Tamar Herzig

Witches, Saints, and Heretics: Heinrich Kramer's Ties with Italian Women Mystics

In the late Middle Ages, mystical sainthood was often defined as antithetical to diabolic witchcraft. Whereas the saintly female mystic was revered as an emblem of piety, her mirror-image, the witch, was believed to be the embodiment of evil, who deliberately inverted orthodox religion by engaging in diabolic rites. Historians exploring the relationship between the category of ‘‘saint’’ and that of ‘‘witch’’ have pointed to the very fine line that usually separated the two in the premodern era.1 Several studies have also lately un-

Bridging North and South: Inquisitorial Networks and Witchcraft Theory on the Eve of the Reformation

This article reconstructs a network of Dominican inquisitors who facilitated the reception and adaptation of northern European demonological notions in the Italian peninsula. It focuses on the collaboration of Italian friars with Heinrich Kramer, the infamous Alsatian witch-hunter and author of the Malleus Maleficarum (1486). Drawing on newly-discovered archival sources as well as on published works from the early sixteenth century, it proposes that Italian inquisitors provided Kramer with information on local saintly figures and were, in turn, influenced by his views on witchcraft. Following their encounter with Kramer in 1499-1500, they came to regard witches as members of an organized diabolical sect, and were largely responsible for turning the Malleus into the focal point of the Italian debate over witch-hunting. I argue that Kramers case attests to the important role of papal inquisitors before the Reformation in bridging the cultural and religious worlds south and north of the Alps.

The Demons and the Friars: Illicit Magic and Mendicant Rivalry in Renaissance Bologna*

In 1473 Pope Sixtus IV instructed the vicar of the Bishop of Bologna to investigate rumors concerning Carmelite friars who were preaching that summoning demons in order to obtain responses from them was not heretical. Drawing on newly discovered archival sources, this article elucidates the circumstances that led the Franciscan pope to intervene in a conflict between the Bolognese Carmelites and the Dominican inquisitor Simone of Novara. It proposes that the Carmelite affair, which ended with the inquisitors defeat, constituted a critical juncture in the Dominicans’ relations with other Mendicant orders, and that it shaped inquisitorial activity in Bologna over the next few decades. This paper suggests that the aftermath of the Carmelite affair may also explain why, when the repression of illicit magic was resumed, Inquisitor Giovanni Cagnazzo decided to turn a female necromancer, and not the friars who had taught her demonic rites, into the main target of his prosecution.

Flies, Heretics, and the Gendering of Witchcraft

This article examines the inquisitor and witchcraft theorist Heinrich Kramers treatment of witchcraft and heresy in several of his works, with particular attention to his gendering of those categories. While in his Malleus maleficarum Kramer famously asserted that witchcraft was a primarily female crime, in other works he asserted the male character of heresy. In particular, he associated heresy and especially heresiarchy with the male qualities of intelligence, (misplaced) reason, and instruction. While earlier boundaries between witchcraft and heresy had been blurry, Kramer and his gendering efforts mark an important step toward the theoretical separation between these two categories of offence.

The Rise and Fall of a Savonarolan Visionary: Lucia Brocadelli’s Contribution to the Piagnone Movement

ZUSAMMENFASSUNG Der vorliegende Aufsatz behandelt die Rolle Lucia Brocadellis bei der Entstehung und Ausbreitung der von Girolamo Savonarola begründeten Reform- und Frömmigkeitsbewegung. Ihre Übersiedlung von Viterbo nach Ferrara stand in engem Zusammenhang mit Ercole d’Este, einem einflußreichen Anhänger Savonarolas. Bisher von der Historiographie nicht beachtete Quellen machen deutlich, daß Lucia Brocadelli eine wesentliche Rolle bei der Entstehung des Savonarola-Kultes in Ferrara zu Beginn des 16.||Jahrhunderts spielte. Nach dem Tod Ercole d’Estes im Jahr 1505 verlor sie jedoch ihren Einfluß. Lucias Beitrag zur savonarolischen Reformbewegung wurde von der späteren Geschichtsschreibung ignoriert, so daß man die frühen Quellen dieser Reformbewegung untersuchen muß, um ihre Bedeutung abschätzen zu können.

Fear and Devotion in the Writings of Heinrich Institoris

In 1501, Heinrich Institoris (Kramer, d. c.1505) published two works exalting the mystical experiences of contemporary women. Drawing on the entire corpus of Institoris’s works, this essay explores his fascination with somatic female spirituality. While Institoris’s diatribe on women in the Malleus maleficarum (The Witches’ Hammer, c.1486)—arguably the most misogynistic work of the premodern era—has been ascribed to his fear of women, it proposes that he was no more preoccupied with female witches than he was with men who strayed from Catholic orthodoxy. Regarding the female sex as inferior to the male sex, Institoris maintained that the same qualities that rendered wicked women more susceptible to witchcraft could turn devout women into the privileged conduits for revelations that confirmed the tenets of Christianity.

The Hazards of Conversion: Nuns, Jews, and Demons in Late Renaissance Italy

Female monasticism and the conversion of the Jews were both major concerns for the ecclesiastical establishment, as well as for Italian ruling elites, after the Council of Trent (1545–1563). Hence, the monachization of baptized Jewish girls acquired a unique symbolic significance. Moreover, during this period cases of demonic possession were on the rise, and so were witchcraft accusations. This article explores a case from late sixteenth-century Mantua in which Jewish conversion, female monachization, demonic possession and witch-hunting all came into play in a violent drama. Drawing on unpublished documents as well as on chronicles and hagiographies, the article elucidates the mental toll that conversion and monachization took on the Jewess Luina, who later became known as Sister Margherita. It delineates her life, which culminated with her diagnosis as a demoniac, and analyzes the significance that this etiology held for the energumen—whose affliction was attributed to her ongoing contacts with Jews—and for Mantuas Jews. The article argues that the anxiety provoked by suspicions that a formerly Jewish nun reverted to Judaism was so profound, that it led to the burning at the stake of Judith Franchetta, the only Jew ever to be executed as a witch in the Italian peninsula.

Michael Heyd: Selected Bibliography

This collection of essays examines interplays of knowledge and religion in early modern thought. Spanning from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, it considers varied formations of knowledge and religion, knowledge about religion(s) and irreligious knowledge in early modern Europe.

Knowledge and Religion in Early Modern Europe

This collection of essays examines interplays of knowledge and religion in early modern thought. Spanning from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, it considers varied formations of knowledge and religion, knowledge about religion(s) and irreligious knowledge in early modern Europe.

Nuns and Nunneries in Renaissance Florence. By Sharon T. Strocchia

Through text and image, Nanjing gains identity as a city as the residents themselves wish it to be seen: organized around the social interactions and activities of daily life. Fei’s book poses an important challenge to the ‘silver-driven late Ming narrative’ (p. 6) by suggesting that commercialization and urbanization should not be conflated. Her nuanced discussions of the intricacies and implications of urban development clearly demonstrate that they are separate from the commercial development of the region facilitated by the influx of silver from the Americas. Her work also makes a valid contribution by arguing for a Ming-centred narrative rather than a China-centred narrative that ignores the very different institutional frameworks created by the different Chinese dynasties. As a consequence, however, the book is less easily accessible for the non-China specialist. Readers interested in comparing Nanjing to some of the other great cities of the early modern world or readers keen to situate Nanjing in a world-historical framework by exploring the role of cities in the emerging economic and cultural networks that characterized the early modern world are not going to get much guidance from Fei. The book pursues a ‘China-centred urbanism’, suggesting that what happened in China was different from what happened in other parts of the world during this time. Fei’s book shows the importance of that pursuit in exemplary fashion, although ironically this also makes it more difficult for those of us interested in connecting China to wider historical narratives to persuade non-specialists to read her book.