Witchcraft and Inquisition in Early Modern Venice

by Jonathan Seitz

Overview

In early modern Europe, ideas about nature, God, demons and occult forces were inextricably connected and much ink and blood was spilled in arguments over the characteristics and boundaries of nature and the supernatural. Seitz uses records of Inquisition witchcraft trials in Venice to uncover how individuals across society, from servants to aristocrats, understood these two fundamental categories. Others have examined this issue from the points of view of religious history, the history of science and medicine, or the history of witchcraft alone, but this work brings these sub-fields together to illuminate comprehensively the complex forces shaping early modern beliefs.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781139125185
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	08/08/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	781 KB

About the Author

Jonathan Seitz received his Ph.D. from the Department of the History of Science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 2006. He is an Assistant Teaching Professor at Drexel University, where he has lectured since 2006. Seitz's awards include an American Historical Association Schmitt Grant, a Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowship, and a John Neu Wisconsin Distinguished Graduate Fellowship. He researched this book in the libraries and archives of Venice and of the Vatican, supported by a Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation fellowship and a National Science Foundation Dissertation Research fellowship. He has been published in Renaissance Quarterly, Isis, Gender and History, The Sixteenth Century Journal and at H-net.org (H-ITALY).

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. Witchcraft and the inquisition in the most serene republic; 2. Blackened fingernails and bones in the bedclothes; 3. Appeals to experts; 4. 'Spiritual remedies' for possession and witchcraft; 5. The exorcist's library; 6. 'Not my profession': physicians' naturalism; 7. Physicians as believers; 8. The inquisitor's library; 9. 'Nothing proven': the practical difficulties of witchcraft prosecution; Conclusion.

Editorial Reviews

"In a beautifully nuanced exploration of the treatment of maleficio or malevolent witchcraft by the Venetian Inquisition, Jonathan Seitz opens fresh perspectives by probing the uncertain boundary between natural and supernatural affliction - especially those offered by two types of experts, exorcists and physicians - in an unusually cosmopolitan and sophisticated corner of early modern Europe."
E. William Monter, Professor Emeritus of History, Northwestern University

"This carefully researched and thoroughly engrossing book examines one of the key features of modernity: the hard-won distinction between the natural and the supernatural. Meticulously examining sixteenth- and seventeenth-century witchcraft trials in Venice, Seitz dissects and lays bare the mechanisms by which the Inquisition struggled to demarcate natural and supernatural agency in cases of alleged witchcraft. In the process, Seitz recovers a lost world in which casting beans could forecast love and finding a bundle of feathers under a pillow could reveal the causes of an illness. With remarkable insight, Seitz challenges traditional interpretations of the relation between popular and elite cultures and teases out of the archives a subtle new understanding of the ‘disenchantment’ of the world. It is a book not only for specialists in Italian history, but one with profound lessons for anyone interested in the history of popular culture and the origins of modernity."
William Eamon, Regents Professor of History at New Mexico State University and author of The Professor of Secrets: Mystery, Medicine and Alchemy in Renaissance Italy

"Jonathan Seitz has written an engaging, elegant book that reveals the tremendous gap between the theory of witchcraft and the reality of witchcraft prosecutions in Venice. Although the belief in supernatural harm did not wane, the Venetian Holy Office failed to convict anyone of the crime. Seitz convincingly shows that the natural explanations of early science failed to disenchant Venice, and that the practical difficulties of witchcraft trials led to the habitual conclusion, "nothing proven"."
Edward Muir, Clarence L. Ver Steeg Professor in the Arts and Sciences, Northwestern University and author of The Culture Wars of the Late Renaissance: Skeptics, Libertines and Opera

"[Seitz] not only provides many insights into a broad range of beliefs and practices in early modern Venice but also tackles broader historical questions including the impact of the Counter-Reformation, the relationship between elite and popular culture, the role of medicine and science, and the disenchantment of European society."
Stephen D. Bowd, University of Edinburgh

"… a penetrating study not only of the inner workings of the Venetian tribunal but also of the mental universe of early modern Venetians, and the slow progress toward the separation of the natural and the supernatural."
Thomas Deutscher, H-Italy

"… synthesizes the structures and procedures of the Venetian Inquisition with great lucidity."
James S. Grubb, The Journal of Modern History

"Seitz provides a detailed reconsideration of Venetian witch trials, focusing on medical understandings rooted in inquisitorial procedure and popular mentalities … makes a significant contribution to the history of medicine in early modern Italy, and one welcomes a future expansion of his findings."
David Lederer, Bulletin of the History of Medicine

From the Publisher