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Clerical Exorcists and the Struggle for Professional Status in Early Modern Venice: Learning, Licensing, and Practice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 2022

Jonathan Seitz
Jonathan Seitz*
Affiliation:
Drexel University
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Abstract

Clerical exorcists occupied an unstable place among healers in early modern Italy. Although recognized by their patients for their skills and knowledge, they were also a potentially disruptive group, given their interactions with malevolent powers and work that transgressed the normal boundaries of clerical activities. Consequently, clerical exorcists had to defend the legitimacy of their activities to skeptical ecclesiastical authorities. The examination of several such defenses by Venetian clerical exorcists reveals how they understood their profession and advocated for its legitimacy using arguments that resonated with discussions in contemporary medicine and natural philosophy.

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Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 75 , Issue 3 , Fall 2022 , pp. 849 - 881
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by the Renaissance Society of America

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Footnotes

This research was made possible in part by the generous support of the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation. Kay Edwards provided considerable advice as I developed this article in an earlier form, and the insights of three anonymous RQ reviewers spurred me to further improvements. Responsibility for the errors and infelicities that remain is mine alone.

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Clark, Stuart. Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
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Marcus, Hannah. Forbidden Knowledge: Medicine, Science, and Censorship in Early Modern Italy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marshman, Michelle. “Exorcism as Empowerment: A New Idiom.” Journal of Religious History 23.3 (1999): 265–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, John. “Religion, Renewal, and Reform in the Sixteenth Century.” In Early Modern Italy, 1550–1796, ed. Marino, John A., 30–47. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
McClure, George W. The Culture of Profession in Late Renaissance Italy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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Menghi, Girolamo. Compendio dell'arte essorcistica et possibilita delle mirabili e stupende operationi delli demoni e de’ malefici. Bologna, 1576. Facsimile reprint, Genoa: Nuova Stile Regina Editrice, 1987.Google Scholar
Midelfort, H. C. Erik. Exorcism and Enlightenment: Johann Joseph Gassner and the Demons of Eighteenth-Century Germany. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Niccoli, Ottavia. La vita religiosa nell'Italia moderna: Secoli XV–XVIII. Rome: Carocci, 1998.Google Scholar
O'Connell, Marvin R. “The Roman Catholic Tradition since 1545.” In Caring and Curing: Health and Medicine in the Western Religious Traditions, ed. Numbers, Ronald L. and Amundsen, Darrel W., 109–45. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
O'Neil, Mary. “Sacerdote Ovvero Strione: Ecclesiastical and Superstitious Remedies in 16th Century Italy.” In Understanding Popular Culture: Europe from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century, ed. Kaplan, Steven L., 55–83. New York: Mouton, 1984.Google Scholar
Palmer, Richard. “Physicians and Surgeons in Sixteenth-Century Venice.” Medical History 23.4 (1979): 451–60.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Park, Katharine. Doctors and Medicine in Early Renaissance Florence. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parrish, Sean David. “Marketing Nature: Apothecaries, Medicinal Retailing, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Venice, 1565–1730.” PhD diss., Duke University, 2015.Google Scholar
Pomata, Gianna. Contracting a Cure: Patients, Healers, and the Law in Early Modern Bologna. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Prosperi, Adriano. “Riforma cattolica, controriforma, disciplinamento sociale.” In Storia dell'Italia religiosa, ed. Rosa, Gabriele De and Gregory, Tullio, 3–48. Rome: Editori Laterza, 1994.Google Scholar
Romeo, Giovanni. Inquisitori, esorcisti e streghe nell'Italia della Controriforma. 2nd ed. Florence: Sansoni, 2003.Google Scholar
Ruggiero, Guido. Binding Passions: Tales of Magic, Marriage, and Power at the End of the Renaissance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Schutte, Anne Jacobson. “Tra Scilla e Cariddi: Giorgio Polacco, donne, e disciplina nella Venezia del Seicento.” In Donna, disciplina, creanza cristiana dal XV al XVII secolo: Studi e testi a stampa, ed. Zarri, Gabriella, 215–36. Roma: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1996.Google Scholar
Seitz, Jonathan. Witchcraft and Inquisition in Early Modern Venice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sluhovsky, Moshe. Believe Not Every Spirit: Possession, Mysticism, and Discernment in Early Modern Catholicism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walker, Daniel P. Unclean Spirits: Possession and Exorcism in France and England in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Webster, Charles. The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine, and Reform, 1626–1660. London: Duckworth, 1975.Google Scholar
Young, Francis. A History of Exorcism in Catholic Christianity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Archivio della Congregazione della Fede, Vatican City, Stanza Storica, manuscript E4-b. Collectio decretorum veterum et resolutionum S.O. ab anno 1560 ad an. 1635 in materia iudiciaria ad iudicum instructionem in conficiendis actibus ac processibus, alphabetico ordine congesta.Google Scholar
Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Venice, Sant'Uffizio, buste 1–153. Cited as ASV SU, with the number of the busta.Google Scholar
Archivio Storico del Patriarcato di Venezia, Venice, Criminalia Sancta Inquisitionis, buste I–IV. Cited as ASPV CSI, with the number of the busta.Google Scholar
Amundsen, Darrel W. “Medieval Canon Law on Medical and Surgical Practice by the Clergy.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 52.1 (1978): 22–44.Google Scholar
Biow, Douglas. Doctors, Ambassadors, Secretaries: Humanism and Professions in Renaissance Italy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Caciola, Nancy. Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Caciola, Nancy, and Sluhovsky, Moshe. “Spiritual Physiologies: The Discernment of Spirits in Medieval and Early Modern Europe.” Preternature 1.1 (2012): 1–48.Google Scholar
Cipolla, Carlo M. “The Professions: The Long View.” Journal of European Economic History 2.1 (1973): 37–52.Google Scholar
Clark, Stuart. Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Dall'Olio, Guido. “Alle origini della nuova esorcitica: I maestri Bolognesi di Girolamo Menghi.” In Inquisizioni: Percorsi di ricerca, ed. Paolin, Giovanna, 81–129. Trieste: Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2001.Google Scholar
Del Col, Andrea. “Organizzazione, composizione e giurisdizione dei tribunali dell'Inquisizione Romana nella Repubblica di Venezia (1500–1550).” Studi storici 25.2 (1988): 244–94.Google Scholar
De Renzi, Silvia. “Witnesses of the Body: Medico-Legal Cases in Seventeenth-Century Rome.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 33.2 (2002): 219–42.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Eamon, William. Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferber, Sarah. Demonic Possession and Exorcism in Early Modern France. New York: Routledge, 2004.Google Scholar
Freeman, Thomas. “Demons, Deviance and Defiance: John Darrell and the Politics of Exorcism in Late Elizabethan England.” In Conformity and Orthodoxy in the English Church, c. 1560–1660, ed. Lake, Peter and Questier, Michael C., 34–63. Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Gentilcore, David. From Bishop to Witch: The System of the Sacred in Early Modern Terra d'Otranto. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Hummel, George Joseph. “Medicinal Exorcisms: The ‘Ritual Virtues’ of the Remedia Efficacissima, and the Work of Girolamo Menghi.” PhD diss., University of Connecticut, 1999.Google Scholar
Keitt, Andrew. Inventing the Sacred: Imposture, Inquisition, and the Boundaries of the Supernatural in Golden Age Spain. Leiden: Brill, 2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kieckhefer, Richard. Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer's Manual of the Fifteenth Century. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Laughran, Michelle A. “Medicating with or without ‘Scruples’: The ‘Professionalization’ of the Apothecary in Sixteenth-Century Venice.” Pharmacy in History 45.3 (2003): 95–107.Google ScholarPubMed
Lavenia, Vincenzo. “‘Tenere i malefici per cosa vera’: Esorcismi e censura nell'Italia moderna.” In Dal torchio alle fiamme: Inquisizione e censura; Nuovi contributi dalla più antica biblioteca provinciale d'Italia; Atti del convegno nazionale di studi, Salerno, 5–6 Novembre 2004, ed. Bonani, Vittoria, Cicco, Giuseppe Gianluca, Vitale, Anna Maria, and Romito, Matilda, 129–72. Salerno: Biblioteca Provinciale, 2005.Google Scholar
Lavenia, Vincenzo. “Girolamo Menghi.” In Dizionario storico dell'Inquisizione, ed. Prosperi, Adriano, with Lavenia, Vincenzo and Tedeschi, John A., 2:1022–23. Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2010.Google Scholar
Levack, Brian P. “General Reasons for the Decline in Prosecutions.” In Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, ed. Ankarloo, Bengt and Clark, Stuart, 7–47. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Levack, Brian P. The Devil Within: Possession and Exorcism in the Christian West. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Levi, Giovanni. Inheriting Power: The Story of an Exorcist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Marangoni, Giovanni. Le associazioni di mestiere nella repubblica Veneta: Vittuaria, farmacia, medicina. Venice: Filippi Editore, 1974.Google Scholar
Marcus, Hannah. Forbidden Knowledge: Medicine, Science, and Censorship in Early Modern Italy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marshman, Michelle. “Exorcism as Empowerment: A New Idiom.” Journal of Religious History 23.3 (1999): 265–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, John. “Religion, Renewal, and Reform in the Sixteenth Century.” In Early Modern Italy, 1550–1796, ed. Marino, John A., 30–47. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
McClure, George W. The Culture of Profession in Late Renaissance Italy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Menghi, Girolamo. Flagellum Daemonum, seu Exorcismi Terribiles, Potentissimi, et Efficacies. Bologna, 1578.Google Scholar
Menghi, Girolamo. Compendio dell'arte essorcistica et possibilita delle mirabili e stupende operationi delli demoni e de’ malefici. Bologna, 1576. Facsimile reprint, Genoa: Nuova Stile Regina Editrice, 1987.Google Scholar
Midelfort, H. C. Erik. Exorcism and Enlightenment: Johann Joseph Gassner and the Demons of Eighteenth-Century Germany. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Niccoli, Ottavia. La vita religiosa nell'Italia moderna: Secoli XV–XVIII. Rome: Carocci, 1998.Google Scholar
O'Connell, Marvin R. “The Roman Catholic Tradition since 1545.” In Caring and Curing: Health and Medicine in the Western Religious Traditions, ed. Numbers, Ronald L. and Amundsen, Darrel W., 109–45. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
O'Neil, Mary. “Sacerdote Ovvero Strione: Ecclesiastical and Superstitious Remedies in 16th Century Italy.” In Understanding Popular Culture: Europe from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century, ed. Kaplan, Steven L., 55–83. New York: Mouton, 1984.Google Scholar
Palmer, Richard. “Physicians and Surgeons in Sixteenth-Century Venice.” Medical History 23.4 (1979): 451–60.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Park, Katharine. Doctors and Medicine in Early Renaissance Florence. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parrish, Sean David. “Marketing Nature: Apothecaries, Medicinal Retailing, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Venice, 1565–1730.” PhD diss., Duke University, 2015.Google Scholar
Pomata, Gianna. Contracting a Cure: Patients, Healers, and the Law in Early Modern Bologna. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Prosperi, Adriano. “Riforma cattolica, controriforma, disciplinamento sociale.” In Storia dell'Italia religiosa, ed. Rosa, Gabriele De and Gregory, Tullio, 3–48. Rome: Editori Laterza, 1994.Google Scholar
Romeo, Giovanni. Inquisitori, esorcisti e streghe nell'Italia della Controriforma. 2nd ed. Florence: Sansoni, 2003.Google Scholar
Ruggiero, Guido. Binding Passions: Tales of Magic, Marriage, and Power at the End of the Renaissance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Schutte, Anne Jacobson. “Tra Scilla e Cariddi: Giorgio Polacco, donne, e disciplina nella Venezia del Seicento.” In Donna, disciplina, creanza cristiana dal XV al XVII secolo: Studi e testi a stampa, ed. Zarri, Gabriella, 215–36. Roma: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1996.Google Scholar
Seitz, Jonathan. Witchcraft and Inquisition in Early Modern Venice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sluhovsky, Moshe. Believe Not Every Spirit: Possession, Mysticism, and Discernment in Early Modern Catholicism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walker, Daniel P. Unclean Spirits: Possession and Exorcism in France and England in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Webster, Charles. The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine, and Reform, 1626–1660. London: Duckworth, 1975.Google Scholar
Young, Francis. A History of Exorcism in Catholic Christianity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar