Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
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 inquisitor's 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.
I wish to thank Michael D. Bailey, Maayan Liebrecht, Moshe Sluhovsky, and the two anonymous readers at Renaissance Quarterly for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. Support from the Israel Science Foundation (grant no. 292/10) is gratefully acknowledged. All translations are the author's except where otherwise noted.