of Brescia. Carcano’s active role in letting Pietro achieve such a result during the General Chapter of the Observance in Naples, in 1475, earned him the anger of the Duke, who expelled him from Milan.164 It seems that Carcano had a better relationship with Galeazzo’s wife, Duchess Bona of Savoy, who was particularly devoted to the friars of St Angelo’s, taking her personal confessor from

consequent Jewish persecution, see Tommaso Caliò, ‘Simonino da Trento’, in Dizionario Storico dell’Inquisizione, ed. by Adriano Prosperi and others, vol. ii (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2010), pp. 1433–34 (with bibliography); Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia, Trent 1475: Stories of a Ritual Murder Trial (New Haven: Yale Uni­ver­sity Press, 1992); Willehad Paul Eckert, ‘Il beato Simonino negli Atti del processo di Trento contro gli Ebrei’, Studi Trentini di Scienze Storiche 44 (1968), pp. 193–221; Willehad Paul Eckert, ‘Aus den Akten des Trienter Judenprozesses’, in Judentum im Mittelalter. Beiträge zum christlichjüdischen Gespräch, ed. by P. Wilpert (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1966), pp. 238–336. Among the other traditional accusations against the Jews, particularly disturbing was that of desecrating the host, the most representative element of Christian community and identity. See Rubin, Gentile Tales. 164  The Capriolanti affair was not the only disturbance to the Franciscan Order — the Observant movement especially — in Milan in the same period. The Franciscan Amedeo da Silva y Menezes (d. 1482) established himself in Lombardy, taking up a friary in 1464 — seemingly through the intercession of Duchess Bianca Maria — and started his own movement of reform, called the ‘Amadeiti’. In the following years the movement grew under the protection of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, eventually establishing a Province in Rome. The movement was finally incorporated into the Observance in 1568. On the Capriolanti, see Burocco, Descrittione Chronologica, pp. 434–35; Burocco, Chronologia Seraphica, pp. 470–80; Paolo Maria Sevesi, ‘La congregazione dei Capriolati e le origini della provincia dei frati minori della regolare osservanza di Brescia’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 7 (1914), pp. 108–21; Andenna, ‘Aspetti politici della presenza degli Osservanti’, pp. 340–44. On the Amadeiti, see Burocco, Descrittione Chronologica, pp. 427–33; Burocco, Chronologia Seraphica, pp. 465–70; Mosconi, Lombardia francescana, pp. 91–95; and Paolo Maria Sevesi, ‘“B. Amedeo Menez de Sylva dei Frati Minori” fondatore degli Amadeiti’, Luce e Amore, 8 (1911), 5–69.

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there. She certainly played a role in Carcano’s readmission to Milanese soil after Galeazzo’s death, in 1478.165 Carcano’s vicissitudes, although representing a rather special case, can exemplify the turn that the relationships between the friars and the political powers could take in some cases. The Milanese preachers were certainly aware of the need to find a balance between different factors, such as the urban political authorities, the pope, and the inner issues of the Order.166 The relationship of the friars with the leaders of the towns is a complex and multifaceted one. Notwithstanding the historiographical issue of deciding whether it was the preacher following the dictates of the political rulers or the other way round, it seems that one should speak of a dialectical relationship between the two parties. Although the political authorities kept the right to check, and if necessary disapprove or even expel a preacher, yet that seems the sign of how serious the influence of the preacher was considered to be, rather than proof of the ‘supremacy of the political dimension’, as it has been described, which put in this way seems to favour too strongly the idea of the subordination of preachers to the political.167 Political authorities needed the charisma of the preachers and their abilities to gather and talk to wide crowds of people and to endorse their interests, as much as the preachers needed protection and condescension from the political leaders. In spite of that, however, preachers did not in every case speak in conformity with the desire or convenience of the city rulers, as we have seen. In cases such as the preaching for the Montes, for instance, it seems that rulers could only try to limit preachers rather than totally control them; in other cases, the preachers were called to become partners in specific processes of urban reform promoted by others, like Michele Carcano with regard to the foundation of the new hospital of Piacenza in 1471/72.168 The preached word — or the word of the preacher — was in any case a powerful instrument and at the same time an instrument of power. It owed its nature to its solid written bases, though: the theological, moral, and pastoral tradition from which the preachers drew their 165 

See Pasquale Valugani, Il beato Michele Carcano da Milano (Milan: Bertolotti, 1950), p. 173; Andenna, ‘Aspetti politici della presenza degli Osservanti’, p. 344. 166  See Andenna, ‘Aspetti politici della presenza degli Osservanti’, p. 344 ff. 167  Letizia Pellegrini, ‘Tra la piazza e il palazzo: Predicazione e pratiche di governo nell’Italia del Quattrocento’, in I Frati osservanti e la società in Italia nel sec. xv. XL Convegno inter­nazionale di studi francescani, Assisi-Perugia, 11–13 ottobre 2012 (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2013), pp. 111–33 (p. 115). 168  See Albini, ‘L’Osservanza francescana e la pratica della carità’, pp. 242–45.

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Chapter 1

preparation, and the rhetorical techniques they could use as the basis for the development of a well organized public speech. Thus, it is important to bear in mind the role of the textual medium that gave substance to the preachers’ spread of their ideas as well as to their presence in the urban context of their age. St Angelo’s in Milan, which during the second half of the fifteenth century became a primary centre of production of preaching and confession-related literature, offers from this point of view a good subject for investigation.

Chapter 2

Bernardino Busti’s Rosarium Sermonum and its Pastoral Context

‘The Tree and the Forest’, or the Importance of Situating Sources The rich literary production of the third generation Observant Franciscan preachers and confessors during the last quarter of the fifteenth century results in the development of ‘oeuvres spécialisèes’ — as Michaud-Quantìn has called them — among which were collections of sermons, summae de casibus, and handbooks for confessors.1 As we know, the diffusion of specialized literature for pastoral use was extensive between the twelfth and the sixteenth centuries. The introduction of printing with movable type greatly facilitated this process. Observant Franciscan friars become mass users of this technology in the period called the ‘incunabula era’, the last two decades of the fifteenth century. In that period, pastoral texts constituted the largest part of total book production, the Franciscans and Dominicans accounting for more than fifty per cent of it.2 The friary of St Angelo represents a privileged locus of exploration from this point of view. In most cases texts produced in that friary enjoyed a large number of reprints through the following decades, and played a role in the development of a particular pastoral approach covering multiple, intertwined, lines of interventions. 1 

Michaud-Quantin, Sommes de casuistique et manuels de confession, p. 11; Bert Roest, Franciscan Literature of Religious Instruction Before the Council of Trent (Leiden: Brill, 2004), p. 66 ff. 2  Cf. Miriam Turrini, La coscienza e le leggi: Morale e diritto nei testi per la confessione della prima età moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1991) p. 69 ff.

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In this context, Busti’s collection of sermons entitled Rosarium sermonum plays a central role. In general terms, it represents well an entire genre of texts, whilst being considered — as I shall show — a particularly successful tool for the use of preachers. The Rosarium seems to be particularly related to two texts composed by Busti’s confreres. They are the Sermonarium de decem preceptis per quadragesimam (or Sermones quadragesimales de decem preceptis) by Michele Carcano, a collection of Lenten sermons printed for the first time in Venice in 1492, and the Interrogatorium sive confessionale by Bartolomeo Caimi, a handbook for confessors printed in Milan in 1474.3 I shall deal with these texts more thoroughly later. Against this background, the development of a model for classifying superstitious behaviours makes its appearance, constituting the clear example of a tradition pertaining specifically to St Angelo’s. To get a closer view, however, we still need to improve our acquaintance with some features and issues related to our sources. The point is to avoid looking only at the ‘tree’ and losing touch with the ‘forest’, to use the metaphor employed by Carlo Ginzburg and Adriano Prosperi when they analysed the anonymous sixteenth century Trattato utilissimo del beneficio di Gesù Cristo crocifisso, where the tree is the text at the focus of attention, and the wood the surrounding background of texts of the same nature.4 In other words, the purpose is to give consideration to core source(s) without neglecting their foundational literary context. Our attention is thus directed to three main pastoral texts, whose aim was to enhance the efforts of friars in spreading their messages. 3 

The incipit of the Confessionale specifies: ‘Compositum in loco Sancte Marie de Angelis apud Mediolanum’. Three manuscripts survive, all from the fifteenth century: Y 11 sup. and + 37 sup., both in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, and Vat. Lat. 11020 in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana: Paul Oscar Kristeller, Iter Italicum. Accedunt alia itinera, 6 vols (Leiden: Brill, 1999), vol. vi, pp. 49a, 50b, 348b. According to the Catalogue compiled by Augusto Balsamo in 1910, another manuscript was held at the Biblioteca Comunale in Piacenza; and a codex dated 1471 that might be an autograph is mentioned by Luigi Pellegrini, ‘Un liber miraculorum su San Giacomo della Marca in un codice statunitense’, in Gemma Lucens. Giacomo della Marca tra devozione e santità, ed. by Fulvia Serpico (Florence: SISMEL, 2013), p. 185. On Caimi’s Confessionale see also Rusconi, ‘Manuali milanesi di confessione’, pp. 123–31; Michaud-Quantin, ‘Sommes de casuistique’, p. 76. On Carcano: Rusconi, ‘Michele Carcano da Milano e le caratteristiche della sua predicazione’. 4  Carlo Ginzburg and Adriano Prosperi, Giochi di pazienza: Un seminario sul ‘Beneficio di Cristo’ (Turin: Einaudi, 1975), p. 7. The metaphor was a fortunate one. See, for instance, Gabriella Zarri, Libri di spirito: Editoria religiosa in volgare nei secoli xv–xvii (Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 2009), pp. 8–9.

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The Rosarium sermonum was published for the first time in Venice by Giorgio Arrivabene in 1498.5 As Miriam Turrini has pointed out, to be printed in Venice meant that a book was destined to have a long publishing history.6 I shall be pointing out more than once in the course of this book that several pastoral texts of Franciscan authors were, in fact, printed in Venice, thus showing the use of common printing centres. All the following editions of the Rosarium were based on the Venetian edition. After Venice, the Rosarium was published in several other cities in and beyond Italy, showing its Europeanwide appeal and the large respect it enjoyed.7 Although the Rosarium might well have been composed even earlier when Busti’s preaching activity was at its height, the claims that two copies were printed, one in 1490 (supposedly held in the library of the Carthusian monastery of Trisulti) and the other in Strasbourg in 1496, proved to be wrong in the former case, and unverifiable in the latter.8 I could actually ascertain that the copy of the Rosarium (of which only the second volume survives) held in the library of Trisulti was printed in Venice, not, however, in 1490, but in 1498, by Giorgio Arrivabene, although on the spine of its cover the date 1493 is impressed. This might be possibly due to the reuse of a previous cover. In addition, in the library of the Gymnasium Carolinum at Osnabrück, a rare pocketbook-format manuscript from the late fifteenth century is held (MS 22), which on fol. 143v contains thirteen lines out of Sermon 27 of the Rosarium. This sort of handbook, collecting excerpts of various sermons, was intended to serve the ministers of the friary in Iburg as

5  The complete title reads: Rosarium sermonum predicabilium ad faciliorem predicantium commoditatem noviter compilatum, in quo quicquid preclarum et utile in cunctis sermonariis usque in hodiernum editis continetur. I relied on the copy, held in the Biblioteca Angelica in Rome as Inc. 644, printed in Venice by Giorgio Arrivabene in 1498, unless otherwise specified. 6  Turrini, La coscienza e le leggi, p. 76. 7  The Rosarium was reprinted in Lyon 1498, Hagenau 1500, Lyon 1502 and 1503, Lyon 1506 (first part) and 1507 (second part), Lyon 1513, Lyon 1525, Brescia 1588, Köln 1607, and Lyon 1625. See Catalogo degli incunaboli della biblioteca comunale di Assisi, ed. by Giuseppe Zaccaria (Florence: Olschki, 1961), nos 119–22. 8  See Paolo Maria Sevesi, Santa Maria della Misericordia in Melegnano (Melegnano: Codeleoncini, 1932), p. 59; Renato Giancola, Il patrimonio bibliografico delle abbazie d’Italia (Rome: Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, 1974), p.  1061; and Giuseppe Galli, ‘Due ignote edizioni quattrocentine della Corona della Beatissima Vergine Maria di fra’ Bernrdino de’ Busti’, in Miscellanea bibliografica in memoria di don Tommaso Accurti, ed. by Lamberto Donati (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e letteratura, 1947), p. 104, note 3. An edition printed in Strasbourg is mentioned in Supplementum, ed. by Sbaraglia, vol. i, p. 133.

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reading on their way to the parishes.9 The practice, common among the friars, of destroying manuscripts after they had been sent to press makes it particularly difficult to find the original manuscripts of works of this type. The Rosarium sermonum groups eighty Lenten sermons in two books of forty sermons each. The sermons are nevertheless intended for the entire liturgical year (‘per totum anni circulum’) as the incipit records. The first book includes sermons ranging from the Sunday of Septuagesima (the seventy days period in preparation for Lent) to the Saturday after the fourth Sunday of Lent; and the second book, sermons from the Sunday of the Passion to the Monday after Whit Sunday. Consonant with the Lenten nature of the sermonarium, the first book (which is my focus) has an extended penitential orientation developed in cycles of sermons. Between Sermons 1 to 10, which deal with the nature of preaching and penitence, and Sermons 31 to 36, which focus on confession, there is a doctrinal cycle centred on the Ten Commandments, extending from Sermons 16 to 30. This cycle provides the friars with an outline for preaching on virtually every aspect of the life of the faithful, equipping the preachers with essential theological and canonical points of reference to address various issues, and showing through the lens of exempla the friars’ pastoral experience on the ground. The Rosarium has been considered the last example of a series of texts sharing the same features in direct connection with the teaching of Bernardino da Siena.10 Busti might even have had opportunities to study Bernardino da Siena’s texts at close range. Certainly in 1480 he was able to consult the manuscripts of the Sienese preacher in the library at ‘La Capriola’ near Siena, when with Bernardino Caimi he was on his way back from Rome, where he had presented his Officium de Conceptione Virginis to Pope Sixtus IV.11 As Roberto Rusconi has noted, with his Rosarium sermonum Busti aimed at producing a ‘polyvalent summa of preaching materials’, a learned compilation for preaching purposes, having preachers as its primary readership, and taking a great deal from other texts of the same genre — for instance relying on Carcano’s Lenten Sermonarium de penitentia (Venice, 1487) when dealing with penitence — as was customary in that period, as the tradition of the florilèges spirituels also 9 

See Udo Kühne, Bernhard Tönnies, Anette Haucap, eds, Handschriften in Osnabrück (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1993), pp. 113–14. 10  See Rusconi, ‘La predicazione francescana sulla penitenza’, p. 91. 11  See Busti, Mariale, Part i, Sermon 3, fol. biiiirb, and Sermon 4, fols [B7]rb–[B7]va. Cf. also Piana, ‘Il beato Bernardino Caimi da Milano’, p. 315; Rusconi, ‘La predicazione francescana sulla penitenza’, pp. 72–74.

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shows.12 Busti himself announces this way of proceeding in his ‘epistola prohemialis’ to the Rosarium, which he addresses to the powerful cardinal Bernardino López de Carvajal.13 De Carvajal was cardinal priest of the basilica of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem in Rome since 1495, supporter of the Franciscans, and considered by his peers a clever and learned man (Samuele Cassini, too, would dedicate to him one of his tracts, the Victoria triumphale contra li errori de Valdesi, printed in Cuneo in 1510; he also backed the interests of Ludovico il Moro in Milan against the French and the Pope.14 Along with other rebel cardinals, de Carvajal tried to convoke Pope Julius II to the Council of Pisa in 1511 (known as ‘Conciliabulum Pisanum’), and was even elected antipope in Milan under the name of Martin, until he abdicated and was absolved by Leo X already in 1513.15 Another suggestion that the Rosarium was produced by a process of compilation is the following: Venerandi patris fratris Samuelis de Cassinis ordinis minorum observantie ac sacre theologie lectoris peritissimi ad fratrem Bernardinum de Bustis exhortatoria epistola metro conscripta, in qua similitudinis argumento multiplicis eum rogavit ut Rosarium perficeret sermonum predicabilium de variis libris flosculos excerpendo.16

12 

Carcano’s De penitentia derived largely, in turn, from Bernardino da Siena’s Quad­ra­ gesimale de christiana religione. See Rusconi, ‘Michele Carcano da Milano e le caratteristiche della sua predicazione’, p. 198 ff. See also Rusconi, ‘Carcano, Michele’, p. 743. On the florilèges cf. Rusconi, ‘La predicazione francescana sulla penitenza’, pp.  72 and 78 note  50; María Elisa Lage Cotos, ‘Auctoritates clasicas para la salvacion humana. El Rosarium Sermonum de Bernardino de Bustis’, Euphrosyne, 27 (1999), 165–77 (p. 166); and Michaud-Quantin, ‘Sommes de casuistique’, p. 76. 13  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, fol. [1] v: ‘Reverendissimo in Christo patri ac domino d. Bernardino sacrosancte Romane ecclesie tituli sancte crucis in Hierusalem presbytero cardinali dignis­simo. Frater Bernardinus de Bustis de Mediolano ordinis minorum de observantia hu­ milem ac debitam commendationem. […] Multorumque predicatorum piis votis annuere volens, Rosarium hoc sermonum predicabilium composui, in quo omnia ad humanam salutem perti­nen­tia per varios codices dispersa congessi.’ 14  Marina Bersano Begey and Giuseppe Dondi, eds, Le cinquecentine piemontesi, 3 vols (Turin: Tipografia torinese editrice, 1961–66), II, p. 408; and Ristori, ‘Cassini, Samuele’, p. 489. 15  On the Cardinal de Carvajal, see Wadding, Annales minorum, vol. xiv, no. 323, p. 371; José Goñi, ‘López de Carvajal, Bernardino’, in Diccionario de historia eclesiástica de España, ed. by Quintín Aldea Vaquero, Tomás Marín Martínez, and José Vives Gatell, 4 vols and supplement (Madrid: Instituto Enrique Flórez, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1972–75), suppl., pp. 442–50; and Gigliola Fragnito, ‘Carvajal, Bernardino Lopez de’, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. xxi (1978), pp. 28–34. 16  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, fols 2v–3r. Cassini’s epigrams are in Appendix One; I deal

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A letter of exhortation set in verse by the venerable father friar Samuele Cassini of the Order of the Observant Minors and most expert professor in theology, to friar Bernardino Busti, in which he asked him by means of various comparisons to compose an anthology of sermons to be preached by picking ornate passages from various books.

The epigram composed by Cassini for Busti, thus introduced, comes immediately after another text of a similar nature composed by a Franciscan friar named Illuminatus Novariensis, who also hinted at Busti’s ‘picking little roses’ from different sources to compose his sermonarium.17 Both Illuminatus’ and Cassini’s poems follow Busti’s introductory letter to the Cardinal de Carvajal. Cassini’s role in encouraging Busti appears more important than that of Illuminatus since he was also given by his superior the task of inspecting and evaluating the Rosarium once it was completed. In this light, Cassini seems to have been particularly well considered as intellectual. Thus, after having exhorted Busti to compose his collection of sermons, which is the theme of a first and longer epigram, Cassini approved and recommended the text for publication in a second, shorter epigram.18 Far from being a mere act of copying, the selection of material from other works, and especially from the works of the confreres (a widespread practice in St Angelo’s) was clearly connected to the nature of the Rosarium as a resource for preaching. The sharing of models was in the tradition. Thus, Bernardino da Siena’s schemes for preaching were widely employed by other friars.19 Drawing from other authors can also represent the channel for sharing approaches to specific issues. From this point of view, Cassini’s writing of epigrams for Busti seems to establish a personal connection between the two friars, thus marking a possible linkage among authors in St Angelo’s, such as Busti, who shared or anticipated the view concerning witch-belief that will be fully developed by Cassini. with them again later in this chapter. 17  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, fol. 2v: ‘Collige de rosulis his tibi gratus eris.’ 18  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, fol. 3r: ‘Predictus quoque pater frater Samuel, qui postea ipsum Rosarium ex commissione prelati superioris videndum et examinandum accepit, non modo illum approbavit, sed etiam imprimi, et omnibus publicari debere hortatus est, predicto fratri Bernardino infrascripta carmina scribens.’ 19  On the Bernardinian ‘atelier’ and fifteenth century Franciscan preaching, see Carlo Delcorno, ‘L’Osservanza francescana e il rinnovamento della predicazione’, in I frati osservanti e la società in Italia nel secolo xv: Atti del xl Convegno internazionale, Assisi-Perugia, 11–13 ottobre 2012 (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2013), pp. 5–53.

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The process of development and transmission of knowledge in friaries took place through the circulation of texts and an educational background based on common curricula studiorum, which implied a large sharing of knowledge at a European level.20 Busti’s Rosarium was certainly part of this picture. The practical aspect of the Rosarium sermonum shows its use as a handbook for a vast readership of preachers. Themes and timing related to the planning of preaching were organized so as to give preachers a handbook that was easy to consult. Each of the two volumes provides a system of indexation by means of three types of tabulae or indexes: an index of sermons in their actual order; an index of topics in alphabetical order; and a tabula per totum annum, which shows a use for the Rosarium beyond its Lenten origin, as stated in the incipit of the proemium itself.21 As Letizia Pellegrini has shown, the ‘indexes for preaching’ very soon became an important instrument employed by Mendicant preachers, and then even became a literary genre among them. They had already been used in manuscript collections of model-sermons well before the invention of printing with movable type. These tabulae rendered a collection of sermons simply a starting point. Sermonarii could provide the users with the possibility to compose new sermons on the basis of the vast preaching material they contained. That was one of the possibilities offered by the potentiality of sermo modernus.22 In addition, the use of indexing changed the way the collection was read and the way in which theological, juridical and pastoral auctoritates could now be used outside their original context. Thus, the sermonarium could also become a product destined for individual reading, easily to imagine if one considers the pocket format these cultural objects often had in the era of print.23 The aforementioned characteristics can certainly explain the extensive publication success enjoyed by Rosarium until quite late and even beyond the Alps.24 20 

See Roberto Rusconi, ‘Predicatori e predicazione’, in Storia d’Italia, Annali 4, Intel­ lettuali e potere, ed. by Corrado Vivanti (Turin: Einaudi, 2000), pp. 951–1035 (pp. 981–82); and Pellegrini, ‘Cultura e devozioni’, pp. 406–07. 21  ‘Incipit Rosarium Sermonum predicabilium per Quadragesimam, et totum anni cir­ culum editum’. 22  See Letizia Pellegrini, ‘Indici per predicare: le tavole nei manoscritti di sermoni fra xiii e xv secolo’, in Fabula in tabula: una storia degli indici dal manoscritto al testo elettronico, ed. by Claudio Leonardi, Marcello Morelli, and Francesco Santi (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1995), pp. 135–43. 23  Cf. Pellegrini, ‘Cultura e devozioni’, p. 413. 24  Cf. note 7 above.

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Its encyclopaedic and concise nature might have made it a manual to be recommended to preachers. At the same time, the presence of a quick-reference index system would make life much easier for somebody looking for a specific topic. It was probably due also to these characteristics that the Rosarium could still play an essential role in the library of a friary newly built in 1605 at Fontevivo, near Parma, under the protection of Ranuccio I Farnese, Duke of Parma and Piacenza. Ranuccio was the son of the more famous Duke Alessandro Farnese, who was a commander at the battle of Lepanto. In a list dated 1611, which contains all the books considered mandatory for the new library, the Rosarium appears among only a few other texts of Observant Franciscan friars compiled before the Council of Trent, primarily those authored by Bernardino da Siena. Busti’s text still appears in a different list dated 1640 from the same friary. This seems even more important if one considers that those lists indicated material intended for the education of future preachers. What is more, the choice of texts in Parma probably mirrored a similar schema used in other Franciscan libraries in the period following the Council of Trent.25 Sermones quadragesimales de decem preceptis by Carcano are on the overall less concise and more involved in theological discussion than the Rosarium. This collection of 77 Lenten sermons, from the Sunday of Septuagesima to the Sunday in octava Paschae (in Albis), does not include a developed system of indexing such as the one we find in the Rosarium, but only a tabula of the sermons. This would possibly point to Carcano’s collection being less extensively employed as a repertory of preaching material than that of Busti. With Caimi’s Interrogatorium we enter the interesting field of confession. One of the most effective kinds of texts for preparing oneself for confession was the so-called ‘general confessional’ (confessio generalis, confessionale generale). These were short booklets, never more than sixteen folios in length, generally containing a list of all the possible sins that could be committed and that should

25  See Stanislao da Campagnola, ‘Ranuccio I Farnese (1569–1622) fondatore della biblio­ teca dei Cappuccini di Fontevivo (Parma)’, Collectanea Francescana, 38, 3–4 (1968), 308–63. According to a recent investigation of the lists of books owned by Franciscan Observant friaries and sent to the Holy Congregation of the Index after the issuing of the Index librorum prohibitorum by Pope Clement VIII in 1596, Busti was one of the most frequently present authors, with more than one hundred occurrences in the lists. See Giovanna Granata, ‘Le biblio­teche dei francescani osservanti alla fine del ‘500: un approccio bibliometrico’, in Libri, biblioteche e cultura degli ordini regolari nell’Italia moderna attraverso la documentazione della Congregazione dell’Indice, ed. by Rosa Marisa Borraccini and Roberto Rusconi (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2006), pp. 145–78 (pp. 159–61 and 173 table 8).

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be therefore confessed.26 The penitent had to introduce the ordered listing of his or her sins with the formula ‘dico mia colpa’ (‘I say my sin [to be]’), as Carcano explicitly indicates in his popular Confessionale generale de la gran tuba.27 The lack of any formula of absolution in such texts shows they were intended for the use of the penitents. The popularity of this genre is related to a general development in the production of penitential literature since the end of the fourteenth century, when leaner confessional texts began to appear at the expense of Summae confessorum, which generally were too expensive and cumbersome (the fourteenth-century popular Summa astesana by Astesano da Asti is almost six hundred pages in length).28 These flexible texts for confession began to be easily distributed among the laity of the Italian peninsula, especially in the age of print, due to the use of the vernacular, their brevity, and their low cost, making of them effective pedagogical instruments, often issued under the names of the most popular preachers, such as Bernardino da Siena, the Dominican Antonino Pierozzi, archbishop of Florence (d. 1459), and Michele Carcano.29 The interrogatorii practically fell within the genre of confessionali, but they were intended for confessors and therefore written in Latin. Their aim was to provide the confessor with an official outline for confessing the faithful. One of the most appreciated and reprinted of these texts was the one that begins with the words Defecerunt scrutantes scrutinio, composed before 1440 by Antonino Pierozzi.30 Antonino’s plan involves a division of the text into four main parts. 26 

See Rusconi, L’ordine dei peccati, pp. 249–50. Michele Carcano, Confessionale generale de la gran tuba (Venice: Agostino Bindoni, 1525), fol. [A7]v: ‘Necessario è che il peccator dica sua colpa.’ I have relied on the copy printed in Venice in 1525, held at the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. The Confessionale was first printed at Venice in 1484, and reprinted until 1529 in Venice. See Rusconi, ‘Manuali milanesi di confessione’, p. 116, note 8. 28  See Rusconi, ‘Manuali milanesi di confessione’, pp. 106–08, 116; Michaud-Quantin, ‘Sommes de casuistique’, pp. 82, 98. 29  On Antonino, see Arnaldo D’Addario, ‘Antonino Pierozzi, santo’, in Dizionario Bio­ grafico degli Italiani, vol. iii (1961), pp. 524–32; Sally J. Cornelison, Art and the Relic Cult of St Antoninus in Renaissance Florence (Furnham: Ashgate, 2012); Luciano Cinelli and Maria Pia Paoli, eds, Antonino Pierozzi OP (1389–1459): La figura e l’opera di un santo Arcivescovo nell’Europa del xv secolo (Firenze 25–28 novembre 2009), Memorie domenicane, 43 (Florence: Nerbini, 2012). See also Rusconi, L’ordine dei peccati, p. 222; and Rusconi, ‘Manuali milanesi di confessione’, pp. 116, 150–56. 30  It was known by the title Defecerunt: Confessorum refugium atque naufragium portus tutissimus. I have used the copy printed in Venice in 1511 held in the Biblioteca Nazionale di Roma. On the date of composition of the Defecerunt, see Howard, Beyond the Written Word, 27 

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The first part deals with the jurisdictional aspects of confession, such as the responsibilities of parish clergy and the role of friars in that respect; the second part addresses the specific skills or scientia needed by a confessor to fulfil his task and to instruct the penitent on how to undertake confession; the third part points to how to confess: what to ask the penitent, and technicalities such as the use of specific verbs to absolve the penitents; the fourth part is an explanation of the so-called ‘reserved cases’, the instances having particular ‘social’ relevance whose absolution was reserved to the bishops and especially to the pope.31 An outline of the interrogation to put to the penitent follows these parts. Within this context the plans on the basis of which the confessor should interrogate the penitent on his/her sins appear. Antonino’s Defecerunt gives the Ten Commandments as a starting point, after which the confessor has to interrogate the penitent on the Seven Deadly Sins. There follows an interesting categorization of the penitent on the basis of his/her status, whether religious or lay, or depending on the penitent’s profession, since, obviously, the sins of a butcher are different from those of a weaver, an innkeeper, or a priest. The confessor shows therefore all his capacity to understand or intervene in questions of social distinction. Antonino’s text would constitute a model for the subsequent works of the same kind. Caimi’s Interrogatorium is the most valuable text of this kind produced at St Angelo’s, and one of the most popular and frequently reprinted excluding Antonino’s Defecerunt. Its use was recommended to priests by the bishop of Basel in 1503 as well as by the synods of Augsburg in 1506 and 1548. 32 The Interrogatorium takes the Defecerunt as a model, being similarly organized into four parts. In addition to that, at the end of the text there is a scheme for an p. 22. Antonino also authored two confessionals entitled Omnis mortalium cura (1429) and Curam illius habe (between 1472–93), printed and published in the vernacular. Cf. Andreina Rita, ‘I libri de poenitentia e i manuali dei confessori’, in Penitenza e penitenzieria, pp. 163–71. 31  For which the tribunal of the Apostolic Penitentiary was created by the first half of the thirteenth century. See Paolo Prodi, Una storia della giustizia: dal pluralismo dei fori al moderno dualismo tra coscienza e diritto (Bologna: Il mulino, 2000), p. 98 ff. 32  The Interrogatorium was partially reprinted in Italy as late as 1517, and beyond the Italian peninsula up to 1491 at Augsburg. The bishop of Basel put it among texts for clergy with a cure of souls, a list which included Angelo da Chivasso’s Summa angelica, Jean Gerson’s Opus tripartitum and De arte audiendi confessiones, Johannes Nider’s Preceptorium divine legis, and Antonino’s Defecerunt. See Matthew Wranovix, ‘Ulrich Pfeffel’s Library: Parish Priests, Preachers, and Books in the Fifteenth Century’, Speculum, 87. 4 (2012), 1125–55 (p. 1129); Rusconi, ‘Manuali milanesi di confessione’, pp. 124–25, notes 5 and 6. Cf. Supplementum, ed. by Sbaraglia, vol. i, p. 119.

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interrogation of the dying person named Interrogationes beati Anselmi, which, as is typical, supplies the questions that the confessor should ask followed by the replies to be suggested for the penitent to give, such as: ‘Primo interrogari debet si credit omnia que sunt fidei Christiane. Et respondeat, credo. Secundo si gaudet se mori in fide christiana. Et respondeat, gaudeo’ (‘First [the penitent] ought to be asked whether he/she believes all the articles of the Christian faith, and [the penitent] should answer: I believe. Second, whether [the penitent] rejoices to die in the Christian faith, and [the penitent] should answer: I rejoice’), and so forth.33 There were a number of formulas which, if followed, would clearly be thought to ensure the safety of the afterlife of a dying penitent. In the third part of the handbook, the scheme suggested by Caimi envisages an interrogation modelled on the articles of faith; the sacraments; the Ten Commandments; the Seven Deadly Sins; the deeds of mercy. Also in Caimi’s text we find the interesting distinction of sins according to the various status one belongs to. Thus, for instance, the innkeeper has to be asked Si vendidit unam speciem vini per aliam, […] si vendidit vinum mensuris iniustis vel minus plenas dedit, ultra peccatum tenetur restituere vel pauperibus erogare.34 If [he] sold one type of wine in place of another […] if [he] sold wine by false measures or did not fill them up, [he] should make restitution or donate to the poor beyond the extent of his sin.

Confessional texts of this kind display several points of contact and similarities with the sermon collections, showing a process of osmosis between preaching and confession. Themes and issues addressed in preaching are in fact the same one finds in the confessional literature. Such a close relationship between these two pastoral moments is particularly striking at St Angelo’s. The texts produced there show what part the preparation for penitence and confession played in the preaching activity of Observant Franciscan friars. The Lenten nature of the Sermones quadragesimales determines, in fact, the centrality of penance, and hence the connection with the practice of confession. Rusconi has pointed out how preaching also sets up a close link between the elaboration of sermonarii and the production of devout literature in the vernacular.35 While basic aim 33 

Bartolomeo Caimi, Interrogatorium sive confessionale (Milan: Cristoforo Valdarfer, 1474), clxxiiiv. I relied on the copy, held at Collegio Sant’Isidoro in Rome as Inc. 17, printed in Milan in 1474 by Cristoforo Valdarfer. 34  Caimi, Interrogatorium sive confessionale, cxxiir. 35  Rusconi, L’ordine dei peccati, pp. 194–95.

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of Lenten preaching was to illustrate sin and show penitence and confession as the only ways to escape infernal punishments, devout literature, in contrast, provided a ‘ladder to Paradise’: both were intended as a means to salvation.36 Antonio da Vercelli’s Tractato utile et salutifero de li consigli de la salute del peccatore, printed in the vernacular in 1470, represents one of these ‘devout booklets’ whose aim was to disseminate a type of morality and devotion that once characterized enclosed monastic circles. Antonio’s Tractato as well as his other tract titled Trattato ovvero sermone de xii frutti della confessione, printed in Parma in 1479, are texts related to confession, yet closely linked to the preaching experience of the author. The former gathers the material used by Antonio during his preaching in Borgo San Sepolcro in 1466, and the latter gathers the preaching material he used in Volterra in 1478.37 It has been pointed out that texts for confession, especially when in the vernacular, represented the main catechetical medium in a period in which ‘confession and spiritual direction became common practice […] in the absence of comprehensive works of Christian doctrine’.38 I believe that, at least in part, pastoral texts of that kind could also function as ‘comprehensive works of Christian doctrine’. The Summa angelica composed by Angelo da Chivasso in 1486, one of the most influential works of the third quarter of the fifteenth century, constitutes a good example from this point of view. Angelo’s is a ‘comprehensive’ text with an alphabetical repertoire of casus conscientiae that explains all the relevant topics dealt with by Christian theology entry by entry. Its use was conceived to be mostly ‘practical’, as is shown by the fact that it even contains a schema of questions to be asked of penitents. This practical inspiration is a feature that characterizes texts for the use of confessors.39 Also, Busti’s Rosarium, and especially Carcano’s Lenten sermons with their thorough theological and juridical examination of the issues, might be considered to perform the function of making plain Christian doctrine, on the basis of specific theological models, such as especially Alexander of Hales (d. 1245) and Bonaventure of Bagnoregio (d. 1274). Texts of this type should ultimately be connected to the rise of a particular method of catechism that was in need of specific instruments providing material for practical and efficient use in pastoral care. 36 

See Zarri, Libri di spirito, p. 74. Rusconi, L’ordine dei peccati, p. 195; Turrini, La coscienza e le leggi, pp. 43–44. 38  Zarri, Libri di spirito, p. 71. 39  See Turrini, La coscienza e le leggi, pp. 76–78; Michaud-Quantin, ‘Sommes de casu­ istique’, pp. 99–101. 37 

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The Uses of the Sermon The main literary medium for the discourse of the friars was the sermo.40 The matter and form of the medium gave a specific and recognizable shape to the various topics it addressed. Sermons were arranged around a liturgical calendar that consisted of two main cycles: the Nativity cycle of fixed feasts centred on Advent, commencing four Sundays before Christmas and celebrating the Nativity of Jesus at Christmas; and the cycle of movable feasts centred on Easter, which was — and still is — based on the Jewish lunar calendar, falling on any Sunday between 22 March and 25 April.41 Lent began with Ash Wednesday, a period of forty days in preparation for Easter and the confession and communion that were made obligatory by Canon 21 of the Fourth Lateran Council. Palm Sunday was the concluding moment of the Lenten period, and at the same time, the initial day of Holy Week, culminating in Easter Sunday. It has been pointed out how such a sacred division of time, which was called the ecclesiasticus usus, could act as a means of Christian initiation for the laity, since it was the moment in which people’s fides implicita could be shown to be fides explicita through the distinct pastoral occasions and the feasts of the liturgical calendar, described as ‘temporal borders between one segment of time and the next’.42 Different types of sermons were matched with various liturgical moments, such as, mainly, sermones dominicales, quadragesimales, de sanctis, de tempore, de mortuis. The first were intended for Sundays, the second for Lent, the third to be preached on saints’ feast days, the sermons de tempore for specific occasions (i.e. Easter, Christmas, etc.), and the last as ‘memorial preaching’.43 It 40  See Louis-Jacques Bataillon, ‘Approaches to the Study of Medieval Sermons’, Leeds Studies in English, 11 (1980), 19–35; Beverly Mayne Kienzle, ed., The Sermon, Typologie des sources du Moyen Age occidental, 81–83 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000). 41  The Jews celebrate Passover on a fixed day, the fourteenth day of the month of Nisan (between March and April in the Gregorian calendar), which coincides with the fourteenth moon after the spring equinox. Christians celebrate Easter on the first Sunday after the fourteenth moon of the spring equinox, or in other words, after 14 Nisan, thus making it a feast held on a range of dates due to the gap between the lunar and solar calendars. Cf. Numbers 28. 16. 42  See Edward Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe (New York: Cambridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 2005), pp. 64–71; Zelina Zafarana, Da Gregorio VII a Bernardino da Siena: Saggi di Storia Medievale (Florence: La Nuova Italia Editrice, 1987), p. 513. 43  See Pellegrini, I manoscritti dei predicatori, p. 214 ff; David L. D’Avray, The Preaching of the Friars: Sermons diffused from Paris before 1300 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), pp. 78–80; Debby, Renaissance Florence, p. 39; and David L. D’Avray, Death and the Prince: Memorial Preaching before 1350 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994).

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was during the Lenten period that the greater part of preaching on doctrinal issues with moral and behavioural implications took place. Lenten sermon cycles compiled and delivered independently — in other words not within other genre of sermons — have been described as a specifically Dominican Italian genre originating from the time of Thomas Aquinas. They began to be used also by Franciscans and others at the beginning of the fourteenth century, becoming widely popular with the Observant friars. 44 Given the pivotal role of sermones quadragesimales in pastoral care and due to their use of themata not based on the liturgical season but on pastoral/theological schemes, as for instance the Ten Commandments, Jussi Hanska has justly raised the question of why they have not yet received due attention as a whole, like the other types of sermons did.45 The importance of Lenten preaching was due to the pivotal role played by Easter in the economy of the liturgical calendar as a feast celebrating the resurrection of Christ, which was already recognized as the foundational event in Christian faith in St Paul’s letter to the Corinthians.46 On the other hand, as Bernadette Paton has pointed out, the widespread attention paid to social issues in the Lenten sermons should be associated with the aim of preachers to encourage people to maintain peace and stability within their communities, especially by being good neighbours to each other. On balance, that even implied an encouragement to the faithful to reinforce connection with their parishes.47 At the core of these preaching cycles there was the sermo modernus, which Jacques Le Goff and Jean-Claude Schmitt have described as the parole nouvelle: a new way to conceive preaching. By the beginning of thirteenth century, preaching began to be perceived as a discourse based on sermons stemming from a biblical thema, as opposed to the traditional, dry explanation of an entire piece of the Gospel in the old homilia.48 The particularity of sermo 44 

See Jussi Hanska, ‘“Sermones Quadragesimales”: Birth and Development of a Genre’, Il Santo, 52 (2012), 107–27. 45  Hanska, ‘“Sermones Quadragesimales”’, p. 109; Pellegrini, I manoscritti dei predicatori, p. 20. 46  1 Corinthians 15–17: ‘Quod si Christus non resurrexit vana est fides vestra; adhuc enim estis in peccatis vestris.’ 47  See Paton, Preaching Friars and the Civic Ethos, p. 41; Dieter Mertens, ‘Clero secolare e cura d’anime nelle città del tardo medioevo’, in Ordini religiosi e società politica in Italia e Germania nei secoli xiv e xv, ed. by Giorgio Chittolini and Kaspar Elm (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001), p. 261. 48  Le Goff and Schmitt, ‘Au xiii siècle: une parole nouvelle’, in Histoire vécue du peuple

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modernus was its typical ‘tree structure’, through which it was very adaptable to every contingency and even to the inventiveness of the preacher, allowing a dilatatio of preaching material through divisiones and subdivisiones, stemming from the original biblical theme.49 This ‘new’ way of elaborating sermons was strictly related to the development of a particular curriculum in the Mendicant studia, in which philosophical and theological knowledge, on the one hand, and the study of Artes Predicandi, on the other, played a central role. What can be defined as the specific ‘communication theory’ of the Mendicant friars was in fact based on the uniform didactic programmes developed in the network of their schools, which can also be accounted among the main ‘distribution circles’ for those intellectual products.50 The traditional distinction between the sermo as a literary genre and the sermonarium as an object (the book, manuscript, or later, printed) containing the sermones suggests a two-fold possibility of inquiry: one concerning the text, and the other concerning the physical medium. With the introduction of printing such a two-fold approach, originating in the analysis of manuscript sermons, becomes less relevant due to the production of multiple identical copies.51 In my case, I am concerned with studying the text and the information it conveys with regard to a specific topic, the learned traditions on superstition and witchcraft. From this point of view, following Carlo Delcorno, I consider the sermon as a discourse that can connect clerical culture and the categories of reasoning typical of the laity by means of words and rhetoric. This implies looking at the sermon using the ‘eclectic’ approach introduced by Beverly Mayne chrétien, ed. by Jean Delumeau (Toulouse: Privat, 1979), pp. 157–80. On the sermo modernus, see Carlo Delcorno, ‘La predicazione medievale’, Lettere Italiane, 33 (1981), 234–76; David L. D’Avray, ‘Method in the Study of Medieval Sermons’, in Modern Questions about Medieval Sermons: Essays on Marriage, Death, History and Sanctity, ed. by Nicole Bèriou and David L. D’Avray (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1994), pp. 3–29; and Kienzle, The Sermon, pp. 81–83. The difficulty of maintaining this kind of twofold distinction in preaching practice has been pointed out by Roest, A History of Franciscan Education, p. 290. 49  See Carlo Delcorno, ‘L’ars predicandi di Bernardino da Siena’, in Atti del simposio internazionale cateriniano-bernardiniano, Siena, 17–20 aprile 1980, ed. by Domenico Maffei and Paolo Nardi (Siena: Accademia senese degli Intronati, 1982), p. 435 ff; Debby, Renaissance Florence, pp.  39–40; Zelina Zafarana, ‘La predicazione francescana’, in Francescanesimo e vita religiosa dei laici nel ‘200: Atti dell’VIII convegno della Società Internazionale di Studi Francescani (Assisi, 16–18 ottobre 1980) (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1981), pp. 203–50 (p. 221). 50  Hobbins, Authorship and Publicity Before Print, p. 186 ff. 51  Pellegrini, I manoscritti dei predicatori, pp. 191–92.

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Kienzle, and drawing attention to the importance of the sermon as a genre for explaining and communicating pastoral discourse to the masses.52 This topic has been thoroughly investigated by scholars from different points of view. From the four main approaches indicated by Kienzle — the ‘formalistic’, directed at the formal characteristics of the medium; the ‘essential’, referring to oral discourse; the ‘functional’, dealing with its achievements; and the ‘historical’, referring mainly to the context — to the ‘performance theory’, still described by Kienzle that seeks to grasp the meaning of the sermon as an oral discourse by ‘categorizing types of utterances as well as their social convention and context’, sermon studies have passed through different phases focusing on diverse aspects.53 These have ranged from the importance of the text and the problem of its transmission, to preaching as a holistic event beyond mere verbal communication.54 This last point is one that deserves careful consideration, in connection with the relationship between preacher and audience. In particular, I believe, the Milanese texts allow one to see this issue through two strands: the use of a particular style in preaching, including the adoption of ‘popularized’ Bible passages, and the topic of conversion within the inner dialogical structure of preaching.

The Pulpit and the Nave A Matter of Style Efforts have been made in scholarship to reconstruct the broad context and the dynamics beyond the words employed by the preachers. Zelina Zafarana urging scholars to consider this pressing issue more thoroughly, called it a link between the pulpit and the nave, terms that have become popular in scholarship to describe the poles of the exchange between preacher and audience. Six years later, the early important results of this inquiry were presented in a conference held by then in her memory.55 In the Italian case it would be probably 52 

Carlo Delcorno, ‘Medieval Preaching in Italy (1200–1500)’, in The Sermon, ed. by Beverly Mayne Kienzle (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), pp. 449–559; Kienzle, The Sermon, p. 146. 53  Beverly Mayne Kienzle, ‘Medieval Sermons and their Performance: Theory and Record’, in Preacher, Sermon, and Audience in the Middle Ages, ed. by Carolyn Muessig (Leiden: Brill, 2002), p. 122. 54  See Thompson, ‘From Texts to Preaching’. See also D’Avray, ‘Method in the Study of Medieval Sermon’; D’Avray, The Preaching of the Friars; and Howard, Beyond the Written Word. 55  Gian Carlo Garfagnini, ed., Dal pulpito alla navata: La predicazione medievale nella sua recezione da parte degli ascoltatori (secc. xiii–xv), Convegno Internazionale di Storia Religiosa in

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more appropriate to speak of square or piazza rather than nave, since fifteenthcentury urban audiences, given to massive participation at sermons, often gathered in public squares rather than in churches. This was already happening at the time of Salimbene de Adam (d. 1288), and even generated topographical transformations within cities, as for instance in Florence in mid-thirteenth century to accommodate better the Dominican preacher’s pulpit, or in Bologna and Siena as soon as the Mendicant friars appeared.56 The crowd that fifteenthcentury preachers managed to attract is shown very well by the famous panel painted by Sano di Pietro, who represents Bernardino da Siena preaching in the Piazza del Campo in Siena to a large public diligently separated by gender. The late medieval intellectual universe experienced the formation of a broader public space than before: it was constituted not by a reading audience capable of developing a ‘public opinion’ in our current sense of the term, but rather by a large listening public attending sermons, in some cases reporting the words of the preacher, and even reacting to them.57 Clearly, preachers needed to know how to be effective communicators. Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby has shown how ‘the pulpit was also a meeting place of the different media’, a mix of preaching, sacred drama and art.58 In his Sermon 1 memoria di Zelina Zafarana, Florence, 5–7 June 1986, in Medioevo e Rinascimento, 3 (1989), pp. 7–321. Cf. Zafarana, ‘La predicazione francescana’, p. 250. 56  Howard, Beyond the Written Word, pp. 85–86; Delcorno, ‘Medieval Preaching in Italy’, pp. 461–63; Jacques Paul, Mariano D’Alatri, Salimbene da Parma testimone e cronista (Rome: Istituto Storico dei Cappuccini, 1992), pp. 181–82. See also Muzzarelli, Pescatori di uomini, p. 107. On the centrality of preaching in late medieval life see Roberto Rusconi, ‘Public Purity and Discipline: States and Religious Renewal’, in Christianity in Western Europe, c. 1100– c. 1500, ed. by Miri Rubin and Walter Simons (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 2009), pp. 458–71. 57  Daniel Hobbins, ‘The Schoolman as Public Intellectual: Jean Gerson and the Late Medi­ eval Tract’, The American Historical Review, 108. 5 (2003), 1308–37 (pp. 1311–12); Hobbins, Authorship and Publicity Before Print, pp. 129–31 and 147–51. As to reportationes, particularly noteworthy are those of Bernardino da Siena’s Lenten preaching cycles held at Padua in 1423 and 1443, transcribed by the recently studied causidicus Daniele da Porcia. Daniele described vividly the bleakness and emotion of the crowd upon the preacher’s departure from the town in 1423. See Giulia Foladore, ‘“Veloci calamo recollegi”. Daniele da Porcia, reportator di San Bernardino da Siena’ (Padova, 1423–43)’, Il Santo, 48 (2008), 145–68. 58  Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby, ‘Italian Pulpits: Preaching, Art, and Spectacle’, in Charisma and Religious Authority, ed. by Katherine L. Jansen and Miri Rubin (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 123–43 (pp. 139–40). On the pulpit as an artistic artefact, as well as a means of expression of the preacher’s oratorical and theatrical power, see Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby, The Renaissance Pulpit: Art and Preaching in Tuscany, 1400–1550 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007).

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for the Sunday of Septuagesima, following a tradition that can be traced back to Bernardino da Siena, Busti writes down the conditions that render preaching effective. According to Busti, a preached sermon had to have a high level of content but at the same time be comprehensible even by the less educated; it had to be truthful in order to be useful; well-balanced; diverse; supported by strong foundations; and finally the preacher had to seek no other rewards than the love of God and the benefit of the audience itself.59 The recommendation to talk comprehensibly is reminiscent of Bernardino da Siena saying that in order to be understood a preacher must speak ‘chiarozzo chiarozzo’ (‘clearly, clearly’).60 It was the Sienese preacher who originated a rhetorical style that ought to be comprehensible to everyone, through what has been called ‘accessible communication’.61 On the other hand, with Zafarana we might ask ‘what was understood and assimilated by the faithful in the church’s nave’. In replying to this problematic question, Roberto Rusconi has proposed that the principle of utilitas — the employment of what was useful for the moral suasion of the listeners — was at the base of both the preaching strategy of the friars and the reportationes written down by those from the audience who wanted to summarize the message of the preacher.62 Busti recommends that preachers take into account the level of the audience urging friars to provide the listeners with what they could actually grasp.63 This attests that Zafarana’s point was already an issue at least for the most aware of the preachers.

59 

These are the virtutes elocutionis: sublimitas, claritas, veritas, utilitas, medietas, diversitas, vigorositas, and charitas: Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 1: De septem causis inducentibus ad predicandum et de septem conditionibus verbi Dei, fols 4rb–8va. See also Muzzarelli, Pescatori di uomini, p. 19. 60  Bernardino da Siena, Prediche volgari sul Campo di Siena 1427, Sermon 3, ed. by Carlo Delcorno, 2 vols (Milan: Rusconi, 1989), vol. i, p. 164. 61  Muzzarelli, Pescatori di uomini, p. 51. 62  Roberto Rusconi, ‘Reportatio’, in Dal pulpito alla navata: La predicazione medievale nella sua recezione da parte degli ascoltatori (secc. xiii–xv), Convegno Internazionale di Storia Religiosa in memoria di Zelina Zafarana, Florence, 5–7 June 1986, ed. by Gian Carlo Garfagnini, in Medioevo e Rinascimento, 3 (1989), pp. 7–36 (p. 31). 63  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 1, fol. 7ra: ‘Debet igitur predicator considerare con­ ditiones auditorum et secundum eorum capacitatem eis illa que dicit declarare. […] Omnia enim debent dari secundum quod recipiens aptum est recipere. […] Ita predicator debet facere quia est distributor verbi divini et sacre scripture.’

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Further, considering the audience also implied meeting their natural curiositas: in this way, the preacher did not risk losing his share of the public. It is from the point of view of the relationship between the preacher and his audience that specific stylistic elements aimed at satisfying the taste of the faithful had to be employed in sermons. From this practice, in particular, is derived the stereotype of preachers as ‘fishers of men’, a literary topos that one can already find in Bernardino da Feltre, derived in turn from Bernardino da Siena.64 As the audience enjoys the interesting tales delivered by the preacher, it could also almost unwittingly access principles of faith and penitence. Through curiosity the audience can attain salvation. In this way, preachers become just like hunters or fishers, who attract their quarry by means of enticing baits: the preaching is just like their nets. Busti explains that Sunt enim multi qui non irent ad predicationem nisi causa curiositatis puta ut audiant poetarum allegationes seu philosophorum vel legum civilium aut aliarum scientiarum; qui tandem in predicatione audiunt aliquid quod eos ad penitentiam convertit. Et sic qui prius ibant propter curiositatem, postea accedunt propter animarum suarum salutem. Sicut enim venatores ostendunt volucribus aliquem cibum eis gratum et similiter piscatores piscibus et sic cum laqueo vel hamo eos capiunt, vel cum aliqua dulci modulatione faciunt venire sub brevi, ita predicatores sancti animas hominum Deo capiunt, ostendendo eis in predicationibus alicuius scientie dulcedinem, propter quam eos illaqueant ut tota quadragesima ad predicationem perseverent. Et ideo vobis quotidie diversarum scientiarum dicta melliflua propinabo tanquam escas vobis gratissimas more boni venatoris et piscatoris. Predicatores enim sunt piscatores, quia uno tractu rethis, id est predicationis, aliquando magnam multitudinem hominum capiunt, id est convertunt, sicut in figuram habetur Luce V et Iohannis XXI de apostolis magnam multitudinem piscium uno tracto capientibus.65 There are many who only go to a sermon out of curiosity, for example, to listen to quotations from the poets or philosophers or the civil laws or any other science; eventually at the sermon they hear something that converts them to penitence. Thus, those who first went [to the sermon] out of curiosity, afterwards attend for the salvation of their souls. Just as hunters display to birds some kind of food they like, and similarly fishers do to fishes, make them come into the shallows, and then catch them with snare or hook, so holy preachers catch human souls for God by showing them in their preaching the pleasure of some erudition, enmeshing them by it so that they keep up attending sermons for the whole of Lent. For this reason, 64  65 

See Bernardino da Siena, Sermon 3 of the Sienese cycle 1427. Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 1, fol. 6va.

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I provide you the anthology pieces of different kinds of erudition everyday as your favourite food following the method of the skilful hunter and fisher. For preachers are fishers, since by a single cast of the net, which is preaching, they sometimes catch, that is to say convert, a great crowd of people, as is figurally represented in Luke 5 and John 21, with regard to the apostles catching great multitude of fish with a single draught.

Busti is addressing a readership of his peers, the preachers, explaining the essence of preaching as captivating the attention of the audience. In him there is nothing of Bernardino da Siena’s rebuking of those who attend sermons to enjoy the preacher’s style and eloquence, rather than for their true value and purpose, as something not in accord with the will of God.66 To the Milanese preacher, style and eloquence are by this time integral to the aim. The central element here is the verb convertere: the preacher is expected to be like a hunter or a fisher in employing the right means to bring conversion to people, one that highlights an effort towards moral change. As Busti himself explains, in fact, the attempt to capture the natural curiosity of the faithful by means of specific rhetorical techniques is part of the preacher’s job of bringing spiritual salvation to his flock. Further, the call to meet the expectations or curiositas of the public clearly points to an existing relationship between preacher, message and audience, thus constituting an indication of the connection between pulpit and nave (or square). In this case, the sermon may be seen as the result of the interrelationships of multiple sources: the learned traditions on which the preacher relies, the echoes of previous preaching sessions in the territory, the political and social context of the preaching event, and finally the role of the urban audience. Especially with the recourse to erudite classical models, Busti urges preachers to render the material more palatable to their audience, who are described as generally eager to listen to the sayings of poets and philosophers. Such a stylistic feature shows the changing taste of the audiences as well as a different kind of sensitivity on the part of the preachers that matches with the new trends in the age of Humanism. After all, it has been shown that preachers often shared a common social and cultural humanistic background with the other urban intellectual élites of renaissance towns, and that Humanism could even be ‘in the service of 66  Bernardino Da Siena, Prediche volgari sul Campo di Siena 1427, Sermon 22, ed. by Delcorno, vol. ii, p. 777: ‘Simile dico di colui e di colei che va a udire la predica, e stavi a udirla o perché gli piace il modo del dicitore, o per la buona loquela del predicatore, non attendendo a l’utile e a la cagione, per che è detta: anco non è quella volontà di Dio stare a udire in quel modo.’ See also Debby, ‘Italian Pulpits’, p. 141.

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the Observance’.67 Busti tends to use a number of sources of diverse typology and provenance. In this respect, the extensive use he made of quotations taken from classical authors puts him in line with some of his more immediate predecessors, especially Michele Carcano and Bernardino da Feltre.68 This tendency becomes even more significant when, on the contrary, the background of conflicts and polemics between humanists and the Mendicants, going on up until the first half of fifteenth century, is considered.69 The preachers’ humanistic ambition and the classical themes and style, however, were not only deployed to encourage the faithful to attend the sermon. Friars could also employ a deliberately polished and difficult style especially when addressing the members of their communities.70 A good example of this style is represented by the two previously mentioned epigrams that Cassini dedicated to Busti, the first one urging him to compose the Rosarium, and the second approving it for printing. The first and longer epigram is in anapaestic dimeter acatalectic verses (although vv. 11 and 15 are adonics and v. 26 is a hemiepes).71 At a first glance, the metric scheme employed by Cassini might seem to point to a reading of the tragedies of Seneca, one of the main Latin 67 

Cécile Caby, ‘L’humanisme au service de l’observance: quelques pistes de recherches’, in Humanisme et Église en Italie et en France méridionale (xv e siècle-milieu du xvie siècle), ed. by Patrick Gilli (Rome: École française de Rome, 2004), pp. 115–48 (but Caby focuses especially on the Camaldoleses and the Augustinians). On preachers as sharing a common humanistic background with other elites, see Roest, A History of Franciscan Education, p. 171. See also Ronald G. Witt, Italian Humanism and Medieval Rhetoric (Aldershot: Ashgate Variorum, 2001). 68  Lage Cotos, ‘Auctoritates clasicas para la salvacion humana’, pp. 165–77. 69  On this see Remo Guidi, ‘Frati e umanisti: ragioni di un conflitto’, in Humanisme et Église en Italie et en France méridionale (xve siècle-milieu du xvie siècle), ed. by Patrick Gilli (Rome: École française de Rome, 2004), pp. 17–42; and Anne Reltgen-Tallon, ‘L’Observance dominicaine et son opposition à l’humanisme: l’exemple de Jean Dominici’, in Humanisme et Église en Italie et en France méridionale (xve siècle-milieu du xvie siècle), ed. by Patrick Gilli (Rome: École française de Rome, 2004), pp. 43–62. See also Charles-Marie De La Roncière, ‘Identités Franciscaines au xve siècle: la réforme des communautés masculines’, in Identités Franciscaines à l’âge des réformes, ed. by Frédéric Meyer and Ludovic Viallet (Clermont-Ferrand: Presses Universitaires Blaise-Pascal, 2005), pp. 49–50. 70  Such a use of Latin that may render obscure its meaning was diffused also in other cultural circles of the Italian peninsula in the second half of the fifteen century, as the case of the intellectual Paolo Spinoso active in the Papal court shows. See Rossella Bianchi, Paolo Spinoso e l’Umanesimo romano nel secondo Quattrocento (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Lettera­ tura, 2004), p. 177. 71  See Appendix One.

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authors using this type of verse whose work was widely diffused in the intellectual circles of renaissance Northern Italy; however, it more probably points to the Christian hymnological tradition (Franciscan in particular), which made use also of rhythmic verses.72 To be more persuasive Cassini makes use of classicizing metaphors from the world of nature to show how even in that domain something similar happens to what he urges Busti to do. Showing a great deal of imagination Cassini tells how the sea produces swirls and fills the inlets; in the animal realm a mother does not refuse to take care of her young; and indirectly referring to the fourth book of Virgil’s Georgics he cites the Mount Lyceum, the great mother Cybele, the zephyr that blows gently, the buzz of the bees escaping their owner looking for honey. Cassini incites Busti to write what he had learned from various texts. Thanks to that — Cassini says — the golden centuries will come back for those who admire Busti (Bustevolentibus). The series of natural metaphors continues. As the roar of the waves that break on the shores resounds, so let Busti’s fame as well as Cassini’s request produce the same roar. Again, may such a gentle sound as urges the birds to look for shelter in the wood also urge the spirit to return to the poets and that they may hold the greatest piety in their sermons. Having abandoned the double-horned hills, may Clio fly back to the heights. These verses — whose precise meaning might prove to be not totally clear for somebody who is far from the cultural context in which they originated — are concluded by a sincere salutation. Cassini’s shorter poem consists of four elegiac couplets. The friar urges Busti to send to the printer the sermons that he had already approved. Here also various classicizing metaphors are employed. Thus, Cassini writes, Busti has picked flowers from various flowers, extracting from them a nectar, as the bees do. What the golden bees took to the hive, may the field now return: so what Busti has picked from his sources is now in his book. Cassini agrees to ask Busti to comply with his petitions for the sake of many, so that his Rosarium sermonum may have useful effects for everybody. The Latin style and the classicizing poetic metaphors Cassini employs signal the resurgence of the humanistic-renaissance taste among these friars. Verses in honour of an author could be inserted into a variety of texts of different kinds (juridical, literary, or medical), a common

72  The point of departure for any further inquiry on this topic are the Analecta Hymnica Medii Aevi. On the fate of Seneca in the Renaissance, see Carla Maria Monti, ‘Le Tragedie di Seneca trasmesse nell’Ambrosiano C 96 inf.’, in Miscellanea grecolatina, 2 vols, ed. by Federico Gallo (Rome: Bulzoni, 2013), vol. i, pp. 211–24 (pp. 221–24); and Carla Maria Monti, Seneca cultor morum: Tradizione e fortuna di Seneca tra Medioevo e Umanesimo (forthcoming).

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practice between the beginning of the sixteenth century and the end of the seventeenth century.73 Thus, the sermons of the later generation of fifteenth-century preachers distance themselves from the drier nature of those composed earlier, complying with a profound desire to display erudition and with a tendency to engage with subtle theological issues.74 If Cerubino da Spoleto had to renounce his fervent humanistic style in sermons and go back to a more traditional kind of preaching, Busti shows the opposite attitude. From this point of view the Milanese preacher may well represent the slow evolution of Franciscan Observant preaching into the categories of incipient renaissance humanism. The aim of producing clusters of preaching material falling within the medieval tradition of ‘florilèges spirituels’ went together with the ability to accept syncretistic pastoral and stylistic elements in the sermons of the third generation Observant Franciscan friars.75 Particularly in Sermon 23 of the Rosarium on the Sixth Commandment concerning lust, Busti makes a consistent use of Ovid, Claudian, Prudentius, Lucan, and Virgil. This allows him to describe sins more realistically by drawing on the poets. Such a tendency has to be seen in the context of Busti’s employment of rhetorical techniques as a means to achieve diversitas, one of the conditions for the good preaching. Having recourse to the refinement of rhetoric provided by the classical tradition is part of the preacher’s goal of becoming a ‘fisher of men’. What is more, in the fruitful mixture of various literary features as they are shown in Busti’s text, one can also engage with the idea of the continuity between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The end of the fifteenth century really appears as an age of contact, rather than of fracture, between apparently opposing elements. There is a sort of ‘compromise solution’ between medieval and renaissance features, the latter slowly advancing, as is evident in Busti’s text.76 These inclinations were not exclusive to Franciscans. The Augustinian Mariano da Genazzano (d. 1498) was well known for his humanistic fervour, 73 

Renato Badalì, Carmina medicalia (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2013), pp. 11–13. 74  Rusconi, ‘La predicazione francescana sulla penitenza’, pp. 71–72. 75  Roest, Franciscan Literature, p. 72; De La Roncière, ‘Identités Franciscaines au xv e siècle’, p. 51. 76  Eisenbichler, Renaissance Medievalisms, p. 19; John Monfasani, ‘The Renaissance as the Concluding Phase of the Middle Ages’, Bullettino dell’Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 108 (2006), 165–85 (p. 185). Cf. Jacques Le Goff, Faut-il vraiment découper l’histoire en tranches? (Paris: Seuil, 2014), pp. 137–91.

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making abundant use of the Classics in his preaching; Girolamo Savonarola too relied on classical philosophers; and Dominican inquisitors, too, were in many instances ‘men of the Renaissance’.77 Nevertheless, the tendency to adopt rhetorical elements and to rely on classical philosophical and literary auctoritates seems to have been particularly widespread in the preaching environment of St Angelo’s: the friary was clearly exposed to the influence of the humanistic afflatus diffused at the Sforza’s court. We know the role of Ludovico il Moro in favouring culture. His diplomatic and ideal approach towards Florence led him to invite Leonardo da Vinci to Milan with the idea of creating an enormous equestrian statue of his father, Francesco Sforza. It does not matter that eventually the statue was not completed. It still represented ‘the biggest self-image of the age’, and a good example of the new tastes.78 The Franciscans must have experienced, in a somewhat similar way, the appeal of the possibilities offered by the Renaissance. In 1464 St  Angelo’s was enriched by an endowment from the Milanese Humanist Giorgio Valagussa, including a few Ciceronian works.79 The works and teaching of Friar Lorenzo Guglielmo Traversagni (d. 1505), who authored in 1478 a Rhetorica nova, show the kind of things friars could produce.80 Michele Carcano introduced numerous allusions to the early Greek philosophers in his sermons. He was actually one of the initiators of this practice, which constituted a good response to Alberto da Sarteano’s call for the study of Greek. This tendency could be seen as a sort of cultural updating of pastoral techniques, of which the restoration of monastic libraries (such as the library at St Angelo’s), the attendance at universities of great reputation, and finally the stylistic elements highlighted in Busti’s Rosarium, constitute proof.81 In addition, another Observant 77 

Davide Gutiérrez, ‘Testi e note su Mariano da Genazzano (d. 1498)’, Analecta Augus­ tiniana, 32 (1969), 117–204; Lorenza Tromboni, ed., Inter omnes Plato et Aristoteles: Gli appunti filosofici di Girolamo Savonarola (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012); Michael Tavuzzi, Renais­ sance Inquisitors: Dominican Inquisitors and Inquisitorial Districts in Northern Italy, 1474–1527 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 45–48. 78  Martines, Power and Imagination, p. 230. 79  Monica Pedralli, Novo, grande, coverto e ferrato: Gli inventari di biblioteca e la cultura a Milano nel Quattrocento (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2002), p. 61. 80  Cf. Franco Mormando, The Preacher’s Demons: Bernardino of Siena and the Social Under­world of Early Renaissance Italy (Chicago: The Uni­ver­sity of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 11. 81  De La Roncière, ‘Identités Franciscaines au xve siècle’, p. 49 ff. On the evolution of the early franciscan libraries see Cesare Cenci, ‘Biblioteche e Bibliofili Francescani a tutto il secolo xv’, Picenum Seraphicum, 8 (1971), 66–80.

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Franciscan, Pietro Arrivabene da Canneto (d. 1513), a contemporary of Busti and a friar who was particularly active in Mantua, displays great erudition in the way he uses different kinds of sources in his sermons, drawing extensively on classical poets and philosophers, as well as being a modest poet himself.82 Similarly, the unpublished and little studied sermons of Bernardino Caimi show, along with the traditional Christian theological sources, an intense use of non-Christian and classical sources: from Aristotle, Averroës, and Avicenna, to Seneca, Horace, Virgil, and Lucan.83 The use of the vernacular is also an important stylistic trait in fifteenthcentury Latin sermon collections and devotional literature. Busti, for instance, inserted vernacular sonnets into the Loreto litanies in praise of the Virgin Mary.84 In the Rosarium, the preacher seems to favour especially Dante’s Divina Commedia, Petrarch, Iacopone da Todi, and Cecco d’Ascoli, mostly in the second book, but also in the first book of his sermon collection, notably in the prohemium, and in Sermons 6, 8, 15, and 24. The same authors of the early Italian vernacular literary tradition were already employed by Bernardino Caimi: from Dante, who is called ‘Poëta Florentinus, multa fide dignus’ (‘the Florentine poet, worthy of much trust’) to Petrarch, and Cecco d’Ascoli.85 This points to the use of the same source material by preachers who, like Busti and Caimi, shared the same intellectual milieu. Probably a sign of close connection with pastoral practice is the use of verse translations of texts either of biblical origin — mainly taken from the Old Testament — or of a theological nature that function as pastoral schemes of Christian doctrine. Sermon 16 of the 1498 Venetian edition of the Rosarium sermonum shows an interesting example of this practice. After having introduced the Ten Commandments in Latin, Busti does the same in vernacular rimes, introducing them by the words: ‘Vulgariter autem sunt ista’ (‘In the vernacular they are as follows’). The vernacularization of the Decalogue begins with the words of the First Commandment: ‘Uno solo Dio debi avere’ 82 

Cesare Cenci, ‘Fra Pietro Arrivabene da Canneto e la sua attività letteraria’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 61 (1968), 115–95. 83  They are his Sermones de tempore and De articulis fidei. See Piana, ‘Il beato Bernardino Caimi da Milano’, pp. 312–15. 84  Pio Bondioli, Le litanie lauretane illustrate da incisioni settecentesche di Giuseppe e Giovanni Klauber con commenti poetici del B. Bernardino de Busti (Busto Arsizio: Giovanni Milani, 1929). See also Lucia Lazzerini, ‘“Per latinos grossos…”: Studio sui sermoni mescidati’, Studi di filologia italiana, 29 (1971), 219–339. 85  Cf. Piana, ‘Il beato Bernardino Caimi da Milano’, pp. 312–15.

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(‘[You] must have only one God’), and goes on to describe the nature and aim of each of the Commandments. What is striking is the way in which the content of the Decalogue is made topical. Explaining concisely the issues each of the commandments refers to, Busti makes them relevant — as one might say — on the basis of some of the most traditional issues dealt with in preaching. Thus, referring to some of the most stereotypical targets of preachers, the First Commandment gives him the opportunity to urge the faithful to renounce vices, games, and dancing, while through the Seventh Commandment he warns against the practice of usury and any other type of robbery. The call not to contravene this commandment is followed by the warning ‘perché saresti tenuto a satisfare’ (‘because you would be required to give satisfaction’). Satisfare here has to be understood in relation to God as well as to those who have been robbed, by returning the stolen goods.86 Furthermore, as an example of the frequent mixture of different theological schemes, the capital sins are also present in Busti’s vernacularization of the Ten Commandments, by cross-referring to the two main vices: lust within the Sixth Commandment, and greed with regard to the ninth and the tenth.87 Notably, the edition of the Rosarium printed in Venice in 1498 displays all the vernacular literary quotations in the original language, while the editions printed in the sixteenth century that I checked have them translated into Latin, and the edition printed in Köln in 1607 does not have the quotations at all but only references to the authors. María Elisa Lage Cotos has explained this by a change in Franciscan preaching attitude, which, she says, in the sixteenth century became much closer to humanistic practices favouring Latin rather than quotation of the vernacular.88 I would rather say that, most probably, the use of pieces written in the vernacular was not considered useful in the editions printed outside the Italian peninsula, intended for a readership of non-Italian preachers; they were, therefore, deleted from the text. This is even more true for a longer piece such as the vernacularization of the Decalogue, which is totally missing from, for instance, the edition of the Rosarium printed in Lyon in 1506.89 86 

See the above mentioned specific hints in regard to the confession manuals. Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 126rb–va. See Appendix Two. 88  María Elisa Lage Cotos, ‘Poesía y predicación, latín y vulgar en el “Rosarium sermonum” de Bernardino de Bustis’, in Poesía latina medieval (siglos v–xv): actas del IV Congreso del ‘Internationales Mittellateinerkomitee’, Santiago de Compostela, 12–15 de septiembre de 2002, ed. by Manuel C. Díaz y Díaz and José M. Díaz de Bustamante (Florence: SISMEL, 2005), pp. 369–84. 89  On the other hand, it must also be noted that sixteenth century copies of the Mariale 87 

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Overall, the presence of vernacular pieces within a Latin sermonarium constitutes a clear echo of the relationship of the preacher with his flock as well as a sign of his awareness concerning the role of the language of the people in the better transmission of his moral message. Related to this is the less studied topic of the translation of biblical texts in Italy with the use of rime.90 For instance, the very ill known Pietro da Napoli (probably a fifteenth-century surgeon) vernacularized Genesis in a text that begins: ‘O celsitudo, o lume, o claritade’ (‘Oh excellence, oh light, oh clarity’).91 A popular case of vernacular use of religious texts, although not of biblical nature, is that of the Observant Franciscan from Puglia Antonio da Bitonto (d. 1465), who made a translation of the Creed in rhyme, beginning with ‘Ciascun fedel cristian dee confessare’ (‘Each faithful Christian must confess’).92 Antonio become famous because of his verbal battle, in Lent of 1444, with Lorenzo Valla, who fervently opposed the apostolic origin of the text so confidently supported by the friar. Having listened to Antonio preaching on the Creed in Naples, Valla wanted to prove him mistaken so passionately that he went to argue with him in his own friary, until eventually the humanist was indicted and had to face a trial by the Inquisition from which he had a hairbreadth escape.93 What that matters here is to highlight the didactic-catechetiprinted outside Italy do include pieces written in the vernacular. 90  See Lino Leonardi, ‘I volgarizzamenti italiani della Bibbia (sec. xiii–xv) Status questionis e prospettive per un repertorio’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Moyen Age, 105 (1993), 837–44; and Kenelm Foster, ‘Vernacular Scriptures in Italy’, in The Cambridge History of the Bible, vol. ii: The West from the Fathers to the Reformation, ed. by G. W. H. Lampe (1969), pp. 452–65. 91  The text is in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS It. 109. See Aldo Vallone, Storia della letteratura meridionale (Naples: CUEN, 1996), pp. 37–38. 92  This version is in the codex Magliabechiano Palatino 171, fol.  2 rv at the National Lib­rary in Florence. The transcription of the entire text can be found in Giuseppe Urbano, Lorenzo Valla e fra Antonio da Bitonto (Palermo: Remo Sandron, 1911), pp. 32–34. Cf. Myriam Chopin, Maria Teresa Dinale, and Raffaella Pelosini, eds, ‘Inventario dei manoscritti biblici italiani’, Melanges de l’École française de Rome: Moyen Âge, 105 (1993), 863–86. For a general overview on Antonio, see Riccardo Pratesi, ‘Antonio da Bitonto’, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. iii (1961), p. 539; on the Creed, see Ferdinand Kattenbusch, Das Apostolische Symbol (Hildesheim: Olms, 1962). 93  See Mario Fois, ‘Il pensiero cristiano di Lorenzo Valla nel quadro storico-culturale del suo ambiente’, Analecta Gregoriana, 174 (1969) 359–82; Attanasio Gaeta, Antonio da Bitonto O.F.M. oratore e teologo del secolo xv (Salerno: Beraglia, 1952), p. 35 ff.

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cal use of vernacular texts of this kind, as is clearly shown by the fact that — as Valla himself writes — Antonio used to teach his young disciples to recite or sing the rimed versions of the Creed in the vernacular.94 As in Busti’s vernacularization of the Decalogue, the aim was clearly to facilitate learning and memorizing of the religious message. Preaching and Interior Conversion Knowing something of the real effects that the sermon could produce on the public is no easy task. As Zafarana has pointed out, we are not even sure of the performance of the preacher in the actual moment of preaching, since sermonarii were mere collections of ‘preaching material’; also, we do not know precisely how much the faithful really got of what the preacher had said.95 All that we know, at bottom, is what was proposed for speaking from the pulpit, except for the rare cases of reports of preached sermons. The Rosarium sermonum makes us infer the type of connection the preacher expected to have with his audience. Busti instructs preachers on the behaviour that the audience was supposed to exhibit in order to make the most of its presence at the sermon, and the necessity for the preacher to instruct the faithful consequently. As a general premise, one should bear in mind the kind of role that the preacher’s own tradition accorded to preaching. During his preaching cycle of 1427, Bernardino da Siena — relying on an argument then used by Franciscans (such as Bernardino da Feltre) and earlier by Dominicans (such as Humbert of Romans and Giordano da Pisa) — urged the faithful to favour public preaching over Sunday Mass, if a choice had to be made between the two.96 94 

See the references in Fois, ‘Il pensiero cristiano di Lorenzo Valla’, p. 365, note 57. See also Rosario Coluccia, ‘Lingua e religione. Il ruolo della Chiesa e l’affermazione del volgare in Puglia’, in Lingue, stili, traduzioni: Studi di linguistica e stilistica italiana offerti a Maria Luisa Altieri Biagi, ed. by F. Frasnedi and R. Tesi (Florence: Cesati, 2004), pp. 71–95; Roberto Rusconi, ‘Pratica cultuale ed istruzione religiosa nelle confraternite italiane del tardo medio evo: libri da compagnia e libri di pietà’, in Le mouvement confraternel au Moyen Age: France, Italie, Suisse: actes de la table ronde, Lausanne, 9–11 mai 1985 (Genève: Librairie Droz, 1987), pp. 133–53 (pp. 147–48). 95  Zelina Zafarana, ‘Per la storia religiosa di Firenze nel Quattrocento. Una raccolta privata di prediche’, in Da Gregorio VII a Bernardino da Siena. Saggi di Storia medievale, ed. by Ovidio Capitani, Claudio Leonardi, Enrico Menestò, and Roberto Rusconi (Florence: La Nuova Italia Editrice, 1987), p. 1018. 96  Bernardino da Siena, Prediche volgari sul Campo di Siena 1427, Sermon  3, ed. by Delcorno, vol. i, p. 149: ‘E se di queste due cose tu non potesse fare altro che l’una, o udire

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Such a decisive approach to the role of preaching became, however, traditional. In Sermon 3 for the Sunday of Quinquagesima, on the issue of whether it was better to attend Mass or preaching, Busti reaffirms that, in case of a non-feast day, it would be better not to miss the sermon since this is ‘more useful for the soul than is the Mass’; in case of a feast day, the believer should consider whether he or she had already been instructed on what is necessary for salvation: in the affirmative case, then the Mass has to be chosen not to contravene the commandment; otherwise — Busti says — it is better to attend the sermon in order to learn what is necessary for salvation.97 Besides the fact that Mass was celebrated in Latin and sermons preached in the vernacular, with the result that the content of the Mass was virtually unintelligible to the average believer, the preference granted to preaching points to the centrality that speech had for the friar, and to the fact that the sermon would also give the preacher more opportunity for delivering tailor-made messages and making contact with the sensibility of the audience. These last two points are indeed at the core of a typically Franciscan Observant pastoral approach.98 In Sermon 2 for the Sunday of Sexagesima, Busti indicates seven basic prerequisites for the faithful in order ‘De verbo Dei fructus reportare’ (‘To take away the fruits of the word of God’).99 The preacher explains that ‘Non sufla messa o udire la predica, tu debbi piuttosto lassare la messa che la predica; imperò che la ragione ci è espressa, che non è tanto pericolo dell’anima tua a non udire la messa, quanto è a non udire la predica.’ (‘If you can only do one of these two things, attending preaching or attending Mass, you should give up Mass rather than the preaching, since it is argued here that there is not so much danger for your soul in not hearing Mass, as in not hearing the preaching.’) 97  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 3: De verbi Dei exhortatione, obligatione, fructi­ ficatione, fol. 15va: ‘Respondeo quod aut est dies non festivus et tunc indistincte credo quod si non possis audire missam et predicationem melius sit audire verbum Dei, quia utilius est anime quam auditio misse […]. Si vero sit dies festivus aut es doctus et sciens necessaria ad salutem aut non. Si primum potius debes audire missam ne facias contra preceptum expressum ecclesie […]. Si vero es ignorans pertinentia ad salutem, que potes discere ad predicationem, et tunc si habes predicatorem sufficientem potius debes dimittere missam.’ Here and hereafter in this chapter I relied on the copy, held in the Library of Collegio Sant’Isidoro in Rome as no. 24, published in Lyon in 1506 by Jean Clein. 98  Cf. Muzzarelli, Pescatori di uomini, p. 25; Paton, Preaching Friars and the Civic Ethos, pp. 324–26. Letizia Pellegrini has spoken of ‘la centralità del predicare’ (Pellegrini, I manoscritti dei predicatori, p. 16). 99  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 2: De septem dispositionibus audientium verbum Dei, fols 8va–12va: the quotations that follow are taken from this passage. On the relationship between the words preached and the ‘fruits’ of preaching, see Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, ed., From Words to Deeds: The Effectiveness of Preaching in the Late Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols,

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ficit ad conversionem peccatoris seminatio predicationis nisi adsit etiam bona dispositio auditoris’ (‘For the conversion of the sinner the propagation of preaching is not enough, unless the listener is also properly disposed’). These dispositions are, according to Busti, accessio (attendance): believers must go to listen to sermons since, the preacher says, in order to understand something, it is necessary that one ‘Vadat et audiat doctores illius artis’ (‘goes and listen to the experts in that art’); festinatio (timeliness): one has to go attend a sermon on time and from the beginning, and avoid showing up after it has already begun; Busti warns that ‘Ut veniat in principio predicationis, contra multos qui somno aut sensualitate aut cupiditate lucri retenti numquam veniunt nisi ad medium predicationis’ (‘Thus, that [the faithful] should come at the beginning of preaching, as opposed to many who held back by sleep, sensual pleasure, or desire for profit, sometimes only arrive in the middle of sermon’); continuatio (perseverance): the listener has to attend a sermon ‘A principio usque ad finem’ (‘From the beginning to the end’), and furthermore, Busti adds, one should not simply attend one sermon, ‘Sed oportet quod vadat ad omnes predicationes que fiunt in Quadragesima’ (‘But it is necessary that [he/she] attends all the sermons that are delivered in Lent’), unless some important impediment arises, he says; attentio (attention): referring to the apocryphal Proverbia Senecae, Busti stresses that ‘Nullum exercitium bonum redditur ubi est discursus aut vagatio animi’ (‘No activity produces a good outcome where the mind races about, or wanders’); creditio (trust): one must believe what the preacher says, and questioning auctoritates is not allowed; susceptio (reception): one must keep in mind what has been heard; operatio (operation) is the seventh and last point, directly related to the previous one, and states that one must put into practice what has been learned from the sermon: this is the hoped-for outcome that according to Busti should be provided to those who ‘a predicatoribus evangelizantur’ (‘are evangelized by the preachers’). To evangelize (or, rather, in this case, re-evangelize) is the aim of all preaching. Although we cannot determine to what extent preachers were successful in their efforts of evangelization, nevertheless, we can note that they were well aware that their sermons could not be considered effective unless the audience accepted them consciously. Busti knows this, and provides a checklist to help friars to attain the goal of moral conversion of believers. The outcome hoped

2014); Roberto Rusconi, ‘Dal pulpito alla confessione. Modelli di comportamento religioso in Italia tra 1470 circa e 1520 circa’, in Strutture ecclesiastiche in Italia e in Germania prima della Riforma, ed. by Paolo Prodi and P. Johanek (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1984), pp. 259–315 (p. 274).

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for is not achieved with a passively receptive audience, but with one that is actively engaged: ‘Non sufficit audire verbum Dei et postea non operari’ (‘It is not enough to listen to the word of God and not put it into practice afterwards’), the preacher writes. Preaching is not automatically effective. The active disposition of the listener is a prerequisite for its full success. This is also clearly a trait of the relationship between pulpit and audience. This is the reason for stressing the importance of attentiveness during the sermon’s delivery. For the same reason, impeding the preacher in his work can be an even more serious matter. In several cases, Busti says, it happened that preachers were deliberately annoyed and interrupted by individuals who wanted to hinder their preaching. On these occasions, however, he warns, some calamity immediately occurred and the causer of the disturbance was severely punished. Thus, according to Busti’s tale, in Crema a knight kept inveighing against ‘predicator unus ordinis nostri’ (‘a preacher of our order’), but as soon as the man left and went through the crowd, he was murdered; in the diocese of Vercelli, Busti continues, ‘predicante ibi uno fratre nostro’ (‘where one of our preachers was preaching’) a young man kept playing his drums and dancing in front of the church where the friar was preaching, but he died soon after the preacher had consigned him to damnation.100 Busti’s exempla aim at emphasizing that the task of the preacher is an important one, since he represents the plans of God himself for converting humanity to his peace, and that those who disrespect the words of the preacher are, therefore, disrespectful of Christ.101 Precisely because friars are God’s servants, they also are not exempt from deserved punishment if they doubt accepted truths of the faith. Thus, in the Mariale, Busti tells how In quadam terra Ytalie dum quidam religiosus contra conceptionem b(eatae) Virginis predicaret dixit: ‘Rogo Virginem Mariam ut de veritate a me predicata aliquam faciat demonstrationem.’ Statimque hoc dicto, una parte fundi pulpiti super quo erat cadente, ipse deorsum corruens usque ad cingulum pannis suis omnibus desuper remanentibus cum esset sine femoralibus et antiphona toti populo ludibrium fuit.102 In a certain Italian town, some religious man preaching against the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin, said: ‘I pray the Virgin Mary that she gives me 100 

Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 3, fol. 15vb. 101  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 3, fol. 15vb: ‘Quicumque contristaverit predicatorem veritatis peccat in Christum. […] Predicator enim est legatus Dei quem mittit ad reformandam pacem cum hominibus.’ 102  Busti, Mariale, Part i, Sermon 9, fol. eiia.

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some proof of the truth I preach.’ Immediately as he said so, part of the base of the pulpit he was on collapsed, he fell through up to his waist, and his clothes were all caught up [above the platform], so that as he was wearing no drawers or underpants he was an object of derision to the whole audience.

This vivid exemplum gives us an idea of the quarrels going on among different parties amongst the religious orders: all friars were working for the same aim, the moral conversion of the faithful by means of preaching, yet, truth was clearly not the exclusive gift of any of them. In considering preaching as a means for moral conversion, one can wonder whether the sermon can be viewed as a pastoral instrument for the ‘acculturation’ of the urban masses in the long process of European Christianization. This implies the consideration of elements in preaching pointing to different cultural levels.103 Without resuming the debate concerning the concept of acculturation — with the related division between learned and popular cultures — one can admit the difficulty that historiography has encountered in applying it to early modern Europe, even if one puts to one side the need for agreement on the meaning of culture (and to its fitting to a specific context). Peter Burke has preferred to speak of a process of ‘“negotiation” of official religion, in the sense of its adaptation or reinterpretation to suit the needs of ordinary people’.104 The core of Burke’s proposition still points to the confrontation of layers (‘official religion’, ‘ordinary people’) that experience some degree of cultural difference, with the need that one of the two adapts itself in order to better meet the other. The point is also to agree on what lies beyond the supposed ‘adaptation’ of the representatives of official religion, or on whether the object of their attempt to suit the needs of ordinary people was to produce change in their religious habits. In this case, we acknowledge the presence of 103  Jean Delumeau has employed both the terms acculturation and christianization to describe the long path of Europe to becoming a Christian continent, although he has referred rather to the period starting with the sixteenth-century reformations: Jean Delumeau, Un chemin d’histoire: Chrétienté et christianisation (Paris: Fayard, 1981), p. 138 ff; Jean Delumeau, ‘Pre­scription and reality’, in Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Edmund Leites (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988; 2nd ed. 2002), pp. 134–58; Jean Delumeau, Le Catholicisme entre Luther et Voltaire (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1992), pp. 237 ff. and 266 ff. For a problematization of these issues see John Van Engen, ‘The Christian Middle Ages as an Historiographical Problem’, The American Historical Review, 91– 93 (1986), 519–52. 104  Peter Burke, ‘A Question of Acculturation?’, in Scienze, credenze occulte, livelli di cultura: Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Firenze, 26–30 giugno 1980 (Florence: Olschki, 1982), pp. 197–204 (p. 204).

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a perceived gap between the ‘ordinary people’ and the set of rules, specified by others, which they were supposed to embrace. This constitutes a religious, behavioural, intellectual, in a word cultural gap that seems to find in the diverse intellectual instruments and goals of the social actors under discussion one of its main fixed points. In this regard, trying to give a more specific definition of acculturation, Stuart Clark has spoken of ‘acculturation by text’, implying ‘the perception of a great disparity between the donors and recipients of cultural goods’, which he relates particularly to the domain of demonology and witchcraft.105 This seems indeed an interesting point. As far as the pastoral texts of the Milanese friars are concerned, Clark’s definition is able to include more generally the attitude of the preachers concerning the everyday life of their flocks, whom they aimed to instruct through established written pastoral and theological traditions in order to begin a change that can be considered to be of a cultural nature, since it implied an entire set of values and reference points in everyday life, and not just in matters of religion. On the whole, late medieval preaching appears to be above all a means for conversion. The friars dealt with people who were already Christian believers, though, so we should rather see it as a call to a more explicit (and at the same time more interior) type of Christian life. This is a type of conversion that would concern morality in virtually all the domains of life. What changed was the benchmark on the basis of which one should be considered a Christian, now well beyond mere formal acceptance of faith. Building the steps to this type of conversion allows the reaffiliation of the faithful with the Christian community the preachers are eager to create.106 This is a process of religious education and propaganda carried out by the friars, who claimed a particular role for religion and piety in people’s everyday life.107 This also leads to the problem of the supposed institutionalizing of a sort of cultural hegemony on the part of the clergy. Although, in general terms, this approach can make sense, it is not easy to measure its real consistency, since 105 

Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 512. 106  On ‘conversion’ and ‘reaffiliation’ as sociological concepts, see Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, eds, Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion (Berkeley and Los Angeles, Uni­ver­sity of California Press, 2000), pp. 114–15. 107  See Giovanni Miccoli, ‘La storia religiosa’, in Storia d’Italia: Dalla caduta dell’Impero Romano al secolo xviii, ed. by Ruggiero Romano and Corrado Vivanti (Milan: Il Sole 24 Ore, 2005), p. 838.

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almost every possible analysis can only be based on sources that are normally produced by the self-same representatives of the supposedly hegemonic circles.108 Further, even if there were a process of hegemonization, it was far from being an uncontested one. Ultimately, if we are to speak of hegemony at all, preaching was clearly one of the major channels through which it was deployed. Communicative processes are always central in shaping religious identities, but they are also dialogical and multifaceted by nature. Undoubtedly, the characteristic pastoral care, based on preaching and confession, frames what have been called ‘discursive formations’, which are both systems for interpreting the world and ‘processes of institutionalization and materialization’.109 The issue is the role of the words articulated by cultural elites in building power, since discourses can influence non-discursive elements basically becoming instruments of power. The sermo can have been one of those instruments. One can even wonder whether sources such as sermons, as well as other learned literary texts, might offer a view of the dialogical character inherent to those communicative processes. Carlo Ginzburg has explained how the dialogical structure of a text can be either explicit — particularly in archival texts such as inquisitorial trials or confessions of accused people — or implicit, as in ethnographic notes describing a rite, a myth or an instrument.110 From this point of view, a sermon as source would fall somewhere within the data cluster revealing an implicit dialogical structure to the extent that the preacher — who is generally also a confessor and sometimes even an inquisitor — provides narrative elements drawn from his everyday duties of pastoral care within the populace. Some exempla from the preacher’s own experience offer the possibility of grasping the human connections that were occurring at the moment the narrated event took place, as when they relate a discussion between the preacher and an illiterate person. Exempla ultimately testify to the need of the preachers for a smoother way to communicate with their unlearned flock, according to a precise way of complying to their pastoral spirit, since, as we read in a booklet circulating under the name of Bernardino da Siena but actually connected to a milieu close to Michele Carcano, they were urged to take note of anything relevant they might happen to see or hear ‘as that comes in useful to you’.111 108 

Cf. Pellegrini, ‘Cultura e devozioni’, p. 409. Kocku Von Stuckrad, Locations of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 4–5, 16. 110  Carlo Ginzburg, Il filo e le tracce: Vero falso finto (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2006), p. 274. 111  Doctrina sancti Bernardini de conditionibus predicatoris, fol. 3r, in Delcorno, ‘L’Osser­ 109 

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This does not mean the dissolution of the divide that existed between the preacher and the faithful, though; as Schmitt reminds us the role of the exemplum is still ancillary to ‘the speech of authority’.112 Giacomo della Marca reported that once a certain mulier malefica had a church built in the countryside and led all the inhabitants of the area to that church. Giacomo tells how, when he asked her by whose authority she had built that church, she answered: ‘ex auctoritate divina’ (‘by divine authority’), clearly believing in the lawfulness of her conduct. It was only later, as described by the preacher, that his questions led her to change her version of the events: ‘Et nesciens respondere dixit coram populo: miserere quia venit diabolus’ (‘And not knowing what to answer, [she] said in front of the people: have mercy on me because the devil came’). In the end, she confirmed the impression of the friar that it had been the devil who convinced her to build the chapel.113 Can this tale be considered as showing a hidden dialogical structure? Probably the occurrence of some kind of dialogue can be grasped. The preacher voluntarily offers to his reader details tracing the different steps in a typical dialogical sequence. Obviously, one has to consider the consequence of employing literary models and topoi in the plot of the tale. Still, it is precisely in the balance or imbalance among elements of different origin that the existence of a dialogical background connected to communicative processes and creation of identities can be measured in a sermon. Ultimately, the heart of what we are inquiring into here seems directly connected to the possibility of using the literary medium to grasp the social and cultural background of the preacher’s pastoral activity. All of which implies the need to identify the communicative process beyond the structure of the sermon. From this point of view, one has to admit, with Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby, that, most works on medieval and Renaissance Christian preaching tend to concentrate on the sermon as a literary text, rather than on the role(s) of the preacher within society.114 In my study, I shall follow this latter track, trying vanza francescana e il rinnovamento della predicazione’, p. 26: ‘Si quid notabile vides vel audis, nota, quia venit tibi in propositum.’ 112  See Claude Bremond, Jacques Le Goff, and Jean-Claude Schmitt, L’exemplum, Typologie de sources du Moyen Âge occidental, 40 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1982; repr. 1996), p. 164; Claire M. Waters, Angels and Earthly Creatures: Preaching, Performance, and Gender in the Later Middle Ages (Philadelphia: Uni­ver­sity of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), pp. 62–66. 113  Giacomo della Marca, Sermones dominicales, Sermon 27, ed. by Renato Lioi, 3 vols (Falconara Marittima: Biblioteca Francescana, 1978), vol. i, pp. 422–23. 114  Debby, Renaissance Florence, p. 8.

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to investigate and retrace the role of preaching and confession as means to describe and offer believers religious and moral models. This becomes clearer when approaching the problem of sin — and of the multiple ways in which the friars classified it — from a much closer perspective.

Chapter 3

Tallying Sins between the Thirteenth and Fifteenth Centuries: The Use of Classificatory Grids

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n the previous chapter, taking Bernardino Busti as the main example, I have described the principal features of preaching among the third generation of Observant Franciscan preachers. Confession and preaching were the two sides of a single coin of pastoral care in which different kinds of grids classify sin and direct human morals. It is through an analysis of the pastoral context of what Jean Delumeau has called ‘un monde pécheur’ that we approach the core of our topic: the ways of considering and classifying superstition, a distinctively multifaceted sin.1

Confessing Sins, Preaching Confession By the time of Bernadino Busti’s death, the principles of Canon  21 Omnis Utriusque Sexus issued by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 had come a long way: three centuries had passed from what has been characterized as ‘the first great assembly of the whole Church since Late Antiquity’.2 The canon 1 

See Jean Delumeau, Le péché et la peur: La culpabilisation en Occident (xiii–xviii siècle) (Paris: Fayard, 1983), p. 129 ff. 2  Brenda Bolton, Innocent III: Studies on Papal Authority and Pastoral Care (Aldershot: Variorum, 1995), p. 57. Bolton defines the Fourth Lateran Council as ‘a show with a meaning’: the careful preparation of the Council reflected the creation of the most important body of disciplinary and reform legislation of the medieval Church. See Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta, ed. by Alberigo and others, p. 245.

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stated the obligation for individual auricular confession at least once a year, and for Easter communion for the faithful of both sexes.3 For the first time the mechanism of an articulated form of private confession was put in motion, placing the confessor and the penitent in direct and exclusive connection. This type of confession has been seen as one of the instruments through which a progressively institutionalized Church handled the everyday religious life of believers. This view is part of a more complex discourse characterizing medieval Christianity, defined by ‘the existence of a church, of a clergy, of a dogma’: an aspect that distinguishes Christianity from all other religions, and inevitably brings to mind its post-medieval developments.4 Closely related to all this is the process of elaboration of the principles of faith on the part of the clergy, and the employment through time of specific instruments for disseminating such principles among the laity. By ‘principles of faith’ I mean the doctrinal elements of Catholic faith elaborated by juridical and theological reflection and systematized over time by papal councils and synods. From this point of view, preaching and confession, reinforced and shaped by the Lateran IV, are considered some of the main channels through which those principles were disseminated to the laity; as we know, the role of the friars in this process was predominant, although not exclusive. Pope  Gregory  IX identified the Mendicants with the viri idonei about whom Canon  10, De Praedicatoribus Instituendis, of the Fourth Lateran Council had spoken.5 The function of the viri idonei was to engender support for the pastoral activities of the bishops. There was a rapid increase of the role of Mendicant friars in managing the pastoral reorganization of parishes according to the canons of 1215. This was due to the slight interest shown by synodical legislation for the Italian peninsula, which led the Mendicants to take the 3 

On the canon and its relevance in the history of confession, see Groupe de la Bussière, Pratiques de la confession des Pères du desert à Vatican II: Quinze études d’histoire (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1983), pp. 13–136; Ilarino da Milano, ‘Le concepte de réforme comme solution des tensions religieuses au xiii siècle’, in The Church in a Changing Society: ConflictReconciliation or Adjustment? Proceedings of the CIHEC Conference in Uppsala, August 17–21, 1977 (Uppsala: Publications of the Swedish Society of Church History, 1978), pp. 48–54; and Pierre-Marie Gy, ‘Le précepte de la confession annuelle et la nécessité de la confession’, Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques, 63 (1979), 529–47. 4  Jean-Claude Schmitt, ‘Les superstitions’, in Histoire de la France religieuse, ed. by Jacques Le Goff and René Rémond, 4 vols (Paris: Seuil, 1988), vol. i, pp. 417–551 (p. 419). 5  Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta, ed. by Alberigo and others, pp. 239–40. Cf. MarieHumbert Vicaire, ‘Sacerdoce et prédication aux origines de l’ordre des Precheurs’, Revue des Sciences philosophiques et théologiques, 64 (1980), 241–54; see Rusconi, L’ordine dei peccati, p. 121.

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place of parish clergy in pastoral care.6 Along with the yearly obligation to confession, there is another important aspect of the Canon Omnis Utriusque Sexus: the obligation to confess proprio sacerdoti, to one’s own parish priest. Although this was not to be widely respected, a number of papal dispositions definitively confirmed the shift of preaching and confessional duties into the hands of the friars.7 Canon 21 of Lateran IV would thus go on through the following centuries, until it was confirmed and recognized by the Council of Trent.8 The dynamism of the canon is still attested to in 1517 by a parish priest such as Florentius Diel, who was active in the diocese of Mainz since 1491. Diel specified the duties related to confession urging his flock to go to confession at Easter on the basis of Canon 21.9 Inquiry into the role that preaching and confession played in pastoral care and in the moral formation of the laity has a long tradition in scholarship. Michel Foucault directed us to analyse confession as ‘one of the main rituals we rely on for the production of truth’, and we are aware of the role of the Fourth Lateran Council as a starting point in this regard.10 Roberto Rusconi has pointed out how, after that council, preachers and confessors began to per6 

Zafarana, Da Gregorio VII a Bernardino da Siena, pp. 201–02. The bulls Nimis iniqua and Nimis prava, both written in 1231, were followed by the Sicut olim in 1234, all issued by Pope Gregory IX, who in response to German prelates confirmed and supported the pastoral efforts of the Friars Minor. Issued by the same pope in 1237, the Quoniam abundavit iniquitas ordered that the friars had to be accepted by the clergy as preachers and that they were not to be obstructed as confessors of those who approached their preaching. It was a constitutional regulation concerning the pastoral activities carried out by the friars, in which it was even possible to recognize a close connection between preaching and confession. An almost identical letter had already been addressed in 1227 to Dominican friars. With the bull Super Cathedram, issued by Boniface VIII on 18 February 1300, again expressing itself in favour of the Mendicants, the trend would remain unchanged until the Council of Trent. See Celsus Uyttenbroeck, ‘Le droit pénitentiel des religieux de Boniface VIII à Sixte IV’, Études Franciscaines, 47 (1935), 171–89; Hugolin Lippens, ‘Le droit nouveau des Mendiants en conflit avec le droit coutumier du clergé séculier du Concile de Vienne à celui de Trente’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 47 (1954), 241–92; Prodi, Una storia della giustizia, pp. 80–83; and Rusconi, L’ordine dei peccati, pp. 105–60. 8  At the Council of Trent the issues of penance and confession were dealt with at the Sixth Session in 1547 and at the Fourteenth Session in 1551. See Adriano Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza: Inquisitori, confessori, missionari (Turin: Einaudi, 1996), p. 265 ff. 9  See Mertens, ‘Clero secolare e cura d’anime’, pp. 258–62. 10  Michael Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 3 vols (New York: Vintage Books, 1978–79), vol. i: An Introduction, p. 56. See also Dyan Elliott, Proving Woman: Female Spirituality and 7 

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form a more precise function in the transmission of themes and modes of the Catholic faith. It was the preacher’s responsibility to lay out from the pulpit the articles of faith to be believed and the behaviours to be followed, while it was up to the confessor to check the extent of the acceptance at the individual level of what the preacher had preached.11 Letizia Pellegrini has outlined how from the thirteenth century onwards the action of the Mendicant friars functioned ‘at a more profound level’ providing society with ‘new categories and instruments of thought’.12 Such a process relied on the standardized education of the friars at a European level, assured by their studia, and the means of transmission of their message to the faithful, mainly the sermo modernus. Ultimately, auricular confession as well as attendance at sermons became crucial moments in the shaping of religious identities in the Italian cities between the Middle Ages and the early modern Period. This also needs to be contextualized within the multifaceted efforts of the Observant reformers towards the instruction and moral formation of the populace.13 Speaking of the Tridentine age, Adriano Prosperi has emphasized that, as to the role to be given in that age to matters such as conscience and confession, ‘it is difficult err in the direction of excess; rather, one might fall into the opposing error of not giving them the right relevance’.14 Further, relying on Hubert Jedin, Prosperi has recognized the conservative role played by the Council of Trent with regard to confession, since it actually recapitulated the medieval juridical dispositions. I agree with Prosperi in considering the increasing importance of confession as well as the issues related to individual conscience in the early modern Period, especially in the age of Reformation and CounterInquisitional Culture in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton Uni­ver­sity Press, 2004), p. 14. 11  Rusconi, ‘Reportatio’, pp. 34–35. See also Roberto Rusconi, ‘La vita religiosa nel tardo Medioevo: fra istituzione e devozione’, in Chiesa, chiese, movimenti religiosi, ed. by Glauco Maria Cantarella (Rome: Laterza 2001), pp. 189–254; Anne T. Thayer, Penitence, Preaching, and the Coming of the Reformation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002). 12  Pellegrini, ‘Cultura e devozioni’, pp. 407–08. 13  See Costanzo Cargnoni, ‘Frati minori osservanti e letteratura spirituale nel ‘400 e primo ‘500 fra pietà e devozione’, in Il beato Antonio da Stroncone: Atti delle giornate di studio. Stron­ cone, 4 maggio 1996 e 29 novembre 1997, ed. by Mario Sensi (Assisi: Edizioni Porziuncola, 1999), pp. 161–97; and Pietro Delcorno, ‘“Quomodo discet sine docente?” Observant Efforts towards Education and Pastoral Care’, in A Companion to Observant Reform in the Late Middle Ages and Beyond, ed. by James Mixson and Bert Roest (Leiden: Brill, 2015), pp. 145–84. 14  Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza, pp. 213 and 260.

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Reformation (or Catholic Reform), which in many instances would reuse the medieval juridical and theological categories. On the other hand, it seems that the development of pastoral care and the specific role played in this regard by the Observant preachers of the fifteenth century have not been fully considered and situated against the background of coeval tendencies and future outcomes. The Observant Franciscans of St Angelo’s in Milan develop a coherent set of pastoral texts and promote a definite approach to sin and moral education. As I shall show soon, they also put forward a characteristic way to cope with superstition as part of their comprehensive pastoral approach. Returning to the initial point, one can recognize that through the organization of their material and the continuous insistence on the importance of penitence, the sermonarii discussed here point to a close, almost symbiotic connection between preaching and confession.15 In the preacher’s mind this constitutes a kind of central thread within the relationship between the pulpit and the square. It is important, therefore, to consider the social presence of the friars and the increasing attention they pay to the behaviour of the faithful through the use of a ‘penitential law’ related to the obligation to confession.16 The tendency towards the juridicization — and the ‘romanization’ — of penitential practice with the connection between preaching and confession is exemplified already between the 1330s and 1340s in the illuminated incipit of the Tractatus de Poenitentia, which is q. 3, c. 33 of Part II of the Decretum Gratiani.17 The miniature represents a friar preaching from the height of a pulpit, to whom another friar hearing the confession of a penitent kneeling at his feet is joined.18 15  Giacomo della Marca, Sermones dominicales, ed. by Lioi, vol. i, pp. 268 and 301 also says he composed his sermon on marriage ‘ad instructionem confessorum’, as well as having added casus in his sermon on confession ‘ad intellectum confessorum et confitentium’. 16  Ovidio Capitani, ‘Verso un diritto del quotidiano’, in Dalla penitenza all’ascolto delle confessioni: il ruolo dei frati mendicanti. Atti del xxiii Convegno della Società Internazionale di Studi Francescani (Assisi, 12–14 ottobre 1995) (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1996), pp. 6–29 (pp. 5–6). See Michaud-Quantin, ‘La conscience individuelle’, p. 52; Pierre Michaud-Quantin, ‘A propos des premières summae confessorum: théologie et droit canonique’, Recherches de Théologie ancienne et médiévale, 26 (1959), 265–306 (p. 295); Prodi, Una storia della giustizia, pp. 64 ff, 76 ff, and 83; and Rusconi, L’ordine dei peccati, pp. 27–28 and 57 ff. 17  But the Tractatus is not entirely due to Gratian. See Anders Winroth, The Making of Gratian’s Decretum (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 2000), p. 13. 18  See Anthony Melnikas, ed., The Corpus of the Miniatures in the Manuscripts of Decretum Gratiani, 3 vols (Rome: Libreria Ateneo Salesiano, 1975); Prodi, Una storia della giustizia,

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Figure 3. Ugolino di Prete Ilario, ‘Woman confessing her sins to a friar’, Cappella del Corporale, Orvieto, c. 1357. © Opera del Duomo di Orvieto.

The iconographical evidence also shows the emergence of a practice related to hearing confession that differed both from the high Middle Ages and from the practice that became common after the council of Trent. Between the Fourth Lateran Council and the Council of Trent confession was auricular and individual with nothing to physically separate the penitent from the confessor. In one of the frames of the cycle painted in fresco that Ugolino di Prete Ilario produced in the mid fourteenth century in the Chapel of the Corporal, in Orvieto Cathedral, to celebrate the famous miracle of Bolsena (which occurred p. 76 ff; Rusconi, L’ordine dei peccati, p. 167; and Delcorno, ‘Medieval Preaching in Italy’, p. 451.

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in 1263), a mulier is represented kneeling at the feet of a friar confessing her sin involving a host (Figure 3).19 The frontispieces of confessional manuals often employed this typical image of the act of confession, as in the case of the wellknown confessionale of Michele Carcano (Figure 4). The wooden confessional we can see in Catholic churches is a typical post-Tridentine addition introduced for the first time by Gian Maria Giberti, bishop of Verona, during the fourth decade of the sixteenth century, as the Constitutiones that he published for his diocese in 1542 indicate. Such a tool was basically intended to render visual contact between the confessor and the penitent more difficult, since eye contact might have been particularly embarrassing with female penitents. Carlo Borromeo, the Milanese bishop, contributed largely to the spread of the confessional between 1564 and 1584. It was only in 1614, however, that the Rituale Romanum made the use of the confessional mandatory in every church.20 When speaking of confession in the preTridentine period, therefore, one has to bear in mind this basic difference from the typical idea of confession in the Catholic world, which is based on a postTridentine image. Thus, in the fifteenth century, eye contact and physical proximity between confessor and penitent were still common. We can certainly imagine the moment of confessing one’s sins as an experience charged with emotion. As seems clear, raising the emotional level was one of the aims of the confessor during the interrogation of the penitent, as the confession manuals indicate. The sources central to this study show an approach largely characterized by the aim of affecting the everyday life of the faithful, with a particular attention to those issues — often classified under the species of sin — that had an impact in the social sphere. This can be considered a sphere in which late fifteenthcentury Observant Franciscan friars were absolute masters.21 19 

See Catherine Harding, ‘Speaking Pictures: Cognition, Spiritual Understanding and the Decoration of the Chapel of the Corporal in the late Middle Ages’, Vivens homo, 18. 1 (2008), 245–53; Corrado Fratini, ‘Pittura e Miniatura ad Orvieto dal xii al xiv Secolo’, in Storia di Orvieto: Medioevo, ed. by G. della Fina and C. Fratini (Pisa: Orvieto, 2007), pp. 478–81. 20  Rituale Romanum Editio Typica 1952, ed. by Manlio Sodi, Alessandro Toniolo (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2000), p. 141 ff; Rusconi, L’ordine dei peccati, pp. 331–35. The interesting use of ‘architectural confessionals’ is attested in the Franciscan Province of Bologna. See Roberto Cobianchi, ‘The Practice of Confession and Franciscan Observant Churches: New Architectural Arrangements in Early Renaissance Italy’, in Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 69 (2006), 289–304. 21  Cf. Rusconi, ‘Manuali milanesi di confessione’, p. 112.

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Figure 4. Michele Carcano, Confessionale generale de la gran tuba (Venice: Agostino Bindoni, 1525), frontispiece. © Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma.

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The Process of the ‘Multiplication of Sins’ The scholarship dealing with sin and confession is vast.22 Among the numerous authors who have dealt with this theme, Thomas Tentler aimed to foster a new approach that would consider the available vast body of sociological and psychological knowledge in order to study confession as a means through which the Church displayed a form of control over society.23 John Bossy has also spoken of medieval confession as a system to regulate collective behaviours; and Jean Delumeau examined the role of social and religious control over the individual conscience through the sacrament of confession, which he has also contextualized within a broader consideration of the history of fear.24 More recently, a scholarly conversation on penitence and penance, focusing on the sense of shame, has been initiated, mostly originating from the issue of fear itself.25 Penitence, confession, and sin clearly are multifaceted issues, within which religious, social, and moral phenomena are deeply intertwined. At the centre of this discourse is the increasing number of particular types of grids by which the confessor was to organize his interrogation of the penitent, in order to identify and evaluate possible deviations from religious norms, a process that mirrored changes in the social life of the period between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries. This phenomenon has been described as ‘the multiplication of sins’ by Carla Casagrande.26 It has its foundation as 22 

Delumeau, Le péché et la peur, p. 129 ff. Thomas Tentler, Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation (Princeton: Princeton Uni­ver­sity Press, 1977), preface p. xii. 24  John Bossy, ‘The Social History of Confession in the Age of the Reformation’, Trans­ actions of the Royal Historical Society, 25 (1975), 21–38; Jean Delumeau, L’aveu et le pardon: les difficultes de la confession, xiiie–xviiie siècle (Paris: Fayard, 1990); Delumeau, Le péché et la peur, pp. 211 ff and 369 ff. 25  Bénédicte Sère and Jörg Wettlaufer, eds, Shame Between Punishment and Penance: The Social Usages of Shame in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times (Florence: SISMEL Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2013). In this volume, see especially Bénédicte Sère and Jörg Wettlaufer, ‘Introduction’, pp. xxxiii–xliv, and Franco Morenzoni, ‘La bonne et la mauvaise honte dans la littérature pénitentielle et la prédication (fin xiie–début xiiie siècle)’, pp. 177–93, and also Catherine Vincent, ‘Pastorale de la honte, pastorale de la grâce en Occident entre le xiie et le xve siècle’, pp. 157–75. 26  Carla Casagrande, ‘La moltiplicazione dei peccati: I cataloghi dei peccati nella letteratura pastorale dei secoli xiii–xv’, in La peste nera: dati di una realtà ed elementi di un’interpretazione. Atti del xxx Convegno storico internazionale, Todi, 10–13 ottobre 1993 (Spoleto: Centro italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1994), pp. 253–84. 23 

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early as the reflection of Distinctio 42 of Peter Lombard’s Sententiae (liber II) — one of the great sources for the background of preaching — in which the theologian explains the multifaceted nature of sin connected first of all to the Seven Deadly Sins, and to a number of other schemes including the Decalogue. Distinctio 42 represents the point of departure from which further elaboration would follow concerning the nature of sin and its possible ramifications during the age of Scholasticism.27 In handbooks for confession and collections of sermons the different ways of classifying sin are indicated. We have already mentioned that Bartolomeo Caimi in his Interrogatorium envisaged a way of interrogating the penitent through five main schemes: the articles of faith, the sacraments, the Ten Commandments, the Seven Deadly Sins, and the deeds of mercy. A larger polyschematization of the typologies of sin is exemplified by Carcano in his vernacular Confessionale generale de la gran tuba. Carcano relied on nine schemes of classification in instructing the confessor how to evaluate the penitent: E poi el sacerdote lo domandi de li dodeci articoli de la fede […] e poi domandi de diece comandamenti de la lege […] e poi comenza domandar de li sette peccati mortali […]. Veduto e domandato di sette peccati mortali secondo che pare a li sacerdoti […] resta a veder de cinque sentimenti. Et primo del vedere […] de auditu […] de odoratu […] de gustu […] de tactu. […] Dio li ha donato uno triplice septenario de virtù: unde lo primo se contiene in sette virtù principale. Fede, speranza, carità, prudentia, temperantia, iustitia, forteza. […] Dopo le predicte virtude lo eterno Dio orna la creatura […] con la donatione di sette beatitudini […]: beati li poveri de lo spirito. Beati li humili et pietosi. Beati chi piange li peccati. Beati chi possede la iustitia. Beati li mundi del core. Beati li pacifici. Beati li misericordiosi. Ancora lo eterno Dio […] per roborar et confortar et fortificar la humana generatione li ha donati sette doni amplissimi e grandi […] di spiritosancto […] cioè donum sapientie, donum scientie, donum consilli, donum timoris Domini, donum intellectus, donum pietatis, donum fortitudinis. […] Habiando el peccator confessato tutte le sopraditte cose ancora conviene che ‘l dica sua colpa di sette sacramenti de la Sancta Madre Giesia: cioè se mai havesse dubitato di alcuni d’essi: e se non li havesse honorati come l’è obligato de fare. Li sacramenti sono questi: cioè baptismo, la chresma, li ordeni sacri, la confessio, lo matrimonio, el corpo de Christo, la unctione extrema. […] Resta a vedere le opere de la misericordia, de le quale […] tu dei sapere che alcune son l’opere de la misericordia spirituale e alcune son corporale 27 

Peter Lombard, Sententiae in IV libris distinctae, 2 vols in 3 parts (Grottaferrata: Frati Editori di Quaracchi, 1971–81), vol. I, part II, pp. 566–72. Cf. Carla Casagrande, and Silvana Vecchio, ‘La classi­ficazione dei peccati tra settenario e decalogo (secoli xiii–xv)’, Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale, 5 (1994), 331–95 (p. 334 ff and passim).

Tallying Sins between the Thirteenth and Fifteenth Centuries […]: visito l’infermi, li prisoneri, le vedove, li orphani […]; poto, cioè dar bevere a chi ha sete, e non del pegior vino che t’habi […]; cibo, cioè de dar manzar a chi non ha da poter vivere, a chi ha fame […]; redimo, cioè de riscoder color che son in prisone […]; tego, scilicet debi vestir li nudi li quali son disfati per le disgratie di questo mondo […]; colligo, cioè che tu debi dar albergo alli peregrini […]; condo, cioè debi sepelir li morti e pregar Dio per lor. […] Le opere de la misericordia spirituale aduncha sono sette […]: consule, cioè dà consilio a chi te pare chi ha de bisogno; castiga, cioè color che fano male con humilità e mansuetudine; doce, amaistra color che non fano con benignità; remitte, cioè perdona a chi te offende; solare, cioè conforta color che sono ne la tribulatione; fer, porta in pace li defecti del tuo proximo; ora, prega per chi te offende.28 And then the priest asks about the twelve articles of the Christian faith, […] then he asks about the Ten Commandments of the law, […] and then he begins to ask about the Seven Deadly Sins; […] once having seen and asked about the Seven Deadly Sins according to the views of priests […] it remains to look at the five senses. Firstly eyesight, hearing, olfaction, taste, […] touch. […] God has given three sets of seven virtues: the first one consists of seven principal virtues. Faith, hope, charity, prudence, temperance, justice, fortitude. […] After the aforementioned virtues the eternal God adorns the creature […] with the gift of the seven beatitudes […]: blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are the humble and pious. Blessed are those who weep for their sins. Blessed are those who have righteousness. Blessed are the pure in heart. Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are the merciful. Again, the eternal God […] has offered to the human generation the seven most generous and great gifts […] of the Holy Spirit […] which are the gift of wisdom, the gift of knowledge, the gift of counsel, the gift of fear of the Lord, the gift of understanding, the gift of piety, the gift of fortitude […]. Once the sinner has confessed all the aforementioned things, it is still fitting that he confess his guilt about the seven sacraments of the Holy Mother Church: in other words if he has ever had doubts about any of them, and if he has not honoured them as he is obliged to do. The sacraments are these: baptism, confirmation, holy orders, confession, marriage, Holy Communion, extreme unction. […] What remains to be seen are the works of mercy, of which […] you must know that some are those of spiritual mercy and others are those of bodily mercy: […] to visit the sick, prisoners, widows, and orphans […]; to give drink, that is to offer drink to the thirsty, and not the worst kind of wine you have; […] to feed that is to offer something to eat to someone who does not have a livelihood and is hungry […]; to set free those who are imprisoned; […] to cover, that is you ought to clothe those who are naked because of the worldly accidents […]; to gather together, that is you ought to give hospitality to pilgrims […]; to bury, that is you ought to bury the dead and pray to God for them. […] The spiritual works of mercy

28 

Carcano, Confessionale generale de la gran tuba, fols Aiiiv–[B8]r.

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are also seven […]: counsel, that is to advise those who seem to you to have need of it; admonishment, that is of those who do wrong, with humility and kindness; forgiveness, that is pardon those who have done you wrong; consolation, that is comfort those who are in tribulation; forbearance, that is tolerate in peace the faults of your neighbour; prayer, pray for those who do you wrong.

The text is not unexpected, since it is similar to many others of the same genre. Nevertheless, it shows the basic pattern that a fifteenth-century Observant Franciscan preacher employed to categorize sin by placing side by side different grids, while nonetheless displaying moderation and pastoral spirit. The preacher suggests, in order, the twelve articles of faith, the Ten Commandments, the Seven Deadly Sins, the five sentiments, the seven virtues, the seven beatitudes, the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, the seven sacraments, the bodily works of mercy, and the spiritual works of mercy. The Seven Deadly Sins are still vital in Carcano’s list, although they by now exist alongside a number of other grids, and are losing the prominent position they used to have in the literature. They would be replaced in that prominence by the twelve articles of faith and especially by the Ten Commandments. Lists of all the possible sins to be confessed appeared in Europe by the thirteenth century or even earlier, and from the last quarter of the twelfth century we see the results of a new penitential literature, though one still relying on the libri poenitentiales, which progressively developed into that casuistic literature that played such a big part in the efforts of the clergy for the moral reform of the faithful through the following centuries.29 In the beginning, the ‘ordo confitendi’ or order for confession was based on the Seven Deadly Sins, and it showed some features characterizing the genre of the summa confessorum, one that continued to develop after 1215. It was 29 

See John Bossy, ‘Moral Arithmetic: Seven Sins into Ten Commandments’, in Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Edmund Leites (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni­ ver­sity Press, 1988), pp. 214–34; Edmund Leites, ‘Casuistry and Character’, in Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Edmund Leites (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni­ ver­sity Press, 1988), pp. 119–33 (pp. 119–20); Casagrande, ‘La moltiplicazione dei peccati’; Casagrande and Vecchio, ‘La Classificazione dei peccati’; Carla Casagrande and Silvana Vecchio, I sette vizi capitali: storia dei peccati nel medioevo (Turin: Einaudi, 2000); Rusconi, L’ordine dei peccati, pp. 83–103; Silvana Vecchio, ‘Il decalogo nella predicazione del xiii secolo’, in Cristianesimo nella storia: Ricerche storiche, esegetiche, teologiche, 10 (1989), 41–56; Thomas Tentler, ‘The Summa for Confessors as an Instrument of Social Control’, in The Pursuit of Holiness: Papers from The Uni­ver­sity of Michigan Conference, ed. by Charles Trinkaus and Heiko A. Oberman (Leiden: Brill, 1974), pp. 103–26; and Scott Wenzel, ‘The Seven Deadly Sins: Some Problems of Research’, Speculum, 43 (1968), 1–22.

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between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries that the practice of penitence arrived at a crucial turning point. Penitence began to be referred to by the verb confiteri, which expressed the central act of confessing one’s sins privately, while in the previous period it was generally indicated by the word poenitentia, which in contrast gave importance to penance.30 Robert of Flamborough’s Liber poenitentialis defines an order through which the confessor should examine the penitent during confession. While confessional practice, Robert says, is commonly based on an exposition of sins that relies on personal, biographical, and chronological memories, it would be much more convenient for a penitent to follow a specific order while confessing his or her sins. Robert suggests the Seven Deadly Sins as a grid to be used for the orderly listing of all the sins, proceeding from the first, pride, towards the last, lust. Such a set way of confessing sins came to replace the way of confessing inordinate, without any order or, more precisely, without the order that the confessor wanted the penitent to follow. Not to follow a given order could apparently generate confusion in the confessor.31 Remarks such as Robert’s show how the clerical elites attempted to instil in the faithful a precise model of sacramental life by disciplining their manner of accessing and using it. In the long run, the Seven Deadly Sins remained pivotal clearly being considered the best scheme to meet the command to confess all sins issued by Canon 21.32 The 30 

See Roberto Rusconi, ‘Ordini medievali del peccato. La penitenza tra confessione e tribunale’, in Peccato e pena: Responsabilità degli uomini e castigo divino nelle religioni dell’Occidente, ed. by Michelina Borsari and Daniele Francesconi (Modena: Fondazione Collegio San Carlo, 2007), pp. 103–25. 31  Robert of Flamborough, Liber poenitentialis: A Critical Edition with Introduction and Notes, ed. by J. J. Francis Firth, Studies and Texts, 18 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1971), p. 62 (under the heading : Qualiter confiteri debeat poenitens): ‘Fere omnes inordinate confitentur; quia omisso ordine vitiorum ordinem aetatis, locorum et temporum observant, dicentes: “In illa aetate feci illam fornicationem, illud adulterium, illud furtum, illum perjurium, illum homicidium. Item in illa aetate feci illum incestum, illam monialem procatus sum, illud sortilegium feci”. Et ita et se et sacerdoti memoriam confundunt. Mihi placuit ut incipiens a superbia, quae est radix omnium malorum, singula cum suis speciebus confitearis gradatim vitia prout unum ab alio nasciture et procedit; scilicet prius vanam gloriam, secundo invidiam, tertio iram, quarto accidiam, quinto avaritia, sexto gulam, septimo luxuriam.’ 32  On the Seven Deadly Sins, see Richard Newhauser and Susan J. Ridyard, eds, Sin in Medieval and Early Modern Culture: The Tradition of the Seven Deadly Sins (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2012); Richard Newhauser, ed., In the Garden of Evil: The Vices and Culture in the Middle Ages (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2005), pp. x–xi; Morton Wilfred Bloomfield, The Seven Deadly Sins: An Introduction to the History of a Religious Concept, with Special Reference to Medieval English Literature (East Lansing: Michigan State

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Seven Deadly Sins offered the possibility of commanding the entire universe of sin, due to a limited number and a fixed genre of categories and filiations of sins. The emergence in penitential literature of the Seven Deadly Sins as a schema through which to classify various aspects of human behaviours took place in the period of Scholastic thought.33 Their original appearance, however, has to be traced back to the fourth century Egyptian eremitic environment, when Evagrius Ponticus created his system of logismoi or the eight ‘evil thoughts’. Such a schema migrated to the West through the works of Cassian. It was in the poem called Psychomachia, composed by Prudentius at the beginning of the fifth century that the number of sins dropped from eight to seven. A list of seven ‘vitia capitalia’ (‘capital vices’) or ‘peccata mortalia’ (‘deadly sins’) — superbia, avaritia, luxuria, ira, gula, invidia, acedia — was introduced into theological and pastoral thought by Gregory the Great. They were known by their mnemonic Latin acronym ‘SALIGIA’, which was popularized by the canonist Enrico da Susa in the thirteenth century.34 Thus the schema, originally intended for monks, was reused by preachers and confessors of the mercantile age in order to categorize all facets of human behaviour under the species of sin. For example, under the heading of avarice one could find grouped the sins that arose through contact with money, such as fraud and usury; under envy one finds the sins that had to do with forms of social conflict; while pride might include the sinful excesses of female fashion, as well as superstitious behaviour.35 This classification based on the Seven Deadly Sins was shortly followed (between the first half of the thirteenth century and the fourteenth century) by a more multifaceted classification in which other schemes of evaluation were placed alongside the earlier one. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, the incipit of the Tractatus de vitiis composed by the Augustinian theologian Heinrich of Friemar opens with the verse of the Apocalypse on the beast with seven heads. While one of the Uni­ver­sity Press, 1967); Aviad Kleinberg, Seven Deadly Sins: A Very Partial List (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni­ver­sity Press, 2008); and Casagrande and Vecchio, I sette vizi capitali. 33  Casagrande and Vecchio, ‘La Classificazione dei peccati’, pp. 362–63; Rusconi, ‘Ordini medi­evali del peccato’, pp. 116–18. 34  See Kenneth Pennington, ‘Enrico da Susa, detto l’Ostiense’, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. xlii (1993), pp. 758–63; Bloomfield, The Seven Deadly Sins, p. 86; Casagrande, ‘La moltiplicazione dei peccati’, p. 268; Kleinberg, Seven Deadly Sins, p. 29 ff. 35  See Mireille Vincent-Cassy, ‘L’envie au Moyen Âge’, Annales. Economies, sociétés, civilisa­ tions, 35. 2 (1980), 253–71; and Georges Duby and Michelle Perrot, Storia delle donne, ii: Il Medio­evo (Rome: Laterza, 1990), pp. 113–17.

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heads of the beast recalls the Seven Deadly Sins, the other six refer to different sets of sins, which on the basis of their moral bearing are classified, respectively, as sins that call to God for vengeance; that are not even to be mentioned; that cannot be forgiven; consent to the sins of others; sins cursed by God; venial sins.36 Heinrich did focus on the Decalogue too. His popular Tractatus decem praeceptorum, composed in 1324, was probably the first example in the genre of praeceptoria (texts revolving entirely around the Ten Commandments) which expanded especially in the fifteenth century. Examples of such texts are the vernacular exegesis of the Decalogue titled Dekalog-Auslegung by the Austrian prelate Ulrich von Pottenstein (d. c. 1417);37 the Preceptorium divine legis by the Dominican Johannes Nider (d. 1438);38 the sermons preached by his Viennese colleague, the theologian Nikolaus von Dinkelsbühl (d. 1433), which then formed a tract titled De preceptis decalogi;39 the treatise titled De decem preceptis by another Viennese intellectual, Thomas Ebendorfer von Haselbach (d. 1464), similarly having its origin in preached sermons, and the Commentum super decem preceptis decalogi of the Carmelite friar Johannes Beetz (d. 1476).40 All of them — apart from Beetz — were among the most prominent repre-

36 

Peccata clamantia, peccata muta, peccata in spirituum sanctum, peccata aliena, pec­cata male­dicta, and peccata venialia: Henricus de Friemar, Tractatus de vitiis, Basel Univ. MS A. VIII. 34, fols 87v–121r. See Casagrande and Vecchio, ‘La classificazione dei peccati’, p. 373 and note 118; Casagrande, ‘La moltiplicazione dei peccati’, p. 278; and Clemens Stroick, Heinrich von Friemar: Leben, Werke, philosophische-theologische Stellung in der Scholastik (Freiburg : Herder, 1954), p. 67 ff. 37  Emilie Lasson, Superstitions médiévales: Une analyse d’après l’exégèse du premier com­ mande­ment d’Ulrich de Pottenstein (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2010). 38  Michael Bailey, Battling Demons: Witchcraft, Heresy, and Reform in the Late Middle Ages (Uni­ver­sity Park, PA: Pennsylvania State Uni­ver­sity Press, 2003); and Gábor Klaniczay, ‘The Process of Trance: Heavenly and Diabolic Apparitions in Johannes Nider’s Formicarius’, in Procession, Performance, Liturgy, and Ritual, ed. by Nancy Van Deusen (Ottawa: The Institute of Medieval Music, 2007), pp. 203–58. 39  Karin Baumann, Aberglaube für Laien: Zur Programmatik und Überlieferung spätmittel­ alterlicher Superstitionenkritik, 2 vols (Wurzburg: Königshausen und Neumann 1989), vol. i, pp. 199–207. 40  Alphons Lhotsky, Thomas Ebendorfer: Ein österreichischer Geschichtsschreiber, Theologe und Diplomat des 15. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1957); on Johannes Beetz, see Marcel Gielis, ‘The Netherlandic Theologians’ Views of Witchcraft and the Devil’s Pact’, in Witchcraft in the Netherlands from the Fourteenth to the Twentieth Century, ed. by Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra and Willem Frijhoff (Rotterdam: Universitaire Pers Rotterdam, 1991), pp. 37–52 (pp. 44–46).

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sentatives of the Viennese school of pastoral theology, whose major aim was to popularize theological and religious discourses for the laity.41 The revival of the Decalogue as a pastoral scheme can be detected at least from the twelfth century, and more consistently from the thirteenth century, after it had long been neglected in the Patristic Age. 42 From the fourteenth century onwards it becomes a steady presence in the manuals for confession, and establishes itself as the greatest source of all Christian moral teaching; it is also a measure of the distance between the Franciscans and the Dominicans, the latter adhering more strictly to the old list of seven capital sins, according to Raymond of Peñafort’s preference.43 From the Ten Commandments to the five senses, from the works of mercy to the sacraments, from the articles of faith to the use of social-professional categories, the choice became wider during the fourteenth century in the works of authors such as Robert Grosseteste, William of Auvergne, and Astesano da Asti. Astesano, a Franciscan theologian, composed in 1317 his Summa de casibus conscientiae in eight books, which would become widely popular under the name Summa astesana.44 In Astesano there is a shift in the theological schemes employed. The Seven Deadly Sins are no longer the starting point. The first book of the Summa is titled De lege divina, and develops a discourse focused on the Ten Commandments. Furthermore, in the context of the First Commandment, 41 

On the Viennese School and its authors, see Ernst Haberkern, Die ‘Wiener Schule’ der Pastoraltheologie im 14. und 15. Jahrhundert: Entstehung, Konstituenten, literarische Wirkung, 2 vols (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 2003); Baumann, Aberglaube für Laien, vol. i, pp. 14, 32, and 198–222; Lasson, Superstitions médiévales, pp. 23–40; and Michael Bailey, Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies: The Boundaries of Superstition in Late Medieval Europe (Ithaca: Cornell Uni­ver­sity Press, 2013), pp. 152–62, for the dating of the texts produced at the school, see pp. 255–65. See also William C. McDonald, ‘Singing Sin: Michel Beheim’s “Little Book of the Seven Deadly Sins”, a German Pre-Reformation Religious Text for the Laity’, in Sin in Medieval and Early Modern Culture: The Tradition of the Seven Deadly Sins, ed. by Richard Newhauser and Susan J. Ridyard (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2012), pp. 282–303 (p. 288). For a more general account of reformation through the Decalogue in Catholic Europe, see Clark, Thinking with Demons, p. 497 ff. 42  See Philippe Delhaye, Le décalogue et sa place dans la morale chrétienne (Bruxelles: La pensée catholique, 1963); and Vecchio, ‘Il decalogo nella predicazione del xiii secolo’. 43  Casagrande and Vecchio, ‘La classificazione dei peccati’, pp. 380–81; Casagrande, ‘La moltiplicazione dei peccati’, pp. 278–79. 44  On Astesano, see Roberto Abbondanza, ‘Astesano’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. iv (1962), pp. 463–65; Casagrande, ‘La moltiplicazione dei peccati’, pp. 256–58; and Rusconi, L’ordine dei peccati, pp. 152–53.

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the author engages in a thorough thirty-page explanation of the problem of superstition, as a sin specifically oriented against that commandment.45 In the scheme for the interrogation of the penitent, Astesano plans the use of the Ten Commandments, the Seven Deadly Sins, and the five senses; he continues on the basis of the socio-professional status of the penitent.46 The Summa introduces for the first time an ‘ethical’ attention to the issues generally dealt with by summae, approaching them with a sort of medico-psychological touch. Astesano explicitly uses the already noted paradigm of the confessor as doctor, advising that ‘Confessor […] debet scrutari conscientiam peccatoris in confessionem quasi medicus vulnus’ (‘The confessor […] has to inspect the conscience of the sinner in confession like a physician with a wound’).47 Astesano’s Summa was widely employed within the Franciscan Order, first of all by Bernardino da Siena, and later also by Busti, who refers to it when speaking of superstition. Astesano’s choice of the Decalogue to check the believer’s conscience, and the attention of his Summa to moral issues, appear as the early steps of a tendency in theological and juridical reflection as well as in pastoral care that was to have future importance. At the root of the search for an alternative to the Seven Deadly Sins there could be, it has been hypothesized, the need to locate more adequately in a system of classification sins such as idolatry and superstition, which had no specific place within the other schemes. Thus, already in the Summa confessorum written by Thomas of Chobham in 1216, the emergence of the Ten Commandments is connected to the need to make up for the lack of space given in the Seven Deadly Sins to issues related directly to superstition.48 On the basis of the principle of sufficientia, the Seven Deadly Sins would be ultimately judged as not sufficiently all-inclusive of the universe of sin. There is a lineage of Franciscan intellectuals who elaborate on this point. The rigorist 45  Astesano da Asti, Summa (Venice: Giovanni da Colonia and Giovanni Manthen, 1478), vol. i, fols [a6]rb–[b6]va. 46  In De interrogationibus faciendis a confessore: Astesano da Asti, Summa, vol. v, fol. 17r. 47  Astesano da Asti, Summa, vol. v, fol. 17r. 48  Thomas of Chobham, Summa confessorum, ed. by Frederick Broomfield, Analecta Mediaevalia Namurcensia, 25 (Louvain-Paris: Éditions Nauwelaerts, 1968), p. 27: ‘Preterea neque Apostolus neque Gregorius neque Augustinus inter peccata mortalia posuit mendacium, vel idolatriam, vel apostasiam, vel veneficium, vel sortilegium, neque peccatum in Spiritum Sanctum, sed omnia talia comprehenduntur subenumeratis.’ On this topic cf. especially Bossy, ‘Moral Arithmetic’; Casagrande and Vecchio, ‘La classificazione dei peccati’; and Casagrande, ‘La moltiplicazione dei peccati’.

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Peter John Olivi in particular was critical of the Gregorian schema, singling out in the absence of haeresis and infidelitas the weaknesses of that sequence.49 After the examination by Duns Scotus (d. 1308) the Seven Deadly Sins would cease to be considered as the ‘roots of all the sins’. Scotus underlined the limits or the ‘insufficiency’ of that schema both in the serious absence of infidelitas and desperatio and in their not being in line with the Ten Commandments, which is the only divine law.50 Traditionally, superstition had been located within superbia, which as a sin characterizing the devil was deemed to be inspired by curiositas — one of the twelve filiations of pride in scholastic thought, indicating the desire to know more than is allowed, even by recourse to demons.51 The main opposition of values here is thus between superbia and curiositas on one side, and humilitas on the other: the former two characterize those who want to overcome their nature in the name of something vain — such as superstition — and the latter represents the behaviour of the good Christian.52 49  Peter John Olivi, Quaestiones in II librum Sententiarum, 3 vols (Florence: Frati Editori di Quaracchi, 1922–26), vol. iii: Quaestio 98 De distinctione victiorum capitalium, p. 223: ‘Nam haeresis vel infidelitas habet magnum principatum ad multa vitia ipsam sequentia, et tamen non ponitur a Gregorio inter septem principalia.’ 50  John Duns Scotus, Quaestiones in librum II Sententiarum, d. 6, q. 2 and d. 42, q. 5, in Scotus, Opera omnia (Paris, 1893), vol. XII, p. 364 and vol. XIII, p. 478: ‘Non esset illa divisio septenaria peccatorum sufficiens, quia primo modo deberent esse septem peccata capitalia alia ab istis, siquidem infidelitas et desperatio sunt proprie opposita illi septenario, et non sunt contenta sub aliquo istorum septem. Secundo modo deberent esse decem capitalia, secundum transgressione Decalogi. Haec divisio non oportet, quod teneatur sufficiens in omnibus malis actibus, sive quoad omnes malos actus, quia istae non sunt primae radices […].’ On this see Casagrande and Vecchio, ‘La classificazione dei peccati’, pp. 341–43. 51  According to Angelo da Chivasso those sinning by curiositas are ‘qui plura volunt sapere quam oporteat’. Angelo states further: ‘cognoscere quod non convenit est curiositas et peccatum,’ and to him curiositas is sinful first of all ‘quia propter superbiam vel aliquid quod sit mortale peccatum querit cognoscere, vel videre, aut audire. […] Scire vel audire puta a demonibus vel aliis incantatoribus vel maleficia a quibus sub precepto prohibemur aliquid adiscere [sic] vel cognoscere.’ Angelo da Chivasso, Summa angelica de casibus conscientie (Venice: Giorgio Arrivabene, 1487), fol. 66ra (IN.III.11, Biblioteca Comunale, Velletri). 52  Bernadette Paton, ‘“To the Fire, To the Fire! Let Us Burn a Little Incense to God:” Bernar­dino, Preaching Friars and Maleficio in Late Medieval Siena’, in No Gods Except Me: Orthodoxy and Religious Practice in Europe, 1200–1600, ed. by Charles Zika (Parkville: Uni­ ver­sity of Melbourne, 1991), pp. 7–36 (pp. 19–20); see also Jean-Claude Schmitt, The Holy Greyhound: Guinefort, Healer of Children since the Thirteenth Century, trans. by Martin Thom (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 1983), p. 16.

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The opposition between superbia and humilitas, with overcoming of superbia, is interestingly found represented iconographically in the third bay of the Upper Church of St Francis’s Basilica in Assisi. In the ninth scene the vision of the heavenly seats is represented, which reveals to a friar many vacant thrones in heaven, one of which appears particularly luminous and prestigious. A voice explains to the friar: ‘This is the seat left vacant by one of the rebel angels, and now it is reserved for the humble Francis’. Plainly speaking, superbia — the sin by which Lucifer stained himself — repels from God, while modestia — St Francis’s main trait — is most highly prized as a Christian value.53 The Dominican preacher and inquisitor Stephen of Bourbon (d. c. 1261) placed the superstitions he had encountered during his local rounds under the rubric of superbia, in which context he described the incredible case of the ‘holy’ greyhound Guinefort. The mildness shown by Stephen towards those who were found practicing superstitious acts has been explained as showing that he viewed them rather as victims than perpetrators.54 Bernardino da Siena still considered the problem of magic, superstition, and evil under superbia, although with less clemency than Stephen of Bourbon. In his Sermon 35, ‘On the three capital sins’, of the Sienese cycle of 1427, in which he recalls the famous witch-hunt following his preaching in Rome in 1426, Bernardino says: ‘The second sin that stems from pride is the sin of spells and divination and because of this God often sends his scourges to cities.’55 The Sienese explains how pride was the reason for which Lucifer and his companions were expelled from Paradise, since they did not want to submit themselves to God, and actually wished to surpass their angelic nature and become like him. Thus, pride was the sin characterizing the devil and representing metaphorically anybody who wished to exceed the limits imposed by nature or knowledge.56 Notably, Bernardino did not even care about explaining the differences among the various practices he mentioned.57 Although they were different in nature, 53 

Chiara Frugoni, Le storie di San Francesco: Guida agli affreschi della basilica superiore di Assisi (Turin: Einaudi, 2010), p. 122. 54  Schmitt, The Holy Greyhound, p. 33. 55  Bernardino da Siena, Prediche volgari sul Campo di Siena 1427, Sermon  35, ed. by Delcorno, vol. i, pp. 1004–07. Bernardino, as he himself states during this preaching cycle, had already spoken of enchanters and casters of spells in his Sermon 30 of the Sienese Cycle of 1425. See Bernardino da Siena, Le prediche volgari, vol. ii, p. 115. 56  Pride and its implications have also been considered in relation to the development of the self and of one’s own individuality. See Kleinberg, Seven Deadly Sins, p. 138. 57  Mormando, The Preacher’s Demons, p. 56.

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ranging from spells to witchcraft, and divination, the preacher was far more interested in their common feature as moral wound based on the vice of pride and in their diabolic nature, as he himself seems to show by saying: ‘Do you know what you did? You let the people renounce God, and you let them worship the devil.’58 Although the First Commandment became progressively the locus for a more specific consideration of sins against faith, superbia will occasionally remain available to exemplify sins of this type. Olivier Maillard — the French Vicar General of the Ultramontane Observant Franciscans — in 1470 preached on the First Commandment, including superstition as a problem of idolatry, but he also still pointed to pride as a type of idolatry.59 In general, therefore, despite the consistent number of available grids and the progressively increasing prominence of the Ten Commandments, the Seven Deadly Sins remained alive, as also their great iconographical fortune show.60 More often, the use of the two schemes proceeded simultaneously. This was the case of Jean Gerson (d. 1429) — theologian, reformer, and chancellor of the Uni­ver­sity of Paris — who addressed a heterogeneous audience far beyond the traditional closed monastic circles, since he was, according to Daniel Hobbins, a leading example of the ‘public intellectual’.61 Gerson was a great advocate of

58  Bernardino da Siena, Prediche volgari sul Campo di Siena 1427, Sermon 35, ed. by Del­ corno, vol. ii, p. 1005. 59  Oeuvres françaises d’Olivier Maillard: Sermons et poems, ed. by Arthur Le Moyne de la Borderie (Nantes: Société des bibliophiles bretons et de l’histoire de Bretagne, 1877), pp. 95–96. See Schmitt, The Holy Greyhound, p. 26. See also Jean-François Courouau, ‘La prose religieuse en langue occitane au xvie siècle’, Revue d’histoire de l’Eglise de France, 94. 232 (2008), 39–61. 60  Buonamico Buffalmacco’s fourteenth-century depiction of the Last Judgment in the Camposanto of Pisa, and Hieronymus Bosch’s fifteenth-century painting The Seven Deadly Sins can be accounted as two of the most impressive representations of the capital sins of their centuries. See Jérôme Baschet, Les justices de l’au-delà: les representations de l’enfer en France et en Italie (xii–xv siècle) (Rome: École française de Rome, 1993); Laura D. Gelfand, ‘Social Status and Sin: Reading Bosch’s Prado Seven Deadly Sins and Four Last Things Painting’, in The Seven Deadly Sins: From Communities to Individuals, ed. by Richard Newhauser (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 229–56; Henry Luttikhuizen, ‘Through Boschian Eyes: An Interpretation of the Prado Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins’, in Sin in Medieval and Early Modern Culture: The Tradition of the Seven Deadly Sins, ed. by Richard Newhauser and Susan J. Ridyard (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2012), pp. 261–81; and Casagrande and Vecchio, I sette vizi capitali, pp. 225–58. 61  Hobbins, ‘The Schoolman as Public Intellectual’, p.  1310. For the range of topics touched on by Gerson, see the appendix in the same article. An extended version of the table of topics touched on by the intellectual is now in Hobbins, Authorship and Publicity Before Print,

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the Decalogue, but as well as a tract on the Ten Commandments his Opus tripartitum also includes a confession manual constructed on the Seven Deadly Sins. Carcano himself did not abandon the Seven Deadly Sins as a pastoral scheme: his Lenten sermons on the Ten Commandments can be seen as the completion of a Quadragesimale de peccatis drawn on the seven capital sins.62 The relationship between the Decalogue and the Seven Deadly Sins was, therefore, still mostly a dialogic one, with the voice of the Decalogue becoming progressively louder, though. Already Bonaventure of Bagnoregio had proposed a harmonization between the Seven Deadly Sins and the Ten Commandments, outlining the existence of a direct correspondence between the two schemes as well as elaborating on the nature of the Decalogue as constituted by both negative and positive norms, with the negative norms exceeding in number the positive ones due to the sinful nature of the human being.63 Through this theological development and by means of pastoral care, the Decalogue would progressively penetrate into moral practice. This reflection on the nature of the Ten Commandments is certainly behind the relevance that Caimi attributes to the ‘negative Commandments’ in his interrogation of the penitent. The confessor explicitly refers to the ‘theological rule’ according to which transgression of the Ten Commandments constitutes mortal sin, especially when it acts against the ‘negative’ ones.64

pp. 137–39, 148, and 194. See also Wranovix, ‘Ulrich Pfeffel’s Library’, p. 1128; Casagrande and Vecchio, ‘La classificazione dei peccati’, pp. 392–93; Casagrande, ‘La moltiplicazione dei peccati’, p. 279; and Jeffrey Fisher, ‘Gerson, Jean’, in The Late Medieval Age of Crisis and Renewal, 1300–1500: A Biographical Dictionary, ed. by Clayton J. Drees (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2001), pp. 183–85. 62  Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 1, fol. 2ra: ‘Verum cum in alio tractatu, quem de moribus et peccatis nuper edidimus, omiserimus multa, ut lucidius omnia habeantur, hic aliqua miscendo describemus et que ibi fuerunt enumerata subticenda in presentiam arbitror, evitans fastidiosam prolixitatem.’ I relied on the copy, held in the Biblioteca Comunale, Velletri, as IN. III. 18/1, printed in Venice by Giovanni e Gregorio de Gregori in 1492/93. 63  Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, Commentaria in quatuor libros Sententiarum magistri Petri Lombardi, d. 37, art. 2, q. 1, c. 6, in Opera omnia, 11 vols (Florence: Frati Editori di Quaracchi, 1882–1902), vol. iii, p. 824; on the corrispondence between the Seven Deadly Sins and the Ten Commandments, see c. 7; cf. Casagrande and Vecchio, ‘La classificazione dei peccati’, p. 349 ff. 64  Caimi, Interrogatorium sive confessionale, xxxiv: ‘Circa interrogationes Decem Pre­ ceptorum Decalogi nota per declaratione dicendorum hanc regulam theologicalem quod omnis transgressio dictorum preceptorum est peccatum mortale precipue quando est contra precepta negative.’

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As I shall show in the next chapter, elaborating on the nature of the Decalogue as lex divina in his Sermon 16 of the Rosarium sermonum, Busti exemplifies further the adherence of Franciscan late medieval pastoral care to the intrinsic logic or the sufficientia of the Ten Commandments. On the basis of Augustine and Psalm 143 (144), the Milanese preacher explains how the Ten Commandments — the ‘ten-stringed psaltery’ — besides being either ‘negative’ or ‘positive’, also have a twofold nature as a moral code directed both towards God, in the first three commandments, and as a code concerning one’s obligations towards humans in the subsequent seven commandments.65 This characterization of the Decalogue was established in Peter Lombard’s Sententiae.66 A specifically Franciscan medium for Busti was certainly, again, the very clear examination by Bonaventure of Bagnoregio of the twofold orientation of justice — through the Decalogue — towards God and humanity.67 Although putting the Ten Commandments at the centre of his thought, Busti is a good example of how different schemes of classification of sins continued to coexist towards the end of the fifteenth century, with each of them playing a different role and having a different degree of importance in the penitential setting of his text. Particularly in the Rosarium sermonum the preacher seems to favour 65  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 126 rab: ‘De quibus loquens, Augustinus in libro De decem chordis inquit: “Decalogus legis decem precepta habet, quorum tria prima pertinent ad Deum et septem alia ad homines”. Hec decem precepta sunt decem chorde psalterii, quas tangendo feras peccatorum occidis. Quibus occisis, securus et innocens in dilectione Dei et humana societate versaris. Hec ille. Et ideo David dicebat Deo Psal. 143: “In psalterio decachordo psallam tibi”, quod exponens Augustinus, ubi supra, ait quod quidam istud psalterium portant, sed in eo non psallunt, quia precepta Dei ex timore servant.’ See Augustine of Hippo, Sermones de scripturis de vetere testamento, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus: series latina (Paris: Migne, 1844–55) (hereafter PL), vol. 38, Sermo 9, cols 6–7; Psalm 143. 9. 66  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, III, d. 37, c. 1, vol. ii, p. 206: ‘Habet enim Decalogus decem praecepta, quae sunt decachordum psalterium. Quae sic sunt distribute, ut tria quae sunt in prima tabula pertineant ad Deum, scilicet ad cognitionem et dilectionem Trinitatis; septem quae sunt in secunda tabula ad dilectionem proximi.’ See also Vecchio, ‘Il decalogo nella predicazione del xiii secolo’, pp. 45–49; and Casagrande and Vecchio, ‘La classificazione dei peccati’, p. 350. 67  Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, Collationes de decem praeceptis, Collatio  I, in Opera omnia, vol. v, p. 310: ‘Iustitia autem est, secundum quam homo habet ordinari ad Deum et ad proximum. Secundum hoc est duplex iustitia: una, qua ordinamur ad Deum; alia, qua or­ dina­mur ad proximum; et secundum hoc datae fuerunt Moysi duae tabulae, scilicet prima et secunda. In prima continentur mandata ordinantia nos ad Deum, in secunda continentur man­ data ordinantia nos ad proximum.’

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two schemes from among all those available besides the Decalogue: the Seven Deadly Sins, and the twelve articles of faith. Busti deals with the capital vices in Sermon 6 De peccatis mortalibus for the Friday preceding the first Sunday of Lent.68 The Seven Deadly Sins are reduced by Busti to patterns of human moral fallibility: following the ‘SALIGIA’ scheme, Busti retraces all the vices, generally taking off from the De fide orthodoxa of John of Damascus as a point of departure. Thus, following a traditional view originating in Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) and subsequently developed by Pope Gregory the Great, superbia is defined by the preacher as ‘caput et regina omnium peccatorum’ (‘the head and queen of all the sins’), being ‘inordinatus amor proprie excellentie’ (‘a disorderly passion for one’s own excellence’);69 avaritia is ‘inordinatus amor pecunie’ (‘a disorderly passion for money’); luxuria is ‘libidinose voluptatis appetitus’ (‘appetite for prurient pleasure’); about gula Busti says that ‘quidam facetus predicator dicebat fuisse uxorem carnisprivii’ (‘it was defined by a certain witty preacher as the wife of Lent’), and here Busti clearly plays with the sense of the sin as the complement or opposite of Lent and fasting; ira is ‘appetitus vindicate’ (‘appetite for revenge’); invidia is defined as ‘tristicia de alienis bonis et leticia de malis’ (‘sadness at good fortune of others and joy at their misfortunes’);70 and last accidia is ‘torpor mentis bona negligentis inchoare et perficere’ (‘torpor of the mind that fails to begin and complete good deeds’). The Scholastic theological consideration of the vices forms the medium of thought on this topic. Thomas Aquinas saw pride and greed — the first two sins named by Busti — as playing a specific and central role in the economy of sin. Aquinas followed in this regard a stricter understanding than that of the other scholastic theologians — Peter Lombard the first — who tended to display sins as more general tendencies towards fault. To Aquinas superbia is the basis of the ordo intentionis, since it is always present in the intention of sinning, while avaritia represents the core of the ordo executionis, the execution of the act, as it plays a central role in leading one to sinning.71 68  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 6, fols 26vb–35vb. The quotations that follow are taken from this passage. 69  Ecclesiastes 10. 15 has: ‘Initium omnis peccati superbia est’; Gregory the Great, reusing the words of Sirach in his Moralia in Job, 31. 45, speaks of ‘Superbia vitiorum regina’. Cf. Kleinberg, Seven Deadly Sins, p. 30. 70  Envy is defined in John of Damascus, De fide orthodoxa, 2. 14 as ‘Tristitia de bonis alienis et gaudium de adversis’. 71  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, II, d. 42 c. 6, vol. I part II, p. 570; Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Ia, IIae, q. 84, a. 1–2. See Casagrande and Vecchio, ‘La classificazione dei peccati’, pp. 338–39.

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In Sermon 13 ‘On faith’ for the Thursday after the first Sunday of Lent, Busti considers the twelve articles of faith as the paramount scheme, and he gives the reason for their importance: Duodecim apostoli, volentes post ascensionem Domini et receptionem Spiritus Sancti per diversas mundi partes ad predicandum Christi fidem proficisci, prius composuerunt simbolum fidei id est credo parvum in quo posuerunt articulos fidei, qui sunt duodecim […]: isti duodecim articuli sunt fundamenta ecclesie Dei.72 The twelve apostles, after the Ascension of the Lord and the reception of the Holy Spirit, wishing to depart for various places of the world to preach the faith of Christ, first composed a symbol of the faith, that is a short Creed, in which they placed the articles of faith, which are twelve […]: these twelve articles of faith are the foundations of the Church of God.

Busti takes up here the old tradition, rooted in patristic thought, according to which the Symbolum apostolicum with its twelve articles was created by the Apostles themselves, when they had gathered in Jerusalem after the resurrection of Christ for the feast of Pentecost, before leaving to spread his teachings.73 I have already mentioned that Antonio da Bitonto was a passionate supporter of the belief in the apostolic origin of the Creed. That belief was at the centre of Antonio’s famous polemic with Lorenzo Valla, whose methodology for revealing the non-apostolic origin of the Creed was probably too philological for the friar.74 Antonio was so convinced about that tradition that he wondered why the Church had needed to create two more Creeds in addition to the real, apostolic, one.75 72  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 13: De fidei diffinitione, declaratione atque im­pedi­ tione, fol. 86ra. 73  Among the first to suggest the Apostles as the authors of the Symbolum was Ambrose, bishop of Milan (d. 397), who in his Epistola, 52. 5 wrote: ‘Credatur Symbolo Apostolorum, quod Ecclesia Romana intemeratum semper custodit et servat’, followed by Rufinus of Aquileia (d. 410), who wrote an Expositio symboli. The tradition was well represented by Jerome, Pope Celestine I, Pope Leo the Great, and probably Augustine. See Fois, ‘Il pensiero Cristiano di Lorenzo Valla’, pp. 366–67; and Curt F. Bühler, ‘The Apostles and the Creed’, Speculum, 28 (1953), pp. 335–39. 74  Fois, ‘Il pensiero Cristiano di Lorenzo Valla’; Gaeta, Antonio da Bitonto, p. 35 ff. 75  The first Creed — with its strong anti-Arian component — was approved at the Council of Nicaea in 325; a revised version of the same text with more anti-heretical elements was approved at the First Council of Constantinople in 381, but was adopted only during the Council of Chalcedon in 451. That was fundamentally the same creed, known as NiceneConstantinopolitan Creed. See Angelo Amato, ‘I quattro Concili: le grandi controversie

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Thus, Busti shares with Antonio the belief that the Creed was composed, article by article, by the twelve apostles, each dictating in turn a clause of the text. There are specially striking similarities in Busti’s sermon with Sermon 2 of Antonio’s Sermones dominicales, composed before 1436 but whose first printing in Venice in 1492 reveals an interesting proximity to the publication date of the Rosarium. Both preachers explain thoroughly the nature and the origin of the Creed, and both emphasize that the Apostles composed a briefer Creed, to distinguish it from the later more elaborated Creeds approved by the Church. Furthermore, both friars base their firm belief concerning the apostolic origin of the Creed on the same Scholastic sources, first of all Bonaventure’s Commentaries on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, without mentioning any earlier source: such a lack of earlier auctoritates was one of the arguments used by Valla to discredit Antonio’s idea.76 The doctrinal core of the Rosarium sermonum (Sermons 16 to 30) is built, however, on the Decalogue, which plays a primary role in analysing the behaviour of the faithful. The superiority of the Decalogue, clearly derives — in accordance with an entire theological tradition that unites both Franciscans and Dominicans — from its distinctive quality as the sum of rules given by God.77 The proportion of space in the sermons that Busti dedicates to the different grids in the Rosarium gives an idea of the importance attributed to each of them. The Decalogue definitely marks the Lenten ‘economy of penitence’ on which the Rosarium is focused. As Carcano did with confessors, so Busti explains to preachers the practical use of the schemes for confessing sins. The preacher describes the outline of confession in his Sermon 35:

trinitarie e cristologiche’, in Storia della teologia, vol. i, ed. by Enrico dal Covolo (Bologna: Edizioni Dehoniane, 1995), pp. 216–34; and Fois, ‘Il pensiero Cristiano di Lorenzo Valla’, p. 366. 76  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 13, fol. 86va–87ra. Antonio da Bitonto, Sermones dominicales, Sermon 2, fol. 9v. Antonio spoke of the Creed also in his Expositiones evangeliorum dominicalium (Venice: Nicolò di Francoforte, 1496). See Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, Commentaria in quatuor libros Sententiarum, d. 24, art. 1, q. 1 and d. 24, art. 1, q. 1, in Opera omnia, vol. iii, pp. 534–38. Cf. Pratesi, ‘Antonio da Bitonto’, p. 539; Fois, ‘Il pensiero Cristiano di Lorenzo Valla’, p. 366 ff; Gaeta, Antonio da Bitonto, p. 50. 77  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 125rb: ‘Scitis que precepta dederim vobis per Dominum Iesum [1 Thessalonians 4. 2] […]: secundum omnes leges superioribus obediendum est in licitis et honestis.’ See also Casagrande and Vecchio, ‘La Classificazione dei peccati’, pp. 356 ff and 387.

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Debet quoque qui vult diligenter confiteri postquam examinaverit conscientiam suam super septem peccatis capitalibus discurrere per decem precepta divina et etiam precepta ecclesie considerans si illa servavit. Item duodecim articulos fidei, si perfecte credidit. Et septem dona Spiritus Sancti si in se illa habuit. Opera quoque misericordie corporalia et spiritualia si perfecit. Si etiam sensus corporis bene custodivit et si quattuor virtutes cardinales et tres theologicas aliasque morales exercuit.78 All those who want to confess diligently, after examining their conscience in respect to the seven capital sins, must run through the Ten Commandments and also the precepts of the Church, considering whether they observed them. Then again, if they have believed in the twelve articles of the faith accurately and if they had in themselves the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. Also, if they have accomplished corporal and spiritual works of mercy. Moreover, [they should consider] whether they have guarded well the bodily senses, and if they have practiced the four cardinal virtues and the three theological, and the other moral rules.

Busti relies here again on the principle of ‘ordinate confiteri’, confessing sins according to a given order. As was traditional, the Seven Deadly Sins are indicated as the starting point, before the Ten Commandments and a few other schemes.79 Busti, however, urges the preacher to adhere to more than simply the theological schemes made available by the tradition. Even before mentioning the available schemes, in fact, Busti advises one that sins must be analysed also from the point of view of one’s own personal biography, beginning the confession by: Recordari de omnibus peccatis, non solum que fecit in anno sed in tota vita sua; […] primo etatem scilicet infantie, pueritie, adolescentie, iuventutis, senectutis, et etatem decrepitam si est in ea, et videre que peccata in his etatibus commisit discurrendo singulos annos et quaslibet partes anni, quia alia peccata fiunt in estate et alia in hyeme et sic de aliis.80 Remembering all the sins, not just those committed during the current year, but also all throughout one’s life […] that is, first the age of infancy, then of childhood, adolescence, youth, old age and senility, in case [the penitent] has reached it, and see which sins he/she committed at those ages, analysing every year and every part of the year, since some sins are committed in the summer, and others in the winter, and so with regard to all the others.

78 

Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 35, fol. 225rb–va. See Mertens, ‘Clero secolare e cura d’anime’, p. 260. 80  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 35, fol. 225rb. 79 

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Personal memories are also shown to be useful in drawing a more perfect picture of the past of a penitent, and this way of confessing is no longer rejected as it was previously. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, in fact, Robert of Flamborough had taught that administering confession on criteria such as age, place, and time, relying on the memories of one’s own life, in addition to the basis of the order of the vices, was a method that could confuse the penitent and also the confessor.81 Connecting the order of the grids to personal memories might be considered a sign of a certain openness towards a practice penitents habitually employed, but we can imagine that it could function as a way to render confession much more autobiographical and anchored in the individual’s life. The use of classificatory grids of theological derivation is actually a further stage in the development of the practice of confession, which in Busti follows the more spontaneous but still rigorous listing of sins based on chronological order. Moreover, the preacher warns that Ad bonam confessionem non sufficit confessio in generali, puta dicendo: ‘commisi omnia peccata’, vel dicendo: ‘commisi peccatum luxurie, avaritie’, etc., sed requiritur explicatio specialis, ut inquit Ray(mundus) et Hostien(sis) in summa […]: hinc queritur nunquid sit necessarium confiteri in particulari circumstantias peccatorum.82 For a good confession a general admission is not enough, as when one says: ‘I have committed all the sins’, or ‘I committed a sin related to lust, greed and so on’; a detailed account is required, as was said by Raymond [of Peñafort] and the Hostiensis [Enrico da Susa] in their summae […]: here is in fact required, necessarily, the confession of the circumstances of sins.

Reusing a procedure suggested by two famous confessionals, Busti stresses that what makes confession effective is not a generic listing of the sins, not even when it is done on the basis of the well-known grids, but the recapitulation of the particular circumstances that led one to sin. I shall address this point in more detail below. Here, first, I should like to point out that Busti’s picking out of two specific elements of the schema of the capital sins — lust and greed — from amongst the many possible, raises the question as to why he chose those two, and why he mentioned them in precisely that order. The role of pride as the head of all the sins is not questioned. Nevertheless, the pre-eminence of lust and greed in his 81  82 

Cf. Rusconi, L’ordine dei peccati, p. 83. Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 35, fol. 225va.

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sentence could indicate the appropriation by the confessor of two areas of sinning that were also important in the iconographic tradition from, at least, the time of the twelfth century Romanesque cathedrals.83 Nevertheless, the context in which this traditional motif appears and within which, therefore, it should be analysed is different. On the one hand, by mentioning lust, Busti points to a particularly intimate sphere of the life of the individual. Greed, on the other hand, might testify to the persistence of an area of sinning closely connected to one of the most powerful inner dynamics of urban society, the development of the economy of the prosperous ‘capitalistic’ northern Italian cities in which the preacher was actually active. It should be noted that two centuries earlier Robert of Flamborough offered a picture of the same pair of sins in exactly the reverse order: greed first, then lust.84 There is a need for further study of the process of evolution, which has already been noted, of topical social issues, showing a shift in the late medieval period from pride to greed, and eventually lust as the preacher/confessor became progressively more eager to penetrate the personal behaviour of the faithful in order to make an ethical evaluation of their life.85 The meticulous classification of sins enables the friars to impose religious models on the faithful, apparently as a contribution to the establishment of a cultural hegemony over believers. One more element subscribes to this idea: the preacher’s call to go to confession ‘prepared’: […] si unus vadit centum miliaria ut mille ducatos accipiat ab aliquo et post laborem itineris non accipiat eos dicet: ‘In vanum hunc veni quem finem meum non sum adeptus propter quem veni’. Sic possunt dicere multi euntes ad confessionem ut recipiant indulgentiam et non recipientes propter eorum impreparationem et malam dispositionem: talium enim confessio est vana. Ideo omnibus euntibus ad confitendum dicit Deus Hiere vii ‘Bonas facite vias vestras’. Et ego vobis idem dico ne si impreparati et indispositi accedatis ad confessionem, dominus Iesus vos proiiciat a gratia et expellat sicut hodie fecit de vendentibus et ementibus in templo.86 […] if someone goes a hundred miles to receive a thousand ducats from somebody, and after the toil of the journey does not get them, he will say: ‘I have come here in vain since I have not achieved the object for which I have come’. So can say many who go to confession in order to receive indulgence, and do not receive it because of their unpreparedness and evil disposition: for their confession is void. For this 83 

See Casagrande and Vecchio, I sette vizi capitali, p. 234. Robert of Flamborough, Liber poenitentialis, ed. by Firth, p. 383. 85  Cf. Rusconi, L’ordine dei peccati, pp. 98–99. 86  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 35, fol. 224va. 84 

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reason in Jeremiah 7[.3] God says to all those who go to confess ‘amend your ways’. And I tell you the same lest, if you go to confession unprepared and disorganized, the Lord Jesus should banish and expel you from his grace as he did today with those selling and buying in the temple.

Self-preparation and a good disposition of mind are necessary conditions to render one’s confession effective and not to be ‘chased away from the temple’ — or refused by the grace of God — as happened to the vendors and buyers in the temple of Jerusalem. No confession is possible without these two elements. The preacher goes on to explain what such preparation should consist of: Sciendum est secundum omnes theologos et doctores quod confessio debet fieri cum magna preparatione, ita quod ante confessionem debet quisque diligenter se preparare et dare operam, ut omnia sua peccata ei ad memoriam revocentur, ut possit illa confiteri cum circumstantiis suis.87 It is to be known that according to all the theologians and doctors, confession has to be approached with great preparation. Thus, before confession itself everyone must prepare themselves diligently, working so that all their sins are recalled in order to be able to confess them along with their circumstances.

The kind of preparation described by Busti is a conscious act of remembering sins, calling to mind not only the single sins but even the circumstances in which they occurred. From these passages it is possible to grasp the role that confessors assigned to the penitent’s self-analysis in preparation for confession. It is in this particular genre of preparation that a new model of personal introspection can be seen as emerging. Busti’s indications are in fact meant to inform preachers how to spur the penitent to analyse his or her own behaviour. This is reasserted by Busti when — this time recalling Seneca’s philosophical authority — he urges the penitent Quotidie examinare conscientiam suam et videre quod boni fecerit et quomodo vixerit, ut inquit Seneca libro tertio De ira. Multo magis pro confessionis debet unusquisque in aliquo secreto loco diligenter premeditari peccata sua et examinare conscientiam suam.88 87 

Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 35, fol. 224vb. 88  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon  35, fol.  225 rb. Seneca stoically encouraged the practice of self-examination as a way to know and dominate oneself: ‘Omnes sensus perducendi sunt ad firmitatem; natura patientes sunt, si animus illos desit corrumpere, qui cotidie ad ratio­ nem reddendam vocandus est. Faciebat hoc Sextius, ut consummato die, cum se ad noctur­nam quietem recepisset, interrogaret animum suum: quod hodie malum tuum sanasti? Cui vitio obstitisti? Qua parte melior es?’ (Seneca, De ira, l. 3, 36, 1).

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To examine his conscience daily and see what good he did and in what way he lived as Seneca says in On Anger, book three. Even more, for confessing everyone has to recall diligently his sins in a secret place and analyse his conscience.

The analysis of the individual’s conscience is the necessary prerequisite to making an orderly and thorough confession, which in turn is the only way to ‘veniam consequi’, attain remission. The preacher explains this point in an interesting exemplum about two confessors passing ‘per quoddam castellum’ (‘through a certain city’). While one of the two friars was confessing ‘quedam mulier vana’ (‘a certain vain woman’) Ab illa domina sic confitente tot bufones ab eius ore egredi quot peccata confitebatur videbat insuper quendam bufonem alium maiorem et horribiliorem procedere sepissime usque ad os deinde retrocedere semper. Tandem vidit quod domina illa absolutione recepta a confessore resuscepit in ore suo omnes bufones per ecclesiam saltantes quos prius emiserat. Post igitur recessus illius domine ille iuvenis simplex confessori dixit: ‘pater mi, sic et sic vidi’. Qui confessor rei seriem intelligens videlicet quod quot bufones illa emiserat tot culpas mortales illa confessa fuerat et quod maior bufo in ore retentus significabat aliquod grave peccatum quod illa pre verecundia confessa non fuerat.89 [The other preacher] saw among the toads running out from her mouth, which were as many as the sins she was confessing, one toad much bigger and more awful than the others, which while trying to get out from her mouth, kept going back in. Eventually, he saw that once the lady had received absolution from the confessor, all the toads she had expelled earlier, who were jumping all around the church, went back again into her mouth. So, after she had left, the younger preacher told the confessor: ‘Father, I saw this and that’. The confessor clearly understood from what had happened that every toad was one mortal sin confessed by the woman, and that the bigger toad returning to the woman’s mouth meant some serious sin she had not confessed because of her embarrassment.

Using an old and widespread negative stereotype, sins are represented by Busti as toads. The demonic symbolism of toads is well known. In Revelation 16. 13–14 toads coming out of the mouth of the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet represent spirits of demons. There is an iconographical depiction of toads emerging from the mouth of the ‘falsus propheta’ in the fifteenth-century French translation of the Libellus of Telesphorus of Cosenza. Hieronimus

89 

Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 32 for the Saturday after the third Sunday of Lent, De confessionis obligatione et dispensatione, fol. 209vb.

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Bosch also represented demons in the form of toads in his Seven Deadly Sins.90 Only full confession can free one from the repugnance of sin and, of course, gain salvation for the believer’s soul. Two more elements reflect the need to get full understanding of the penitent’s multiple ways to sin. In the prologue of his Confessionale Carcano writes: Poi el sacerdote debe domandare la conditione del peccatore: cioè che arte è la sua, aciò che possa conoscere facilmente in quali errori possa quella persona cadere. Poi comenzi el sacerdote a commovere el peccatore con dolce parole, dicendo: ‘fiolo e fratello mio, il nostro signore dio non vuole la morte del peccatore, ma piuttosto vuole che se pentisca de li suoi peccati e che viva’.91 And then the priest ought to ask about the condition of the sinner: namely what his profession is, in order to recognize easily into which sins that person might fall. Then the priest has to move the sinner emotionally by saying kind words, such as ‘My little son and brother, our lord God does not wish the death of the sinner, but rather wishes that he should repent of his sins and live’.

Although the words employed by the preacher are part of a cliché that is stereotypical of the genre, the interrogation of the penitent on the basis of his or her affiliation to a specific status or ‘arte’ shows a kind of socio-anthropological identification of the faithful. Carcano’s aim, also, was to obtain from the penitent the most exhaustive confession possible. This is the reason that the way of addressing the penitent differs according to his or her profession. Further, categorizing the faithful on the basis of their professional vocation ultimately allowed the confessors to penetrate social reality more profoundly through combining each profession or craft with some precise sets of sins.92 The vogue for the ad status mode appears as early as the beginning of the thirteenth century as ‘a tendency to define, to order, and to direct perceptions

90 

Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Poets, Saints, and Visionaries, pp. 192–94; Giovanni Pizza, ‘Toads’, in Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition, ed. by Richard M. Golden, 4 vols (Santa Barbara: ABC Clio, 2006), vol. iv, pp. 1123–25. 91  Carcano, Confessionale Generale de la gran tuba, fol. Av. 92  See Jaques Le Goff, ‘Métier et profession d’après le manuels de confesseurs du Moyen Âge’, Beiträge zum Berufsbewusstsein des mittelalterlichen Menschen, ed. by Paul Wilpert, Miscellanea Mediaevalia, 3 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1964), pp. 44–60 (p. 57 ff ); Zafarana, Da Gregorio VII a Bernardino da Siena, p. 187 ff; Rusconi, L’ordine dei peccati, pp. 142 ff and 154 ff; Turrini, La coscienza e le leggi, passim; Michaud-Quantin, Sommes de casuistique, p. 62 ff; and Casagrande, ‘La moltiplicazione dei peccati’, p. 272.

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of society’.93 Robert of Flamborough, whose Liber poenitentialis (1208–15) was among the first to differ from the old-fashioned penitential books, already considers the existence of a connection between sin, penance and professional roles, confirming Peter the Chanter’s conviction that oral confession to the priest was absolutely essential for the expiation of sins.94 The early summae, composed from the twelfth century onwards, propose a classification of sins committed by the penitents on the basis of their affiliation to a specific social or professional group. Between the thirteenth and the fifteenth centuries this tendency characterized both the Dominicans, with the Spanish Raymond of Peñafort, who completed his Summa de casibus conscientiae in 1234, and Bartolomeo da San Concordio, who authored in 1338 a Summa then popularized in the vernacular as Summa pisanella, and the Franciscans, with the Summa of Astesano da Asti or with the Supplementum to the Summa pisanella composed by the Franciscan Niccolò da Osimo in 1444. The process of classifying penitents according to their status regains life in the fifteenth century with the handbooks of Antonino da Firenze, Bartolomeo Caimi, Angelo da Chivasso, and also sermon collections such as Busti’s Rosarium, and is furthered by the spread of printed editions of the texts. When speaking of the act of confessing the Milanese preacher stresses the importance for the penitent to report especially the sins related to the ‘duties, professions and activities that (the penitent) has made’.95 This testifies to the responsibility of the friars to provide an even more profound order for people’s interior and exterior lives, one that should be adapted to their different social-functional status, evidently according to a dominant pastoral orientation aiming at encompassing all the aspects of one’s life.96 93 

Carolyn Muessig, ‘Audience and Preacher: Ad Status Sermons and Social Classification’, in Preacher, Sermon and Audience in the Middle Ages, ed. by Carolyn Muessig (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 255–76 (p. 275). See also Waters, Angels and Earthly Creatures, p. 146. 94  Robert of Flamborough, Liber poenitentialis, ed. by Firth. See Liber Quintus: De poenitentiis pro singulis peccatis introductoria, p. 204; cf. Bussière, Pratiques de la confession, pp. 78–79. 95  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 35, fol. 225rb: ‘Officia, artes et exercitia que fecit.’ 96  See Roberto Rusconi, ‘Da Costanza al Laterano: la “calcolata devozione” del ceto mercantile-borghese nell’Italia del Quattrocento’, in Storia dell’Italia religiosa: I. L’Antichità e il Medioevo, ed. by André Vauchez (Bari: Laterza, 1993), pp. 506–32 (p. 507); Pierre MichaudQuantin, ‘Les méthods de la pastorale du xiii au xv siècle’, in Methoden in Wissenschaft und Kunst des Mittelalters, ed. by Albert Zimmermann, Miscellanea Medievalia, 7 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1970), pp. 76–91 (p. 88 ff ).

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The way in which the confessor talked was also important in convincing the penitent to make a full disclosure. In Carcano’s text, the use of ‘polite words’ by means of which he instructs the confessor on how ‘to move the sinner’, indicates the deliberate goal of obtaining the desired outcome — repentance — by relying on a sort of psychological empathy with the mood of the faithful.97 This kind of sensitivity or spiritual proximity of the confessor to the penitent — already emphasized in Astesano — is reminiscent of the exhortation of the Canon Omnis Utriusque Sexus to the priest to be ‘discreet and cautious’ and to act ‘as an expert physician’.98 In the totality of literature for confession, however, this sort of psychologizing approach develops besides another, juridical, aspect, in which confession is understood as a ‘tribunal of sin’. This latter aspect is important in the immediate aftermath of Lateran IV when confession took a legalistic swerve, a tendency which had already begun in the Church as an institution under Pope Alexander III (1159–81), the initiator of the ‘juridical Papacy’, characterized by the vast increase of legal transactions in Rome and the development of the papal curia.99 It has been noted how the first summae confessorum outlined the tendency to describe the confessor as a judge, and the relationship between the believer and his or her parish priest as a relationship between a subject and a judge to such an extent that Michaud-Quantin spoke of a morale juridisée. The emergence of auricular confession coincided with its use as a preferred proof of orthodoxy in the same period in which a gradual rise of the inquisitorial procedure can also be observed.100 In particular, the Summa by Raymond of Peñafort, already in its first draft in 1225, was among the texts rather frequently read and diffused until the fifteenth century, bringing a ‘juridicization’ to confession and consolidating the characterization of that practice as a forum poenitentiale or a penitential 97 

As of the twelfth century, theological reflection on penitence had been elaborating a characteristic articulation of confession in specific steps: contritio, confessio, and satisfactio. It is particularly in order to favour the interior repentance (contritio) of the penitent that the confessor is urged to make use of ‘dolci parole’, polite words. See Tentler, Sin and Confession, pp. 18–22. 98  Concilium Lateranense IV-1215, Constitutio 21 De confessione facienda, in Conciliorum Oecomenicorum Decreta, ed. by Giuseppe Alberigo and others (Bologna: Istituto per le Scienze Religiose, 1973), p. 245: ‘Sacerdos autem sit discretus et cautus […] more periti medici.’ See also Mertens, ‘Clero secolare e cura d’anime’, p. 260. 99  Schimmelpfennig, Das Papsttum, p. 180. 100  Michaud-Quantin, ‘A propos des premières summae confessorum’, p. 295; Prodi, Una storia della giustizia, p. 83; Elliott, Proving Woman, pp. 14–15.

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court. We must remember how the emergence of the metaphor of the confessor as judge occurred in the same period that bore witness to the rediscovery of the Ten Commandments as the only grid that could compete with the Seven Deadly Sins. Thus, in turn, such a rediscovery would coincide with the development of canon law and the ‘juridicization of the conscience’.101 Ultimately, whether concerning friars or penitents, the core issue at debate here is the centrality of speech. The importance of the word appears as a crucial element already in urban and mercantile society of the thirteenth century, closely connected to the development of the Mendicant orders. Speech is an instrument in the hands of the new urban classes or status (merchants, bankers, jurists) as well as a means of persuasion employed by friars.102 Little doubt remains that in the intentions of the preachers, speech was considered able to produce outcomes, mainly patterns of social and personal behaviour, by marking the moral sphere of the faithful. After all, post-social reflection has highlighted the importance of discourse in conceptualizing ‘categorical framework or social imaginary’ and, thus, basically, in shaping social reality.103 The development of speech under the species of preaching was essential to urban preachers in general, but it seems to have been even more appropriate for the Observant Franciscan friars who, according to one scholar, would use it in a way that distinguished them from ‘the scholarly’ Dominicans and ‘the establishment-favoured’ Augustinians.104 The preaching of the Observant Franciscans has been seen as more disposed to touch upon the heart of the masses in order to reform society, and it has been claimed that Franciscan Observance and popular preaching tout-court are mutually defining characteristics during the fifteenth century.105 On the other hand, one has to bear in mind that speech developed through the pulpit was just one of the spheres 101 

Prodi, Una storia della giustizia, p. 88. Cf. Lester K. Little, Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe (London: P. Elek, 1978), pp. 197–99. 103  See Michael Cabrera, Postsocial History: An Introduction (Oxford: Lexington, 2004), p. 43. 104  Resulting in what Oberman has defined the Observant Franciscans’ ‘non-violent revolutionary eschatology, their tendency towards anti-intellectualism and the psychological rather than metaphysical basis of their theology in pulpit and confessional’. See Heiko A. Oberman, ‘The Shape of Late Medieval Thought: The Birthpangs of the Modern Era’, in The Pursuit of Holiness: Papers from The Uni­ver­sity of Michigan Conference, ed. by Charles Trinkaus, with Heiko A. Oberman (Leiden: Brill, 1974), p. 7. 105  Rusconi, ‘Manuali milanesi di confessione’, p. 112; perhaps with partisan verve Ghinato, ‘La predicazione francescana’, p. 26. 102 

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in which the power of communication of what has been called ‘the new religious order’ of the fifteenth century par excellence, the Franciscan Observance, became prominent; diplomatic missions, the development of a specific socioeconomic theory, and close relationships with the ruling classes figure as further and equally important aspects of the friars’ activities (in several instances still intertwined with preaching), all together giving shape to the leading role of the order, or what has been called the ‘francescanesimo dominativo’.106

A Worldview Beyond the Grids for Hearing Confession In general terms, the elaboration of a number of different penitential schemes suggests the existence of classificatory strategies as well as of a specific mindset progressively induced to see a humanity endangered by sin. This idea is well exemplified by fifteenth-century literary and visual representations. Thus, in the Stultifera navis (Das Narrenschiff or The ship of fools) composed by Sebastian Brant in 1494, the ship leading to Narragonia, the land of fools, is loaded with fools each one of whom represents a different vice.107 The passengers of the ship set out to sea without any point of reference, neither maps nor compass: perhaps this is a representation of the ‘ship of Christianity’ endangered on the waves of a particularly ill-omened century.108 Similarly, the painting The ship of fools (1500–02) by Hieronymus Bosch represents a ship of sinners who proceed irreparably towards perdition while singing and laughing; it acquires even more significance when considered alongside Bosch’s The Seven Deadly Sins.109 Finally, both the fools and the ship become metaphors for life, mirrors of everyday sinful behaviour and at the same time a safe haven for the satirical revelation of the weaknesses of various social classes. In the wake of this tendency, penitence, and confession became the moments in which the behaviour of Christians and their mastery of the principles of faith were checked. Nevertheless, the choice of classificatory models on the part of the preachers can be also approached from a social constructionist point of view, by considering such interpretative schemes as ‘constructed 106  Cf. Pellegrini, ‘Tra la piazza e il palazzo’, pp. 112–13; Pellegrini, ‘Predicazione osservante e propaganda politica’, p. 522; Merlo, ‘L’Osservanza come minoritismo dominativo’. 107  Sebastian Brant, The Ship of Fools, trans. by William Gilles (London: The Folio Society, 1971). 108  Delumeau, Le péché et la peur, pp. 234–35. 109  See Massimo Centini, Bosch: Una vita tra i simboli (Florence: Edizioni Polistampa, 2003), pp. 54–55.

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ideas’ within their vital context of social and intellectual interactions. Relying on Reinhart Koselleck’s approach to Begriffsgeschichte, we might look with Richard Newhauser at these pastoral grids as ‘conceptual fields bound firmly into the social and political life of the humans who articulated them’.110 The grids for classifying sin are, in fact, the outcome of the intellectual work of theologians and pastors, and they constantly come to life in their application on the ground through pastoral care. It would be interesting to discover what lies behind the use that preachers made of these schemes, and try to reconstruct the nature of their progressively more articulated plan to control the morals of the faithful. Clearly, the moralizing efforts of the preachers were directed to both the individual and the social spheres of the life of their flocks, promoting a screening of the self as well as the evaluation of one’s place within the social net. The contacts and relationships between religious and political leaderships were tight.111 The Decalogue also became an important instrument for the moral instruction of political elites. The Augustinian psalm metaphor of the ‘ten-stringed harp’, for instance, had been proposed by Jean Gerson as ‘a novel courtly entertainment’ to familiarize King Charles VII with the Ten Commandments.112 A central part in this discourse is the affirmation of the Ten Commandments in pastoral activity and theological reflection. The faithful were called upon to make their behaviour conform in every aspect to those norms. The Decalogue appeared to be more precise, complete and authoritative than the Seven Deadly Sins, more capable of comprising all the facets of human life. As we know, the progressive affirmation of the Ten Commandments has been connected with the emergence of a view of the world and humankind alternative to the one proposed by the Seven Deadly Sins.113 The seven sins would point to the centrality of social-human relationships, in which ‘horizontal’ obligations among the members of a community are predominant; the Ten Commandments would rather testify to the shift towards obligations of a more ‘vertical’ type, of the faithful towards God, represented by the core role idolatry played within the moral economy of the Decalogue. According to this view, the choice of the Decalogue implied a sort of socio-cultural shift from 110  Richard Newhauser, ed., The Seven Deadly Sins: From Communities to Individuals (Leiden: Brill, 2007), p. 2; Newhauser, In the Garden of Evil, p. ix. 111  Merlo, ‘L’Osservanza come minoritismo dominativo’. 112  Cf. Hobbins, Authorship and Publicity Before Print, p. 86. 113  Bossy, ‘Moral Arithmetic’.

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community to individual, where the relationship between God and the faithful becomes progressively more personal, to be verified on the basis of the individual’s behaviour. This picture represents the core feature of a process of change from a social and cultural perspective. ‘Horizontality’ or ‘verticality’ was, however, not exclusive. One can also find in the use of the Ten Commandments strong tendencies aimed at shaping a sense of community, although this is constructed by considering first of all the prerogatives of God, and thus of the Church. This is recognizable in the whole pastoral context within which the preacher attends to his duties, as Busti shows, as well as in the theological tradition from which the preachers draw their material. The moral discourse has also to be considered within the process of juridical evolution as something detached from theological thought. The main development of this process occurs in the fifteenth century and would lead to the separation of positive law and conscience. Hence, believers had to respond both to the inner forum and to the civil laws.114 Here a window is open on the issue of ‘social control’, and on the study of ‘social discipline’ in early modern Europe. One can invoke Gerhard Oestreich’s concept of ‘sozialdisziplinierung’ or rather that of ‘sozialregulierung’, which would apply better to the fifteenth century, in order to explain the tendency to control individual behaviour and ultimately ‘the pull towards order in the sense of harmonization of the existing social relations’ that might derive from the reading of the pastoral texts composed in those years.115 Thus, amidst the state-building process of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, to which Oestreich devoted all his attention, the introduction by the Church of a ‘discipline’ for the faithful has been seen as active in the late medieval period, as well as after the Reformation in both Catholic and Protestant churches. The theory of ‘Konfessionalisierung’ — which would apply especially to the post-Reformation period — sees in the engagement of the Church(es) within society a way to build identities. This also implies the idea of a ‘planned transformation of human behaviour’ distinct from social discipline.116 From the 114 

Prodi, Una storia della giustizia, pp. 211–17. Gerhard Oestreich, ‘Strukturprobleme des europäischen Absolutismus’, in Geist und Gestalt des fruhmodernen Staates: Ausgewahlte Aufsätze (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1969), pp. 179–97; Winfried Schulze, ‘Gerhard Oestreichs Begriff “Sozialdisziplinierung” in der frühen Neuzeit’, Zeitschrift fur Historische Forschung, 14 (1987), 265–302. 116  See Wolfgang Reinhard, ‘Disciplinamento sociale, confessionalizzazione, moderniz­ zazione: Un discorso storiografico’, in Disciplina dell’anima, disciplina del corpo e disciplina 115 

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perspective of Catholic Church, the canons of Lateran IV constituted the first stage in the development of a more institutionalized Church, which was the basis for that evolution towards confessionalization which would peak in the age of Reformation.117 The introduction of compulsory confession and of various grids to classify sins ended up being two amongst the instruments for discerning the moral stances of the faithful, with the clear aim — as Schulze has said — of change (or at least of orienting) their way of life.118 Thus, we return to the (bygone) future with hindsight, the great advantage of the scholar researching the past. The point, of course, is not to conjecture ‘precedents’ in history, but to try to see if one can retrace a thread that links ideas, developments, and aims. The tendency to measure the ‘orthodoxy’ of believers, and the aim of regulating social and moral behaviours on the part of fifteenth century preachers, herald in a way the process of doctrinal and pastoral systematization that marked the fourteenth session of the Council of Trent, in 1551. At Trent the priest’s absolution was assimilated to an actus iudicialis, while the formula of confession ‘proprio sacerdoti’ was abolished, definitively opening the way to the pastoral action of the religious orders. The power of both the pope and his bishops was thus advancing. Every confessor had to be approved by the bishop before assuming his office. Moreover, in 1566 Pope Pius V, on the basis of Canon 22 of the Fourth Lateran Council Quod infirmi prius provideant animæ quam corpori, made confession compulsory for the sick as a necessary condition for receiving medical treatment.119 The canon Omnis utriusque sexus eventually became the battering ram of a campaign for control over people, as is also shown by the multiplication of the registers with the intention of checking the participation of the faithful in the liturgical activities and the sacraments administered in every parish.120 The pastoral engagement of the Observant friars constitutes an important link in the transmission of ideas

della società tra medioevo ed età moderna, ed. by Paolo Prodi (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1994), p. 111. 117  Cf. Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza, p. 258 ff. 118  Schulze, ‘Gerhard Oestreichs Begriff “Sozialdisziplinierung”’, p. 379. 119  Conciliorum Oecomenicorum Decreta, p.  245. Cf. Rusconi, L’ordine dei peccati, pp. 303–22; Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza, pp. 469–70. 120  See Fonti ecclesiastiche per la storia sociale e religiosa d’Europa: xv–xvii secolo, ed. by Cecilia Nubola and Angelo Turchini (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999); La ‘conta delle anime’: Popolazioni e registri parrocchiali: questioni di metodo ed esperienze, ed. by Gauro Coppola and Casimira Grandi (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1989); and Umberto Mazzone and Angelo Turchini, eds, Le visite pastorali: Analisi di una fonte (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1985).

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concerning the relationship between the Church and its flock, based on a better understanding of the faithful even through more refined pastoral instruments. From this point of view, the fierce early sixteenth-century opposition to confession of the Servite friar Paolo Sarpi appears significant. In his Istoria del Concilio tridentino (London, 1619), Sarpi described – sometimes with sarcasm – the debates concerning sacramental confession.121 It is, however, in the Italian translation of Sir Edwin Sandys’ A Relation of the State of Religion in Europe (London, 1605), published in Geneva in 1625 with extensive additions by Sarpi himself, that the friar recognized the role of Canon 21 as pivotal in shaping the form of Western European Christendom he criticized. Sarpi describes the canon of Lateran IV as catalysing all the negative features that would appear in subsequent years in the history of the Church in terms of a form of power that was typically ‘Roman’.122 What the critics attacked was precisely a form of religion that had at its core, in their view, the affirmation of a pastoral theory based on the multiplication of texts and manuals of casus conscientiae, and a focus on canonical, theological, and juridical minutiae. Sarpi’s attitude was not unprecedented. In 1415 the Council of Constance had condemned doctrines attributed to John Wycliffe that criticized confession.123 Critical voices through time can definitely be an indicator of the extent to which the penitential system conceived by the ecclesiastical elites was occasionally perceived as a form of control exerted by a caste over the faithful, and confession as one of the modalities through which power displayed itself.124 On the one hand, as already noted, such a process concerning an aspect of the pastoral and social history of the Church has to be placed within the context of a general redefinition of Christianitas, of its goals and the modes to achieve them. On the other hand, the meaning of Canon 21 should also be seen in a more complex light, as the expression of a specific Catholic anthropology aimed at resolving the religious problem par excellence, which is the problem of salvation, within worldly time and in a social perspective. That would be 121 

Paolo Sarpi, Istoria del Concilio tridentino, ed. by Giovanni Gambarin, Scrittori d’Italia, 151–53, 3 vols (Bari: Laterza, 1935), vol. II, pp. 144–48. Cf. Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza, pp. 214, 269–70. 122  Paolo Sarpi, Opere, ed. by Gaetano Cozzi and Luisa Cozzi (Milan: R. Ricciardi, 1969), pp. 306–39. See Rusconi, L’ordine dei peccati, pp. 338-41; Prodi, Una storia della giustizia, pp. 322–24; Letizia Pellegrini, ‘Predicazione, penitenza e confessione nell’Italia del Quattrocento’, in Penitenza e penitenzieria, pp. 262–63. 123  Elliott, Proving Woman, p. 9 ff. 124  Cf. Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza, pp. 214–15.

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basically indicated by the choice of giving a juridical organization to the means of pastoral care, which were to provide an ‘apparatus of (self-) control’ through a ‘catalogue of moral concepts’, the primary purpose of which was ‘to anchor a spiritual perspective in everyday life’.125 In this context, the significance of penitence and confession as means for the orientation of believers needs to be reconsidered. As the fifteenth-century Milanese Franciscan friars may help to show, it seems that the adoption of those elements was not simply due to their imposition from above, but rather to the skills of a new school of preachers and confessors, who would soon become doctors of sick souls and tormented minds.126

125  Newhauser, In the Garden of Evil, p. viii. See also Paolo Grossi, L’ordine giuridico medi­ evale (Rome: Laterza, 1995), p. 113. 126  Cf. Adriano Prosperi, ‘L’inquisitore come confessore’, in Disciplina dell’anima, pp. 202–03.

Part II The First Commandment and Superstition

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Superstition as a Problem of Divine Cult

S

uperstition played a particular role among the many issues that found their place in the moral discourse of the friars, in preaching and in confessionrelated texts. Writing about superstition did not mean, however, to deal only with unorthodox beliefs. As a text concerning the First Commandment, Bernardino Busti’s Sermon  16 of the Rosarium sermonum exemplifies the multifaceted nature of superstition as well as its interdependence with issues such as faith and divine cult. The preacher deals with faith in the preceding Sermon 15 De fidei catholice, giving direction on the signs that distinguish the ‘true Christian’, and on the various heresies that have appeared throughout history as deviations from ‘true’ faith. Sermon 15 prepares the ground for the cycle centred on the Ten Commandments starting with Sermon 16, which develops further the discourse on faith and analyses the ways by which it is possible to contravene it. Superstition is part of this picture. The theological and juridical structure of the discourse as well as its pastoral purpose are the main characteristics of Busti’s handling of this topic. Sermon 16 is De preceptis: primo in generali, deinde de primo in parti­cu­ lari (‘On the Commandments: at first in general, then about the First [Com­ mandment] in particular’). This sermon is intended for the second Sunday of Lent, and is one of those sermons whose teaching was considered necessary to prepare the faithful for Easter and the yearly duty of confession; it is composed of three considerationes on ‘Declaration’, ‘Adoration’, and ‘Transgressions’ of the First Commandment.1 The first part is an introduction to the whole Decalogue 1 

Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 125rb.

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and to its place within law; the second deals with divine cult, whose relevance points to the problem of idolatry; the third consists of a list of transgressions of the First Commandment, which are in fact a number of superstitions, thus constituting a model-scheme for their classification. Busti’s dependence on Michele Carcano’s Sermones quadragesimales de decem preceptis is rather evident: the same organization of the material, considering, in order, the issues of law (the importance of the Ten Commandments), divine cult, and finally superstition is shared by the two preachers.2 As I shall show (in a partial rather than systematic examination) nodal points Carcano deals with in the course of several sermons are actually recapitulated by Busti in Sermon 16. This highlights again, if needed, the dependence of Busti’s collection on his master and, on the other hand, the difference in nature between the two: the concise and practical aspect of Busti’s work, and the comprehensively doctrinal nature of Carcano’s collection, which displays its material through the traditional organization into rationes, auctoritates, and exempla. Antonio da Vercelli’s Sermones quadragesimales, a collection of seventy-one sermons printed in Venice in 1492, confirms and expands the interrelation of superstition with the issues of divine cult and Christian faith.3 As I shall explain more fully in the next chapter, in fact, Antonio relates divine cult, latria, and Christian faith to a number of elements that oppose them, such as heresy or believing that the Church can err. Within this context, a list of the same superstitious elements addressed by his fellow friars, Busti and Carcano, are referred to by Antonio as well.

2 

Carcano’s sermons begin on the Sunday of Septuagesima, which inaugurates the period of preparation for Lent, and develop a discourse on the obedience due to Ten Commandments (Sermons 1 to 7); from the Sunday of Sexagesima they deal with the types of law: eternal law, natural law, the law of Moses, human law (Sermons 8 to 14); from the Sunday of Quinquagesima — the week immediately preceding the first Sunday of Lent (Quadragesima) — they expand on the relevance of the Ten Commandments as well as on divine cult and the First Commandment, through Sermon  15: De magnitudine divinorum preceptorum; Sermon  16: De excellentia preceptorum Dei; Sermon 17: De excellentia preceptorum respectu comparationis ipsorum ad humana precepta; Sermon 18: De probatione primi precepti decalogi per rationes, auctoritates, et exempla; Sermon 19: De modo adorandi Deum et quod solus adorandus est adoratione latrie actu interiori et exteriori; Sermon 20: De adoratione Christi, Virginis et sanctorum ac eorum reliquiarum. The topic of superstition is developed from Holy Saturday to the Monday after the first Sunday of Lent, through Sermons 21 to 24. 3  Antonio da Vercelli, Sermones quadragesimales de xii mirabilibus christiane fidei excellentiis (Venice: Giovanni e Gregorio De Gregori, 1492).

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Following the order Busti gave to his material, in this chapter I first deal with the issue of law, with its distinction between divine law and human law as well as the focus on the Decalogue. Related to that, I deal with the issue of divine cult, which implies other possible degrees of worship directed to other beings as well as the side effects connected to it. After that, I introduce the Observant Franciscans’ reuse of the traditional view of superstition as something opposed to religion. This section draws more on Busti’s colleagues since he, as we have said, did not provide any theoretical or introductory consideration of the issue; moreover, this is a step towards the consideration of the model for classifying superstition, which will be fully discussed in the next chapter.

Sermon 16 of the Rosarium Sermonum, the Law, and the Cult The thema, taken from 1 Thessalonians 4. 2 ‘Scitis que precepta dederim vobis per Dominum Iesum’ (‘You know what precepts I have given to you by the Lord Jesus’), introduces the topic Busti develops in the sermon: the consideration of the Ten Commandments.4 Before going through the exposition of the Commandments, however, the preacher presents the issue of the necessity of obeying the laws of God. By citing multiple passages taken from Decretum Gratiani, Digesta Iustiniani, and the Biblical books of Numbers and Deuteronomy, Busti states that ‘Secundum omnes leges, superioribus obediendum est in licitis et honestis’ (‘According to all the laws, in licit and honest things obedience must be paid to the superior one’). The superior law is represented by the Ten Commandments, since: ‘Si Deus est super omnes, habens potestatem ad omnia, ei est summe obediendum, quia potentissimus est inobedientes punire et obtemperantes premiare’ (‘If God is above everybody, having authority for everything, obedience must be paid to him utterly, since [he] is very powerful in punishing the disobedient and in rewarding the obedient’). Even literary sources help Busti underline this concept, as when he quotes a passage as taken from Virgil’s Georgics, although it actually comes from a Pseudo-Virgilian text: ‘Est legum servanda fides. Suprema potestas quod mandat fierique iubet parere necesse est’ (‘The faith of the laws has to be kept. It is necessary to obey all that the supreme authority orders to be done’).5 4 

Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 125rb. Vita Vaticana II, Ms Vat. Lat. 1577, fols 49r–50v. (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana). See Jan M. Ziolkowski and Michael C. J. Putnam, The Virgilian Tradition: The First Fifteen Hun­dred Years (New Haven: Yale Uni­ver­sity Press, 2008), p. 284, lines 18–19. 5 

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After having highlighted the authoritative role of the Old Testament, Busti gets more specifically into the issue of law in his first consideratio, which is a Declaratio brevis decem preceptorum Decalogi (‘A concise exposition of the Ten Commandments of the Decalogue’). Here, the preacher presents briefly each Commandment through a constant process of comparison between the ‘words of God’ and the leges humanae, that is to say the Decretum Gratiani and Corpus iuris civilis. The preacher first hints at the reason for the numbering of the Commandments, referring to the scholastic auctoritates concerning the Mosaic Law, in particular to Alexander of Hales and Bonaventure of Bagnoregio. Busti does not pause for an inquiry into theological details. When referring to the numbering of the Ten Commandments, he does not provide any explanation for why ‘Nec debuerunt esse plura vel pauciora’ (‘They should neither be more nor less’), referring the reader directly to the rationes whose full examination, however, he says, ‘causa brevitatis omitto’ (‘I omit for brevity’).6 This exemplifies the limits of Busti’s insight into the doctrinal intricacies of the issues he touches, and at the same time it highlights once again the practical nature of his collection of sermons, which is not characterized by a deep speculative vein. Busti’s adherence to brevity proves to be useful in a pastoral setting for its mnemonic convenience; this is exemplified by the preacher at the beginning of his sermon when he provides the reader with a concise summary of the Decalogue in just four verses: Omnia vero precepta continentur in his versibus: Unum cole Deum, ne dicas vanas per ipsum. Sabbata santifices; habeas in honore parentes. Non sis occisor, fur, mechus, testis iniquus. Alterius nuptam nec rem cupias alienam.7 Indeed all the Commandments are included in these verses: Worship one God; do not say vain things for the sake of him. Keep holy the Sabbath; hold your parents in honour. Do not be a murderer, thief, adulterer, or false witness. Do not desire somebody else’s wife nor property.

6 

Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 125va. See Alexander of Hales, Summa theo­ logica (Florence: Frati Editori di Quaracchi, 1948), III. II., Tractatus Secundus, Q. 1, Titulus II, c. 1, vol. 4. 1, pp. 421–35; Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, Commentaria in quatuor libros Sententiarum, d. 37, art. 2, q. 1, in Opera omnia, vol. iii, p. 821 ff. 7  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 125va.

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Behind the representation of divine law there is the theological distinction between lex aeterna, lex naturalis, and lex humana, so well systematized by Scholastic thought. Lex naturalis defines the participation of the eternal law in the rational creature, as Thomas Aquinas states, and from its universal principles human reason draws human law.8 As Alexander of Hales explains, following Peter Lombard, lex naturalis discriminates between good and evil, because natural law has normative value in itself (by nature) beyond any human conceptualization.9 Eternal law is the main rule for the Christian, and is divine law that marks the plan of God for ruling the world, not through time but within an eternal frame.10 The reason why divine law is superior to any laws is thus a metaphysical one: Praeter legem naturalem et legem humanam, necessarium fuit ad directionem humanae vitae habere legem divinam. […] Sed quia homo ordinatur ad finem beatitudinis aeternae, quae excedit proportionem naturae humanae […] ideo necessarium fuit ut supra legem naturalem et humanam, dirigeretur etiam ad suum finem lege divinitus data.11 For the orientation of our life divine law was necessary, beyond natural law and human law. […] Since the human being is ordained to the goal of eternal beatitude, 8  Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Ia, IIae, Q. 91, a. 3: ‘Ita etiam ex praeceptis legis naturalis, quasi ex quibusdam principiis communibus et indemonstrabilibus, necesse est quod ratio humana procedat ad aliqua magis particulariter disponenda. Et istae particulares dispositiones adinventae secundum rationem humanam, dicuntur leges humanae […].’ Further Aquinas makes clear that ‘Omnis lex humanitus posita intantum habet de ratione legis, inquantum a lege naturae derivatur. Si vero in aliquot, a lege naturali discordet, iam non erit lex sed legis corruptio’ (Summa theologiae, Ia, IIae, Q. 95 a. 2). 9  Alexander of Hales Summa theologica, III. II., Inquisitio II, Q. 1, c. 1, vol. 4. 1, p. 338; and Alexander of Hales, Summa theologica, III. II, Inquisitio II, Q. 1, c. 2, vol. 4. 1, p. 340: ‘Lex naturalis est secundum quam animae rationales de istis inferioribus recte iudicant; sed lex aeterna est huiusmodi; ergo lex naturalis est lex aeterna, ergo increata’; cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Ia, IIae, Q. 91, a. 2. See also Reginaldo Pizzorni, Diritto naturale e diritto positivo in S. Tommaso D’Aquino (Bologna: Edizioni Studio Domenicano, 1999), p. 251 ff; Étienne Gilson, Le Thomisme: introduction a la philosophie de Saint Thomas D’Aquin (Paris: Libraire philosophique J. Vrin, 1945), p. 368 ff; Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (London: Sheed and Ward, 1989 3rd edn), p. 379 ff. 10  Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Ia, II ae, Q.  91, a.  1: ‘Ipsa ratio gubernationis rerum in Deo, sicut in principe universitatis existens, legis habet rationem. Et quia divina ratio nihil concipit ex tempore, sed habet aeternum conceptum, ut dicitur Prov. 8; inde est quod huiusmodi legem oportet dicere aeternam.’ 11  Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Ia, IIae, Q. 91, a. 4.

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which surpasses the natural capacities of human beings, […] it was necessary that he should be led to his goal by a law expressly given by God, above natural and human laws.

Showing his adherence to Carcano, Busti provides concrete cases to establish the superiority of divine over human law (the Justinian Code). Quoting Exodus 20, Busti explains the prescriptions of the First Commandment: ‘Non habebis Deos alienos’ [Exodus 20. 3] prohibet omnem idolatriam, divinationem, et recursum ad ariolos, ad magos indistincte et quacumque ex causa; et hoc Levitici 19 expresse prohibetur. Et in hoc preceptum istud excedit leges humanas que, licet puniant incantatores et maleficos, tamen, si incantationes faciant contra grandines aut infirmitates et huiusmodi, non ulciscuntur sed assentiunt, c. de maleficiis, l. Eorum.12 ‘You shall have no other gods’, forbids any kind of idolatry, divination and the recourse to soothsayers and magicians, without distinction and for whatever reason; and this is expressly forbidden in Leviticus 19. And in this, that commandment goes beyond human laws which, although they punish enchanters and magicians, nevertheless, if incantations are made against hail or infirmities and similar, do not punish them but give assent [as in] c. de maleficiis, l. Eorum.

The anti-idolatrous nature of the First Commandment is immediately explained through recourse to Leviticus which also makes the First Commandment the site for the discussion of superstition.13 According to Busti the Commandments exceed human law because they are more ‘inclusive’, meaning that they comprehend more cases than human laws in their respective areas of application. Thus Busti explains that the Second Commandment, which forbids all perjury and 12 

Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 125va. Carcano Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 17, fol. 40va has: ‘Pars prima huius sermonis in qua declaratur excellentia preceptorum Dei respectu comparationis ipsorum ad leges humanas […]. Primum enim preceptum est “Non adorabis deos alie(nos)” ubi prohibetur omnis divinatio, et prohibetur ire ad ariolos et magos, unde Levi(ticus) 19 dicitur “Anima que declinaverit ad ariolos et magos interficiam illam de medio populi mei” […]. Sed secundum le(ges) imperiales licet divini, incantatores, magi et malefici puniuntur tamen qui hoc faciunt contra imbres, ventos, grandines et infirmitates premiantur c. de maleficis l. eorum’. In ‘De maleficiis et mathematicis’ the Codex Iustinianus reads: ‘Eorum [maleficorum et mathematicorum] est scientia punienda [...]. Nullis vero cri­ mi­na­tionibus implicanda sunt remedia humanis quaesita corporibus aut in agrestibus locis inno­center adhibita suffragia, ne maturis vindemiis metuerentur imbres aut ruentis grandinis lapidatione quaterentur’ [...]. Corpus iuris civilis, ii: Codex Iustinianus, ed. by Paul Krueger (Berlin, Weidmann, 1929), 9.18.4.1. 13  Leviticus 19. 4: ‘Nolite converti ad idola nec deos conflatiles faciatis vobis. Ego Domi­nus Deus vester.’

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oaths without just cause, is superior to human law (the Digesta) because it does not allow one to bribe the accuser in the case of homicide, as the latter does.14 On a different issue, the respect given to one’s parents, the Fourth Commandment includes also the rights of spurious or illegitimate children, as opposed to the ‘imperial laws’ — the Corpus iuris civilis — which do not acknowledge them.15 Further, on the basis of Alexander of Hales, Busti enlarges the domain of the respect to be given to one’s own parents to include the ‘spiritual parents’, such as priests and those belonging to a religious order. This allows the preacher to condemn the practice, admitted by human laws, of requiring payment of tolls and taxes on goods carried by members of the clergy not for business reasons, but for their own sustenance. The preacher argues that the practice contravenes the Fourth Commandment, and those who do so, whether individuals or corporate bodies permitting such demands in their statutes, should be excommunicated immediately in the case of individuals, and proscribed by the very act in the case of communities, with no possibility of absolution unless complete restitution is made.16 14 

Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 125va: ‘Secundum preceptum dicit: “Non assumes nomen Dei in vanum, Exodi 20 [7]”. Quo precepto prohibetur omnis periuratio et iuramentum sine causa, ut inquit Nicolaus de Lira super predicto capitulo. Et ideo hoc man­ datum excedit leges humanas quibus licitum est corrumpere accusatorem in causa sanguinis […] de praeuarica(tione).’ Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 17, fol. 40vb has: ‘Secundum leges imperiales licitum est in causa sanguinis corrumpere accusatorem […] de preuaricato. Cf. Nicholas of Lyra’s Postillae on Exodus 20, in Biblia Sacra cum glossis interlineari et ordinaria, 6 vols (Lyon: Gaspar Trechsel, 1545), vol. i, p. 164 ff.; Corpus iuris civilis, i Digesta, ed. by Theodor Mommsen (Berlin, Weidmann, 1928), 47. 15. (‘De praevaricatione’) 7: ‘In omnibus causis, praeterquam in sanguine, qui delatorem corrumpit, ex senatus consulto pro victo habetur’. 15  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 125va: ‘Quartum preceptum dicit in eodem capitulo: “Honora patrem tuum et matrem tuam” [Exodus 20. 12]. Ubi etiam inclusive pre­ cipitur parentibus filios diligere et nutrire. Et in hoc excedit leges imperiales, quae filios, spurios et ex damnato coitu generatos, ab omni beneficio paterno excludunt, ut in […] c. de incestis nup(tiis) […] et c. de naturali(bus) li(beri)’. Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 17, fol. 40va says: ‘Quartum est honora patrem tuum et matrem tuam: ubi inclusive etiam precipitur parentibus filios diligere, quia amor debet esse reciprocus, sed secundum leges imperiales filius spurius ex damnato coitu ab omni beneficio excluditur c. de naturali(bus) libe(ri).’ Cf. Corpus iuris civilis, ii: Codex Iustinianus, ed. by Krueger, 5. 5: ‘De incestis et inutilibus nuptiis’, and 5. 27: ‘De naturalibus liberis et matribus eorum.’ 16  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 125vab: ‘Preterea in hoc precepto precipitur etiam honoratio patrum spiritualium, scilicet sacerdotum et religiosorum, ut inquit Alexander de Ales in 3a parte summe, in tractatu huius precepti. Leges autem humane sepe permittunt fieri contra hoc preceptum, scilicet exigi pedagia et gabellas a religiosis et clericis, pro rebus eorum

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These few examples should explain how to Busti the Decalogue was more allinclusive than human laws. In general, in part three of Sermon 17, Carcano had described the excellentia of the Ten Commandments in terms that Busti would clearly reuse. Carcano goes even further: while speaking of the First Com­ mandment, he asserts the superiority of Christian law, on a metaphysical level, over the moral codes of the Muslims and the Jews. Busti’s master argues that Et ideo promissa sunt nobis talia premia, quibus in nulla lege reperiuntur similia. Nam saracenis promittitur fluvius lactis et mellis, iudeis terra promissionis, sed christianis angelorum gloria Mat. 30: ‘Et erunt sicut angeli Dei’. Igitur congruum est ipsum tanquam creatorem et remuneratorem recognoscere, revereri, adorare, et religiose ei servire.17 And thus such rewards are promised to us, whose like are found in no other law. To Saracens rivers of milk and honey are promised, to the Jews the Promised Land, but to Christians the glory of the angels as in Matthew 30: ‘they shall be like the angels of God’. Thus, it is fitting to recognize, revere, worship, and scrupulously serve him [God] as the Creator and the one who grants rewards.

What sociologists would call the ‘otherworldly reward’ represents to Carcano a distinctive feature of Christian faith in comparison to its two neighbouring religions.18 Although not in these wider terms, the overall idea of the superiority of divine law over human law is stated by Busti at the end of the first part of Sermon 16 when he sums up his point in reliance on Alberico da Rosate’s juridical lexicon, explaining that Lex igitur divina incomparabiliter excellentior est quam humana […], quod finis quem intendit lex humana est pax humani generis […], finis autem legis divine est pacificatio humani generis cum Deo.19 quas non causa negotiationis sed pro victu suo defferunt. Qui omnes hoc facientes peccant mortaliter contra hoc preceptum. Et si sunt singulares persone, sunt excommunicati ipso facto. Et si est collegium, vel universitas talia faciens statuta, ipso facto subiicitur interdicto nec a predictis absolvi poterunt nisi satisfecerint et plene restituerint.’ A very similar passage is in Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 17, fol. 40vb. The reference is Alexander of Hales’ teaching on the Fourth Commandment (Summa theologica, III. II., Tractatus Secundus, Titulus IV, vol. iv. 1, pp. 505–20). 17  Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 18, fol. 43ra. 18  Cf. Stark and Finke, Acts of Faith, p. 89. 19  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 126ra. Cf. the entry ‘Lex humana’ in Alberico da Rosate, Dictionarium iuris (Venice: Società dell’Aquila che si rinnova, 1581).

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Divine law is thus incomparably superior to human [law] […] since the goal at which human law aims is peace within human race […] while the goal of divine law is putting the human race at peace with God.

The fact — according to Busti — is that the divine law aims at re-establishing peace, and therefore at setting a symmetrical relationship between Christians and God: for this reason ‘Obedire oportet Deo magis quam hominibus’ (‘It is proper to obey God rather than humans’).20 The Ten Commandments are divine law par excellence. Busti reasserts this point while explaining the twofold nature of the Decalogue as established by commandments oriented both towards God and towards humans by reusing the ‘ten-stringed psaltery’ image elaborated by Augustine.21 Following this image, Busti warns against discarding the directions of the Commandments: they constitute a psaltery that needs to be both carried and played, meaning that the Decalogue has to be put into practice in reality, not just in appearance, according to the rule of love rather than dread — a reference to the different spirits stemming from the Old and the New Testament — although, he points out, it is still better to put the Commandments into practice out of awe rather than not practising them at all.22 This call to obey divine law is the final point in Busti’s introduction to the Ten Commandments, which is followed by the vernacularization of the Decalogue tellingly recapitulating this law in the idiom of the people.23 On the whole, through the intellectual means offered by medieval juridical and theological speculation, Busti shows unquestionable self-confidence in the status and the role of the preacher as the one responsible for mediating between God and the faithful. The preacher discloses to believers the way to eternal salvation by offering moral guidance, of which the Ten Commandments are the core part.24 20 

Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 126ra; cf. Acts 5. 29. 21  See note 65 in the previous chapter. 22  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 126rb: ‘Melius est autem, ut ibidem dicit Augustinus, psalterium portare et cantare, quam tantum portare, et rursus, melius est portare et non cantare quam proiicere, quia melius est precepta Dei ex amore quam ex timore facere et rursus melius est facere ex timore quam nullo modo facere. Potest autem addi, quod sunt aliqui, qui non portant sed cantant, scilicet qui dicunt et non faciunt.’ Cf. Vecchio, ‘Il decalogo nella predicazione del xiii secolo’, p. 46. 23  See Appendix Two. On the alternation of Latin and vernacular in sermons, see Lazzerini, ‘“Per latinos grossos […]”’. 24  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 3, fol. 15vb.

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The second part of Sermon  16 De primo precepto adorationis Dei (‘On the First Commandment of the adoration of God’) deals with the First Commandment in more detail, introducing the issue of divine worship. 25 Busti here links the correct worship of God to the correct understanding of religion itself, establishing an idea of the ‘absolute authority’ of God by quoting the Psalms: ‘Dominum Deum tuum adorabis de quo etiam Psal. 71 dicitur: “Adorabunt eum omnes reges terre, omnes gentes servient ei”’ (‘You shall adore the Lord your God of whom is said in Psalm 71: “All the kings of the earth shall adore him, all the peoples will serve him”’).26 The aim of this section of the sermon is, like the previous one, to set up the necessary premises for the following and last section elaborating on the ways of contravening the First Commandment. Also in this second part a swarm of biblical, patristic, and scholastic auctoritates gives the preacher the possibility of proving the rationality of his statements. First of all, Busti reminds his readership of the basic rule established by the Old Testament: ‘“Ego sum Dominus Deus tuus, non adorabis deos alienos in conspectu meo”’ (‘“I am the Lord your God, you shall not adore strange gods in my sight”’).27 Further, relying on Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Richard of Mediavilla (d. c. 1308), and Bonaventure, Busti remarks that ‘Solus Deus adorandus est adoratione latrie’ (‘Only God is to be worshipped by the worship of latria’), according to a point that Bernardino da Siena had already made in relation to idolatry.28 It does not come as a surprise that Busti, as I have already remarked, relies largely on the Franciscan scholastic authors. This is something that applies to the issue of divine cult as well as to superstition itself, while Thomas Aquinas has been seen too often putting other figures of philosophers into shadow.29 On the contrary, widely diffused treatise-like texts such as Busti’s and Carcano’s Lenten sermons allow one to gain a more accurate insight into the use of authoritative sources in the matters of divine cult, superstition, and demonology: in these domains they follow closely the

25 

This section of Sermon 16 goes from fols 126va to 127rb. Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 126va. 27  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 126va. Cf. Deuteronomy 5. 7. 28  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 126va. Similarly Carcano, Sermones quadra­ gesimales, Sermon 19, fol. 45va. Bernardino da Siena, Quadragesimale de Christiana Religione, Sermon 10: De idolatriae cultu, in Opera omnia, vol. i, p. 110: ‘Cum enim latria summae venerationis cultus sit et obsequium honorificentiae consummatae, merito soli Deo altissimo debita est.’ 29  Cameron, Enchanted Europe, p. 349 note 13. 26 

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intellectual tradition of their religious order, tempering Thomas Aquinas with the Augustinian-Bonaventurian tradition.30 Since Sermon 16 deals with divine cult, the characterization of latria plays a central role in it. Busti explains that Latria secundum Augustinum X De civitate Dei capitulo primo, est servitus que pertinet ad colendum Deum, latria enim grece, idem est quod religio latine sive cultus soli Deo debitus.31 Latria, according to Augustine in the X book of the City of God, chapter one, is servitus that pertains to cultivating God, in fact the Greek latria is the same as the Latin religio, in other words it is the cult due only to God.

Nevertheless, although the preacher cites Augustine, when he illustrates the correspondence between latria, servitus, and religio, he does not follow Augus­ tine’s traditional stance, according to which religio would actually recall the Greek threskeia, rather than latreia.32 The equivalence between latria and religio is established on the basis that both terms point to the worship that is due only to God, which also recalls the teaching of Thomas Aquinas.33 Carcano is very clear in this regard. The preacher explains how latria rests on the balance between dominium (sovereignty), which is proper to God, and servitus (serfdom towards God), which pertains to the faithful; latria is also called religio since it compels the believer to prescribed actions directed to the cult of God.34 Further, in Sermon 19 De modo adorandi Deum, Carcano covers the interior and the exterior acts which pertain to the cult of God: reverence, devotion, a 30 

Cf. Martine Ostorero, Le diable au sabbat: Littérature démonologique et sorcellerie (1400–1460) (Florence: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2011), pp. 233–35. 31  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon  16, fol.  126va. Cf. Carcano, Sermones quadra­ gesimales, Sermon 19, fol. 45va: ‘Latria est cultus Dei […] quod est servitus que pertinet ad colendum Deum.’ 32  Augustine of Hippo, De civitate Dei, book x. 1, ed. by Bernhard Dombart and Alfons Kalb, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, 47–48, 2 vols (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955), vol. i, p. 273: ‘[…] Threskeia Graece, Latine autem religio dicitur.’ 33  ‘Adoratio qua Deus adoratur est religionis actus’: Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, a II , IIae, Q. 84, a. 1. 34  Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 19, fol. 45vb: ‘Aliquando etiam dicitur latria quam secundum Aug(ustinum) X De civi(tate) Dei c. 1 nostri interpretati sunt servitutem, in quantum per ipsam Deo exhibetur obsequium ad recognitionem dominii in ipso et servitutis in offerente. Aliquando etiam vocatur religio, in quantum obligatur homo ad aliqua determinata opera ad cultum Dei exhibenda.’

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humbled mind among the former, and genuflection among the latter.35 Also, Busti’s coverage of divine cult shows his reliance on a strong definition based on the equivalence between servitus and religio. In this view, apparently asserting the idea of the divine power as a sort of absolute authority, besides the patristic and theological sources, philosophical and classical auctoritates also find a place: Cum ergo dominium conveniat soli Deo secundum quandam excellentiam singularem, quia est creator, salvator et gubernator totius orbis. Igitur ei specialis servitus et reverentia debetur et non alteri hec autem reverentia et servitus appellatur religio, unde Tulius 2 Rethorice inquit: ‘Religio est qua reverenti famulatu cerimonie divini cultus exhibentur’.36 Supreme rulership is proper to God alone for the reason of his unique excellence, since He is the creator, the saviour and ruler of the whole world. Thus, special submission and reverence are due only to Him and not to any other. This submission and reverence is what is named religion, of which Cicero says in chapter 2 of Rhetoric: ‘Religion is that by the ceremonies of divine cult are performed by reverent service.’

A political metaphor is employed by Busti when he writes that ‘Cum ergo unicuique regno unus solus princeps preesse debeat’ (‘There should be a single ruler for each kingdom’): reference to Book 12 of Aristotle’s Metaphysics is provided by the preacher, who puts it in relation with the Corpus iuris civilis.37 The use of Aristotle is telling. The text had developed the idea of the ‘immutable substance’, which was widely drawn upon during the Middle Ages because of its theological usability.38 The legal idea of kingship finds therefore its counterpart 35  Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 19, fols 46vb–48ra. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, IIa, IIae, Q. 81, a. 7 and Q. 84, a. 2. 36  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 126 va. The quotation Busti indicates as taken from Cicero is to be also found later in Jean Pontas, Dictionarium Casuum Conscientiae, 3 vols (Venice: Antonio Bortoli, 1744), vol. iii, p. 168, where the author deals with religio. Pontas reports the quotation as taken from Cicero too, De natura deorum, liber I, although it actually does not appear in that text. 37  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 126va. Cf. Corpus iuris civilis, i Digesta, ed. by Theodor Mommsen, 1. 2. 11: ‘De origine iuris et omnium magistratuum et successione prudentium’; and Aristotle, Methaphysics, XII.  10.  14, trans. by Hugh Tredennick, 2 vols (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni­ver­sity Press, 1990), vol. ii: Books X–XIV, p. 175: ‘The rule of many is not good. Let one be the ruler.’ 38  On Aristotle’s Metaphysics, see Fritz W. Zimmerman, ‘The Origins of the So-Called “Theo­logy of Aristotle”’, in Warburg Institute Surveys and Texts, xi: Pseudo-Aristotle in the Middle Ages, ed. by Jill Kraye, and others (London: Warburg Institute, 1986), pp. 110–240.

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in the philosophical concept of the unity of God, the only one to be granted worship (latria or servitus). Augustine had actually recognized two types of servitus: latria, which is due to God, and dulia, which is granted to creatures of special nature.39 This twofold distinction is systematized by Scholastic theological thought, and reused as such by the Milanese preachers. Drawing on Duns Scotus, Peter Aureoli, Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, Alexander of Hales, Richard of Mediavilla, and Thomas Aquinas, Busti explains that there is a type of veneration due to rational creatures such as the saints and the angels.40 What distinguishes the worship due to God from the veneration that can be granted to these creatures who have a special status goes beyond linguistic differentiation. A third term, hyperdulia, represents something between latria and dulia but superior to the latter, and which can be granted to the Virgin Mary.41 Still following Richard of Mediavilla, Bonaventure, Aquinas, and John of Damascus, Busti points out that relics should not be worshipped but rather venerated, and that this should be borne in mind also with regard to the cross of Christ, which is not to be worshipped by the cult of latria in itself, but exclusively with reference to Christ, of whom the cross is a representation.42 39 

Cf. Augustine of Hippo, De civitate Dei, X. 1, X.2. Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 126va: ‘Dulia proprie sumpta est adoratio, que fit rationali creature. Et ista adorandi sunt sancti et angeli […].’ Cf. Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 19, fol. 46ra: ‘Dicitur dulia honor et reverentia debita et exhibita rationali creature’; Alexander of Hales, Summa theologica, III. II., Tractatus Secundus, Titulus I, Q. 2, c. 2, vol. 4. 1, pp. 441–42 has: ‘Latria dicitur cultus soli Deo trino et uni debitus, dulia vero dicitur cultus vel reverentia debita rationali creaturae superiorem ordinem tenenti.’ 41  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 126 vb: ‘Si vero queratur qua adoratione adoranda est humanitas Christi, dico quod in quantum est coniuncta divinitati debet adorari adoratione latrie. […] Beata autem Virgo debet adorari adoratione iperdulie. […] Iperdulia vero est aliquid supra duliam. Et ista adoranda est beata Virgo, scilicet honore aliis maiore et Dei honore minore.’ Thomas Aquinas in the Summa theologiae, IIa, IIae, Q. 103, a. 3, set the difference between the supremacy of God and the one humans can determine among themselves. Camille has pointed out how Aquinas distinguished relative degrees of reverence due to particular objects, and how in using the concepts of latria and dulia he was deeply dependent on some twelfth-century translations from Book 4 of John of Damascus’s De Fide Orthodoxa as well as on the statutes of the Second Council of Nicaea, held in 767. Bonaventure’s discussion on the same issues is also heavily dependent on Greek thought. See Michael Camille, The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-making in Medieval Art (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 1989), pp. 207 and 380 note 25. 42  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 126vb. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theo­ logiae, IIIa, Q. 25, a. 4. 40 

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Another important issue is the cult of images, which evidently deserved major consideration and a more careful explanation — as is indicated by the fact that Busti deals with it more thoroughly — probably because it could easily lead to the risk of idolatry. With regard to images, Busti follows the traditional Scholastic explanation of the use of visual representations of Christ, Mary, and the saints, on the basis of three principles: the instruction of the unlettered, the easier memorization of the examples they support, and the ability of images to raise emotions. The foundations of this theory are the commentaries on Peter Lombard’s third book of the Sentences, primarily those of Thomas Aquinas. Busti, however, does not refer directly to Aquinas but favours Richard of Mediavilla and Bonaventure, as did Carcano in his sermons.43 First of all, Busti asserts that images are used ‘Propter simplicium eruditionem, ut qui non possunt scripturas legere, in picturis possint sacramenta nostrae fidei cernere’ (‘For the education of the ordinary people, so that [those] who cannot read texts, can discern the sacraments of our faith in images’).44 Images are intended for the instruction of unlearned people, so that through a visual representation the faithful can learn the principles of faith that they cannot understand otherwise. In this way, suggesting a point that he employs also in discussing the other two points of the explanation, Busti refers to the usefulness of the pictorial or artistic representation of sacred themes as didactic-moralistic channels. This is a classical topic in the long tradition of Christian thought, present already in Gregory of Nyssa but especially in Gregory the Great, who had admonished Serenus, bishop of Marseilles, to allow images in churches for the benefit of 43 

Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 127ra: ‘Iterum queritur de imagine Christi depicta vel sculpta, respondeo declarando, secundum Ricardum in 3a di. 9a ar. 2. q. 2a et Bonaventuram ibidem ar. primo q. 2a, quod imagines Christi, Virginis et aliorum sanctorum introducte fuerunt triplici de causa’; Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 19, fol. 48vb explains it very similarly. Cf. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, Commentaria in quatuor libros Sententiarum, d. 9, a. 1, q. 2, in Opera omnia, vol. iii, pp. 202–05; Richard of Mediavilla, Super quatuor libros Sententiarum, 3 vols (Brescia: Vincenzo Sabbio, 1591; repr. Frankfurt am Main: Minerva Gmbh, 1963), vol. iii, dist. 9, q. 2, pp. 89–90. On the three reasons for employing images, see David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies on the History and Theory of Response (Chicago: The Uni­ver­sity of Chicago Press, 1989), pp. 161–67 (pp. 162–63). On the role of the images to foster devotion practice and as an aid in preaching, see Ottavia Niccoli, Vedere con gli occhi del cuore: Alle origini del potere delle immagini (Rome: Laterza, 2011); Lina Bolzoni, La rete delle immagini: Predicazione in volgare dalle origini a Bernardino da Siena (Turin: Einaudi, 2002). 44  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon  16, fol.  127 ra. With identical words Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 20, fol. 48vb: he only adds salutis to fidei.

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the illiterate people, so that they could see depicted what they could not read in books.45 While Busti does not refer directly to Gregory the Great, Carcano does refer to him when he describes the function of images.46 All this suggests the use of the religious images as biblia pauperum, a view criticized by Jérôme Baschet, who has shown it to be different from the traditional perspective of historiography.47 Busti’s awareness of the role of images as an aid in preaching clearly recalls the traditional practice in the Franciscan churches of Lombardy of representing iconographic ally, for the benefit of the faithful, scenes of the life and passion of Christ. The painted partition walls in these churches — with their earliest examples to be located precisely in the old St Angelo’s — and the use of the ‘Fastentücher’ in the broad sub-Alpine region, constitute a concrete background for the use of images promoted by preachers for the illustration of religious messages.48 The second reason that justifies the employment of images has an almost psychological flavour: Propter devotionis excitationem, ut qui non excitantur cum aliqua audiunt de sanctorum memoria, saltem moveantur cum ea cernunt in picturis, quasi presentia: plus enim excitatur affectus per ea que videt quam per ea quae audit.49 For the sake of the arousal of devotion, so that those who are not aroused when they hear something of the history of the saints, are moved to salvation when they

45 

Gregory I, Epistola XIII ad Serenum Massiliensem Episcopum, in PL 77, cols 1128–30 (col. 1128): ‘Nam quod legentibus scriptura, hoc idiotis praestat pictura cernentibus, quia in ipsa etiam ignorantes vident quid sequi debeant, in ipsa legunt qui litteras nesciunt.’ On this cf. Freedberg, The Power of Images, p. 163. 46  Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 19, fol. 49ra: ‘In ipsa ignorantes vident quod sequi debeant, in ipsa legunt qui litteras nesciunt, unde et precipue gentibus pro lectione pictura est. Verba hec scribit Gregorius Sireno episcopo marsiliensi.’ 47  Jérôme Baschet, ‘I peccati capitali e la loro punizione nell’iconografia medievale’, in Carla Casagrande and Silvana Vecchio, I sette vizi capitali: Storia dei peccati nel Medioevo (Turin: Einaudi, 2000), p. 235; Jérôme Baschet and Claude Schmitt, eds, L’image: Fonctions et usages des images dans l’Occident médiéval (Paris: Le Léopard d’or, 1996). On the religious function of the images, see Camille, The Gothic Idol, p. 206; Hans R. Hahnloser, ‘Du culte de l’image au Moyen Âge’, in L’Umanesimo e il demonico nell’arte. Atti del II Congresso Internazionale di Studi Umanistici, ed. by Enrico Castelli (Rome: Fratelli Bocca, 1953), pp. 225–34. 48  On the partition walls, see Nova, ‘I tramezzi in Lombardia fra xv e xvi secolo’. 49  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 127ra.

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see those things in pictures, as if face to face, emotionality is more aroused by what it sees than by what it hears.

Adhering to the original Scholastic development of the topic, Busti goes on and reinforces his position by quoting Horace: ‘Iuxta illud Oratii in Poetria: “Segnius irritant animos demissa per aures quam que sunt oculis infixa fidelibus”’ (‘According to Horace in the Ars poetica: “What is admitted through the hears excite minds more weakly than what is impressed through the trustworthy eyes”’).50 Pictorial representations have a more immediate effect on people than words, since they render the representation almost real. What has been rightly underscored with regard to this point is the power of images to excite empathy.51 To underline this concept, Busti quotes the Commentaries of Macrobius on Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis: Macrobius, De somnio Scipionis, libro primo, inquit: ‘Facilior ad intelligendum per oculos via est, quam per sermonem’ et, libro 2 eiusdem operis, etiam dicit: ‘Anime facilius illabitur concepta ratio descriptione quam sermone’.52 Macrobius in De somnio Scipionis, book one, says: ‘The path to understanding through the eyes is easier than that through speech’, and in book 2 of the same work, also says: ‘In the soul the sense of concepts is understood more easily by delineation than by speech.’

Bernardino da Siena had also insisted on the same concept, highlighting the importance of seeing in order to understand the meaning of a concept.53 In 50  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 127ra. Cf. Horatius, De arte poetica liber, verses 180–81. 51  Freedberg, The Power of Images, pp. 163–64. 52  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon  16, fol.  127ra. Cf. Macrobius, Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis, I. 21. 3 and II. 5. 13, ed. by James Willis (Leipzig: Teubner, 1963). 53  Bernardino da Siena, Quaresimale fiorentino del 1425, Sermon 10, ed. by Ciro Can­ narozzi, 3 vols (Florence: Libreria Editrice Fiorentina, 1940), vol. iii, p. 172: ‘[…] Dicono i dottori, che le cose vedute con gli occhi corporali, si ficcano più nella mente che le cose udite. Però fu ordinato, per santa chiesa, che si facesse la santa figura del nostro Signore Gesù Cristo, e della Vergine Maria, e degli altri santi, acciò che, veduti con gli occhi corporali, ti mettessi in memoria e alla mente il Signore, e la madre gloriosa e gli altri santi come sono in paradiso.’ (‘The doctors say that the things seen through bodily eyes stick themselves in the mind more than those heard. Therefore it was ordained by the holy Church that there should be made representations of our lord Jesus Christ and of the Virgin Mary and of the other saints, so that by being seen through the bodily eyes the Lord and the glorious mother and the other saints as they are in paradise would be kept in memory and borne in mind.’)

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his quotation of classical authors, Busti also relies on Terentius’s Adelphoe to underscore his thought: ‘Ideo Terrentius [sic] in Adelphis ait c. XI: “Inspicere tanquam in speculo vitas hominum iubeo, atque ex aliis sumere exemplum sibi”’ (‘Thus, Terentius in the Adelphoe chapter XI says: “I tell him to examine people’s life as in a mirror, and take an example for himself from others”’).54 The preacher reinforces the idea of observing visually as a way to have access to the truths of faith and morals. He finds this approach in the classical tradition, and especially in the Neo-Platonist view, as the reference to Macrobius shows, which through the idea of the ‘mediative processes’ actually made communication between God and humans possible.55 The role played by images in the preaching context is well known, as is the part the Observant Franciscan friars had in employing them for transmitting specific morals or charitable institutions to the laity.56 The devotion of the Holy Name of Jesus (represented by the three letters ‘IHS’ depicted on a wooden tablet consisting of a blue field surrounded by a golden sunburst of twelve rays) is probably the most famous example of such aids, probably because it caused Bernardino da Siena to be charged with heresy in 1427, although he was soon acquitted by Pope Martin V, and later in 1431 by Pope Eugene IV.57 Examples can be added to include iconographies not strictly related to Jesus, the Virgin 54 

Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 127ra. See Terentius, Adelphoe, XI, 415–16. See Steven Kruger, Dreaming in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni­ver­ sity Press, 1992), pp.  32–33; Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 1989), p. 130. See also Linos G. Benakis, ed., Néoplatonisme et philosophie médiévale: actes du colloque international de Corfou, 6–8 Octobre 1995 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997). 56  See Muzzarelli, Pescatori di uomini, pp. 71–75; Mauro Carboni and Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, eds, L’iconografia della solidarietà: la mediazione delle immagini (secoli xiii–xviii) (Venice: Marsilio, 2011). 57  Bernardino preached on the Name of Jesus in Florence in 1424, and in Siena in 1425. In Sermon 40 for the Florentine Lenten preaching cycle Bernardino writes: ‘Questo nome di Gesù è el brieve de’ brievi santo. Portatelo addosso, o scritto o figurato, e non potrai capitar male.’ (‘This name of Jesus is the most holy among the amulets. Wear it, either in writing or in image, and nothing bad will happen to you.’) Bernardino da Siena, Le prediche volgari: Quaresimale fiorentino del 1424, ed. by Ciro Cannarozzi, 2 vols (Pistoia: Pacinotti, 1934), vol. ii, p. 209. In the same sermon there is a description of the tablet. See Emily Michelson, ‘Bernardino of Siena Visualizes the Name of God’, in Speculum Sermonis: Interdisciplinary Reflections on the Medieval Sermon, ed. by Georgiana Donavin and others (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), pp. 157–79; Bernard Dompnier, ‘Des Franciscains et des dévotions, entre Moyen Âge et époque moderne’, in Le silence du cloître: l’exemple des saints, xive–xviie siècles. Identités franciscaines à l’âge des réformes, vol. ii, ed. by Ludovic Viallet and Frédéric Meyer (Clermont-Ferrand: Presses universitaires 55 

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Mary or the saints, such as the ‘Man of Sorrows’ or the Imago pietatis which Bernardino da Feltre employed especially to promote the Montes Pietatis, and Marco da Montegallo’s ‘Figura della vita eterna’, linking economic and moral discourses. Let us consider them in greater detail. The ‘Man of Sorrows’ was employed by more than one preacher in print, and also as an emblem for the Montes (for example, the Defensorium by Busti, whose woodcut print of an Imago pietatis was used by Michele Carcano for the Mons of Perugia), but this iconographical theme must have certainly made a more powerful impression when it stood out on the flags that were used to accompany the processions for the foundation of a new Mons. One of the earliest of those flags bearing an Imago pietatis was the one that Bernardino da Feltre ordered to be made in 1484 for the inauguration of the Mons in Mantua. Bernardino also used that image in other cases, such as for the pacification of Todi in 1487.58 In Marco’s La tabula della salute the representation of the Image of eternal life — which apparently originally circulated detached from the tabula — was a paradigm of a charitable life, having at its centre the Mons Pietatis, the only means to reach spiritual and physical ‘salute’ or salvation, and therefore eternal life.59 Images that were at the same time simpler and more explicit were also employed. Thus, upon preparing a bonfire of the vanities in Ferrara after the Easter of 1474, Michele Carcano had a flag raised bearing the image of a man and a woman being grabbed by hair by the devil.60 Visual means gave more emotionality to the work of the preacher among his flock. The third reason for which, according to Busti, it is worthwhile to make use of images is the weakness of memory, so that visual representations constiBlaise Pascal, 2011), pp. 39–62 (pp. 53–55); Mormando, The Preacher’s Demons, pp. 48, 88, and passim; and Muzzarelli, Pescatori di uomini, p. 97 ff. 58  Catherine R. Puglisi and William C. Barcham, ‘Bernardino da Feltre, the Monte di Pietà, and the Man of Sorrows: Activist, Microcredit and Logo’, Artibus et Historiae: An Art Anthology, 58 (2008), 35–63; Muzzarelli, Il denaro e la salvezza, pp. 24–27 and 127; Muzzarelli, Pescatori di uomini, pp. 73–75; Corinna Tania Gallori, ‘L’Imago pietatis e gli istituti di carità: problemi di iconografia’, in Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia dell’Università degli Studi di Milano, 59. 1 (2006), 75–125. 59  Muzzarelli, Pescatori di uomini, pp. 71–73; Philine Helas, ‘Fürsorge und Seelsorge – Die Predigt von Fra Marco da Montegallo für den “Monte di Pietà” und seine Marienbruderschaft in einem Stich von Francesco Rosselli (ca. 1485)’, in Inklusion/Exklusion: Studien zu Fremdheit und Armut von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, ed. by Andreas Gestrich and Lutz Raphael (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2004), pp. 423–50. 60  Diario di Ugo Caleffini (1471–1494), ed. by Pardi, p. 55.

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tute a good instrument in the service of faith, on condition that what is to be honoured is not the image, but what it refers to.61 The risk is that a too great attention to images could hide idolatry. Demons, in fact, can arise under false appearance: this is a risk that — Busti points out — concerns especially simple women (mulierculae) and uneducated men.62 Part two of Sermon 16 ends with this comment. Insisting on how to make a correct use of images enables the shift towards dealing with idolatry, which is the starting point of the third and last part of the sermon elaborating on the transgressions of the First Commandment, in other words superstition. Before getting to that, however, we need to prepare the ground. Superstition, being multidimensional, was a complex issue to handle. A few general considerations are still necessary to understand what superstition meant for Observant Francescan friars as they dealt with this issue in sermons on the First Commandment and in texts for confession.

Superstition as Perversion of Religion Busti employs the term superstitio only in relation to what is called ‘vanae observationes’ or ‘vain observances’. Otherwise, as mentioned, he prefers to speak of offensiones of the First Commandment. We have seen that preachers deal with superstition as something contradicting the majesty of God. This is actually the conclusion of texts fostering the view of the Ten Commandments as divine law. Nevertheless, the thought of magic and superstition as clashing with the principle of authority found a parallel with much earlier uses. Roman law placed them in the same group with the crimes punishable as crimina laesae maiestatis.63 The further development of such an approach would be the bringer of serious outcomes ahead. Starting with the pontificate of Innocent III — and especially by the decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council — the redefinition of the prerogatives of the Church from the canonical, theological, and pastoral point of view progres61 

Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon  16, fol.  127 ra: ‘Non tamen effigiem, sed quod designat honora.’ On this see Muzzarelli, Pescatori di uomini, p. 72. 62  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 127ra: ‘Verum quia hodiernis temporibus demones faciunt homines idolatrare apparentes eis in forma Christi, vel beate Virginis, aut alicuius sancti, et ab eis adorantur maxime a mulierculis, et viris imperitis.’ 63  See Cardini, ‘La stregoneria fra medioevo ed età moderna’, p.  11; Michale Bailey, ‘Concern over Superstition in Late Medieval Europe’, in The Religion of Fools? Superstition Past and Present, ed. by Stephen Anthony Smith and Alan Knight (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, 2008), pp. 115–33 (p. 118).

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sively developed. The attention to the instruction and formation of the laity in religious affairs increased, with faith, cult and superstition becoming increasingly important within the whole process, not only in the Italian peninsula.64 According to Bernadette Paton, by the end of the fifteenth century, the definition of superstition had progressively become that of ‘the failure of any individual to confine his belief in or use of the sacred to those doctrines and activities sanctioned by the church’.65 The privileging of the Decalogue, with magic and sorcery linked together with idolatry under the First Commandment, reinforced the acceptance of superstition as the territory of illicit practices opposing (not only) divine authority. As noted in the previous chapter, the texts produced by the Viennese school of moral theology represent a nodal point in the development of the consideration of superstition within the First Commandment. Yet, the Decalogue was not the only resource employed in the case of superstition. The texts produced in the same Viennese milieu, as well as already those composed by a versatile and wide-ranging figure such as Jean Gerson relied on the Decalogue as well as on diverse other intellectual frameworks to examine superstition.66 As is clear among the friars of the Milanese group, the priority granted to divine law as a theological framework within which superstition was considered an indicator of anti-religious practices, usually developed through the penitential discourse fostered by Lenten sermons. Beyond Lent, however, the scheme was generally the same. In his Sermon 88 De amore proximi, preached in Brescia for the Advent of 1493, Bernardino da Feltre describes superstitiones et incantamenta as the main elements opposing the love of God, and to explain what they consist of the preacher refers to the interrogation of the faithful framed on the basis of the First Commandment in Angelo da Chivasso’s Summa angelica.67 64 

Krzysztof Bracha, ‘Der Einfluß der neuen Frömmigkeit auf die spätmittelalterliche Kritik am Aberglauben im Reformschrifttum Mitteleuropas’, in Die ‘Neue Frömmigkeit’ in Europa im Spätmittelalter, ed. by Marek Derwich and Martial Staub (Göttingen: Ver­öffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte, 2004), pp. 225–48. 65  Paton, ‘To the Fire, To the Fire!’, p. 15. Cf. also Peters, ‘The Medieval Church and State on Superstition, Magic and Witchcraft’, p. 229; Baumann, Aberglaube für Laien, vol. i, pp. 66–82; and Lasson, Superstitions médiévales, pp. 56–62. 66  Baumann, Aberglaube für Laien, vol. i, p. 272 ff. On Gerson as a writer, see Hobbins, ‘The Schoolman as Public Intellectual’, pp. 1308–37. 67  ‘Et nota quod Deus vult totum hunc amorem et cor […] et quis furatur hunc? Super­ stitiones et incantamenta. Vide in Angelica: interrogationes contra primum preceptum.’ See Sermoni del Beato Bernardino Tomitano da Feltre nella redazione di fra Bernardino Bulgarino da

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For the modern scholar, one of the most characterizing and interesting aspects of the preachers’ approach to superstition in their sermons lies in their constituting, in many instances, a link between the intellectual mindset of the clergymen and the world of the laity. If Euan Cameron, speaking of sources, is right in assuming that ‘there are strong reasons for rejecting an approach that dismisses entirely any relationship between the literature and the real-world phenomena of “superstition”’, sermons certainly account for a large portion of such a literature implying a confrontation between different cultural strata.68 While treatise texts focus rather on the learned practices of elite magic, sermons, on the other hand, also included a broader consideration of common superstitious acts and diabolic trickery, as they were designed to instruct the preachers’ flocks, and in many cases, as I shall show, even implied direct confrontation with their supposed beliefs.69 Thus, in the Milanese Franciscan Observant milieu, within the typically learned outline of the sermons, the Decalogue frames a pastoral context that holds a catechetic aim, as its employment also in the vernacular texts for confession confirms. The wide role that Thomas Aquinas played in providing material for elaborating such an approach to superstition has to be highlighted here. Aquinas dealt with superstition extensively in the Secunda Secundae of his Summa theologiae, quaestiones 92 to 96.70 One of the main characteristics of Aquinas’s Summa has been seen as the inclusion in each of its three parts of a number of distinct treatise-like groups of quaestiones focusing on specific issues. The quaestiones discussing superstition are in the section concerning the Cardinal Virtues, namely under Justice. As Leonard Boyle has pointed out, Secunda Secundae was the most popular part of the entire Summa, surpassing the others in circulation, and being considered already by theologians contemporary with Aquinas as a sum of virtues and vices in itself. Secunda Secundae was recommended also in the following centuries as a specific source for integrating works of pastoral care with doctrinal elements, as in the Summa Historialis of a ‘best-selling’ author such as Antonino da Firenze.71 Brescia, minore osservante: I sermoni dell’Avvento di Brescia del 1493, ed. by P. Carlo Varischi da Milano (Milan: Renon, 1964), vol. iii, p. 15. 68  See Cameron, Enchanted Europe, pp. 8, 16. 69  On the distinction between treatise and sermon literature with regard to the approach to superstition cf. Bailey, Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies, p. 191. 70  The coverage of superstition in the Summa goes on up to Q. 96, a. 4. 71  See Howard, Beyond the Written Word, p. 61; and Leonard Boyle, ‘The Setting of the

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First of all, Aquinas states the general character of superstition as a vice opposed to religion, thus confirming the dichotomy between these two concepts: Sic igitur superstitio est vitium religioni oppositum secundum excessum, non quia plus exhibeat in cultum divinum quam vera religio: sed quia exhibet cultum divinum vel cui non debet, vel eo modo quo non debet.72 Thus superstition is a vice opposed to religion by excess, not because it proffers more in divine cult than true religion: but because it proffers divine cult to one to whom it is not proper, or in a way which is not proper.

Superstitio is therefore specified either with regard to the object — cui — to whom or to which undue divine worship is granted; or with regard to the way — eo modo — through which the act of worshipping is displayed unfittingly. Thus, Aquinas explains further, granting divine worship to God in an undue way represents the first species of superstition, while granting divine worship to one to whom it is not due is a different type of superstition, which can be divided into three more species: idolatry, which is granting the divine honour to a creature; divinatory superstition, which implies seeking advice from the demons through explicit or tacit pacts; and the superstition of observances (vanae observationes), which includes a number of common practices of various natures.73 This scheme elaborated by Thomas Aquinas was certainly the most frequently employed by subsequent authors as a general outline. In the fifteenth century this scheme is reused — although with different frequency — in the praeceptoria, the sermons, and other treatises by authors such as Ulrich von Pottenstein, Nikolaus von Dinkelsbühl, Stephen of Landskrona, Thomas Ebendorfer von Haselbach, Hans Vintler, and others from the German area, who worked out a view of superstition concerning observations, divination, and magic practices.74

Summa theologiae of Thomas Aquinas’, in Leonard Boyle, Facing History: A Different Thomas Aquinas (Louvain-La-Neuve: Fédération Internationale des Instituts d’études médiévales, 2000), p. 11. On the organization of material in the Summa cf. Vernon J. Bourke, Aquinas’ Search for Wisdom (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1965), pp. 200–02. 72  Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, IIa, IIae, Q. 92, a. 1. 73  Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, IIa, IIae, Q. 92, a. 2. On this cf. Cameron, Enchanted Europe, p. 98. 74  See Lasson, Superstitions médiévales, p. 227 and the table at p. 233; see also Bailey, Fear­ ful Spirits, Reasoned Follies, p. 152 ff.

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The way Observant Franciscans classified superstition was also traditionally based on Aquinas’s scheme. The coexistence of two of the meanings of superstition articulated by Aquinas seems to have been the basic and common trait of the view of second-generation Observant Franciscans concerning superstition: they were on the one hand a specific idolatrous/demonic acceptation of superstition understood as unfitting cult; on the other, a more general kind of superstition, involving mostly harmless common practices (vanae observationes).75 This is also true for the friars of the third generation of Franciscan Observance, although, as is clear with the Milanese preachers, their way of classifying superstition becomes more systematic and detailed than earlier. Busti does not adhere to any specific conceptualization of superstition, thus probably denoting once again the practical nature of his Rosarium sermonum, which often takes for granted general theoretical issues or refers to specific auctoritates, avoiding to explain them in detail. It is Michele Carcano in his Lenten sermons who describes — following Aquinas — the main nature of superstition in its relation with, and opposition to, religion: Sicut enim religio consistit in reverentia Dei et rerum sacrarum, ita superstitio importat superfluum et indebitum modum cultus divini: cum non exhibetur eo modo quo debet vel cui non debet.76 Just as religion consists in reverence towards God and sacred things, so superstition which is opposed [to religion] implies a superfluous and undue modality of divine cult: not granting it in the way it should or [granting it] to whom it is not due.

Carcano’s words, denoting a preoccupation that is shared by his fellow friars, describes religion as reverentia towards God and the ‘sacred things’: the limit between the licit and the illicit is thus clearly posited in the opposition — which is also terminological — between religion and superstition. Superstition as opposed to religion is described again as superfluous and improper manner of divine worship, consisting of either incorrect performance, or addressing worship to an improper recipient. Carcano’s confrere, Angelo da Chivasso, whose Summa angelica became a reference point for preachers and confessors until modern times, also described

75  Marina Montesano, ‘Supra acqua et supra ad vento’: Superstizioni, maleficia e incanta­ menta nei predicatori francescani osservanti (Italia sec. xv) (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo, 1999), pp. 8–9; Montesano, ‘L’Osservanza francescana’, p. 147. 76  Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 21, fol. 51ra.

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superstition employing Aquinas’s words, even borrowing a metaphor already used by him to establish the difference between superstition and religion: Superstitio est vitium contrarium religioni non quia plus exhibeat in cultum divinum quam vera religio, sed quia exhibet cultum divinum, vel cui non debet, vel eo modo quo non debet. […] Superstitio est religio supra modum servata, ubi accipitur methaphorice religio, sicut quando dicimus bonus latro.77 Superstition is a mistake opposed to religion not because it proffers in the divine cult anything in excess of the true religion, but because it proffers divine worship to one to whom it is not due or in a way that is unfitting. […] Superstition is equivalent to a religion practiced in excess and, if it is called religion it is only metaphorically, as when one says a good thief.

The view of superstition is symmetrical both in preaching and in confession. Angelo is aware that due to its intrinsic characteristics superstition might end up looking like religion, but he takes up the Thomist view of superstition as ‘religion practiced in excess’ to state that superstition is only apparently close to religion (methaphorice), but in fact is opposed to it on the basis of how or to whom it grants worship. At the core of the friars’ understanding of superstition lies the problem of avoiding idolatry in the divine cultus: hence the role of preachers and confessors who helped to demarcate the boundaries between religion and superstition as well as, at the same time, to specify their respective semantic domains.78 Further, still on the basis of Aquinas, Carcano groups superstition under the traditional three labels of idolatry, divination, and vain observances, and acknowledges the distinction between pactum expressum and pactum tacitum, showing how idolatry, implying the worshipping of a creature, can lead to the possibility of establishing an explicit pact with the devil.79 From a general point of view, the notion of pact would become an increasingly important element to denote demonic action, for instance in the theories concerning the invocation of demons.80 The whole issue concerning the idea of the pact with demons was 77 

Angelo da Chivasso, Summa angelica, fol. 322va. 78  On the movable relation between superstition and religion, see Smith, ‘Introduction’, in Religion of Fools?, pp. 45–48; and Cameron, Enchanted Europe, pp. 6–7. 79  Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 21, fol. 51vb. Carcano deals more exten­ sively with pact within the context of divination, in Sermon 22. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, IIa, IIae Q. 85, a. 2. 80  On demonic pact, see Smith, ‘Introduction’, p. 20; Cameron, Enchanted Europe, pp. 98 and 106–10; and Bailey, Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies, pp. 20 and 166–67.

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introduced by Augustine, to whom Carcano refers. In his De doctrina christiana the Bishop of Hippo specifies that: Superstitiosum est quidquid institutum est ab hominibus ad facienda et colenda idola pertinens vel ad colendam sicut Deum creaturam partemve ullam creaturae vel ad consultationes et pacta quaedam significationum cum daemonibus placita atque foederata, qualia sunt molimina magicarum artium.81 Something instituted by humans is superstitious if it concerns the making and worshiping of idols, or the worshiping of the created order or part of it as if it were God, or if it involves certain kinds of consultations or pacts about meanings arranged and ratified with demons, such as the enterprises involved in the art of magic.

In Augustine’s text superstition is explicitly identified with idolatry, ‘the making and worshipping of idols’ or the worshipping of a creature as if it were God. Augustine establishes a connection between superstition and the demonic powers, since superstition is the context that renders communication between humans and demons possible by means of ‘pacta significationum’ or ‘pacts concerning certain meanings’ agreed to by both. This view has to be contextualized within the theory of signs, which in turn is part of the doctrine of knowledge presented by Augustine in his De doctrina christiana. According to this doctrine, knowledge and teaching can concern res, the things in themselves, which are not employed to signify something, and signa, ‘signs’ that refer to something else.82 Signs can be of two species: signa naturalia, which signify something by observation alone, as when, by observing smoke, one understands that there must be fire; and signa data, prescribed or conventional signs, which are intended to communicate something either among humans, or between the divine and human spheres. Superstition belongs to this second type of signs, being for Augustine a conventional sign for communicating with demons. On all the issues the preachers dealt with, their aim was certainly not to be innovative: as was customary in medieval practice they built their discourse on authoritative intellectual sources, referring to them almost literally and then working on from this basis.83 What appears new in the Observant Franciscans, 81 

Augustine of Hippo, De Doctrina Christiana, II. xx, ed. by R. P. H. Green (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), p. 90. 82  See Augustine of Hippo, De Doctrina Christiana, I. ii and II. ii, ed. by Green, pp. 12–15 and 56–59. 83  Hervé Martin, ‘La predicazione e le masse nel xv secolo. Fattori e limiti di un successo’,

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however, is the extent to which in the late fifteenth century preachers and confessors aimed at building a comprehensive pastoral campaign employing these theological models. This has to be put in relation with the nature of one part of their works, oriented towards the doctrinal aspect of pastoral issues. Such an orientation is clear in Angelo da Chivasso’s Summa angelica, which by definition was intended to sum up theological and canonical knowledge, becoming an auctoritas in itself, but it is also evident in Carcano’s Lenten sermons, which as such one would imagine intended for pastoral purposes rather than for theological summary. Carcano’s abundant use of the scholastic apparatus of reasoning clearly show his purpose.84 This is why in dealing with this type of texts — to employ Letizia Pellegrini’s words — it is sometimes difficult to distinguish ‘whether it is a case of collections of sermons hidden under the appearance of the treatise, or treatises which make use of the sermon as literary genre’.85 These treatise-like sermons are actually composed to provide their learned readership with an orientation on doctrinal matters, laid out for pastoral use. Thus, as will be clearer in the next chapter, three points seem to represent the general understanding of superstition on the part of the Observant Franciscan friars. First, the link with scholastic thought, by adopting Thomas Aquinas’s macro categories, and by referring to Franciscan auctoritates, such as especially Bonaventure and Alexander of Hales, when the discourse becomes more detailed. Second, their drawing on an approach fostered by the representatives of the ‘mature’ Observance, such as Bernardino da Siena and Giacomo della Marca, and on other representatives of pastoral traditions. Assessing how the friars make use of those intellectual tools in a newly construed context, leads us to the third point. In general, the Milanese preachers seem to have been more oriented than their predecessors towards drawing a concise but detailed outline of such a heterogeneous issue as superstition, inserting it in their overall in Storia vissuta del popolo cristiano, ed. by Jean Delumeau, It. ed. by Franco Bolgiani (Turin: SEI, 1985), pp. 455–90 (pp. 472–73): ‘Vis-à-vis these texts we have to strip ourselves of our mental habits and enter into a different logic. We must not privilege anymore novelty at the expense of repetition in a society that celebrates tradition. […] The long chains of scriptural or patristical quotes […] constitute often fundamental itineraries of reasoning.’ 84  Cf. Turrini, La coscienza e le leggi, pp. 77–78; Rusconi, ‘Michele Carcano da Milano e le caratteristiche della sua predicazione’, p. 199. 85  Pellegrini, I manoscritti dei predicatori, p. 20. On this topic and more generally on the relationship between preaching and literature, see Ginetta Auzzas, Giovanni Baffetti, and Carlo Delcorno, eds, Letteratura in forma di sermone: I rapporti tra predicazione, e letteratura nei secoli xiii–xvi (Florence: Olschky, 2003).

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pastoral programme for educating the laity. What is more, as we know, such a scheme for classifying superstition provided the framework for the consideration of beliefs of importance at the time, such as those concerning witchcraft. We shall come to these matters in due course.

Chapter 5

Fifteen Ways to Transgress Against God: The (Re-)Development of a Model for Classifying Superstition

A List of Superstitions for Pastoral Use In the third part of Sermon 16 of the Rosarium sermonum, we find a practical scheme to assess the behaviour of the faithful in light of the first two considerationes of the sermon. Here Bernardino Busti enumerates a list of fifteen offensiones, beliefs and behaviours through which one contravenes the fundamental precept of the First Commandment: ‘You shall have no gods except me.’1 Within each offensio the preacher gives an introduction to the relevant theological and canonical fundamentals in order to explain the nature of those violations. The elements listed by Busti are, in order: idolatry; diviners; invocation of demons; belief in dreams; those who tempt God; paying regard to the constellations; those who observe the course of the moon and the stars; paying regard to days and months; lot-casting; sorcery; enchantments; textual amulets; anyone who believes that a creature can turn into another species; blasphemy; anyone who loves his or her body, son or daughter, or son or wife, or wife her husband, or any other creature, being, or money more than God.2 1 

This part of the sermon extends from 127rb to 129va. Cf. Fabrizio Conti, ‘Preachers and Confessors against Superstitions: Bernardino Busti and Sermon 16 of His Rosarium Ser­ monum’, Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft, 6 (2011), 62–91. 2  Idolatria, divinatores, invocatio demonum, fides somniis, tentantes Deum, observatio constellationes, observantes cursum lune ac stellarum, observatio dierum et mensorum, sortes, maleficia, incantationes, brevia, quis credit aliquam creaturam posse transmutari in aliam

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As I shall show, this latter point leads again to idolatry. The implications of blasphemy are such that, although the preacher lists it among the offensiones of the First Commandment, he reserves the right to deal with it more extensively in the following sermon on the Second Commandment. He also immediately points out that failure to honour God and the saints is much more important than swearing.3 As mentioned, this all-embracing model for the classification of superstition is to be found in the same format — with variations that I shall highlight — in Michele Carcano’s Sermones quadragesimales de decem preceptis, and in Bartolomeo Caimi’s Interrogatorium. Speaking of the differences concerning the way the Milanese preachers used this classificatory model, I have noted how, unlike Busti, who deals with superstition in one sermon, Carcano deals with it in Sermons 21 to 24. Carcano develops a similar model of classification through the first three sermons, while the fourth — ‘On the permission, the remedy, and punishment of superstitions’ — includes a thorough reflection on the powers of demons (such as demonic possession) and their deceptions.4 Each one of the sermons is divided into three sections. Sermon 21 is on superstition as opposed to divine cult and the First Commandment, and thus centred on idolatry. The first part explains the nature of idolatry; the second, the origin of idolatry; the third part explains the seriousness of the fault of idolatry. Sermon 22 deals in its first part with divination, with invocation of demons, necromancy, augury, and lot-casting in the second, and explains what believing in dreams and tempting God mean in the third part, here also briefly returning to idolatry. Within the discourse concerning idolatry, Carcano deals with those who value bodily concerns more than God, first of all the superbus and the avarus. Sermon 23 deals with the observations of celestial bodies in the first part; in the second it explains the observation of incantations, textual amulets, speciem, blasphemia, quis diligit plus corpus suum, filium aut filiam vel uxorem aut uxor maritum vel aliam creaturam seu nummos quam Deum. 3  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 129va. Sermon 17 on blasphemy is divided into three parts: De vana Dei nominatione, De iuramento licito et illicito, De periurio. 4  Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, fols 51ra–64rb. The following sermons are con­cerned: Sermon 21: De superstitione contraria cultui divino et primo precepto: Et primo de ydola­tria et prima eius specie, meant for Ash Saturday; Sermon 22: De alia specie superstitionis que dicitur divinatio, incantatio, demonum invocatio, et huiusmodi, for the first Sunday of Lent; Sermon 23: De superstitione observationum, planetarum, temporum, incantationum, et huiusmodi, for the first Sunday of Lent after lunch; Sermon 24: De permissione, remediatione et punitione superstitionum, for the Monday after the first Sunday of Lent.

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and illusions (such as shapeshifting and the sceleratae mulieres who go riding at night with Diana); in the third part the sermon deals with the observations of particular times of the calendar, ars notoria, and the observation of ill-omened occurrences, along with other types of superstitions such as procuring the celebration of a Mass to make somebody die.5 The capacity of demons to operate maleficiatio or sorcery is dealt with in Sermon 24, when the preacher engages with the multifaceted abilities of demons. The general categories employed by Busti were thus all already applied by Carcano, except for blasphemy. As we have seen, Busti mentions blasphemy within his scheme but does not really deal with it there, similarly to Carcano, who deals with blasphemy through Sermons 32, 33, and 34. Some of these superstitions are suggested by Carcano for the interrogation of the penitent in the Confessionale generale de la gran tuba. When the moment has arrived for the confessor to interrogate the penitent on the Decalogue, starting with the First Commandment — Carcano says — the confessor should ask whether the penitent has performed specific actions or kept particular beliefs. In this case, however, after having mentioned idolatry (greater veneration of the creature than of the creator) as the starting point, Carcano pays more attention to some common behaviours in interpersonal relationships, especially between a man and a woman, such as the case in which a man has flattered the woman with a great many words describing her as the most loved creature in his life.6 Other points in contravention of the First Commandment include having asked for spells in order to conquer more women, having worn amulet scrolls (brevi), and having had regard to particular days, or to dreams. 5 

Ars notoria employs notae, diagrams or visual schemata functioning as a link between the operator of magic and the celestial sources that provide him with a superior form of knowledge. See Michael Camille, ‘Visual Art in Two Manuscripts of the Ars Notoria’, in Conjuring Spirits: Texts and Traditions of Medieval Ritual Magic, ed. by Claire Fanger (Uni­ver­sity Park, PA: Pennsylvania State Uni­ver­sity Press, 1998), pp. 110–35. The friars attest to the use of the Mass for the dead as a magical means to facilitate somebody’s trespassing: Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 23, fol. 61va: ‘Qui dicunt vel dicere faciunt missas per requiem eternam ut persona viva moriatur.’ 6  Carcano, Confessionale generale de la gran tuba, fol. A iiiir: ‘E poi domandi de diece comanda­menti de la lege. Et primo circa el primo comandamento se mai ’l ha adorato più le creature che ’l creatore, e se mai el volse tanto bene a donna alcuna, o per ingannarla e redurla a la sua voluntà […] el dicesse […]: tu sei el mio Dio, tu sei la mia speranza, senza te non vorei vivere.’ (‘And then [the confessor] should ask about the Ten Commandments, and whether [the penitent], being so much in love with a woman or to mislead and reduce her to his own will, told her: “you are my God, you are my hope, I would not want to live without you”’).

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The Confessionale shows therefore a list of the most common superstitions for the practical use of those who had not mastered Latin. In Caimi’s Confessionale, following a scheme that is typical of the genre of the interrogatoria, each superstitious belief and behaviour is introduced by a question concerning forbidden actions contravening the First Commandment that the confessor has to ask to the penitent, such as for instance ‘Si adoravit aliquam creaturam pro Deo’ (‘Whether [the penitent] adored any creature in the place of God’).7 Comparing the fields covered by Caimi with those dealt with by Busti and Carcano, we note that all of them are considered, with the exception of those who tempt God. In order, Caimi addresses: idolatry; enchantment; divination; ars notoria and necromancy; observing constellations, planets, the course of the moon; observing specific days and months; observing dreams; divination through sortes; the use of brevi; maleficia; shape-shifting; the belief in the mulieres who go with Diana; blasphemy; favouring one’s own body more than God. As I pointed out, Carcano is more interested in the theological development of his material, which is why he needs more room to deal with it in his sermons. Overall, the abundant repertoire of theological, patristic, and biblical references as well as citations from classical philosophers and poets, becomes widespread in Franciscan pastoral texts of this period, serving as the binding agent of a literary form that can be defined as encyclopaedic.8 Busti’s Rosarium had a reputation as a valuable manual of preaching materials for the use of preachers, standing somewhere between Caimi’s text and Carcano’s: concise enough, but not overly so. As mentioned in the previous chapter, Antonio da Vercelli and Angelo da Chivasso also employed partially similar lists of superstitions. Thus, Antonio elaborates on forty elements that are hostile to divine cult in his Sermones qua­ dragesimales de xii mirabilibus christiane fidei excellentiis, from Sermon 43 to Sermon 45.9 In Sermon 43 twenty of these elements transgress divine cult and latria, and in Sermon 44 there are ten more transgressing divine cult and latria. In Sermon 45 the remaining ten categories infringe divine cult and Christian faith. Within this last group, eight elements are superstitions that partially cor7 

Caimi, Interrogatorium sive confessionale, xxxiir–xxxvr. Lage Cotos, ‘Auctoritates clasicas para la salvacion humana’. 9  These are three sermons De quinta excellentia videlicet de maxima nobilitate ipsius sacra­ tissime fidei. Sermon 43 is intended for the fourth Sunday of Lent; Sermon 44 for the Monday after the fourth Sunday of Lent; Sermon 45 for the Tuesday after the fourth Sunday of Lent. 8 

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respond to those listed by Caimi, Carcano, and Busti. The superstitious elements considered by Antonio are: those who believe that a woman, sorceress, or witch can transform into a cat; those who make use of ars notoria; those who invoke demons; those who ask diviners about life and death; those who work charms for gaining good health; those who observe the stars or constellations to know the future; those who believe in dreams; those who infer a good or bad future by the day and time of one’s birth.10 As for Angelo da Chivasso, a series of superstitions are considered within the scheme for interrogating the penitent on the basis of the First Commandment included in his Summa angelica. Each of the elements is included by Angelo under the alphabetically listed key-words or macrocategories through which the Summa is conceptually organized. Thus, according to this scheme, to adoratio pertain idolatrous elements such as the adoration of a creature, or of the devil as luciferus, the ‘angel of light’; the practices connected to sors or divination include the invocation of demons, necromancy, aeromancy, and the like; incantations to know secret things or to find stolen objects; foretelling the future through the inspection of animals; drawing an omen from encountering a hare or other animals; a pregnant woman asking for fire in order to predict the future; discerning the future by means of the letters of the alphabet, the throw of dice, the astrolabe, or casting by opening a book; observing the sky and dreams; believing that one is led to do good or bad according to the constellation under whose sign one was born. Under superstitio, Angelo includes wishing to worship God according to the rites of the Jews; using talismans or written amulets to gain good health; making a ring or a seal while the Passion of Christ is read; ars notoria; the use of herbs against demons; hanging brevi on the neck; putting a spell on animals; putting a spell on the sick; celebrating a Mass, a prayer, or asking somebody to celebrate them in order to make somebody die; picking herbs with superstitious rituals (through vain observances); to perform an action to gain knowledge of someone’s shameful secrets; to counter an ailment by means of an evil spell; believing in those women who wander at night or believing that they can transform into cats; observing the Egyptian days; giving someone love potions. To curiositas Angelo refers owning books of magic and superstitions, which the penitent must burn to be absolved, and to sacrum the use of sacraments or sacramentals for healing purposes. More practices are considered, which however are not included in the listing used by

10 

Antonio da Vercelli, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 45, fols 328vb–332vb.

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the other friars, for example the elements pertaining to infidelitas such as apostasy or having too much contact with Jews.11 Certainly, the friars could rely on earlier outlines of superstition that were circulating being particularly intended for pastoral and penitential purposes. The scheme for a self-examination written in the vernacular under the name of Giacomo della Marca and preserved in a manuscript from Ascoli Piceno, might well be one of them. This text lays down a detailed list of sins according to three of the main available pastoral/theological schemes: the Seven Deadly Sins, the Ten Commandments, and the five senses.12 On confessing sins according to the First Commandment, Giacomo’s text explains the risk of infidelity, which can be expressed with respect to the Church by adoring the devil or worshiping God following the rites of the Jews. Subsequently, the scheme of confession lists behaviours and beliefs pertaining to superstition. Each of them is introduced by the formula ‘se cridi’ (‘if you believe’) or ‘se hai creduto’ (‘if you believed’) or ‘if you did’ this or that, depending on the form of the question to be put, as follows: Se hai pigliato o facto pigliare el ferro infocato per dimostrare alcuna verità o altra cosa. Se cridi a li incanti, a le sorti e a li sogni. Se cridi per iscontrare alcuno li seguiti bene o male et dici lo tale me ha havuto mal occhio. Se cridi a li incanti de ocelli che significha bene o male. Se cridi che chi nasce in tal hora haverà bene o male. Se cridi che lo pianeta et constellatione constrenga lo homo ad lo male fare. Se cridi a li indovini et incantatori. Se hai creduto le femine o corpo humano andare in corso

11 

Angelo da Chivasso, Summa angelica, fols 164rb–164vb. 12  The beginning of the text reads: ‘This is a confession and rule made by friar Giacomo of Monteprandone — “Iacobo de Monte Branduno” — of the order of the Observance of St Francis, a mirror for the way of the faith of Jesus Christ, and declares that one must confess and should avoid all mortal and venial sins.’ The self-examination of Giacomo is in a miscellaneous notarial book containing prayers and liturgical texts belonging to the Archivio notarile di Ascoli, which is held in the Archivio Nazionale in Ascoli. The piece is not numbered. The ‘Confessione’ is included between folios 188 and 206 of the manuscript. Reference to the text is also in Giuseppe Fabiani, Ascoli nel Cinquecento, 2 vols (Ascoli Piceno: Società tipolitografica editrice, 1957), vol. i, p. 402 (see also p. 119), and in Allevi, ‘Costume, folklore, magia’. A tricky detail: both these scholars transcribe the name of Giacomo as ‘Iniacobo’, since attached to the first letter of the name ‘Iacobo’ there is a letter — seemingly an ‘m’ — that both of them take for ‘in’. This, I believe, does not make much sense. It would be intriguing to speculate that the ‘m’ would possibly stand for ‘messer’, whose use would also allow one to presume the non-religious status of the anonymous reporter addressing Giacomo in such an uncommon way. I must admit that this idea is, perhaps, somewhat imaginative. The most likely explanation is a misspelling of the copyst in writing the name ‘Iacobo’.

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de nocte et diventare streghe, gacte o lupi e bevere el sangue de mammoli et simili paczie. Se hai usato herbe contra le demonia. Se hay facto anello o nodo o signo in corda o correggia o altro quando se lege lo paxio o simile. Se hai usato brevi da portare ad collo o adossa. Se hai incantato o fatto incantare alcuna infermità contra cristiani ad dente o carne […] o capo. Se hai incantato ad luna o sole o stelle. Se hai incantato per retrovare furto o facto far. Se hai consigliato alcuno ad simile incanto. Se hay usato incanto o facto incantare ad amalare et usato acqua benedetta o cose sacre. Se hai adorato herbe o sambuco o altra creatura in simili incanti o facture. Se hai indovinato ad cartucia o con palme de oliva […] o aprire libro o altro. Se hai facto dire o dicto messe o altro bene contra persone ad ciò che moresse o adriuscisse male qualunque persona. Se hai tenuto libri de sorta de incanti et altro simile et se non le habrucia non pò nessuno dicto absolvere.13 If you took or make somebody take the red-hot iron to prove any truth or something else. If you believe in charms, casting lots and dreams. If you believe that upon bumping into somebody good or bad would follow, and you say ‘that one had the evil-eye for me’. If you believe that bird song means something good or bad. If you believe that if one was born at a certain time one would be lucky or unlucky. If you believe that planets or constellations would constrain a person to do bad. If you believe in diviners and enchanters. If you believed that women or human bodies travel at night and become witches, cats, or wolves and suck the blood from children and similar insanities. If you used herbs against demons. If you made a ring or knot or sign on a rope or strap or something else when the Passion is read or the like. If you used textual amulets to wear from the neck or elsewhere on your person. If you enchanted or make to enchant any infirmity against anybody’s teeth or body […] or head. If you enchanted the moon, the sun, or the stars. If you enchanted to find stolen things or made anybody else do it. If you advised anybody with regard to similar spells. If you made spells or made anybody else (do it) to cause someone to become sick and used holy water or sacred items. If you adored herbs or the elder three or any other creature in similar enchantments or evil spells. If you cast lots with parchment or olive leaves […] or by opening a book or anything else. If you made somebody celebrate a Mass or celebrated yourself or anything else against persons so that they would die or anything bad would happen to them. If you held books for spells or anything similar and if you do not burn them nobody can absolve you.

As we have seen, the use of the Mass as a means of superstition indicated in the text attributed to Giacomo is also mentioned by Angelo da Chivasso and Antonio da Vercelli. The ‘Confessione’ constitutes the interesting example of a personal note containing ‘ready-to-use’ material for pastoral purposes, as the employment of the vernacular may indicate. 13 

‘Confessione’, fols 193v–194 v.

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Thus, lists of blameworthy, superstitious habits transgressing against the First Commandment circulated among the friars, packaged and elaborated with some differences according to the aims and the needs of their users. To sum up, the greater part of superstitious beliefs condemned by the preachers belonged to these categories: idolatry; divination, which combines different practices including invocation of demons; maleficium; vain observances linked to the everyday customs of life; and the women who were believed to travel at night (‘andare in corso’) and to shape-shift into cats. As we shall see, these latter beliefs would prove to be ones under which more sophisticated and topical issues regarding witchcraft are located, such as the sabbath stereotype, and the transvection of witches, which becomes the subject of specific intellectual consideration by Samuele Cassini. Busti’s orderly listing of superstitions with its inner similarities with the models deployed by Carcano and Caimi, and its use both in preaching and confession-related texts, appears as a comprehensive model for pastoral usage. What is more, the fact that, as I am about to show, the intellectual origins of such a model can be traced in a different but connected religious environment, further marks its nature as an instrument for pastoral care.

Dominican Patterns The classificatory model of superstition I am describing was not developed exclusively by the Observant Franciscan preachers, whether Milanese or not. Following the most common mode of medieval intellectual activity — which, as I have pointed out earlier, is based on the sharing of common theological/ canonical material between different religious milieus — under the surface of such a coherent scheme we find the reuse of an earlier approach to listing superstitions for pastoral use that is not even Franciscan in origin.14 A similar record of superstitions is, in fact, in Johannes Herolt’s Sermones discipuli de tempore, the model sermons written for his brothers and first published around

14 

The ‘topographic inventory’ of the Franciscan library of Poggibonsi shows that the friary owned pastoral texts originating in different religious milieus, among which a specific desk was assigned to those by Antonino da Firenze. See Monica Bocchetta, ‘“A primo bancho a destra”: La dispositio librorum della libreria del convento di Poggibonsi’, in Libri, biblioteche e cultura degli ordini regolari nell’Italia moderna attraverso la documentazione della Congregazione dell’Indice, ed. by Rosa Marisa Borraccini and Roberto Rusconi (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2006), pp. 179–200 (pp. 190–91).

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1418, and in the Summa theologica composed by the Dominican Antonino da Firenze between 1440 and 1454.15 Herolt’s Sermon 41 for the second Sunday of Lent entitled De vigintiquat­ tuor generibus hominum qui falsificant fidem, lists twenty-four beliefs and behaviours pointing to those ‘who falsify faith’, twenty-one of which are types of superstition. Superstition is by Herolt divided into categories within a discourse which urges preaching to the laity on the right nature of Christian faith and cult. Including more elements than those that would be later rehearsed by the Franciscans — and even by Antonino — Herolt lists, in order: 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; lot-casting ; worshiping the moon or the sun; lore concerning pregnant women, the vetulae who can render women sterile, or those who can advise how to kill a foetus; vain superstitious rites employing 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.16 Notwithstanding his long list of superstitious beliefs, Herolt has been studied not for his coverage of ordinary vain observances, or various divinatory and idolatrous practices, but rather for his more developed version of the cult of Diana related to the tenth-century canon Episcopi, and for his adding to this superstition, fundamental to witch-belief, such an interesting element as the link with the dead.17 I deal with this aspect in more detail in the next chapter. 15 

I have consulted Antonino da Firenze, Summa theologica (Pars II) (Venice: Francesco Renner de Hailbrun and Nicola Francifordia, 1474), held at the Biblioteca Angelica, Rome; and Johannes Herolt, Sermones discipuli de tempore et de sanctis cum promptuario exemplorum et miraculis beate Marie Virginis (Lyon: Jean de Vingle, 1497), held at the Biblioteca Nazionale di Roma. Cf. Howard, Beyond the Written Word, p. 30 ff.; Ian D. K. Siggins, A Harvest of Medieval Preaching: The Sermon Books of Johann Herolt, OP (Discipulus) (Dartford: Xlibris, 2009), esp. pp. 17–36. 16  Herolt, Sermones discipuli, Sermon 41, fols hivb–hiiiira. 17  Cf. Carlo Ginzburg, Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath, trans. by Raymond

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Taken as a whole, Herolt’s list is not a classification that coincides totally with that of the Franciscans. Along with the similarities there are noteworthy differences. The sequence of superstitions is not the same, and many of the elements Herolt lists are not actually considered by the Franciscans or at least not the focus of specific headings. Thus, ordeal (by touching a piece of burning iron — as already in Giacomo’s ‘Confessione’ — or by boiling water) is only briefly mentioned in heading nine of Busti’s list under the casting of lots.18 The same can be said for those who adore the moon and the sun, or those who enchant beasts. Further, the belief of those who claim ‘quod aliqui homines eis in nocte appareant’ (‘that certain persons appear them at night’), along with the mention of the dead as part of the train of Diana, apparently did not become part of the Milanese Franciscan concerns, pointing to a rather different mix of traditions, perhaps partially of Germanic provenance. Nevertheless, in general terms, similarities with the Milanese Franciscan model are recognizable, and constitute a broad set of traditions and stereotypes, some of which would ‘migrate’ towards or be absorbed by other intellectual milieus. Thus, the categorization of superstition we find in Herolt constitutes an early fifteenth century attempt to split that material into coherent categories, most of which we still find in Antonino da Firenze, and later in the Franciscan texts elaborated at St Angelo’s, as part of a pastoral discourse aimed at instructing the laity. In the Titulus XII De infidelitate of the second book of the Summa, Antonino da Firenze indicates fourteen categories of superstition, which following its traditional reference to the question of divine cult, he explains as ‘vitium contrarium virtuti religionis’ (‘vice opposed to the virtue of religion’). According to Antonino’s list, the superstitions are: idolatry, divination, necromancy, the invocation of demons, astronomy or mathematics (astrology), divination by dreams, auguries, lot-casting, the observance in the form of enchantment, the enchantment of snakes and other animals, observances concerning textual amulets, observance of times and days, women who believe they go riding at night along with Diana or Herodias.19 Rosenthal (Chicago: Uni­ver­sity of Chicago Press, 1991), pp. 101–03. 18  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, fol. 128vb: ‘Facere vero experientiam de ferro ignito, vel aqua ferventi ad cognoscendum aliquod peccatum, ut olim fiebat, est illicitum secundum Thomam 2a 2e, q. 95a, ar. 8 in responsione ultimi argumenti. Et de hoc est textus in c. Consuluisti 2a q. 2a.’ The auctoritates Busti refers to are the same mentioned in the case of ordeal by fire in the Mariale: see note 139 in Ch. 1. Herolt mentions ordeal ‘Per ferrum candens vel aquam bullentem velut duellum’. 19  Antonino, Summa theologica (Pars II), 345ra–348vb: Idolatria, de divinatione, de nigro­

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As opposed to Herolt, Antonino gives a listing that already in the titles and the sequence of superstitious beliefs is closer to what we find in the Franciscans, although not all the elements employed by him (such as snake charming) are actually reused by them. The fact that the pastoral/theological works of the archbishop of Florence accounted for some of the main sources of the authors active in St Angelo’s, first of all Caimi, significantly adds to this point and makes of him an important cultural bridge between Dominican and Franciscan traditions. As I shall show below, such closeness does not remain at the exterior level, but involves also the sharing of specific points of view, such as those pertaining to witch-belief. The consideration and reuse of these interpretations of witch-beliefs in a different context, and in a period in which they were being developed in a different way, constitute points of major interest. From a general point of view, one may deduce that the Thomistic nature of Antonino’s Summa and its evident pastoral orientation might have appeared to the Franciscans coherent with their own outlook.20 Antonino’s works had, too, experienced great publishing success. I have already mentioned how the confession manual Defecerunt represented a good model for subsequent manuals as well as for the one composed by Caimi, thus constituting a good example of the circulation of pastoral themes and techniques among the Mendicants.21 A not unimportant difference between the scheme employed by Antonino and that of the Franciscans is the theological-moral orientation within which the former progressively takes shape. In the final index of the Summa it is said that ‘Titulus duodecimus de superstitionibus potest reduci ad superbiam’ (‘Title Twelve on superstitions can be referred to pride’). Title XII De infidelitate whose caput primus is dedicated to superstition, is in fact preceded by eleven chapters modelled on the Seven Deadly Sins. 22 Thus, while Busti, mantia, de invocatione demonum, de astronomia seu mathematica, de divinatione per somnia, de auguriis, de sortibus, de observantia, de observantia per incantationes, de incantationibus serpentum vel aliorum animalium, de observantia circa brevia, de observantia temporum vel dierum, de mulieribus credentibus se cum Diana vel Herodiade nocturnis horis equitare. 20  See Battista Mondin, Storia della teologia, 4 vols (Bologna: PDUL Edizioni Studio Domeni­cano, 1996), vol. iii, p. 77. 21  Cf. Rusconi, L’ordine dei peccati, p. 220 ff. 22  They are the tituli: i De avaritia; ii De restitutionibus; iii De superbia; iv De inanigloria; v De luxuria; vi De gula; vii De ira; viii De invidia; ix De accidia; x De mendacio; xi De voto et voti transgressione. See Antonino, Summa theologica (Pars II), index. Thus, also in the confessional Omnis mortalium cura Antonino links superstition to superbia: see the paragraph De obseruatione temporis.

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Carcano, and Caimi deal with the material concerning superstition in the context of the Decalogue, in Antonino’s Summa the same issue was still centred on the vices. A similar scheme of classification appears also in the Defecerunt — which, as a confessional, is obviously a much more pastorally oriented text than the Summa — but in this case the author outlines the classification under: ‘De modo interrogandi penitentes a confessore secundum Decem Precepta legis’ (‘On the way of hearing penitents on the part of confessor according to the Ten Commandments’).23 The fact that in his confessional Antonino often refers to the Summa, on which in fact the Defecerunt is based, is suggestive of a certain oscillation between the two important theological schemes for classifying sins in the first half of the century. After all, as we know, as late as 1470 the Franciscan Olivier Maillard preached on superstition looking both to the First Commandment and to the vice of pride.24 The transition in preference from the Seven Deadly Sins to the Decalogue in dealing with superstition is finally clear in Franciscans. Speaking of superbia in Sermon 6, Busti does not connect it anymore to the domain of magic and superstition. Although he recognizes it as ‘Caput et regina omnium peccatorum’ (‘The head and queen of all the sins’), and curiositas is still part of the traditional twelve filiations stemming from it, in his sermon superbia appears rather as behaviour that seems profoundly improper for a mortal being.25 This constitutes, again, the specific pastoral-theological context within which a particular conception of superstition develops as a sin (or a violation) affecting directly the cult of God, and thus pertaining to the issue of faith itself, as is represented by its concerning the First Commandment. It is therefore on the basis of such a specific intellectual orientation that the issue of superstition has to be considered here. This would also provide the possibility, I believe, to reconcile the objectifying intuition of Richard Gordon, according to whom superstition is a type of 23 

Within the First Commandment, Antonino’s confessional splits the material into three chapters: De votis, De superstitionibus, and De blasphemia. Superstition is introduced by speaking of maleficium; from there the chapter goes on with the following sections: de incantationibus, de adoratione creaturarum, de divinationibus, de arte notoria, de constellationibus, de sortibus, de incantationibus, de brevibus, de observatione temporum, and de somniis, under which Antonino mentions those who believe that mulieres can shapeshift into cat, go around at night and suck the children’s blood: Antonino da Firenze, Summula confessionalis (Defecerunt) (Venice: Pietro de Quarengi, 1511), 52rb–53rb. 24  Cf. note 59 in Ch. 3. 25  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon  6, fol.  27va: ‘Legitur autem quod quidam dixit Alexandro Magno superbo: quamvis leo sit rex animalium, tamen fit sepe cibus formicarum.’

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religious or mythological thinking to be explained through historical research, with that of Jean-Claude Schmitt, who on the contrary, puts superstition in relationship to the authority and coercion of the ‘adherents of a particular religious or ideological orthodoxy’.26 If it is in fact true that superstition is a form of religious thinking that can be explained through historical research, the analysis of our pastoral texts would require a specific interpretation, which might turn out to be that of Schmitt, seeing superstition as one of the privileged fields for the application of clerical models directed to regulate and interpret the religious life of the faithful. In other words, that would be a process implying the progressive establishment of a pastoral tendency, of which the classificatory model we are talking about would be one of the instruments.27 Those are pastoral instruments and tendencies that, as our sources seem to suggest, base themselves firmly on typically medieval intellectual categories. Along with the already mentioned theological explanation by Thomas Aquinas, one has to highlight the juridical norms systematized by Gratian’s Decretum, which provided the essential canons for an evaluation of conscience in the inner forum: a tendency certainly linked to the characterization of the sacrament of penitence as a ‘judicial act’, but even more, to the development of the role of preachers and confessors. When Cherubino da Spoleto, following Bernardino da Siena, introduces the duties proper to the confessor, he actually describes the confessor as priest, physician, and judge, underlining the basic knowledge associated with each of these three roles. According to Cherubino, as a priest the confessor has to know the substantial and formal aspects of the sacraments he administers as well as the rites related to them; as a doctor he has to command the fundamentals of Christian faith; as a judge he has to be able to untangle the various types of sins.28 This is a picture that, although stereotypical, describes 26 

Richard Gordon, ‘Superstitio, Superstition and Religious Repression in the Late Roman Republic and Principate (100 bce–300 ce)’, in The Religion of Fools? Superstition Past and Present, ed. Stephen Anthony Smith and Alan Knight (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, 2008), pp. 72–94; Schmitt, ‘Les superstitions’, p. 423. See also Smith, ‘Introduction’, p. 10. 27  See especially the line of research that has been inquiring into the renewed desire for classifying and ‘domesticating’ the behaviour of the faithful, which would stem especially from the Lateran IV of 1215. See Capitani, ‘Verso un diritto del quotidiano’; Rusconi, L’ordine dei peccati, pp. 29 ff and 59 ff. 28  Cherubino da Spoleto, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 64, fol. 327vb: ‘Bernardinus in sermone ferie VI post primam dominicam quadragesimalem in quadragesimali de christiana religione dicit quod cum confessor sit sacerdos, doctor, et iudex, aliqua debet scire ut sacerdos, aliqua ut doctor et aliqua ut iudex. Inquantum sacerdos scire debet quae sit debita materia et forma cuiuslibet sacramenti cuius est minister et modum rite dispensandi. Inquantum doctor

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sets of skills that were certainly at work in the way preachers and confessors dealt with the different types of superstition they had been classifying in their works for pastoral care.

Superstition in Fifteen Categories In the next pages I go through each of the elements listed in Busti’s scheme, emphasizing that the persistent similarities among the Milanese pastoral texts point to the sharing of material at St Angelo’s. This must certainly be related to the preachers’ habit of relying on each other but, as already suggested, it might also imply the circulation of vade-mecums from which each preacher drew his own material. From a textual point of view, I shall exemplify the type of relation existing primarily among the texts of Caimi, Carcano, and Busti. First, similarities are of diverse natures depending on which type of superstition is considered. In addition to passages in which the transmission of textual material between Busti and Carcano seems to be quite clear, there are others in which great similarities are to be noted between Busti and Caimi, as well as further cases where the sharing of material seem to be almost uniform among all three authors. At the same time, indirectly, Antonio da Vercelli’s collection of sermons and Angelo da Chivasso’s Summa highlight the nature of Carcano’s and Busti’s collections as repertoires of preaching material intended for easier deployment by preachers, due to their organization into one section on cult and one on superstition in which the different types of superstition are listed in an almost pedagogical form. The same can be said for Caimi’s confessional, for its conciseness and pocket sized format. Busti considers the various categories of superstition one by one, while, as I shall point out, Carcano still tends to aggregate some of them, as in the case of divination, invocation of demons, and observing dreams. Idolatry The list of violations against the First Commandment begins with the condem­ nation of idolatria. The relevance of idolatry is immediately striking both in Busti’s Sermon 16 and in those by Carcano, as well as in Caimi’s confession debet scire fidei fundamenta. Inquantum iudex tenetur scire discernere inter lepram et lepram, saltem in his peccatis quae omnibus sunt noticiora.’ Cf. Bernardino da Siena, Quadragesimale de christiana religione, Sermon 15: De vera confessione, in Opera omnia, vol. i, pp.167–80.

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manual, along with its two other most closely connected categories, which are divination and invocation of demons (although in Caimi’s list divination follows incantationes rather than idolatry). In discussing idolatry one must keep in mind the mobility of the concept through time, arising in the context of relationships between Christian and Jewish cultures. A recent article has highlighted how the Jews continued to consider Christian religion as idolatrous — or at least as ambivalent — from Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages up to the first three decades of the thirteenth century.29 The Trinitarian dogma and the developing cult of images did not render it easy for the Jews to decide whether to consider Christians as Noahide, and thus not idolatrous worshipers, according to the indications of the Avodah Zarah or Tractate of Idolatry of the Babylonian Talmud. In rabbinic texts one finds the plural tselamim for images, idols, while the singular tselem was subsequently most often employed to indicate the Christian cross, the ‘Christian image’ par excellence. Thus, late medieval Christian writers re-used a concept such as idolatry whose original roots were far more complex, definitely Jewish in nature, and employed earlier to characterize Christian practices. The development of this type of technical terminology by friars — on the basis of Scholastic thought — represents an important step in shaping the boundaries of the Christian theological universe. Following Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Richard of Mediavilla, Duns Scotus, Alexander of Hales, and Nicholas of Lyra (d. 1349), Busti represents idolatry as implying the most direct impact on divine cult: the replacement of God in his exclusive right to be worshipped by another being or object.30 This leads the preacher to conclude that: ‘Si quis ergo adoret diabolum pro Deo, aliquod idolum, sive creaturam, ei tribuens honorem divinum peccat mortaliter 26. Q. 5. Non liceat’ (‘If therefore anybody, instead of God, worships the devil, any image, or creature, granting divine honour to that, (one) commits mortal 29 

See Katrin Kogman-Appel, ‘Christianity, Idolatry, and the Question of Jewish Figural Painting in the Middle Ages’, Speculum, 84 (2009), 73–107 (p. 86 ff ). Camille, The Gothic Idol, p. 28 ff pointed out ‘the confrontation’ of ‘two seemingly discrete systems of image ideology’ — the prohibition against building images in the Decalogue and the building of the Tabernacle in Exodus 31. 30  Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, IIa, IIae, Q. 94, a. 2. The other references are the comments on the Sentences (III, d. 37) of Peter Lombard by Bonaventure, Duns Scotus, and Richard of Mediavilla. Alexander of Hales refers to the issue in the Summa theologica III. II. (Tractatus Secundus, Q. II, Titulus I, vol. 4.1, p. 439–59), and Nicholas of Lyra writes about it in his Postillae on Exodus 20.

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sin (according to) 26. Q. 5 Non liceat’).31 The reference to both theological and canonistic sources let Busti show that idolatry is a precisely delimited type of violation of the First Commandment, and therefore that this definition of superstition applies to specific cases. Euan Cameron has argued that Aquinas ‘contributed fairly little to the detailed casuistic investigation of particular beliefs’, even establishing a comparison between the Summa, which he sees as lacking ‘the application of superstition-theory to particular instances and circumstances’, and the ‘exuberant abundance’ offered from the same point of view by later pastoral writings.32 I believe the Milanese Franciscan Observant view allows us to offer a few more precise considerations on this pivotal issue, since it seems to show that the great relevance of Aquinas’s work might reside precisely in providing the doctrinal bases on which such a ‘detailed casuistic investigation’ could fully develop. One must not forget that Aquinas’s Summa deliberately intended to provide no specific casuistic insight in matters of superstition. As the basic study of Leonard Boyle reminds us, this clearly derives from its not being a handbook of practical theology — although especially the Secunda Secundae gets close to this characterization — but precisely because it is a work of theology whose aim was to enlarge the too narrowly practical view of Dominican theological education, designed especially around the collationes de moralibus or the summae confessorum.33 In the prologue to the first part of the Summa, Thomas Aquinas explained that his work was intended to treat the items pertaining to the Christian religion in a suitable manner for the teaching of beginners, his aim being to go through the pertinent points of sacred doctrine as briefly and clearly as possible.34 This is the ratio of the three parts constituting the Summa. Nevertheless, being intended especially for the instruction of the younger 31 

Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 127rb. The reference is Decretum Gratiani, II, C. 26, q. 5, c. 3. 32  Cameron, Enchanted Europe, pp. 92 and 104. 33  Boyle, ‘The Setting of the Summa Theologiae’, pp. 11, 71–77. 34  Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Prima pars, prologus: ‘Quia catholicae veritatis doctor non solum provectos debet instruere, sed ad eum pertinet etiam incipientes erudire, secundum illud Apostoli I ad Corinth. 3 [1–2]: “Tanquam parvulis in Christo, lac vobis potum dedi, non escam”; propositum nostrae intentionis in hoc opere est, ea quae ad christianam religionem pertinent, eo modo tradere, secundum quod congruit ad eruditionem incipientum […] tentabimus, cum confidentia divini auxilii, ea quae ad sacram doctrinam pertinent, breviter ac dilucide prosequi, secundum quod materia patietur.’ Cf. also Bourke, Aquinas’ Search for Wisdom, p. 196.

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Dominican friars, Aquinas’s work is profoundly characterized by a catechetic aim. Jussi Hanska, indeed, has highlighted how Aquinas was even the first to introduce thematic Lenten preaching as early as 1273: in that year he delivered a whole Lenten sermon cycle in Naples and completed the third part of the Summa up to Q. 90, a. 4, leaving the work unfinished.35 Such characteristics of topical completeness, orderliness and not being tied to any specific, limited, concrete circumstances, made of Aquinas’s Summa an incomparable instrument for providing a theological setting for the use of the concept of superstition in pastoral care; the Observant Franciscans owed much to this characterization of the issue. In Franciscan Observant practice, idolatry represents one of several types of superstitio, but it can also express the most representative nature of superstition, its general character, thus being an all-encompassing concept coinciding with superstition itself.36 Earlier, William of Auvergne in particular proposed a classification of superstition based on the notion of idolatry. William split it into ten categories characterized by an open or covert recourse to demonic agency, from the cultus daemonum, to a number of beliefs or observances of different nature, some of which would not be perceived as inherently idolatrous by late medieval Observant preachers, who would rather consider them vain, such as, for instance, those concerning the sun, the moon, the stars, particular times, or various daily occurrences regarded as ominous.37 With direct reference to Thomas Aquinas, in fact, the Milanese friars seem to adhere rather to the specific meaning of idolatry, the bestowing on other entities or objects of what is due only to God, or in other words, granting the act of worship to that to which it is not due. Michele Carcano is sound in this respect, specifying that: Cultus divinus ordinatur primo ad reverentiam Deo exhibendam: contra quem est prima species superstitionis, que dicitur ydolatria, que exhibit reverentiam creature.38

35 

Hanska, ‘“Sermones Quadragesimales”’, pp. 119–22. See also Bourke, Aquinas’ Search for Wisdom, pp. 195–96; Howard, Beyond the Written Word, pp. 50–51. 36  Cf. Montesano, ‘Supra acqua et supra ad vento’, p. 3. 37  William of Auvergne, De legibus, chs 23–27 (ch. 23), in Opera omnia quae hactenus reperiri potuerunt (Paris: Couterot, 1674), vol. i, pp. 63–91 (p. 67). On William’s categories, see Bailey, Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies, pp. 63–65. 38  Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 21, fol. 51ra.

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Divine cult is established first of all in order to show reverence to God: the first species of superstition, which is called idolatry, is opposed to this since it worships the creature.

Carcano describes the nature of idolatry as divine cult granted to a creature instead of the Creator, and refers to the etymological origin of ydolatria as deriving from ydolum, recovering through Isidore of Seville and especially from Seneca, the Platonic concept of ydos (eidos) as the portrait of an idea, or in other words the visible representation of something existing or imaginary.39 Similarly also in his Confessionale generale de la gran tuba, dealing with superstition as a sin against the First Commandment, Carcano instructs the confessor to begin his check of the penitent concerning idolatry by asking whether the sinner has worshipped a creature rather than the Creator, thus translating into the vernacular the same concept expressed in his Latin sermons.40 Antonio da Vercelli still refers to Isidore, linking further the concept of idolum to the representations through which the pagans used ‘to worship the demons’.41 Interestingly enough, in Carcano the description of idolatry as 39 

Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 21, fol. 51rb: ‘Ydolatria est cultus divinus qui exhibetur creature representate per aliquod signum vel figuram que dicitur ydolum. Ydolum enim deductum est ab eo quod est ydos, ut dicit Isid(orus). Ydos autem dicit formam ab idea tractam, ut dicit Seneca, unde ydolum proprie dicitur simulachrum representativum rei existentis vel rei ficte.’ Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum libri, VIII. 11, 11–15: ‘Eἶδος enim Grece formam sonat.’ For the Senecan reference, see Seneca, Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, I, letter 58, ed. by Leighton Durham Reynolds, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, 1965), pp. 156–58. Domenico da Peccioli (d. 1408), who was vicar general of the Dominican province of Lombardy wrote a Commentarium to Seneca’s letters that enjoyed wide circulation and appreciation; perhaps Carcano could have read it. But, the Ad Lucilium was already in Giacomo della Marca’s library in Monteprandone. See Domenico da Peccioli, Lectura epistolarum senece, ed. by Silvia Marcucci (Impruneta: SISMEL, 2007), pp. 230–31; Silvana Vecchio, ‘Domenico da Peccioli’, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. xl (1991), p. 81; Rino Avesani, ‘Cultura e istanze pastorali nella Biblioteca di San Giacomo della Marca’, in San Giacomo della Marca nell’Europa del ‘400, Atti del Convegno internazionale di Studi, Monteprandone, 1994, ed. by Silvano Bracci (Padua: Centro Studi Antoniani, 1997), pp. 391–405 (p. 396). A similar passage — without the direct reference to Seneca — was also quoted by Bernardino da Siena in his Sermon 10: De idolatriae cultu. See Bernardino da Siena, Quadragesimale de christiana religione, in Opera omnia, vol. i, p. 105. 40 

Carcano, Confessionale generale de la gran tuba, fol. Aiiiir: ‘Circa el primo comandamento se mai ‘l ha adorato più le creature che ’l creatore.’ 41  Antonio da Vercelli, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 43, fol. 113vb says that idolatry ‘Nihil est aliud quam quedam latria ydolis exhibita. Ydolum vero secundum Isidorum lib(ro) Ethimo(logiarum) dicitur ab idos que est forma tracta ab idea. Propter quod idolum proprie

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demonic is also exemplified through specific groups of people, both external and internal to the Christian oecumene, Saracens, Jews, and heretics being part of the first group, and Christians who commit sin of the second. Saracens are idolatrous as they revere their own demon, ‘Machometus’, as if he were God, and Jews since, while they wait for the Messiah, they actually wait for the Antichrist. Heretics, on the other hand, make images of God as their beliefs about him are confined to what they can make a quasi-visual mental image of: they are therefore idolaters in the sense explained also by Antonio.42 On the ‘bad’ Christians the discourse is different since it points to morals. According to the implications of the Seven Deadly Sins, Christians who become idolatrous are those who put themselves, their instincts, or anything else before God. From a general point of view, as we have already noted, texts for preaching and those for confession share the same source material. The general concept of idolatry to be found in sermons mirrors that of Angelo da Chivasso, who in his Summa angelica writes: Unde prima species superstitionis est, cum exhibetur cultus cui exhibendus est, sed modo indebito, ut si quamvis coleret Deum nunc secundum legis veteris observantiam. Secunda est cum cultus divinus exhibetur cui non debetur scilicet creature cuicunque, et ista habet multas sub se species. Nam si reverentiam Deo debitam exhibet creaturae est idolatria.43 Whence the first species of superstition is performing cult towards one to whom it is due, but in an undue way, as when, in the present time, worshipping God according to rituals of the old law. The second type is performing divine cult towards one to whom it is not due, namely to any created being, and this has several subspecies. For if someone should show a creature the reverence due to God, this is idolatry.

Still relying on Thomas Aquinas, Angelo confirms the view of idolatry as a type of superstition. Caimi, on his part, discussed in a more detailed way what questions to put to the penitent. Relying solely on the Gratian’s Decretum, Caimi explains that:

dicitur simulacrum representativum aut rei existentis, aut rei ficte, in quo antiquitus colebantur demones.’ 42  Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon  22, fol.  57 rb: ‘Saraceni habent suum diabolum Machometum, cui tantam reverentiam exhibent ac si esset Deus […] et Iudei messiam futurum expectant Antichristum. […] Heretici faciunt sibi sculptilia, quia de Deo non credunt nisi quod imaginationes et fantasia contingunt.’ 43  Angelo da Chivasso, Summa angelica, fol. 322va.

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Primo igitur confessor interroget confitentem si adoravit aliquam creaturam pro Deo, puta diabolum, solem, lunam vel stellas, arborem vel herbam et huiusmodi quia mortale est et prohibitum 26. Q. 5.44 First, thus, the confessor has to ask the penitent whether (he or she) worshipped any creature in the place of God, such as the devil, the sun, the moon or the stars, a tree or the grass, and so forth, since it is deadly and prohibited by 26. Q. 5.

Overall, we can confirm the idea that the Milanese Observant Franciscan friars referred idolatry to a specific context, identifying it with granting divine cult to one to whom it is not due, represented either by the devil or by a number of different elements from the world of nature, thus also involving beliefs rooted in popular tradition. The view of the Milanese friars concerning idolatry seems to differ significantly from that expressed earlier by the great master of their movement, Bernardino da Siena. To Bernardino there was indeed an implication of demonic action, and thus of idolatry, when people ‘grant the glory of God to the devil’, but nevertheless his approach to the issue might suggest more closely a general role for idolatry in describing the nature of any superstition.45 In his Sermon 10 De idolatriae cultu of the collection of Lenten sermons De Cristiana religione, Bernardino inserted a chapter entitled De triplici ficta daemonum potestate per quam homines in idolatriam prolabuntur. Here the Sienese shows how demons can lead people to idolatry by means of superstition. Disseminaverunt daemones idolatriam per orbem terrarum, scilicet ficta potentia. Triplicem potentiam ostendebant daemones deceptis hominibus, propter quam inducti sunt in idolatricam labem et adhuc plurimi inducuntur: primam, placandi con­trarietates et turbationes; secundam, sedandi tempestates et fluctuationes; tertiam, sanandi infirmitates et laesiones.46 Demons have spread idolatry throughout the whole world by means of false abilities. Demons displayed a threefold power to deceive people, through which they were led to idolatrous ruin, and many more still are. The first [is the power] to calm oppositions and disorders; the second, to settle storms and gales; the third to cure diseases and wounds.

44 

Caimi, Interrogatorium sive confessionale, xxxiir. Cf. Decretum Gratiani, II, C. 26, q. 5, c. 3. Bernardino da Siena, Le prediche volgari: Quaresimale fiorentino del 1424, Sermon 27, ed. by Cannarozzi, vol. i, p. 446. 46  Bernardino da Siena, Quadragesimale de christiana religione, Sermon 10: De idolatriae cultu, in Opera omnia, vol. i, pp. 113–17. 45 

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The genre of occurrences described in this sermon gives an idea of what Bernardino meant by superstition. The preacher explains how demons can deceive humans in three different ways. First, they can do so by giving one the conviction of being able to calm opposition and civil disorder, as in ancient times the Romans sacrificed to idols, while in Christian times people try to achieve the same results by means of observing the stars. Second, humans can be deceived by the idea of being able to calm the weather, as when people put pieces of coal from the Christmas fire outside their house for protection from storms. Third, through the power of healing illnesses or injuries through magic means, as for instance when in order to cure a toothache somebody puts his or her tooth in contact with the tooth of a hanged person or a bone from a dead person (the case histories go on for three pages).47 Different types of superstitions can thus lead to idolatry. To these are also added sinful behaviours related to common aspects of everyday life such as, according to Busti, valuing the concerns of the body above God, as the glutton and the lecher do, the preacher says, attending to their stomach as if it were God. Already Carcano, as mentioned above, referred to the Seven Deadly Sins, to pride and avarice in particular, to exemplify those who surrender to their instincts and so forget God. Speaking of idolatry implies, therefore, the call for a total self-denial before God, in which paying too much attention to anything else, or more precisely to anything material, may lead one to contravene the First Commandment. From this point of view, the final goal of Christians is not to fall in love with what is in front of the eyes, not to collapse into the darkness, Carcano says, but to go ahead towards the ‘heavenly homeland’ to become angels with the angels.48 In this way, in the preachers’ understanding, identifying what idolatry is, through the First Commandment, in order to shrink from it through avoiding the capital sins, clearly becomes the first step of a ladder leading the faithful from the heart to the heavens.

47  Cf. Montesano, ‘Supra acqua et supra ad vento’, pp. 9–14; Pier Giuseppe Pesce, ‘La religiosità popolare nella predicazione bernardiniana’, in L’evangelizzazione in San Bernardino da Siena: Saggi e ricerche, ed. by L. Glinka (Rome: Ed. Antonianum, 1980), p. 87, note 97. 48  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 129va: ‘Gulosus enim et luxoriosus habent ventrem pro Deo. […] Non ergo adoremus res temporales pro Deo, sed toto corde et omni devotione in omnibus necessitatibus nostris recurramus ad Deum et ipse nos exaudiet.’ Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 22, fols 57rb–58va: ‘Non diligamus visibilia spectacula, ne ab ipsa veritate aberrando et amando umbras in tenebras proijciamur. Sed potius ad illam supernam patriam perducamur cum societate angelorum gaudentes et exaltantes’.

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Seers The second genre of violations against the First Commandment Busti deals with is centred on divinatores. As we have seen, Carcano also deals with divination immediately after idolatry, while Caimi mentions it only after having discussed incantations. Yet, all three friars are consistent on the theme. Relying on Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, and Alexander of Hales for the theological part, on the Decretum Gratiani and the Corpus iuris civilis on the legal side, as well as on a mass of Biblical quotations, Busti describes divinatio as the desire to understand in an unlawful and inappropriate manner future contingent events, for example things that depend on free will or that happen by chance, which it is only for God to foreknow. The auctoritates on which Busti relies are exactly the same used by Carcano.49 This might point either to Busti’s dependence on the text of his master, or to both relying on an earlier outline of preaching material. Echoing words that we already find in Giacomo della Marca, Carcano particularly insists on the impossibility of foretelling future events. Not even angels or demons, Carcano says, know the future; so he asks his readers: Futura contingentia neque angeli neque demones noverunt. Si igitur sancti angeli et apostoli sanctissimi spiritus sancti pleni non poterant scire futura contingentia nisi Deo revelante, quomodo hi qui vasa sunt peccatorum et amici diaboli poterunt scire?50 49 

Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 127rb: ‘Secundo peccant mortaliter divina­ tores. Et notandum, secundum Thomam 2a 2e questione 96a, articulo primo, et Bonaventuram in 2 di. 7a parte 2a articulo primo, q. 3a, et Alexandrum de Ales, in 3a parte Summe, in Tractatu de scientia demonum, quod tunc aliquis dicitur divinare contra hoc preceptum quando indebito modo vult predicere de futuris contingentibus, ut puta de his, que dependent ex libero arbitrio vel que per accidens contingunt in rebus humanis, que solius Dei est prescire, unde Esaia 41 [23] dicitur: “Annuntiate que futura sunt et sciemus quia dii estis”, et 26a questione 5a canone primo scriptum est: “Futura prescire solius Dei est.”’ Decretum Gratiani, II, C. 26, q. 5, c. 1, in Corpus iuris canonici, ed. by Emilius Friedberg, 2 vols (Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1879–81), vol. i, col. 1027 reads: ‘Si quis ariolos, aruspices, vel incantatores obseruauerit, aut phylacteriis usus fuerit, anathema sit.’ So also Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 22, fol. 54ra. Cf. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, Commentaria in quatuor libros Sententiarum, d. 7, a. 1, q. 3, in Opera omnia, vol. ii, pp. 194–96; Alexander of Hales, Summa theologica, II. II., Inquisitio II, Tractatus secundus, Q. 1, vol. 3, pp. 84–96. 50  Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 22, fol. 54va. Giacomo della Marca, Ser­ mones dominicales, Sermon 17, ed. by Lioi, vol. i, p. 427, has: ‘Divini, quasi Deo pleni sunt; usurpantes divinum honorem volunt scire future, quod solum pertinent ad Deum. […] Si ergo Apostoli, sanctissimi viri, habentes Spiritum Sanctum et amici Christi non potuerunt scire future, quomodo isti qui sunt amici diaboli et vasa peccatorum possunt scire future?’ Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, IIa, IIae, Q. 95, a. 1.

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If therefore holy angels and the apostles, the holiest men, who are filled by the Holy Spirit cannot predict future contingents except by God’s revelation, how can those who are sinners and friends of the devil do that?

Further, Carcano explicitly prohibits ‘Divinatio, per quam non queritur instruc­tio a Deo sed a diabolo’ (‘Divination, through which teaching is sought not from God but from the devil’), thus highlighting the diabolic connotation of divination.51 On the contrary, Busti does not give divination any expressly diabolic colouring, although he warns that ‘peccant mortaliter divinatores’. Relying solely on Thomas Aquinas in his scheme of examination for penitents, Caimi approaches divination by suggesting two of the main aims for which it was evidently employed: to find stolen goods and to foretell the future.52 An extended series of auctoritates was clearly not essential in confessional manuals. Both Caimi and Carcano explain how divination can entail three types of practices: ars notoria and necromancy; the observation of a number of signs of various kinds; and the casting of lots. This latter will be dealt with by Busti separately under heading nine in his list. Ars notoria consisted in practicing a series of rites to access occult knowledge by means of interpreting special signs or characters (notae); this ‘art’ would finally be equated by religious authorities with the invocation of demons.53 Antonio da Vercelli warns that one should consider all those rites that are practiced to gain knowledge and to know about life and death through the use of images or obscure words and formulas, as ‘ex pestifera societate demonum aquisite’ (‘Obtained from the pestilential cohort of the demons’).54 Similarly, 51 

Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 21, fol. 51rb. 52  Caimi, Interrogatorium sive confessionale, xxxiir: ‘Si divinavit vel procuravit fieri divina­ tionem ad inveniendum furta vel ad sciendum aliquid sibi vel suis eventurum.’ 53  On ars notoria, necromancy and more generally ritual magic, see Bailey, Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies, pp. 22–23, 91, and 126; Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, pp. 152–53; Richard Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer’s Manual of the Fifteenth Century (Uni­ver­sity Park, PA: Pennsylvania State Uni­ver­sity Press, 1998); Claire Fanger, ed., Invoking Angels: Theurgic Ideas and Practices, Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries (Uni­ver­sity Park, PA: Penn­sylvania State Uni­ ver­sity Press, 2012); Claire Fanger, ed., Conjuring Spirits: Texts and Traditions of Medieval Ritual Magic (Uni­ver­sity Park, PA: Pennsylvania State Uni­ver­sity Press, 1998); Frank Klaassen, The Transformations of Magic: Illicit Learned Magic in the Later Middle Ages and Renaissance (Uni­ver­ sity Park, PA: Penn State Uni­ver­sity Press, 2012); and Frank Klaassen, ‘Subjective Experience and the Practice of Medieval Ritual Magic’, Magic, Ritual, and Witch­craft, 7 (2012), 19–51. 54  Antonio da Vercelli, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 45, fol. 330ra.

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by the later Middle Ages necromancy passed from indicating ‘divination by means of the dead’, to including a wide range of ritual demonic conjuration. Carcano explains that nigromantia is when some diviners conjure the souls of the dead which seem to foretell the future, although that is only an appearance produced by demons.55 Both ars notoria and necromancy entail rites that presuppose a certain knowledge of written sources and traditions, thus implying the awareness on the part of the friars of typically — although not exclusively — learned magic techniques.56 A much wider number of practices are included under the observance of different sorts of signs: the preachers show that the whole business of divination is far more complicated than its traditional threefold classification might suggest.57 The future can also be read, for instance, by observing omens. In regard to this, Carcano mentions the aurispex (haruspex), a soothsayer inspecting the entrails of animals, and then he refers to the traditional way of divining through the four elements: bromantia, which is divination through materials such as nails, horns, hair, iron or polished stone; sormantia, through figures or signs appearing in the water; aeromantia through air; piromantia, through fire.58 Other practices involve astrology, invocation of demons, and the interpretation of dreams: some of them are dealt with separately by Busti, and are consequently addressed in this chapter. Since, as noted by Richard Kieckhefer, divination was basically ‘a means for knowing a destiny that was foreordained’, it is clear that different kinds of more or less professional intermediaries may be found undertaking the task of disclosing such secret knowledge.59 Observant Franciscan popular preachers had often highlighted the evil and misleading intent of such skills due to their fundamentally demonic association.

55 

Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 22, fol. 55ra. 56  Cf. Montesano, ‘Supra acqua et supra ad vento’, pp. 94 and 163 ff. 57  See Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, IIa, IIae, Q. 95. a. 3; Isidore of Seville, Etymo­ logiarum libri, VIII. 9, 12–35. Isidore’s Etymologies book viii, ch. 9 in English translation is in Alan Charles Kors and Edward Peters, eds, Witchcraft in Europe, 400–1700: A Documentary History, 2nd edn (Philadelphia: Uni­ver­sity of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), pp. 50–54. On the threefold division of divination as well as its multifaceted nature cf. Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, p. 56 ff; Cameron, Enchanted Europe, pp. 63–69; and Bailey, Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies, p. 65. 58  Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 22, fol. 55ra. 59  Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, p. 85.

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The episode of the Godmother (‘comare’) of Lucca, on which Bernardino da Siena preached in Florence and in Siena in 1425, is one of the best examples of a story of a seer in which divination is described as mixed up with demonic activity, resulting in the deceit of those who have recourse to it. The tale says how a man lost sixteen florins and had recourse to his godmother, who was a diviner, to find them. She promised him to find out where the money had gone, and urged her relative to return the following morning. That same night, however, the man, in hiding, observed his godmother going naked into a bush and invoking the devil, who urged her to tell the man that the money had been given by his wife to a priest whom she liked, although the devil declared that the truth was actually that the coins were lost by the man in the pigsty. So he was able, once back home, to find the coins and finally had the godmother expelled from Lucca. On the base of Tubach’s Index Exemplorum, Franco Mormando has tried to relate the Lucca episode to those kinds of ‘exempla of similar plot in which a sorceress or old woman assists the Devil in sowing discord between a happily married, virtuous couple’.60 Indeed, this exemplum relates to a class of tales in which moralistic and folkloric elements seem to converge. Another episode following the story of the Godmother of Lucca in the same Bernardinian sermons has it that in the Marche region a jealous man was deceived by a woman who was a seer, whom he had asked about his wife. The seer told the man that his wife had fallen in love with a priest, thus causing the man to murder his wife and then ending up by being himself killed by her relatives.61 In this exemplum the element of explicit demonic invocation is omitted. What Bernardino is in general interested in is the dangerously cheating nature of the answers one can receive by appealing to diviners in matters of everyday personal life. The intent of the preacher was clearly that of discouraging people from appealing to those types of ‘intermediaries’ with the occult. Busti’s injunction not to seek the help of magicians of any sort recalls the same sort of possibilities, although his preoccupation with the matter is rather related to the correct understanding of the nature of the problem in theology and canon law for the benefit of preachers. In order to describe the various types of diviners performing magic rites of divination, Busti and Carcano

60 

Mormando, The Preacher’s Demons, pp. 77 ff and 272 note 115. For the two episodes, see Bernardino da Siena, Le prediche volgari: Quaresimale fioren­ tino del 1424, Sermon 35, ed. by Cannarozzi, vol. ii, pp. 196–97; and Bernardino da Siena, Le prediche volgari inedite: Firenze 1424, 1425–Siena 1425, ed. by Dionisio Pacetti (Siena: Cantagalli, 1935), pp. 540–42. 61 

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stick to the traditional terminology recast by Isidore of Seville.62 Both preachers employ the term magi to designate the operators of magic from a general point of view, but ariolus and phiton are also employed, while the previous Franciscan Observant tradition favoured maleficus, which Busti, as I shall show in the next chapter, includes in his discussion in more specific contexts such as those related to witch-beliefs.63 While magus may refer to learned ceremonial magic, without implying evil intent, ariolus and phiton can imply a negative and diabolic connotation, although ariolus in particular does not seem to have had an absolutely evil connotation.64 Giacomo della Marca explains the meaning of ariolus according to its Isidorian derivation from the pagan arae. Marina Montesano has pointed out that Bernardino da Siena, as opposed to Giacomo, employed the term rather generically as an equivalent of ‘magician’, and similarly Giovanni da Capestrano removed from it any reference to divination, which to the Italian scholar has meant that the original divinatory background of the term was, essentially, lost 62 

Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 127rb: ‘Quantum autem sint exosi, tales divini Deo et ad eos recurrentes habetur Levit(ici) 19. [31], ubi precipitur: “Non declinetis ad magos nec ab ariolis aliquid sciscitemini, ne polluamini per eos”, et 20.[6] caput eiusdem libri scribitur: “Anima, que declinaverit ad magos et ariolos, ponam faciem meam contra eam et inter­ficiam eam de medio populi mei”. Et ibidem dicitur: “Vir sive mulier in quibus phitonis sive divinationis fuerit spiritus, morte morietur, lapidibus obruent eos”, et Deuteronomii 18. [10–12] caput dicitur: “Non invenietur in te qui phitones ac divinos consulat aut querat a mortuis veritatem, omnia enim abhominabitur Dominus”. Similiter prohibetur divinatio lege canonica, 26, questione 5a, canone Si quis etc., Nec mirum, et etiam lege civili, ut in l. Nullus et l. Nemo, c. De maleficis et mathematicis.’ Busti clearly synthesizes from his master; see Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 22, fol. 54va. Cf. Decretum Gratiani, II, C. 26, q. 5, c. 1 and c. 14; Corpus iuris civilis, IX: Codex Iustinianus, ed by Krueger, 18.0; Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum libri, VIII, 8, pp. 1–35. 63  Cf. Montesano, ‘Supra acqua et supra ad vento’, p. 49. 64  Recalling Decretum, II. 26, q. 5 Nec mirum and while considering divination Angelo da Chivasso speaks of arioli, aruspices, augures, negromantici: Angelo da Chivasso, Summa angelica, fol. 115ra. ‘Learned’ as an attribute of magic can be sometimes problematic. With Michael Bailey one should remember that a too strict dichotomy between elite and popular ideas has proven inadequate when inquiring into magic, and that a more thorough understanding of how magic-related concepts were distributed across society is necessary. In this regard Kieckhefer has elaborated the notion of a ‘common tradition’ at the base of medieval magic, which means magic was widespread and not in the hands of a few only. See Michael Bailey, ‘The Meanings of Magic’, Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft, 1 (2006), 1–23 (p. 12); Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, p. 56 ff; and Richard Kieckhefer, ‘The Specific Rationality of Medieval Magic’, The American Historical Review, 3 (1994), 813–36.

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in the Observant Franciscans’ terminology.65 Still drawing on Isidore and adding the authority of the Decretum Gratiani (which the author quotes besides the Old Testament and the New Testament to forbid recourse to diviners) Carcano refers to the traditional etymology of ariolus as derived from ‘arae ydolorum’, thus connecting it to the art of divining, not to general magic, as is in fact confirmed by the insertion of the issue in a sermon about divination. Thus, towards the end of the century a more specific use of terminology according to a stricter adherence to traditional categories can again be attested among the friars.66 Speaking of the various types of demonic conjurations employed to know the future, after having spoken of necromancy, Carcano explains how demons can appear to persons who are possessed, and he connects this type of divination, which he calls phitonia to the tradition of the oracle of Apollo, showing that phiton might be the corrupted version of python, which is the term originally related to the Pitia or the priestess of the temple of Delphi according to Isidore of Seville.67 The variant phiton can be explained through a passage from Giacomo della Marca who links it not to the Pitia but to the famous episode of King Saul consulting the Witch of Endor, who summoned the spirit of the dead prophet Samuel and foretold the tragic outcome of Saul’s impending battle against the Philistines. The sorceress was called later a witch, and her story would be reused from the fifteenth century in the light of witchcraft-related stereotypes.68 65 

Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum Libri, VIII. 9, 15–17 reads: ‘Arioli vocati, propter quod circa aras idolorum nefarias preces emittunt, et funesta sacrificia offerunt, iisque cele­bri­ta­tibus daemonum responsa accipunt.’ Drawing on Isidore, Giacomo describes arioli as ‘Qui circa aras nepharias preces emictunt et funesta sacrificia offerunt et responsa a demonii recipient’. He goes on by giving an interesting example: ‘Sicut quidam parentes filium infirmum habentes ex remediis non sanum medicorum; ex consilio vetule in fossato obtulerunt denarios dyabolo et sanus factus est et in capite anni portatus a diabolo.’ Giacomo della Marca, Sermones dominicales, Sermon 27, ed. by Lioi, vol. i, p. 427. Cf. Montesano, ‘Supra acqua et supra ad vento’, p. 59. 66  Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 22, fol. 54vb: ‘Tertio prohibetur auctoritate Decreti. Nam 26.q.4 c. Igitur scribitur: “Arioli sunt qui circa aras ydolorum nefarias preces emittunt, funesta sacrificia offerunt, hiisque celebritatibus demonum recipiunt responsa”; […] prohibetur etiam divinatio per leges.’ 67  Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 22, fol. 55ra: ‘Aliquando invocati pre­nun­ ciant per arreptitios id est per homines vivos et vigilantes ab eis obsessos, et a phitonio Apoline qui fuit primus inventor divinandi dicitur phitonia.’ Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum libri, VIII. 9, 21–22, has: ‘Pythonissae a Pythio Apolline dictae, quod is auctor fuerit divinandi’. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, IIa, IIae Q. 95, a. 4. 68  Giacomo della Marca, Sermones dominicales, Sermon 27, ed. by Lioi, vol. i, p. 428: ‘Phitonici, a Phitone qui fuit primus inventor divinando et maxime mortuos resurgere,

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Invocation of Demons The third way to break the First Commandment, according to Busti, is invocatio demonum. The preacher deals with this category partially following Carcano, with some telling differences. While Carcano considers invocation as one of the three main species of divination, along with augury and casting of lots, Busti deals with it as an independent category, showing how invokers of demons violate all the other commandments besides the first.69 This gives Busti the possibility of inserting a number of accusatorial stereotypes based on the convergence between the province of the First Commandment and each of the others. Invocation of demons is also the heading under which the preacher addresses some of the multisided stereotypes concerning witchcraft. I shall return to this specific aspect of invocation in the next chapter, when I deal with the problem of the formation of witch-belief and the response Busti and his colleagues give to the issue. The correspondence between Busti and Carcano with regard to demonic invocation is not uniform. Carcano elaborates on invocation in the second part of his Sermon 22 under three major points. I have already mentioned the first two, but it is useful to recall them here. First of all, starting with Bonaventure, Carcano explains the impossibility for the demons to tell the truth about future events, although — relying on Augustine and the Decretum Gratiani — he adds that they can often make good guesses, because of four reasons: the sharpness of their minds, their long experience, their cunning prudence, and some knowledge that by divine assent they can acquire from the angels.70 Second, Carcano sicut habetur 1 Reg. 28 quod Saul ex consilio fitonisse adoravit diabolum in specie Samuelis, prophete mortui.’ Cf. Isidore, Etymologiarum libri, VIII. 9, 7. The episode of the ‘Witch’ of Endor is in 1 Samuel 28. 3–25. On its link with witchcraft, see Charles Zika, ‘The Witch of Endor: Transformations of a Biblical Necromancer in Early Modern Europe’, in Rituals, Images, and Words: Varieties of Cultural Expression in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. by F. W. Kent and Charles Zika (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), pp. 235–59. See also Montesano, ‘Supra acqua et supra ad vento’, pp. 59–60; Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, p. 33; Bailey, Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies, p. 59; and Lasson, Superstitions médiévales, pp. 326–35. 69  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 127vb: ‘Non tantum faciunt contra hoc primum preceptum, quia non adorant Deum sed diabolum, sed etiam faciunt contra omnia alia precepta.’ 70  Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 22, fol. 55ra. Angelo of Chivasso, Summa, 115rab explains the same four reasons for which demons can know the future while dealing with divination. Cf. Decretum Gratiani, II. 26, q. 4, c. 2 Sciendum; Augustine of Hippo, De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim, PL 34, III. 10, XI. 13, XII. 13 and 17.

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lists the various types of invocation through which one aims at foretelling the future: prestigium (deceitful trick), which is when demons show themselves under human appearances, or through voices, or idola; invocation by means of dreams; necromancy; and the Delphic type of conjuration.71 Another interesting practice of demonic conjuration is hinted at by Antonio da Vercelli, when he describes how Trigesimitertii qui adversantur divino cultui et fidei christiane sunt omnes illi qui expresse demones invocant ad aliquid consulendum vel faciendum et ipsos ex hoc aut in vitro aut in adamante aut in ampula et huiusmodi coactos, et constrictos tenent.72 The thirty-third class of those who oppose divine cult and Christian faith are all those who expressly invoke demons for getting advice or to do something, and keep them closed-up in a glass object, a diamond, or an ampoule.

This practice perhaps involves a Christian Neo-Platonist idea, according to which demonic powers could be held in some objects as if they were physical entities, thus suggesting the possibly of divination by means of reflective surfaces known as scrying or crystal-gazing.73 Busti does not seem to be interested in developing either of these aspects. What he takes up, rather, is the third point made by Carcano: here there is verbatim correspondence between the two preachers, to the extent that one may suppose the incorporation by Busti of the material employed by Carcano.74 On 71 

Carcano’s main references are Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, Commentaria in quatuor libros Sententiarum, d. 7, a. 1, q. 3, in Opera omnia, vol. ii, p. 204; Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, IIa, IIae Q. 95, a. 3. 72  Antonio da Vercelli, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 45, fol. 330rab. 73  The use of reflective surfaces even other than glass for conjuring demons was known much earlier. Interesting hints are in John of Salisbury, Policraticus i–iv, ed. by K. S. B. KeatsRohan (Turnhout: Brepols, 1993), II. 28: De speculariis et quod maligni spiritus interdum future praenoscunt. Cf. Bailey, Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies, p. 55. 74  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 127va says: ‘Tamen sciendum est, secundum Bonaventuram in 2, di. 7, parte 2, ar. 2, q. 3, quod homo potest advocare demonem duobus modis: uno modo virtute divina, ei imperando aliquid licitum et honestum unde, Act. 16, Paulus imperavit diabolo exire de puella et exivit eadem hora. Et hoc similiter esse posset quando Deus suo iusto iudicio diabolum subiiceret homini prout de quibusdam viris sanctis narratur. Nam etsi demon non invocatus alicui sancto viro occurreret, posset eum in virtute divina cogere ad aliqua vera dicenda ad utilitatem aliorum. Alio modo potest quis invocare diabolum ei supplicando. Et hoc est mortale peccatum.’ Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 22, fol. 55ra reads: ‘Tertium notandum est secundum Bonaventuram in 2, dist. 7,

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the basis of Bonaventure’s commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, both the preachers indicate that invocation of demons can be of two different kinds, one licit and the other not. The licit way of conjuring demons is exemplified by Acts 16 in the episode in which St Paul exorcises a young woman commanding the demon to leave her body, and an illicit type of invocation when one names the devil in entreaty (Busti), or familiarity (Carcano). Busti’s and Carcano’s adherence to the case provided by the Acts of the Apostles keeps the matter in the safe zone of declaring invocation of demons permissible only in very specific, and maybe unreproducible, cases. The preachers explain further that the devil can be subjugated to the saints by the divine will, as when without invocation, he can appear to a saint who can make him tell something useful for people. This is therefore a kind of miracle that, by divine will alone, and not as a result of invocation, can lead demons to become useful to humans, and even then only through the agency of a saint. Nevertheless, examples rooted in a learned background suggested the possibility for a legitimate non-evil invocation of demons. The Dominican Raimundus of Tarrega in his De invocatione daemonum (1370) had asserted that, if demons represent their creator, they can certainly be worshipped.75 Again, in the second half of the fifteenth century, several Carmelite friars in Bologna did not regard summoning demons as a heretical act. The fact caused the Dominican inquisitors to request the intervention of the Franciscan Pope Sixtus IV, who promoted an investigation in 1473, without however arriving at

parte 2, ar. i q. 3 quod homo potest advocare diabolum duobus modis: uno modo virtute divina, ei imperando aliquid licitum et honestum: hoc modo licet, unde Paulus act. 16 diabolo imperavit exire de puella et exivit eadem hora. Et hoc similiter esse posset quando Deus suo iusto iudicio diabolum subiiceret homini prout de quibusdam viris sanctis narratur. Nam etsi demon non invocatus alicui hominum sanctorum occurreret, posset virtute divina eum cogere ad aliqua vera dicenda ad utilitatem aliorum. Alio modo potest quis invocare diabolum voluntario comertio et familiariter, et hoc modo non licet tacite vel expresse.’ Cf. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, Commentaria in quatuor libros Sententiarum, d. 7, a. 1, q. 3, in Opera omnia, vol. ii, p. 204: ‘Factum est autem, euntibus nobis ad orationem, puellam quandam habentem spiritum pythonem obviare nobis, quae quaestum magnum praestabat dominis suis divinando. Haec subsecuta Paulum et nos clamabat dicens: “Isti homines servi Dei Altissimi sunt, qui annuntiant vobis viam salutis”. Hoc autem faciebat multis diebus. Dolens autem Paulus et conversus spiritui dixit: “Praecipio tibi in nomine Iesu Christi exire ab ea”; et exiit eadem hora.’ 75  Joseph Hansen, Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Hexenwahns und der Hexenverfolgung im Mittelalter (Bonn: C. Georgi, 1901, reprint Hildesheim, Zürich, New York: Georg Holms Verlag, 2003), p. 67: ‘Quod licet daemones adorare et honorare latria meritorie, si representent suum creatorem.’

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any definitive result. The anti-magic campaign prompted by Dominicans probably failed because of the delicate situation involving two religious orders and the Gonzaga family that backed the Carmelites.76 The illicit type of invocation is for evil purposes, and can be considered a blend of magic and maleficium, since throughout their sermons, preachers show that as well as to protect oneself, demons can also be invoked to bring about someone else’s ruin.77 Similarly, the diffusion (and the evil fate) of demonic practices in that misty ‘clerical underworld’ described by Richard Kieckhefer, is demonstrated by the execution in Milan in 1474 of a hermit named Rolando accused of diabolism, after a trial held by Dominican inquisitors. The coexistence of holy and unholy, sacred and demonic, has been viewed by Kieckhefer as ‘a rare and fascinating alliance’ especially in the demonic practices of the necromancers.78 Having made this point on the licit and illicit types of invocation of demons, Carcano and Busti diverge in their subsequent consideration of the issue. Carcano — insisting on the Augustinian idea of a demonic pact — inquires further into the ban on invoking demons ‘voluntario comertio et familiariter’ (‘by voluntary habit and familiarly’), in essence using the typical framework of rationes, auctoritates, exempla to point to the risk of idolatry. On the other hand, Busti embarks on his interesting development of the various types of beliefs related to the invocation of demons. The last common point before departing towards such different intellectual frameworks is, however, in both Busti and Carcano, the same telling reference to the canon Episcopi: ‘A diabolo captivi tenentur, qui, relicto creatore, diaboli auxilium querunt’ (‘Those who having abandoned the Creator seek help from the devil, are held prisoners by the devil’).79 All this introduces us to what I take up again and discuss at length in the next chapter. 76  See Hansen, Quellen, p. 21; Tamar Herzig, ‘The Demons and the Friars: Illicit Magic and Mendicant Rivalry in Renaissance Bologna’, Renaissance Quarterly, 4 (2011), 1025–58. 77  On the role of maleficium in invocation, see Bailey, Battling Demons, p. 29; and Valerie Flint, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe (Princeton: Princeton Uni­ver­sity Press, 1991), pp. 147–56. 78  Richard Kieckhefer, ‘The Holy and the Unholy: Sainthood, Witchcraft, and Magic in Late Medieval Europe’, Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 24 (1994), 355–85 (p. 372 ff ); Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, pp. 153–56; Cf. also Tavuzzi, Renaissance Inquisitors, p. 254. 79  Decretum Gratiani, II, C.  26, q.  5, c.  12; Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon  16, fol. 127rb; Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 22, fol. 55rb–va.

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For his part, Caimi, detaches himself from the pattern I have outlined so far. The confessor does not take into consideration invocation in itself, but seems, rather, interested in considering its practical implications such as the involvement with occult magic and necromancy, as well as its potential presence in the manufacture and use of textual amulets. I shall return to this too. Dreams According to Busti, the fourth way to transgress against God is to give credence to dreams in order to foretell the future.80 The theological, canonistic, biblical, and literary/moralistic auctoritates Busti relies on exemplify the array of sources preachers could employ. Along with the references to Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas, to the Decretum Gratiani, and to Deuteronomy, Busti also quotes the Disticha Catonis. The Disticha is a collection of moralistic precepts in hexametres named after Cato, which belongs to a category of texts traditionally employed in schools throughout the Middle Ages until the sixteenth century, and widely present in the Observants’ libraries, for teaching the basics of Latin as well as a variety of apothegms. Through this text especially, Busti expresses the notion of a mental, or perhaps, ‘psychological’ causation of dreams, according to which people see in sleep what concerns them while awake, and so he exhorts the faithful not to take them into serious consideration.81 80  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 127vb: ‘Quarto contra hoc primum pre­ ceptum offenditur Deus dando fidem somniis, volendo interpretari per somnia illa que sunt futura, quod est peccatum.’ On divination by means of dreams, see Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, p. 85. 81  The references are: Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, Commentaria in quatuor libros Sententiarum, d. 7, a. 1, q. 3, in Opera omnia, vol. ii, p. 204; Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, IIa, IIae, Q. 95, a. 6: ‘Utrum divinatio quae fit per somnia sit illicita’; Decretum Gratiani, II, C. 26, q. 5, c. 16 Non observetis; and Deuteronomy 18. 10–11. From the Disticha Catonis Busti quotes: ‘Somnia ne cures, nam mens humana quod optat, dum vigilat, sperat, per somnum cernit id ipsum’ (II. 31). The Disticha and its like belong to the group of authors defined as ‘auctores minores’, as opposed to the main authors of the Roman tradition studied in medieval and renaissance schools at an upper level. See Rino Avesani, Quattro miscellanee medioevali e umanistiche: Contributo alla tradizione del Geta, degli Auctores octo, dei Libri minores e di altra letteratura scolastica medioevale (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1967), pp. 17–25, 31, 89, and 91; Avesani, ‘Cultura e istanze pastorali’, pp. 402–04; and Robert Black, Humanism and Education in Medieval and Renaissance Italy: Tradition and Innovation in Latin Schools from the Twelfth to the Fifteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni­ver­sity Press 2001), pp. 173–74, and passim.

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In this case, too, Busti’s general adherence to Carcano is evident, although with some variations. Carcano mentions the same auctoritates with the exception of Disticha Catonis, and extends his explanation to include the origin of dreams on the basis of Thomas Aquinas’s five inner and outer dispositions. According to this view, dreams can arise from interior causes, such as the disposition of the body (the physiology of its inner humours), and the concerns of the mind before falling asleep; the exterior causes imply demonic illusion, angelic inspiration, and divine revelation.82 The decisive fact, in relation to this approach, Carcano specifies, is that there is no illicit divination when one tries to understand the future by interpreting dreams that are angelically or divinely inspired, while divining through dreams that are originated by explicit or implicit pacts with demons is illicit and forbidden. Notably, the preacher distinguishes between angelic and divine causation, while in Thomas Aquinas they are treated together; further, Carcano does not refer to the bodily causation reported by Aquinas, according to which dreams can originate from the influence of physical elements, such as the air or the stars. This choice is probably due to Carcano’s not wanting to adopt a position that would create superstitious misunderstanding, or perhaps because physical causation was just not considered meaningful anymore. Caimi does not add anything to a reference to Thomas Aquinas, simply forbidding, briefly, divination by means of dreams. On the other hand, Antonio da Vercelli develops a different text-material. The friar introduces the reader to an interesting literary tradition, when he criticizes those who use the book known as Somniale (or Somnia) Danielis, a manual that lists in alphabetical order the keys for the symbolic interpretation of dreams.83 The Somniale was already transmitted through the Greek world by the fourth century, and was translated during the following centuries into Arabic and Latin as well as many other languages, such as Coptic, Aramaic, Armenian, Icelandic, Irish, and Slavic, to name but a few. The Somniale was one of the 82  Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 22, fol. 56vb. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, IIa, IIae, Q. 95, a. 6. Dreams were considered of five types already by the fifth century Neoplatonists. Macrobius distinguished between the false ones having bodily or psychological origin, which are not worth interpretation (insomnium and visum), and the true ones having prophetic nature and worthy to be interpreted (oraculum, visio, somnium): Macrobius, Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis, I. 3. 3–10. See also Kruger, Dreaming in the Middle Ages, pp. 21–23; Schmitt, Les superstitions, p. 490; and Lasson, Superstitions médiévales, pp. 266–68. 83  See Steven R. Fischer, The Complete Medieval Dreambook: A Multilingual, Alphabetical Somnia Danielis Collation (Bern: Lang, 1982). Cf. Schmitt, Les superstitions, pp. 494–95.

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tracts circulating under the name of the famous biblical prophet, Daniel, who was considered an inventor of oneiromancy and geomancy. Antonio refers to this ancient text as an example of the many illusions that demons can produce. The preacher writes: Contra quos 26. Q. 4. c. Sciendum dicitur. Suadentibus demonibus miris et modis per illam subtilitatem corporea hominum non sentientium penetrando: et se cogitationibus hominum per quedam imaginaria visa ammiscendo sive vigilantium sive dormientium fides non debet adhiberi, ut hec ibi. Item 26. Q. 7 c. Non observetis dicitur: ‘Errant qui attendunt ad somnialia scripta et falso in Danielis nomine intitulata’ [Intitulantia in the original].84 Against those (who believe in the Somniale) it is said in 26.  Q.  4.  c. Sciendum. Dreams are mostly the deeds of the devil: in fact under the influence of demons, through singular and invisible ways, by means of their ability they penetrate into people’s bodies without being noticed, and by means of some imaginary visions, they mix with their thoughts, both while they are sleeping and when they are awake; no faith should be put in them. Thus in 26. Q. 7 c. Non observetis it is said: ‘Those who pay attention to the Somnialia texts, falsely entitled with the name of Daniel, are in error.’

As Antonio shows, the direct link between fifteenth century preachers and the tradition referring to the Somniale is indeed the Decretum Gratiani, which condemns it along with other divinatory practices.85 Nevertheless, the circulation the Somniale enjoyed among Italian poets could undoubtedly constitute a further channel of transmission from a broader cultural point of view. The text was translated into the Italian vernacular already by the end of the thirteenth century, as attested by a manuscript that brings together two versions of the Somniale — one in the vernacular and the other in Latin — together with the rhymes of Guido Cavalcanti and Dante Alighieri, along with the first ever complete transcription of the Vita Nova.86 84 

Antonio da Vercelli, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 45, fol. 331rb. Among the books of magic he condemns and calls to be burned, Giacomo della Marca also mentions ‘Sompnia Danielis et clavicula Salomonis’ (Giacomo della Marca, Sermones dominicales, Sermon 27, ed. by Lioi, vol. i, p. 431). 85  Decretum Gratiani, II, C. 26, q. 4, c. 2, and II, C. 26, q. 7, c. 16. On the relation between the Somniale and the Decretum cf. Kruger, Dreaming in the Middle Ages, pp. 12–13. 86  Codex ‘Laurentianus Martelli’, 12. See Valerio Cappozzo, ‘Libri dei sogni e geomanzia: la loro applicazione letteraria tra Islam, medioevo romanzo e Dante’, in Quaderni di Studi Indo-Mediterranei II – Sogni e visioni nel mondo indo-mediterraneo/Dreams and Visions in the

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Overall, the way in which the Milanese preachers dealt with dreams highlights the relevance of the issue from the point of view of divination; but by regarding the two topics separately within their lists of superstitions — according to the same order already employed by the Dominicans — they seem to be considering the observation of dreams in its own terms. After all, dreams were not just a medium for divining. Related to them was the multifaceted realm of visions, apparitions, and illusions, as well as a relation with the discernment of spirits, and also with fiction.87 All these implications would lead theologians and pastors to other and more problematic types of issues, in some instances also pointing to the problem of witchcraft. Those Who Tempt God Tempting God contravenes the First Commandment through the belief that he should intervene and work miracles to save somebody in a critical situation. Here again the general closeness of the material employed by Busti and Carcano is quite clear, first of all from their relying on the same sources, although, as always, the material is far more fully developed in Carcano than in Busti. The typical cases to be found of tempting God are exemplified by Busti with those who would climb down the stairs not step by step but leaping, relying on the assistance of God, or when somebody who is sick refuses drugs, believing that God would help. Furthermore, the preacher mentions the recent case of an ultramontanus student, who died in Pavia after refusing medicines while saying ‘Christus medicina’ (‘Christ is my therapy’) and ‘Christus pictima’ (‘Christ is my epithem’).88 With these examples, and relying on Nicholas of Lyra’s Indo-Mediterranean World, ed. by Daniela Boccassini (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2009), pp. 207–26 (pp. 210–11). 87  On the many-sided interrelation of observing dreams, see Schmitt, Les Superstitions, pp. 489–95; Kruger, Dreaming in the Middle Ages, pp. 123–49; and Tullio Gregory, ed., I sogni nel medioevo: seminario internazionale Roma, 2–4 ottobre 1983 (Rome: Ed. dell’Ateneo, 1985). 88  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fols 127vb–128ra:‘Quinto peccatur tentando Deum secundum Nicolaum de Lira, Super Mattheo 4, et Thomam 2a 2e q. 97 ar. primo et Astesanum parte prima libro primo tit. 16 qui dicunt, quod tentare Deum est experientiam de eius potentia et maiestate querere sine necessitate. Sic faciebant pharisei, Matthei 12, signum de celo querentes […]. Et talis fuit quidam scolaris ultramontanus, qui in civitate Papie infirmatus mortuus est. Nam, cum vellent medici dare ei medicinam, recusabat illam, dicens: “Christus medicina”; et, cum vellent cordi eius imponere pictimam, nolebat eam, dicens: “Christus pictima”. Et hoc fuit temporibus nostris.’ Cf. Matthew 12. 38: ‘Tunc responderunt ei quidam de scribis et pharisaeis dicentes: “Magister, volumus a te signum videre.”’ Pictima is mentioned in

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Postillae, Thomas Aquinas, and the Summa of Astesano da Asti, Busti points out and condemns those exaggerations of faith that might lead one to be irresponsible in life. It must be noted that, technically, according to the classical Thomistic schema, tempting God was not part of superstition, but of irreligion, which in the Summa is actually distinct from it, following the quaestiones dealing with superstition; nevertheless, as Carcano writes, tempting God is an act of irreverence and ‘opposed to religion’, as superstition is.89 The inclusion of elements that were not originally superstitious in a list of superstitions marks further the aim of the preachers to broaden the sphere of influence of the First Commandment concerning the right forms of faith. Vain Observances The superstitions classified as vanae observationes or ‘vain observances’ cover headings 6 to 8 in Busti’s list. They represent the greatest extent of shared material between Carcano, Caimi, and Busti, although here the most direct similarities seem to be between Busti and Caimi. By ‘vain observances’ is generally indicated a set of folk-beliefs represented by the observation of a number of signs, which vary according to their sphere of influence. Amongst the Milanese friars the first topic covered is observing constellations, generally to foretell the character of a person, which borders on astrology; the second consists in consulting the phases of the moon or the movements of celestial bodies before undertaking an action; the third is observing and celebrating special days or times of the year, along with other types of ‘nonreflective’ practices and beliefs apparently related to an old background of popular or pagan nature. Sometimes the observation of natural signs can mix with pseudoscientific approaches, as in the case of beliefs concerning astrology.90 On the whole, although vain beliefs were traditionally of little the sense of an external topical application by the Ricettario fiorentino, a pharmacopoeia printed in Florence in 1498. The origin of the term is to be found in fourteenth-century Tuscany. See ‘pìttima’, ‘epìtema’, in Vocabolario della lingua italiana (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1991); Alfonso Corradi, Le prime farmacopee italiane ed in particolare dei Ricettari fiorentini (Milan: Fratelli Rechiedei Editori, 1887), p. 12, note 3; and James Shaw and Ewelyn Welch, Making and Marketing Medicine in Renaissance Florence (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011), pp. 252–53. 89  Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 22, fols 56vb–57ra. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, IIa, IIae Q. 92. 90  On observances cf. Montesano, ‘Supra acqua et supra ad vento’, p.  14  ff; Lasson, Superstitions médiévales, pp. 239–49.

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concern to preachers, it seems that the Milanese friars perceived some of them with less insouciance than their earlier colleagues. The space these beliefs fill in their texts might point to their being perceived as persistently and dangerously present among the daily life of the faithful.91 Busti goes into greater depth in the observationes related to astrology, which he seems to address with more concern. Supposing one is induced to do good or evil under the influence of the constellations or planets under whose sign one was born is considered by Busti and Caimi not only forbidden, but also heretical. Carcano, on the other hand, is still satisfied by saying that those believing so are mistaken.92 The refutation of the possibility that the stars could provide guidance in people’s lives was well embedded in the Christian tradition. The case of the Magi shows the falseness of that belief, since according to the Church Fathers they had to renounce their astrological skills in order to see Christ.93 Still on the topic of astrological-related observances, Busti considers various types of activities as diabolical when performed with attention to the conjunction of celestial bodies: Unde peccant illi, qui ad faciendas armaturas expectant punctum astrologie et tunc percutiunt maleo, et dant aliquos ictus. Deinde alium punctum expectant, et credunt quod postea talis armatura sit fatata, quasi esset Hectoris, vel Achillis. Alii vero, volentes itinerare, tenent equum paratum cum sella, habentes calcaria in pedibus et unum pedem in stafa et in puncto astrologie ascendunt equum etiam si pluviis et turbinibus aer esset exagitatus. O astrologe, exspecta etiam punctum astrologie quando morieris, ut facias iter prosperum. Et fac ut tua uxor expectet punctum 91 

Although the friars do not seem to polemicize on this with the political élites of their town, we know the important part astrology played at the Sforza court especially as a means of political and medical prognostication. See Monica Azzolini, The Duke and the Stars: Astrology and Politics in Renaissance Milan (Cambridge: Harvard Uni­ver­sity Press, 2013). 92  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 128ra: ‘Quis credit certitudinaliter et deter­ minate quod omnes cogantur ad bonum vel malum ex constellationibus et planetis sub quibus nati sunt hoc enim hereticum est et prohibitum.’ Caimi, Interrogatorium sive confessionale, xxxiiv: ‘Si ex constellationibus et planetis sub quibus quis natus est iudicavit determinate et certitudinaliter futura hominum opera procedere, et ex talibus homines cogi ad malum vel bonum hereticum est et prohibitum’. Cf. Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 23, fol. 57vb. The friars rely on Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, IIa, IIae, Q. 95, a. 5 Utrum divinatio quae fit per astra sit illicita; Decretum Gratiani, II, C. 26, q. 2, c. 8, ed. by Friedberg, vol. i, col. 1023: ‘Christiana et vera pietas planetarios expellit, et damnat’, and II, C. 26, q. 5, c. 3, col. 1027: ‘Elementa colere, lunae, aut stellarum cursus in suis operibus, Christianis servare non licet’. 93  See Flint, The Rise of Magic, pp. 368–69.

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astrologie ad pariendum tibi filium, quando est in illis doloribus ut faciat filium felicem. O stultitia maxima, per quam quamplures a diabolo tenentur captivi.94 Because of this those sin who, while forging armour, wait for the conjunction of constellations and in that moment beat the hammer and give a series of hits. Then, they wait for another astral conjunction, and believe that after that armour would be enchanted, almost as if it were Hector’s or Achilles’. Others again wishing to travel, keep their horse ready and saddled and have their spurs on their feet, with one foot in the stirrup and at the moment of a certain astral conjunction they mount even if rain and storm upset the air. Oh astrologer, wait for the right astral conjunction even when you die, so that your journey should be prosperous! And let your wife wait for the right astral conjunction to give birth to your child when she is in labour, so that she should give birth to a fortunate child. Oh what enormous folly, through which so many people are being kept captive by the devil.

Busti refers to the ingrained habit of relying on some kind of practical astronomical expertise to render more fortunate the outcome of ordinary activities. The preacher even urges ironically the astrologer to try to rely on his skills during the most important and delicate moments of his own life as well as of his wife’s, beginning with birth and death, to show how fanciful and ultimately diabolic those beliefs are. The observation of particular days called Dies Aegyptiaci is related to the calendar and accounts for another of the more widespread beliefs, which according to the Church Fathers derived from an old Egyptian tradition. ‘Egyptian days’ recurred twice each month and were deemed to be particularly unsuitable to let blood and to begin any human activity.95 Those who in Busti’s description celebrate special days and months participate in a broader class of vain beliefs listed under heading eight in the preacher’s list, apparently derived from Carcano and Caimi, and shared by a large part of pastoral and penitential literature dealing with superstition.96

94 

Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 128ra. 95  See Charles Du Cange, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, 10 vols (Graz: Aka­ de­mische Druck-U. Verlagsanstalt, 1954), vol. ii, col. 106b. Cf. Cameron, Enchanted Europe, p. 66; Flint, The Rise of Magic, p. 322; and Marina Montesano, ‘Fantasima, fantasima che nella notte vai’: La cultura magica nelle novelle toscane del Trecento (Rome: Città Nuova, 2000), p. 123. 96  Cf. Decretum Gratiani, II, C. 26, q. 7, c. 16; Cameron, Enchanted Europe, pp. 98–100; Bailey, Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies, pp.  51–54; and Lasson, Superstitions médiévales, pp. 270–73.

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To those who celebrate the first of the year (Kalendis Ianuarii) by exchanging gifts, the preachers add those who fasten green branches of trees on their houses on 1 May (Kalendis Maii), showing strong similarities between their respective texts.97 Other superstitiones include hanging up pieces of coal from the fire of the Christmas night to stop hail, predicting the future from the size of the flame of an oil lamp, from the chirping of birds, or from the strength of the wind, or the belief that a stone marten crossing the street in front of somebody is a sign of bad luck.98 To believe that if some ravens land on the roof of an house where a sick person lies, that person is destined to die soon is regarded by Busti as a false belief specific to the populares.99 The preacher considers this as a mark of immoral conduct: Sepe tamen Deus permittit demones apparere in forma corvorum et aliorum animalium super domos vel in domibus morientium quando bestialiter vixerunt.100 Frequently, however, God allows demons to appear under the species of ravens or other animals on the houses of those who lived as beasts.

Another belief is that after the passing of a comet, the prince would die. In this case the preacher provides more solidly ‘scientific’ background, taken from 97  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 128rb: ‘Quando in kalendis Ianuarii vel alio die, quasi pro bono augurio aliquid donatur. Item si in kalendis Maii vacavit lauro, aut viriditate arborum domos cinxit, hec enim observantia paganorum est.’ Very similarly Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 23, fol. 61va: ‘Non observetis dies qui dicuntur egyptiaci aut kalendas Ianuarij in quibus […] adinvicem dona donant, quasi in principio anni boni fati augurio;[…] non licet iniquas observationes agere kalendarum et ociis vacare neque lauro aut viriditate arborum cingere domos. Omnis enim hec observatio paganorum est’. On the same line Caimi, Interrogatorium sive confessionale, xxxiiv: ‘Si in kalendis ociis vacavit lauro aut viriditate arborum domos cinxit. Hec enim observatio paganorum est.’ Cf. Decretum Gratiani, II, C. 26, q. 7, c. 13. 98  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon  16, fol.  128ra: ‘Item si quis superstitiones alias observavit, puta suspendendo carbones nativitatis Domini contra grandinem vel accipiendo in malum signum.’ Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 23, 61va: ‘Nonnulli carbones nativitatis Domini suspendunt in vincis vel alibi ad expulsionem grandinis’. Caimi, Interro­ gatorium sive confessionale, xxxiiv–xxxiiir: ‘Si vanitates superstitiosas observavit puta suspen­ dendo car­bones nativitatis Domini contra grandinem.’ In his Tractatus de confessione Giovanni da Capestrano mentions those who ‘in nocte Nativitatis nolunt dare ignem’: Codex 17, fol. 293r. (Capestrano, Convento dei Frati Minori). See Montesano, ‘Supra acqua et supra ad vento’, p. 17. 99  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon  16, fol.  128 va: ‘Populares vero dicunt quod ibi apparent in signum quod ille infirmus debet mori, quod non est verum.’ 100  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 128va.

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the commentary on Aristotle’s Liber meteororum composed by Paolo Veneto (Paolo Nicoletti), a Nominalist philosopher and theologian belonging to the order of the Hermits of St Augustine, who died in 1428.101 According to this theory, a comet or alii ignes appearing in the air would testify that some changes have occurred in that element, or in other words — Busti explains — that the middle part of the sky, which is normally cold, has instead became hot and inflamed the vapours that rise from the lands or the waters towards that region of air due to the action of the sun. This turmoil in the air is what causes death in the population. Now, Busti goes on, since hard drinking and lustful princes are weaker than others, it often happens that they die sooner in case of affections of the air, although the populares say that it happens because the comet had appeared.102 Exceptions to the usual prohibition on practicing these observances did exist, Busti indicates. The preacher recalls the late medieval tendency that permitted flexibility concerning practices that did not aim at predicting future human behaviour, relying on Thomas Aquinas (Summa theologiae, IIa, IIae, Q. 5, a. 5), the Archdeacon of Bologna and jurist Guido da Baisio (d. 1313), and the Decretum Gratiani.103 Thus, for instance, the observation of natural signs such as the lunar phases and the winds can be employed to predict the rain and drought, or to determine the best period to sow. These clearly identify archaic customs for interpreting the cycles of nature, rather than ‘beliefs’ in strict sense. The same can be said with regard to lot-casting, which Busti deals with under the ninth heading of his list concerning divination, except for his concern about those who performed it: unofficial intermediaries of the sacred constituted a major concern for the preachers. Indeed, a certain accommodating approach towards the sortes was already traditional earlier. Gregory of Tours indicates 101  ‘Paolo Veneto’, in Dizionario di filosofia Treccani (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2009), vol. ii, p. 176. 102  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 128rb–va. 103  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 128ra–rb: ‘Si autem quis observet cursum lune ad incidenda ligna vel, si utatur consideratione astrorum ad prenoscendum futura, que ex celestibus corporibus causantur, puta siccitates et pluvias, non est illicitum secundum Thomam, ubi supra, et nota Archidiaconus, 26a q. 5a c. Si quis clericus, licet etiam rusticis per ventos et dispositiones lune considerare tempus seminandi.’ Caimi, Interrogatorium sive confessionale, xxxiiv: ‘Si tamen utatur consideratione astrorum ad prenoscendum futura que ex celestibus corporibus creantur puta siccitates et pluvias non est illicitum. Si quis clericus licet etiam rusticis pro ventos et dispositiones lune considerare tempus seminandi.’ On these beliefs, see Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, pp. 127–28. Cf. Decretum Gratiani, II, C. 26, q. 5, c. 9.

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how practices such as the sortes biblicae and the sortes sanctorum were common and accepted for clerics. Observant Franciscans looked at these superstitions as just different kinds of magic.104 Busti also describes the populares and the vulgares paying attention to these observances. That might point to the preachers’ awareness of the existence of a gap between their intellectual framework and the beliefs that they oppose, whose origin they situate in a ‘popular’ type of background. A clear similarity puts the vain beliefs listed by the preachers alongside the superstitiones condemned as pagan survivals by the earlier penitential handbooks. In both cases the approach is relaxed, although there is a more active search for the demonic element in the fifteenth century lists. Neither Busti nor the other Observant Franciscans were seriously concerned about these kinds of superstitions, which were in fact classified generally as stultitiae (‘foolish things’) and those who practiced them as frivoli (‘light headed’).105 Beliefs of an old folkloric or rural flavour were basically considered innocuous provided that they contained no element of ritual. The recalling of traditional lore can ultimately point to the survival of an old substratum of customary beliefs connected to the rhythms and the time frame of a society still deeply rooted in an agricultural background. Following Aaron Gurevich, behind those recorded beliefs one can see the existence of a traditional mentality pointing to ‘an ultimate unity and a reciprocal penetration of nature and humankind’.106 104  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 128rb–va: ‘Sors non est aliquid mali, sed in re humana dubia, divinam indicans voluntatem; tamen, quia plerunque male eis utuntur homines, sortes prohibetur.’ On lot-casting, see Cameron, Enchanted Europe, pp. 67–69; Schmitt, Les Superstitions, pp. 486–88; Flint, The Rise of Magic, p. 222; and Montesano, ‘Supra acqua et supra ad vento’, pp. 55–57. 105  Those who believe that days can be fortunate or ominous are considered by Carcano superstitiosi and frivoli; further, the preacher admonishes: ‘Abstineamus ergo fratres ab his vanis et superstitiosis’ (Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 23, fols 61ra and 61va), and Caimi, Interrogatorium sive confessionale, xxxiiv, wonders ‘Si vanitates superstitiosas observavit.’ Cf. Marina Montesano, ‘I temi magici nella predicazione di Giacomo della Marca’, in San Giacomo della Marca e l’altra Europa: Crociata, martirio e predicazione nel Mediterraneo Orientale (secc. xiii–xv). Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Monteprandone, 24–25 novembre 2006, ed. by Fulvia Serpico (Impruneta: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2007), pp. 193–203 (pp. 195–96); Montesano, ‘L’Osservanza francescana’, p. 147. See also Cameron, Enchanted Europe, p. 99; and Schmitt, Les superstitions, pp. 475–89. 106  Aron Gurevich, Medieval Popular Culture: Problems of Belief and Perception, trans. by János M. Bak and Paul A. Hollingsworth (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 1992), p. 81.

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The connection with the domain of nature is attested by Carcano, who enriches his discourse with brief examples designed to illustrate the links between superstition and natural features, as when he writes: Ad predicta etiam sunt multa exemplificativa que fiunt hodie. Alii enim nove lune dum primum viderint radios dicunt adorantes: ‘Salve sancta luna’; alii in suis incantationibus arbores salutant, dicunt: ‘Salve sancta sambuce’ et similia.107 In addition to the aforementioned there are many examples that happen today. Some, when they have first seen the rays of the new moon, say with reverence: ‘Hail, blessed moon’; others hail the trees in their enchantments, and say: ‘Hail, blessed elder tree’, and the like.

In this way the preacher actualizes the formulaic condemnation of superstitious beliefs rooted in penitential tradition. These practices that seem to reflect everyday life and can be classified as relics of an old pre-Christian past, are certainly easy enough to imagine as actually occurring. Nevertheless, they are also well rooted in preaching tradition. Johannes Herolt, for instance, says that upon seeing the new moon, some people worship it kneeling, removing their hats and lowering their head, or that a certain old woman believed that the sun was a goddess and worshipped her with prayers and certain superstitious acts of service.108 The actual reality of the superstitious practices and their place in the preaching tradition are two points not necessarily in contradiction. Yet, in evaluating the preacher’s words in this regard one has to bear in mind that they might constitute two different — although still related — types of problem.109 This quotidian dimension of the superstitions recalled by the Milanese preachers could draw on the traditional listing of the earlier representatives of their order, Giacomo della Marca for example. In the section titled Quot modis adoratur dyabolus (‘How many ways the devil is worshipped’) of Sermon 27 De sortilegiis of the Sermones dominicales, Giacomo composed a long list of different types of magicians, who for their rites employed various elements such as herbs, plant roots, iron, stones, myrrh, incense, silver, wine, animal or human 107 

Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 23, fol. 61va. Cf. p. 165. Herolt, Sermones discipuli, Sermon 41, fol. Hiiira: ‘Plures hominum inueniuntur qui cum nouilunium viderint, adorantes flexis genibus et deposito caputio aut pilea et capite incli­ nato honorant suscipiendo et illoquendo. […] Item aliqui venerantur solem. Exemplum de una vetula que credidit solem esse deam, vocans eam dominam sanctam et aliquando solem bene­ dixit cum certis verbis et cum quadam observantia superstitiosa.’ 109  On the problem of the reality of superstitions cf. Cameron, Enchanted Europe, p. 69 ff. 108 

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bones, putting objects on altars, or making crosses; the superstitious generally do the same, and make a number of charms for different reasons, such as against wolves to prevent them devouring lost cattle, to treat the sick, or to securing one’s love. The use of herbs in particular is connected to the term herbarius, whose use dates back to the Carolingian period at least, being employed as a synonym for ‘magician’.110 Bernardino da Siena urges the ‘servants of God’, the good faithful, not to repeat the superstitions concerning the Kalendis Maii, but it is in the vernacular confessional tract entitled Renovamini that Bernardino lists a number of superstitions centred on definitions of ominous or propitious days to perform actions such as washing the hair or picking herbs, which he presents as beliefs acting in contravention of the First Commandment. As Marina Montesano points out, the main features of these descriptions of superstitions are their including a wide variety of beliefs, and their individual character or the lack of a collective, ceremonial attitude.111 Superstitions the clerics conceived to be vain observances were apparently connected to beliefs and practices whose function was basically to maintain the balance between the cycles of nature and the needs of everyday life. In this case superstition appears to be connected to the idea that there are positive and negative powers inherent in the elements of nature, and that one should take precautions against the negative and pursue the positive ones. This mindset can be understood in the context of lack of technical expertise and the primitive technology characterizing pre-modern societies, the most vivid index of their distance from us.112 Citing Henry Wallon, Lucien Febvre pointed out that Un univers où la seule force musculaire de l’homme est aux prises avec les êtres concrets qui se dressent davant lui n’est pas, ne peut pas être la même univers que celui

110 

See Giacomo della Marca, Sermones dominicales, Sermon 27, ed. by Lioi, vol. i, p. 429; in the same sermon Giacomo mentions the piromantici who ‘In kalendis nolunt dare ignem, vel in festo sancti Ioanni Baptiste transeundo hinc inde per flammam’. See also Giacomo della Marca, Sermones Quadragesimales, Cod. Vat. Lat. 7642, fols 62v–65v; Dario Lasić, ‘Sermones S. Iacobi de Marchia in cod. vat. Lat. 7780 et 7642 asservati’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 63 (1970), pp. 476–565; Montesano, ‘I temi magici nella predicazione di Giacomo della Marca’, pp. 195–200; and Montesano, ‘Supra acqua et supra ad vento’, pp. 14–29. For the use of the term ‘herb’ in cases of magic, see Riché, ed., Instruction et vie religieuse, p. 134. 111  Montesano, ‘Supra acqua et supra ad vento’, p. 14 ff. 112  Cf. Gurevich, Medieval Popular Culture, p. 83.

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où l’homme asservit l’électricité à ses besoins et, pour produire cette électricité, asservit les forces de la nature même.113 A Universe in which only the muscular force of humanity is available to cope with the concrete beings who raise against him is not, cannot be, the same universe in which humanity has subdued electricity to his own needs and has subjugated the forces of Nature themselves in order to produce this electricity.

With some imaginative efforts, one can try to understand the feelings that were likely to concern people whose existence depended almost completely on nature and on the extent of its clemency. One can even imagine the perception of constant peril and challenge, especially when after sunset the only means one had to master the surrounding spaces was the light of a torch. In this way, perhaps, one can grasp something of the most intimate — let us say ‘physiological’ — meaning and function that those ‘vain observances’ might have had for the folk, in an environment in which even simple survival was an issue. Everything points to the basic need to cope with a universe (both natural and human) perceived as rich in dangers as well as pervaded by forces that one would certainly try to summon to one’s own bidding.114 Maleficium Maleficium is a rather generic term, but in a restricted sense it may point to harmful sorcery, an evil deed performed through occult malevolent magic with the intention of bringing harm to others. Thus, relying on Deuteronomy and Decretum Gratiani, Busti’s list gives as the tenth transgressor of the First Com­ 113  Lucien Febvre, Combats pour l’Histoire (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1953), p. 218. Pre-modern life as a life of sharper contrasts from ours recalls what Huizinga had described as ‘The passionate intensity of life’. Johan Huizinga, The Autumn of the Middle Ages, trans. by Rodney J. Payton and Ulrich Mammitzsch (Chicago: Uni­ver­sity of Chicago Press, 1996), pp. 1–29 (pp. 1–2). 114  The recent ‘revolution’ in cognitive studies has yielded new insights in the study of magic and religious beliefs in general. Religiosity and magic have in fact resented approaches attempting to show the role of cognitive resources in guiding and retaining them. The cognitive approach tends to evaluate religious and magic beliefs as related to inherent categories of the human psyche, linking them to the innate ways of working of the human mind, and highlighting their role within the areas of concrete concerns. See Edward Bever, ‘Current Trends in the Appli­cation of Cognitive Science to Magic’, Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft, 7 (2012), 3–18; and Justin L. Barrett and Jonathan A. Lanman, ‘The Science of Religious Beliefs’, Religion, 38 (2008), 109–24.

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mandment one who has made or consented to any bewitchment ‘propter quamcumque causam’ (‘for whatever reason’). ‘Whatever reason’ points to one of the basic features of maleficium: its being employed as a means to concretely affect various aspects of one’s life.115 Busti does not explain the meaning of maleficium, nor does he inquire further into the characteristics of its diabolic nature. Probably the meanings associated with maleficium were far too familiar to him to need explanation in a concise text. Nevertheless, just like Caimi, Busti refers again to maleficium when he speaks of invocation of demons, thus highlighting the role of demonic power in that respect.116 In that case, as I shall show, Busti mentions harmful magic in particular relation to marriage and procreation. Carcano, on the other hand, is more sound in explaining the demonic nature of bewitchment, and like Antonino da Firenze, he exemplifies it as harming one’s health, ‘ut quando aliquis consumatur paulatim’ (‘as when somebody gradually wastes away’), or marital relations, as ‘quando non possit uxorem cognoscere’ (‘when someone cannot have intercourse with his wife’).117 115 

Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 128va: ‘Decimo: contra hoc preceptum peccat qui facit vel fieri consentit aliquod maleficium propter quamcumque causam, Deute(ronomium) 18 et 26a q. 5a c. Nec mirum.’ Cf. Deuteronomy 18. 10–12; Decretum Gratiani, II, C. 26 q. 5 c. 14. Bailey, Battling Demons, p. 29 notes that ‘Typical acts of maleficium included committing crimes such as theft or murder by magical means, causing pestilence or disease, withering crops or afflicting livestock, and conjuring lightning and hail.’ On maleficium, see Oscar Di Simplicio, ‘Maleficio’, Dizionario Storico dell’Inquisizione, ed. by Adriano Prosperi and others, vol. ii (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2010), p. 965; Christa Tuczay, ‘Sorcery’, in Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition, ed. by Richard M. Golden, 4 vols (Santa Barbara: ABC Clio, 2006), vol. iv, p. 1061. See also Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century England (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971), pp. 436–37; Flint, The Rise of Magic, pp. 147–56; Michael Bailey, ‘The Disenchantment of Magic: Spells, Charms, and Superstition in Early European Witchcraft Literature’, The American Historical Review, 2 (2006), pp. 383–404 (p. 386); and Matteo Duni, Under the Devil’s Spell: Witches, Sorcerers, and the Inquisition in Renaissance Italy (Florence: Syracuse Uni­ver­sity in Florence, 2007), p. 62 ff. 116 

Caimi, Interrogatorium sive confessionale, xxxiir: ‘Si fecit, vel fieri fecit, seu procuravit fieri aliquod maleficium seu malias, que semper fiunt cum invocatione demonum occulta vel manifesta mortale est semper et prohibitum Deutero(nomium) 18, 26 q. 5 Non licet, et cetera.’ 117  Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 23, fol. 62rb: ‘Sciendum quod quedam alie incantationes fiunt operatione demonum ad nocumentum hominum, ut quando aliquis con­ sumatur paulatim, vel quando non possit uxorem cognoscere, et huiusmodi, et he incantationes dicuntur maleficia.’ Cf. Antonino da Firenze, Summa theologica, (Verona: Agostino Carattoni, 1740), II, Titulus XII, c. i, col. 1144: ‘Quaedam aliae incantationes fiunt ad nocumentum hominum, ut quod aliquis paulatim consumatur, vel quod non possit cognoscere uxorem et huiusmodi. Et hae incantationes dicuntur maleficia.’

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Following Duns Scotus, and reiterating a point already made by Caimi and Antonio da Vercelli, Busti points out that ‘qui potest tollere maleficium meretur destruendo opera diaboli’ (‘whoever can remove an evil spell gains merit by destroying the work of the devil’), thus voicing a typically Franciscan point of view.118 The exhortation does not seem to go against the well-established principle according to which it was forbidden ‘to repel sorcery by sorcery’, as was stated in the condemnation of sorcery issued by the theological faculty of Paris in 1398. The only Franciscan to specify how to counteract a spell, Angelo da Chivasso, is also the only one to refer to Peter Aureoli, who discussed the possibility of employing a spell, made spontaneously by someone, in order to counteract another spell (but he forbids inducing a person to do so). Angelo ends this part by pointing out that evil spells can also be destroyed ‘per sacramenta, adiurationes, divinas orationes’ (by means of sacraments, prayers, and divine invocations).119 Generally, not only was making use of demonic sorcery subject to condemnation, but also claiming to know how to counteract its effect might put one under suspicion, since claiming to be able to remove a spell could imply the ability to perform the same. Bernardino da Siena reminded his audience of this idea while preaching in Siena, and the famous case of the late sixteenthcentury witch Gostanza da Libbiano, tried at San Miniato in 1594, bears out the same point.120

118 

Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 128vb; Caimi, Interrogatorium sive con­ fessionale, xxxiiiir: ‘Si potest tollere maleficium tollat, quia meritorium est opera diaboli destruere intentione curandi maleficiatum’; and Antonio da Vercelli, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 45, fol. 330vb. Cf. Scotus, Quaestiones in librum IV Sententiarum, in Opera omnia, vol. xix, p. 403: ‘Non enim solum licet, sed est meritorium destruere opera diaboli’. 119  On the Paris condemnation, see Kors and Peters, Witchcraft in Europe, p. 131. Angelo da Chivasso, Summa angelica, fol. 314rb: ‘Utrum sciens maleficium possit sine peccato illud soluere’, in ‘Superstitio’, § 13. Cf. Peter Aureoli, Commentarium in primum [-quartum] librum Sententiarum, 2 vols (Rome: Zannetti, 1596–1605), on Sentences 4, dist. 34, Quaestio Unica, art. 2, vol. ii, pp. 181–82. 120  Bernardino da Siena, Prediche volgari sul Campo di Siena 1427, Sermon 35, ed. by Delcorno, vol. ii, p. 1006: ‘Sappi che colei o colui che dice che le sa disfare, tiene che elli le sa anco fare.’ For Gostanza, see Gostanza la strega di San Miniato, ed. by Franco Cardini (Rome: Laterza, 1989), p. 129 ff; her story has been made into a film; see Ilaria Bucciarelli, ‘Sul set di Gostanza da Libbiano’, in Incanti e sortilegi: Le streghe nella storia e nel cinema, ed. by Laura Caretti and Dinora Corsi (Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 2002), pp. 209–23. See also Katharine Park, ‘Medicine and Magic: The Healing Arts’, in Gender and Society in Renaissance Italy, ed. by Judith C. Brown and Robert C. Davis (London: Longman, 1998), pp. 129–49.

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Enchanters After having dealt with the powers of bewitchment, Busti engages with those of the incantatores. Enchanters perform magic to find stolen objects, to gain knowledge, or to recover from an illness, thus displaying their sinful behaviour: Cum quis facit incantationem, vel fieri procurat, vel ad inveniendum furta aut amissa, vel ad aliquid sciendum, vel ad recuperandam sanitatem et semper est mortale peccatum et gravius, si fiat cum rebus sacris vel sacramentalibus, ut cum aqua benedicta vel oleo sancto et huiusmodi.121 Whether one makes enchantment or provides that it is done in order to retrieve something stolen or lost, to find out about something or to regain health, it is always a mortal sin, and more serious when it is performed with sacred or sacramental elements, such as holy water, oil and the like.

The most widespread case in which such magical techniques could be used was with regard to healing, without obviously being accepted as official practice: Quotienscumque ergo aliquis querit sanitatem vel aliud per incantationem quomodocumque fiat semper peccat mortaliter, si est sciens hoc esse prohibitum, sive incantatio fiat verbis et impetrationibus, sive fiat signaturis ac ligaturis seu aliis remediis, que medicorum disciplina condemnat.122 Whenever somebody seeks health or something else through incantation, however it is done, that is always a mortal sin, if the person is aware that it is forbidden, whether the spell is done through words, prayers, signs or ligatures or other remedies which the science of medicine rejects.

According to Busti the enchanters are all ‘inimici Christi’, but while some of them believe in the efficacy of their words or prayers out of mere ignorance, thus committing only a venial sin, others are consciously prone to such ignorance in a way which is comparable to malice. Antonio da Vercelli too describes those who work charms as a means to preserve their health or that of their cattle, and urges priests to admonish the faithful to consider those remedies as inefficacious traps of the devil.123 In this context, as mentioned above, Antonio inserts the casting of spells, showing the closeness between these two domains 121 

Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 128vb. Same in Caimi, Interrogatorium sive confessionale, xxxiir. 122  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon  16, fol.  128 vb. Cf. Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana, II. xx. On magical healing, see Cameron, Enchanted Europe, p. 51 ff. 123  Antonio da Vercelli, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 45, fol. 330vab.

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of magic. Getting more specific, Busti warns that evil people and soothsayers who foretell a future that ‘becomes true’ should not be absolved, unless they burn their books of necromancy and revelations.124 As we have noted, the use of books points to some kind of learned magic. There are actually examples of traditions concerning the use of books of magic in specific geographical areas deemed to be particularly suitable for the purpose. Thus, in that part of the Appennine region already diligently visited by Giacomo della Marca, the Sibylline Mountains around Norcia, the inhabitants decided to build a wall on the path and placed guards nearby to prevent so many enchanters and necromancers climbing up to the infamous Lake of Pilate. At this lake, according to Francesco Panfilo di Sanseverino (a sixteenth-century author from the Marche who echoes the remarks of Bernardino Bonavoglia, an Observant Franciscan preacher from Foligno), necromancers would consecrate their books to the devil in accordance with a precise ritual, using circles of stones placed on the ground.125 A topographical drawing from the sixteenth century found in the Vatican Library seems to confirm this tradition. The sketch shows the place between the two circular basins constituting the lake where in the dry season a thin strip of land is exposed in the middle, producing the shape of a pair of eyeglasses: there circles of stones made by the magicians 124 

Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 128vb: ‘Si vero ex simplicitate ignoranter faciat, credens bonas esse orationes vel verba, veniale videtur, nisi sit ignorantia crassa et supina, que equiperatur dolo […]; quandoque malefici et divini predicunt futura et eveniunt non debent absolvi nisi comburant libros nigromantie et artis notorie.’ 125  On Bernardino Bonavoglia, see Supplementum, ed. by Sbaraglia, vol.  i, p.  132. Bernardino’s description is reported by Arturo Graf, who indicates it as found by the scholar Michele Faloci Pulignani (d. 1940) in the Biblioteca Comunale in Foligno. The manuscript is not there or not there anymore. See Arturo Graf, Miti, legende e superstizioni del medio evo (Rome: Loescher, 1892–93; repr. Milan: Mondadori, 1984), vol. ii, p. 163. Another sixteenthcentury author from the Marche, Nicolò Peranzoni, describes the magic setting of the lake — although not the ritual — in his De laudibus Piceni. See the reprint of Panfilo’s and Peranzoni’s texts in Giuseppe Colucci, Delle antichità picene, 31 vols (Fermo: Paccaroni, 1786–97), vol. xvi, p. 93 and vol. xxv, p. 120; see also Rino Avesani, ‘Aspetti della cultura marchigiana nei primi decenni del Cinquecento’, in Le origini della Riforma cappuccina: Atti del Convegno di Studi storici, Camerino 18–21 settembre 1978 (Ancona: Curia provinciale frati cappuccini, 1979), pp. 19–64 (pp. 35–36). A larger assembly of authors fostered the magic tradition of the Lake of Pilate. A list, only partial, includes the Benedectine Pierre Bersuire (d. 1362) in his Reductorium morale; Fazio degli Uberti (d. after 1368) in the Dittamondo; Biondo Flavio (d. 1463) in the Italia illustrata; the Dominican Leandro Alberti (d. 1552) in the Descrittione di tutta Italia, which derives its material from a Dominican colleague, Pietro Razzano of Palermo (d. 1492). Cf. Allevi, ‘Costume, folklore, magia’, pp. 258–60; and Giuseppe Bonomo, Caccia alle streghe (Palermo: Palumbo, 1986), pp. 77–81.

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are in use for their rites of invocation and for the consecration of their necromantic books.126 When Busti speaks of books to be burned, he does not expressly mention any involvement of clerics. Nevertheless, there was a clerical background to the use of magical practices and knowledge. Antonio da Vercelli, for instance, refers to two different punishments according to whether the one who works magic was a cleric or a layperson: in the former case — the preacher says — he has to be degraded, in the latter anathematized.127 Earlier, in the times of Giacomo della Marca, the vicar of the bishop of Spoleto found in Norcia in 1465 a parish priest who performed magical practices, and Antonino da Firenze once discovered a barber-surgeon owning a book of magic that had been given to him by a monk.128 Magic was clearly a domain in which the boundaries between the learned and the not-learned were porous. In the preachers’ view all those who work this type of magic are ‘filii diaboli’.129 Preachers became even more serious when superstition began to involve elements of Christian ritual. The interest and concern for the individuals performing magic derives mostly from this aspect, as I shall show more thoroughly in the next chapter. This is a concern that is already established within the Franciscan Observant tradition, and that sometimes overlaps with what we should consider more properly the practice of maleficia. The Eucharist especially is at the core of a number of tales involving its sacrilegious use for magic purposes, often with the outcome of provoking a miracle in response. Thus, in the already mentioned fresco in the Cathedral of Orvieto, according to the inscription beneath 126  See Augusto Campana, ‘Itinerari sibillini, I. Una carta topografica del secolo xvi’, in Ambiente e società pastorale nella montagna maceratese: Atti del xx Convegno di Studi Maceratesi, Ussita, 29–30 settembre 1984 (Macerata: Centro di Studi Storici Maceratese, 1987), pp. 111–30 (pp. 120–24). 127  Antonio da Vercelli, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 45, fol. 330va: ‘Trigesimiquinti qui adversantur divino cultui seu christiane fidei sunt omnes illi qui pro sanitate recuperanda sui atque suorum nec non et animalium irrationabilium diversa faciunt fieri incantamenta. […] Si quis hoc exercuerit clericus, degradetur; laicus autem anathematizetur.’ 128  On the first case: Pietro De Angelis, ‘Un frammento di sacra visita della diocesi spoletina del 1465’, Archivio per la storia ecclesiastica dell’Umbria, 3 (1916), pp. 446–539 (p. 469); on the second: Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, pp. 62 and 153 ff. From the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries the monks of St Augustine’s in Canterbury owned a large collection of magic texts, which they studied side by side with licit books. See Sophie Page, Magic in the Cloister: Pious Motives, Illicit Interests, and Occult Approaches to the Medieval Universe (Uni­ver­ sity Park, PA: Pennsylvania State Uni­ver­sity Press, 2013). 129  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 129ra.

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the image (which lacks some letters), a mulier confesses to a friar her attempt at producing a malia by cooking a host in a hot pan, then trying to hide it in a stable when — as we know by the rest of the pictorial cycle — it became a piece of bleeding flesh (Figure 3 on p. 94).130 The tale seems to echo the very similar miracle occurring in 1273 at Lanciano to another woman who had tried to fry a host to make a love-spell. All these refer to the narratives centred on bleeding hosts and host desecration whose common aim was to prove the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.131 In his Sermon De sortilegiis, Giacomo della Marca speaks extensively of those vetulae whose behaviour and magic skills definitely concerned him when they appeared to be intertwined with sacramental elements or other items of ecclesiastical apparatus. In one case it is the sacramental element, in another the altar of a church, that gives magic practices their strength: In Nursia mulier ferens secum Corpus Christi cum ossibus capitis et carbone, ut diligeretur a viro, quod feci honorifice portari ad ecclesiam. Item, repperi in Visso et in Cassia ponentes ad novem missas super altare stercus galline et canis et rospum.132 At Norcia a woman was carrying with her the consecrated host along with some bones of a skull and coals so that she could be loved by a man; this [viz., the host] I had her bring to church with all the due honour; in the same way, I found in Visso and in Cascia [some women] who were putting faeces of hens and dogs and a toad over the altars during nine masses.

In other cases, religious apparel is worn by vetulae whose abilities and evil deeds suggest those of witches: Quedam vetula mitrata confessa est quod portabatur a vento et interfecit quemdam dominum et puerum et multa alia mala.133 A certain old woman wearing a mitre, confessed that she was taken by the wind and killed a certain gentleman and a child, and [she confessed] numerous other evil actions as well. 130 

Cf. note 19 in Ch. 3. Cf. Godefridus J. C. Snoeck, Medieval Piety from Relics to the Eucharist: A Process of Mutual Interaction (Leiden: Brill, 1995), pp. 315–20. 132  Giacomo della Marca, Sermones dominicales, Sermon 27: De sortilegiis, ed. by Lioi, vol. i, p. 434. 133  Giacomo della Marca, Sermones dominicales, Sermon 27: De sortilegiis, ed. by Lioi, vol. i, p. 423. 131 

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Quedam vetula induta vestibus sacerdotalibus equester super lignum portatum a duabus vetulis in nocte hinc inde per aliquos vicos ad domos aliquorum ut non possent concipere neque cognoscere uxores.134 A certain old woman wearing a priestly robe rode horseback on a piece of wood carried by two old women during the night through certain villages to some people’s houses so that they could neither conceive nor have intercourse with their wives.

Identifying professional workers of magic whose magical practice could overtly overlap with the distorted use of Christian practices, and thus with heresy and witchcraft, came to constitute a specific dimension of the work of the preachers.135 Milanese friars develop this line further, as I show in the next chapters. Textual Amulets The twelfth heading in Busti’s list concerns those who deal with textual or written amulets. The reference is to those amulets known as brevi. They were generally composed of a piece of parchment or paper with formulas to ward off evil written on one of their sides, and they were usually folded or rolled to be more comfortable to hide or to wear, being closed in a way to prevent their being opened.136 The consideration of the brevi issue shows the extent to which material is shared between the three Milanese preachers, and thus how they composed 134  Giacomo della Marca, Sermones dominicales, Sermon 27: De sortilegiis, ed. by Lioi, vol. i, p. 424. 135  Cf. Cardini, ‘Giacomo della Marca e le streghe’, p. 112; Montesano, ‘L’Osservanza francescana’, p. 148. 136  See Henri Leclerq, ‘Amulettes’, in Dictionnaire d’archéologie Chrétienne et de liturgie, vol. i. 2 (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1924), cols 1784–1860; and Leclerq, ‘Talisman’, in Diction­ naire d’archéologie Chrétienne et de liturgie, vol.  xv.  2 (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1953), cols 1969–72. On talismans, see Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, pp. 77–78; on textual amulets, see Don Skemer, Binding Words: Textual Amulets in the Middle Ages (Uni­ver­sity Park: Pennsylvania State Uni­ver­sity Press, 2006); on the brevi, see Franco Cardini, ‘Il “breve” (secoli xiv–xv): tipologia e funzione’, in Franco Cardini, Le mura di Firenze inargentate: letture fiorentine (Palermo: Sellerio, 1993), pp. 177–99; and Dinora Corsi, ‘La medicina popolare’, in La cultura folklorica, ed. by Franco Cardini (Busto Arsizio: Bramante, 1988), p. 285. On the polyvalent use of writing as means to communicate with the divine or to reach evil, see Gábor Klaniczay and Ildikó Kristóf, ‘Écritures saintes et pactes diaboliques: Les usages religieux de l’écrit (Moyen Âge et temps Modernes)’, Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 56 (2001), 947–80. See also Edina Bozoky, Charmes et prières apotropaïques (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003).

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their texts. The doctrinal part establishing the theoretical premises for the classification of this type of superstition is uniform in all three of the friars, while in Busti and Carcano there is a section containing exempla including one tale each that is not shared by the other. In the first part, Caimi, Carcano, and Busti share the condemnation of wearing brevi, as well as of making or acquiring them ‘quando sunt superstitiosa, sicut communiter accidit’ (‘when they are superstitious, as commonly happens’); Busti and Caimi make that point on the basis of the same canon Non observetis of the Decretum Gratiani, while Carcano quotes an anathema issued by Pope Gregory the Great, later included in the Decretum.137 As said, the section dealing with exempla is missing from Caimi’s text; this shows the use of that part for purposes connected to the practice of preaching, also pointing to the link between the composition and delivery of the sermon.138 The major concern of the preachers with regard to amulets is with the possibility, suggested by Thomas Aquinas, that something pertaining to the invocation of demons could be hidden in them as well as illicit material under obscure symbols, or that, beside the cross, vain signs could be mixed with licit religious words. It is still, therefore, essentially the danger of idolatry which constitutes the basis for such concern. At the same time, the friars condemn the attention given to the ways in which such items are wrapped and tied onto the wear137 

Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 129rab: ‘Duodecimo: offenditur contra hoc preceptum, quando quis portat brevia aut facit ea vel fieri procurat quando sunt superstitiosa, sicut communiter accidit; […] qui autem talibus credunt, scribunt, portant seu docent graviter peccant, 26 q. 7 c. Non observetis.’ Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 23, fol. 60ra writes: ‘Quantum ad secundum de observantia suspensionum scilicet chartarum et huiusmodi […] peccant facientes, portantes, utentes, consulentes, credentes ac vendentes unde propter hoc dicit Gregorius 26 q. 5: “Si quis ariolos aut incantatores observaverit aut philateriis usus fuerit, anathema sit”’. Caimi, Interrogatorium sive confessionale, xxxiiir has: ‘Si usus est brevibus sibi faciendo vel portando vel quod fierent procurando, quia communiter sunt superstitiosa et illicita; […] qui autem talibus credunt, scribunt, portant seu docent graviter peccant, 26 q. 7 Non observetis’. See Appendix ad Epistolas S. Gregorii, VI Alia S. Gregorii papae I decreta, in Sancti Gregorii Papae I […] Opera omnia, vol. ii (Venice: Geremia, 1744), col. 1293; Decretum Gratiani, II, C. 26, q. 7, c. 16. Bernardino da Siena had been even more detailed, by saying with regard to the brevi: ‘Peccant qui scribunt, qui portant, qui donant, qui vendunt, qui emunt, qui portanda docent, qui bona esse credunt’. Bernardino da Siena, Selecta ex autographo Budapestinensi, Sermon 12, in S. Bernardini Senensis Opera omnia, ed. by Jean De La Haye, 5 vols (Paris: 1645), vol. i. 9, p. 386. Thus also Herolt, Sermones discipuli, Sermon 41, fol. hiiiva: ‘Qui scribunt litteras contra dolorem dentium vel oculorum vel aliarum infirmitatum, omnes tales graviter peccant, et similiter qui portant et qui docent’. 138  On this cf. Pellegrini, I manoscritti dei predicatori, p. 205.

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ers. So, through the investigative lens of the preachers we see the traditional requirements for wrapping or wearing the brevi, such as making at dawn, in a church, during Mass, while fasting, or in secret; having them fastened by a virgin; wrapping them up in specific parchment, such as ‘charta non nata’ (‘unborn skin’ or uterine vellum), as Busti and Caimi call it, or ‘charta virginea’ (‘virgin skin’), as Carcano defines it, with the presence of a stereotypical formula such as ‘Quicumque portaverit super se istud breve, non peribit in aqua vel igne’ (‘Whoever wears on him/herself this breve shall not perish in water, nor in fire’).139 These are the elements making a breve superstitious and sinful, 139 

Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 129ra: ‘Et ideo est peccatum, secundum Thomam 2a 2ae q. 96, articulo 4 si in eis est aliquid pertinens ad invocationem demonum, vel si aliquid illicitum sub ignotis nominibus lateat in ipsis, vel etiam si sint verba divina et bona sed cum eis misceantur aliqua vana, puta aliqui caracteres preter signum crucis aut spes habeatur in modo scribendi, puta in charta non nata, vel in uno tempore vel loco magis quam in alio aut per unam personam magis quam aliam, puta quod scribantur a ieiuno vel tempore misse vel in ecclesia vel per virginem vel in fine dicatur: “Quicumque portaverit super se istud breve, non peribit in aqua vel igne”. Hec enim omnia superstitiosa sunt, ut notat Archidiaconus, 26 q. 5a c. Non liceat.’ Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 23, fol. 60ra writes: ‘Quantum ad secundum de observantia suspensionum scilicet chartarum et huiusmodi secundum Thomam sciendum est 2. 2. q. 96 articulo 4 quod cavendum est ne quid horum in eis reperiatur scilicet: Primo, ut non sit in eis aliquid pertinens ad invocationem demonum, quia sic esset superstitiosum. Secundo, ne si habeat nomina ignota, sub illis lateat aliquid illicitum. Tertio, ne quid falsitatis contineat, quia sic eius effectus non posset expectari a Deo, quia non est testis falsitatis sed a diabolo. Quarto, notandum est ne cum verbis sacris contineat aliqua vana puta caracteres scriptos et huiusmodi signa preter signum crucis. Quinto, ut spes non ponatur in modo scribendi aut ligandi, puta quod scribatur in charta virgine [sic], vel in ortu solis, vel ieiuno stomacho, vel dum legitur evangelium, vel ligatis [ligaris in the original] cum tot filis, vel appendi per hominem virginem, vel quod nullus debet videri, et huiusmodi vanitatibus que ad Dei reverentiam non pertinent, quia illicita essent et superstitiosa; […] non licet portare nisi simbolum et orationem dominicam et hoc sine aliqua superstitione modis predictis unde W(illelmus) dicit quod illa brevia que continent huiusmodi si quis portaverit in igne vel aqua vel non morietur morte subitanea vel consequetur tale bonum etc. Talia non sunt portanda sed reprobanda sunt.’ Caimi, Interrogatorium sive confessionale, xxxiiir has: ‘Nam si ibi est aliquid pertinens ad invocationem demonum vel si aliquid falsitatis contineant vel aliquid illicitum sub ignotis nominibus seu hebraicis lateat: manifeste ibi est superstitio prohibita. Si vero sunt verba divina et bona, cavendum est ne ibi immisceantur cum verbis sacris aliqua vana: puta aliqui caracteres preter signum crucis aut quod spes habeatur in modo ligandi aut scribendi puta in carta non nata vel in uno tempore magis quam in alio vel in uno loco magis quam alio vel per unam personam magis quam per aliam, puta quod scribantur a ieiuno, vel tempore misse, vel in ecclesia, vel per virginem, vel in fine dicatur: quicumque portaverit super se istud breve, non periclitabitur in igne vel in aqua et cetera. Hec enim omnia superstitiosa sunt et illicita secundum W(illelmum) et Thomam, ubi supra, ut etiam notat Archi(diaconus), 26

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and are also described by Bernardino da Siena — who mentions the ‘unborn parchment’ — as well as earlier by Nikolaus von Dinkelsbühl among others.140 A more closely related description of the brevi is however found in Antonino da Firenze. That may easily account for the original provenance of the material employed by the Milanese Franciscans, especially if one considers how much Caimi looked to Antonino as a model.141 The reference to the virgin or the ‘unborn’ parchment, which taken in itself would be rather baffling, recalls a specific element of magic recipes. One of the most famous renaissance grimoires or handbooks of magic, the Clavicula Salomonis, explains the importance of using only either virgin or unborn parchment for magic purposes. Virgin is ‘that which is taken from an animal which hath not attained the age of generation, whether it be ram, or kid, or other animal’; unborn ‘is taken from an animal which hath been taken before its time from the uterus of its mother’.142 These features clearly point to the need to have the most pure parchment possible for the sake of its efficacy.

q. 5 Non licet.’ Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, IIa, IIae, Q. 96, a. 4: Utrum suspendere divina verba ad collum sit illicitum. Bernardino da Siena, Selecta ex autographo Budapestinensi, Sermon 12, in S. Bernardini Senensis Opera omnia, ed. by De La Haye, vol. i. 9, p. 386 gives a precise listing of the superstitious characteristics of the brevi. 140  Bernardino da Siena, Seraphim 1423, Sermon  8, in S.  Bernardini Senensis Opera omnia, ed. by Jean De La Haye, 5 vols (Venice, Poletti, 1745), vol.  i, col. 234: ‘Item nota quando scribunt in pelle, seu charta non nata.’ Cf. Montesano, ‘Supra acqua et supra ad vento’, pp. 81–82. For Nikolaus, see Baumann, Aberglaube für Laien, vol. i, p. 548. 141  Antonino da Firenze, Summa theologica, II, col. 1144: ‘De observantia circa brevia et adjurationes dicit Thomas Secunda Secunde q. 26 esse cavendum, quod non reperiatur in eis aliquid horum. Primo, ut non sit ibi aliquid pertinens ad invocationem demonum; quia sic esset superstitiosum. Secundo, ut non contineat nomina ignota, ne sub illis aliquid lateat illicitum. Tertio, ne aliquid falsitatis contineat […]. Quarto cavendum, ne cum verbis sacris contineantur aliqua vana, puta caracteres scripti et huiusmodi signa preter signum crucis. Quinto ut spes non ponatur in modo scribendi aut ligandi, puta quod scribatur in carta virgine [sic], vel in ortu solis, vel dum legitur evangelium, vel quod oportet ligari cum tot filis, vel appendi per virginem hominem, vel quod nullus debet videre, et huiusmodi vanitatibus que ad Dei reverentiam non pertinent, quia illicita essent et superstitiosa.’ 142  The Key of Solomon the King (Clavicula Salomonis), ed. and trans. by S. Liddell MacGregor Mathers (London: Kegan Paul, 1909; orig. publ. 1899), II. 17. On the Clavicles, see Elizabeth M. Butler, Ritual Magic (Uni­ver­sity Park, PA: Pennsylvania State Uni­ver­sity Press, 1949; repr. 1998), pp. 47–80. On the virgin and unborn skin, see Skemer, Binding Words, pp. 127–33 (p. 131); Cameron, Enchanted Europe, p. 56; and Montesano, ‘Supra acqua et supra ad vento’, p. 81 note 163.

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Giacomo della Marca also speaks of ‘charta non nata’ to describe the parchment for confecting a breve. He relates that in Norcia he happened to meet two old ladies wearing two brevi made of the skin of an unborn calf. The closed amulets the two women had bought for thirty ducats to have good luck with their husbands, once opened turned out to be completely empty.143 This stereotypical description actually points to two basic elements, the fact that the brevi had to be kept sealed, and that in the preachers’ view this could generate deceptions, thus unveiling the fundamental evil nature of amulets, which preachers obviously tend to highlight in order to discourage their use. The description of the bearers as vetulae, also, matches with a common stereotype concerning women, who were considered particularly prone to use or make written scrolls, seeking for or providing protection in the sensitive moments of their life such as, especially, pregnancy or giving birth.144 It is not surprising that Busti and Caimi follow Giacomo’s and Bernardino’s suggestions concerning the material contingency of the brevi. Carcano’s description of the parchment as virgin could also refer to a looser sense, suggesting the interchangeability of ‘unborn’ and ‘virgin’ parchment. Furthermore, the formula of protection reported by the preachers seems to be a constitutive feature of the breve that Caimi and Carcano — but not Busti — as well as Antonino da Firenze, and Martin de Arles y Andosilla (d. 1521), expressly refer to the thirteenth-century Dominican preacher Guillaume Perault (d. 1271).145 143 

Giacomo della Marca, Sermones dominicales, Sermon 27, ed. by Lioi, vol. i, p. 420: ‘Inveni in Nursia duas vetulas portantes a iuventute sua duo brevia de carta vitillina non nata, clausa. Pro quolibet habuit deceptor triginta ducatos, ut haberent fortunium suorum maritorum. Et dum aperui nihil scriptum erat.’ The interpretation of ‘non nata, clausa’ as referring to the skin of a calf ‘nata all’aperto’ (‘born outside’) seems odd: Allevi, ‘Costume, folklore, magia’, p. 269. 144  On women and the use of amulets, see Don Skemer, ‘Amulet Rolls and Female Devotion in the Late Middle Ages’, Scriptorium, 55 (2001), pp. 197–227 (pp. 199–201). 145  See note 139 above. Caimi and Carcano employ an abbreviation ‘V.V.’ to refer to Guillaume Perault as the one who reported the formula. This can be deduced from the reference of the other authors. Antonino quotes the same passage with the same abbreviation in the edition of the Summa theologica printed in 1474, while in the edition printed in Verona in 1740, II, col. 1144 the abbreviation is replaced in this way: ‘Dicit etiam Guillelmus, quod illa brevia, quae continent huiusmodi, si quis portaverit haec, non peribit in igne vel aqua, non morietur morte subitanea, vel consequetur tale bonum; talia sunt reprobanda, non portanda.’ Martin de Arles y Andosilla, Tractatus de superstitionibus contra maleficia seu sortilegia (Rome: Vincenzo Luchino, 1559), fol. 35r quotes the same passage even more precisely: ‘Similiter dicit Guillermus Lugdunensis quod illa brevia que continent huiusmodi verba: “Si quis portaverit hoc, non peribit in igne vel aqua, non morietur morte subitanea vel peste, vel consequetur

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The only types of brevi whose use the preachers tolerate are those containing words taken from the Gospel or the Sunday sermons. They nevertheless should be worn — the preachers admonish — ‘sine aliqua superstitione’ (‘without any superstition’), in other words, we might imagine, without attributing to them particular magic protective powers and without observing the special conditions indicated, ‘quia multe fiunt deceptiones sub pretextu devotionis’ (‘because many are the deceptions under the excuse of devotion’). Examples of licit apotropaic texts have been described, although they cannot be considered brevi, since they were not to be kept closed but on the contrary were even meant to be read, as in the case of three Lombard rolls from the fifteenth century analysed by Paolo Galimberti, or they had to be kept within the house for the protection of the entire household, as in the thirteenth century chartula studied by Mirella Ferrari.146 This latter is an amulet found in Proserpio, a small village near the lake of Como, during restoration works in a local house. In the text, several names of those to be blessed are mentioned, along with invocations to God, saints, and angels interspersed only with the signs of the cross as official doctrine would recommend. In general, however, according to the preachers, in talismans the boundary between the licit and the illicit — or between trust and deception — can be particularly elusive. By means of several exempla Busti and Carcano admonish the faithful to deal carefully even with possibly licit amulets. The point is that while one has to receive and keep the breve closed so as not to loose its magical efficacy, there is always a certain degree of uncertainty about its real content. The aim of the exempla was clearly to diminish the trust of the users in amulets. What is more, the preachers show a preference for relating items of narrative in their supposedly original vernacular, thus providing some realistic hint of their experience in the field.

tale bonum.”’ On Martin of Arles, see Bailey, Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies, pp. 159–60; on Guillaume Perault, see P. M. Starrs, ‘William Peraldus (Perault)’, in New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. xiv (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967), p. 935. 146  Paolo Galimberti, ‘“Dio te destruga e finalmente te strepa e te disperda”: Talismani magico terapeutici medievali milanesi’, Aevum, 77. 2 (2003), 403–20; Mirella Ferrari, ‘Buona fortuna e scongiuri: una chartula lombarda del Trecento’, in Margarita amicorum: Studi di cultura europea per Agostino Sottili, ed. by Fabio Forner, Carla Maria Monti, and Paul Gerhard Schmidt, 2 vols (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2005) vol. i, pp. 291–302. Similar features are in the more elaborated early fifteenth century French roll transcribed in Skemer, ‘Amulet Rolls and Female Devotion’, pp. 224–27; more examples in Don Skemer, ‘Written Amulets and the Medieval Book’, Scrittura e civiltà, 23 (1999), 253–305.

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Thus, Busti tells how a sorcerer gave to a certain Sambuco a breve deemed to be useful ‘contra omnes febres’ (‘against any fever’). In the amulet, however, a stanza of this kind was written: Dio ve salvi miser Sambuco | pane e sale io ve lo adduco | febre terzana e febre quartana e febre d’ogni dì | tollìtela voi che non la volio mì.147 May God save you, messer Sambuco. Bread and salt I guarantee to you. As for tertian fever, quartan fever, and fever for any day, remove them by yourself, because I do not want it.

A woman had also a bad surprise with her scroll: Item quedam domina Ioanna, laborans febre quartana, portabat super se quoddam breve in quo putabat esse bona verba cum legere nesciret. Quidam autem frater noster confessor eius aperiens hoc breve invenit scriptum sic: ‘Madona Gioanna de la febre quartana | Dio ve mandi lo malo anno e la mala septimana.’148 Again, a lady named Ioanna, suffering from quartan fever, wore a breve in which some words that she deemed to be useful were written, which she could not read. A friar confessor of our order, opening the package, found this message: ‘Lady Gioanna, may God send to you a bad year and a bad week of the quartan fever.’

In a similar fashion, Busti and Carcano tell: Et frater Vincentius, socius sancti Bernardini invenit quoddam breve huius tenoris: ‘Dogliate il capo che doler te sole | doglia a te e a chi ben te vole | dogliate li ochi e dogliate li denti | dogliate il corpo insieme con il ventre. Vanne al mare e fate incantare | che cento demoni ti possano portare’. Ecce, ergo, quanta est deceptio in his brevibus.149 147 

Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 129ra. Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 129ra. Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 23, fol. 60va writes: ‘Quedam domina nomine Ioanna laborans febre quartana, accepit a quodam breve huius tenoris: “Madona Zoana da la febre quartana | Dio ve mandi lo malanno et la mala septimana.” Nam quidam frater noster cum eius esset confessor aperiens hoc breve hanc deceptionem reperit.’ 149  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 129rab. Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 23, fol. 60va has: ‘Similiter et frater Vincentius socius sancti Bernardini invenit quod­ dam breve huius tenoris: “Doliate il capo che doler te sole | dolia a te et a chi ben te vole | do­g liate li ochii et doliate li denti | doliate il corpo insieme con lo ventre. Vane al mare et fati incan­tare | che cento diavoli te possiano portare.” Ecce ergo quanta est deceptio.’ The exemplum is about Vincenzo da Siena (d. 1442), who was ‘Sancti Bernardini intimus amicus, fidelis socius, omnium conscius secretorum’ (Wadding, Annales minorum, vol. xi, no. 165, p. 189). 148 

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And friar Vincentius, companion of Bernardino da Siena, found a scroll to this effect: ‘May your head hurt, your head that usually hurts. May it hurt you and those who love you. May your eyes hurt as well as your teeth. May your body hurt, along with your stomach. Go to the sea and cast a spell, so that a hundred demons can carry you off.’

The exempla concerning Giovanna and Vincenzo socius of Bernardino, are clearly taken by Busti from Carcano, since they are in both texts. The case of Sambuco is on the contrary Busti’s own addition. Further, Busti also refers what happened to him during his preaching activity: Nam predicante me in civitate Hipporigiensi, quidam portabat unum breve parvissimum ligatum quibusdam filis diversis coloris, quod ei dederat unus caprarius. Cum autem eius confessor ipsum breve aperuisset, statim de eo exivit quoddam animal grossius ipso brevi fortiter vociferans et evolans et credo quod esset diabolus in eo habitans. In illo autem brevi erant scripti tantum modo aliqui caracteres et idem per omnia accidit predicante me in civitate Laudensi.150 Thus, while I was preaching in the city of Ivrea, somebody wore a tiny amulet bound by strings of different colours, which was given to him by some goatherd. When the confessor had opened that talisman, immediately some huge beast came out from it protesting loudly and flying away. I believe it was the devil living in that talisman. There were only some letters written on that object. Something exactly the same happened to me while I was preaching in the city of Lodi.

It is perhaps significant that this exemplum is set in Ivrea, in that Canavese Valley that was indeed known for its witchcraft-related milieu, although Busti explains that something similar had occurred to him also in Lodi. Busti’s tale also highlights another main point related to the way the brevi work. As has been said, the main point of the breve is its secrecy. It can neither be opened nor read: if it is, its magical power immediately disappears. Once again the fortuitous action of the preacher unveils the tricky nature of these objects, as well as their diabolical essence, which in the Ivrea tale is vividly exemplified by the animal flying away yelling and shouting. What is more, the description of that breve as delivered by a goatherd, as well as the previous remarks concerning the inability of the users to read the content, help the preacher emphasize that the material culture on which the making and the use of those items was centred was closely connected to a rural or (if one will) ‘popular’ background. Finally, the use of the vernacular in the incantations clearly underlines the nature of 150 

Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 129rb.

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these beliefs as pertaining to common people. From these details, it seems also to comprehend all the ill-concealed feeling of a cultural distance between preachers/confessors and the folk. Carcano gives another exemplum involving Giacomo della Marca: Frater noster Jacobus de Marchia repperit quemdam armigerum habentem breve, propter quod confidebat nunquam posse male mori. A fratre Jacobo interrogatus unde hoc habuisset respondit quod quidam suus famulus habebat qui fuit suspensus. Cui senior subridens dicit: ‘O pauper homo si non profuit famulo tuo, quomodo proderit tibi?’ Qui confusus quamprimum illud laceravit. Vana ergo hec sunt omnia, nec ab aliquo alio efficaciam habentia, nisi a diabolo.151 Our brother Giacomo della Marca discovered a man-at-arms who had a breve because of which he was confident that he would never die a bad death. Being asked by friar Giacomo where he had got it from, the man replied that one of his servants, who had been hanged, had had it. The friar, smiling, said to him: ‘Oh poor man, if it did not help your servant, how would it help you?’ Baffled, he tore it up immediately. Thus, all these things are vain, nor do they have effectiveness from anyone except the devil.

Tellingly, the attitude of Giacomo is represented in the exemplum as directed to correcting, pointing out, teaching, rather than penalizing. Here is displayed a pastoral stance that clearly represents the general approach endorsed by the friars of St Angelo’s. Mediated by the reprocessing of a precise classificatory scheme of superstition, this attitude concerns, in fact, not only vain superstitions in which no link with matters of cult is traceable. The same attitude concerns also some aspects of the witchcraft stereotype, which is in fact tellingly dealt with by Carcano immediately after the section concerning the deceits of the brevi. On the other hand, the distinction of this type of superstitio from idolatry is tenuous. Busti reminds the confessors that Talia brevia portantes graviter peccant, nisi fuerint adeo simplices, quod ignorantia debeat eos excusare, que tamen eos non excusat, cum super hoc fuerint moniti et instructi. Et talia brevia superstitiosa habentes non debent absolvi nisi ea destruant. Sunt enim diabolica opera.152 Those who wear such scrolls sin fully, except in the case of uneducated people who have to be excused because of their ignorance, which however does not excuse them when they have been admonished and instructed about this. Those who wear such 151 

Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 23, fol. 60rb. 152  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 129rb.

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superstitious amulets must not be absolved unless they destroy them. For they are the work of the devil.

It is because of their intrinsically diabolic nature that, according to Busti, textual amulets should be destroyed by their users if they want to be absolved. Ultimately, the diabolic threat is never fully absent in any superstition, not even in the practices considered less alarming. There is indeed a fluctuating orientation of the preachers between abolition and sarcasm, though always with the object of condemning beliefs considered superstitious and leading the faithful to change their behaviour. Within this pattern several aspects coexist between the reference to the dogmas of Scholastic theology and the pastoral experience of the friars. As I am about to show, in the case of witch-belief those boundary lines, marking the contrast between different attitudes, would become interestingly sharper.

Part III From Superstition to Witchcraft

Chapter 6

Busti and the Malefici, or How the First Commandment Can Affect the Other Commandments of the Decalogue

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wo of the superstitions Bernardino Busti lists are linked to the major outbreak of witchcraft that peaked during the fifteenth century: the invocation of demons, and the belief that a creature can turn into another species (which is associated with the tradition of participation in the sabbath); these include the basic strata of belief in witchcraft, which I illustrate in this chapter and the next. The power of bewitching or using harmful magic appears as an important element at the root of the acts that are described under both the above-mentioned headings, although in Busti’s list nothing is said with specific regard to witchcraft within maleficium itself. The ordered enumeration of stereotypes related to witchcraft in Busti’s text might seem to point to what Joseph Hansen has thought of as the ‘cumulative concept’ of those beliefs.1 As I will try to show, however, the elements Busti selects seem more telling if seen in light of the most recent historiographical approach proposed by Richard Kieckhefer, which tends to highlight how witchcraft did not simply develop along a one-way path: separate paradigms or multiple mythologies are implied, each one favouring different sets of beliefs.2 1 

Joseph Hansen, Zauberwahn, Inquisition und Hexenprozess im Mittelalter und die Ent­ stehung der grossen Hexenverfolgung (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1900; repr. Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1964). See also Brian Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe (London: Longman, repr. 1993), pp. 27–45. 2  Richard Kieckhefer, ‘Mythologies of Witchcraft in the Fifteenth Century’, Magic, Ritual, and Witchraft, 1 (2006), 79–108; Richard Kieckhefer, ‘The First Wave of Trials for

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Busti, in fact, seems to consider beliefs under diverse patterns, gathering some pertaining to one pattern under the invocation of demons, and clustering others, pertaining to at least two other patterns, under his heading of shapeshifting. A certain degree of merging is thus shown, as Busti is inclined to employ stereotypes that are rooted in his own broad geographical and cultural setting under both headings, while operating along the lines of a more general intellectual framework. In general, Busti and his colleagues provide partial evidence for the suggestion of Stuart Clark, according to whom witchcraft, when discussed as part of superstition, ‘was classified within, or alongside, vana observantia’ (although he acknowledges that ‘there are some variations in this respect’).3 In fact, Michele Carcano, and Antonio da Vercelli in part, seem to fit this characterization, placing some witch-beliefs under ‘observance of illusions’. On the other hand, as we have seen, Busti also deals with witchcraft-related stereotypes as a separate entity from vain observances, and Bartolomeo Caimi, also, engages with those who can shapeshift, and the mulieres who go with Diana (along with all the evil deeds traditionally ascribed to them), not in the context of vain observances and immediately after having dealt with maleficium. As I have pointed out earlier, neither Caimi’s, nor Carcano’s texts contain the developments of core witchcraft stereotypes that Busti handles under the topic of invocation of demons. Busti’s take on the issue under invocation is interestingly worked out, although conveniently concise, with a combination of diverse stereotypes, not every one of which is considered frivolous. As already noted, a number of elements that recent investigation has ascribed to different and specific patterns of witch-belief, are gathered by Busti to form a unique, coherent picture formed at the intersection of the First Commandment and all the others. Within this pastoral scheme the Commandments constitute reference points for the identification of specific behavioural patterns depicting a precise image of malefici. In this chapter I show that the Milanese preachers’ stances on the reality status of witchcraft beliefs constitute a spectrum, varying according to which particular beliefs are under discussion. It is also clear that the extent to which one considers single stereotypes as real or not gives a varying sense of the reality of witch-belief as a whole. As we know, all these beliefs refer to intertwined backDiabolical Witchcraft’, in The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America, ed. by Brian Levack (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, 2013), pp. 159–78. 3  Clark, Thinking with Demons, p. 485.

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grounds of heretical, demonic, and folkloric natures. Yet, some of the stereotypes mentioned under invocation of demons, the use of harmful magic, and metamorphosis combine when reference is made to the ludus Dianae, which is the embryonic cell of belief in the sabbath.4 The ludus is even more interesting since its degree of reality can be measured. In the next chapter I deal more thoroughly with the ludus Dianae and the issue of whether witches, carried by demons, really fly to take part in it. From this point of view, the Milanese preachers’ sceptical stance rests on the revaluation of the tenth century canon Episcopi, which had described the nightly ride of women as an illusory phenomenon, thus providing a precisely defined position for asserting its physical unreality. The choice to uphold the canon is paradigmatic of a classificatory scheme that allows the friars of St Angelo’s to deal with witchcraft-related beliefs within the pattern of superstition, virtually without changing subject, for they are all elements that share the same nature as violations of the First Commandment.

The Malefici Invokers of Demons Invocation of demons played a central role in the shift towards belief in organized sects devoted to demonic cult, and it was equated with idolatrous worship, as its insertion among the violations of the First Commandment confirms.5 Invocation of demons, however, represents more than just one of the actions performed by some evil people in contravention of the First Commandment. As Busti’s text shows, invocation frames an entire discourse within which a number of other elements pertaining to witchcraft appear, and it ends by implying the breach of several other Commandments in addition to the first. Furthermore, invocation brings one dangerously close to giving a ritualistic shape to superstition, which is one of the main features traditionally assigned to the phenomenon of witchcraft. Michael Bailey has spoken of a passage from 4  The term ludus (‘game’) ended up by denoting the nocturnal gathering of witches, but it might be also employed in a more general way to indicate a festive assembly of people, often characterized by licentious or illegal traits, such as the case of the ludus stellae discovered in 1395 in today’s Vallouise. See Bonomo, Caccia alle streghe, p. 49. 5  See Michael Bailey, ‘From Sorcery to Witchcraft: Clerical Conceptions of Magic in the Later Middle Ages’, Speculum, 4 (2001), pp. 972–76; and Edward Peters, ‘The Medieval Church and State on Superstition, Magic and Witchcraft: from Augustine to the Sixteenth Century’, in Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The Middle Ages, ed. by Karen Jolly and others (Philadelphia: Uni­ver­sity of Philadelphia Press, 2002), p. 215.

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sorcery (the use of harmful magic) to witchcraft (organized sects believed to be devoted to demonic cult and to endangering people’s well-being ) which was completed by the early fifteenth century; the assumption that invocation of demons amounted to their worship played a major role in framing the stereotype of the witch, for instance through the works of inquisitors such as the Dominican Nicolas Eymerich (d. 1399), who wrote a Tractatus contra daemonum invocatores in 1359.6 Entreating the devil is the form of invocation that concerns Busti more, since in that way the name of God is improperly used in spells and is mixed with demonic formulas.7 Within demonic invocation, a dangerous coming together of idolatry, sorcery, and diabolism can be found, with the consequent emergence of an image of the witch. In one of the earliest cases of witchcraft recorded in Central Italy Matteuccia di Francesco, who was tried at Todi in 1428, was said to summon Lucifer by saying: ‘O Lucibello, demon of hell, since you have been banished you have changed your name, and have the name Lucifer the greater; come to me or send me one of your servants’.8 Among the numerous charges against Filippa da Città della Pieve, tried at Perugia in 1455, was that of being ‘Immundorum spirituum et diaboli invocatricem et incantatricem’ (‘an invoker and enchantress of filthy spirits and of the devil’). 9 The impact of the long tradition of papal bulls condemning magic is to be found in these descriptions.10 Busti’s text shows how the dangers of demonic invocation had to be explained for the pastoral purposes of preachers. The Milanese friar identifies persons of both sexes who practiced diabolic sorcery with malefici and maleficae, and analyses their behaviour according to categories provided by each of 6 

See Bailey, Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies, p. 81 ff; Bailey, ‘From Sorcery to Witchcraft’, p. 976. 7  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 127va: ‘In vanum enim nomen Dei assumunt, quia illud invocationibus demonum et incantationibus suis immiscent.’ 8  Domenico Mammoli, Processo alla strega Matteuccia di Francesco 20 marzo 1428 (Todi: Res Tudertinae, 1983), p. 33: ‘O Lucibello, | demonio dello inferno, | poiché sbandito fosti, | el nome cagnasti, | et ay nome Lucifero maiure, | vieni ad me o manda un tuo servitore.’ 9  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 (Perugia: Deputazione di Storia Patria per l’Umbria, 1987), p. 52. 10  See Henry Charles Lea, Materials toward a History of Witchcraft, ed. by Arthur C. Howland, 3 vols (Philadelphia: Uni­ver­sity of Pennsylvania Press, 1939; repr. Whitefish: Kessinger, 2004), vol. i, pp. 220–25.

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the Ten Commandments. The term maleficus/malefica may identify one who operates evil either with regard to traditional demonic magic or in a more specific context of witchcraft-related activities, retaining a clear reference to the ability to cause harm. For instance, in the Formicarius (1436–38) Johannes Nider derives the meaning of maleficus from doing evil, being in bad faith, and harming one’s neighbour, through superstition and evil deeds.11 In Busti’s sermon the term keeps its general meaning, which slides more properly towards witchcraft as the preacher deepens his description of the sorcerers and sorceresses, although he never suggests the idea of an organized sect. Further, the area of action represented by the malefici becomes clearer when it is associated with other terms to identify it more specifically. Thus, the French Dominican inquisitor Nicolas Jacquier (d. 1472) employs maleficus together with fascinarius (which refers to bewitching through the evil eye), hereticus and demonum cultor in his Flagellum hereticorum fascinariorum (1458).12 Isidoro Isolani, Dominican friar in Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan and Professor of Philosophy, published in 1506 a Libellus aduersus magos, diuinatores, maleficos, which is one of the first Italian texts dealing with witchcraft in the context of a polemic against magic.13 According to Isolani the malefici, as they are popularly called, are part of the ‘society of demons’, with other workers of magic such as magi, diuinatores, and sortilegi; their area of activity is outlined in the section on the invocation of demons and harmful magic, and through reference to the Decretum Gratiani, they are said to be called by that name ‘for the greatness of their crimes’.14 Among the malefici, the friar includes strigae, 11  Catherine Chène, ed., ‘Jean Nider, Formicarius’ [V.3], in L’imaginaire du sabbat: Edition critique des textes les plus anciens (1430 c.–1440 c.), ed. by Martine Ostorero, Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, and Kathrin Utz Tremp (Lausanne: Cahiers Lausannois d’Histoire Médiévale, 1999), pp. 99–265 (p. 146): ‘Maleficus dicitur quasi male faciens vel male fidem servans, et utrumque in maleficis, qui superstitionibus et operibus proximum laedunt, satis reperitur.’ 12  Joseph Hansen, Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Hexenwahns und der Hexen­verfolgung im Mittelalter (Bonn: C. Georgi, 1901, reprint Hildesheim, Zürich, New York: Georg Holms Verlag, 2003), pp. 133–45. See Ostorero, Le diable au sabbat, pp. 453–56. 13  Tamar Herzig, ‘Isolani, Isidoro’, in Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition, ed. by Richard M. Golden (Santa Barbara: ABC Clio, 2006), vol. ii, pp. 573–74; Silvano Giordano, ‘Isolani, Isidoro’, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. lxii (2004), pp. 663–65. A brief description of the Libellus is in Luigi Balsamo, Giovann’Angelo Scinzenzeler tipografo in Milano (1500–1526) (Florence: Sansoni Antiquariato, 1959), p. 91. 14  Isidoro Isolani, Libellus aduersus magos, diuinatores, maleficos (Milan: Giovanni Angelo Scinzenzeler, 1506), fol. B4v: ‘Qui demonum societatem ineunt, magi, diuinatores, sortilegi aut

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lamiae, and strigones, who according to him renounce Christian faith, trample on the cross, and desecrate the host.15 This marks an opposite tendency from that of the Milanese Franciscans, who as I shall show linked strigae to a completely different tradition. On the other hand, Michele Carcano described malefici in a similar way, in a context of harmful magic, although in his words there is no hint of the existence of an organized sect, and a closer adherence to the model of the Decretum.16 Ultimately, a maleficus is one whose nature and skills are rooted in a demonic background, but the term is clearly employed in a broader sense than an exclusive relation to witchcraft.

The Ludus Diabolicus While the First Commandment represents the main context for Busti’s sorcerers/sorceresses, since ‘they do not worship God but the devil’, the other Commandments provide him with the possibility to cross-refer, one by one, to malefici nuncupantur. […] Magi sunt qui uulgo malefici ob facinorum magnitudinem appellari solent. […] Sciunt impiissimos demones euocare, quos alloquuntur, quibus precipiunt ab eisue docentur.’ I have relied on the copy held in the Biblioteca Universitaria of Pavia. Decretum Gratiani, II, C. 26, q. 5 c. 14 Nec mirum, ed. by Friedberg, vol. i, col. 1032 reads: ‘Magi sunt qui vulgo malefici ob facinorum magnitudinem nuncupantur. Hi sunt qui permissu Dei electa concutiunt, hominum perturbant mentes minus confidentium in Deo, ac sine ullo ueneni haustu uiolentia tantum carminis interimunt.’ 15  Isidoro Isolani, Libellus aduersus magos, fol. [B7]v: ‘Maleficorum tertium genus est, aduersum quod aciem instruimus, uirorum ac mulierum conuentus, quos demones admiranda edocent: strigae, lamiae ac strigones uulgi censentur nomine […] diabolo suadente Christum ac sanctum abnegant baptisma, crucem pedibus calcant, sanctissimae eucharistiae latentes digitis inferunt calumnias.’ Both the strigae (deriving, like strigones, from strix or ‘screech-owl’) and the lamiae refer to the ancient classical tradition of bird-women living on children’s blood. The lamiae, strigae or striae, and also mascae, and larvae were addressed by earlier tradition as demonic illusions, as in Gervase of Tilbury (d. 1234): Lea, Materials toward a History of Witchcraft, ed. by Howland, vol. i, p. 173. See Montesano, ‘Supra acqua et supra ad vento’, pp. 103–09; Bailey, ‘From Sorcery to Witchcraft’, pp. 961–62; Wolfgang Behringer, Witches and Witch-Hunts (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004), pp.  30–31; and Richard Kieckhefer, ‘Avenging the Blood of Children: Anxiety over Child Victims and the Origins of the European Witch Trials’, in The Devil, Heresy, and Witchcraft in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honor of Jeffrey B. Russell, ed. by Alberto Ferreiro (Leiden: Brill, 1998), pp. 91–109. 16  Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 24, fol. 62rb: ‘Sciendum quod quedam alie incantationes fiunt operatione demonum ad nocumentum hominum […] et he incantationes dicuntur maleficia. […] Magi sunt qui vulgo malefici ob facinorum magnitudinem nuncupantur. Hi sunt qui permissu Dei electa concutiunt, hominum perturbant mentes minus confidentium in Deo.’

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other related behavioural traits. This might be considered a categorization of human conduct outlined on the basis of the Ten Commandments and accomplished through the reference to stereotypes of diverse origin, whose result is a coherent and multisided image of the maleficus. The first trait of the invokers of demons follows from their utter disrespect for the Third Commandment. Busti says that not only they do not keep festive days holy, but it is precisely during those days that they are thought to intensify their demonic sorcery and to perform maleficia, clearly implying defiance of the official rules of religion. Speaking of how they transgress the Fourth Commandment (‘honour your father and your mother’), the preacher describes more thoroughly some facets of their behaviour aiming at disowning religious rites, since the malefici, in fact, bestow on the devil those honours that were owed to God. This is an explicit accusation of idolatry and diabolism, which from the preacher’s point of view carries a clear proof of their rejection of the precepts, the sacraments, and the authority of the Church.17 An interesting example allows Busti to describe better one of the ways through which malefici renounce the Fourth Commandment. That concerns what he calls ludus diabolicus, a patently heretical and diabolic type of gathering: Unde isti malefici, maxime qui vadunt ad ludum diabolicum, nunquam aqua bene­dicta se aspergunt, sed quando intrant ecclesias accipiunt asperges, et dant alijs aquam benedictam, se autem illam non tangunt, vel aspergere se ostendunt, et aquam de super caput proijciunt; hi autem irreverentes Patri Eterno, et Matri Ecclesie, multo magis sunt irreverentes patribus carnalibus.18 Thus these malefici, especially those who go to the diabolic game, never sprinkle themselves with holy water, but upon entering a church they take the aspergillum and give the holy water to others, as they do not touch the water themselves, or they pretend to sprinkle themselves, but instead they throw the water over their heads. Those who are irreverent to the Eternal Father and the Mother Church, are even more irreverent to their earthly parents.

One of the behaviours of the participants in this ludus is notably linked to the rejection of the holy water, which being a sacramental element seems to 17 

Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 127va: ‘Contra etiam tertium preceptum faciunt, quia festa non sanctificant, imo in precipuis festivitatibus maleficia sua magis exercent. Quartum etiam preceptum transgrediuntur, quia non honorant sed vituperant patrem celestem, eius honorem diabolo tribuentes, nec etiam honorant sanctam matrem ecclesiam, cuius precepta et sacramenta contemnunt et accipere nolunt.’ 18  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 127va.

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represent symbolically refusing the Church, or perhaps membership in the Christian community. For this reason, the distortion of an act to be performed by the faithful in the church may have a sort of anti-ritualistic connotation: that action was clearly seen as performed in direct opposition to the ritualized Christian habit of sprinkling oneself upon entering a church, thus perhaps even suggesting a sort of shared affiliation among those participating in that ludus. This element would certainly deserve further investigation. The implications of this act are significant especially in light of the role that rites and ritualized actions had in constructing community identity in closed and hierarchical societies such as the Church.19 In Busti’s mind, being irreverent towards God and the Church, makes these malefici even more irreverent towards their earthly parents, which marks in a way the disrespect for and the estrangement from the basic pillars of civic life. In his Summa angelica also Angelo da Chivasso describes a ludus diabolicus. According to the friar, that ludus is called diabolic because — obviously — it was invented by the devil to lead people to sin.20 He gives it a threefold characterization: from encompassing acts of mockery (participation in which was absolutely prohibited, even as a mere spectator), to different types of gambling, based either on pure chance, such as cards or dice, or involving a mixture of chance and skill. Angelo, however, does not offer any hint at the irreverent act with holy water referred to by Busti, although the unspecific reference to the element of mockery could match well with the parody of actions such as the one mentioned by the preacher. Thus, moral and demonic elements can blend together to constitute the background of ludus diabolicus. Further, there emerges a correspondence between the knowledge of preachers and the accusatorial stereotypes fostered by the inquisitors. A series of trials held in 1520 at Venegono Superiore in the Duchy of Milan, just a few years after Busti’s death, are telling from this point of view. In a particularly tormented time, with the French occupying Lombardy, it happened that about twenty people were accused of witchcraft and tried in the castle of Fioramonte Castiglioni, lord of Venegono. In one of the sessions there is a moment that recalls the ludus diabolicus described by Busti, when the Dominican inquisitor Battista of Pavia asked Caterina Fornasari ‘si fuit 19 

See Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, 1992), p. 178. See also Philippe Buc, The Dangers of Rituals: Between Early Medieval Texts and Social Scientific Theory (Princeton: Princeton Uni­ver­sity Press, 2001). 20  Angelo da Chivasso, Summa angelica, fol. 218 ra: ‘Ludus qui dicitur diabolicus, quia opera­tione diabolica est inventus ad inducendos homines ad peccatum.’

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instructa proycere aquam benedictam post tergum in ingressu vel egressu templi’ (‘whether she was instructed to throw the holy water behind her back upon entering or leaving a church’).21 The reality and the diabolical nature of these accusatorial stereotypes are never questioned, not even by Busti. One can imagine that the idea of their occurrence could be fostered by noticing or suspecting, in the behaviour of the faithful, traits having a broadly anti-social flavour, or by the poor adherence of some to norms of religious conduct. The act of throwing holy water behind one’s back is ultimately, in the eyes of the friars, a sign that marks people out as evil. Moreover, although the ludus diabolicus mentioned by Busti deviates from the pattern of the ludus Dianae, which involved the participation of a female presider with all its folkloric elements, Busti’s employment of the same term ludus for both instances – as I shall show later – indicates the use of a category that must have been common among the friars of Northern Italy.

Invokers of Demons: Behavioural Patterns Unholiness Reference to the Fifth Commandment gives Busti the opportunity to remind his readers of those who ‘perpetrate several homicides’, which is the context for introducing the figures of well-known witches and their stereotypical forms of behaviour. The first one to be recalled by the preacher is Finicella (whom Busti calls ‘Facinella’), the famous witch tried in Rome at the time of Bernardino da Siena.22 She was burnt at the stake after she had confessed to having murdered sixty-five children. In all likelihood, in her case Busti relies on Giacomo della 21  Streghe e roghi nel Ducato di Milano: Processi per stregoneria a Venegono Superiore nel 1520, ed. by Anna Marcaccioli Castiglioni (Milan: Thelema edizioni, 1999), pp. 92–93. 22  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 127va: ‘Contra quintum mandatum etiam faciunt quia multa homicidia perpetrant. Combusta enim fuit Rome quedam malefica tempore sancti Bernardini nomine Facinella, que confessa est quod occiderat 65 pueros.’ In his Sermon 35 of the Sienese cycle of 1427 Bernardino da Siena says to his audience: ‘Non vi so meglio dire: al fuoco, al fuoco, al fuoco! Oimmè! O non sapete voi quello che si fece a Roma mentre che io vi predicai? O non potrei io fare che così si facesse anco qui? Doh, facciamo un poco d’oncenso a Domenedio qui a Siena!’ (‘I don’t know how better to tell you: To the fire! To the fire! To the fire! Oimmè! Do you want to know what happened in Rome when I preached there? If I could only make the same thing happen here in Siena! Oh, let’s send up to the Lord God some of the same incense right here in Siena!’). Bernardino da Siena, Prediche volgari sul Campo di Siena 1427, Sermon 35, ed. by Delcorno, vol. ii, pp. 1006–07; English translation in Mormando, The Preacher’s Demons, p. 52.

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Marca, since while Bernardino da Siena put the number of children killed by the witch at thirty, Giacomo della Marca gives the exact figure of sixty-five.23 The case of the witch of Rome must have been rather popular. Stefano Infessura’s chronicle reports that in 1424 ‘Finicella the witch was burnt at the stake on 8 July, since she had killed several children in an evil way and she had bewitched many others, so that all of Rome went to see her’.24 After Finicella, Busti records the case of Sanctucia (Santuccia), a witch who was burnt at the stake in Perugia in 1445 having confessed the murder of fifty children. In this case also Busti seems to rely on Giacomo della Marca.25 The Milanese friar refers to Santuccia to help preachers recognize this type of woman, from the main psychological and behavioural traits. This is how Busti characterizes the witch: Videbatur enim una sancta, sicut communiter sunt tales malefice, que frequentant ecclesias et simulant se stare in orationibus et devotionibus, occulte tamen diabolum adorantes, ac crucem Christi pedibus conculcantes, baptismoque ac sacramentis ecclesie renunciantes, ac fidem catholicam negantes.26 She looked like a saint, as generally such sorceresses seem to be, attending churches and simulating being engrossed in prayer and devotions, while secretly they worship the devil, and with their foot trample upon Christ’s cross, renouncing baptism and the sacraments of the Church and disowning Catholic faith.

Two elements here are noteworthy. One is the description of what we might call ‘feigned sanctity’; the other is the ways Santuccia opposes Christian faith. These 23  Bernardino da Siena, Prediche volgari sul Campo di Siena 1427, Sermon  35, ed. by Delcorno, vol. ii, pp. 1007–08: ‘E fune presa una fra le altre, la quale disse e confessò senza niuno martorio, che aveva uccisi da XXX fanciulli col succhiare il sangue loro’ (‘Among all these women, there was one woman arrested who said and confessed without any torture that she had killed at least thirty young babies by sucking their blood’), translation in Mormando, The Preacher’s Demons, p. 59. Cf. Giacomo della Marca, Sermones dominicales, Sermon 27, ed. by Lioi, vol. i, p. 424: ‘Funicella [sic] interfecit 65 pueros.’ 24  Stefano Infessura, Diario della città di Roma, a.a. 1424, ed. by Oreste Tommasini (Rome: Fonti per la Storia d’Italia, 1890), p. 25. 25  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 127va–b: ‘Et alia combusta est Perusij 1445 nomine Sanctucia. […] Hec autem maledicta femina confessa est se 50 pueros occidisse.’ Giacomo della Marca, Sermones dominicales, Sermon 27, ed. by Lioi, vol. i, p. 424, reads: ‘Item, quedam diabolica vetula de Gualdo de Nuceria, combusta in Perusia, nomine Santecia, que fecit innumerabilia mala, inter que confessa est quod occidit pueros 50.’ Santuccia’s verdict is published in Nicolini, La stregoneria a Perugia e in Umbria nel Medioevo, pp. 50–51. 26  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 127va.

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are hints at specific issues, not often dealt with in sermons.27 Before considering them, however, the terminological aspect is again to be noted. Busti does not call Finicella and Santuccia strigae or lamiae, as one might have expected in an Italian setting, but he prefers to define them more simply as maleficae, probably manifesting his compliance with a bookish tradition of Northern provenance rather than with the classical stereotype beyond these characters. That maleficus or malefica could be witchcraft-related terms is, nevertheless, clear. Among the many possible examples — besides the earlier mentioned case of Nider’s Formicarius, and before the infamous culmination in Heinrick Kramer’s Malleus maleficarum (1486) — we may note the French secular priest and professor of theology Pierre Mamoris, who composed around 1462 a tract called Flagellum maleficorum, which targets sorcerers infesting the region of Poitou, and calls them malefici and sortilegi (the latter indicating soothsayers). The use of such terminology points to the domains of diabolic magic and bewitchment, but also to a more traditional sense of proximity to heresy, blasphemy, and idolatry.28 Already in a letter dated 1320, Pope John XXII instructed the inquisitors at Carcassonne and Toulouse to make an investigation about sortilegi and malefici using the same means as those assigned to prosecute heretics.29 As I have noted earlier, however, in this period the term maleficus can still point to the operators of harmful sorcery in general terms. It was the merger of common magical practices (such as those connected to the area of magical healing or foretelling the future), and more complex ritual magic (namely learned necromancy), which opened the door to ideas that eventually formed the late medieval and early modern concept of witchcraft.30 This development had already occurred in the bull Super illius specula issued by Pope John XXII in 1326, 27 

On this see Fabrizio Conti, ‘Mulieres Religiosae tra santità e stregoneria nella tarda Osser­vanza Francescana’, in Agiografia e culture popolari / Hagiography and Popular Cultures: Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Verona (28–30 October 2010), ed. by Paolo Golinelli (Bologna: CLUEB, 2012), pp. 329–44. 28  Cf. Ostorero, Le diable au sabbat, pp. 507–08. On the particular relationship between witchcraft and heresy, see Richard Kieckhefer, ‘Witchcraft, Necromancy, and Sorcery as Heresy’, in Chasses aux sorcières et démonologie: entre discours et pratiques (xive–xviie siècles), ed. by Martine Ostorero, Georg Modestin, and Kathrin Utz Tremp (Florence: SISMEL, 2010), pp. 133–53. 29  Peters, ‘The Medieval Church and State on Superstition, Magic and Witchcraft’, pp. 220–21; Kors and Peters, Witchcraft in Europe, pp. 113 and 118–19. Cf. also Alain Boureau, Satan hérétique: naissance de la démonologie dans l’Occident médiéval (1280–1330) (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2004), p. 62. 30  See Bailey, ‘From Sorcery to Witchcraft’, pp. 961–67.

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which recognizes the making of pacts with demons (literally, ‘with Hell’), and so connects sorcery with heresy.31 The invocation of demons appears, therefore, as the moment in which magic becomes harmful, idolatrous and above all organized. Some of the conditions for the construction of witchcraft-related stereotypes have to be found within this context. Returning to Busti’s characterization of Santuccia, her feigning holiness would become one of the characterizing traits of those wicked and cursed women, ending up by giving shape to a complex typology of the witch. Busti speaks of women who seem to be not merely ordinary but even holy, while in truth they conspire against the Church and faith and adore the devil. Thus, for instance, Caterina Fornasari, one of the witches tried at Venegono, admitted to the inquisitor’s question as to whether she really used to pray the Lord’s Prayer, the Sunday prayer or the Hail Mary while she was in church holding the rosary, that she ‘pretended to pray but instead did not say anything’.32 The nature of simulatio was well established in confession-related literature, which viewed it as a sin of hypocrisy. Angelo da Chivasso, however, explains that the equation between ‘simulation’ (of Latin origin) and ‘hypocrisy’ (of Greek origin) is more subtle and is matter of intention: every act of hypocrisy is simulation, but simulation is hypocrisy only when one who is evil inwardly feigns outward goodness. Further, Angelo explains that the hypocrite commits mortal sin if feigning sanctity is done for a specific purpose, such as to hide heresy or gain ecclesiastical offices.33 In his confessional manual Omnis mortalium cura (1429), Antonino da Firenze had introduced the same point, explaining how

31  John XXII, Super illius specula, in Hansen, Quellen, p. 5: ‘Dolentes advertimus […] quamplures esse solo nomine christianos qui […] cum morte foedus ineunt, et pactum faciunt cum inferno: daemonibus namque immolant, hos adorant […].’ 32  Streghe e roghi nel Ducato di Milano, ed. by Marcaccioli Castiglioni, pp. 92–93: ‘Inter­ rogata si quando erat in templo et contractabat manibus coronam de suis Pater Noster, si orabat aut dicebat orationem dominicam vel Salutationem Angelicam, respondit que fingebat orare, sed nichil dicebat.’ 33  Angelo da Chivasso, Summa angelica, fols 312rb–312va: ‘Simulatio idem est quod ipocrisis unde dicit Isi(dorus) li(bro) Ethi(mologiarum) quod ipocrita grece, latine dicitur simulator. Vel dic quod se habent sicut superius et inferius quia omnis ipocrisis simulatio est, sed non omnis simulatio ipocrisis, sed tamen illa qua quis, cum sit malus intus, se bonum simulat et palam ostendit ut bonum videatur. […] Si vero accipiatur ipocrita non pro qualitate vite male, sed

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Ipocrisia […] è dimostrare de haver quella bontà o sanctità de la quale […] è peccato mortale quando la ipocrita fa tale simulatione o per introducere alcuno errore, o per acquistare alcuna dignità o prelatura eclesiastica […].34 Ipocrisia is the show of having such goodness or sanctity, which is mortal sin […] when the deceiver produces such simulation either to introduce some mistakes or to gain an ecclesiastical honour or office.

That simulation could be matter of heresy was also explained by Heinrich Kramer (d. about 1505), who wrote on Bohemian heretics able to attract so many to their errors by pretending to be holy.35 This is the background of Busti’s representation of Santuccia and the maleficae, whose feigned sanctity conveys this traditional sense of fabricated behaviour, in his view concealing a real evil nature. In general, this type of simulation seems to require mostly the discernment of the abuse and misuse of piety and acts of devotion — as Jean Gerson pointed out with regard to holy women, and Nicolas Eymerich concerning necromancers — as well as the assessment of the forms of ‘popular sainthood’.36 In this latter regard, discerning between the false and the true regains relevance during what André Vauchez has called the age of the ‘mystical invasion’ of the fourteenth century, and later with the spread of models of sanctity so well embodied by the popular preachers of the fifteenth century. As Gabriella Zarri has noted, the issue of feigning sanctity becomes more pressing when an imitable model of sanctity spreads, with simulation applying to the externals of that model, just as in the case of Busti’s Santuccia.37 pro simulatione: sic aliquando est peccatum mortale, puta si hoc facit ex fine qui est contra caritatem Dei vel proximi, puta simulat se sanctum ut possit seminare heresim vel consequatur dignitatem ecclesiasiasticam, vel quecumque alia bona in quibus constituit finem.’ Cf. Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive originum libri XX, ed. by W. M. Lindsay (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911; repr. 1957), X, p. 251: ‘Simulator dicitur a simulacro; gestat enim similitudinem eius, quae non est ipse’. 34  Antonino da Firenze, Omnis mortalium cura (Venice: Cristoforo Pensi, 1500), 11rb (Biblioteca Comunale, Velletri). 35  See Tamar Herzig, Christ Transformed into a Virgin Woman: Lucia Brocadelli, Heinrich Institoris, and the Defense of the Faith (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2013), p. 123 ff. 36  Bailey, Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies, p. 139. 37  André Vauchez, ‘La nascita del sospetto’, in Finzione e santità tra medioevo ed età moderna, ed. by Gabriella Zarri (Turin: Rosenber & Sellier, 1991), pp.  39–51; Adriano Prosperi, ‘L’elemento storico nelle polemiche sulla santità’, in Finzione e santità tra medioevo ed età moderna, ed. by Gabriella Zarri (Turin: Rosenber & Sellier, 1991), pp. 88–115; Tamar

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Here emerges one of the most interesting currents of the cultural history of witchcraft: the inquiry into the possible analogies or ‘typological correlations’ between the saint and the witch, by considering the structural similarities between their respective manifestations, as proposed by Gábor Klaniczay, who puts punitive miracles and evil spells in a common analytical framework.38 Peter Dinzelbacher has suggested that the increasing attention given to the charismatic gifts of female saints could have implied an interest regarding similar phenomena in women who were believed to exercise magic and witchcraft.39 In slight disagreement with this suggestion, Kieckhefer has pointed out that if sainthood and witchcraft did mirror each other, it was ‘in non-systematic ways, and by virtue of their common focus on areas of life that are deeply charged with emotion and symbolic meaning’.40 The American scholar has been critical of Dinzelbacher’s famous analogies, pairs of parallel elements characterizing saints’ and witches’ most typical behaviours. According to Kieckhefer the applicability of the scheme is limited since those elements are not always interchangeable, and have different functions as well as diverse weight in their respective area of pertinence. Further, he notes, sainthood and witchcraft are ascribed categories, ones that are socially driven, and it might be the lack of broader alternative categories that made late medieval religious inquiry so eager to see a religious attitude as either holy or unholy, within sainthood or witchHerzig, ‘Female Mysticism, Heterodoxy, and Reform’, in A Companion to Observant Reform in the Late Middle Ages and Beyond, ed. by James Mixson and Bert Roest (Leiden, Brill, 2015), pp. 255–82; Bailey, Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies, p. 139; Gabriella Zarri, ‘Vera santità, simulata santità: ipotesi e riscontri’, in Finzione e santità tra medioevo ed età moderna, ed. by Gabriella Zarri (Turin: Rosenber & Sellier, 1991), pp. 9–36 (p. 12). 38  For a contextualization of this trend of research and the relevant historiographic developments, see Gábor Klaniczay, ‘A Cultural History of Witchcraft’, Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft, 5 (2010), 188–212 (pp. 209–10). See also Klaniczay, ‘The Process of Trance’, p. 255; Gábor Klaniczay, ‘Hungary: The Accusations and the Universe of Popular Magic’, in Early Modern European Witchcraft: Centres and Peripheries, ed. by Bengt Ankarloo and Gustav Henningsen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), pp. 219–55 (pp. 240–41); and Gábor Klaniczay, ‘Miraculum and Maleficium: Reflections Concerning Late Medieval Female Sainthood’, in Problems in the Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Europe, ed. by R. Po-Chia Hsia and R. W. Scribner (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1997), pp. 49–73. 39  Peter Dinzelbacher, ‘Sante o streghe: Alcuni casi del tardo medioevo’, in Finzione e san­ tità tra medioevo ed età moderna, ed. by Gabriella Zarri (Turin: Rosenber & Sellier, 1991), pp. 52–87; Peter Dinzelbacher, Heilige oder Hexen? Schicksale auffälliger Frauen in Mittelalter und Frühneuzeit, 3rd edn (Düsseldorf: Patmos Verlag, 2004), pp. 153–248. 40  Kieckhefer, ‘The Holy and the Unholy’.

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craft. The medieval mindset needed a black or white choice, according to the narrow possibilities of scholastic anthropology. There was no valid alternative between God and the devil. These are also the only options acknowledged by Busti. His maleficae pretended to be holy, but were in fact devilish. This consideration — and also search — for opposed models of holiness and unholiness can be found among the fierce opponents of witches. Thus, again, Heinrich Kramer, whose attacks on witches in the Malleus maleficarum have often been interpreted as a manifestation of his overall fear of women, appears on the contrary to be a great admirer of female mystic saints, to the point of becoming one of the major contributors to the spread of their veneration, as is apparent from his pamphlet titled Stigmifere virginis Lucie de Narnia (1501) — recently studied by Tamar Herzig — written to promote the fame for sanctity of holy women of his own time, Lucia Brocadelli da Narni (d. 1544), Stefana Quinzani (d. 1530), and Colomba da Rieti (d. 1501). To Kramer it was the same female nature which rendered women more inclined either to diabolic flatteries or to divine revelation.41 Those women were among the ‘sante vive’ or living saints, who were hosted and venerated during their lifetime in the princely courts of mid-Northern Italy, between the fifteenth and sixteenth century, being sometimes consulted for their supernatural powers.42 The case of the Savonarolan Dominican tertiary Caterina da Racconigi, to whom Giovanfrancesco Pico della Mirandola (d. 1533) dedicated his Compendio delle cose mirabili della venerabile serva di Dio Catterina da Raconisio (1532), presents the ambiguity — or to some extent assimilation — between witches and saints. Caterina is said to fly like a witch and to tend to people in need of help, although she does not ride animals or broomsticks, but is rather carried by angels, and he calls her the ‘witch of God’.43 Towards the end of the Middle Ages there was certainly a general rise in interest in female supernatural powers, considered in 41 

Herzig, Christ Transformed. See also Tamar Herzig, ‘Witches, Saints, and Heretics: Heinrich Kramer’s Ties with Italian Women Mystics’, Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft, 1 (2006), 24–55; Tamar Herzig, ‘Heinrich Kramer e la caccia alle streghe in Italia’, in ‘Non lasciar vivere la malefica’: Le streghe nei processi e nei trattati (secoli xiv–xvii), ed. by Dinora Corsi and Matteo Duni (Florence: Firenze Uni­ver­sity Press, 2008), pp. 167–96 (p. 175 ff ). 42  Zarri, Le sante vive, p. 111. 43  Tamar Herzig, Savonarola’s Women: Visions and Reform in Renaissance Italy (Chicago: Uni­ver­sity of Chicago Press, 2008), p. 173 ff; Dinora Corsi, ‘Mulieres religiosae e mulieres maleficae nell’ultimo medioevo’, in ‘Non lasciar vivere la malefica’: Le streghe nei processi e nei trattati (secoli xiv–xvii), ed. by Dinora Corsi and Matteo Duni (Florence: Firenze Uni­ver­sity Press, 2008), pp. 19–42; Zarri, Le sante vive, pp. 12–13.

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either a positive or a negative light, during what has been called the ‘effeminate age’, in which the ‘feminization of sanctity’ has been interestingly viewed as an anticipating factor of the ‘feminization of the demonic’ that occurred at the end of the Middle Ages.44 Feminization certainly does not encompass all the possibilities. Males who behaved unorthodoxly were in trouble too. Nevertheless, when Busti decided to exemplify the most characteristic figures of the malefici he actually chose two women who were exemplary witches. Thus, notwithstanding their ability to resemble saints, Busti’s ‘malefice’ are representative of a way of behaving deliberately oriented against the Church and its rituals, and tremendously favourable to the cult of the devil, for whom they commit crimes of any kind. This is the second element in Busti’s description of these women. As part of that quick sketch, the worship of the devil is assumed. The description of the deeds that the witches performed as a consequence of that worship (and as part of a sect), namely the renunciation of faith, baptism, and trampling on Christ’s cross, are reminiscent of a stereotype that had begun to crystallize between the 1430s and 1440s in the earlier texts concerning witchcraft composed by Hans Fründ, Johannes Nider, Claude Tholosan, Martin Le Franc, and the anonymous Errores Gazariorum.45 The description of a witch in similar terms by the famous consilium attributed to the juridical authority of Bartolo da Sassoferrato seemed to suggest that the diffusion of such stereotypes could be dated back to the fourteenth century, before, in 1975, Norman Cohn exposed the text a forgery.46 The forgery 44  Cf. Nancy Caciola, Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell Uni­ver­sity Press, 2003), p. 274 ff. 45  I refer to Fründ’s Bericht über die Hexenverfolgung im Wallis; Nider’s Formicarius; Tholosan’s Ut magorum et maleficorum errores; Le Franc’s Le Champion des Dames. See Ostorero, Paravicini Bagliani, and Utz Tremp, eds., L’imaginaire du sabbat; Ostorero, Le diable au sabbat, pp. 23–76. For instance, the French secular judge Claude Tholosan describes around 1436 the ‘sect of the witches’ in these terms: ‘[…] talis secte intrantes renegant Deum […], totaliter recedunt a fide Christi, […] Dei legem renegando et penitus ejus fidem, non credendo eciam in articulis fidei et ecclesie sacramentis […], faciendo crucem in humo, expuendo de super ter et calcando eam pede.’ Quotation from Pierrette Paravy and Martine Ostorero, eds, Claude Tholosan, ‘Ut magorum et maleficiorum errores’, in L’imaginaire du sabbat: Edition critique des textes les plus anciens (1430 c.–1440 c.), ed. by Martine Ostorero, Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, and Kathrin Utz Tremp (Lausanne: Cahiers Lausannois d’ Histoire Médiévale), p. 364. On the ‘birth of the witch’ cf. Duni, Under the Devil’s Spell, pp. 15–19. 46  The Consilium reads: ‘Mulier striga, de qua agitur […], debet tradi ultimo supplicio et igne cremari. Fatetur enim Christo et baptismate [sic] renuntiasse […], item confitetur dicta striga sive lamia se crucem fecisse ex paltis et talem crucem pedibus conculcasse, et crucem

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could actually be the work of the late sixteenth-century Italian jurist Giovanni Battista Piotto, who may have relied on the Tractatus de strigibus composed by the Dominican Bernardo Rategno of Como (d. 1510), maintaining that the new diabolic sect of witches had come into existence in the mid-fourteenth century.47 Richard Kieckhefer has shown how the tradition of accusatorial stereotypes concerning the mocking of Christian beliefs and rituals emerges in the mythology of witchcraft diffused in the Pays de Vaud, in the region of Lausanne, between 1438 and 1498.48 Actually, not too far from there, the starting point in the accusations against the witches called mascae, tried in 1495 by the Dominican inquisitor Vito dei Beggiami at Rifreddo and Gambasca, in the marquisate of Saluzzo (Piedmont) and the diocese of Turin, pointed to similar stereotypes based on profaning the sacraments — baptism in particular — and trampling on the cross with the feet as well as shamefully turning one’s buttocks to it.49 Also at Venegono, Tognina del Cilla was instructed by Elisabetta Oleari on how to trample on the sign of the cross that she had drawn on the soil with her left foot, thereby denying God, the Catholic faith and baptism all together.50 The different disposition of stereotypes recurring both in Busti and slightly later in Dominican texts such as the one by Isolani is at this point telling, as it clearly highlights the construction of different images of witchcraft and the development of different perceptions of its degrees of reality. As I have showed, ipsam dedita opera fecisse, ut illam pedibus conculcaret […], se adorasse diabolum’ (Hansen, Quellen, p. 64). See Norman Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons: The Demonization of Christians in Medieval Christendom (London: Pimlico, 1993), pp. 194–95. 47  See Tamar Herzig , ‘Bernardo Rategno of Como (d.  1510)’, in Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition, ed. by Richard M. Golden, 4 vols (Santa Barbara: ABC Clio, 2006), vol. iv, p. 951; and Tamar Herzig, ‘Rategno, Bernardo (Bernardus Comensis, Bernardo da Como)’, in Dizionario Storico dell’Inquisizione, ed. by Adriano Prosperi and others, vol. iii (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2010), p. 1299. 48  Kieckhefer, ‘Mythologies of Witchcraft’, pp. 82–87; Kieckhefer, ‘The First Wave of Trials’, pp. 160–70. 49  Lucea talvolta la luna: I processi alle masche di Rifreddo e Gambasca nel 1495, ed. by Grado Giovanni Merlo, Rinaldo Comba, and Angelo Nicolini (Cuneo: Società per gli studi storici, archeologici ed artistici della provincia di Cuneo, 2004), p. 146 said, with regard to the masca Caterina Borrella: ‘fidem in sacro baptismate susceptam et ipsum baptismum abnegando profanavit; […] venerandum Sancte Crucis signum […] expressit in terram et pedibus ac podice vilipendiose sepius conculcavit.’ 50  Streghe e roghi nel Ducato di Milano, ed. by Marcaccioli Castiglioni, p. 134: ‘Ad per­ suasionem dicte Elixabet, conculcavit Crucem, sive signum Crucis, factum per eam Elixabet, cum pede sinistro, trina vice, abnegando Deum et fidem catolicam ac Baptismum et huiusmodi.’

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Isolani does merge strigae and lamiae with the malefici, thus enlarging his view of the reality of witchcraft to include a mythology that the preachers of St Angelo’s, on the contrary, would keep well separated, considering the strege or strigae within their discussion of illusions related to the canon Episcopi. As I point out again below, this shows diverging ways of considering the same witchcraft-related patterns. Debasing Morals By the time Busti was writing, the figure of the witch had long become the key target of both secular and religious authorities. Stress was being progressively put on the agents of evil, while earlier the persecutors had been more concerned about the effects of their supposed evil actions.51 Continuing his description of those sorceresses, Busti mentions a different type of behaviour, in contravention of the Sixth Commandment. The preacher reasserts some of the oldest accusatorial stereotypes of the anti-heretical tradition, explaining that: Contra sextum etiam preceptum faciunt, quia communiter tales sunt meretrices, vel adulteri et adultere et matrimonii legem violantes ac mechie et impudicitie dediti, ut dicitur Sap. 14. Committunt etiam vitium sodomiticum et omnes alias spurcitias perpetrant, maxime illi et ille que vadunt ad ludum qui dicitur bariloti, in quo pater cum filiabus et filii cum matribus ac sorores cum fratribus et cognati cum consanguineis carnaliter commiscentur. Isti quoque, si ex antiquitate non possunt predicta scelera perpetrare, procurant illa ab aliis committi.52 They act in contravention of the Sixth Commandment, since such people are commonly whores, adulterers, and adulteresses, and violate the rules of marriage and are addicted to adultery and uncleanness, as is said in Widsom 14. They also commit sodomy and perpetrate every other filthiness, especially those males and females who go to what is called ‘the game of the keg’, in which father has carnal union with daughters, sons with mothers, sisters with brothers, and kin with their blood-relatives. If, because of their age, they cannot commit such wicked acts themselves, they procure their performance by others.

On this occasion many sins involving sex and numerous actions in violation of marital ties are committed. Thus, what links the ludus bariloti (‘game of 51 

Bailey, Battling Demons, p. 29. Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 127vb. Cf. Wisdom 14. 25–26: ‘Et omnia com­mixta sunt: sanguis et homicidium, furtum et fictio, corruptio et infidelitas, turbatio et periurium, tumultus bonorum, gratiarum immemoratio, animarum inquinatio, generis immu­ tatio, nuptiarum inordinatio, moechia et impudicitia.’ 52 

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the keg’) to the specific areas of concern of the Sixth Commandment are the charges of orgies and sexual promiscuities through which the participants not only show disrespect towards family ties, but also behave in ways that seem completely unnatural, wild and disgusting. The reference to the ludus bariloti was certainly familiar to Busti, since there had been an entire tradition within the Franciscan movement speaking of it. What that ludus consisted of is explained by Bernardino da Siena, who had preached on that accusatorial stereotype in Siena in 1427, probably having in mind earlier events involving groups of Waldensians in Piedmont.53 The Sienese is generous with details. According to him, those who participate in the game kill babies just before the orgies begin and prepare a brudetto or broth with their flesh: La sera, di notte si ragunano tutti uomini e donne in uno luogo, e fanno uno brudetto di loro. […] E sai come si chiamano questi tali? Chiamansi quelli del barilotto. E questo nome si è perché eglino pigliaranno uno tempo dell’anno uno fanciullino, e tanto il gittaranno fra loro de mano in mano, che elli si muore. Poi che è morto, ne fanno polvare, e mettono la polvare in un barilotto, e danno poi bere di questo barilotto a ognuno.54 Deep in the night they all get together, men and women all in the same place, and they stir up quite a broth among them […] and do you know what the name of this group is? They’re called the people of the keg. They have this name because once a year they take a small child and toss it among themselves back and forth, until it dies. Once it’s dead, they make a powder of its body and put the powder in a keg and each one drinks from this keg.

These are the stereotypes whose reality Busti, as well as Bernardino da Siena, take for granted. The approach holding the ludus bariloti and related charges as directed at realities stands directly opposed to the stark disbelief that, as we shall see, characterizes the Franciscan Observant view regarding the ludus 53  Bernardino tells that they murdered five inquisitors in Piedmont. See Bernardino da Siena, Prediche volgari sul Campo di Siena 1427, Sermon 27, ed. by Delcorno, vol. ii, p. 793; cf. Montesano, ‘Supra acqua et supra ad vento’, pp. 117–18. 54  Bernardino da Siena, Prediche volgari sul Campo di Siena 1427, Sermon 27, ed. by Del­ corno, vol. ii, pp. 793–94. Bernardino da Siena, Seraphim 1423, Sermon 2, in S. Bernardini Senensis Opera omnia, ed. by De La Haye, vol. i, col. 209 hints at the same ludus referring to the Dolcinians: ‘Unde semel in partibus Novariae in aliquibus montibus quidam Dolcinus levavit unam sectam, sicut est secta bariloti, et crevit ita quod tota una civica erat plena illa secta.’ See also Mormando, The Preacher’s Demons, pp. 85–86.

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Dianae. Antonio da Vercelli is very clear in this regard. Speaking of those who believe they take part in the ‘game of Diana’ as a mere illusion, the preacher mentions the ‘game of the keg’ as a contrasting case: Non dico de illis que vadunt ad ludum bariloti, quoniam ille realiter et personaliter incedunt ad illud opus diabolicum, comedunt, bibunt et actu venereo utuntur.55 I am not talking about those who go to the ludus bariloti, since they really go in person to that diabolic event and eat, drink, and have sexual intercourse.

The origin of the belief in the reality of those activities has to be found in the spread of long-standing anti-heretical traditions.56 As Norman Cohn has pointed out, accusations of orgies, ritual murders, and cannibalism had all long been topoi employed to target Montanists, Marcionites, Manicheans, Bogomils, Armenian Paulicians, and Waldensians. The ludus bariloti conspiracy was later re-used against the Fraticelli de opinione, some of whom had been tried in Rome in 1466 and had had to make the scripted confession of such horrible stories. Strangely enough, Bernardino da Siena did not mention the same ludus in relation to the Fraticelli. The pairing of the ludus bariloti and the Franciscan heretics seems to be a later development, the main protagonist of which was Giovanni da Capestrano, who along with Giacomo della Marca, engaged in the anti-heretical campaign both within and beyond Italy.57 The literary tradition of medieval exempla might also play a role in giving a shape to tales of ritual orgies characterized by a frankly diabolic taste. We may note Stephen of Bourbon’s tale of the confession given by a woman belonging to a heretic group captured near Saint-Pourçain, in Alvernia, concerning the orgy following a secret rite to summon the devil appearing under the species of a black cat, the latter element being already a further devel-

55 

Antonio da Vercelli, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 44, fol. 324rab. 56  There are, for instance, similarities in the description of how the heretics of Soissons killed a baby by tossing him among themselves, finally burning the baby and making a piece of bread from the ashes, in Guibert de Nogent, Histoire de sa vie, III. 17, ed. by Georges Bourgin (Paris: Picard, 1907), pp. 212–13. 57  See Györg y Galamb, ‘“In ultimis christianorum finibus”, Due Osservanti italiani nell’Europa centrale e nell’area balcanica’, in San Giacomo della Marca e l’altra Europa: Crociata, martirio e predicazione nel mondo del Mediterraneo Orientale. Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Monteprandone, 24–25 novembre 2006, ed. by Fulvia Serpico (Impruneta: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2007), pp. 11–28

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opment of the scenario.58 In Bernardino da Siena as well as in Busti, the literary elements and the stereotypes of heretic provenance are clearly welded together. Cohn has been criticized, however, for tracing a too homogeneous and continuous development between the early and the late use of these accusatorial stereotypes.59 A more precise background to the entrenchment of such patterns in the fifteenth century has been located in space and time. It is a question of what Gábor Klaniczay, recalling Carlo Ginzburg’s enquiry, has called ‘the slow maturation of complex notions of scapegoats which subsequently develop into a stable sabbath imagery’, which surveys those trajectories of demonization that led to the accusations of orgies and ritual murders.60 As Ginzburg has shown, the ‘obsessional image of a plot directed against society’ represented the context within which different sorts of scapegoats, particularly marginal social groups such as lepers, Jews, and finally witches, were targeted by similar accusations within France and the Western Alps between 1321 and 1375. Further steps led this ‘phantasmagoria of conspiracy’, in Martine Ostorero’s words, to become more specifically focused on witchcraft.61 Thus, in 1409 the 58 

See Stephen of Bourbon, Anecdotes historiques, légendes et apologues tirés du recueil inédit d’Étienne de Bourbon dominicain du xiiie siècle, ed. by A. Lecoy de la Marche (Paris: Librairie Renouard, 1877), no. 367, pp. 322–23. As to the Roman process against the Fraticelli, see Processus contra hereticos de opinione dampnata existentes, coram dominis deputatis ad instantiam domini Antonii de Eugabio procuratoris fiscalis factus, in Franz Ehrle, ‘Die Spiritualen, Ihr Verhältnis zum Franziskanerorden und zu den Fraticellen’, Archiv für Literatur-und Kirchen­ geschichte des Mittelalters, 4 (1888), pp. 110–38. On the heretical background of the charges connected to the ludus bariloti, see Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons, pp. 35–39; 48–53; on the Fraticelli p. 61 ff. See also Gábor Klaniczay, ‘Orgy Accusations in the Middle Ages’, in Eros in Folklore, ed. by Mihály Hoppál and Eszter Csonka-Takacs (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 2002), pp. 38–55; Peter Burke, ‘Witchcraft and Magic in Renaissance Italy: Gianfrancesco Pico and his Strix’, in The Damned Art: Essays in the Literature of Witchcraft, ed. by Sidney Anglo (London: Routledge, 1977), p. 40; Grado Giovanni Merlo, Contro gli eretici (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1996), p. 56; Merlo, Eretici e inquisitori nella società piemontese del Trecento (Turin: Einaudi, 1977), pp. 75–93; and Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans, eds, Heresies of the High Middle Ages (New York: Columbia Uni­ver­sity Press, 1991), pp. 73–76. 59  Carlo Ginzburg, ‘Deciphering the Sabbath’, in Early Modern European Witchcraft: Centres and Peripheries, ed. by Bengt Ankarloo and Gustav Henningsen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), pp. 121–37 (p. 121). 60  ‘Round-Table Discussion with Carlo Ginzburg, Gustav Henningsen, Éva Pócs, Giovanni Pizza and Gábor Klaniczay’, in Demons, Spirits, Witches, 3: Witchcraft Mythologies and Per­ secutions, ed. by Gábor Klaniczay and Éva Pócs (Budapest: CEU Press, 2008), pp. 35–49 (p. 45). 61  Ginzburg, Ecstasies, pp.  33–80; Martine Ostorero, ‘The Concept of the Witches’ Sabbath in the Alpine Region (1430–1440): Text and Context’, in Demons, Spirits, Witches, 3:

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Jews and some Christians were accused of founding ‘new sects’ and performing ‘rites that are repugnant to the Christian religion’, practicing magical activities including sorcery, divination and conjuration of demons, by the bull that Pope Alexander V issued for the Franciscan inquisitor Ponce Feugeyron, active in the Duchy of Savoy, whose mandate was subsequently confirmed in 1418 by Pope Martin V, and in 1434 by Eugene IV.62 Later, Johannes Nider described similar plots centred on desecration, orgies, the killing of infants, and the drinking of their powdered remains from a keg, on the basis of reports from the judge Peter von Greyerz. A complex process led to the coalescence of themes, eventually giving shape to the notion of a sect of witches and to the idea of their sabbath, to the spread of which the Council of Basel with its wide circulation of intellectuals and ideas acted as one of the main catalysts.63 Once again these types of accusations bear strong resemblance to stereotypes widespread in the Western Alpine area, and crystallized in an early written tradition which finds Witchcraft Mythologies and Persecutions, ed. by Gábor Klaniczay and Éva Pócs (Budapest: CEU Press, 2008), pp. 15–34. 62  Alexander V’s bull states: ‘Nonnulli christiani et perfidi Iudaei infra eosdem terminos constituti novas sectas et prohibitos ritus eidem fidei repugnantes inveniunt’ (Hansen, Quellen, pp.  16–17; translation in Kors and Peters, Witchcraft in Europe, p.  153). Very similarly Eugene  IV wrote ‘Multi christiani et iudei sortilegi, divinatores, daemonum invocatores, carminatores, coniuratores, superstitiosi, augures, utentes artibus nefariis et prohibitis, quibus christianum populum seu plerosque simplices illarum partium maculabant et pervertebant’ (Hansen, Quellen, p. 17; translation in Kors and Peters, Witchcraft in Europe, p. 154). Pope Eugene issued also a similar letter to ‘All inquisitors of heretical depravity’ in 1437 (Hansen, Quellen, pp. 17–18; Kors and Peters, Witchcraft in Europe, p. 154). 63  Nider’s account is in Formicarius V. 3: Chène, ed., ‘Jean Nider, Formicarius’,in L’imaginaire du sabbat, pp. 144–82. See Wolfgang Behringer, ‘How Waldensians became Witches: Heretics and Their Journeys to the Other World’, in Demons, Spirits, Witches, 1: Communicating with the Spirits, ed. by Gábor Klaniczay and Éva Pócs (Budapest: CEU Press, 2005), pp. 155–92. On the sabbath, see Gian Maria Panizza, ‘Sabba’, in Dizionario Storico dell’Inquisizione, ed. by Adriano Prosperi and others, vol. iii (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2010), pp. 1355–57; Jonathan L. Pearl, ‘Sabbat’, in Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition, ed. by Richard M. Golden, 4 vols (Santa Barbara: ABC Clio, 2006), vol. iv, pp. 987–92; Robert Muchembled, A History of the Devil from the Middle Ages to the Present, trans. by Jean Birrell (Cambridge: Polity, 2003), pp. 35–68. On the diffusion of witchcraft-related ideas in a precisely detectable geographical and cultural context, see Martine Ostorero, ‘Folâtrer avec le démons’: Sabbat et chasse aux sorcières à Vevey (1448) (Lausanne: Cahiers Lausannois d’histoire médiévales, 1995), pp. 26–27; and Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, ‘La genesi del sabba. Intorno all’edizione dei testi più antichi’, in Incanti e sortilegi: Le streghe nella storia e nel cinema, ed. by Laura Caretti and Dinora Corsi (Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 2002), pp. 15–29; Michael Bailey and Edward Peters, ‘A Sabbat of Demonologists: Basel, 1431–1440’, The Historian, 65 (2003), pp. 1375–95.

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its most likely means of diffusion in the Errores Gazariorum, thus once again pointing to a heretical background, that of the Gazarii or Cathars. The accusation of performing a confused orgy in which almost everything could happen, appears both in the numerous trials held by Franciscan inquisitors in Val d’Aoste between the second decade of the fifteenth century and the first half of the sixteenth century, as well as in the text of the Errores, which is now known to have originated in the same area.64 If we ascribe the supposed authorship of the Errores to the Franciscan Ponce Feugeyron or to another Franciscan inquisitor working in Val d’Aoste, the whole picture becomes even more interesting.65 In this case what we have is a mythology of witchcraft centred on elements of desecration, sexual chaos, and participation in the ‘game of the keg’, as related to the Western Alpine or sub-Alpine setting, which shows an early connection with a Franciscan inquisitorial milieu.66 The geographical proximity and the Franciscan background might help to explain Busti’s reuse of these accusatorial stereotypes for his preachers. Cursing Life The description of the spectrum of malefici, invokers of demons, goes on in Busti through a variety of other elements transgressive of the remaining Com­ mandments. As we have seen, the preacher is not interested in giving a com64 

Errores Gazariorum, seu illorum qui scopam vel baculum equitare probantur, ed. by Kathrin Utz Tremp and Martine Ostorero, in L’imaginaire du sabbat, p. 290: ‘[…] Convivioque sceleratissimo sic peracto, postquam satis ad libitum tripudiaverunt, diabolus qui tunc presidet, clamat, lumen extinguendo: “Mestlet, mestlet”. Cuius vocem postquam audiunt, simul carnaliter coniunguntur solus cum sola vel solus cum solo, et aliquando pater cum filia, filius cum matre, frater cum sorore et equo, ordine nature minime observato.’ English translation in Kors and Peters, Witchcraft in Europe, pp. 160–61. According to the traditional interpetation, the command ‘mestlet, mestlet’ (or ‘meschlet, meschlet’) would mean ‘mélez, mélez’ (mix-up): Hansen, Quellen, p. 118. See Errores Gazariorum, ed. by Utz Tremp and Ostorero, p. 308; Ostorero, Le diable au sabbat, p. 35; Silvia Bertolin and Ezio Emerico Gerbore, La stregoneria nella Valle d’Aosta medievale (Quart: Musumeci Editore, 2003), pp. 225–27. 65  Martine Ostorero, ‘Itinéraire d’un inquisiteur gâté: Ponce Feugeyron, les juifs et le sabbat des sorciers’, Médiévales, 43 (2002), pp. 103–17; Ostorero, Le diable au sabbat, p. 36; Behringer, ‘How Waldensians Became Witches’, p. 167. 66  The ‘confessions’ of witches in Val d’Aoste point to the organization of the ‘mesclet’, the pulling of the cross to the ground to trample and spit on it, the denial of God, Virgin Mary, and baptism, as referred to by Marieta dou Byel, tried between 1449 and 1450 by the Franciscan inquisitor Bérard Trémey. See Bertolin and Gerbore, La stregoneria nella Valle d’Aosta medievale, pp. 232–33.

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plete picture of the stereotypes he mentions. He is rather concerned with describing the malefici invocatores in a paradigmatic way, classifying their behaviours according to those features that best describe the contravention of the Decalogue. Thus, in addition to the note on sexual scandals, Busti’s malefici are also thieves who contravene the Seventh Commandment. In this case, the preacher says that those who make incantations to find treasures or stolen objects do so in order to rob the owners, a type of greed that is related again by the preacher to idolatry.67 Similarly, the malefici act against the Eighth Commandment, since being invokers of demons they foretell untrue things and especially falsely accuse other people of theft and other misdeeds, thus being just like the devil ‘mendax et mendacii pater’ (‘a liar and the father of lies’).68 Referring to the last two Commandments, which point to the so called ‘inner sins’ or sins of the will, Busti concludes his Decalogue-based description of the malefici. At the end of this section of the sermon, Busti points again to a cluster of accusations that are stereotypical to witch-belief. Harmful sorcery performed by the malefici affects, in fact, the vital cell of the individual and the social body. Couples’ fertility and women’s pregnancy are the particular target of sorcerers, who curse married men so that they cannot join carnally their wives and procreate. These sorcerers also cause abortion, or bring conflict into the relationship between husband and wife.69 In the context of maleficium, Michele Carcano and Bartolomeo Caimi hint at the same area of concern, pointing especially to bewitchment to impede the sexual act.70 There are interesting hints in the Sermones discipuli by Johannes Herolt, who in the context of superstitions concerning pregnant women and those in labour, besides disapproving those who practice contraception, also condemns those who mur67 

Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 127va: ‘Contra septimum etiam preceptum faciunt, quia communiter sunt fures. Item, ut proximos suis bonis spolient, eis divinationes et incan­tationes faciunt ad inveniendos thesauros et furta etc. Hinc apostolus Ad Ephe. 5 vocat avaritiam servitutem idolorum.’ Cf. Ephesians 5. 5: ‘Hoc enim scitote, intellegentes quod omnis fornicator aut immundus aut avarus, id est idolorum cultor, non habet hereditatem in regno Christi et Dei.’ 68  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 127vb. 69  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 127va: ‘Alia etiam innumera abhominabilia scelera perpetrantes, hos enim maritatos suis maleficiis impediunt ne possint coniungi. Illos ne possint filios generare. Aliis procurant abortus, aliis faciunt ne possint uxorem bono vultu intueri et similiter de uxore peragunt, ut non valeat maritum suum, nisi torva facie aspicere atque asperis verbis alloqui.’ 70  Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 24, fol. 62rb; Caimi, Interrogatorium sive confessionale, xxxiiiir.

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der children in their mothers’ wombs as well as the vetulae who instruct them. Behind this, one can probably see the practice of abortion. 71 All these hints refer to a broad background of concern related to procreation, which probably points to the merger of two distinct factors: the general concern at the high rate of child mortality, and the long-term process that saw the good thirteenthcentury vetula medica, healing through God’s grace, transforming into the late fourteenth and fifteenth-century demonic vetula sortilega. This character is already depicted as such by Jean Gerson in his account of superstition, and is then fully developed in the texts of the Observant friars as well as in inquisitorial practice, with the vetula becoming the stereotypical representation of the old, wicked witch performing maleficia.72 The figure of a malefica tried and eventually burned at the stake in 1346 in Lucca, exemplifies the early convergence of these elements. Franceschina da Roma was a healer expert in curing with herbs, which in the view of the judges soon became the typical mark of a witch cursing people. Finally, she was also condemned for being a ‘famous thief ’, since she took advantage of people’s confidence by actually stealing from the houses of those whom she healed. The overlap of different layers is evident in the records of the trial of Franceschina, although, of course, what we lack is her own voice on the whole matter.73 That one’s power of cursing might be effective and thus real was not to be doubted from the preacher’s point of view: even a mother cursing her own son could in reality produce a terrible effect. Thus, Giacomo della Marca tells how in the Umbrian town of Cascia a woman put an imprecation on her disobedient son that he might dry out like a dead tree. That was exactly what happened,

71 

Herolt, Sermones discipuli, Sermon  41, fols  hiii rb–hiii va. Speaking of those vetulae murdering babies, Giacomo della Marca points out: ‘Una alia [vetula] interfecit 12 et alia 14 et in uteribus matrum multos.’ Giacomo della Marca, Sermones dominicales, Sermon 27, ed. by Lioi, vol. i, p. 425 72  See Graziella Federici Vescovini, ‘Stregoneria e magia cerimoniale nei secoli xiii e xiv’, in Stregoneria e streghe nell’Europa moderna: Convegno internazionale di studi. Pisa, 24–26 marzo 1994, ed. by Giovanna Bosco and Patrizia Castelli (Rome: Ministero per i Beni Cul­ turali e Ambientali, 1996), pp. 23–47; and Franco Cardini, ‘Le streghe nella predicazione degli Osservanti Francescani’, in Stregoneria e streghe nell’Europa moderna: Convegno internazionale di studi. Pisa, 24–26 marzo 1994, ed. by Giovanna Bosco and Patrizia Castelli (Rome: Ministero per i Beni Culturali e Ambientali, 1996), pp. 125–31. See also Kieckhefer, ‘Mythologies of Witchcraft’, p. 108. 73  Dinora Corsi, Diaboliche maledette e disperate: Le donne nei preocessi per stregoneria (secoli xiv–xvi) (Florence: Firenze Uni­ver­sity Press, 2013), pp. 53–58.

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until his soul left the son.74 Although the exemplum is employed by Giacomo within a discourse concerning the respect due to parents, and thus clearly with an aim to intimidate, nevertheless it shows what the mentality concerning such powers could be. Thus, while the deeds of the malefici were related to the variegated universe of bewitchment, the lack of any connection between harmful magic and organized sects of witches in the texts of Busti, Carcano, Caimi, and Antonio da Vercelli is telling. These preachers’ malefici seem to be still rather individual users of diabolic powers, clearly distinct from the strege that we will soon meet in their texts. As I point out in the next chapter, witchcraft, strictly speaking, appears in the Milanese Franciscan observant sources when a quite independent set of beliefs partially merge with those so far discussed, in this case seen under a completely different light.

74 

Giacomo della Marca, Sermones dominicales, Sermon 11: De honore parentum, ed. by Lioi, vol. i, p. 217: ‘Inveni in Cassia quandam mulierem maledicentem filium inobedientem ut siccaretur sicut lignum. Et sic factum sit, quia [quae in the original] aruit usque dum anima exivit de corpore.’

Chapter 7

The Apparent Reality of Illusion: The Metamorphosis of Witches and the Ludus Dianae

U

nder heading thirteen of his list concerning violations of the First Com­mandment, Busti introduces two more elements that would become traditional in the construction of the image of the witch. They are the belief that a creature might assume another shape, and that certain women go riding at night to the ludus led by the goddess Diana. Further, a number of misdeeds that partially correspond to those we have seen with regard to the malefici is attributed also to such companies of people — women especially — wandering about at night. In the texts of the Milanese Observant Franciscan preachers, metamorphosis and ludus Dianae are described in two precise ways. First, they identify what the friars considered to be properly referred to as witchcraft. It is when dealing with these beliefs, in fact, that some of the friars write of strege, thus using terminology that points exclusively to the witch represented by the Italian paradigm(s) of witchcraft. Second, in contrast to the misdeeds and evil conduct attributed to the malefici, the Milanese preachers of St Angelo’s deny the reality of metamorphosis, the ludus Dianae, and the associated crimes supposedly performed by witches. The intellectual benchmark for the friars’ approach concerning metamorphosis and the ludus Dianae is represented by the canon Episcopi, which is referred to and quoted verbatim or paraphrased by all the preachers. The canon Episcopi is to be found for the first time in Regino of Prüm’s De ecclesiasticis disciplinis, compiled c. 906 for the archbishop of Trier, subsequently taken by Burchard of Worms as stemming from an old canon issued by the Council of

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Ancyra in 314, but most probably originating from a Carolingian capitulary.1 The text was later extensively reused and incorporated in important medieval collections of canon law, such as the Decretum of Burchard between 1008 and 1012, the Decretum and the Panormia of Ivo of Chartres between 1091–95, and Gratian’s Decretum in the first half of the twelfth century.2 As was customary in the fifteenth century, Busti and his fellow friars relied in their use of the canon Episcopi on Gratian’s Decretum, the summation of medieval canon law. As its general proposition, the canon Episcopi urges the bishops and their priests to eradicate the art of sorcery and magic from their parishes, framing these phenomena within the traditional context of heresy. Two more specific parts follow. The first is the famous text referring to the women who believe they go riding with Diana in the dead of night; the second explains how the devil can appear to deluded women in different forms, inspiring visions that these women believe to be true. Those who claim that these phenomena might physically happen are labelled by the canon as pagans and infidels.3 As has been pointed out, at the core of the canon Episcopi there is the distinction between 1 

Regino of Prüm, De ecclesiasticis disciplinis et religione christiana libri duo, L. ii, PL 132, cols 175–400 (cols 352–53). After Burchard, the attribution of the canon Episcopi to the Council of Ancyra was accepted until the sixteenth century. It was probably due to confusion with the canon preceding the Episcopi in Regino’s book that referred to that council. See Burchard of Worms, Decretorum libri XX, book x, PL 140, cols 831–32; Joseph Hansen, Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Hexenwahns und der Hexenverfolgung im Mittelalter (Bonn: C. Georgi, 1901, reprint Hildesheim, Zürich, New York: Georg Holms Verlag, 2003), p. 38 note 1; Bonomo, Caccia alle streghe, p. 164; and Werner Tschacher, ‘Der Flug durch die Luft zwischen Illusionstheorie und Realitätsbeweis: Studien zum sog. Kanon Episcopi und zum Hexenflug’, in Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, 116 (1999), 225–76 (p. 233 note 23). On the canon Episcopi, see Martine Ostorero, ‘Canon Episcopi’, in Dizionario Storico dell’Inquisizione, ed. by Adriano Prosperi and others, vol. i (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2010), pp. 256–57; and Edward Peters, ‘Canon Episcopi’, in Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition, ed. by Richard M. Golden, 4 vols (Santa Barbara: ABC Clio, 2006), vol. i, pp. 164–65. 2  Burchard of Worms, Decretorum libri XX, book x and xix, PL 140, cols 831–33 and 963–64; Ivo of Chartres Decretum, pars XI, PL 161, cols 752–53; Ivo of Chartres, Panormia, book viii, PL 161, cols 1323–24; Decretum Gratiani, II, C. 26, q. 5, c. 12, in Corpus iuris canonici, ed. by Emilius Friedberg, 2 vols (Leipzig : Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1879–81), vol. i, cols 1030–31. See Ostorero, Le diable au sabbat, p. 574 ff; Peters, ‘The Medieval Church and State on Superstition, Magic and Witchcraft’, p. 182 ff; and Jeffrey Burton Russell, Witchcraft in the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell Uni­ver­sity Press, 1984, repr.), pp. 75–80. 3  For the English translation of Regino of Prüm’s version of the canon Episcopi, see Kors and Peters, Witchcraft in Europe, pp. 61–63.

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the possible and the impossible in terms of the bodily and the spiritual, or in other words, the (im)possibility of bodily participation in events that were considered as solely spiritual or dreamlike experiences.4 The Milanese preachers seem to be well aware of this. They refer to the canon Episcopi to question a set of beliefs whose correspondence to physical reality was accepted by leading texts confronting the problem of witchcraft in the course of the fifteenth century. The friars also show awareness of their pastoral responsibility concerning the faithful. Angelo da Chivasso considers those who believe in animal metamorphosis and night rides as full sinners when, although they have been instructed in the truth, they still maintain their belief; the attitude of confessors should on the contrary be milder when they face people who have not received proper instruction.5 The view promoted on the basis of the canon Episcopi contributes to one of the possible images of witchcraft, as the analysis of the elements that follow endeavours to explain more fully.

Metamorphosis The sceptical view concerning the belief that certain women can change shape and engage in bewitchment was already proposed by the earlier Observant Franciscans, such as Bernardino da Siena and Giacomo della Marca. Thus, Bernardino warns that ‘The devil makes it seem to the evil woman that she metamorphoses into a cat and that she goes around bewitching, but in reality she remains in her bed. These are the devil’s illusions to deceive people!’; and the vernacular confession scheme attributed to Giacomo asks to the penitent: ‘Whether you have believed that women or a person in human bodily shape (‘corpo umano’) participate in the night ride and become witches, cats, or wolves, drinking the blood of babies or similar foolishness’.6 4 

Walter Stephens, Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex, and the Crisis of Belief (Chicago: The Uni­ver­sity of Chicago Press, 2002), pp. 127–28. Cf. Schmitt, Les superstitions, p. 460 ff. 5  Angelo da Chivasso, Summa angelica, fol. 324rb: ‘Utrum credentes se cum aliis nocturnis horis equitare et ubicumque voluerint subito posse transire, aut in aliam speciem creaturam posse mutari peccent mortaliter. Respondeo quod sic postquam super talibus audierunt veritatem, et sunt infideli deteriores XXVI, Q. V, Episcopi. Secus si ex simplicitate ante infor­ mationem de veritate.’ 6  Bernardino da Siena, Le prediche volgari: Quaresimale fiorentino del 1424, Sermon 38, ed. by Cannarozzi, vol. ii, p. 169: ‘El dimonio fa parere a quella mala femmina ch’ella diventi gatta e vada stregando, ma ella si sta nel letto suo. Lusioni di dimonio per ingannare altrui!’; Giacomo della Marca, ‘Confessione’, fol. 193v: ‘Se hai creduto le femine o corpo humano

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The friars of St Angelo’s follow the same pattern, giving these attitudes to witchcraft a more careful pastoral framework, deepening their intellectual development to fit them for the examination of penitents, and apparently making more precise the contrast between this approach and others that on the contrary accepted the actuality of witchcraft phenomena. Bernardino Busti claims that it is heretical to believe that somebody might be able to transform into another species, such as a cat, for that is an illusion attributable to the power of demons.7 In his text for confession, Caimi agreed, using the auctoritates that Busti would later consider again, and excerpting a relevant piece from the canon Episcopi: Si credidit aliquam creaturam in melius aut deterius posse mutari aut transformari in aliquam speciem vel similitudinem, puta in gattas, quia talem transformationem realiter fieri est impossibile, nisi a solo creatore et qui aliter credit est infideli deterior 26. Q. 5 Episcopi, et notat Augustinus 18 De ci(vitate) Dei c. 18: apparenter vero bene potest fieri virtute demonum, patet de Samuele d(icto) c(apitulo), Nec mirum, idem Tho(mas) prima parte q. 114.8 Whether [the penitent] has believed that some creature can change shape for better or worse or be converted into another species or likeness, such as cats. It is impossible that such a transformation can be made in reality, except by the Creator alone. Anyone who believes differently is worse than an infidel [according to] 26. Q. 5 Episcopi. Augustine notes in De civitate Dei c. 18 how demons can make things appear real, as is clear from Samuel d. c. Nec mirum. In the same way, Thomas [Aquinas] in the first part [of the Summa theologiae] Q. 114.

The only insertion Caimi makes while quoting the corresponding text of the canon Episcopi is the mention of a cat — as Busti does too — which is a clear reference to the most popular cliché concerning the witches’ metamorphoandare in corso de nocte et diventare streghe gacte o lupi e bevere el sangue de mammoli et simili paczie.’ 7  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 129ra: ‘Decimotertio: offenditur in hoc pre­ cepto, cum quis credit aliquam creaturam posse realiter transmutari in aliam speciem, puta in gattas, vel huiusmodi: hoc enim est hereticum, 26a q. 5a c. Episcopi. Et notat Augustinus 18 De civitate Dei, capitulo 18, apparente vero potest fieri virtute demonum, ut patet de Samuele, de quo in capitulo Nec mirum 26a q. 5a. Et idem habetur per Thomam prima parte Summe, q. 114.’ 8  Caimi, Interrogatorium sive confessionale, xxxiiiirv. The canon Episcopi reads: ‘Quis­quis ergo credit fieri posse aliquam creaturam aut in melius aut in deterius immutari, aut trans­ formari in aliam speciem vel in aliam similitudinem, nisi ab ipso creatore, qui omnia fecit, et per quem omnia facta sunt, proculdubio infidelis est, et pagano deterior’ (see Decretum Gratiani, II, C. 26, q. 5, c. 12, ed. by Friedberg, vol. i, col. 1031).

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sis.9 It seems clear that Caimi’s Interrogatorium constitutes the direct basis for Busti’s consideration of the issue. Angelo da Chivasso and Michele Carcano follow the same line, and they show the close relationship between confession and preaching in fostering a certain type of pastoral orientation.10 The juridical and theological auctoritates employed by Caimi and Busti to refute the belief in the reality of such phenomena exemplify the set of sources generally employed by the majority of preachers. The basic trait is the predominance of the Augustinian stance on the matter.11 Augustine had mentioned the strange metamorphoses of men in his City of God, referring to Circe transforming Ulysses’ companions into pigs, and to the ritual transformation of the Arcadians into wolves, the former narrated in the Odyssey, the latter by Ovid. The preachers rely on Augustine’s conviction that not even demons can work the transformation of human soul and body. God could certainly perform everything, Augustine says, but demons can only produce illusions. At this point the Bishop of Hippo makes things more complicated, pointing to something that Busti does not consider here, but which was to become important. Augustine explains, in fact, how metamorphosized persons may show up in the form of dreamlike images appearing to persons while they are sleeping or in conditions that are much deeper than sleep, resembling trance-states. These unreal images may make them appear to other people as though transformed into the shapes of animals, even apparently carrying loads, which according to Augustine can in fact sometimes be real; in this case the loads are carried by demons in order to make the deceit more realistic.12 Demons can thus produce only illusory images of human metamorphoses, but can carry real objects. The same Augustinian sceptical view is reconsidered in the canon Nec mirum of the Decretum, whose text is actually attributed to Augustine. According to this canon, to which both Caimi and Busti refer, the famous case of the witch of 9  Oscar Di Simplicio, ‘Cats’, in Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition, ed. by Richard M. Golden, 4 vols (Santa Barbara: ABC Clio, 2006), vol. i, pp. 174–75. 10  Angelo da Chivasso, Summa angelica, fol. 324rb; Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 23, fol. 60vb. 11  The canon Episcopi is in line with this approach, to the extent that sometimes it had even been erroneously considered a work of Augustine. See Ostorero, Le diable au sabbat, p. 576; Laurence Harf-Lancner, ‘La métamorphose illusoire: Des théories chrétiennes de la métamorphose aux images médiévales du loup-garou’, Annales. Economies, sociétés, civilisations, 40. 1 (1985), 208–26. 12  Augustine of Hippo, De civitate Dei, book xviii. 18, ed. by Dombart and Kalb, vol. ii, p. 608.

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Endor, who summoned Samuel at the request of king Saul, clearly shows that magic art is, simply, deception, since she had summoned a demon and not the soul of the prophet.13 Reference to Thomas Aquinas, who still elaborates on Augustine, reinforces the idea that demons can operate marvellous works that are, however, illusory.14 Clearly, behind the issue of metamorphosis, the main concern of these texts is to put demons in their place, a place that in no way should impair God’s omnipotence. In his Sermon 45, Antonio da Vercelli explains how ‘Qui ultra predictos divino cultui et christiane fidei etiam adversantur sunt omnes illi qui firmiter credunt quod aliqua mulier, maga vel striga, veraciter convertatur in murilegam seu gattam vel musipulam’ (‘All those oppose divine cult and Christian faith who firmly believe that any woman, sorcerer or witch, can really transform into a mouser, a cat, or a feline’).15 In this passage Antonio refers immediately to two core elements. First, he identifies the women with those who are generally believed to shapeshift, among whom he lists the type of witch called striga. Second, he points out how the animal into which these women are believed to change shape is a (female) cat, and not to be mistaken he mentions three equivalent terms denoting that feline: murilega and musipula (which refer to the nature of a cat as a hunter of mice), and gatta (which refers to her nature as a catcher).16 Just like Busti and Caimi, Antonio, also, feels the need to refresh the indications provided by the canon Episcopi, including an even more thorough reference to cats. This is one instance of the preachers’ use of the tenthcentury canon as a lens to read witch-beliefs originally extraneous to it. Clearly, the varied roots of folkloric and literary origin traceable behind the belief in human metamorphosis, which has been seen as a paradigm of the journeys of the soul, were by that time obscured by a mythology centred on female witches metamorphosing into cats and bewitching people. This is a clear sign of the demonization of those ancient roots (including also the element of flight) and the ensuing picture is one that the friars seek to dispel.17 13 

Decretum, 26, Q. 5, c. 14. See Kors and Peters, Witchcraft in Europe, p. 75. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Ia, Q. 114, a. 4. 15  Antonio da Vercelli, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 45, fol. 328vb. 16  See Du Cange, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, vol. iv, col. 42c and vol. v, cols 552c and 557c. 17  Cf. Ginzburg, Ecstasies, pp. 138–40; Caroline F. Oates, ‘Metamorphosis’, in Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition, ed. by Richard M. Golden, 4 vols (Santa Barbara: ABC Clio, 2006), vol. iii, pp. 754–57. 14 

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As an exemplum of the illusory nature of the belief in metamorphosis, Antonio tells the story of St Macarius of Egypt, the fourth-century monk, disciple of St Anthony in the Egyptian desert. In the version of the tale from which Antonio draws (the Historia lausiaca by Palladius of Galatia) a libidinous Egyptian, who had not been successful in seducing a young married woman, asked the help of a sorcerer to bring about a separation between her and her husband. By means of magical arts, the sorcerer apparently transformed the woman into a mare. The husband, understandably shocked, turned to the monks in the desert and sought out Macarius, who unveiled the trick and blamed the lack of faith of the onlookers.18 Antonio summarizes the story as follows: Nam legitur in legenda sancti Macharii quod quedam puella oculis hominum videbatur in equam conversa. Cui compatientes monaci eidem sancto Machario, cui iam et hoc ipsum Deus notum fecerat, retulerunt, et ut pro eadem instanter oraret rogaverunt. Quibus sanctus Macharius dixit: ‘O filii, vos equi estis, qui equorum habetis oculos: illa enim puella mulier est, nec est transformata in formam eque sicut apparet, sed simpliciter falluntur oculi videntium ex prestigii vanitate’. Et cum orasset Deum ut, sicut erat, monachis [monachus in the original] appareret, statim [stati in the original] viderunt eam habere formam mulieris et non formam eque. Hoc et similia sunt simpliciter delusio quedam demonum. Ex predicta auctoritate, ratione et exemplo, patet qualiter falsissimum est quod mulier aliqua converti possit in gatam vel murilegam. 19 We read in the legend of St Macarius that a certain girl seemed, to human eyes, to be transformed into a mare. The monks, feeling pity for her, turned to St Macarius, to whom God had already explained the facts, and asked that he would pray for her. But St Macarius told them: ‘Oh my sons, you are the horses, because you have horses’ eyes. That girl is a human female, and she has not been transformed into the appearance of a mare, as seems to be the case, but she just appears as such to the eyes of those who are deceived’. And when he (Macarius) had prayed God that she should appear to the monks as she really was, immediately the monks saw that she had the appearance of a woman, not of a mare. This and the like are just deceits of demons. From the above mentioned authority, reasoning, and example, it is clear that it is completely untrue that a woman or any other creature can transform into a cat. 18 

Palladius, Historia lausiaca, De Vitis Patrum liber VIII, c. 20–21, PL 74, cols 1110–11; The Lausiac History, trans. by Robert T. Meyer (New York: Newman, 1965), pp. 56–57. The metamorphosis into a horse has been seen as an ‘efficacious analogy’ for lust in erotic spells. See David Frankfurter, ‘The Perils of Love: Magic and Counter-Magic in Coptic Egypt’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 10. 3–4 (2001), 480–500. 19  Antonio da Vercelli, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 45, fol. 329rb.

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Those who believe in metamorphosis, therefore, according to Antonio, do so because they are lacking in faith and deluded by demons. Michele Carcano too insists on St Macarius’s tale — although he relies on the different version transmitted by Rufinus of Aquileia in the Historia monachorum — not only to state that animal metamorphoses are just ‘illusions provided by demons’, but to exemplify the illusory nature of the overall mythology surrounding the strege.20 The reading of patristic literature served to equip the preachers with the basis for developing their position on the delusory nature of contemporary witch-beliefs, although, from a general point of view, one should bear in mind that human metamorphosis alone would seldom be an issue for pastors and inquisitors. At the beginning of the fifteenth century sceptical views are incorporated in a text such as the Tractatus de superstitionibus of Nikolaus von Jauer (d. 1435), and notable earlier examples include William of Auvergne, who thought that those who believed they became werewolves were deluded by demons.21 Further, the Dominican Giordano da Bergamo (d. after 1490), in his Quaestio de strigis, a private letter written to his fellow friar Agostino Spica da Cortona in 1460, argues strongly against the possibility of metamorphosis, which he explains by the powers of the devil to deceive women, still basing his reasoning on the canon Episcopi.22 An important example of the opposing stance is certainly the Malleus maleficarum, which exhibits a harsher response and points to the actuality of witches’ metamorphoses.23 Much more problematic in the eyes of the friars were beliefs concerning the supposed evil abilities of the strege to harm people, children in particular. The Observant Franciscans would keep the 20  Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 23, fol. 60vab. See Rufinus of Aquileia, Historia monachorum, De Vitis Patrum liber ii, in PL 21; English translation in The Lives of the Desert Fathers: The ‘Historia monachorum in Aegypto’, trans. by Norman Russell (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1981), p. 151. In this version of the tale, the girl is not married and she is a virgin, and her parents are the ones to appeal to Macarius, who takes care of her in a different way compared to Palladius’s version, and without addressing the onlookers moralistically as in the other tale. For a fuller delineation of these aspects: Frankfurter, ‘The Perils of Love’. 21  Nicolaus’s text is in Hansen, Quellen, p. 70. William of Auvergne, De universo creatu­ra­ rum, II. 3, c. 13, in Opera omnia quae hactenus reperiri potuerunt (Paris: Couterot, 1674), vol. i, p. 1043. See further Cameron, Enchanted Europe, pp. 111–12. 22  Hansen, Quellen, pp.  195–200: 196–97. Cf. Tomaso Ghigliazza, ‘Fra Giordano da Bergamo e il problema delle streghe’, La Rivista di Bergamo, 9 (1982), 17–25; Bonomo, Caccia alle streghe, pp. 359–60. 23  The Hammer of Witches: A Complete Translation of the Malleus Maleficarum, ed. and trans. by Christopher S. Mackay (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 2009), I, Q. 10 (pp. 201–10); II, Q. 2, c. 8 (pp. 330–34).

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same stance even in the face of these accusations, considering them alongside the element at the core of this mythology, which is the story of the train of women travelling in the dead of night towards the mysterious ludus with the lunar goddess. To this now I turn.

Travelling to the Ludus Dianae on an Anointed Stick Just as in the case of metamorphosis, in the eyes of Busti the belief of those who report that they ‘go to the ludus with Diana’ is similarly unreal: Item, si quis credat quasdam mulieres seu homines ad ludum cum Diana nocturnis temporibus ire et deferri super bacculum [sic] unctum seu super quasdam bestias, ac multa terrarum spacia transire. Hec enim omnia falsa sunt et talia fantasmata a maligno spiritu mentibus infidelium irrogantur ut habetur plene in c. Episcopi 26 q. 5.24 Again, if someone believes that certain women or men go to the ludus with Diana during the night, being carried on a greased stick or on certain animals, and passing through the space of many lands: all those things are false and illusions of that kind are suggested by the devil to the minds of those who lack faith, as is fully explained in canon Episcopi 26. q. 5.

Busti refers here to the famous tradition crystallized in the canon Episcopi concerning the so-called ludus Dianae. The myth of the nocturnal rides of Diana and her followers is clearly employed by Busti and his fellow friars when they think of the sabbath. We know how the term ludus was diffused in Northern Italy as a synonym for ‘synagogue’ that was employed in the francophone side of the Alps to indicate the witches’ assemblies.25 As is clear from a comparison between Busti’s text and the canon Episcopi in the case of the ludus Dianae also elements related to witch-beliefs that were originally extraneous to the old canon are included in the context of the mythology concerning the ludus. The canon Episcopi depicts the nocturnal event as a ride performed only by women: Illud etiam non est omittendum, quod quaedam sceleratae mulieres retro post satha­nam conuersae, daemonum illusionibus et phantasmatibus seductae, credunt se et profitentur cum Diana nocturnis horis dea paganorum, uel cum Herodiade, et innumera multitudine mulierum equitare super quasdam bestias, et multa ter24 

Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 129rb. 25  Cf. Ostorero, Le diable au sabbat, pp. 682–83.

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rarum spacia intempestae noctis silentio pertransire, eiusque iussionibus obedire uelut dominae, et certis noctibus euocari ad eius servicium. […] Non a diuino sed a maligno spiritu talia phantasmata mentibus infidelium irrogari.26 It is also not to be omitted that some wicked women, who have given themselves back to Satan and been seduced by the illusions and phantasms of demons, believe themselves and profess that, in the hours of night, they ride upon certain beasts with Diana, the goddess of the pagans, or with Herodias, and an innumerable multitude of women, and in the silence of the dead of night traverse great spaces of earth, and obey her commands as of their lady, and are summoned to her service on certain nights. […] Such phantasms are imposed on the minds of infidels not by the divine but by the malignant spirit.

The canon Episcopi mentions wicked women riding animals at night, following Diana or Herodias. Busti, although following almost literally the text, does not mention Herodias along with Diana, and adds that the participants at the imaginary ride are both women and men. Moreover, he says that those people are believed to go to the ludus not simply by riding ‘certain beasts’, but also on anointed poles. The pattern centred on the ludus Dianae is thus enlarged to include details that are part of fifteenth-century beliefs about witchcraft. Michele Carcano shows an even more direct reference to witch-belief: De observatione illusionum qua observatione quedam mulieres decipiuntur et illuduntur que asserunt se cum Diana vel Herodiade nocturno tempore equitare, et se in alias creaturas transformare, que ideo vulgariter dicuntur strege. Nam huiusmodi valde detestantur per Concilium Aquilianum 26 [56 in the original] q. 5 c. Episcopi eorum, ubi dicitur ‘Quedam scelerate mulieres […]’.27 As to the observance of illusions, there is the observance of certain women who are misled and deceived and say that they go riding at night with Diana or Herodias, and that they transform themselves into other creatures that are popularly called strege. This is strongly opposed by the Council of Aquileia (through) 26, q. 5 of the canon Episcopi, where is said ‘These wicked women […]’.

Relying on Gratian, the Milanese preacher mentions both the traditional names of the nocturnal goddess, Diana and Herodias, as well as that those participating in the ride are women. Although the preacher does not mention the greased 26  Decretum Gratiani, II, C. 26, q. 5, c. 12, ed. by Friedberg, vol. i, col. 1030. See also Hansen, Quellen, pp. 38–39. I have used the translation of Regino of Prüm’s canon Episcopi in Kors and Peters, Witchcraft in Europe, p. 62, integrating in it the few changes made by Gratian. 27  Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 23, fol. 60va.

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stick, he tellingly connects night rides and metamorphosis to the Italian witchcraft tradition centred on the strege. What follows in Carcano’s text is the usual reference to the canon Episcopi as an auctoritas derived from the Council of Ancyra. Given the context, Carcano’s expression ‘per Concilium Aquilianum’ (‘through the Council of Aquileia’) may be a mistaken form for ‘Ancyranum’: speaking of the mulieres who go at night with Diana, even Thomas Aquinas had referred to that council (‘in Concilio Aquilejense’), which, however, made no statement on the matter.28 Like Carcano, the Dominican Antonino da Firenze, in his Summa theologica, had mentioned under illusions women who believe they go riding at night with Diana or Herodias, or who believe they transform themselves into other creatures; besides calling them strege he also uses the name ianuatice, referring to the canon Episcopi as an auctoritas from the Council of Aquileia to affirm that ‘those things are done through diabolic illusion’.29 The term ianuatica, employed also by Giovanni da Capestrano who calls the witches janas, is not easy to explain.30 The origin of the term, which was spread in central Italy, especially in the area of Benevento, where an entire folkloric tradition concerns the janare, can probably be traced to the women taking part in the entourage of Diana (thus as a distortion from Dianaticae or Dianas), or it might derive from ianua (door) in reference to their supposed ability to enter people’s houses through closed doors.31 28 

Thomas Aquinas, Quaestio unica de spiritualibus creaturis, art. 2 ad 14, in Quaestiones disputatae, 2 vols (Parma: Pietro Fiaccadori, 1856–59), vol. i, p. 433, quoted in Lea, Materials toward a History of Witchcraft, ed. by Howland, vol. i, p. 187. On the spelling of Ancyritanus cf. Ecclesiae occidentalis monumenta iuris antiquissima canonum et conciliorum graecorum interpretationes latinae, ed. by Cuthbert Hamilton Turner, 2 vols in 6 parts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1899–1930), vol. ii, pp. ix–x. 29  Antonino da Firenze, Summa theologica, II, col. 1145: ‘De quibusdam aliis super­stitioni­ bus, et primo de mulieribus credentibus se cum Diana vel Herodiade nocturnis horis aequitare, vel se in alias creaturas transformari, ut dicitur de his, quae vulgariter dicuntur strigae vel ianuaticae. Dicit Concilium Aquil[ianum] quod haec fiunt illusione diabolica.’ 30  Giovanni da Capestrano, Tractatus de confessione, Capestrano, Convento dei Frati Minori, MS 17, fol. 304v. 31  Carlo Ginzburg believes that Antonino’s ianuaticae is a mistaken form for ianaticae (possibly derived from Diana), while Marina Montesano claims that ianuaticae is a correct form that Antonino wrongly draws from Janus. See Ginzburg, Ecstasies, pp. 103–05 and 117 note 64; Marina Montesano, ‘Preaching, Magic, and Witchcraft: A Feedback Effect?’, in From Words to Deeds: The Effectiveness of Preaching in the Late Middle Ages, ed. by Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), pp. 153–67 (pp. 160–61); Montesano, ‘Supra acqua et

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Besides these terminological differences, the general closeness between Carcano and Antonino is of interest. It shows that the sceptical approach to witch-beliefs of Antonino, ‘a theologian in practice’ — as Peter Howard has defined him — and one of the most popular Italian Dominican pastoral authorities of the first half of the fifteenth century, was evidently appealing.32 After all, as we have seen, the model for classifying superstition elaborated by Antonino gave to the Franciscans a pattern to be developed. We can safely assume that the late fifteenth-century Milanese Observant Franciscans revived an earlier Dominican moderate and pastoral stance concerning witch-belief. On that basis they built their own pastoral approach. Antonino da Firenze, and also the scepticism concerning the ludus in Johannes Nider’s Formicarius, show an approach that was in the first half of the fifteenth century still present in the ranks of the later, otherwise less moderate, Dominicans. A sceptical line of reasoning concerning witch-beliefs was being developed throughout the fifteenth century. Raffaele da Pornassio with his De arte magica (1450) represents the rare example of a Dominican inquisitor supporting the dreamlike view of these beliefs based on the canon Episcopi, in the same years in which Antonino composed the Summa. The General Master of the Hermits of Saint Augustine, Guglielmo Becchi, endorses the same view in his De potestate spirituum (1465/70); so does Nicholas of Cusa (d. 1464) speaking of two old women from Val di Fassa; in the Quaestio de strigis by Giordano da Bergamo the critique of metamorphosis is part of a more generally sceptical approach that, however, the friar failed to pursue further.33 Lay authors also expressed themselves on these matters. Mariano Sozzini, the Sienese jurist contemporary with Bernardino da Siena, advances doubts about beliefs in metamorphosis and flight in his De sortibus (or De sortilegiis).34 In 1489, the Swiss lawyer supra ad vento’, p. 108 and note 46; Sabina Magliocco, ‘Witchcraft, Healing, and Vernacular Magic in Italy’, in Witchcraft Continued: Popular Magic in Modern Europe, ed. by Willem de Blécourt and Owen Davies (Manchester: Manchester Uni­ver­sity Press, 2004), pp. 151–73 (p. 158). 32  Howard, Beyond the Written Word, p. vii. 33  See Ostorero, Le diable au sabbat, pp. 685–87; Ginzburg, Ecstasies, pp. 94–96 and 129–30; Fabio Troncarelli, Le streghe (Rome: Newton Compton, 1983), pp. 55–64; Bonomo, Caccia alle streghe, pp. 359–63; Hans Peter Broedel, ‘Fifteenth Century Witch Beliefs’, in The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America, ed. by Brian Levack (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, 2013), pp. 32–49. 34  Bonomo, Caccia alle streghe, pp. 264–65; Mormando, The Preacher’s Demons, p. 265 note 52.

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Ulrich Molitor condemned both the sabbath and animal metamorphosis as impossible in his De lamiis et pythonicis mulieribus, although he did not deny that supposed witches had to suffer the death penalty due to their devotion to the devil.35 At the same time, this moderate stance would be seriously compromised by the specialized inquiry of some French Dominicans after the first half of the century. The belief that the powers of witches were real began to advance through the criticism of the suitability of the canon Episcopi to cover the phenomenon of those who were considered ‘modern’ witches, different from those described in the canon. Thus, the Tractatus contra demonum invocatores composed by Jean Vineti in the first years of the 1450s, the Flagellum hereticorum fascinariorum, published in 1458 by Nicolas Jacquier, and the Flagellum maleficorum, published by Pierre Mamoris between 1460 and 1462, all represent these strong efforts to demolish the sceptical building before the high point in this direction represented by the Malleus maleficarum.36 Returning to the ways in which the Milanese preachers faced the issue of the actuality of the ludus, Busti’s mention of the use of anointed poles employed to go to the ludus Dianae deserves particular attention. The baculus unctus is very similar to the modern cliché of the broomstick traditionally associated with the image of the witch. The baculus seems to be an element widespread among the friars of St Angelo’s although not always mentioned by all the authors. Besides Busti, Bartolomeo Caimi links the baculus with the demonically illusory ludus Dianae in his Interrogatorium, which is possibly Busti’s more immediate source concerning that element, especially if the general reliance of the preacher on the confessional material of his fellow friar is considered.37 The wooden stick 35 

‘Tales scelerate mulieres, que a Deo largissimo apostatarunt et dyabolo sese dedicarunt, morte plecti debent’: Hansen, Quellen, p. 246. 36  See Ostorero, Le diable au sabbat, pp.  105–15, 149–53, 177, 187, and 619–47; Stephens, Demon Lovers, pp. 134–36; Matteo Duni, ‘I dubbi sulle streghe’, in I vincoli della natura: Magia e stregoneria nel Rinascimento, ed. by Germana Ernst and Guido Giglioni (Rome: Carocci, 2012), pp. 203–22 (pp. 204–08); Duni, Under the Devil’s Spell, pp. 20–22; Matthew Champion, ‘Crushing the Canon: Nicolas Jacquier’s Reponse to the Canon Episcopi in the Flagellum Haereticorum Fascinariorum’, Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft, 6 (2011), 183–211; Cameron, Enchanted Europe, pp. 132–34; Bailey, Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies, pp. 197–203 and 205–06; and Martine Ostorero, ‘Vinet, Jean’, in Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition, ed. by Richard M. Golden, 4 vols (Santa Barbara: ABC Clio, 2006), vol. iv, pp. 1169–70. 37  Caimi, Interrogatorium sive confessionale, xxxiiiiv: ‘Si credit quasdam mulieres ad ludum cum Diana vel Herodiade et in multitudine mulierum nocturnis horis ire vel deferri super baculum unctum seu super quasdam bestias et multa terrarum spacia pertransire et huiusmodi.

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Figure 5. ‘Witches flying on broom­ sticks’, from Martin Le Franc, Le Champion des dames, MS Fr 12476, fol. 105v (1451): miniature. © Biblio­thèque nationale de France.

was not totally absent from the earlier tradition of the Observance. Giacomo della Marca, for instance, inserts a sexually-minded characterization of some vetulae from Verona, who according to him, ‘Ut capiant virum in nocte vadunt scapigliate et nude, vel eque super lignum’ (‘In order to catch men, go about at night with their hair let down and naked, or riding a piece of wood’).38 Behind Nam hec omnia erronea sunt et omnino falsa et talia fantasmata a maligno spiritu mentibus infidelium irrogantur 26. Q. 5. Episcopi ubi de hoc plene.’ 38  Giacomo della Marca, Sermones dominicales, Sermon 68, ed. by Lioi, vol. ii, p. 481.

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the mention of the baculus and its description as unctus, one can see reference to a precise background of beliefs. Ulrich Molitor also spoke of women who were believed ‘Super baculum unctum vel super lupum seu aliud animal equitare’ (‘to ride on a greased stick, or on a wolf or any other animal’).39 Molitor’s tract De Lamiis was also the first printed text in which the image of witches flying on a stick was represented.40 Giordano da Bergamo mentioned flight on the anointed stick among the witches’ beliefs, highlighting that particular consideration was attributed to the use of ointments that were believed to give witches the ability to fly. Giordano considered all this as mere superstition, although he assigned to the devil the power to transport the witches with God’s assent.41 The origin of the stereotype centred on the use of poles goes back to the first half of the fifteenth century and to the Western Alpine region, where there were attempts by the inquisitors to find proof of the witches’ transvection to the sabbath through the identification of their means of transport. From the trials held in that region we also gain the earliest attestations of flights on sticks, such as the case of Pierre Vallin, tried in 1438 in the Dauphiné.42 Mentions of sticks and ointments are also shared by some of the earliest texts dealing with witchcraft. On this cf. Montesano, ‘Supra acqua et supra ad vento’, p. 130 and note 122; Michael Bailey, Historical Dictionary of Witchcraft (Lanham: Scarecrow, 2003), p. 23. In his Summa pacifica the Observant Franciscan Pacifico da Novara (d. 1470), equally sceptical about the metamorphosis of women into cats, about that of men into wolves, and about the ludus with Herodiana and Zobiana, refers to the greased pole as a means of transport for the witches: Lea, Materials toward a History of Witchcraft, ed. by Howland, vol. i, p. 192. 39  Hansen, Quellen, p. 245. 40  Duni, Under the Devil’s Spell, p. 165. 41  ‘Vulgares communiter tenent, immo et ipse strige fatentur, quod certis diebus vel noctibus certa unctione inungunt baculum quendam et equitant super eum et statim deferuntur ad loca a demone deputata. […] Non enim per huiusmodi unctiones sive per baculos deferri possunt, sed totum hoc fit virtute demonis deportantis illas’ (Hansen, Quellen, p. 199). On these aspects, see Ghigliazza, ‘Fra Giordano da Bergamo e il problema delle streghe’, pp. 21–22. 42  Vallin ‘confessed’ that he went to the synagogue ‘in unum bacculum [sic] ministerio dicti dyaboli equitando’ (Hansen, Quellen, p. 460). See Ostorero, ‘Folâtrer avec le démons’, pp. 26–27, 88, and 224; Ostorero, Le diable au sabbat, pp. 673–76; and Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, ‘La genesi del sabba. Intorno all’edizione dei testi più antichi’, in Incanti e sortilegi: Le streghe nella storia e nel cinema, ed. by Laura Caretti and Dinora Corsi (Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 2002), pp. 15–29. For an historiographical orientation, see Kathrin Utz Tremp, ‘Witches, Brooms and Magic Ointments. Twenty Years of Witchcraft Research at the Uni­ver­sity of Lausanne (1989–2009)’, Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft, 5 (2010), 173–87.

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While Hans Fründ spoke of stools used by witches to go visiting wine cellars from one place to the other, Claude Tholosan illustrated how witches are deceived in dreams, believing that they corporally go to the synagoga (the sabbath) through sticks anointed with the grease of a child and the urine of the devil, with many others travelling on sticks and beasts.43 Although Tholosan mentions the canon Episcopi and describes the nature of night flight as illusion, he agrees with the death penalty for witches. The anonymous Errores Gazariorum, despite the subtitle (illorum qui scopam vel baculum equitare probantur), is rather cautious on the means of transport used by witches. The Errores mentions a greased stick only in one manuscript, and as Martine Ostorero has pointed out, the devil’s delivery of stick and ointment to the initiate seems to be rather the description of a rite for entering the sect than a suggestion of actual flight.44 Yet this description is precious. One of the earliest representations of women flying on brooms or besoms is also connected to these texts. The miniature in the Parisian manuscript of Martin Le Franc’s Le Champion des Dames, whose marginal explanation refers to the Vaudoises, clearly attests to the moment of merging of heretical and witchcraft-related stereotypes, roughly in the period between the second half of the 1430s and 1440–42 (Figure 5).45 When we consider an element such as flying on anointed sticks in the Milanese Franciscan sources, we must regard it as a clear sign of the merging of two originally independent traditions: the old belief in rides (not flights) of Diana with her followers as referred to by the canon Episcopi, and the tradition concerning flying witches constructed by the inquisitors during the first dec43  Pierrette Paravy and Martine Ostorero, ‘Claude Tholosan Ut Magorum et maleficorum errores […]’, p. 368: ‘Item illudi eos in sompniis, sic quod credunt ire corporaliter de nocte […] et asserunt se ire longe aliqui super virga uncta sagimine pueri et pulvere subscripto cum mictu dyaboli, et nonnulli super bestiis et scobis, tenentes synagogam […].’ Cf. Ostorero, Le diable au sabbat, pp. 601, 676. 44  Errores Gazariorum, ed. by Utz Tremp and Ostorero, pp. 280 and 321–23: ‘Dyabolus [suus] presidens dat sibi unam pixidem unguento plenam et baculum, cum quibus debet seductus ire ad synagogam, docetque eum quomodo et qualiter debet baculum inungere.’ Ostorero, Le diable au sabbat, pp. 602 and 676. 45  See Martine Ostorero and Jean-Claude Schmitt, ‘Le balai des sorcières: Note sur une illustration marginale du manuscrit Paris, BNF, fr. 1247, f. 105v’, in L’imaginaire du sabbat: Edition critique des textes les plus anciens (1430 c.–1440 c.), ed. by Martine Ostorero, Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, and Kathrin Utz Tremp (Lausanne: Cahiers Lausannois d’ Histoire Médi­ évale, 1999), pp. 501–08; and Ostorero, Le diable au sabbat, pp. 614–17 and 676–77. See also Behringer, ‘How Waldensians became Witches’, pp. 160–63; and Tamar Herzig, ‘Flies, Heretics, and the Gendering of Witchcraft’, Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft, 5 (2010), 51–80 (pp. 61–62).

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ades of the fifteenth century. For this reason, the mention of the baculus unctus in the context of the canon Episcopi by Busti and Caimi linking two different traditions, highlights the intention of the preachers to affirm the lack of factual basis for witch-belief. The trials held in Val d’Aoste by Franciscan inquisitors from 1449 might indeed constitute an immediate context for the Milanese friars’ reference to the baculus stereotype. In those trials, as in many others, the inquisitors attempted to introduce into the charges elements that appeared sometimes extraneous to the beliefs of the accused ones, amongst them, the preparation of ointments with which the accused would grease brooms and fly to the sabbath. Thus, Johanna de Caboreto, tried in 1449, initially refused to confess that she owned a broom, but in the course of the trial she changed her mind and accused another woman of having provided her with a broom and a saddlebag, items that, however, as has been noted, look more like the apparel of a pilgrim than of a witch.46 Overall, the charges of using broomsticks in Val d’Aoste appear quite variable, with the inquisitors only partially managing to obtain admissions on their use, but sometimes even recording descriptions of those objects. The charge of using brooms was perhaps introduced by the inquisitors on the basis of the written tradition they relied on, but in no case do poles seem to represent the exclusive or even the main means of transport employed by suspected witches. This impression is probably confirmed by testimonies from the nearby region of the Swiss and French Alps, where it is never specified that the baculus was employed for flying in the air: it was, rather, the means for obtaining an immediate displacement of the body.47 Probably in the minds of inquisitors and demonologists the wooden stick was the most representative means to account for the quick displacement of witches from one place to the other as well as for the spread of the effects of maleficia among distant regions. More details concerning the baculus and its characterization as unctus come from some of the trials held in Northern Italy by Dominican inquisitors, between the end of the fifteenth century and the first two decades of the following century. The grease employed could possibly refer to the use of herbs, but it would also suggest the more worrying use of fat, which according to the tradition could have been obtained from the boiled flesh of babies.48 Such was 46 

Bertolin and Gerbore, La stregoneria nella Valle d’Aosta medievale, pp. 240–43. Cf. Ostorero, Le diable au sabbat, p. 675. 48  As the Dominican Girolamo Visconti points out. See Astrid Estuardo Flaction, ‘Girolamo Visconti, un témoin du débat sur la réalité de la sorcellerie au xve siècle en Italie du 47 

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the case of Caterina Borrella, a supposed masca tried in 1495 at Gambasca, in South-West Piedmont. She confessed to having exhumed the corpse of a child whom she and her companions had murdered the previous night, and to having made ointments from its fat in order to grease their sticks.49 In the trials of Venegono Superiore, in the Duchy of Milan, the same charges centred on the use of ointment and poles were repeated through descriptions that can be compared already with those to be found in the earlier anti-witchcraft texts. Caterina Fornasari confessed that her fellow witch Elisabetta Oleari owned some ointment to grease the sticks on which they both then flew as fast as wind, after placing the brooms between their legs.50 In Val Camonica, Benvegnuda nicknamed Pincinella told the inquisitor that the witches used to grease their sticks in order to fly fast, although in her tale the sticks then turned into goats or horses that carried the participants on their backs.51 Neither Busti nor Caimi linger over the nature of the ointment they mention. Yet the cultural and geographical contiguity of these testimonies certainly point to a circulation of stereotypes between written traditions and their practical application on the ground. The relevant point is that, while the inquisitors — whether they were Franciscans in Val d’Aoste or Dominicans in other regions of Northern Italy — widely applied these elements as charges in trials, the Milanese preachers were firm in regarding them as mere fabrication.

In the Train of the Lady of the Game Thus, either riding certain beasts or on their greased sticks, the strege go to the ludus with Diana, or more precisely, according to the preachers, they believe they do so. Among the several names by which the nocturnal goddess presiding over the ludus was known, the Milanese friars consistently use either just Diana (Busti), or both Diana and Herodias (Carcano, Caimi), or Diana and Nord’, in Chasses aux sorcières et démonologie: Entre discours et pratiques (xive–xviie siècles), ed. by Martine Ostorero, Georg Modestin, and Kathrin Utz Tremp (Florence: SISMEL, 2010), pp. 389–403 (pp. 393–94). 49  Lucea talvolta la luna, ed. by Comba and Nicolini, p. 154: ‘Reservantes pinguetudinem pro unctura baculorum suorum.’ 50  Streghe e roghi nel Ducato di Milano, ed. by Marcaccioli Castiglioni, p. 90: ‘Elixabet habebat pixidem, sive bussulam, in qua erat unguentum quo unguento ungebant quasdam virgas, quas postea, equitantes positas intra tibias ad sugestionem sodalium, celeriter tamquam ventus incedebant.’ Cf. Errores Gazariorum in Hansen, Quellen, p. 413. 51  Marino Sanudo, I Diarii (Venice: Visentini, 1899), XXV–XXVI, p. 36.

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Herodiana (Antonio da Vercelli). Herodiana was clearly a merging of Diana and Herodias. Herodias, the Biblical figure, according to legend doomed to wander for her part in the beheading of St John the Baptist, appears already in a passage from the Bishop of Verona, Raterius of Liege (890–974), which refers to the mythology of the canon Episcopi.52 Following Gratian and especially the Italian traditions, the friars of St Angelo’s do not mention the Northern German fertility goddess Holda — nor her Southern German counterpart Perchta — who was linked to the practice of devotion, protection, and goodness as well as to the myth of the Furious Horde or the Wild Hunt, the company of the dead going about at night. Burchard of Worms had mentioned Holda in his Decretum in Book 19 (the manual for confessors called Corrector sive medicus) when speaking of ‘Cum daemonum turba in similitudinem mulierum transformatam, quam vulgaris stultitia Holdam vocat’ (‘the train of demons transformed into the appearance of women, which the popular foolishness calls Holda’).53 The Dominican Johannes Herolt, perhaps following Burchard’s suggestion, links Holda to the train of Diana reported by the canon Episcopi. In his Sermon 41 De vigintiquattuor generibus hominum qui falsificant fidem (on the twenty-four types of people who falsify faith), in the Sermones discipuli, Herolt states that ‘Deciminoni sunt qui credunt quod Diana cum exercitu suo de nocte ambulet per multa spatia’ (‘The nineteenth [in this list] are those who believe that Diana goes about at night with her army through great distances’).54 The preacher’s mentioning of Diana’s army seems to indicate the merging of two originally independent beliefs of the type of the Furious Horde and the train of Diana. The fact that in a few editions of Herolt’s sermon Diana is also called Unholde constitutes an additional proof of the merging of the two mythologies. Unholda is the demonized version of Holda, as indicated by Johannes Nider, and the term is considered in the fifteenth century to be a synonym for ‘witch’, representing nocturnal malevolent beings opposed to the benevolent ones, such as indeed Holda and Perchta.55 52 

Raterius, Praeloquiorum libri, I. 10, PL 136, col. 157. On Herodias, see Bonomo, Caccia alle streghe, pp. 19 and 28–29; Lasson, Superstitions médiévales, pp. 275–76. 53  Burchard, Decretum, l. xix, PL 140, col. 962. Burchard mentions Diana and Herodias in Decretum, l. x, PL 140, cols 831–32, and only Diana in Decretum, l. xix, PL 140, col. 963. On Holda: Ostorero, Le diable au sabbat, p. 586; Russell, Witchcraft in the Middle Ages, pp. 49, 81; Gurevich, Medieval Popular Culture: Problems of Belief and Perception, pp. 83–84. 54  Herolt, Sermones discipuli, Sermon 41, fol. hiiiira. 55  On Herolt’s associating Diana with other German deities and the Wild Hunt, see Carlo

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A reference to the varied and complex world of nocturnal shadows as well as to a background of folkloric traditions is implied by Antonio da Vercelli, when in his numbered list he points out that Vigesiminoni qui adversantur divino cultui et christiane fidei sunt omnes illi qui firmiter credunt quod umbrarii de nocte vadant cum Diana vel Herodiana que et vulgariter vocatur la dona del zogo, et quod comedant simul cum illa, bibant et corizent etc. huiusmodi faciant, quodutique falsissimum est et demonum illusio.56 The twenty-ninth to oppose divine cult and Christian faith are all those who firmly believe that at night umbrarii go with Diana or Herodiana, who is commonly called the Lady of the Game, and that they eat with her, drink, dance and do other things of the like, which however is totally false and is the illusion of demons.

The feminine figure leading the ludus is identified with Diana or Herodiana, but the way Antonio names her, ‘la dona del zogo’, refers to a pattern that connects the image of a ludus presided over by a woman with the idea of bounty: a pattern that emerges in Northern Italy and discloses the folkloric backgrounds of the sabbath, which Antonio — like his fellow friars — wants to prove an illusion.57 Diana is a multiform goddess identified with the night, the moon, and the hunt, who was particularly suitable as the bearer of nocturnal beliefs and naturally disposed to cover much older and complex figures through a process of interpretatio romana.58 In the Northern Italian trials there is a constant presGinzburg, The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, trans. by John and Anne Tedeschi (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Uni­ver­sity Press, 1992), p. 40; Ginzburg, Ecstasies, pp. 101 and 114 note 40; and Ginzburg, Il filo e le tracce, pp. 278–79. On Unholda, see Chène, ed., ‘Jean Nider, Formicarius, in L’imaginaire du sabbat, p. 212; Wolfgang Behringer, Chonrad Stoeckhlin und die Nachtschar: Eine Geschichte aus der frühen Neuzeit (Munich: Piper, 1994), pp. 56–57 and 104–05; and Lasson, Superstitions médiévales, pp. 295–96. 56  Antonio da Vercelli, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 44, fol. 324ra. There is a clear connection with the ‘Herodianiste’ mentioned by Giacomo della Marca, according to whom: ‘Videntur in nocte cum multis ad comedendum et bibendum et coriçandum cum Herodina [sic].’ (Giacomo della Marca, Sermones dominicales, Sermon 27, ed. by Lioi, vol. i, p. 431). 57  On the Northern Italian pattern, see Kieckhefer, ‘Mythologies of Witchcraft’, pp. 96–98; Kieckhefer, ‘The First Wave of Trials’, pp. 171–72. On the diabolization of the ludus or ‘zogo’ into the sabbath in the inquisitorial tradition, see Dinora Corsi, Diaboliche maledette e disperate: Le donne nei preocessi per stregoneria (secoli xiv–xvi) (Florence: Firenze Uni­ver­sity Press, 2013), pp. 99–106. 58  Eliade noted how among the Romanians the name of the goddess Diana became Zîna, which stems from dziana meaning fairy, and the zîne, the fairies, are the followers of the

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sure from the inquisitors to merge ‘la dona del zogo’ with Diana, and thus to diabolize her. In Milan, between 1385 and 1390, ‘Madona Horiente’ revered by Sibillia and Pierina, was transformed progressively into a devilish Diana from her previously harmless, clearly folkloric character as Domina ludi who led troops of good women into well-kept, tidy houses that she blessed, and who, after feasting with her company on oxen, resuscitated them from their bones.59 The paradigm of the change in the inquisitors’ attitude concerning participation in the ludus is linguistically exemplified by the shift from the verb credidisti, addressed to Sibillia in 1385, to fuisti, by which she is charged five years later when she is condemned to the stake with Pierina, because she was believed to have really participated in a ludus that was by then demonized.60 Later, in Val Camonica between 1518 and 1521, as attested by the Venetian Diarii of Marino Sanudo, Benvegnuda confessed to the Dominican inquisitor Lorenzo Maggi that during the ludus (‘zuogo’) on the bank of the Mella River, there was a nice lady dressed in black velvet whom the participants greeted by saying: ‘Welcome among us, Madonna’. The difference between Benvegnuda’s madonna and that of Sibillia and Pierina was that the former used to hurl a cross to the ground, after which all the participants performed irreverent acts, while she gave orders to do as many evil deeds as possible.61 The shift from folklore to diabolic characterization in these later trials is complete.

goddess, characterized by an ambivalent character, both positive — due to their beauty — and negative — due to their cruelty. This linguistic development in a peripheral region might say something about the multifacetedness of the character. See Mircea Eliade, ‘Some Observations on European Witchcraft’, in Occultism, Witchcraft and Cultural Fashions: Essays in Comparative Religions (Chicago: Uni­ver­sity of Chicago Press, 1976), pp. 69–92 (p. 80). On Diana, see Ginzburg, Ecstasies; Bonomo, Caccia alle streghe, p. 27; and Peter Maxwell-Stuart, ‘Diana (Artemis)’, in Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition, ed. by Richard M. Golden, 4 vols (Santa Barbara: ABC Clio, 2006), vol. i, pp. 279–80. 59  See Ettore Verga, ‘Intorno a due inediti documenti di stregheria milanese del secolo xiv’, Rendiconti del Regio Istituto Storico Lombardo di Scienze e Lettere, 32 (1899), 165–88 (p. 181 ff ); Luisa Muraro, La Signora del gioco: La caccia alle streghe interpretata dalle sue vittime (Milan: La Tartaruga, 2006), pp. 198–209; 240–45; Ginzburg, Ecstasies, pp. 92–93; and Maurizio Bertolotti, ‘The Ox’s Bones and the Ox’s Hide: A Popular Myth, Part Hagiography and Part Witchcraft’, in Microhistory and the Lost Peoples of Europe, ed. by Edward Muir and Guido Ruggiero (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Uni­ver­sity Press, 1991), pp. 42–70. 60  Cf. Muraro, La signora del gioco, pp. 191–93. 61  Sanudo, I Diarii, XXV–XXVI, p. 33. On witchcraft in Val Camonica, see Stephen Bowd, ‘“Honeyed Flies” and “Sugared Rats”: Witchcraft, Heresy, and Superstition in the Bresciano,

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Well tested techniques of interrogation or types of coercion led the accused to say what the inquisitors needed to hear. Interrogations could suggest equivocal elements to the accused, whose answers could easily be turned into a negative or diabolic meaning. This technique has been highlighted in the later case of Chiara Signorini, tried in Modena between 1518 and 1519.62 Physical coercion, or even just the possibility of its occurrence, could easily have the desired effect. Thus, at a certain point in the acts of Gambasca it is said that the only way through which the inquisitor could hope to obtain the truth from Caterina Bonivarda was by torturing her.63 Similarly, at Venegono, Caterina Fornasari decided ‘to tell the truth’ and to accuse others only after she had been hoisted on a rope.64 There was evidently a truth the accused were urged to relate fully, a truth inquisitors already knew.65 In acknowledging that Diana and the Lady of the Game are the same figure, Antonio da Vercelli does not immediately identify the participants with the mulieres one would expect to find in a text aligned to the canon Episcopi, nor does he speak here of strege, but he calls those who follow the Lady of the Game umbrarii. The preacher clearly merges a different folkloric tradition with that of the ludus Dianae. Umbrarii seems to refer to an elusive nocturnal setting of souls, demonic or dream-like spirits, who may occasionally take human appearance to deceive people.66 Such a characterization would be confirmed by the eighth-century handbook of penance attributed to Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury. In the interrogation on the First Commandment to be addressed to the penitent, Theodore’s handbook asks ‘Si credit, quod umbratici vadant, et comedant: 1454–1535’, in The Religion of Fools? Superstition Past and Present, ed. by Stephen Anthony Smith and Alan Knight (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, 2008), pp. 134–56. 62  Carlo Ginzburg, ‘Witchcraft and Popular Piety: Notes on a Modenese Trial of 1519’, in Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method, trans. by John Tedeschi and Anne C. Tedeschi (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Uni­ver­sity Press, 1989), pp. 8–11. 63  Lucea talvolta la luna, ed. by Comba and Nicolini, p. 111: ‘Et prefatus reverendus dominus inquisitor […] viso quod veritas de contentis in eius processus et sibi abnotis aliter quod per viam torture ab ea non speratur haberi.’ 64  Streghe e roghi nel Ducato di Milano, ed. by Marcaccioli Castiglioni, pp. 96–98: ‘[Caterina Fornasari] semper dixit nichil aliud scire. Et ideo [Dominus inquisitor] iussit ligari ad torturam […], iussit alciari [...]; [Caterina] statim dixit et petijt remitti que diceret veritatem. Et illa […], remissa, dixit que fuit seducta a dicta Elixabet.’ 65  Lucea talvolta la luna, ed. by Comba and Nicolini, p. 111: ‘[…] Attenta eius obstinatione in negando etiam ea que notoria et manifesta sunt.’ 66  See ‘Umbrae’, in Du Cange, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, vol. viii, col. 365b.

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propter quod daemones ita homines decipient, quod se transfigurent in hominum figuras’ (‘Whether [the penitent] believes that the umbratici travel and eat: because demons deceive people by transforming themselves into human forms’).67 Antonio’s stressing that umbrarii are believed to engage with their Lady in eating, drinking and dancing, reinforces the idea of their connection with a harmless background of old folkloric beliefs in nocturnal beings wandering about at night and bringing wealth to those who deserved it. The aim of these fairy-like figures was essentially that of assuring prosperity to the houses they visited, while enjoying the food and the wine therein. It is a seemingly widespread mythology that has probably its most interesting characterization in the Sicilian donni di fuora, the ‘ladies from outside’, good women differing from the malevolent witches, mediating between people and fairies with the same name, who besides transforming themselves into animals, flew, engaged in delightful nocturnal meetings and brought prosperity, lacking anything diabolic or negative until the arrival of Spanish inquisition in 1579.68 The general context of this belief refers to the ambivalent or even positive dominae nocturnae led by a feminine figure whom William of Auvergne calls Abundia and Satia, and the Roman de la Rose Dame Abonde, with a clear reference to the prosperity and abundance they bring. Stephen of Bourbon and Vincent of Beauvais related for the first time these ‘good women’ or ‘good things’ (bonae res) to Diana and Herodias and to the sceleratae mulieres disapproved by the canon Episcopi, while Giacomo da Varazze speaks of demons taking their shapes, thus originating the demonization of these folkloric characters.69 67 

Theodori archiepiscopi Cantuariensis poenitentiale, ed. by Jacques Petit(Paris: Dezallier, 1679), p. 349. 68  Giuseppe Pitrè, Usi, costumi, credenze, e pregiudizi del popolo siciliano (Palermo: L. Pedone-Lauriel, 1889), pp. 153 and 160; Gustav Henningsen, ‘The Ladies from Outside: An Archaic Pattern of the Witches Sabbath’, in Early Modern European Witchcraft: Centres and Peripheries, ed. by Bengt Ankarloo and Gustav Henningsen (Oxford: Clarendon Press; repr. 2001), pp. 191–215; Gustav Henningsen, ‘Sicily’, in Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition, ed. by Richard M. Golden, 4 vols (Santa Barbara: ABC Clio, 2006), vol. iv, pp. 1032–34. Cf. William Monter, ‘Witchcraft in Iberia’, in The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America, ed. by Brian Levack (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­ sity Press, 2013), pp. 268–82 (pp. 275–77). 69  William of Auvergne, De universo creaturarum, II. 3, c. 24, in Opera omnia, vol. i, p. 1066a tells ‘De illis vero substantiis quae apparent in domibus, quas dominas nocturnas et principem earum vocant dominam Abundantiam pro eo quod domibus quas frequentant abundantiam bonorum temporalium praestare putantur [...]’. Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum morale (Douai: Alma Academica Duacensi, 1624), pp. 1111–17: ‘[…] Error illarum mulierum,

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A blend between the spirits bringing fortune to people’s houses and the nocturnal horde of the dead seems to be present in Herolt, who besides mentioning Diana’s army, points out also that ‘Item aliqui de nocte preparant mensam et vasa discoperiunt ut manes debeant illa replere et ipsis omnium fortunium prebere’ (‘Similarly, some at night prepare the table and uncover the vessels so that the souls of the dead should fill them and bring them every fortune’).70 Antonio places the umbrarii who go around eating and drinking on the same plane as the followers of Diana-Herodiana who in his text are therefore associated with la dona del zogo, and the impression is reinforced by the fact that immediately after this piece, the preacher quotes the canon Episcopi. Tellingly, as I have mentioned in the previous chapter, the illusory nature of the delightful banquets associated with the ludus Dianae is starkly contrasted by Antonio to the reality of the orgiastic banquets performed by those taking part in the ludus bariloti (who ‘really go in person to that diabolic event’).71 This confirms, I believe, that Antonio is referring to two distinct and originally unrelated mythologies centred on the two ‘games’: one thought to be a mere illusion, the other regarded as real. The striking fact is the preacher’s awareness of the complete difference in nature between the two ludi. ‘Differences in sensibility’ towards witchcraft-related beliefs among the same preachers — as also in Bernardino da Siena and Giovanni da Capestrano — have been seen as the sign of their using sources of diverse origin.72 This is not yet, however, the final explanation of such an apparently inconsistent approach. The classificatory attitude of the Milanese Observant Franciscans helps us recognize that such a divergent stance points more precisely to the awareness of the preachers of the existence of two distinct patterns of witch-beliefs, which they regard either with sceptiquae dicunt se nocturnis horis cum Dyana et Herodiade et alijs personis quas Bonas res vocant ambulare et super bestias equitare et multa terrarum spatia transire.’ Cf. Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda aurea, ed. by Theodor Graesse (Osnabrück: Zeller, 1965), p. 449. See Ostorero, Le diable au sabbat, pp. 581–88; Ginzburg, Ecstasies, p. 100; Montesano, ‘Supra acqua et supra ad vento’, pp. 101–03; Montesano, ‘La circolazione di motivi stregonici tra folklore e cultura scritta’, in ‘Non lasciar vivere la malefica’: Le streghe nei processi e nei trattati (secoli xiv–xvii), ed. by Dinora Corsi and Matteo Duni (Florence: Firenze Uni­ver­sity Press, 2008), p. 162; Schmitt, Les superstitions, pp. 507–10; Bonomo, Caccia alle streghe, pp. 22–27. 70  Herolt, Sermones discipuli, Sermon 41, fol. hiiiira. 71  Antonio da Vercelli, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 44, fol. 324rab. See p. 240. 72  Ostorero, Le diable au sabbat, pp. 683–84; Marina Montesano, ‘Nomina nuda tenemus: Il nome della strega’, in La strega, la luna, il solstizio: Cultura popolare e stregoneria nell’Italia medievale e moderna, ed. by Franco Cardini (Rimini: Il Cerchio, 2002), pp. 9–22.

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cism, or with an acceptance of the reality of the events described, depending on which kind of belief is under consideration. Busti shows this most clearly by dealing with the two ludi under two different headings in his list: that of the malefici participating in the ludus bariloti scrutinized along with a set of behaviours concerning the invokers of demons regarded as real, and the ludus Dianae condemned along with related beliefs as the outcome of illusion. This might be also the point in the earlier tradition of fluctuation between the two opposed positions on the reality of different witch-beliefs: we find them split, in fact, between two different books in Johannes Nider’s Formicarius.73

Unveiling Demonic Illusions The illusory nature of the ludus Dianae is illustrated by Busti and Antonio da Vercelli through the famous exemplum of St Germanus, Bishop of Auxerre, reported in Giacomo da Varazze’s Legenda Aurea. The basis of the tale is the widespread belief in the bonae res who visit people’s houses at night eating and drinking what is prepared for them, and supposedly rewarding the householders.74 The tale narrates that in a house where St Germanus was a guest, he saw the owner preparing the table again after the evening meal. When the bishop asked for whom the preparations were being made, the host replied ‘for those good women who walk at night’. Having decided to stay awake that night, indeed Germanus saw a crowd of demons entering the house and coming to the table in the shape of men and women. When the family said that they were their neighbours, Germanus sent somebody to check their homes and in fact the neighbours were found asleep in their own beds. Through this tale the belief in the bonae res is clearly demonized, although the demons con73 

Historians have generally claimed this to be a mere ambivalence between two dif­ ferent attitudes: Duni, ‘I dubbi sulle streghe’, p. 204; Bailey, Battling Demons, p. 41; Gábor Klaniczay, ‘Learned Systems and Popular Narratives of Vision and Bewitchment’, in Demons, Spirits, Witches, 3: Witchcraft Mythologies and Persecutions, ed. by Gábor Klaniczay and Éva Pócs (Budapest: CEU Press, 2008), pp. 50–82 (pp. 64–65). 74  Étienne de Bourbon, Tractatus de diversis materiis predicabilibus, ed. by Jacques Berlioz and Jean-Luc Eichenlaub, Corpus Christianorum continuatio medievalis, 124-B (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), p. 311: ‘Unum accipe, centum redde. [...] Tace et claude oculos; divites erimus, quia bone res sunt, et centuplicabunt bona nostra’. These are words used in the amusing exemplum in which Stephen of Bourbon explains how a naive man, to the dismay of his wife, allowed a group of people to plunder his own house, believing that they were the ‘good people’ who would add to his fortune.

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cerned are rather innocuous, and at the request of the saint immediately confess that they deceive people under false appearances.75 Demons appearing as humans, roaming about at night, are connected to what the fourteenth-century Dominican preacher Jacopo Passavanti, and later Bernardino da Siena, call the tregenda, whose female leaders were Diana and Herodias, and whose participants included the strigae and people who could see and talk with the dead: probably a reminiscence of the Wild Hunt.76 Tellingly, in Busti’s version of the tale of St Germanus, the host declares that he prepares the table not for the bonae res but ‘for those who go to the game’. In this way, in a tale that originally concerned a folkloric belief, St Germanus — whom Busti confuses with St Remigius — is represented as revealing the ludus Dianae to be a demonic trick.77 Illusions and demons are the two points 75 

Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda aurea, c. 107, ed. by Theodor Graesse (Osnabrück: Zeller, 1965), pp. 448–51 (p. 449): ‘Hospitatus in quodam loco cum post coenam mensa iterum pararetur, admiratus interrogat, cui denuo praepararent. Cui quum dicerent, quod bonis illis mulieribus, quae de nocte incedunt, praepararent, illa nocte sanctus Germanus statuit vigilare, et ecce vidit multitudinem daemonum ad mensam in forma hominum et mulierum venientem, qui iis praecipiens, ne abirent, cunctos de familia excitavit inquirens, si personas illas agnoscerent. Qui cum omnes vicinos suos et vicinas suas esse dicerent, misit ad domos singulorum daemonibus praecipiens, ne abirent, et ecce omnes in suis lectulis sunt inventi. Adiurati igitur se daemones esse dixerunt, qui sic hominibus illudebant.’ English translation: Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. by William Granger Ryan, 2 vols (Princeton: Princeton Uni­ver­sity Press, 1993), vol. ii, pp. 27–30 (p. 28). On the story, see Ginzburg, The Night Battles, pp. 42–47; Jean Claude Schmitt, Les revenants: Les vivants et les morts dans la société médiévale (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), pp. 44, 208; Bailey, Battling Demons, p. 114; Willem de Blécourt, ‘Sabbath Stories: Towards a New History of Witches’ Assemblies’, in The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America, ed. by Brian Levack (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, 2013), pp. 84–100 (p. 91). 76  Lo Specchio della vera penitenza di Iacopo Passavanti, ed. by Filippo Luigi Polidori (Florence: Le Monnier, 1856), pp. 317, 319; cf. Lea, Materials toward a History of Witchcraft, ed. by Howland, vol. i, pp. 175–76. Bernardino da Siena, Le prediche volgari: Quaresimale fiorentino del 1424, Sermon 38, ed. by Cannarozzi, vol. ii, pp. 167–70. Cf. Ostorero, Le diable au sabbat, pp. 589–91; Stephens, Demon Lovers, pp. 132–34. ‘Tregenda’ has been related to the Latin transienda, from transire: Montesano, ‘Supra acqua et supra ad vento’, p. 103 note 25. 77  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 129va: ‘Ad confirmationem quoque predic­ torum faciunt ea que leguntur de sacto Remigio, scilicet quod cum semel esset hospitatus in quodam hospitio vidit nocte parari mensas quamplures cum ferculis. Quapropter advocans patronum illius hospitii, interrogavit eum quibus prepararet cibaria in illa hora. Ipse autem respondit, quod preparabat his qui vadunt ad ludum, qui debebant venire tali hora noctis et ibi epulari. Cum autem venissent in magna multitudine, sanctus Remigius interrogavit predictum patronum hospitii, an illos viros et mulieres cognosceret, quo respondente quod sic, sanctus

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at issue for the preachers. In Antonio da Vercelli’s version of the exemplum, St Germanus makes plain to his host the demonic and illusory nature of those who appeared in the house.78 The same exemplum — without mentioning the ludus — was inserted by Giacomo della Marca in his sermon ‘On witches’ dealing with sompniorum illusio (‘the illusion of dreams’), and it also appears in Nider’s Formicarius (II. 4) among the accounts of dreams and visions through which, as is stated by the canon Episcopi, Satan works deception.79 The illusions or phantasmata the preachers refer to are definitely reminiscent of the Aristotelian-Augustinian tradition, which stressed the role of dreaming in their production and found in the powers of demons the cause for their imprinting in the human psyche.80 What can be described as the apparent reality of illusion matches well with the diabolic nature of the trick. This was the core pattern orienting the sceptics. It seems relevant, however, that even when dealing with beliefs related to the ludus Dianae, the Milanese preachers try to balance the Augustinian and Thomistic ideas and so, as opposed to modern interpreters, show a more nuanced perception of the two lines of thought, not too exclusively sceptical in one case, nor too readily believing in the reality of the phenomenon in the other.81 Among all illusory beliefs, therefore, the ludus Dianae plays a primary role. Busti notes the fallacious nature of the ludus through an anecdotal exemplum. At the end of his discourses on illusions he explains: Et predicta confirmantur per illud quod accidit in territorio Hipporigiensi, ubi quedam iuvenis sepius incitata a quadam vetula diabolica ut ad ludum Diane secum pergeret, cum ei semel inter alia diceret quod numquam talia solatia viderat nec habuerat, tandem consensit. Cumque illi vetula diceret quod talibus spectaculis et consolationibus interesse non poterat nisi fidei christiane et baptismo atque omnibus sacramentis ecclesie renunciaret, illa omnia fecit. Quibus peractis, cum esset in quodam agro, statim apparuit ei quod esset ducta in quodam pulcherrimo atrio, Remigius misit statim ad domos eorum et inventi sunt omnes in lecto dormientes. Ipsis tamen tunc videbatur quod in dicto hospitio in simul essent et ibi epularentur.’ 78  Antonio da Vercelli, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 44, fol. 324va: ‘Isti in veritate non sunt homines, sed sunt demones sensus deludentes.’ 79  Giacomo della Marca, Sermones dominicales, Sermon 68: De Factuchiariis, ed. by Lioi, vol. i, p. 478;Chène, ed., ‘Jean Nider, Formicarius’, in L’imaginaire du sabbat, pp. 136-38. 80  Patrizia Castelli, ‘“Donnaiole, amiche de li sogni” ovvero i sogni delle streghe’, in Biblio­ theca lamiarum: Documenti e immagini della stregoneria dal Medioevo all’Età Moderna, ed. by Giovanna Bosco (Pisa: Pacini Editore, 1994), pp. 35–85 (p. 36 ff ). 81  On the opposed view, see Clark, Thinking with Demons, p. 538.

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sericis strato atque miris odoribus pleno, ibique videbantur esse iuvenes pulcherrimi vestibus aureis et argenteis induti corrizantes cum feminis euntibus ad ipsum ludum et similiter femine pulcherrime tripudiantes cum viris, audiri soni et cantus melliflui. Cum autem et ipsa iuvenis tripudiaret, vidit quandam vetulam decrepitam et curvam deformosissimamque tripudiantem et post choream velle turpia agere cum uno iuvene, propter quod stupefacta illa iuvenis cepit clamare dicens: ‘O Iesu’; et statim omnis illa illusio disparuit ipsaque in eodem agro et loco se reperit, ut postea confessori suo retulit.82 The above mentioned things are confirmed by what occurred in the territory of Ivrea, where a certain girl was often urged by a diabolical little old lady to go with her to the Game of Diana, after she had once said to her that she had never seen nor experienced such delights, and at last agreed to go. When the old lady told her that in order to participate in those sights and pleasures she would have to renounce the Christian faith, baptism and all the sacraments of the Church, she did all that. Thus, while she was in a certain field suddenly it seemed that she had been taken to a wonderful hall covered with silk and filled with pleasant fragrances. And in that place it seemed that there were wonderful young men dressed in golden and silver clothing dancing with women participating in the same game, and likewise beautiful women frolicking with the men, and that the sounds of sweet singing were to be heard. But when the young girl herself began to join in, she saw a little old lady all decrepit, bent, and twisted, cavorting, and after the dance wanting to do disgusting things with a young man; the girl was astonished at this and began to yell, saying: ‘Oh Jesus!’ Suddenly the illusion completely disappeared and she found herself in the same place in the field, as she told her confessor afterwards.

The wicked old woman inciting the young girl to take part in the game is one of those vetulae who changed the ancient bonae res into the consistent stereotype of witches engaged in a ludus that is basically an occasion for renouncing Christian faith.83 The sudden disappearance of the ludus itself with all the dancing and delirious jubilation, just after the girl had shouted the name of Jesus, signals that all of it was a demonic illusion. This element was present in trials too, though not describing situations thought to be illusory. Uttering the name of Jesus was banished from the gatherings of Sibillia and Pierina, so as not to offend Madonna Oriente.84 At Venegono the supposed witches confessed 82 

Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 129rbva. An entire literary and pseudo-scientific tradition comes to determine how ‘la vetula est une nature (complexio) physiopathologique maligne’: Jole Agrimi and Chiara Crisciani, ‘Savoir médical et anthropologie réligieuse: les représentations et les fonctions de la “vetula” (xiiie– xve s),’ Annales. Economies, sociétés, civilisations, 48. 5 (1993), 1281–1308. 84  Cf. Henningsen, ‘The Ladies from Outside’, pp. 203–04. 83 

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their participation at similar venues in the silva rupta, where they had sexual contact with their demonic lovers, and the invocation of Jesus was forbidden.85 Further, Busti’s representation of the ludus Dianae seems to evoke — at least partially — the image of the sabbath that was being fashioned in the trials, with such emphasis on its reality. At Gambasca, Caterina Bonivarda confessed to having seen her accomplices and many other people dancing with demons and desecrating the cross on the shores of the Po River.86 In Val Camonica, the ‘heretic beasts’ — as the witches and their followers are called — were said to gather on top of the Mount Tonale where they ‘have sexual intercourse and dance’, as well as to cause ruin to children, cattle, and crops by using a kind of magical powder.87 Busti’s tale invites one to wonder about what should be considered illusion and what reality. Walter Stephens has pointed out that ‘a closer look shows that the crucial distinction drawn by the canon Episcopi is not between truth and falsehood, or between waking and dreaming, but rather between body and spirit’.88 Body and spirit, however, had their specific nature within Scholastic theology, and were both considered as equally real. Dreams, also, would seem to offer the example of something that really happens, although not in a physical (and nor in a spiritual) form: we are aware, after all, that during certain phases of sleep the brain is in a state similar to wakefulness.89 Yet, this is properly the domain of illusion within which the Milanese preachers confined certain witch-beliefs. The sceptical view of the friars was simply based on the grounds that these phenomena did not occur, certainly not physically, but not even spiritually, being dreamlike experiences, mere illusions of the mind inspired by the devil. Jacopo Passavanti’s description of those who believe they roam about at night at the tregenda as deluded by dreams exemplifies this 85 

Streghe e roghi nel Ducato di Milano, ed. by Marcaccioli Castiglioni, p. 96. Lucea talvolta la luna, ed. by Comba and Nicolini, p. 111: ‘Vidit corrizantes et coheuntes cum demonibus in confurtiis graverie Padi […] ac conculcantes crucem in terra expressam.’ 87  Sanudo, I Diarii, XXV–XXVI, p. 11. Crops might be ruined also by provoking hail­ storms; such was the case of the tempestarii: Agobard of Lion, Liber de grandine et tonitruis, PL 104, col. 148. See Schmitt, Les superstitions, pp. 464–66; Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, p. 46; Marina Montesano, ‘La circolazione dei motivi stregonici tra folklore e cultura scritta’, in ‘Non lasciar vivere la malefica’: Le streghe nei processi e nei trattati (secoli xiv–xvii), ed. by Dinora Corsi and Matteo Duni (Florence: Firenze Uni­ver­sity Press, 2008), pp. 155–66 (p. 161). 88  Stephens, Demon Lovers, p. 127. 89  Bever, The Realities of Witchcraft and Popular Magic in Early Modern Europe: Culture, Cognition, and Everyday Life (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 106–18. 86 

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type of approach.90 The famous image of Johannes Nider’s vetula dementata, whose supposed flight was proved an illusion by a Dominican friar observing her remaining motionless while she was convinced she was riding with Diana, is illustrative of the same approach, although in this case the hypothesis of a trance-state can be considered alongside a dream in the strict sense, given that the witch had anointed herself before engaging in her experience.91 Busti’s tale is even somewhat reminiscent of Bernardino da Siena’s story of the page of a cardinal, who travelling from Rome to Benevento, came across a nocturnal gathering of people dancing on a threshing floor. He joined them and in the end, as the assembly vanished upon the arrival of the dawn, he took home with him for three years a nice girl from Schiavonia who remained speechless all the time.92 On the one hand, beyond the idea of Busti’s illusory, joyful, but also lustful and anti-Christian ludus, and more generally beyond the sabbath stereotype, there can be traced also the echoes of nocturnal dances or ritual feasts to be found in the countryside. After all, as Willem de Blécourt has pointed out, a balance has to be found between illusion and historical reality, because ‘to reduce the sabbath to delirium, dreams, or the product of hallucinogens ultimately amounts to abandoning history altogether’.93 The existence of possible roots in social reality that might have contributed to inspire sabbath stories has therefore to be borne in mind. In this regard, we may think of the extensive distribution of popular assemblies, festivities, and practices, which could easily end up in various types of excesses, perhaps even tinged with political or religious significance.94 Ludus-related beliefs and the idea of the sabbath especially have been seen as part of a broader background of cultural traditions extending to a panEuropean level. Behind the different types of night-goers that the preachers 90 

Lo Specchio della vera penitenza, p. 319; Lea, Materials toward a History of Witchcraft, ed. by Howland, vol. i, p. 176. 91  Chène, ed., ‘Jean Nider, Formicarius’, in L’imaginaire du sabbat, p. 200; Hansen, Quellen, pp. 89–90; Klaniczay, ‘The Process of Trance’, p. 213; Bailey, Battling Demons, pp. 113–14; Bailey, Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies, pp. 206–07. 92  Bernardino da Siena, Prediche volgari sul Campo di Siena 1427, Sermon  35, ed. by Delcorno, vol. ii, pp. 1012–13. For an analysis of the tale, see Michael Bailey, ‘Nocturnal Journeys and Ritual Dances in Bernardino of Siena’, Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft, 8 (2013), 4–17; and Mormando, The Preacher’s Demons, pp. 67–72. 93  De Blécourt, ‘Sabbath Stories’, p. 85. 94  Bever, The Realities of Witchcraft, pp. 94–96; Bailey, ‘Nocturnal Journeys and Ritual Dances’, p. 17.

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condemned as illusion, one can glimpse the occurrence of trance-states, visionlike experiences, or ecstatic soul-journeys that may recall a variety of proximate cultural patterns. These range from spiritual possession, as analysed by Nancy Caciola, through the ‘shamanistic substratum’ hypothesized by Carlo Ginzburg (involving either male fertility rituals — as in the cases of the Friulan benandanti or the Hungarian táltos — or the female attitude towards communicating with the dead), to the ambivalent fairy mythologies studied by Éva Pócs, and the specific popular vision narratives traced by Gábor Klaniczay.95 Further, elements such as animal metamorphosis and witches’ night flights, especially when the employment of wooden poles and ointments are concerned, seem to acquire real significance when seen as shamanistic traits. Nevertheless, we have been cautioned that, even when traceable, such shamanistic traces have to be rather recognized as the disembodied fragments of multifaceted structures conflating with the belief-system of witchcraft.96 One might even wonder whether tales of soul journeys or flights to the otherworld, like those performed by the benandanti and the donni di fuora, or described against the background of the multiform mythology connected to the ludus Dianae, might recollect what medical science calls Near-Death Experience (NDE).97 From this point of view, one might find worth considering some of the recurrent features that according to medical literature are experienced by people facing NDE, namely the awareness of being dead, the increase of mood with feelings of euphoria, happiness and well-being, out-of95  Caciola, Discerning Spirits, pp. 72–78 and 193; Ginzburg, Ecstasies, pp. 153–204, 243, and 257; Éva Pócs, Fairies and Witches at the Boundary of South-Eastern and Central Europe (Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1989); Éva Pócs, Between the Living and the Dead: A Perspective on Witches and Seers in the Early Modern Age (Budapest: CEU Press, 1998); Klaniczay, ‘Learned Systems and Popular Narratives’. As far as the shamanistic influence on witchcraft is concerned, see Gábor Klaniczay, ‘Shamanistic Elements in Central European Witchcraft’, in Shamanism in Eurasia, ed. by Mihály Hoppál (Göttingen: Herodot, 1984), pp. 404–22; Klaniczay, ‘The Process of Trance’. Ginzburg has traced the ‘meandering way’ that led him to studying Central Asian steppe shamanism in Ginzburg, Il filo e le tracce, pp. 281–93. 96  Gábor Klaniczay, ‘Shamanism and Witchcraft’, Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft, 1 (2006), 214–21 (p. 221). For a reflection on the points of contact and the differences between witch­ craft and shamanism, see ‘Round-Table Discussion with Carlo Ginzburg, Gustav Henningsen, Éva Pócs, Giovanni Pizza and Gábor Klaniczay’, in Demons, Spirits, Witches, 3: Witchcraft Mythologies and Persecutions, ed. by Gábor Klaniczay and Éva Pócs (Budapest: CEU Press, 2008), pp. 35–49; Klaniczay, ‘The Process of Trance’, pp. 218–29. 97  See Christian Agrillo, ‘Near-Death Experience: Out-of-Body and Out-of-Brain?’, Review of General Psychology, 15 (2011), pp. 1–10.

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body experience, perception of a heavenly or hellish landscape, encounter with the deceased or some beings of light, perceptions of sounds or music.98 To some extent these elements, in part or whole, may sound familiar to historians of witch-beliefs. The analogies between this set of occurrences and what we find in tales of out-of-body experiences in folklore and witchcraft-related accounts may suggest the possibility of parallelism: a parallelism that, however, should probably be referred to the vast domain of vision experience at large.99

The Misdeeds of the Strege The preachers enrich the mythology centred on the ludus Dianae with more specific considerations pertaining to the supposed evil deeds of the witches. Thus, Busti reconsiders the belief according to which these women, passing through locked doors, entered into people’s homes at night in order to harm children, and were sometimes injured by the parents in the attempt to defend them.100 This belief also is regarded as an illusion under the umbrella of the canon Episcopi. The words employed by Busti echo almost exactly those of Caimi.101 The beliefs the friars want to discredit show the shift to a negative story-pattern of the old folkloric tradition centred on the harmless raids of the bonae res into people’s houses, by merging them with such misdeeds as the murder of babies. We know that these charges were already part of a larger pattern of accusations addressed against Santuccia and Finicella, representing one of the behavioural traits of the malefici Busti referred to earlier in his list of those who sin against the First Commandment. That was clearly a different mythology, with regard to which, as I have noted, the preacher does not show any scepticism. On the other hand, when the maleficia and the powers to harm of witches merge with the mythology centred on metamorphosis and night rides, that is interpreted through the canon Episcopi, whose overall orientation towards illusion sustains the preachers’ stance concerning this pattern. 98 

Agrillo, ‘Near-Death Experience’, table at p. 2. On soul journeys, see Behringer, ‘How Waldensians became Witches’, pp. 175–82. 100  Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 129rb: ‘Item si quis credat predictas mulieres intrare ostia clausa et interficere parvulos et quandoque a patribus vel matribus eorum vulnerari, hoc enim est falsum et erroneum, sed demon hoc facit.’ 101  Caimi, Interrogatorium sive confessionale, xxxiiiv: ‘Si credidit predictas mulieres sive lamias intrare hostia clausa et surgere seu interficere parvulos et quandoque vulnerari a patribus eorum falsum est et erroneum, sed demon hoc facit.’ 99 

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Antonio da Vercelli sticks to the same line, elaborating more on the topos according to which a vetula can transform into a cat (gatta, musipula, murilega) and in that guise penetrate houses through closed doors in order to harm newborn babies, sometimes receiving wounds that can be later detected on her body as a proof of real participation in these events. As he and his fellow friars stigmatize belief in human metamorphosis into animals as heretical, the preacher asserts that whenever it seems ascertained that a vetula was injured while perpetrating some of those misdeeds (allegedly under the shape of a cat), her wounds, in fact, have other causes, either natural or supernatural, and her misdeeds are solely the work of the devil: he is the one who acquires that appearance and perpetrates the crimes, which may happen with God’s assent, for instance to punish unfaithful parents. What is more, Antonio insists with a touch of realism that no ‘physical body’ could ever pass through closed doors. In this way he discharges the supposed witches from the responsibility that witch-belief would seek to attribute to them.102 Disbelief concerning the alleged ability of sorceresses to pass through closed doors had a tradition behind it. In an exemplum on the canon Episcopi’s night rides, Stephen of Bourbon tells how a priest unmasked the dream-like belief of a woman who claimed to travel at night with the bonae mulieres. She once told the priest that one night they entered his room through a locked door while he was sleeping, and that she quickly covered his privates, because if they had been seen by the domina he would have been beaten to death. The priest, not greatly impressed by that confession, locked the gate and kept beating the woman with the staff of the cross sarcastically urging her to make her gateway, which she, of course, could not do; thus he scolded the sortilega’s folly for believing in a dream as if it were real.103 102  Antonio da Vercelli, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 45, fol. 329vab: ‘Illud quod vide­tur in forma gatte simpliciter est ipse demon in specie vetularum vel musipularum pueros de cunabulis et lecto rapiens et occidens.’ Here Antonio relies on a certain ‘Magister Michael de Fesulis’. The Dominican Giordano da Bergamo bears on the prob­lem the same position: Lea, Materials toward a History of Witchcraft, ed. by Howland, vol. i, p. 301. That God might want to allow evil to happen was not reasonable to everyone: Walter Stephens, ‘The Sceptical Tradition’, in The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft, pp. 101–21 (pp. 110–12). 103  Anecdotes historiques, ed. by de la Marche, no. 368, p. 324: ‘Tunc eam invocans sacerdos intra cancellum, clauso ostio, verberavit eam cum crucis baculo, dicens: “Exite hinc, domina sorti­lega”. Cum autem non posset, emisit eam sacerdos, [dicens]: “Modo videtis quod fatua estis, que sompnium veritatem creditis.”’ The term sortilegus/a still refers to a background of magic and foretelling rather than to witchcraft in the strict sense. See Du Cange, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, vol. vii, col. 535b. Cf. Montesano, ‘Supra acqua et supra ad vento’, p. 98.

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As we know, the Italian witchcraft paradigm referred to by the Milanese friars, which rests on the belief in certain women’s ability to turn into different species and commit various types of misdeeds, was already present in the classical Latin tradition centred on the strigae or lamiae turning into birds and living on children’s blood, as well as among the Germans in the early Middle Ages.104 Strigae can be described in three different ways: as screech-owls, as beings halfway between a women and a screech-owl, and as ordinary women. In the last case, the deeds of dismembering dead bodies and devouring children are connected to necromantic practices.105 The witch as ‘strega’ plays therefore a basic role within a mythology in which the classical tradition and that of the canon Episcopi merge. She is seen as a woman who goes about at night, enters into people’s homes, and harass infants even killing them, usually by sucking their blood. These elements, along with the ability to transform into other species, the use of magic ointments, and the night flight, describe the Umbrian-Italian type of witch.106 Several cases seemed to confirm the stereotypes, being addressed by inquisitors without the scepticism of the Milanese friars. Matteuccia da Todi, as well as Filippa da Città della Pieve, tried at Perugia in 1455, and Mariana da San Sisto, tried at Perugia in 1456, were all accused of transforming themselves into cats in order to go to the walnut tree of Benevento and to enter into people’s homes to kill children.107 Busti does not specify the blood-related element when he refers to the stereotype of the murder of babies. In all likelihood, in 104 

Montesano, ‘Supra acqua et supra ad vento’, pp.  103–07; Cardini, ‘La stregoneria’, pp. 12–13; Bonomo, Caccia alle streghe, p. 39 ff. 105  Ovid, Fasti, VI, 131–32, 135, 139–40, and 143–46: here the striges are bird-women who bleed babies in their cradles: ‘Sunt avidae volucres, non quae Phineïa mensis | guttura fraudabant, sed genus inde trahunt […]. | Nocte volant, puerosque petunt nutricis egentes […]| Est illis strigibus nomen; sed nominis huius | causa, quod horrenda stridere nocte solent. | […] Proca natus in illis | praeda recens avium quinque diebus erat: | pectoraque exsorbent avidis infantia linguis: | at puer infelix vagit opemque petit.’ An exemple of strix is the bloodthirsty and necrophiliac Thessalian seer named Erichto: Lucan, Pharsalia, VI, 507–830. 106  See Kieckhefer, ‘Mythologies of Witchcraft’, pp. 87–91; Kieckhefer, ‘The First Wave of Trials’, pp.  170–71; Kieckhefer, ‘Avenging the Blood of Children’, pp.  95–97. See also Montesano, ‘Supra acqua et supra ad vento’, p. 107. 107  Thus Matteuccia, after invoking the devil: ‘in musipulam conuersa […] ad dictam nocem […] vadit’ (Mammoli, Processo alla strega, p. 32). Musipula does not mean fly, as translated by Mammoli and followed by some others, but cat, as the Milanese preachers show. It is also said of Matteuccia: ‘Ipsa Mactheutia, strega effecta ut supra in forma musipule una cum quadam sua sotia strega, accesserunt […] ad domum cuiusdam mulieris […] que habebat unum suum filium nondum sex mensium et ipsum sucauerunt prout supra solite sunt facere’ (Mammoli, Processo

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his view it was little more than a detail. Moreover, as noted, the charges referred to in the trials held in the Milanese area show that bloodsucking was not the only way witches murdered children: there was also the idea of murdering by touch. This is well exemplified by the trials held in Venegono where witches perpetrated a number of maleficia provoking the deaths of children and cattle just by touching them. Caterina Fornasari, with other acolytes, murdered the young son of a certain Callore while he was sleeping by touching him after passing through a closed door, and similarly they killed one of the oxen of Rigone di Cattaneo by touching its loins, passing like the wind through a door that was left with an opening only three fingers wide.108 Unexpectedly, the same lord of Venegono, Count Fioramonte Castiglioni, learned from one of the accused witches that he had lost his child years earlier because she and her fellows touched him more than once while he was playing outside the castle. Apparently, the witches were aware of their power to harm by touching, since ‘they used to do so every time they had to kill children or cattle’.109 Neither Busti nor his colleagues go into detail about the maleficia perpetrated by witches. There are no doubts, however, that their mulieres or vetulae who enter people’s houses must be understood in the light of the mythology we have described. Further, the Milanese Observant Franciscan preachers do not seem to follow the panicky tradition concerning the existence of sects through which those women spread their net of evilness over the villages. When the preachers address witches they speak in the plural, obviously implying the belief that there were a lot of them around; however, there is no mention of any organized sect such as can be found in Nider’s Formicarius, and more extensively in Heinrich Kramer’s Malleus maleficarum (1486), or in his Sancte Romane ecclesie fidei defensionis clippeum adversus waldensium seu pikalla strega, p. 32). The sentences to death of Filippa and Mariana are in Nicolini, La stregoneria a Perugia e in Umbria nel Medioevo, pp. 52–63. 108  Streghe e roghi nel Ducato di Milano, ed. by Marcaccioli Castiglioni, pp. 88–91 and 106–07: ‘[…] Ubi ille due sotie infrascripte, intrantes in loco ubi dormitur clauso hostio, ut ipsa asserit, astante semper ipsa Caterina, perdiderunt infantem filium Callore […] tetingerunt eum; […] iverunt […] ad stabulum Rigoni de Cattaneis, ubi erant boves […] et approprinquantes ad unum bovem […] tetigerunt eum circha renes […] et que dictus bos continuo cecidit et nunquam de cetero surrexit […]: interrogata [Caterina] si fores erant clause, vel aperte respon­ dit que erant clause remanente tamen quadam rimula trium digitorum […] et que per dictam rimulam intraverunt […] tamquam ventus. […] Interrogata si sciebant que, tangen­dum ipsum puerum, ipse puer debebat mori, respondit que sic, quia sic faciebant etiam quando nocebant alijs pueris et bestijs.’ 109  See also Streghe e roghi nel Ducato di Milano, ed. by Marcaccioli Castiglioni, p. 142 ff.

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ardorum heresim (1501).110 The lack of any hint of the existence of organized groups of witches is another of the notable points in the Milanese preachers’ consideration of witchcraft, and it clearly indicates their basic opposition to the ‘modern’ idea of witchcraft.111 On the other hand, the existence of new sects of witches — the novae sectae Pope Alexander V had mentioned in 1409 — was promoted by the Northern Italian Dominican inquisitors, as in the case of the witches of Rifreddo and Gambasca, who were said to belong to the secta mascharum or to the societas mulierum.112 The fever caused in Lombardy by the phenomenon had to be quite high for Alexander VI to issue in 1501 a letter to the Dominican inquisitor Angelo da Verona, giving him ‘full and sufficient powers’ to seek and punish ‘the many people of both sexes’ engaged in harming people and animals, and in destroying the fields by means of diabolic superstitions.113 The witches (strigae, lamiae, and strigones) described by the Milanese Dominican Isidoro Isolani as perverting Christian orthodoxy, and engaging in woodland gatherings whose reality is not doubted at all, are certainly part of a well-organized group.114 Following a point that was made for the first time by Johannes Nider, Isolani maintains that mulierculae are particularly disposed to the powers of demons, since the weakness of their gender makes them more prone to debauchery and illusions.115 He describes the meetings of these women, assuming their reality, as follows: Nubunt mulierculae diabolo quibus pro suo abutitur imperio. Hae [hi in the original] ante ecclesiasticum iudicem constitutae mira fatentur. Loca adeunt silvestria, tum ab demone latae, tum pedibus eo concessae. Ibi choreas magno plausu uiri demonesque passim feminis mixti deducunt. Venerea nimia oblectatione experiuntur, conuiuantur, concinunt, mutuo fabulantur, ac quampiam alto residentem throno ueluti reginam adorant. Docet ea princeps mederi atque ignotis egritudini-

110 

Cf. Herzig, ‘Heinrich Kramer’, pp. 175–87; Herzig, ‘Flies, Heretics, and the Gendering of Witchraft’. 111  Cf. Behringer, ‘How Waldensians became Witches’, p. 162. 112  Tavuzzi, Renaissance Inquisitors, pp. 150–51; Lucea talvolta la luna, ed. by Comba and Nicolini, p. 13; Duni, Under the Devil’s Spell, pp. 15–17. 113  Hansen, Quellen, p. 31; Kors and Peters, Witchcraft in Europe, p. 229. 114  Isidoro Isolani, Libellus aduersus magos, fol. [B7]v. 115  Isidoro Isolani, Libellus aduersus magos, fol. C4v: ‘[Demones] cristianos peroptant ac potissimum mulierculas quod ad lasciuiam sint procliuiores ac facilius illudantur pro imbecilli faemineo sexu.’ On this issue see Bailey, Battling Demons, pp. 48–53.

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bus suffragia praestare. […] Verum quot maleficorum speties audisti, totidem esse maleficia arbitrare.116 The little old women couple with the devil, who exploits them for the sake of his dominion. When they are brought before the ecclesiastic judge, they confess astonishing things. They go to woodland places, sometimes brought by the devil, at other times on their own feet. In that place, with great enthusiasm, men and demons dance mixed up at random with the women. They experience gross sexual pleasure, feast, sing, and gossip together, and worship a certain ‘lady’ seated on a high throne like a queen. That ‘lady’ teaches them how to heal and give relief to complaints whose origin is unknown. […] But, however many kinds of witches you have heard about, think of them as so many [kinds of ] evil spells.

The folkloric background of the ludus, here represented by the joyful gathering of people, and notably by the presence of a Lady of the Game who is capable of healing, is clearly diabolized according to an attitude that is already expressed by the Milanese Dominican Girolamo Visconti (d. c. 1478).117 The supposed spread of this phenomenon, perceived as an emergency, quickly triggered the reaction of the courts. In another of his works, Isolani says that in the diocese of Como, in the Duchy of Milan, more than sixty witches were burnt at the stake in 1513 alone.118 We know that burnings in the whole of that area were at a serious level. Witch-hunts had begun in Como in the 1480s and peaked between 1512 and 1517, making it the largest witch-hunt conducted in Italy by the papal inquisition before 1542.119 In the opposition of views concerning the witchcraft phenomenon present in the Duchy of Milan, the friars of St Angelo’s can be considered as a group questioning in an interestingly coherent way the emerging Italian mythology 116 

Isidoro Isolani, Libellus aduersus magos, fols [B7]v–[B8]r. 117  See Estuardo Flaction, ‘Girolamo Visconti’, pp. 389–403. On Visconti, see Martine Ostorero, ‘Visconti, Girolamo’, in Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition, ed. by Richard M. Golden, 4 vols (Santa Barbara: ABC Clio, 2006), vol. iv, pp. 1171–72; on the healing lady, see Albano Biondi, ‘La signora delle erbe e la magia della vegetazione’, in Albano Biondi, Umanisti, eretici, streghe: Saggi di storia moderna, ed. by Massimo Donattini, with intro. by Adriano Prosperi (Modena: Archivio storico, 2008), pp. 367–85. See also Kieckhefer, ‘The First Wave of Trials’, pp. 171–72. 118  Isidoro Isolani, De imperio militantis Ecclesiae libri quattuor (Milan: Gottardo da Pónte, 1517), fol. 4r. 119  Tamar Herzig, ‘Witchcraft Prosecutions in Italy’, in The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America, ed. by Brian Levack (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­ sity Press, 2013), pp. 249–66 (pp. 251–52); Duni, Under the Devil’s Spell, pp. 29–30.

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of witchcraft. The confidence of the Milanese preachers about the unreality of the strege and associated beliefs opens up an important and apparently not much investigated field. The question is whether the opposition between the friars who backed the canon Episcopi and those who denied its application to ‘modern’ witches coincided with an antagonism between friars tasked with different kinds of duties: the inquisitors backing the reality of witch phenomena, the preachers proposing scepticism.120 It is true that the same friars might have more than one duty to fulfil. Dominican inquisitors preached too, although their preaching responsibilities were traditionally strongly linked to their inquisitorial task.121 On the other hand, the Milanese Observant Franciscans were not inquisitors, but preachers and confessors. The possibility of an opposition of views arising from the different roles of the friars was much in the air, as an important piece of direct evidence shows. In his Tractatus varii, published in 1496, Heinrich Kramer appears greatly angered by the attitude of some preachers who considered the powers of witches (the unholden, who as noted by the German inquisitor, were in Italian called strige) to bewitch humans, animals, and crops, to be nothing but illusion.122 To refute this point, the Dominican inquisitor states the need to provide proofs supporting the ‘truth’. The primary document to prove the reality of the maleficia perpetrated by witches is, to Kramer, the bull Summis desiderantes affectibus, which Pope Innocent VIII issued in 1484 in response to a supplicatio that Kramer himself, with his colleague Jacob Sprenger, had earlier addressed to him.123 After this important reference, which gives Kramer’s discourse its jurid120 

Cf. Ostorero, Le diable au sabbat, pp. 706–07. Cf. Grado Giovanni Merlo, ‘Predicatori e inquisitori: Per l’avvio di una riflessione’, in Praedicatores, Inquisitores, i: The Dominicans and the Medieval Inquisition: Acts of the 1st International Seminar on the Dominicans and the Inquisition, 23–25 February 2002 (Rome: Istituto Storico Domenicano, 2004), pp. 13–31. 122  Heinrich Kramer, Tractatus varii cum sermonibus plurimis contra quattuor errores novissime exortos adversus divinissimum eucharistie sacramentum. Secunda Pars (Nürnberg : Anton Koberger, 1496), Sermon 6: Sermones de corpore Christi, fol. Iiivab. For a contextualization of Tractatus, see Herzig, Christ Transformed, pp. 67–76. 123  Bullarium Franciscanum continens bullas brevia supplicationes tempore Romani Pontificis Innocentii VIII pro tribus ordinibus S. P. N. Francisci obtenta, ed. by Cesare Cenci, Bullarium franciscanum, new series, 4, 2 vols (Grottaferrata: Frati Editori di Quaracchi, 1989–90), vol. iv, p. 12, n. 39: ‘Famosam bullam contra maleficas seu strigas Germaniae, diei 5 dec. 1484, papa concessit post supplicationem inquisitorum illius regionis, qui omnia ad litteram suggesserant et facultates inquirendi petierant; Reg. Supplic. 842, f. 223rv, sub die “quarto nonas decembris, anno primo” (2 dec. 1484): “fiat ut petitur (Iohannes Baptista Cybo)”.’ Giovan Battista Cibo 121 

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ical validity, the inquisitor turns to the main problem, explaining how witches have been proliferating: Quia enim retroactis temporibus periculosi et indocti predicatores quod non verentur in eorum publicis sermonibus ad populum asserere: ‘tu non debes credere quod huiusmodi mulieres superstitiose que vulgariter unholden dicuntur inveniantur quasi per eas nocumenta inferantur hominibus, iumentis et terre frugibus per tempestates, sed illa contingent per alias causas nobis occulta, vel per demones Dei permissione et nullo modo per maleficas’. Et cum eis obiiciebatur quod sepe confesse sunt talia fecisse et propterea incinerate, responderunt huiusmodi indocti predicatores quod seducte fuerunt per demones in sompnis putantes se facere cum tamen non faciebant. Et quia per huiusmodi vanam doctrinam malefice semper fuerant defensate et sic continue augmentate, ut vix reperiatur villa in qua non sit rumor de huiusmodi maleficis, eo quod iudices seculares noluerunt sepe propter huiusmodi falsas quorundam predicatorum assertiones eas punire. Ideo periculosissimum est huiusmodi predicare per que defenduntur et augmentantur non propter nocumenta temporalia sed propter contumelias creatori et fidei illatas ab eis. […] Ideo dicat predicator quod licet quedam eorum opera delusorie fiant et non vere, non tamen omnia ita fieri estimare oportet: ut delusorie fit ubi membra virilia auferunt aut in bestiales formas hominem transmutant, aut ibi in somnis vehuntur per longa terrarum spatia prout loquitur c. Episcopi 26. Q. 5. licet etiam sepe corporaliter et non in somnis vehantur sicut Simon Magus volabat in aere et plures nigromatici [sic] sepe transferuntur. Tamen ubi nocumenta inferunt hominibus, iumentis et sepe terre frugibus, hec non prestigiosa arte, sed heu vere et realiter ab eis cooperante demonis malicia, ubi Deus talia fieri propter peccata nostra permittit, perpetrantur.124 Since in past years those preachers, dangerous and untrained, were not afraid to assert in their public sermons that ‘you do not have to believe that superstitious women of this kind, popularly called unholden, really exist and that they produce damages to people, cattle and crops by means of storms, but [you have to believe] that all this happens for different causes hidden from us, or with God’s assent by means of demons, but in no way through these women’. When the objection was made to them that those women themselves often confessed and were therefore burned, those untrained preachers replied that they had been deceived by demons was the name of Innocent VIII before becoming pope. See Walter Senner, ‘How Henricus Institoris Became Inquisitor for Germany: The Origin of ‘Summis Desiderantis Affectibus’, in Praedicatores, Inquisitores, i: The Dominicans and the Medieval Inquisition: Acts of the 1st International Seminar on the Dominicans and the Inquisition, 23–25 February 2002 (Rome: Istituto Storico Domenicano, 2004), pp. 395–406. 124  Kramer, Sermones de corpore Christi, in Tractatus varii, Secunda Pars, Sermon  6, fols Iiivb–Iiiira.

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while dreaming and that they thought they did things that they had not. Since witches were constantly defended by this sort of vacuous teaching, they always grew in number, so that there is hardly to be found a village where there are no rumours concerning them, and the secular judges were unwilling to punish them on account of the false assertions of some preachers. It is thus very dangerous to preach the sorts of things by which witches are defended and increase, not because of any material damage, but because of the affront they offer to God and the faith. […] Thus the preacher should say that, although some of their works are illusory and not true, not all of them, however, are to be so regarded: so it is delusion when they remove male organs or transform someone into animal form, or they are transported through many lands in their dreams as is said in canon Episcopi 26. Q 5., although people are often transported physically and not in dreams, just as Simon Magus flew through the air and many necromancers are often transported. When, however, they damage people, cattle, and, as they often do, crops, these things are committed not by the conjurer’s art but, alas, really and truthfully by them with the cooperation of the ill-will of the devil, when God allows such things to happen because of our sins.

From Kramer’s burning words, the opposition between the standpoints of friars who were identified by their respective duties as either preachers or inquisitors (in the colophon of the Tractatus Kramer defines himself ‘sacre pagine professorem ac heretice prauitatis inquisitorem’) stands out as the main point at issue. According to the Dominican, the preachers deny the existence of strige with their supposed power to harm. The terminology is clearly reminiscent of the pattern also referred to by the Milanese Observant Franciscans. The defence which, according to Kramer, the preachers used to offer brings to mind Antonio da Vercelli, who had seen a direct intervention of the devil in the misdeeds attributed to the witches, denying the direct responsibility of the women. Holding the preachers responsible for the spread of witches, Kramer asserts the reality of their misdeeds and the possibility of bodily transportation, as opposed to the sceptical view of the preachers based on the canon Episcopi, whose weight in that regard he wants to reduce. In light of this background, the attack launched by Samuele Cassini on the reality of the witches’ transportation to the sabbath seems to be the outcome of a position scrupulously stated by his fellow friars during the previous decades. As I show in the final chapter, Cassini’s attack on Dominican inquisitors and the bitter reply by Vincenzo Dodo (or Dodi), represent a significantly early statement tending to scepticism, as well as a concrete example that set in opposition friars standing on two different sides regarding witch-belief.

Chapter 8

Flying with Demons: Samuele Cassini’s Questiones lamearum and the Clash with the Dominicans

T

he belief in witchcraft may seem to conflict with the spirit of the Renaissance, but in fact it implies a type of rationality not opposed to the Renaissance eagerness for understanding reality, although still constructed from typically medieval intellectual instruments that persist well into the early modern Age. Categories such as ‘medieval’ and ‘Renaissance’ have been seen as merging one into the other, with the Renaissance — as Jacques Le Goff wrote — being ‘a last sub-period of a long Middle Ages’.1 From this point of view, witch-belief is an example of how mindset and cultural categories do not fit into a rigid subdivision of history aligned on excessively clear-cut temporal boundaries. The position held by Bernardino Busti and his colleagues suggesting that some beliefs relating to specific witchcraft mythology were pure fantasies is nevertheless part of a similar rationality that would regard them as reflecting reality. In keeping with the traditional Franciscan Observant stance based on the canon Episcopi, the sceptical take of the Milanese preachers concerning the ludus Dianae seems to prepare the way for Cassini’s criticism of the reality of the witches’ flight, the sabbath, and the inquisitors themselves. I have discussed earlier that it was Cassini himself who encouraged Busti to write his Rosarium sermonum, addressing to him an epistola exhortatoria in the form of a metrical 1 

Le Goff, Faut-il vraiment découper l’histoire en tranches?, p. 187. Cf. Monfasani, ‘The Renaissance as the Concluding Phase of the Middle Ages’.

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poem. This suggests that the two friars were acquainted with one another and may have held each other in mutual esteem, agreeing on the same pastoral message. The scepticism towards a belief in witchcraft that was demonstrated by Cassini therefore finds its natural vehicle of transmission in Busti’s Rosarium, which offers a specific reading of the canon Episcopi that was part of the common heritage at St Angelo’s. The view of witchcraft taken by Busti and Cassini mirrors contemporary developments in anti-magical thought and jurisdiction, testifying to the crystallization of two opposed stances. The idea of witchcraft as a real phenomenon was especially held by the Dominicans, following the examination of the canon Episcopi by Nicolas Jacquier with his condemnation of those who, on its basis, took the sabbath as a mere illusion.2 As I have noted earlier, while the stance which viewed witchcraft as a real phenomenon was developing, the sceptical approach had never been completely eliminated: Guglielmo Becchi, Ambrogio Vignati, Ulrich Molitor, and the Lyonnese doctor Symphorien Champier (to mention just a few) were all intellectuals questioning the reality of witch-beliefs between the 1460s and 1500.3 Cassini’s position became part of this complex picture precisely at the time when opposition to this viewpoint was gaining prominence. As indicated in the colophon, Cassini’s Questiones lamearum was published in 1505, most likely in Pavia.4 The Questiones is therefore a remarkably early 2 

Joseph Hansen, Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Hexenwahns und der Hexenverfolgung im Mittelalter (Bonn: C. Georgi, 1901, reprint: Hildesheim, Zürich, New York: Georg Holms Verlag, 2003), pp. 133–45; Lea, Materials toward a History of Witchcraft, ed. by Howland, vol. i, pp. 276–85. See Ostorero, Le diable au sabbat, pp. 627 ff and 706–07; Stephens, Demon Lovers, pp. 134–35; Duni, ‘I dubbi sulle streghe’, p. 205; Matteo Duni, ‘Skepticism’, in Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition, ed. by Richard M. Golden, 4 vols (Santa Barbara: ABC Clio, 2006), vol. iv, pp. 1044–49 (p. 1045). 3  Cf. Duni, ‘Skepticism’; Duni, Under the Devil’s Spell, pp. 20–22; Bibliotheca lamiarum: Documenti e immagini della storia della stregoneria dal Medioevo all’Età Moderna ed. by Giovanna Bosco (Pisa: Pacini Editore, 1994), p. 114. 4  The publisher is unknown. The title reads Questione de le strie: Questiones lamearum fratris Samuelis de Cassinis or. minorum ob. regularis. I have relied on the rare sixteenth-century book held at the Biblioteca Universitaria of Pavia. The text is twelve folios in length, in octavo format, and is bound together with a copy of the Malleus maleficarum printed in Nürnberg in 1519. Joseph Hansen was aware of the existence of two versions of Questiones, and he used the one held at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan. The Milanese copy is clearly a more recent version of the Pavia exemplar, since it integrates the errata corrige listed in this latter. Further, the Milanese copy lists only six of the seven conclusiones that are at the beginning of the Pavia text. Cf. Joseph Hansen, Quellen, p. 263; Lea, Materials toward a History of Witchcraft, ed. by Howland, vol. i, pp. 366–67.

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tract questioning the reality of the flight to the sabbath and its occurrence. The text is founded on the sceptical stance concerning the mythology of strege flying to the ludus, which in turn was developed at St Angelo’s as part of the comprehensive pastoral material produced for the use of preachers and confessors. Cassini’s tract drew definite conclusions — worked out by a friar questioning the approach of other friars — that are indicative of a more general opposition between the two influential Franciscan and Dominican religious and intellectual milieus. Just a few years after the Questiones were published, Cassini’s inclination towards the opposition to certain types of supernatural intervention and the rivalry with the Dominicans was expressed in another tract debating a different problem. In his De stigmatibus (1509), following the Franciscan tradition on the issue, Cassini shows that the stigmata received by St Francis were the most perfect example of that type of divine gift, and that it was impossible for women to receive it due to its being especially intended for male flesh; the appearance of the marks of the stigmata on a female body, according to Cassini, would contradict the set of rules that God gave to nature (his potentia ordinata).5 Cassini’s target was Caterina da Siena, and that was again an attack on the Dominicans: as has been highlighted by Tamar Herzig, questioning the nature of Caterina’s stigmata would imply an attack on the Savonarolan ‘holy women’ who were inspired by her.6 The intellectual attitude of the Franciscan friar towards this type of scepticism reflects the complementarity and the actuality of the debates concerning witchcraft and holiness.

Witchcraft as a Recent Phenomenon A mere ten years after the Formicarius, Pope Nicholas V (1447–55) held that sorcery should be prosecuted even if there was not a clear connection with heresy.7 The idea of witchcraft as a new or ‘modern’ phenomenon, already introduced by Pope  Alexander  V in 1409, was being consolidated to justify the 5 

Samuele Cassini, De stigmatibus sacris divi Francisci et quomodo impossibile est aliquam mulierem, licet sanctissimam, recipere stigmata (Pavia: Bernardino Garaldi, 1509), fol. [C5]r: ‘Conferre stigmata sexui muliebri repugnat potentie ordinarie Dei.’ On female stigmatics, see Tamar Herzig, ‘Stigmatized Holy Women as Female Christs’, Archivio italiano per la storia della pietà, 26 (2013), 151–75. See also William J. Courtenay, Capacity and Volition: A History of the Distinction of Absolute and Ordained Power (Bergamo: Pierluigi Lubrina Editore, 1990), pp. 65–103 and 189–96. 6  Herzig, Savonarola’s Women, pp. 148–49. 7  ‘Etiam si haeresim non sapiant manifeste’ (Hansen, Quellen, p. 19).

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rejection of the view of the canon Episcopi as something old. The Dominican Jean Vineti (d. c. 1470) in his Tractatus contra demonum invocatores, published c. 1450, pointed out that the canon Episcopi did not deal with the ‘modern heretics’ who summon demons, worship them, and sacrifice their new-born babies to them.8 The novelty of these characters matched his conviction that demons were able to move people even over long distances, ‘unless prohibited by divine will’.9 The view on local motion or the conveyance of a corporeal substance from one place to the other was firmly based on Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae, which explained that ‘the corporeal nature has a natural aptitude to be moved immediately by the spiritual nature as regards place’.10 Affirming the possibility of being carried by demons was of fundamental importance to establishing the reality of the sabbath. A decade later, around 1460, Girolamo Visconti also wondered in his Lamiarum sive striarum opusculum whether or not the ludus was truly possible, concluding with an affirmative answer. Like his colleague Vineti, Visconti maintained that demons were truly able to carry people to the ludus.11 Further, in his Opusculum de striis published in the same period, Visconti cast the ludus in a more unambiguously demonic light. When the friar’s two texts were finally published together as a single volume in 1490, the image of the sabbath as a real gathering, the specification of its participants as a hitherto novel class of sinners, and the demonic characterization of the Lady presiding over the ludus were finally tied together in a single story. The issuing of the bull Summis desiderantes affectibus by Pope Innocent VIII in 1484 can be considered the last step in the construction of a net of ter8  ‘Quod dictum capituli [sic] Episcopi non loquitur de modernis hereticis, qui in vigilia demones invocant, ipsos adorant, ab eis responsa prestolantur et acceptant, ipsis tributum solvent et, quod beluarum excedit ferocitatem, interdum proprios natos et frequenter infantes alienos demonibus immolant’ ( Jean Vineti, Tractatus contra demonum invocatores, in Hansen, Quellen, p. 125). 9  ‘Angelus sive bonus sive malus, nisi divinitus prohibeatur, sua naturali virtute potest hominem corporaliter de loco ad locum etiam plurimum distantem baiulare’ (Vineti, Tractatus, in Hansen, Quellen, p. 125). 10  Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Ia q.  110, a.  3 Utrum corpora obediant angelis ad motum localem: ‘Et ideo natura corporalis nata est moveri immediate a natura spirituali secundum locum.’ Cf. Vineti, Tractatus, in Hansen, Quellen, p. 126. 11  ‘Talis ludus nullo modo est impossibilis, nam demones possunt deferre homines de loco ad locum.’ (Girolamo Visconti, Lamiarum sive striarum opusculum, in Hansen, Quellen, p. 202). Visconti makes a fine distinction between the actual reality of the ludus, which is denied by the canon Episcopi, and the possibility of its occurrence, which the canon did not exclude. See Estuardo Flaction, ‘Girolamo Visconti’.

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ror.12 This bull is a definitive theological-canonical utterance on the matter of witchcraft and, combining the fears of Pope John XXII and the directions of Pope Eugene IV, it played a central role in the great witch-hunting processes, largely based as they were on the assumptions of the Malleus maleficarum, published by Heinrich Kramer only two years after the bull. Innocent’s bull was inserted as a preamble to the Malleus, the high point of the tradition of papal endorsement of inquisitors and judges concerning heretics and disbelief in general, and transforming — as has been said — imagination into matter of fact.13 Themes, stereotypes, and charges involving sorcery and witchcraft were brought before the highest ecclesiastical hierarchies directly by the inquisitors working in the field. The existence of the long list of misdeeds and maleficia which following Kramer and Sprenger’s supplicatio to Innocent were said to characterize the behaviour of a set of people who had deviated from Catholic faith, was thus ratified by decree.14 According to the Malleus, one could consider such misdeeds unreal only on pain of being declared a heretic. 15 At the same time, the manual confirms the possibility that the devil might take a person bodily from one place to another, thus alleging that the view proposed by the canon Episcopi was in conflict with the tradition of the Church Fathers and Holy Scripture itself.16 This came to constitute a tenet of central importance for the Dominican point of view that was emerging as dominant in the last quarter of the fifteenth century. 12 

Innocent VIII, Summis desiderantes affectibus, in Bullarum diplomatum et privilegiorum sanctorum Romanorum pontificum Taurinensis editio, 24 vols (Turin: Franco and Enrico Dalmazzo, 1857–88), vol. v (1860), pp. 296–98. 13  Merlo, ‘Aliquando luna lucebat’, p. 39. 14  Innocent VIII, Summis desiderantes affectibus, p. 297: ‘Quamplures utriusque sexus personae, propriae salutis immemores et a fide catholica deviantes, cum demonibus incubis et succubis abuti ac suis incantationibus, carminibus et coniurationibus aliisque nefandis superstitiis et sortilegiis, excessibus, criminibus et delictis mulierum partus, animalium foetus, terrae fruges, vinearum uvas et arborum fructus necnon homines, mulieres, iumenta, pecora, pecudes et alia diversorum generum animalia, vineas quoque, pomeria, prata, pascua, blada, frumenta et alia terrae legumina perire, suffocari et extingui facere et procurare, ipsosque homines, mulieres, iumenta, pecora, pecudes et animalia diris tam intrinsecis quam extrinsecis doloribus et tormentis afficere et excruciare, ac eosdem homines ne gignere, et mulieres ne concepire, virosque ne uxoribus, et mulieres ne viris actus coniugales reddere valeant, impedire.’ English translation in Kors and Peters, Witchcraft in Europe, pp. 177–80. See Senner, ‘How Henricus Institoris Became Inquisitor for Germany’. 15  The Hammer of Witches, I. Q. 1, 7A, ed. and trans. by Mackay, p. 91. 16  The Hammer of Witches, II. Q. 1, c. 3, 101A–105C, ed. and trans. by Mackay, pp. 292–301.

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In the Milanese area the tradition of the Malleus was gaining ground among the inquisitors and the would-be inquisitors of the powerful Dominican Congregation of Lombardy, which was expanding in direct connection with the studium generale of San Domenico in Bologna. The unceasing activity of inquisitors such as Domenico Pirri, Niccolò da Finale, and Giovanni Cagnazzo indicates the extent to which the Northern Italian Dominican circle was determined to spread belief in the reality of the misdeeds of witches, under the assumption that the participants in the ludus were part of a new sect not at all connected to what was described in the canon Episcopi. It has been pointed out how these ideas could have crossed the Alps through the connections of the friars of the Observant Dominican Congregation of Lombardy with Kramer himself.17 The author of the Malleus would have played a central role, therefore, in transmitting to the Italian inquisitors the peculiar elements of the Northern European mythology describing witches as the members of a diabolical sect devoted mainly to the perversion of orthodox Christianity. The letter of 1508 in which Domenico Pirri indicated to the Marquis of Mantua, Francesco Gonzaga, the necessity of exterminating the sect, constitutes the first text written in the Italian vernacular to view the witch-beliefs according to the Northern European patterns.18 A further indication of the rise of the point of view of the Malleus is represented by the dialogue Strix, composed in Latin in 1523 by the humanist Giovanfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, and translated into Italian in the following year by the Dominican inquisitor Leandro Alberti. Clearly representing the position of the author, one of the four protagonists of the dialogue, the Witch, manages to persuade Apistius (the Sceptic) that witchcraft was a real phenomenon.19 The deeds that Strix reports having committed, the practice of maleficia, the renunciation of the Christian 17  See Michael Tavuzzi, Prierias: The Life and Works of Silvestro Mazzolini da Prierio, 1456–1527 (Durham, NC: Duke Uni­ver­s ity Press, 1997), p.  34  ff; and Tamar Herzig, ‘Bridging North and South: Inquisitorial Networks and Witchcraft Theory on the Eve of the Reformation’, Journal of Early Modern History, 12 (2008), 361–82. 18  Herzig, ‘Bridging North and South’, pp. 364 ff and 370–75; Herzig, ‘Heinrich Kramer’, pp. 184–94; Michael Tavuzzi, Renaissance Inquisitors: Dominican Inquisitors and Inquisitorial Districts in Northern Italy, 1474–1527 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), p. 153. 19  It is the Dialogus in tres libros divisus, cui titulus est Strix sive de ludificatione daemonum (Bologna: Girolamo Benedetti, 1523). See Giovanfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, La sorcière: dialogue en trois livres sur la tromperie des demons, ed. by Alfredo Perifano (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007). See also Stephens, ‘The Sceptical Tradition’, pp. 114–17; Burke, ‘Witchcraft and Magic in Renaissance Italy’, pp. 34–35.

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faith, flight, participation in the ludus as a place of preparation for evil actions of a demonic, orgiastic aspect, are all elements that denote witchcraft as a real phenomenon in direct opposition to Christian faith.

Samuele Cassini and the Unreality of the Sabbath Samuele Cassini’s Questiones maintains an opposed point of view, denouncing the reality of a phenomenon that would only much later be recognized as a figment of the imagination.20 Employing all the means at disposal of a medieval Aristotelian philosopher, Cassini develops a line of thought which is interesting for its conclusion. The tract’s thorough exploration of the flight of supposed witches to the ludus Dianae is actually an inquiry into whether the devil might really carry people there. The trials held in Val Camonica indicate that the reality of night flights was a tenet for deciding the consistency of the witchcraft phenomenon. When the Dominican inquisitor Lorenzo Maggi asked Benvegnuda whether she went to Mount Tonale in reality or just in a dream, he showed that from the inquisitor’s point of view distinguishing between physical displacement and the mere effects of hallucination was of central importance.21 Cassini explains how he decided to write about witches — lamiae that are called strigae, he specifies — in order to clarify an issue that, despite all the past debates, remained largely unsolved and led to many erroneous convictions.22 Following the typical ‘thesis’ mode of exposition widespread in late Scholasticism, Cassini states his propositions and then demonstrates them by syllogistic reasoning in opposition to the arguments that he wants to prove wrong. In the opening question, the friar wonders ‘Utrum diabolus possit deferre homines de loco ad locum causa alicuius maleficii perpetrandi’ (‘Whether the devil might move people from one place to the other in order to perpetrate evil deeds’).23 This is the central issue in Cassini’s text, since to 20 

See Michela Valente, ‘La critica alla caccia alle streghe da Johann Wier a Balthasar Bekker’, in ‘Non lasciar vivere la malefica’: Le streghe nei processi e nei trattati (secoli xiv–xvii), ed. by Dinora Corsi and Matteo Duni (Florence: Firenze Uni­ver­sity Press, 2008), pp. 67–82; Stephens, ‘The Sceptical Tradition’, pp. 101–21. 21  Benvegnuda was persuaded of the physicality of her experience: ‘I really acknowledge that I go bodily and not in my dreams.’ (Sanudo, I Diarii, XXV–XXVI, p. 37). 22  Cassini, Questiones lamearum, fol. [a1]v. 23  Cassini, Questiones lamearum, fol. a2r.

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him the ability of the devil to move people from one place to the other could actually decide the questions of the reality of the witches’ flight and, in consequence, of the occurrence of the sabbath itself along with the charges traditionally connected with it. First of all, the friar explains that believers maintain that the devil can transport people to the ludus by referring to the nature of the devil himself: as the angels can move celestial bodies, they claim, thus demons can move people from one place to another. Several biblical examples that were already traditional in the demonological literature are used by believers to support the idea that people can be really moved by supernatural forces. Thus, Gabriel who was sent by God to Galilee, Habakkuk who was brought by an angel to feed Daniel in the den of lions, Jesus himself, who was taken to the mountain and tempted by the devil who showed him all the earthly kingdoms, and Simon Magus, who during his confrontation with Peter, in front of Nero, flew into the air carried by an evil angel, are all cases that — Cassini suggests — believers employ to support their false opinion.24 Against this thesis, Cassini presents his own point of view: ‘In oppositum arguo sic: nullus actus miraculosus concurrit in producendo actum peccati’ (‘As opposed I argue that no miraculous act can concur in producing a sinful action’).25 To move a human body would be a miracle, the friar states, since bodies are not disposed by their own nature to being moved by a spirit. As, however, miracles can be produced only by God, never by the devil, asserting that such an action can really occur would imply that God would favour an act of sin, such as the ludus, which — Cassini explains — is clearly impossible. By applying the canon Episcopi to the issue of flight, belief in aerial transportation is therefore marked as heretical.26 The prerogative of God to perform corporeal transportation constitutes the backbone of Cassini’s line of reasoning. 24 

Cassini, Questiones lamearum, fol.  a2 r. On Gabriel cf. Luke 1.  26; on Habakkuk: Deuteronomy 14. 35; on Jesus: Matthew 4 and 5. 8. The episode of the aerial flight of Simon Magus is in the Acts of Peter, an apocryphal New Testament text from the second century. See Mario Erbetta, Gli apocrifi del Nuovo Testamento, ii: Atti e leggende (Turin: Marietti, 1981), pp. 189–190. On the employment of Scriptural references by demonologists to support aerial flight, see Ostorero, Le diable au sabbat, pp. 423–25, 629–34, 695–98, 713–20. 25  Cassini, Questiones lamearum, fol. a2r. 26  Cassini, Questiones lamearum, fol.  [a4] r: ‘Deferre corpus non facilitatum, sive non naturaliter dispositum ad deferri per aliqua terrarum spacia a spiritu est actus miraculosus, ergo deferre sic corpus non concurrit in producendo actum peccati, qui actus peccati est postea ipse ludus. Maior est nota theologo quia, cum miraculum possit a solo Deo causari, videretur

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Examining the canon Episcopi in greater depth, Cassini points out that the belief condemned by the canon is centred on four actions: riding, passing through (the space of many lands), obeying (Diana), and being summoned (equitare, pertransire, obedire, evocari). Only believing in two of these actions, however, according to the friar, is heretical. Neither belief in obedience to the goddess, nor belief that one is summoned to her service are heretical. Diana, in fact, Cassini explains, is nothing else than an image behind which exists the devil, and since the devil can really summon someone, and he can also be served, it turns out that believing these actions possible is not heretical. On the other hand, the friar points out, it is heretical to believe that the devil can carry people around by means of riding and passing through the space of many lands because human bodies are neither naturally, nor supernaturally disposed to that.27 Now the same biblical references already employed by believers in demonic transportation are taken into consideration by Cassini to prove his point. The friar shows how the role of divine grace is always preponderant even in the cases of bodily transportation narrated in the Bible. Sometimes divine grace can be at work alone, as shown by the cases of Peter walking on the waters, or of Paul who survived after being adrift at sea for twenty-four hours;28 in other circumstances an angel can act as a medium in the transportation, but still as an agent of divine grace, as in the case of Habakkuk, or in those of Philippus and Deus favere peccato et velle peccatum, quod est impossibile. […] Probatio minoris: patet enim, quod natura humana non habet hanc proprietatem, que est esse indistincte ad quecumque loca quocumque modo deferribilem. Est enim solum deferribilis a corporibus debito modo et debitis circumstantiis adaptatis ad hoc […]: quod autem deferatur a spiritu, hoc non est naturale simpliciter […]. Preterea iste actus sic deferendi est miraculosus […]. Ergo est a solo Deo producibilis, ergo non a diabolo […]. Preterea Concilium Acquirense, 26, questio 9, caput Episcopi dicit esse hereticum credere huiusmodi delationem.’ 27  Cassini, Questiones lamearum, fol.  [a5]v: ‘Neque credere aliquem se obedire Diane atque evocari ad servitium eius est hereticum, ergo solum equitare et pertransire aliqua terrarum spacia. […] Et ita dato, quod Dyana sit nihil, quia idolum, tamen quia in idolo servitur diabolo, ideo credere hoc posse fieri non est hereticum; quando etiam quis alicitur a diabolo ad huiusmodi faciendum, dicitur evocari, immo etiam nihil obstat posse sensibiliter evocari. […] Cum enim, ut visum est superius, nullo modo sit naturaliter dispositus ad sic ferri nec etiam supernaturaliter […] constat quod impossibile sit diabolum ferre huiusmodi homines per hunc modum equitationis et pertransitionis. […] Ex hoc sequitur corolarie quod tunc attribuere hanc lationem alicui creature esset etiam hereticum.’ 28  Cassini, Questiones lamearum, fol. [a4]r. For Peter walking on waters cf. Matthew 14. 29; on Paul, Cassini writes: ‘Quando Paulus fuit sub aquis xxiiii horis, non fuit sibi ministratus aer ab angelo, sed sola divina virtute preservatus’, whose reference is to 2 Corinthians 11. 25: ‘Ter naufragium feci, nocte et die in profundo maris fui’.

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Elijah.29 Thus, according to Cassini, since they are not naturally prone to levitation, people can be transported from one place to the other only through the miraculous intervention of God, and only for a good purpose. This clearly does not apply to the devil, in whose transportations grace takes no part.30 On the basis of this reasoning Cassini concludes that the devil cannot take people from one place to the other for the purpose of working evil deeds.31 The basic aim of the Milanese friar was to show that accepting the reality of the ludus would lead to an impossible conclusion. Being conveyed to the ‘game’ would in fact require violation of the rules of nature since a body would have been moved in a way to which it was not disposed by its own nature. This line of reasoning is also present when the friar states that the devil cannot even produce an act of lechery in a human body since he is a spirit; this clearly suggests a link between two different spheres of corporeal contact between humans and demons, such as flight and copulation, both judged as naturally unfeasible.32 Using all the means provided by Aristotelian-Thomistic rationalism, the friar tries to explain that God could not allow bodies to be moved de poten29 

This point is summarized in the sixth conclusio, the one that is missing from the list prefixed to the Milanese text of the Questiones (which puts the seventh of the Pavia text as the sixth and last) but still deals with it in the body of the tract: ‘Sexta conclusio. Quando solum [corpus] supernaturaliter disponitur, si solum moveatur a Deo immediate, tunc est miraculum, licet intercedat presentia angeli, ut factum est in delatione Abacuch et Elie et Philippi’ (Cassini, Questiones lamearum, fol. [a1]v). With Philippus, Cassini refers to St Philip the Deacon, who after having baptized an eunuch was transferred to Azotus ‘by the Spirit of the Lord’ as told in Acts 8. 39–40: ‘Cum autem ascendissent de aqua, Spiritus Domini rapuit Philippum, et amplius non vidit eum eunuchus. Ibat autem per viam suam gaudens. Philippus autem inventus est in Azoto, et pertransiens evangelizabat civitatibus cunctis, donec veniret Cæsaream’. For Elijah cf. 2 Kings 2. 11: ‘Cumque pergerent, et incedentes sermocinarentur, ecce currus igneus, et equi ignei diviserunt utrumque: et ascendit Elias per turbinem in cælum’. 30  Cassini, Questiones lamearum, fol. [a4]r: ‘Ex quo infero, quod tali modo non potest deferre diabolus, quia sue delationi non concurrit gratia, gratum faciens, et ideo non potest esse testis divine assumptionis in homine et tandem, quando divina vis movet id quod non est aptum natum moveri et motus eius est immediate ad finem bonum, quia videlicet nullus malus intercedit, sicut vidimus in exemplis ante datis, tunc illi motui non potest adesse malus angelus, sed bonus dumtaxat.’ 31  Cassini, Questiones lamearum, fol. a2r: ‘[...] Respondeo dicendum, quod pars negativa conclusionis est vera, quod videlicet diabolus non possit deferre homines de loco ad locum causa alicuius malefitii perpetrandi et argumenta in oppositum adducta optime concludunt.’ 32  Cassini, Questiones lamearum, fol. [a4]v: ‘Diabolus enim non produceret actum libidinis in corpore hominis propter applicationem corporis aerie.’ On this point cf. Stephens, Demon Lovers, pp. 125–26; Bailey, Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies, pp. 61–62.

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tia ordinata (or through the system of nature and grace that he himself has created) without this immediately having dire consequences. Nevertheless, according to Cassini God could allow such acts to happen de potentia absoluta (or according to his faculty to operate things even breaking the rules that he himself has established) except acts which would cause, in essence, divine self-contradiction. Consequently, for people to be carried to the ludus by the devil (thus assuming the reality of the ludus and therefore that God performs miracles in order to favour sin) would be possible de potentia absoluta, but since it would contradict God himself, it is de facto impossible.33 On the one hand, nature has disposed that bodies can be moved only by means of other corporeal entities; on the other hand, Cassini points out, as far as supernatural intervention is concerned, the persons under accusation are not apt to be moved since, as the inquisitors themselves admit, those who are generally interested in such illusions (prestigia) repudiate God in principle, trample on the cross, and are mainly uneducated old women from the countryside. To Cassini supernatural disposition characterizes persons of distinction, and in any case such inclination would be used by God only for a good purpose, which however is never achieved by means of transvection. Thus, in the absence of either natural or supernatural predisposition of that kind, the devil cannot take anybody to the ludus.34 Cassini’s approach towards what he considers a mere illusion characteristic of simple-minded people or old and uneducated women recalls closely the standard Franciscan Observant attitude towards popular beliefs, as well as the 33  Cassini, Questiones lamearum, fol.  [a1] v: ‘Corpus […] non posset Deus immediate movere de potentia ordinata, ne videretur esse immediata causa malorum culpe; de potentia vero absoluta posset, quia posset ratificare illos actus alias divina lege prohibitos, preterquam actum odii divini, ne videretur Deus negare seipsum.’ On the differentiation between the absolute and ordained power of God, see Mariateresa Fumagalli Beonio Brocchieri, ‘Potentia absoluta – potentia ordinata: une longue histoire au Moyen-Âge’, in Potentia Dei: L’onnipotenza divina nel pensiero dei secoli xvi e xvii, ed. Guido Canziani, Miguel A. Granda, and Yves Charles Zarka (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2000), pp. 13–23; and Courtenay, Capacity and Volition, pp. 65–103 and 189–96. See also Casagrande and Vecchio, ‘La classificazione dei peccati’, p. 357 ff. 34  Cassini, Questiones lamearum, fol. [a4]v: ‘Impossibile est diabolum ferre homines ad ludum, cum non sint naturaliter neque supernaturaliter ad hoc dispositi. Naturaliter quidem non, quia nulla inest passio homini, quod transferatur de loco ad locum motu tali, nisi per corpora, ut patuit et est manifestum recte philosophantibus. Supernaturaliter etiam non, quia isti tales, ut supponitur ab inquisitoribus, negant Deum in principio et conculcant crucem, et sunt sepenumero quedam ignobiles vetule aut persone idiote atque simplices, grosse et rurales, et illis maxime fiunt hec prestigia. Et preterea, si essent supernaturaliter disposite, atque dato quod essent notabiles persone, hoc fieret a Deo ad aliquem finem bonum mediate vel immediate consequendum. Ex delatione autem huiusmodi nullus sequitur talis finis.’

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way of considering popular superstitions characterizing some theologians and intellectuals during and beyond the fifteenth century.35 After having discoursed of the problem of transvection, Cassini goes further. His sceptical attitude, in fact, goes hand in hand with a scathing critique of the conduct of the inquisitors. They are considered ‘crude and half-educated’, aiming ‘to protect themselves with the little cloak of some interpretation’; this is erroneous, Cassini warns, since it opposes the teaching of the council: again a reference to the authority of the canon Episcopi to which the friar turns later to explain better his point.36 The friar argues that people do not need to go to the ludus to dance or to ‘lie licentiously’. To dance is not a sin in itself, he explains, and although the second charge has a moral implication because it keeps the sinner from God’s grace, neither justifies the need for the existence of the ludus.37 Following this line of reasoning, Cassini outlines four points of powerful effect, attacking the inquisitors themselves: Ex hoc infero primo quod inquisitores, facientes capi eos qui accusantur ab istis lamiis, eo quod viderint illos in ludo, peccant gravissime, cum sit falsissimum et impossibile, quod viderint eosdem sic accusatos in tali ludo. Infero secundo, quod inquisitores sic credentes sunt heretici, si modo proterviter crediderint homines, ut prefertur, ad ludum huiusmodi deferri posse. Infero tertio, quod accusantes et inquisitores tenentur ad restitutionem fame accusatorum et restitutionem bonorum ablatorum. Infero quarto, quod accusatione huiusmodi improbanda nullus potest dici fautor hereticorum, immo econverso consentiendo et favendo est fautor hereticorum, cum faveat heresi damnate per concilium 26, questio 4, caput Episcopi.38

35 

Cf. Michael Bailey, ‘Witchcraft, Superstition, and Astrology in the Late Middle Ages’, in Chasses aux sorcières et démonologie Entre discours et pratiques (xive–xviie siècles), ed. by Martine Ostorero, Georg Modestin, and Kathrin Utz Tremp (Florence: SISMEL, 2010), pp. 349–66 (pp. 352–53). In 1542 the physician Giovanni Grillenzoni expressed a similar position to save ‘a poor and simple-minded, not educated old woman’ from the accusation of being a witch. As he himself states, this costed him the resentment of the Dominican inquisitors. See Albano Biondi, ‘Streghe ed eretici nei domini estensi all’epoca dell’Ariosto’, in Albano Biondi, Umanisti, eretici, streghe: Saggi di storia moderna, ed. by Massimo Donattini, with intro. by Adriano Prosperi (Modena: Archivio storico, 2008), pp. 67–97 (pp. 79–80). 36  Cassini, Questiones lamearum, fol. [a5]v: ‘Et quia inquisitores grossi atque scioli nituntur se contutari quodam palliolo cuiusdam expositionis ipsorum, que est etiam nihilominus erronea et contra mentem sacri concilii, ideo capitulum ipsum hic exponam inferius.’ 37  Cassini, Questiones lamearum, fol. [a5]r. 38  Cassini, Questiones lamearum, fol. [a5]r.

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From this I conclude, first, that the inquisitors who cause the arrest of people who are accused by these witches, on the grounds that they have seen them in the ludus, sin very seriously, because it is absolutely false and impossible that they could have seen the accused in such a ludus. Second, I conclude that the inquisitors who believe this are heretics if as has been shown above, they have believed with such confidence that men could be taken to such a ludus. Third, I conclude that the accusers and the inquisitors are required to make restitution for their reputation and the goods seized. Fourth, I conclude that nobody can be called a promoter of heretics for rejecting such a charge, but on the contrary, someone who agrees and supports the charge is a promoter of heretics since he or she favours the heresy condemned by the council [in Decretum Gratiani, Causa] 26, Quaestio 4, Chapter Episcopi.

Apparently, the scepticism shown towards the ludus Dianae in the pastoral texts produced at St Angelo’s, which dealt with it as simply a superstition, became in the writings of Cassini an outspoken criticism of both the belief in the sabbath and of the inquisitors, who were the major supporters of this viewpoint. The claim of the Observant Franciscans that the allegations against the mulierculae, mulieres, strigae or lamiae who believed they went with the nightly goddess were based on illusions and delusions, were systematized by Cassini through the framework of his theological-philosophical reasoning, which read the sabbath stereotype through the sceptical lens of the canon Episcopi. Cassini’s words do not appear to be just those of an intellectual speaking through his Aristotelian rationality, though. They carry all the disappointment with the conduct of the inquisitors that was shared especially by some jurists. Ambrogio Vignati, from Lodi (d. between 1478 and 1485), in his Quaestio de lamiis seu strigibus, composed presumably in 1468 but published only in 1581 as part of his Tractatus de haeresi, expressed all his scepticism towards accepting the witches’ denunciations of their accomplices, and the Milanese Andrea Alciato (d. 1550) made the same point, justifying it with the nature of the sabbath as a mere illusion, citing the canon Episcopi.39 Giovanfrancesco Ponzinibio, too, criticized witch-beliefs as well as the conduct of the inquisitors in his De lamiis (1511), although not as strongly as Cassini. The testimony of accomplices, Ponzinibio says, should not constitute an indicium for inquisitors, because these women are simply deluded. Ponzinibio’s tract is probably the most consistently close 39 

Lea, Materials toward a History of Witchcraft, ed. by Howland, vol. i, pp. 299–301 and 374–76; Matteo Duni, ‘Vignati, Ambrogio’, in Dizionario Storico dell’Inquisizione, ed. by Adriano Prosperi and others, vol. iii (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2010), pp. 1690–91; Abbondanza, ‘Alciato (Alciati)’.

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to the points made by Cassini and to those already developed by the Milanese Observants, such as the condemnation of belief in witches entering houses at night and enchanting children, or the flight to the ludus.40 Ponzinibio’s effort to cast doubts over witchcraft resulted in a harsh reply from the inquisitors: in his Quaestio de strigibus the Dominican Bartolomeo Spina (d. 1546) calls on his colleagues to burn Ponzinibio along with his text, and condemns the efforts of the jurist to apply the canon Episcopi to ‘modern’ witchcraft.41 The vicissitudes related to the numerous trials held in Northern Italy even triggered the reaction of intellectuals who had been generally unconnected with such matters. Ill feelings towards the Dominican inquisitors can be found in Val Camonica, originating from the Venetian authorities, officially for political and jurisdictional reasons. The reprimands concerned the same aspects indicated by Cassini. On 14 July 1518 the ‘Consiglio dei Dieci’ (one of the most prominent judiciaries of the Venetian Republic) decided to intervene after seventy witches were burned at the stake, claiming that the local authorities of Brescia and the inquisitors had proceeded without consultation with the Venetian authorities. Fifteen days later, on 31 July, the Venetians ordered the regents of Brescia to halt the trials to let the Consiglio make a thorough investigation of what was going on. In particular, the Venetians were determined to check ‘Whether [the accused] had been influenced in their answers […] and how [the inquisitors] had been proceeding with regard to the seizing and the distribution of their goods’.42 An anonymous report written in August of 1518 on behalf of the Venetians relates the testimony of two witches who were constrained to confirm false accusations, and the reporter concluded that: ‘The presence of several witches and sorcerers in Val Camonica is ascertained, however I believe it [the investigation] has not been completed in the best possible way’.43 40 

Lea, Materials toward a History of Witchcraft, ed. by Howland, vol. i, pp. 377–82. Lea, Materials toward a History of Witchcraft, ed. by Howland, vol. i, pp. 385–95. See Matteo Duni, ‘Ponzinibio, Giovanni Francesco’, in Dizionario Storico dell’Inquisizione, ed. by Adriano Prosperi and others, vol. iii (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2010), pp. 1238–39; Matteo Duni, ‘Spina, Bartolomeo’, in Dizionario Storico dell’Inquisizione, ed. by Adriano Prosperi and others, vol. iii (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2010), pp. 1471–72; Duni, ‘I dubbi sulle streghe’; Duni, ‘La caccia alle streghe e i dubbi di un giurista: il De lamiis et excellentia utriusque iuris di Giovanfrancesco Ponzinibio (1511)’, in La centralità del dubbio. Fonti classiche e sviluppi dello scetticismo nell’età moderna, ed. by Camilla Hermann and Luisa Simonutti (Florence: Olschki, 2011), pp. 3–26. 42  Sanudo, I Diarii, XXV–XXVI, p. 45. 43  Sanudo, I Diarii, XXV–XXVI, p. 51. 41 

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Furthermore, a letter from the regents of Brescia to the Consiglio dei Dieci, dated 7 November 1518, reports on the arrogance of such an inquisitor as Lorenzo Maggi, and on how inquisitors forced the accused to purchase the special red cross to be stitched on their clothes as an identification mark, keeping the profit for themselves. The writer states: ‘If the friars were calm I would be happy to spend the last months of my mandate here instead of becoming mad at them’.44 Another report shows the same ill feelings concerning the inquisitors operating in Val Camonica. According to the text, after the accused Bartolomeo de Celeri was imprisoned by the Dominicans, Lorenzo Maggi robbed him of fourteen ducats. Bartolomeo summoned fra’ Lorenzo to have the money back. The inquisitor promised to fulfil that request, but seemingly never did.45 Seizing the goods and money of the accused was one of the rights prescribed by both canon and civil law against heretics and apostates, as those accused of witchcraft were classified.46 Such texts clearly point to the existence of reprimands addressed to the inquisitors, whose conduct in Northern Italy gave contemporaries room for doubt. Cassini’s standpoint also needs to be contextualized within this background of opposition against the power of the inquisitors, which clearly generated clashes among the different parties and triggered a prolonged debate, destined to flare up in the following centuries.47

Vincenzo Dodo’s Reaction Within a year, Cassini’s message, opposing those who believed in the reality of the ludus, prompted a reply from the Dominican side. In 1506 Vincenzo Dodo (d. 1520), bachelor of the Sentences in the Studium in the friary of San Tommaso in Pavia, and subsequently regent master in the same friary, wrote his Apologia Dodi contra li difensori de le strie attacking Cassini’s thesis; the polemic between Dodo and Cassini lasted until the following year and saw both men produce further pamphlets on the subjects.48 Dodo’s words show 44 

Sanudo, I Diarii, XXV–XXVI, pp. 61–62. Sanudo, I Diarii, XXV–XXVI, p. 67 ff. 46  In the trials held at Gambasca, the Dominican inquisitor Michele de Madeis, counselor to the marquis, states that: ‘Bona autem confischabitis seu pocius confischata declarabitis tam de iure canonico quam civili, quia bona hereticorum apostatorum utroque iure confiscantur […]’ (Lucea talvolta la luna, ed. by Comba and Nicolini, p. 138). 47  See Michaela Valente, Contro l’Inquisizione: Il dibattito europeo secc. xvi–xviii (Turin: Claudiana, 2009), pp. 19–20. 48  The full title of Dodo’s text reads Apologia Dodi contra li difensori de le strie et principaliter 45 

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all his animus against the Franciscan, to the point that he compares the results of Cassini’s way of reasoning based on the canon Episcopi to the prognostications of peasants.49 Dodo criticizes Cassini for having written a tract that was, according to him, completely in error and one that substantially favoured witches.50 Further, the Dominican claims that he once tried to arrange a public debate with Cassini, who however declined the invitation for fear of losing.51 Although Dodo recognizes that sometimes the devil may want to deceive people by making them believe that they are moving while in fact they are not, his central argument is the possibility that, with the permission of God, demons can move people to help them commit maleficia.52 The traditional examples of Jesus and Simon Magus are employed again to assert the possibility of bodily transportation either for good or evil purposes. Dodo insists on the inscrutable reasons for which ‘Deus gloriosus qui ex omni malo scit elicere bonum, iuste a contra Questiones lamiarum fratris Samuelis de Cassinis, printed in Pavia by Bernardino Garaldi. I have relied on the copy held at the Biblioteca Comunale Augusta in Perugia, which also includes the Questio apologetica contra inuectiuam fratris Samuelis de Cassinis in doctrinam diui Thome Aquinatis. A partial transcription of the text is in Hansen, Quellen, pp. 273–78. See also Lea, Materials toward a History of Witchcraft, ed. by Howland, vol. i, pp. 366–67. On the polemic between Dodo and Cassini, see Frédéric Max, ‘Les premières controversies sur la réalité du sabbat dans l’Italie du xvi siècle’, in Le sabbat des sorciers en Europe (xv–xviii siècles): Colloque international E. N. S. Fontenay Saint-Cloud (4–7 novembre 1992), ed. by Nicole Jacques-Chaquin and Maxime Préaud (Grenoble: Jérôme Millon, 1993), pp. 55–62. On Vincenzo Dodo, see Michaela Valente, ‘Dodo, Vincente’, in Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition, ed. by Richard M. Golden, 4 vols (Santa Barbara: ABC Clio, 2006), vol. i, pp. 287–88; and Michael Tavuzzi, ‘I maestri reggenti dello Studio generale domenicano in Pavia a cavallo del Quattro e Cinquecento (1478–1516)’, Archivum Fratrum Predicatorum, 72 (2002), 253–319 (pp. 301–07). 49  Dodo, Apologia, fol. e[1]r: ‘Per hec patet quam sit distorta et falsa ac destruens textum Samuelis expositio ad capitulum Episcopi, et primum eius presuppositum (quo supponit rationes suas esse veras) falsissimum est. Et pronosticatio quam facit in illo […] similis est pronosticationi cuiusdam rustici, qui prenunciabat serenitatem et secuta est densissima grando.’ 50  Dodo, Apologia, fol. a2r: ‘Ab ea [Questione lamiarum] longe mihi aliena mens fuit, utpote comperiens eam plures continere errores et lamiarum secte, multorum iudicio, plurimum favere.’ 51  Dodo, Apologia, fol. a2r: ‘Quam tamen se obtulerat facturum congressionem, statuto tempore territus declinavit.’ 52  Dodo, Apologia, fol. d2v: ‘Sexta conclusio: Diabolus potest de facto hominem localiter movere (permittente Deo) ad maleficium perpetrandum, adque ad oscenos actus exercendos.’ Dodo, Apologia, fol. d3v: ‘Septima conclusio: Diabolus potest illusorie decipere hominem ab exteriori et interiori ut credat se localiter moveri ad maleficium vel actus turpes peragendum, etsi realiter aut corporaliter non moveatur.’

Flying with Demons

303

demonibus et maleficis effectus noxiales et maleficiales pluresque nephandos actus fieri permittitur’ (‘The glorious God, who can bring good from every evil, rightly allows that harmful and evil actions and many nefarious deeds can be performed by demons and witches’).53 In this way, the Dominican contradicts the point made by Cassini, and argues that the women mentioned by the canon Episcopi are not mistaken because they believe they ride and pass through the space of many lands, but only because they believe they follow Diana or Herodias, whom they consequently and erroneously consider real beings of divine nature. Belief in the possibility of riding on the backs of demons and travelling under the species of animals does not constitute heresy, Dodo claims, because the devil can carry these women like a horse. To deny this, the Dominican concludes, means to oppose the teaching of St Augustine, who had claimed that demons can transport real (physical) loads.54 Thus, Dodo claims, while metamorphosis seems to be imaginary, it is in fact real, and the question whether the maleficae go to the ludus only in spirit or also corporally is not even to be asked by the wise man, because going in spirit alone would mean that they were dead, due to the separation of body and spirit, the friar specifies, while all the maleficae actually confess that they are corporally taken to the ludus by the devil.55 Dodo’s opposition to Cassini’s main point concerning the reality of diabolical human transportation is supported by the Dominican through the frequent employment of the restriction ‘permittente Deo’, which allows him to try 53 

Dodo, Apologia, fol. [c7]r. 54  Dodo, Apologia, fol.  e[1] r: ‘Non ergo condemnantur iste mulieres ab ecclesia quia credant se equitare et ire, ut putavit Samuel, sed quia credunt se equitare cum Diana vel Herodiade et se illi obedire debere. Nam si crederent se ire et perambulare comite demone aut equitare super diabolum in corpore vel in iumento assumpto, propter hoc non essent heretice quia crederent id quod possibile est. Posset enim diabolus se illis tamquam caballum supponere, sicut et illis oneribus de quibus agit Aug(ustinus) XVIII De civitate Dei c. XVIII. […] Non negat ergo Ecclesia illas mulieres vel maleficas a demone posse deferri quia sic contrariaretur Augustino.’ See Augustine of Hippo, De civitate Dei, book xviii. 18, ed. by Dombart and Kalb, vol. ii, p. 608. 55  Dodo, Apologia, fol. e3r: ‘Ex predictis etiam apparet quam stulta et irrationabilis sit questio vulgi quam movet in hac materia, an scilicet malefice vadant ad maleficium per­pre­ tandum seu ad ludum in corpore et anima, et an transformentur in cattas et cetera animalia cuius­modi videntur. Patet enim transformationem realem ipsarum in alienas species virtute demo­n is fore impossibilem. Fantastica, tamen possibilis est. Nec expedit apud sapientes primam questionem solvere, cum separatione anime a corpore mors sit: mortuum autem vivi­fi­ care virtutis est divine, non diabolice. Nec hactenus reperi maleficam se asserentem illius opini­ onis: quin potius asserunt omnes se corporaliter accedere, demone semper comite in corpore assumpto.’

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to reconcile the possibility that the devil can move people with the prerogatives of the omnipotence of God. With the reference to the teaching of St Augustine Dodo tries to provide a more solid doctrinal ground for the thesis of the sabbath as a real occurrence. The reasoning of Cassini had probably seemed to him more sound than he would admit. Nevertheless, the consideration of witchcraft as a real phenomenon was not yet overpowered by the efforts of the sceptics. An indication of this is that Cassini’s Questiones lamearum was never reprinted after 1505, while Dodo’s Apologia was printed again in Rouen four years after its first publication, and was widely employed by Bernardo Rategno of Como in his Tractatus de strigibus. Still, as I have already pointed out, Cassini’s heated tract did not pass without leaving its mark on the arguments of the sceptics, being certainly employed by Giovanfrancesco Ponzinibio.56 Yet as a supporter of witchcraft prosecution, the Jesuit Martin Delrio mentioned Cassini’s tract among the sources for the sceptical approach in his comprehensive Disquisitiones magicarum (1603).57 Ultimately, the relevance of the Questiones rests in its elaborating a type of rationality that promoted moderation and doubt concerning witch-belief in a period that had relentlessly granted success to the opposite view. Cassini’s position, as well as the sceptical orientation that is to be found in the pastoral texts produced at St Angelo’s, certainly suggests the need for a thorough reconsideration of the role of friars who, in the late fifteenth century, took part in the debate concerning witchcraft not as inquisitors but as preachers and confessors, bringing to the problem an approach that in many respects diverged from that of the inquisitors.

56 

Cf. Max, ‘Les premières controverses sur la réalité du sabbat’, pp. 58–59; Duni, Under the Devil’s Spell, pp. 20–22; Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons, pp. 194–95. 57  Martin Delrio, Disquisitionum magicarum libri sex (Mainz: Peter Henning, 1616), II, q. 16. See Germana Ernst, ‘Del Rio, Martín Anton’, in Dizionario Storico dell’Inquisizione, ed. by Adriano Prosperi and others, vol. i (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2010), pp. 462–63.

Conclusion: A Pastoral Way to Superstition and Witchcraft

I

n light of the recognition of two mythologies of witchcraft centred on two different ludi (the ludus Dianae and the ludus bariloti) in the Milanese Franciscan Observant texts, I have aimed to show that the supposed hardening of the Observant Franciscans in their views on witches did not concern all elements of witchcraft, and nor did it concern the set of beliefs underpinning both these mythologies, which the friars in fact helped to clarify.1 The Milanese preachers dealt with witchcraft as part of their broader consideration of superstition, and, in line with the nature of superstition, framed them both as issues of faith in accordance with the concerns expressed by the First Commandment. Superstition, witchcraft, and the ways faith should be practiced were part of an overall picture that also included other areas of concern for the friars in their efforts to (re)define the relationship between God, the believers, and the Church by creating a comprehensive pastoral programme that would reform late fifteenth-century society.2 The texts elaborated at St Angelo’s were intended to provide the friars with a precise outline of correct behaviours that they had to explain to the faithful through their preaching, and whose outcomes on the part of believers had to be checked according to established pastoral schemes during confession. In both 1 

On the hardening of the Observant Franciscans towards witchcraft, see Montesano, ‘L’Osservanza francescana’, p. 148; Ostorero, Le diable au sabbat, p. 684. 2  On the need to identify a wider context for the Observant Franciscans’ preaching on superstition and witchcraft, see Cardini, ‘Le streghe nella predicazione degli Osservanti Francescani’, pp. 130–31. From a general point of view, the natural setting of this discourse is the longue durée process of the Christianization of Western societies: Delumeau, Un chemin d’histoire: Chrétienté et christianisation.

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cases, the Ten Commandments played a central role. In this context, the rediscovery of ad status preaching demonstrated the need to deliver a more precise and selective religious message to the laity, with the friars approaching believers on the basis of their own ‘socio-functional’ status, as Michaud-Quantin has called it.3 A pastoral stance was pre-eminent in this regard. The Milanese friars, who were primarily preachers and confessors, were well aware of the role they played in society through cura animarum. This awareness, which was so wellrepresented by Busti, emerged when Cassini, debating beliefs in witchcraft, called into question the stance of friars whom he instead identified as inquisitors. The opposing viewpoints held by pastors and inquisitors with regard to witchcraft may even disclose a more general conflict between two very different approaches to questions of orthodoxy and faith, with one pointing to coercion and the other to pastoral care. It was this latter viewpoint, however, that came to be followed at an ecclesiastical level in the early modern Age. A moderate stance to matters of superstition and witchcraft developed at the time of and after the Council of Trent with the gradual affirmation of a more cautious attitude in Italy. The Instructio pro formandis processibus in causis strigum, sortilegiorum et maleficiorum, drafted between 1590 and 1610 but published officially only in 1657, is the most representative document of a shift in understanding that even came to influence the Roman Inquisition.4 Although the text did not lead to the denial of belief in witchcraft as a whole, it nevertheless ratified a greater emphasis on proof in connection to allegations of witchcraft and upheld the refusal to accuse people of being accomplices in misdeeds that related to the sabbath. The mitigation of procedures connected to witchcraft and magic within Holy Office was also matched within the ranks of the Church by the consolidation of a general missionary strategy that was aimed at re-evangelizing existing believers: both tendencies testify to the development of a more pragmatic and — as has been said — ‘paternalistic’ outlook based on a pastoral attitude.5 I claim that some constitutive roots of this progressive 3 

Michaud-Quantin, ‘Les méthods de la pastorale du xiii au xv siècle’, p. 88 ff. On the ad status preaching, see Muessig, ‘Audience and Preacher’; Carla Casagrande, Prediche alle donne del secolo xiii: Testi di Umberto da Romans, Gilberto da Tournai, Stefano di Borbone (Milan: Bompiani, 1978). 4  For a general introduction and a bibliographical orientation on the Instructio, see Oscar Di Simplicio, ‘Instructio pro formandis processibus in causis strigum, sortilegiorum et maleficiorum’, in Dizionario Storico dell’Inquisizione, ed. by Adriano Prosperi and others, vol. ii (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2010), pp. 845–47. 5  Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza, pp. 368–417. A more nuanced and slow development

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change in the Church’s strategy towards the faithful were already present in the calls for moral reform by fifteenth-century preachers, and this viewpoint was particularly apparent amongst the Milanese Observant Franciscan friars. Thus, I have argued within this volume that the typical pastoral approach taken by the Milanese preachers was based on three major points: the aim of classifying and checking the behaviour of the faithful in line with specific schemas of deviance that were applied through preaching and confession; the examination of superstition and witchcraft as two issues among a number of others that underpinned a wider attitude towards reform and that focused on instructing and moralizing, rather than condemning and punishing believers; and the sceptical stance regarding certain beliefs about witchcraft — culminating in Cassini’s tract — which questioned the mythology of the ludus Dianae, namely the physical reality of witches’ flight, shape-shifting, the possibility that demons move people from one place to another, the responsibility of the supposed witches for the crimes ascribed to them, and the reality of the sabbath itself, as reflecting (or being connected to) this pastoral attitude. The Milanese friars dealt with their job in such a way that there was no feeling of terror, no panicking or apocalyptic perception of an imminent collapse of the world; what one senses is rather a firm confidence on the part of the friars that they held all the necessary intellectual means for understanding individual and social realities and for teaching these cornerstones of doctrine and faith to other friars so that they could in turn be explained to believers. This has to be connected to the leitmotiv of preachers as ‘fishers of men’, which Busti develops vividly, exhorting preachers to attract support for their programme of moral instruction through the use of rhetorical devices and erudite speaking. Busti’s attitude was one way of rendering preaching both more attractive and more effective, in line with the contemporary cultural trends of the Renaissance, and it was combined with a pastoral role whose purpose and intellectual instruments were delineated more precisely than ever before, and disseminated far more easily thanks to the printing press. Together, all of this marked the way in which Observant Franciscan preachers tried to reshape their influence over individuals, as well as to assert their voice in current intellectual debates at the dawn of the early modern age.

of such a ‘moderate turn’ has been pointed out, although the outcomes are basically confirmed. See Giovanni Romeo, ‘Inquisizione, Chiesa e stregoneria nell’Italia della Controriforma: nuove ipotesi’, in ‘Non lasciar vivere la malefica’: Le streghe nei processi e nei trattati (secoli xiv–xvii), ed. by Dinora Corsi and Matteo Duni (Florence: Firenze Uni­ver­sity Press, 2008), pp. 53–64.

Appendices

Appendix One

Samuele Cassini’s Epigrams for Busti

Busti, Rosarium sermonum, fols 2v–3r Fluidum resonat mare gurgitibus, sinuosa vadis vere replentibus. Fera nec refugit alere catulos. Modo, quum resonant zephiri dulcius, apium strepitans pede mellifluo modulos resonat sonus ambiguos: pia corticibus petit e laceris dominum fugitans turba, nec humiles revocans motus summa Licei,1 nisi quod teneat cimbala quatiens Mater ad amnem.2 Ea codicibus bona que variis tenuit quondam tua Calliope resera: redeunt bustevolentibus aurea secla. Mare quod celebrant littora, feriunt, ferit ut ipsum littora sonitu: tua me pulsat fortis opinio, mea te pulsat crebra petitio. Sonus hic dulcis strepitans volucres 1  Licey in the original. Cf. Virgil, Georgica, IV 539: ‘(eximii tauri) qui tibi nunc viridis depascunt summa Lycaei’. 2  Cf. Virgil, Georgica, IV 64: ‘et Matris quate cymbala circum’.

Appendix One

312

agit in saltus nemoris varios: agit ut redeant vatibus animi, teneant nimis pia tractatibus. Volitans remeet alta bicornibus Clio3 remissis modo de collibus. Sit tibi vera salus.

Busti, Rosarium sermonum, fol. 3r Que vidi metroque tibi suadente probaram, hec modo littrificis ere notanda iube. De variis varios flores variumque liquorem floribus exculpis: quod fluit arte secas. Ergo apis immensum quod iam tulit aurea pondus mellis in alveolum nunc4 tibi reddet ager. Si quid amas, igitur, rogitanti pro omnibus uni obsequere, ut cunctis sit liber iste salus.

3  4 

Clyo in the original. Num in the original.

Appendix Two

Bernardino Busti’s Ten Commandments in Vernacular Verses

Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Sermon 16, fol. 126rb–va Uno solo Dio debi avere, amar et adorar cum tutta mente, cercar con ogni forza e lui timere. Il suo nome non debi nominare senza casone né quello de li sancti; fa’ che non giuri e mai non biastemare. Sanctifica le feste che sono comandate oldendo messa e li officii sancti; lassa li vicii, giocchi et balate. Il padre e la madre debi honorare e provedere a lor necessitate, se a mala morte non vôi capitare. Non infamare, occidere, né havere in odio o rancore alcuna creatura, ma quanto poi defende e fa piacere. In te non sia vicio né brutura d’alcuna luxuria che se pò usare; nel matrimonio serva la drittura.

Quello ch’è d’altrui non te appropriare per furto, usura o ver per rapinare, perchè saresti tenuto a satisfare. Guarda che falso non testificasse, per odio, pagamento o per amore; non affirmare quando dubitasse. Cacia da te li mali pensamenti e non desiderar l’altrui moglia, se vôi fugire li eternal tormenti. Di cose d’altri non ti venga voglia né anche de roba de male acquisto per avaritia la to mente invoglia. Quello christiano che observa questo che sopra è dicto camparà le pene: di possidere gloria li protesto.

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Index of Names and Places

Abbondanza, Roberto: 104 n., 299 n. Abonde (Abundia): 269 Agrillo, Christian: 277 n., 278 n. Agrimi, Jole: 274 n. Alberico da Rosate: 138 Alberti, Leandro: 206 n., 292 Alberto da Sarteano, Observant Franciscan: 15, 20, 27, 31, 76 Albini, Giuliana: 35 n., 51 n. Alciati, family (Milan): 28 Alciato, Andrea: 299 Alecci, Antonio: 40 n. Alexander III, Pope: 121 Alexander V, Pope: 242, 282, 289 Alexander VI, Pope: 282 Alexander of Hales: 64, 134, 135, 137, 138 n., 143, 156, 173, 180 Alfonso de Spina: 46 Alighieri, Dante: 77, 192 Allevi, Febo: xvii, xvii n., 164 n., 206 n., 213 n. Alvernia see Saint-Pourçain Amadeus VIII, Duke of Savoy: 4 Amato, Angelo: 112 n. Ambrose, Saint: 112 n. Amedeo da Silva y Menezes: 50 n. Ancona, mark of: 10 Ancyra, Council of: 248, 257 Andenna, Giancarlo: 24, 25 n., 31 n., 33 n., 36 n., 39 n., 45 n., 49 n., 50 n., 51 n. Andreozzi, Laura: 27 n. Andrić, Stanko: 12 Angelo da Chivasso see Carletti Angelo da Verona: 282

Angiolini, Hélène: 4 n., 24 n. Antoniazzi Villa, Anna: 47 n., 49 n. Antonino da Firenze, Saint, Archbishop of Florence: 42 n., 61, 62, 120, 151, 166 n., 167, 168, 169, 170, 203, 207, 212, 213, 232, 233 n., 257–58 Antonio da Bitonto, Observant Franciscan: debate with Lorenzo Valla about the Creed: 79, 80, 112, 113 Antonio da Vercelli, Observant Franciscan: xiv, 20, 21, 33, 172 and the usurer of Assisi see Caimi, Bernardino booklets for confession by: 64 superstition and divine cult: 132 and various types of superstitions: 162–63, 165 and idolatry: 176–77 and invocation of demons: 187 and the symbolic interpretation of dreams: 191–93 n. and ritual magic: 181, 207 on the lawfulness ‘to repel sorcery by sorcery’: 204 and charms: 205 and unreal witch beliefs: 222, 271, 273 on witches shape-shifting into cats: 252–53, 280 n. and witches: 246, 279, 286 and the distinction between the ludus Dianae and the ludus bariloti: 240, 270, 305 and the ‘Lady of the Game’: 265–66, 268, 270

366

Apistius: 292 Apollo, oracle of: 185 Aprile, Renato: 24 n. Aquileia see Ancyra Argelati, Filippo: 40 n. Aristotle: 77, 142, 142 n., 198 Armenia: 14 n. Arrivabene, Giorgio: 55 Arrivabene, Pietro, da Canneto, Observant Franciscan: 77 Ascoli Piceno: 164 Assisi: Basilica of St Francis, upper church: 107 Basilica of St Mary of the Angels in: 27 ‘Le Carceri’, hermitage in: 11 the usurer of see Caimi, Bernardino Astesano da Asti: 61, 104, 105, 120–21, 194 Augsburg: 62 Augustine of Hippo, Saint: 110, 112 n., 139, 141, 143, 155, 186, 205 n., 250, 251, 252, 303, 304 Averroës: 77 Avesani, Rino: 176 n., 190 n., 206 n. Avicenna: 77 Azotus (Ashdod, Israel): 296 Azzolini, Monica: 195 n. Badalì, Renato: 75 n. Baer, Yitzhak: 46 n. Bailey, Michael: xvi n., 103 n., 104 n., 149 n., 151 n., 152 n., 154 n., 175 n., 181 n., 182 n., 184 n., 186 n., 187 n., 189 n., 196 n., 203 n., 214 n., 223, 224 n., 226 n., 232 n., 233 n., 234 n., 238 n., 242 n., 259 n., 261 n., 271 n., 272 n., 276 n., 282 n., 296 n., 298 n. Balkans: 4 Balletti, Andrea: 42 n. Balsamo, Augusto: 54 n. Balsamo, Luigi: 225 n. Barcham, William C. 148 n. Bariani, Niccolò: 45 Barret, Justine L. 202 n. Bartolo da Sassoferrato: 236 Bartolomeo da San Concordio: 120 Bartolomeo de Celeri, accused by the inquisitors in Val Camonica: 301 Baschet, Jerôme: 108 n., 145 Basel, Council of: 4, 242

INDEX OF NAMES AND PLACES Bastanzio, Serafino: 24 n. Bataillon, Louis-Jacques: 65 n. Battista of Pavia, Dominican inquisitor: 228 Baumann, Karin: xvi n., 103 n., 104 n., 150 n., 212 n. Becchi, Guglielmo: 258, 288 Beetz, Johannes: 103 Behringer, Wolfgang: 226 n., 242 n., 243 n., 262 n., 266 n., 278 n., 282 n. Belgrade, battle of: 4 Bellano, parish of: 40 Beltrami, Luca: 28 n., 30 n. Benevento: 276 and the ‘ianuatice’: 257 the walnut tree of: 280 Benvegnuda, witch: 264, 267, 293 Benvenuti, Anna: 14 n. Benvoglienti, Leonardo: 22 n. Berdini, Alberto see Alberto da Sarteano Bergamo: 50 Bernardino Aquilano da Fossa, Observant Franciscan: 10, 16, 31 Bernardino da Feltre, Observant Franciscan: 23 n., 24, 26, 35–36, 44–45, 71, 73, 80, 148, 150 Bernardino da Siena, Saint, Observant Franciscan: xvi-xvii, 7–8, 15–20, 22–23, 30, 40, 43, 45, 56, 57 n.–8, 60–61, 69, 70, 71, 72, 80, 86, 156 and the friary of St Angelo: 27 and superstition: 105, 107–08, 140, 176 n., 178–79, 184, 201, 204, 210 n., 212–13, 216 and the devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus: 146–47 and confessors: 171 and the Godmother of Lucca: 183 and Finicella the witch: 229–230; see also Finicella and the ludus bariloti: 239–241 and the metamorphosis of witches: 249–250 n., 258 and witch beliefs: 270 nocturnal gatherings and dances 272, 276 Bersuire, Pierre: 206 n. Bertolin, Silvia: 243 n., 263 n. Bertolotti, Maurizio: 267 n. Bever, Edward: 202 n., 275 n, 276 n. Bianchi, Rossella: 73 n.

INDEX OF NAMES AND PLACES Biondi, Albano: 283 n., 298 n. Bisogni, Fabio: 22 n. Black, Robert: 190 n. Bloomfield, Morton Wilfred: 101 n.,102 n. Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Renate: 4 n., 119 n. Bocchetta, Monica: 166 n. Bologna: 23 n., 69 Carmelite friars and invocation of demons in: 188 Franciscan Province of: 95 n. Bolsena, miracle of: 94 Bolton, Brenda: 89 n. Bolzoni, Lina: 144 n. Bona of Savoy, Duchess of Milan: 50 Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, Saint: 64, 109, 110, 113, 134, 140, 143, 144, 156, 173, 180, 186, 187 n., 188, 190 Bonavoglia, Bernardino, Observant Franciscan: 206 see also Pilate, lake of, and necromancers Bondioli, Pio: 41 n., 77 n. Boniface VIII, Pope: 91 n. Bonivarda, Caterina, witch: 268, 275 Bonomo, Giuseppe: 206 n., 223 n., 248 n., 254 n., 258 n., 265 n., 267 n., 270 n., 280 n. Borgo San Sepolcro: 64 Borrella, Caterina, witch: 237 n., 264 Borromeo, Carlo, Saint: 95 Bosch, Hieronymus: 108 n., 119, 123 Bossy, John: 97, 100 n., 105 n., 124 n. Boureau, Alain: 231 n. Bourke, Vernon J.: 152 n., 174 n., 175 n. Bowd, Stephen: 267 n. Boyle, Leonard: 151, 152 n., 174 Bozoky, Edina: 209 n. Bracha, Krzysztof: xvi n., 150 n. Brant, Sebastian: 123 Brantley, Jessica: 8, 9 n. Braudel, Fernand: 4 n. Bremond, Claude: 87 n. Brengio, Ludovico: 6 n., 11 n. Brescia Bernardino da Feltre preaching in: 150 Franciscan Custody of: 29 Michele Carcano preaching in: 49 and Pietro da Capriolo: 50 and the Trials of Val Camonica: 300–301 Briggs, Robin: xiv n.

367

Brocadelli, Lucia, da Narni: 235 Broedel, Hans Peter: 258 n. Brogliano, hermitage of St. Bartolomeo di: 9 n., 10, 13, 15, 21 Bronzini, Giovanni Battista: xvii Broomfield, Frederick: 105 n. Bucciarelli, Ilaria: 204 n. Buffalmacco see Buonamico di Martino Bughetti, Benvenuto: 54 n. Bühler, Curt F. 112 n. Buonamico di Martino: 108 n. Burchard of Worms: 247, 248, 265 Burke, Peter: 84, 241 n., 292 n. Burocco, Bernardino: 27 n., 28 n., 29 n., 31 n., 35 n., 42 n., 50 n. Burr, David: 11 n. Bussière see Groupe de la Busti, family (Milan): 41 Busti, Bernardino, Observant Franciscan: xiv-xv, 9, 25, 34, 39–49 and the Rosarium sermonum: 44, 54–60, 64, 120 and the Jews: 44, 46–48 on money-lending and the Defensorium Montis Pietatis: 44–45, 48, 148 and the Mariale: 40 n.–1 n., 43, 56 n., 78 n., 83–84, 168 n. on preachers and their audience: 70–83 and an ordeal for the Immaculate Conception of Mary: 43–44 tells of a preacher who opposed the Immaculate Conception of Mary: 83–84 on sin and confession: 110–18, 120, 125 tells of a woman confessing her sins: 118 and images: 144–49 on religion, superstition and the Decalogue: 105, 133–34, 136–143, 149, 153, 169–70 and various categories of superstition: 159–163, 166, 168 on idolatry: 172–74, 179 on divination: 180–84 and invocation of demons: 186–89 and the ‘astrologer’: 195–96 on dreams: 190–91 on the student who refused medicines: 193–94 and vain observances: 194–99

368

and harmful magic: 202–04 and the enchanters: 205–07 and the brevi (amulet scrolls): 209–11, 213–18 and the magic formulas written in the brevi: 215–16 and a man from Ivrea wearing a breve: 216 on witches: 223–233, 235–39, 241, 243–44, 246, 247–48, 278, 280–81, 287–88, 306–07 and the ludus diabolicus: 226–29 on feigning holiness: 230–31; see also Santuccia and the ludus bariloti: 238–39 and the metamorphosis of witches: 250–52 and the ludus Dianae: 223, 255–56, 259, 263–64, 271–76 on St Germanus and the ludus Dianae: 271–73 on the girl dancing at the ludus Dianae in Ivrea: 273–74 and the ‘anointed stick’: 255–56, 259, 263–64 and various frames of reference behind witch beliefs: 221–23, 270–71, 305–07 and the distinction between the ludus Di­ anae and the ludus bariloti: 271, 305 Busti, Bernardino, member of the Order of the Knights of Jerusalem: 41 Busti, Bernardo, senator in Milan: 40 Busti, Lorenzo: 40 Busto Arsizio: 40 n., 41 n., 42 Butler, Elizabeth M. 212 n. Cabrera, Michael: 122 n. Caby, Cécile: 73 n. Caciola, Nancy: 236 n., 277 Cagnazzo, Giovanni, Dominican inquisitor: 292 Caimi, Bartolomeo, Observant Franciscan: xiv, 34, 278 and the Interrogatorium sive confessionale: 54, 60, 62 and the interrogation of the penitent: 63, 98, 109, 120 on superstition: 160, 162–63, 166, 169–170, 172

INDEX OF NAMES AND PLACES and idolatry: 177–78 and divination: 180–81 and invocation of demons: 190 on dreams: 191 and vain observances: 194–99 on harmful magic: 203–04, 244 and enchanters: 205 n. and the use of brevi (amulet-scrolls): 210–13 on witchcraft: 222, 244, 246, 278 on the metamorphosis of witches: 250–52 and the ludus Dianae: 259, 263–64 Caimi, Bernardino, Observant Franciscan: 33–34, 39, 56, 77 and the anecdote of the usurer of Assisi: 37–38 Calderari, Lara: 30 n. Caliò, Tommaso: 50 n. Callore, a victim of the witches in Venegono Superiore: 281 Calogero, Cassandra: 34 n. Calufetti, Abele: 19 n., 33 n., 41 n. Camerino, the last will of: 14 Cameron, Euan: xv n., xvi n., 140 n., 151, 152 n.,154 n., 174, 182 n., 196 n., 199 n., 200 n., 205 n., 212 n., 254 n., 259 n. Camille, Michael: 143 n., 145 n., 161 n., 173 n. Campana, Augusto: 207 n. Canavese Valley: 216 Canonici, Luciano: 24 n. Canterbury, monks of St. Augustine in: 207 n. Capestrano, Convento dei Frati Minori: 257 n. Capitani, Ovidio: 33 n., 46 n., 80 n., 93 n., 171 n. Cappozzo, Valerio: 192 n. Caracciolo, Roberto da Lecce: xvi, 24 n. Carcano, family (Milan): 28 Carcano, Michele, Observant Franciscan: xiv, 26–27, 34, 39, 41–42 preaching in Ferrara: 23 and the Mons Pietatis of Perugia: 34–35, 46, 49, 148 preaching style and activity: 41, 43, 45, 49–51, 73, 76, 86, 251 and the Jews: 35, 49–50

INDEX OF NAMES AND PLACES on images: 144–45 and the Sermones quadragesimales de decem preceptis: 54, 60, 64, 109, 132, 156, 160 and the Sermonarium de penitentia: 56–57 on sin and confession: 61, 95–96, 98–100, 109, 113, 119, 121 on confession and superstition: 161–62 on the Ten Commandments: 136–38 on divine cult and superstition: 140–43, 153–55 various categories of superstition: 160–63, 166, 170 on idolatry: 172, 175–77, 179 on divination: 180–85 and dreams: 191 on tempting God: 193–94 on vain observances: 194–97, 199 on superstition as nature worship: 200 and invocation of demons: 186–89 and harmful magic: 203 and the brevi (amulet-scrolls): 210–17 on Giacomo della Marca, the knight, and the breve: 217 and witch beliefs: 222, 226, 244, 246 on shape-shifting: 254 and witches: 256–58, 264 Carcassonne: 231 Cardini, Franco: xvii-xviii, 149 n., 204 n., 209 n., 245 n., 270 n., 280 n., 305 n. Cargnoni, Costanzo: 46 n., 92 n. Carletti, Angelo da Chivasso, Observant Franciscan: xiv, 33, 36, 39 and the Summa angelica: 62 n., 64, 156 and superstition: 106, 150, 153–54, 162–65, 172, 177, 184 n., 186 n. and the penitents: 120 on how to counteract a spell: 204 and witchcraft: 228, 249, 251 on feigning holiness: 232–33 Carvajal, Bernardino López de, Cardinal: 57–58 Casagrande, Carla: 15 n., 97, 98 n., 100 n., 102 n-6 n, 108n-11n, 113 n., 116 n., 119 n., 145 n., 297 n., 306 n. Cascia, superstition and spells in: 208, 245–246 n Cassian: 102

369

Cassini, Samuele, Observant Franciscan: xiv, 34 and Bernardino Busti: 57–58, 73 classicism of: 74 and the stigmata: 289 on the nature of witch beliefs: 166, 287–89, 300 and the Questiones lamearum: 288–89 on the flight of witches: 293–97 against the inquisitors: 286, 298–99, 301 and the sabbath: 293–99 and Vincenzo Dodo: 301–04; see also Dodo, Vincenzo Castelli, Patrizia: 245 n., 273 n. Castiglioni, Fioramonte, Lord of Venegono Superiore: 228, 281 Castile and León, kingdom of: 5 Caterina da Racconigi: 235 Caterina da Siena, Saint: 289 Cato: 190 Disticha Catonis: 190–91 Cavalcanti, Guido: 192 Cecco d’Ascoli: 77 Celestine I, Pope: 112 n. Cenci, Cesare: 76n-7n, 284 n. Centini, Massimo, 123 n. Cerulli, Enrico: 15 n. Chalcedon, Council of: 112 n. Champier, Symphorien: 288 Champion, Matthew: 259 n. Charles V, Emperor: 27 Charles VII, King of France: 124 Chène, Catherine: 225 n., 242 n., 266n, 273 n., 276 n. Cherubino da Spoleto, Observant Franciscan: 24, 26, 38 n., 171 Chiappini, Aniceto: 4 n., 17 n. Cicero: 142, 146 Clareno, Angelo: 10–11 n., 14 Clark, Stuart: 85, 104 n., 222, 273 n. Claudian: 75 Clement VIII, Pope: 60 n. Clement VI, Pope: 11 Clio, muse of history: 74 Cobianchi, Roberto: 95 n. Cohn, Norman: 236–37 n.,240–41 n., 304 n. Colomba da Rieti: 235 Colombaio see Siena Colombo, Cristoforo: 5

370

Colucci, Giuseppe: 206 n. Coluccia, Rosario: 80 n. Como, witches burnt in: 283 Franciscan Custody of: 29 lake of: 214 Constance, Council of: 3, 6, 15, 127 Constantinople: 4, 39 First Council of: 112 n. Conti, Fabrizio: 159, 231 Cornelison, Sally J. 6 n.,: 61 n. Corradi, Alfonso: 194 n. Corrain, Cleto: xvii Corsi, Dinora: 204 n., 209 n., 235 n., 242 n., 245 n., 261 n., 266 n., 270 n., 275 n., 293 n., 307 n. Courouau, Jean-Fraçois: 108 n. Courtenay, William J. 289 n., 297 n. Covini, Maria Nadia: 29 n. Crema: 50 the knight of: 83 hospitals in: 35 Creytens, Raymond: 14n Crisciani, Chiara: 274 n. Cybele, goddess: 74 Cibo, Giovan Battista (Iohannes Baptista Cybo): see Innocent VIII D’Addario, Arnaldo: 61 n. D’Alatri, Mariano: 69 n. Daniel, prophet: 192, 294 Daniele da Porcia, reportator: 69 n. Dante see Alighieri Dauphiné: 261 D’Avray, David: 65 n., 67 n.–8 n. De Angelis, Pietro: 207 n. De Blécourt, Willelm: 258 n., 272 n., 276 De La Roncière, Charles-Marie: 73 n., 75 n.–6 n. De Madeis, Michele, Dominican inquisitor: 301 n. Debby, Nirit Ben-Aryeh: 6 n., 38 n., 65 n., 67 n., 69, 72, 87 Del Maino, family (Milan): 28 Agnese: 28 n. Delcorno, Carlo: 58 n., 67–0n, 72 n., 80 n., 86 n., 94 n., 107 n.–8 n., 156 n., 204 n., 230 n., 239 n., 276 n. Delcorno, Pietro: 92 n. Delhaye, Philippe: 104 n.

INDEX OF NAMES AND PLACES Delorme, Ferdinand: 16 n., 18 n. Delphi, temple of: 185 Delrio, Martin: 304 Delumeau, Jean: 67 n., 84 n., 89, 97, 123 n., 156 n., 305 n. Dessì, Rosa Maria: 33 n., 35 n., 37 n., 44 n.–5 n., 49 n. Di Simplicio, Oscar: 203 n., 251 n., 306 n. Diana, goddess: 161–62, 167–69, 222, 247–48, 255–57, 259 n., 262, 264–270, 272, 276, 295, 303 see also Herodiana Diel, Florentius: 91 Dinzelbacher, Peter: 234 Dodo, Vincenzo: 286, 301–04 Domenico da Peccioli: 176 Dompnier, Bernard: 147 n. Du Cange, Charles: 196 n., 252 n., 268 n., 279 n. Duby, George: 102 n. Duni, Matteo: 203 n., 235 n.–236 n., 259 n., 261 n., 270 n., 271 n., 275 n., 282 n.–283 n., 288 n., 293 n., 299 n.–300 n., 304 n. Duns Scotus: 106, 140, 143, 173, 204 Ebendorfer von Haselbach, Thomas: 103, 152 Eckert, Willead Paul: 50 n. Egypt, Egyptian desert: 253 Ehrle, Franz: 241 n. Eisenbichler, Konrad: 3 n., 75 n. Eliade, Mircea: 266 n.–7 n. Elie, Hubert: 47 n. Elijah, prophet: 296 Ellington, Donna Spivey: 44 n. Elliott, Dyan, 91 n., 121 n., 127 n. Elm, Kaspar: 6 n.–7, 25, 66 n. Endor, Witch of: 185–86 n., 251–52 England: 48 Enrico da Susa: 102 Erbetta, Mario: 294 n. Ernst, Germana: 304 n. Estuardo Flaction, Astrid, 263 n., 283 n., 290 n. Étienne de Bourbon see Stephen of Bourbon Eugene IV, Pope: 19–20, 31, 147, 242, 291 Europe: xviii, 31, 38–39, 48, 84, 100 Evagrius Ponticus: 102 Evangelisti, Paolo: 21 n., 33 n. Eymerich, Nicolas, Dominican inquisitor: 224, 233

INDEX OF NAMES AND PLACES Fabiani, Giuseppe: 164 n. Facinella see Finicella Faloci Pulignani, Michele: 206 n. Farnese, Ranuccio I, Duke of Parma and Piacenza: 60 Fazio degli Uberti: 206 n. Febvre, Lucien: 201–02 Federici Vescovini, Graziella: 245 n. Feliciangeli, Bernardino: 15 n. Felix V see Amadeus VIII Ferrara, Michele Carcano preaching in: 23, 148 Ferrari, Gaudenzio: 29 n. Ferrari, Mirella: 214 Feugeyron, Ponce, Franciscan inquisitor: 242–43 Filippa da Città della Pieve, witch, 224, 280 Finicella, witch: 229, 230–231, 278 Finke, Roger: 85 n., 138 n. Fischer, Steven R. 191 n. Fisher, Jeffrey: 109 n. Flint, Valerie: 189 n., 195 n.–6 n., 199 n., 203 n. Florence: 23 n., 36 n., 49, 69, 76, 147 n., 169, 183, 194 n. Fois, Mario: 6 n., 79n-80 n., 112 n.–113 n. Foladore, Giulia: 69 n. Foligno: 15, 21–22, 206 Biblioteca Comunale of: 206 n. see also Brogliano, Marano Fontevivo see Parma Fornasari, Caterina, witch: 228, 232, 264, 268, 281 Foster, Kenelm: 79 n. Foucault, Michel: 91 Fragnito, Gigliola: 57 n. France: 14, 34, 48, 57, 241 Franceschina da Roma, witch: 245 Francesco da Rimini: 16 Francis I, King of France: 28 Francis of Assisi, Saint: 12, 22, 27, 30, 107, 289 Rule and Testament of: 13–14 Frankfurter, David: 253 n.–4 n. Fratini, Corrado: 95 n. Freedberg, David: 144 n.–6 n. French Alps: 263 Frugoni, Chiara: 107 n. Fründ, Hans: 236, 262 Fumagalli Beonio Brocchieri, Mariateresa: 297 n.

371

Gaeta, Attanasio: 79 n., 112 n.–3 n., 127 n. Galamb, György: 240 n. Galimberti, Paolo: 214 Galli, Giuseppe: 55 n. Galloni, Pietro: 39 n. Gallori, Corinna Tania: 148 n. Gambasca, witches of: 237, 264, 268, 275, 282, 301 Gecser, Ottó Sándor: 42 n. Gelfand, Laura D. 108 n. Gennaro, Clara: 34 n. Genoa Mons Pietatis: 36 Observant Province of: 33 n. Gentile da Spoleto, Observant Franciscan: 11 Gentile, Marco: 29 n. Gerbore, Ezio Emerico: 243 n., 263 n. Germanus, Saint, Bishop of Auxerre: 271–73 Germany, German lands: 49 Gerson, Jean: 62 n., 108, 124, 150, 233, 245 Gervase of Tilbury: 226 n. Ghigliazza, Tommaso: 254 n., 261 n. Ghinato, Alberto: 22 n., 122 n. Giacomo da Varazze: 269, 271 Giacomo della Marca, Observant Franciscan: xvi-xvii, 15, 24, 156, 176 ‘Confessione’ attributed to: 164–65, 168, 249 n. and confessors: 93 n. and the woman who built a chapel: 87 on superstition and magic: 180, 184–85, 192 n., 200–01, 206–07, 208–09 and the use of brevi (amulet-scrolls): 213 the knight and the breve: see Carcano, Michele and the heretics: 240 and the woman cursing her own son: 245–46 and the witches: 229–230, 249, 260, 266 n., 273 Giancola, Renato: 55 n. Giberti, Gian Maria, Bishop of Verona: 95 Gielis, Marcel: 103 n. Gilson, Étienne: 135 n. Ginzburg, Carlo: xv, 54, 86, 167 n., 241, 252 n., 257 n.–258 n., 266 n.–8 n., 270 n., 272, 277 Giordano da Bergamo, Dominican inquisitor: 254, 258, 261, 279 n.

372

Giordano da Pisa: 80 Giordano, Silvano: 225 n. Giovanna (domina Ioanna, Madona Gioanna), and the breve (amulet scroll): 215–16 Giovanni da Capestrano, Observant Franciscan: xvi, 4, 7, 15–16, 19, 21, 24, 184, 197 n., 240, 257, 270 Giovanni da Stroncone, Observant Franciscan: 14, 22 Giovanni delle Valli, Observant Franciscan: 9–13 Glassberger, Nicholas, Observant Franciscan: 40 n. Goffredo da Bussero: 26 n. Goñi, José: 57 n. Gonzaga, family (Mantua): 189 Ferrante, Governor of Milan: 27 Francesco, Marquis of Mantua: 292 Ludovico III, Marquis of Mantua: 20 Gordon, Richard: 170–71 n. Gostanza da Libbiano, witch: 204 Graf, Arturo: 206 n. Granada, Kingdom of: 5 Granata, Giovanna: 60 n. Gratian: 93, 171, 177, 248, 256, 265 Greece: 14 n. Gregory I the Great, Pope: 102, 111, 144–45, 210 Gregory IX, Pope: 90–91 n. Gregory of Nissa, Saint: 144 Gregory of Tours, Saint: 198 Grillenzoni, Giovanni: 298 n. Grosselli, Zelia: 27 n. Grossi, Paolo: 128 n. Groupe de la Bussière, 90 n., 120 n. Guenée, Bernard: 42 n. Guibert de Nogent: 240 n. Guidi, Remo: 73 n. Guido da Baisio: 198 Guinefort, the ‘holy’ greyhound: 107 Gurevich, Aaron: 199, 201 n., 265 n. Gutenberg, Johannes: 8 Gutiérrez, David: 76 n. Gy, Pierre-Marie: 90 n. Habakkuk, prophet: 294–295 Haberkern, Ernst: 104 n. Hahnloser, Hans R. 145 n.

INDEX OF NAMES AND PLACES Hansen, Joseph: 188 n.–9 n., 221, 225 n., 232 n., 237 n.,: 242 n.–243 n., 248 n., 254 n., 256 n., 259 n., 261 n., 264 n., 276 n., 282 n., 288 n.–290 n., 302 n. Hanska, Jussi: 66, 175 Harding, Catherine: 95 n. Harf-Lancner, Laurence: 251 n. Heinrich of Friemar: 102, 103 n. Helas, Philine: 148 n. Henningsen, Gustav: 234 n., 241 n., 269 n., 274 n., 277 n. Herodiana: 261 n., 265–66, 270 see also Herodias Herodias: 168, 256–57, 264–65, 269, 272, 303 Herolt, Johannes: 166–69, 200, 210 n., 244–45 n., 265, 270 Herzig, Tamar: 189 n., 225 n., 233 n.–4 n., 235, 237 n., 262 n., 282 n.–284 n., 289, 292 n. Hinderbach, Johannes, Bishop of Trent: 49 Hobbins, Daniel: 8–9 n., 46 n., 67 n., 69 n., 108, 124 n., 150 n. Hofer, Johannes: 5 n. Holda, German goddess: 265–266 Holy Land: 38 Horace: 77, 146 Howard, Peter Francis: 6 n., 42 n., 61 n., 68 n.–9 n., 151 n., 167 n., 175 n., 258 Hubert, Henri: xiv Huizinga, Johan: 202 n. Humbert of Romans: 80 Hunyadi, János, Governor of the Kingdom of Hungary: 4 Iacopone da Todi: 77 Iburg, friary of: 55 Ilarino da Milano: 90 n. Illuminatus Novariensis: 58 India: 5 Infessura, Stefano: 230 Innocent III, Pope: 149 Innocent VI, Pope: 11 Innocent VIII, Pope: 36, 284, 285 n., 290–291 Isidore of Seville: 176, 182 n., 184–85, 186 n., 233 n. Isolani, Isidoro: 225–226 n., 237–238, 282–283

INDEX OF NAMES AND PLACES Italy: 7, 10, 14 n., 17, 19, 23 n., 27–28, 30, 39, 55, 62 n., 74, 79, 224, 229, 235, 240, 255, 257, 263–64, 266, 283, 300–01, 306 Ivo of Chartres: 248 Ivrea, a breve (amulet scroll) found in see Busti, Bernardino, Observant Franciscan a girl dancing at the ludus Dianae in, see Busti, Bernardino, Observant Franciscan church of St Bernardino in: 29 Jacquier, Nicolas, Dominican inquisitor: 225, 259, 288 Jedin, Hubert: 92 Jerome, Saint: 22, 112 n. Jerusalem: 112 temple of: 117 Johanna de Caboreto, witch: 263 John the Baptist, Saint: 265 John XXII, Pope: 10, 13 n., 231–32, 291 John of Damascus, Saint: 111, 143 Kattenbusch, Ferdinand: 79 n. Kieckhefer, Richard: 147 n., 181 n.–2, 184 n., 186 n., 189, 190 n., 198 n., 207 n., 209 n., 221, 226 n., 231 n., 234, 237, 245 n., 266 n., 275 n., 280 n., 283 n. Kienzle, Beverly Mayne: 65 n., 67 n.–8 Kirn, Hans-Martin: 48 n. Klaassen, Frank: 181 n. Klaniczay, Gábor: 23 n., 103 n., 209 n., 234, 241–42 n., 271 n., 276 n.–7 Kleinberg, Aviad: 102 n., 107 n., 111 n. Kogman-Appel, Katrin: 173 n. Köln: 55 n., 78 Koroŝak, Bruno: 15 n. Koselleck, Reinhart: 124 Kramer, Heinrich, Dominican inquisitor: 231, 233, 235, 281, 292 criticism of preachers: 285–86 supplicatio to Pope Innocent VIII: 284, 291 Kristeller, Paul Oscar: 54 n. Kristóf, Ildikó: 209 n. Kruger, Steven: 147 n., 191 n.–3 n.

373

Lage Cotos, Marìa Elisa: 57 n., 73 n., 78, 162 n. Lambert, Malcolm D. 18 n. Lanciano, miracle of: 208 Lanman, Jonathan A. 202 n. L’Aquila, friary of St Francis: 20 friary of St. Giuliano: 20 Lasić, Dario: 201 n. Lasson, Emilie: 103 n.–4 n., 150 n., 152 n., 186 n., 191 n., 194 n., 196 n., 265 n.–6 n. Lateran IV, Council: 6, 65, 89–91, 94, 121, 126–27, 149, 171 n. Lateran V, Council: 25, 45 Lazzerini, Lucia: 77 n., 139 n. Le Carceri, hermitage see Assisi Le Goff, Jacques: 35 n.–6, 66, 75 n., 87 n., 90 n., 119 n., 287 Le Moyne, Pasquier: 28, 30 Lea, Henry Charles: 127 n., 224 n., 226 n., 257 n., 261 n., 272 n., 276 n., 279 n., 288 n., 299 n.–300 n., 302 n. Leclerq, Henri: 209 n. Legnano, friary of St. Angelo in: 41 Leites, Edmund: 84 n., 100 n. Leo I the Great, Pope: 112 n. Leo X, Pope: 19, 45, 57 León see Castile and León Leonardi, Lino: 79 n. Leonardo da Vinci: 30, 76 Lepanto, battle of: 60 Lerner, Robert: 17 n. Levack, Brian: 221 n.–2 n., 258 n., 269 n., 272 n., 283 n. Lhotsky, Alphons: 103 n. Lioi, Renato, 15 n., 87 n., 93 n., 180 n., 185 n., 201 n., 208 n.–9 n., 2013 n., 230 n., 245 n.–6 n., 260 n., 266 n., 273 n. Lippens, Hugolin: 91 n. Little, Andrew George: 16 n. Little, Lester K. 122 n. Lodi a breve (amulet scroll) found in: 216 peace of: 3 Lombardy: 40 n., 228, 282 and Bernardino da Siena: 27 and the Capriolanti movement: 50 n. Dominican Observant Congregation of: 292

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Dominican Province of: 176 Franciscan churches of: 145 Lorenzino di Trento see Sossio Louis XII, King of France: 31 Lucan: 75, 77, 280 n. Lucca the Godmother of see Bernardino da Siena the malefica of see Franceschina da Roma Lucia da Narni, see Brocadelli, Lucia Ludovico il Moro see Sforza, Ludovico Lugano, St Maria degli Angeli, Franciscan church in: 29 n. Luini, Bernardino: 29–30 Łuszczki, Lucianus: 7 n. Luttikhuizen, Henry: 108 n. Lyceum, mount: 74 Lyon: 55 n., 78 Macarius of Egypt: 253–54 Mackay, Oscar S. 254 n. Macrobius: 146–47, 191 n. Maggi, Lorenzo, Dominican inquisitor: 267, 293, 301 Magli, Ida: 36 n. Magliocco, Sabina: 258 n. Maillard, Olivier: 108, 170 Mainz, diocese of: 91 Maiolati, castle of: 17 Majarelli, Stanislao: 35 n. Mammoli, Domenico: 224 n., 280 n. Mamoris, Pierre: 231, 259 Manselli, Raoul: xiii, 6, 15 Mantua: 23, 26, 77 and the Fraticelli de opinione: 15 and the Jews: 35 Mons Pietatis: 35–36, 148 Marano, friary of St. Bartolomeo: 15 Marche region: xvii, 183 see also Maiolati Marco da Bologna, Observant Franciscan: 33 Marco da Montegallo, Observant Franciscan: 24, 36, 45, 148 Mariana da San Sisto, witch: 280 Mariano da Firenze, Observant Franciscan: 9 n., 15 n. Mariano da Genazzano: 75 Marieta dou Byel, witch: 243 n. Martin de Arles y Andosilla: 213 Martin Le Franc: 236, 260, 262

INDEX OF NAMES AND PLACES Martin V, Pope: 3, 6, 15, 17, 147, 242 Martin, Hervé: 155 n. Martines, Lauro: 4, 30 n.–31 n., 76 n. Matteuccia di Francesco da Todi, witch: 224, 280 Mauss, Marcel: xiv n. Max, Frédéric: 302 n., 304 n. Maxwell-Stuart, Peter: 267 n. McDonald, William C. 104 n. Medici, Lorenzo de’: 33 Melegnano, friary of Santa Maria della Misericordia: 42 Mella, river: 267 Meneghin, Vittorino: 45 n. Merlo, Grado Giovanni: 10 n., 14 n., 21, 25, 31 n., 33 n., 123 n.–4 n., 237 n., 241 n., 284 n., 291 n. Mertens, Dieter: 66 n., 91 n., 114 n., 121 n. Miccoli, Giovanni: 85 n. Michaud-Quantin, Pierre: 33 n., 46 n., 53–54 n., 57 n., 61 n.–2 n., 64 n., 93 n., 119 n.–121, 306 Michele da Cesena: 10, 13 n. Michelson, Emily: 147 n. Milan: 23, 26, 27–31, 34 n., 40–41, 43–44, 50, 54, 57, 76, 189 Biblioteca Ambrosiana of: 288 n. diocese of: 40 n. Duchy of: 30, 38, 228, 283; see also Venegono Superiore Franciscan Custody of: 29 the friary of St. Angelo in: xiv, xvi, 20, 26–28, 31, 33–34, 41–42, 50, 52–54, 58, 62–63, 76, 93, 145, 168–69, 172, 217, 223, 238, 247, 250, 259, 283, 288–89, 299, 304–05 general chapter of the Friars Minor (1457) in St. Angelo: 31 library of St. Angelo: 76 Consorzio della Misericordia of St. Angelo: 35 frescoes in St. Angelo: 29–30 Hospitals in: 35 Jews in: 47–48 Observant Franciscan Province of: 31–33 Porta Nuova in: 26 Province of the Friars Minor of: 27, 29 St Maria Fulcorina, parish church in: 26

INDEX OF NAMES AND PLACES St Maria del Giardino, Franciscan church in: 28 St Maria delle Grazie, Dominican friary in: 30, 225 territory of: 33, 41 n. trials against Pierina and Sibillia in see Pierina, Sibillia Minnis, Alastair: 42 n. Mirabile, Davide: 27 n. Mixson, James D. 6 n., 92 n., 234 n. Modena: 41, 268 Molitor, Ulrich: 259, 261, 288 Mondin, Battista: 169 n. Monfasani, John: 75 n., 287 n. Monteprandone, Observant library: 176 n. Monter, William: 269 n. Monteripido, first Franciscan studium: 16 Montesano, Marina: xv-xvii, 7 n., 23, 153 n., 175 n., 179 n., 182 n., 184–86 n., 194 n., 196 n.–197 n., 199 n., 201, 209 n., 212 n., 226 n., 239 n., 257 n., 261 n., 270 n., 272 n., 275 n., 279 n.–280 n., 305 n. Monti, Carla Maria: 74 n., 214 n. Monza, Franciscan Custody: 29 Moorman, John R. H. 18 n. Morenzoni, Franco: 97 n. Morisi, Anna: 33 n. Mormando, Franco: xvi n., 76 n., 107 n., 148 n., 183, 230 n., 239 n., 258 n., 276 n. Mosconi, Anacleto: 21 n., 28 n., 50 n. Muchembled, Robert: 242 n. Muessig, Carolyn: 26 n., 68 n., 120 n., 306 n. Muir, Edward: 65 n., 267 n. Muraro, Luisa: 267 n. Muzzarelli, Maria Giuseppina: 23 n.–4 n., 26, 35–37 n., 44 n.–6 n., 69 n.–70 n., 81 n., 147 n., 148 n.–9 n., 257 n. Nanzia, and Franciscan Observance: 14 Naples: 79, 175 general chapter of the Observance (1475): 50 Nero, Emperor: 294 Newhauser, Richard: 101 n., 104 n., 108 n., 124, 128 n. Nicaea, Council of: 112 n., 143 n. Niccoli, Ottavia: 144 n. Niccolò da Finale, Dominican inquisitor: 292

375

Niccolò da Osimo, Observant Franciscan: 120 Nicholas V, Pope: 4, 289 Nicholas of Cusa: 258 Nicholas of Lyra: 137 n.,173, 193 Nicoletti, Paolo (Paolo Veneto): 198 Nicolini, Ugolino: 16 n., 35 n., 224 n., 230 n., 281 n. Nider, Johannes: 62 n., 103, 225, 231, 236, 242, 258, 265, 271, 273, 276, 281–82 Nikolaus von Dinkelsbühl: 103, 152, 212 Nikolaus von Jauer: 254 Nimmo, Duncan: 6 n., 13–14 n., 18 n., 31 n. Nirenberg, David: 47 n. Noonan, Thomas: 46 n. Norcia: 206–207 brevi (amulet scrolls) worn by women in: 213 a superstitious woman from: 208 Nova, Alessandro, 29 n.–30 n., 145 n. Oates, Caroline F. 252 n. Oberman, Heiko A. 122 n. Oleari, Elisabetta, witch: 237, 264 Olivi, Peter John: 45, 106 Orvieto: 13 Cathedral of: 207 the Chapel of the Corporal in the Cathedral of: 94 Osnabrück, library of the Gymnasium Carolinum: 55 Ostorero, Martine: 141 n., 225 n., 231 n., 236 n., 241–43, 248 n., 251 n., 255 n., 258 n.–259 n., 261 n.–265, 270 n., 272 n., 283 n.–4 n., 288 n., 294 n., 298 n., 305 n. Otranto: 39 Ovid: 75, 251, 280 n. Oxner, Andrea, and the Jews: 49 Pacifico da Novara, Observant Franciscan: 261 n. Padua: 69 n. general chapter of (1442): 31 Mons Pietatis: 36 Page, Sophie: 207 n. Palestine see Holy Land Palestro, Ambrogio: 40 n. Palladius of Galatia: 253, 254 n.

376

Palos: 5 Panfilo, Francesco, di Sanseverino: 206 Panizza, Gian Maria: 242 n. Panzanelli, Roberta: 39 n. Paolo Veneto see Nicoletti, Paolo Paoluccio di Vagnozzo Trinci see Trinci, Paoluccio Paravicini Bagliani, Agostino: 225 n., 236 n., 242 n., 261 n.–2 n. Paravy, Pierrette: 262 n. Paris, theological faculty of: 204 University of: 108 Park, Katharine: 204 n. Parma friary and library of Fontevivo near: 60 Mons Pietatis: 36 Passavanti, Jacopo: 272, 275 Pastor, Ludwig von: 39 Paton, Bernadette: 8, 24 n., 66, 81 n., 106 n., 150 Paul, apostle, Saint: 66, 187 n.–8, 295 Paul, Jacques: 69 n. Pavia: 41, 47 n. Biblioteca Universitaria of: 226, 288 Dominican friary of St. Tommaso in: 301 Hospital of: 36 the superstitious student of: 193 Pazzi, conspiracy of the: 33 Pearl, Jonathan L. 242 n. Pedralli, Monica: 76 n. Pellegrini, Letizia: 3 n., 8 n.–10, 13 n.–4 n., 18 n.–20 n., 22 n., 24 n.–5 n., 36 n., 51 n., 59, 65 n.–7 n., 86 n., 92, 123 n. Pellegrini, Luigi: 54 Pennington, Kenneth: 102 n. Peranzoni, Nicolò: 206 n. Perault, Guillaume: 213–214 n. Perchta, German goddess: 265 Perrot, Michelle: 102 n. Perugia: 8, 16, 23 n., 34, 224, 230, 280 Biblioteca Comunale Augusta of: 302 n. general chapter of the Friars Minor in (1322): 13 n. Mons Pietatis: 34–35, 46, 49, 148 ousting of the Fraticelli from: 13 Pesce, Pier Giuseppe: 179 n. Peter, apostle, Saint: 294–95 Peter Aureoli: 143, 204 Peter Lombard: 98, 110–11, 113, 135, 144,

INDEX OF NAMES AND PLACES 173 n., 188 Peter the Chanter: 120 Peter von Greyerz: 242 Peters, Edward: 150 n., 182 n., 204 n., 223 n., 231 n., 242 n.–3 n., 248 n., 252 n., 256 n., 282 n., 291 n. Petrarch, Francis: 77 Pezzella, Sosio: 33 n., 36 n. Philip the Deacon, Saint: 295–96 n. Philippus see Philip the Deacon Piacenza, Hospital of: 35, 51 Piana, Celestino: 16 n., 21 n., 33 n., 37 n., 77 n. Piantanida, Bonaventura, Observant Franciscan: 33 Piccolomini, Aeneas Sylvius see Pius II Pico della Mirandola, Giovanfrancesco: 34, 235, 292 Piedmont: 34 n., 38, 239, 264 see also Saluzzo Pierina, witch: 267, 274 Pierozzi, Antonino see Antonino da Firenze Pietro Angelo di Giovanni: 35 Pietro da Canneto see Arrivabene, Pietro, da Canneto Pietro da Capriolo, Observant Franciscan: 50 Pietro da Napoli, Observant Franciscan: 79 Pilate, lake of, and necromancers: 206–207 Pincinella see Benvegnuda Piotto, Giovanni Battista: 237 Pirri, Domenico, Dominican inquisitor: 292 Pisa Camposanto of: 108 n. Council of: 57 Pitia, priestess: 185 Pitrè, Giuseppe: 269 n. Pius II, Pope: 27, 32 Pius V, Pope: 126 Pizza, Giovanni: 119 n., 241 n., 277 n. Pizzorni, Reginaldo: 135 n. Po, river: 275 Po-Chia Hsia, Ronnie: 50 n., 234 n. Pócs, Éva: 241 n.–2 n., 271 n., 277 Poggibonsi, franciscan library of: 166 n. Poitou: 231 Poliakow, Leon: 45 n. Pontas, Jean: 142 n. Ponzinibio, Giovanfrancesco: 299–300, 304 Portugal: 5 Pratesi, Riccardo: 15 n., 21 n., 79 n., 113 n.

INDEX OF NAMES AND PLACES Prodi, Paolo: 7 n., 62 n., 82 n., 91 n., 93 n., 121 n.–2 n., 125 n.–7 n. Proserpio, an amulet found in: 214 Prosperi, Adriano: xiv n., 5, 50 n., 54, 91 n.–2, 126 n.–8 n., 203 n., 233 n., 237 n., 242 n., 248 n., 283 n., 298 n.–300 n., 304 n., 306 n. Prudentius: 75, 102 Puglisi, Catherine R. 148 n. Putnam, Michael C. J. 133 n. Quinzani, Stefana: 235 Raciti, Maria: xvii Raffaele da Pornassio, Dominican inquisitor: 258 Raimundus of Tarrega: 188 Rategno, Bernardo of Como, Dominican inquisitor: 237, 304 Raterius of Liege, Bishop of Verona: 265 Ravenna, convent of the Poor Clares (St Apollinare): 42 Raymond of Peñafort: 104, 115, 120–21 Razzano, Pietro, of Palermo: 206 n. Reggio Emilia: 41 Mons Pietatis: 42 n. Regino of Prüm: 247–48 n., 256 n. Reinhard, Wolfgang: 125 n. Reltgen-Tallon, Anne: 73 n. Remigius, Saint: 272–73 n. Richard of Mediavilla: 140, 143–44, 173 Riché, Pierre: 201 n. Rifreddo, witches of: 237, 282 Rigone di Cattaneo, a victim of the witches in Venegono Superiore: 281 Ristori, Renzo: 34 n. Robert Grosseteste: 104 Robert of Flamborough: 101, 115–16, 120 Roberto da Lecce see Caracciolo, Roberto Roest, Bert: 6 n., 17 n., 53 n., 67 n., 73 n., 75 n., 92 n., 234 n. Rolando, hermit in Milan: 189 Rome, 4, 50, 56, 107, 121, 229–230, 240, 276 Basilica of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem: 57 Biblioteca Angelica: 55 n., 167 n. Biblioteca Nazionale: 38 n., 61 n., 167 n. Collegio Sant’ Isidoro: 63 n., 81 n. Lateran Basilica: 4; see also Lateran Council

377

St. Peter’s Basilica: 4 Vatican Library, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana: 54 n., 206 Romeo, Giovanni: 307 n. Rossetti, Edoardo: 28 n., 30 n. Rouen: 304 Rovereto, Adele: 30 n. Rubin, Miri: 6 n., 42 n., 48 n., 50 n., 69 n. Rudy, Kathryn M. 39 n. Rufinus of Aquileia, Saint: 112 n., 254 Rusconi, Antonio: 20 Rusconi, Roberto: 6 n., 23 n.–6 n., 38 n.–9 n., 42 n., 54 n., 56, 57 n., 59 n., 61 n.–4 n., 69 n.–70, 75 n., 80 n., 82 n., 90 n., 91, 92 n.–5 n., 100 n.–1 n.–102 n., 104 n., 115 n.–116 n., 119 n.–120 n., 122 n., 126 n.–127 n., 156 n., 166 n.,: 169 n., 171 n. Russel, Jeffrey Burton: 248 n., 265 n. Sabbatelli, Giacomo V. 24 n. Saint-Pourçain, heretics of: 240 Salimbene de Adam: 69 Saluzzo, marquisate of see Rifreddo, Gambasca Sambuco, a man wearing a breve (amulet scroll): 215 Samuel, prophet: 185–86 n., 252 San Miniato: 204 Sandys, Edwin: 127 Sano di Pietro: 69 Santuccia (Sanctucia, Santecia), witch: 230–33, 278 Sanudo, Marino: 264 n., 267 n., 275 n., 293 n., 300 n.–1 n. Sarpi, Paolo: 127 Satia see Abonde Saul, King: 185–186 n., 252 Savona, Mons Pietatis: 36 Savonarola, Girolamo: 34, 76 Savoy: 48 Duchy of: 242 Scalvanti, Oscar: 35 n., 49 n. Schiavonia: 276 Schimmelpfennig, Bernhard: 4 n., 6 n., 121 n. Schmitt, Carl: 6 n. Schmitt, Clément: 10 n., 14 n.

378

Schmitt, Jean-Claude: 66, 87, 90 n., 106 n.– 8 n., 145 n., 171, 191, 193 n., 199 n., 249 n., 262 n., 270 n., 272 n., 275 n. Schulze, Winfried: 125 n.–6 Sedda, Filippo: 5 n., 17 n. Sedulio, Enrico: 40 n. Sella, Pacifico: 10 n.–1 n., 19 n. Seneca: 73–74 n., 77, 117–118, 176 Proverbia Senecae: 82 Senner, Walter: 285 n., 291 n. Senocak, Neslihan: 16 n. Sensi, Mario: 6 n., 10 n.–9, 22, 45 n.–6 n. Sère, Bénédicte: 97 n. Serenus, Bishop of Marseilles: 144 Sevesi, Paolo Maria: 21 n., 23 n., 27 n., 33 n., 35 n., 39 n., 41 n., 47 n., 49 n.–50 n., 55 n. Sforza, family (Milan): 28 court of the: 76, 195 n. Bianca Maria see Visconti, Bianca Maria Francesco I, Duke of Milan: 31, 47, 50, 76 Galeazzo Maria, Duke of Milan: 41 n., 50–51 Ludovico Maria (il Moro), Duke of Milan: 31, 39, 48, 57, 76 Shaw, James: 194 n. Sibillia, witch: 267, 274 Sibylline Mountains see Pilate, lake of, and necromancers Siena: 147 n., 229 n., 239 hermitage of ‘Colombaio’, near: 22 friary of ‘La Capriola’, near: 56 Piazza del Campo in: 69 Siggins, Ian D. K., 167 n. Signorini, Chiara, witch: 268 Simon Magus: 285–86, 294, 302 Simonino of Trent, and the Jews: 49 Sion, mount: 38 Sixtus IV, Pope: 4, 39, 49, 56 and clerical magic see Bologna, Carmelite friars and invocation of demons in Skemer, Don: 209 n., 212 n.–4 n. Smith, Stephen Anthony: xiii n., 149 n., 154 n., 171 n., 268 n. Snoeck, Godefridus J. C. 208 n. Solvi, Daniele: 44 n. Sossio, Lorenzino, and the Jews: 49 Sozzini, Mariano: 258 Spain: 46 Spanish inquisition: 269

INDEX OF NAMES AND PLACES Spanzotti, Martino: 29 n. Spello, Mons Pietatis: 35 Spica, Agostino da Cortona: 254 Spina, Bartolomeo, Dominican inquisitor: 300 Spinoso, Paolo: 73 n. Spoleto: 207 Sprenger, Jacob, Dominican inquisitor, supplicatio to Pope Innocent VIII see Kramer, Heinrich Stanislao da Campagnola: 60 n. Stark, Rodney: 85 n., 138 n. Stephen of Bourbon: 107, 240–41 n., 269, 271 n., 279 Stephen of Landskrona: 152 Stephens, Walter: 249 n., 259 n., 272 n., 275, 279 n., 288 n., 292 n.–3 n., 296 n. Strasbourg: 55 Stroick, Clemens: 103 n. Swiss Alps: 263 Tavuzzi, Michael: 76 n., 189 n., 282 n., 292 n., 302 n. Telesphorus of Cosenza: 118 Tentler, Thomas: 97, 100 n., 121 n. Terentius: 147 Thayer, Anne T. 92 Theodore of Canterbury, handbook of penance attributed to: 268, 269 n. Tholosan, Claude: 236, 262 Thomas Aquinas, Saint: 44 n., 66, 111, 135, 140–44, 151–52, 154, 156, 171, 173–75, 177, 180–81, 190–91, 194–95, 198, 210,212, 252, 257, 290 Thomas of Chobham: 105 Thomas, Keith: 203 n. Thompson, Augustine: 26, 68 n. Toaff, Ariel: 35 n., 49 n. Todeschini, Giacomo: 13 n., 18 n., 36 n., 45 n. Todi: 148, 224 Tognina del Cilla, witch: 237 Tomitano, Martino see Bernardino da Feltre Tonale, mount: 275, 293 Traversagni, Guglielmo Lorenzo: 76 Trémey, Bérard, Franciscan inquisitor: 243 n. Trent: 49 Council of: 22, 60, 91–92, 94, 126, 306 and the Jews see Hinderbach, Johannes

INDEX OF NAMES AND PLACES Trexler, Richard: 8 Trinci, family (Foligno): 22 Paoluccio di Vagnozzo, Observant Franciscan: 12–16, 18 Ugolino, Prince of Foligno: 15 Trisulti, Chartusian library of: 55 Trivulzio, family (Milan): 28 Troncarelli, Fabio: 258 n. Tschacher, Werner: 248 n. Tubach, Frederic C. 183 Tuczay, Christa: 203 n. Turin, diocese of: 237 Turner, Victor: 12 Turrini, Miriam: 53 n., 55, 64 n., 119 n., 156 n. Tuscany: 27, 194 n. Ugolino di Prete Ilario: 94 Ulrich von Pottenstein: 103, 152 Umbria, 10, 13, 27, 36 Unholda (Unholde): see Holda Unholden, witches: 284–85 Urbano, Giuseppe: 79 n. Utz Tremp, Kathrin: 225 n., 231 n., 236 n., 243 n., 261 n.–2 n., 264 n., 298 n. Uyttenbroeck, Celsus: 91 n. Val Camonica, Dominican inquisitors in: 300–01 witches of: 264, 267, 275, 293 Val d’Aoste, Franciscan inquisitors in: 243, 263–64 Val di Fassa: 258 Valagussa, Giorgio: 76 Valente, Michaela: 34 n., 293 n., 301 n.–2 n. Valla, Lorenzo see Antonio da Bitonto Vallin, Pierre, sorcerer: 261 Vallone, Aldo: 79 n. Vallouise, the ludus stellae in: 223 n. Valugani, Pasquale: 51 n. Van Engen, John: 84 n. Varallo, church of St Maria delle Grazie: 29 n. Sacro Monte of: 38–39 Vatican see Rome Vauchez, André: 120 n., 233 Vaud, Pays de: 237 Vecchio, Silvana: 98 n., 100 n., 102 n.–6 n., 108 n.–11 n., 113 n., 116 n., 139 n., 145 n., 176 n., 297 n.

379

Velletri, Biblioteca Comunale: 109 Vendramin, Andrea, Doge of Venice: 49 Venegono Superiore, 228, 232, 237, 264, 268, 274, 281 see also Castiglioni, Fioramonte Venice: 44, 49–50, 54, 56, 113, 132 publishing sermons in: 55 Vercelli a man disturbing a preacher in: 83 Franciscan Custody of: 29 Mons Pietatis: 36 Verga, Ettore: 267 n. Verona: 213 n. old women of: 260 Vespasiano da Bisticci: 20 Viallet, Ludovic: 5 n., 10 n., 25 n., 73 n., 147 n. Vicaire, Marie-Humbert: 90 n. Vignati, Ambrogio: 288, 299 Villata, Edoardo: 30 n., 39 n. Vincent of Beauvais: 48, 269 Vincent, Catherine: 97 n. Vincent-Cassy, Mireille: 102 n. Vincenzo da Siena, Observant Franciscan, and the breve (amulet scroll): 215–16 Vineti, Jean, Dominican inquisitor: 259, 290 Vintler, Hans: 152 Virgil: 74–75, 77, 133 Visani, Oriana: 24 n. Visconti, family (Milan): 28 Bianca Maria, Duchess of Milan, 28, 31, 33, 50 Filippo Maria, Duke of Milan: 27, 30, 47 Visconti, Girolamo: 263 n., 283, 290 Vismara, family (Milan): 28 Visso, superstitious women in: 208 Vito dei Beggiami, Dominican inquisitor: 237 Volterra: 64 Von Auw, Lydia: 11 n. Von Stuckrad, Kocku: 86 n. Wadding, Lucas: 10–11 n., 13 n.–14 n., 16 n., 18 n.–9 n., 27, 33 n.–4 n., 39 n.–41 n., 46 n., 57 n., 215 n. Walker Bynum, Caroline: xiii Wallon, Henry: 201 Waters, Claire M. 87 n., 120 n. Weber, Max: xiii

380

Welch, Ewelyn: 194 n. Wenzel, Scott: 100 n. Wettlaufert, Jörg: 97 n. Wharton, Annabel Jane: 39 n. William of Auvergne: 104, 175, 254, 269 Willis, James: 146 n. Winroth, Anders: 93 n. Witt, Ronald G. 73 n. Wranovix, Matthew: 62 n., 109 n. Wycliffe, John: 127 Zachariae, Theodor: xvii Zafarana, Zelina: 7, 15 n., 24 n., 65 n., 67 n.–70, 80 n., 91 n., 119 n. Zampini, Pierluigi: xvii Zarri, Gabriella: 7 n., 54 n., 64 n., 233–235 Zawart, Anscar: 40 n. Zika, Charles: xv n., 106 n., 186 n. Zimmerman, Fritz W. 142 n. Zîna see Diana Ziolkowski, Jan M. 133 n. Zobiana: 261 n. Zoppi, Giovanni: 34 n.

INDEX OF NAMES AND PLACES

Europa Sacra All volumes in this series are evaluated by an Editorial Board, strictly on academic grounds, based on reports prepared by referees who have been commissioned by virtue of their specialism in the appropriate field. The Board ensures that the screening is done independently and without conflicts of interest. The definitive texts supplied by authors are also subject to review by the Board before being approved for publication. Further, the volumes are copyedited to conform to the publisher’s stylebook and to the best international academic standards in the field. Titles in Series Religious and Laity in Western Europe, 1000-1400: Interaction, Negotiation, and Power, ed. by Emilia Jamroziak and Janet E. Burton (2007) Anna Ysabel d’Abrera, The Tribunal of Zaragoza and Crypto-Judaism: 1484–1515 (2008) Cecilia Hewlett, Rural Communities in Renaissance Tuscany: Religious Identities and Local Loyalties (2009) Charisma and Religious Authority: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Preaching, 1200–1500, ed. by Katherine L. Jansen and Miri Rubin (2010) Communities of Learning: Networks and the Shaping of Intellectual Identity in Europe, 1100-1500, ed. by Constant J. Mews and John N. Crossley (2011) Alison Brown, Medicean and Savonarolan Florence: The Interplay of Politics, Humanism, and Religion (2012) Faith’s Boundaries: Laity and Clergy in Early Modern Confraternities, ed. by Nicholas Terpstra, Adriano Prosperi, and Stefania Pastore (2013) Late Medieval and Early Modern Ritual: Studies in Italian Urban Culture, ed. by Samuel Cohn Jr., Marcello Fantoni, Franco Franceschi, and Fabrizio Ricciardelli Thomas A. Fudge, The Memory and Motivation of Jan Hus, Medieval Priest and Martyr (2013) Clare Monagle, Orthodoxy and Controversy in Twelfth-Century Religious Discourse: Peter Lombard’s ‘Sentences’ and the Development of Theology (2013)

Darius von Güttner-Sporzyński, Poland, Holy War, and the Piast Monarchy, 1100–1230 (2014) Tomas Zahora, Nature, Virtue, and the Boundaries of Encyclopaedic Knowledge: The Tropo­ logical Universe of Alexander Neckam (1157–1217) (2014) Line Cecilie Engh, Gendered Identities in Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons on the Song of Songs (2014) Mulieres religiosae: Shaping Female Spiritual Authority in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods, ed. by Veerle Fraeters and Imke de Gier (2014) Bruno the Carthusian and his Mortuary Roll: Studies, Text, and Translation, ed. by Hartmut Beyer, Gabriela Signori, and Sita Steckel (2014) David Rosenthal, Kings of the Street: Power, Community, and Ritual in Renaissance Florence (2015)

In Preparation Adriano Prosperi, The Giving of the Soul: The History of an Infanticide