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Giambattista Della Porta and the Roman Inquisition: censorship and the definition of Nature's limits in sixteenth-century Italy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 August 2012

NEIL TARRANT
NEIL TARRANT*
Affiliation:
Department of Humanities, Imperial College, London, SW7 2AZ. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

It has long been noted that towards the end of the sixteenth century the Catholic Church began to use its instruments of censorship – the Inquisition and the Index of Forbidden Books – to prosecute magic with increased vigour. These developments are often deemed to have had important consequences for the development of modern science in Italy, for they delimited areas of legitimate investigation of the natural world. Previous accounts of the censorship of magic have tended to suggest that the Church as an institution was opposed to, and sought to eradicate, the practice of magic. I do not seek to contest the fact that ecclesiastical censors prosecuted various magical and divinatory practices with greater enthusiasm at this time, but I suggest that in order to understand this development more fully it is necessary to offer a more complex picture of the Church. In this article I use the case of the Neapolitan magus Giambattista Della Porta to argue that during the course of the century the acceptable boundaries of magical speculation became increasingly clearly defined. Consequently, many practices and techniques that had previously been of contested orthodoxy were categorically defined as heterodox and therefore liable to prosecution and censorship. I argue, however, that this development was not driven by the Church asserting a ‘traditional’ hostility towards magic, but was instead the result of one particular faction within the Church embedding their conception of orthodox philosophical investigation of the natural world within the machinery of censorship.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 46 , Issue 4 , December 2013 , pp. 601 - 625
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 2012 

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References

1 Valente, Michaela, ‘Della Porta e l'Inquisizione: Nuove documenti dell'archivo del Sant'Uffizio’, Bruniana e campanelliana (1999) 5, pp. 415–434Google Scholar, which makes available these important new documents. See too Francesco Fiorentino, ‘Giovan Battista de la Porta: I, Della vita e opere di Giovan Battista De La Porta’, in L. Fiorentino (ed.), Studi e ritratti della rinascenza, Bari: G. Laterza 1911, pp. 235–293 (originally published in Nuova antologia, 14 May 1880, pp. 251–84) – on Fiorentino's dating, and speculation on the causes, of Della Porta's encounter with the Inquisition, see especially pp. 245 and 258–60; Amabile, Luigi, Il Santo Officio della Inquisizione in Napoli, narrazione con molti documenti inediti, 2 vols., Città di Castello: Lapi, 1892, vol. 1, pp. 326–328Google Scholar, but see especially p. 327 n. 1; Aquilecchia, Giovanni, ‘Appunti su G.B. Della Porta e l'Inquisizione’, Studi secenteschi (1968) 9, pp. 3–31Google Scholar.

2 These trends were identified by Thorndike, Lynn, History of Magic and Experimental Science, 8 vols., New York: Columbia University Press, 1923–1958Google Scholar, vol. 6, Chapter 34. For more recent discussions of the censorship of magic see William B. Ashworth, ‘Catholicism and early modern science’, in David Lindberg and Ronald Numbers, God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986, pp. 19–48; and more recently, Ugo Baldini, ‘Le Congregazioni Romane dell'Inquisizione e dell'Indice e le scienze, dal 1542 al 1615’, in L'inquisizione e gli storici: un cantiere aperto, Rome: Accademia dei Lincei, 2000, pp. 329–364.

3 Henry, John, ‘The fragmentation of Renaissance occultism and the decline of magic’, History of Science (2008) 46, pp. 1–48Google Scholar, 11.

4 Henry, op. cit. (3), p. 16.

5 I have made extensive use of a recent body of literature that has exposed significant divisions within the hierarchy of the Catholic Church during the sixteenth century. See, inter alia, Frajese, Vittorio, ‘La revoca dell'Index Sistino e la curia romana, (1588–1596)’, Nouvelles de la république des lettres (1986), pp. 15–49Google Scholar; idem, ‘La politica dell'Indice dal Tridentino al Clementino (1571–1596)’, Archivio italiano per la storia della pietà (1998) 11, pp. 269–356Google Scholar; Fragnito, Gigliola, La Bibbia al rogo: la censura ecclesiastica e i volgarizzamenti della scrittura, Bologna: il Mulino, 1997Google Scholar.

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8 In framing my discussion of the manner in which contemporaries distinguished between the categories of natural, preternatural and supernatural, I have drawn on Stewart Clark's excellent Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, especially Part II, Science.

9 I have followed Kieckhefer's definition of sorcery, op. cit. (7), pp. 6–7. On the various types of demonic magic see Cohn, Norman, Europe's Inner Demons: The Demonisation of Christians in Medieval Christendom, St Albans: Paladin, 1976Google Scholar, Chapter 9.

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11 See Cohn, op. cit. (9), Chapter 9, especially pp. 169–170. For a fascinating discussion of a dispute over the orthodoxy of ritual magic in fifteenth-century Bologna see Herzig, Tamar, ‘The demons and the friars: illicit magic and mendicant rivalry in Renaissance Bologna’, Renaissance Quarterly (2011) 64, pp. 1025–1058Google Scholar.

12 See for example, Kieckhefer, op. cit. (7), Chapter 4; idem, Magic in the Middle Ages, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989Google Scholar, especially Chapter 4.

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14 The essential work on these matters remains Walker, D.P., Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella, London: The Warburg Institute, 1958Google Scholar; see too Yates, Frances, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964Google Scholar, Chapters 4 and 5.

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16 On Trithemius see Brann, Noel L., Trithemius and Magical Theology: A Chapter in the Controversies over Occult Studies in Early Modern Europe, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999Google Scholar; on Agrippa, see Yates op. cit. (14), Chapter 7.

17 On the consumption of astrological prognostication in sixteenth-century Europe see Westman, Robert, The Copernican Question: Prognostication, Skepticism and Celestial Order, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011Google Scholar, especially Part 1; and amongst the Catholic ecclesiastical hierarchy see Thorndike, op. cit. (2), vol. 5, especially pp. 252–274. For popular uses of prognosticatory arts see, for example: Niccoli, Ottavia, Prophecy and People in Renaissance Italy (tr. Lydia Cochrane), Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990Google Scholar. On astrology and medicine see Siraisi, Nancy, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice, 2nd edn, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990, pp. 67–69Google Scholar.

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19 Tricasso, Patritio, Expositione del Tricasso Mantuano sopra Il Cocle al Illustrissimo Signore S. Federico Gonzaga Marchese Mantua, Venice: H. de Rusconi, 1525Google Scholar. For a discussion of the importance of the role of book dedications in the patronage structures of early modern Italy see Biagioli, Mario, Galileo, Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993, pp. 36–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Tricasso, Patritio, Epitoma chyromantico di Patritio Tricasso da Cerasari Mantouano, Venice: Agostino de Bindoni, 1538Google Scholar.

21 Tricasso, op. cit. (20), Chapter 4: ‘Delli principi naturali di questa Scientia Chyromantia’. On the influence of the planets, see Chapter 19, especially pp. 55–56.

22 Tricasso, op. cit. (20), Chapters 12, ‘Della Linea Vitale’, and 13, ‘D'alcuni accidenti particolori della Vitale’, especially p. 72.

23 On Gaurico and Cardinal Medici see Thorndike, op. cit. (2), vol. 5, p. 252, on his predictions for Farnese, see p. 256.

24 For the origins of these orders see Brooke, Rosalind B., The Coming of the Friars, Oxford: G. Allen and Unwin, 1975Google Scholar. For a more detailed history of the Dominicans see Hinnebusch, William A., The History of the Dominican Order, 2 vols., New York: Alba House, 1966–1973Google Scholar. For a discussion of the friars' attitudes to Judaism see Cohen, Jeremy, The Friars and the Jews: Evolution of Mediaeval Anti-Judaism, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982Google Scholar.

25 The bibliography on the Inquisition is extremely large, but for an overview of its history see Peters, Edward, Inquisition, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989Google Scholar; del Col, Andrea, L'inquisizione in Italia dal XII al XXI secolo, Milan: Mondadori, 2006Google Scholar. In focusing on the standards of orthodoxy utilized within the Inquisition, I have drawn on the approach of Beretta, Francesco; see especially ‘Orthodoxie philosophique et Inquisition Romaine au 16e–17e siècles: Un essai d'interprétation’, Historia philosophica (2005) 3, pp. 67–96Google Scholar.

26 Cohn, op. cit. (9), p. 175.

27 For Aquinas's views see The Summa Theologica of St Thomas Aquinas, 2nd edn (tr. by Fathers of the English Dominican Province), London: Thomas Baker, 1920, (hereafter Summa), secunda secundae partis, Question 96, Article 1.

28 For Aquinas's discussion of natural, albeit occult, qualities see Summa, secunda secundae partis, Question 96, Article 2. On the legitimate use of natural substances see too Walker, op. cit. (14), p. 43.

29 William Newman, ‘Art, nature, alchemy, and demons’, in Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and William Newman (eds.), The Artificial and the Natural: An Evolving Polarity, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2007, pp. 109–133, especially 124–126. Alchemy has long been pushed to the margins of the history of science, because of its supposedly spurious character. Recent work on the history of alchemy has clarified earlier misconceptions about this art. See especially Newman, William and Principe, Lawrence, ‘Alchemy vs chemistry: the etymological origins of a historiographic mistake’, Early Science and Medicine (1998) 3, pp. 32–65Google Scholar; see too William Newman and Lawrence Principe, ‘Some problems with the historiography of alchemy’, in William Newman and Anthony Grafton (eds.), Secrets of Nature: Astrology and Alchemy in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001, pp. 385–432.

30 Aquinas, Summa, secunda secundae partis, Question 95, Articles 1, 2 and 3. On his condemnation of prediction through the stars see Article 5. For Aquinas on astrological prediction in large populations see Smoller, op. cit. (18), pp. 31–32.

31 Gui, Bernard, The Inquisitor's Guide: A Medieval Manual on Heretics (tr. Janet Shirley), Welwyn Garden City: Ravenhall Books, 2006Google Scholar. For Gui's discussion of magic see pp. 149–151.

32 For a discussion of the early reception of Aquinas's ideas within his own order see Lowe, Elizabeth A., The Dominican Order and the Theological Authority of Thomas Aquinas: The Controversies between Hervaeus Natalis and Durandus of St Pourcain, 1307–1323, New York: Routledge, 2003Google Scholar.

33 Eymerich, Nicholas, Manuale dell'inquisitore (ed. Rino Cammilieri), 4th edn, Casale Monferrato: Pieme, 2000, p. 171Google Scholar.

34 On the Inquisition's assault on popular magic from the fourteenth century onwards see Kieckhefer, op. cit. (7), Chapter 5; Edward Peters, ‘Sorcerer and Witch’, in Bengt Ankaloo and Stewart Clark (eds.), The Athlone History of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe, vol. 3: The Middle Ages, London: The Athlone Press, 2002, pp. 223–237. For a discussion of the anti-magical atmosphere within the Dominican order during the fifteenth century see Collins, David J., ‘Albertus, Magnus or Magus? Magic, natural philosophy, and religious reform in the late Middle Ages’, Renaissance Quarterly (2010) 63, pp. 1–44Google Scholar, especially 22–25.

35 On the developing structures of censorship see del Col, op. cit. (25), p. 315; Gigliola Fragnito, ‘The central and peripheral organisation of censorship’, in idem (ed.), Church, Censorship and Culture in Early Modern Italy (tr. Adrian Belton), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 13–49.

36 Paul Grendler, ‘Printing and Censorship’, in Schmitt, op. cit. (15), pp. 25–53. For an overview of the indices of the sixteenth century see Jesús Martínez de Bujanda, ‘Squadro panoramico sugli indici dei libri proibiti del XVI secolo’, in Ugo Rozzo (ed.), La censura libraria nell'Europa del secolo XVI, Udine: Forum, 1997, pp. 1–14.

37 For the indices of Louvain and Paris see de Bujanda, Jesús Martínez (ed.), Index des livres interdits, 10 vols., Sherbrooke: Centre d’études de la Renaissance, Université de Sherbrooke, 1985–1996Google Scholar (hereafter ILI), vols. 1 and 2 respectively. See too Grendler, Paul, The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 1540–1605, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977, pp. 94–95Google Scholar; Fausto Parente, ‘The Index, the Holy Office, the condemnation of the Talmud and publication of Clement VIII's Index’, in Fragnito, Church, Censorship and Culture, op. cit. (35), p. 164.

38 For the Venetian Index see ILI, op. cit. (37), vol. 3.

39 Quotation from Porta, Giambattista Della, Dei miracoli et maravigliosi effetti dalla natura prodotti, Italian translation of the 1558 edition of the Magia naturalis, Venice: Ludovico Avanzi, 1560Google Scholar, p. 1r–v.

40 Della Porta, op. cit. (39), p. 104v.

41 Della Porta, op. cit. (39), p. 105v.

42 Della Porta, op. cit. (39), pp. 120v–121v.

43 Della Porta, op. cit. (39), Book II, Chapter 24, esp. p. 100r–v;

44 Della Porta, op. cit. (39), on finding a thief see p. 86v; and on the detection of infidelity see pp. 88r–89v.

45 For the Roman Index of 1559 see ILI, op. cit. (37), vol. 8. For the production of the 1559 Index and its rules see Grendler, op. cit. (37), pp. 115–116. On the expanding power of the Inquisition see Fragnito, ‘The central and peripheral organisation of censorship’, op. cit. (35), p. 16.

46 On the works condemned in 1559 see Luigi Firpo, ‘The flowering and withering of speculative philosophy – Italian philosophy and the Counter-Reformation: the condemnation of Francesco Patrizi’, in Eric Cochrane (ed.), The Late Italian Renaissance, London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 266–267. See too Grendler, op. cit. (37), pp. 266–284. On the censorship of literature see Ugo Rozzo, ‘Italian literature on the Index’, in Fragnito, Church, Censorship and Culture, op. cit. (35), pp. 194–222.

47 See the 1559 Index, ILI, op. cit. (37), vol. 8; for the injunction on the divinatory arts see pp. 291–292.

48 1559 Index, ILI, op. cit. (37), vol. 8.

49 For the 1564 Index see ILI, op. cit. (37), vol. 8. On the preparation of this Index see Grendler, op. cit. (37), pp. 144–149.

50 Clubb, Louise, Giambattista Della Porta Dramatist, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965, pp. 12–13Google Scholar, dates Della Porta's departure to 1563–1564; compare with Aquilecchia, op. cit. (1), p. 5, who dated it to between 1561 and 1566. On Della Porta's Neapolitan circle see Badaloni, Nicola, ‘I fratelli Della Porta e la cultura magica e astrologica a Napoli nel' 500’, Studi storici (1959) 1, pp. 677–715Google Scholar.

51 Valente, op. cit. (1), pp. 420–422.

52 On the date of the closure of Della Porta's academy see Eamon, William, ‘Natural magic and utopia in the cinquecento: Campanella, the Della Porta Circle and the revolt of Calabria’, Memorie domenicanae (1995) 26, pp. 369–402Google Scholar, 374.

53 On the dates of Della Porta's trial see Valente, op. cit. (1), p. 421. Eymerich, op. cit. (33), pp. 193–196.

54 Eymerich, op. cit. (33), pp. 193–196, 193.

55 Eymerich, op. cit. (33), pp. 193–196, 193.

56 Pena's commentary is published in Eymerich, op. cit. (33), pp. 171–172.

57 Eymerich, op. cit. (33), pp. 172–173.

58 See Valente, op. cit. (1), p. 423.

59 Porta, Giambattista Della, De humana physiognomonia, Hannover: G. Antonium, 1593Google Scholar, Epistola dedicatoria lectoris, pp. 3r, 173 and 158.

60 On the prohibition of the Italian edition of the Phyisognomonia see Aquilecchia, op. cit. (1), p. 22; and Valente, op. cit. (1), pp. 415–434, quotation from document 1, p. 432.

61 Valente, op. cit. (1), pp. 433–434.

62 Porta, Giambattista Della, Natural Magick by John Baptista Porta, a Neapolitane, London: T. Young and S. Speed, 1658Google Scholar, Preface and Introduction.

63 On alchemy see Della Porta, op. cit. (62), Book V, p. 160, on the power of certain foods to affect dreams, Book VIII, Chapter 3, p. 220.

64 Della Porta, op. cit. (62), Book 7, Chapter 17: ‘How to make an army of sand to fight before you’, p. 199.

65 Valente, op. cit. (1), pp. 427–428.