‘Twelve Thousand Circes’

Montesano, Marina

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-92078-8_8

Marina Montesano⁵

Part of the book series: Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic ((PHSWM))

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Abstract

The title of this chapter alludes to Giovanfrancesco Pico della Mirandola’s dialogue Strix, inspired by actual trials held in Modena in the early 1520s. The humanist author mentions the spread of witchcraft in his lands, and how it had produced thousands of imitators of ancient witches. But it is not only this dialogue which draws heavily on ancient, classical sources and relates them to contemporary witchcraft; indeed, this linking of learned and lay narratives will become a common feature of all the treatises on the dangers of the witchcraft phenomenon between the fifteenth and the early sixteenth centuries.

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Notes

1.
Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, Vita Hieronymi Savonarolae, ed. Elisabetta Schisto (Firenze, 1999).
2.
Elisabetta Scapparone, Pico della Mirandola Gianfrancesco, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (Roma, 2015), vol. 83 (online http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/giovan-francesco-pico_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/); Gabriella Zarri, Pico della Mirandola Gianfrancesco, in Encyclopaedia of Witchcraft: The Western Traditio, ed. Richard M. Golden (Santa Barbara, CA, 2006), vol. 4, pp. 898–900.
3.
Giovanfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, Strega o delle illusioni del demonio nel volgarizzamento di Leandro Alberti, ed. Albano Biondi (Venezia, 1989), pp. 49–50. The Latin text with Italian translation is now available in a very good version: Lucia Pappalardo (ed.), La Strega (Strix) (Roma, 2017).
4.
Peter Burke, The Renaissance dialogue, Renaissance Studies, 3, 1 (1989), pp. 1–12.
5.
On Lamia/ lania see supra, in the chapter ‘Maleficia: From Late Antiquity to the High Middle Ages’. For the Latin terminology (especially lania and pythonissa), see Julia Gold, ›Von den vnholden oder hexen‹: Studien zu Text und Kontext eines Traktats des Ulrich Molitoris (Hildesheim, 2016), pp. 79–84.
6.
Ibidem, pp. 165–171.
7.
Jane P. Davidson, The Witch in Northern European Art, 1470–1750 (Freren, 1987) passim; Charles Zika, The Appearance of Witchcraft: Print and Visual Culture in Sixteenth-century Europe (London and New York, 2007), pp. 18–20; and Natalie Kwan, Woodcuts and Witches: Ulrich Molitor’s De lamiis et pythonicis mulieribus, 1489–1669, German History, 30, 4 (2012), pp. 493–527.
8.
Rudolf Wittkower, Marco Polo and the Pictorial Tradition of the Marvels of the East, in Allegory and the Migration of Symbols, ed. Rudolf Wittkower (London, 1977), pp. 75–92.
9.
Gold, Von den vnholden oder hexen, pp. 193–194.
10.
Ulrich Molitor, De Laniis et Pythonicis Mulieribus in Des sorcières et des devineresses. Reproduit en facsimile d’apres l’édition latine de Cologne 1489 et traduit pour la première fois en français (Paris, 1926), pp. 19–27.
11.
See supra, ‘The Italian Quattrocento’.
12.
Hom. Od. 12.365. Pappalardo (ed.), La Strega, pp. 368–369.
13.
Ibidem, pp. 378–379. Unless otherwise stated, English translations are my own.
14.
Ibidem, pp. 266–271.
15.
Ibidem, pp. 396–399.
16.
Giovanfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, Strega o delle illusioni, p. 34.
17.
Peter Burke, Witchcraft and Magic in Renaissance Italy: Gianfrancesco Pico and His Strix, in The Damned Art: Essays in the Literature of Witchcraft, ed. Sydney Anglo (London, 1977), pp. 32–52 (esp. p. 38).
18.
See supra, ‘The Italian Quattrocento’.
19.
Tamar Herzig, The Demons’ Reaction to Sodomy: Witchcraft and Homosexuality in Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola’s Strix, Sixteenth Century Journal, 34, 1 (2003), p. 59.
20.
Martine Ostorero, Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, Kathrin Utz Tremp, Catherine Chène (eds.), L’imaginaire du sabbat. Edition critique des textes les plus anciens (1430c.–1440c.) (Lausanne, 1999). On Johann Nider see also Michael D. Bailey, Battling Demons: Witchcraft, Heresy, and Reform in the Late Middle Ages (University Press, PA, 2003).
21.
«Sans reprendre bien sûr le conclusions de çe dernier, opposée à son propos»: Agnès Blanc, Virginie Dang, Martine Ostorero, L’imaginaire du sabbat, p. 491.
22.
Bernard Basin, De artibus magicis ac magorum malificiis opus clarissimum eximii (Paris, 1506), pp. 14–16.
23.
Ibidem, p. 6.
24.
Wolfgang Behringher, Malleus Maleficarum, in Encyclopaedia of Witchcraft, vol. 3, pp. 717–723 (esp. p. 720).
25.
Christopher S. Mackay (ed.), The Hammer of Witches: A Complete Translation of the Malleus Maleficarum (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 162–163, 67–168.
26.
Ibidem, p. 93.
27.
Behringher, Malleus Maleficarum, p. 720.
28.
See entries lamia and strix: Ambrogio Calepino, Dictionarium Latinum (Reggio, 1502) (no page numbers).
29.
Robert Estienne, Dictionarium seu latinae linguae Thesaurus (Lyon, 1531), p. 848.
30.
Lambert Daneau, Les sorciers, dialogue très utile et très nécessaire pour ce temps (Genève, 1574); Idem, De veneficiis quos olim sortilegos, nunc autem vulgo sortiarios vocant, dialogus (Genève, 1574); and Idem, A Dialogue of Witches, in Foretime Named Lot-tellers, and Novv Commonly Called Sorcerers (London, 1575).
31.
Idem, Les sorciers, p. 78.
32.
Ibidem, p. 18.
33.
Ibidem, pp. 28–29.
34.
Ibidem, p. 29.
35.
Ibidem, p. 35.
36.
Ibidem, p. 56.
37.
Ibidem, p. 94.
38.
Ibidem, pp. 94–95.
39.
Liv., I, 16.
40.
Jean Bodin, Demon-Mania of Witches, ed. and trans. Jonathan L. Pearl, Randy A. Scott (Toronto, 2001), p. 40.
41.
Ibidem, p. 41.
42.
Ibidem, p. 122.
43.
Ibidem, p. 123.
44.
Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford, 1997), pp. 274–276.
45.
Bodin, Demon-Mania of Witches, p. 126.
46.
Ioannis Wieri, De praestigiis daemonum in Idem, Opera omnia (Amsterdam, 1609); see: Clark, Thinking with Demons, pp. 198–202; and Michaela Valente, Johann Wier: Agli albori della critica razionale dell’occulto e del demoniaco (Firenze, 2003).
47.
Jean-Patrice Boudet, Les who’s who démonologiques de la Renaissance et leurs ancêtres médiévaux, Médiévales, 44 (2003), pp. 117–140.
48.
Weyer Johann, De praestigiis daemonum, et incantationibus, ac veneficiis, in Witches, Devils and Doctors in the Renaissance: Johann Weyers ‘De praestigiis daemonum’, ed. Mora George, Benjamin Kohl, trans. J. Shea (Binghamton, NY, 1991), p. 583.
49.
Wolfgang Behringer, Witches and Witch-Hunts: A Global History (Cambridge, 2004), p. 101 thinks Del Rio developed his interest towards witchcraft after the wave of trials that occurred in the Spanish Netherlands during the reign of Philippe II (1556–98). Anyway, he might have been interested because of those events, but, as Jan Machielsen rightly argues, Del Rio’s knowledge of the phenomenon was mostly theoretical: Martin Delrio: Demonology and Scholarship in the Counter-Reformation (Oxford, 2015).
50.
Ibidem, pp. 233–234 and passim.
51.
Martin Del Rio, Disquisitionum magicarum libri sex (Mannheim, 1617), pp. 353–355.
52.
Ibidem, p. 356.
53.
Ibidem, pp. 357–358, 362–366.
54.
Ibidem, p. 355.
55.
On Peruvian ‘vampires’ see Anita G. Cook, Huari D-Shaped Structures, Sacrificial Offerings, and Divine Rulership, in Ritual Sacrifice in Ancient Peru, eds. Elizabeth P. Benson, Anita G. Cook (Austin, 2001), pp. 137–164, esp. pp. 158–160; Fernando Santos-Granero, The Land Within: Indigenous Territory and the Perception of the Environment, American Ethnologist, 25, 2 (1998), pp. 128–148, esp. pp. 136–138; and Nathan Wachtel, Gods and Vampires. Return to Chipaya (Chicago and London, 1994).
56.
Cristóbal de Molina, Relación de las fábulas y ritos de los incas, ed. Paloma Jiménez del Campo (Berlin and Madrid, 2010), pp. 94–95.
57.
On witchcraft in those border areas amid France, Switzerland and Germany, see William Monter, Witchcraft in France and Switzerland: The Borderlands During the Reformation (Ithaca, NY, 1976); Caroline Oates, Metamorphosis and Lycanthropy in Franche-Comte, 1521–1643, in Fragments for a History of the Human Body, eds. Michael Feher, Ramona Naddaff, Nadia Tazi (New York, 1989), vol. 1, pp. 305–363; and Brigitte Rochelandet, Sorcières, diables et bûchers en Franche-Comté aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles (Besançon, 1997). On Lycanthropy see Willem de Blécourt (ed.), Werewolf Histories (London, 2015).
58.
Henri Boguet, Discours exécrable des sorciers (Paris, 1603), pp. 110–124; in English: Henri Boguet, An Examen of Witches, trans. Montague Summers (London, 1929).
59.
Jonathan L. Pearl, The Crime of Crimes: Demonology and Politics in France, 1560–1620 (Waterloo and Ontario, 1999).
60.
Pierre de Lancre, On the Inconstancy of Witches, eds. Gerhild Scholz Williams, Harriet Stone, Michaela Glesenkirchen, John Morris (Tempe, AZ–Turnhout, 2006), p. 67.
61.
Ibidem, pp. 67–80.
62.
Ibidem, pp. 145–146: Torquato Tasso, Gerusalemme liberata, XIII, 4.
63.
William Monter, Edward Peters, Nicolas Rémy, Encyclopaedia of Witchcraft, vol. 4, p. 955.
64.
Robin Briggs, Witchcraft and Popular Mentality in Lorraine, 1580–1630 in Idem, Communities of Belief: Cultural and Social Tensions in Early Modern France (Oxford, 1989), pp. 66–82; Idem, The Witches of Lorraine (Oxford, 2007).
65.
Nicolas Rémy, La Démonolâtrie. Texte latin de 1595 et traduction par Jean Boës (Nancy and Paris, 2017), vol. 2, pp. 37–45.
66.
Ibidem, p. 26.
67.
Ibidem, pp. 26–27.
68.
Clark, Thinking with Demons, p. 90.
69.
Machielsen, Martin Delrio, p. 194.
70.
Ibidem, pp. 186–203.
71.
Jean Bodin, Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem, ed. Sara Miglietti (Pisa, 2012); for an English translation see Idem, Method for the Easy Comprehension of History, trans. Beatrice Reynolds (New York, 1945). For the differences between the two, see the comment by Sara Miglietti, pp. 22–31.
72.
Cesare Vasoli, Riflessioni su De la Démonomanie des sorciers di Jean Bodin, in Idem, Armonia e giustizia. Studi sulle idee filosofiche di Jean Bodin (Firenze, 2008), pp. 131–167; many essays in Gabriel A. Pérouse, Nicole Dockès-Lallement, Jean-Marie Servet (eds.), L’Oeuvre de Jean Bodin: actes du colloque tenu á Lyon à l’occasion du quatriéme centenaire de sa mort, 11–13 janvier 1996 (Paris, 2004): especially Marc Venard, Jean Bodin et les sorciers La Démonomanie est-elle une aberration dans l’oeuvre de Bodin, pp. 419–429.
73.
Federicomaria Muccioli, Il canone degli storici greci nella Methodus di Jean Bodin, in Storici antichi e storici moderni nella Methodus di Jean Bodin, eds. Alessandro Galimberti, Giuseppe Zecchini (Milano, 2012), pp. 27–48.
74.
Maria Teresa Schettino, Il canone degli storici romani nella Methodus di Jean Bodin and Giuseppe Zecchini, Il canone degli storici tardoantichi nella Methodus di Jean Bodin, ibidem, pp. 49–74, 75–84.
75.
Michaela Valente, Storia e politica. Bodin e gli storici coevi nella Methodus, p. 129.
76.
Bodin, Demon-Mania of Witches, p. 38.
77.
Ibidem, pp. 40–41.
78.
Ibidem, p. 46.
79.
Ibidem, p. 106.
80.
Ibidem, p. 126.
81.
Bodin, Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem, p. 7.
82.
Behringer, Witches and Witch-Hunts, p. 105.
83.
Francesco Maria Guaccio, Compendium maleficarum (Torino, 1992).
84.
For Leonardo’s quote, see Jean Paul Richter, The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci (London, 1939, 2nd ed.), vol. 1, pp. 52–68; on Renaissance theories of painting: Lee W. Rensselaer, Ut Pictura Poesis: The Humanistic Theory of Painting, The Art Bulletin, 22, 4 (1940), pp. 197–269.
85.
«Pictoribus atque poetis quidlibet audendi semper fuit aequa potestas» Horat, Ars Poetica, 10; Ioannis Wieri, De praestigiis daemonum, p. 531; a commentary on Horace’s phrase in Medieval and Renaissance times: André Chastel, Le dictum Horatii: quidlibet audendi potestas et les artistes (XIIIe–XVIe siècle), Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettre, 121, 1 (1977), pp. 30–45.
86.
Rabelais, The Works of Françis Rabelais (London, 1807), vol. 2, p. 134.
87.
The Tempest Act 1, s. 2.
88.
«Scot was certainly familiar with both Apuleius and Cicero: indeed he seems especially indebted to the latter’s De diivinatione, although, somewhat disingenuously, he specifically refers to that text at only one of several points where its influence is manifest»: Sidney Anglo, Reginald Scot’s Discoverie of Witchcraft: Scepticism and Sadduceeism, in The Damned Art, pp. 106–139 (esp. p. 129). See also Cora Fox, Authorising the Metamorphic Witch: Ovid in Reginald Scot’s Discoverie of Witchcraft, in Metamorphosis: The Changing Face of Ovid in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, eds. Alison Keith, Stephen Rupp (Toronto, 2007), pp. 165–178.
89.
Simon F. Davies, The Reception of Reginald Scot’s Discovery of Witchcraft: Witchcraft, Magic, and Radical Religion, Journal of the History of Ideas, 74, 3 (2013), pp. 381–401.
90.
Peter Corbin, Douglas Sedge, Three Jacobean Witchcraft Plays (Manchester, 1986); James Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in England 1550–1750 (London, 1996).
91.
Some useful indications are in Gareth Roberts, The Descendants of Circe: Witches and Renaissance Fiction, in Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe: Studies in Culture and Belief, eds. Jonathan Barry, Marianne Hester, Gareth Roberts (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 183–206.
92.
Charles Zika, Images of Circe and Discourses of Witchcraft, 1480–1580, Zeitenblicke, 1 (2002). online http://www.zeitenblicke.de/2002/01/zika/zika.html.
93.
Margaret A. Sullivan, The Witches of Dürer and Hans Baldung Grien, Renaissance Quarterly, 53, 2 (2000), pp. 333–401; on Baldung see also Dale Hoak, Art, Culture, and Mentality in Renaissance Society: The Meaning of Hans Baldung Grien’s Bewitched Groom (1544), Renaissance Quarterly, 38, 3 (1985), pp. 488–510.
94.
See the beautiful catalogue, richly commented and illustrated by Renilde Vervoort, Bruegel’s Witches: Witchcraft Images in the Low Countries Between 1450 and 1700 (Bruges, 2015).
95.
Linda C. Hults, Dürer’s Four Witches Reconsidered, in Saints, Sinners, and Sisters: Gender and Northern Art in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, eds. Jane L. Carroll,‎ Alison G. Stewart (London, 2003), pp. 94–125, esp. pp. 94–99.
96.
The standard studies by Jean Seznec, The Survival of the Pagan Gods (New York, 1953) and Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance (London, 1958) can be revised in the light of Monica Centanni, Fantasmi dell’Antico. La tradizione classica nel Rinascimento (Rimini, 2017).
97.
Peter Humfrey, Mario Lucco (eds.), Dosso Dossi: Court Painter in Renaissance Ferrara (New York, 1998), pp. 89–92, 114–118; Stefania Macioce (ed.), L’incantesimo di Circe. Temi di magia nella pittura da Dosso Dossi a Salvator Rosa (Roma, 2004), esp. pp. 11–40; and Mina Gregori (ed.), In the Light of Apollo: Italian Renaissance and Greece, 2 vols. (Athens, 2003–2004).
98.
Nicolò Machiavelli, L’Asino d’Oro, con tutte l’altre sue operette, vol. IV (s.l. 1679), pp. 35–48.
99.
Brigitte Urbani, Vaut-il «mieux mille fois être ânes qu’être hommes» ? Chroniques Italiennes, 59–60 (2002), pp. 163–180; Eadem, Ulysse dans la culture italienne. Voyage multiforme à travers le temps, Cahiers d’études romanes, 27 (2013), pp. 19–46.
100.
Roberts, The Descendants of Circe, pp. 183–206.
101.
Patricia Simons, The Crone, The Witch, and the Library: The Intersection of Classical Fantasy with Christian Vice During the Italian Renaissance, in Receptions of Antiquity, Constructions of Gender in European Art, 1300–1600, eds. Marice Rose, Alison C. Poe (Leiden, 2015), pp. 264–304.
102.
Zika, Images of Circe, p. 4.
103.
Roberts, The Descendants of Circe, p. 194.
104.
Gregorii Magni, Registrum epistularum libri I–XIV, ed. Dag Norberg (Turnhout, 1982), p. 768.
105.
Many examples in Zika, The Appearance of Witchcraft, pp. 125–155. See also Robert H. F. Carver, The Protean Ass: The Metamorphoses of Apuleius from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Oxford, 2007). For the image/writing relationships, and the prevailing force of the former towards vs. latter, see David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago, 1989).
106.
Hults, Dürer’s Four Witches Reconsidered, pp. 96–97.

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Montesano, M. (2018). ‘Twelve Thousand Circes’. In: Classical Culture and Witchcraft in Medieval and Renaissance Italy. Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92078-8_8

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92078-8_8
Published: 12 July 2018
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