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Classical Culture and Witchcraft in Medieval and Renaissance Italy

  • Book
  • © 2018

Overview

Authors:
  1. Marina Montesano

    1. University of Messina, Messina, Italy

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  • Demonstrates how ancient Greek and Roman beliefs and descriptions of magic impacted modern ideas of witchcraft and witch hunts
  • Challenges the perception of the Renaissance as an enlightening movement
  • Utilises Italian texts that are important, but relatively unknown, for the construction of modern witchcraft

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

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Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-ix
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction

    • Marina Montesano
    Pages 1-10

  3. Prototypes: Magic and Witchcraft in Greece

    • Marina Montesano
    Pages 11-35

  4. The Witch as a Woman: Tales of Magic in Rome

    • Marina Montesano
    Pages 37-66

  5. Maleficia: From Late Antiquity to the High Middle Ages

    • Marina Montesano
    Pages 67-97

  6. ‘A Company That Go the Course’

    • Marina Montesano
    Pages 99-131

  7. ‘Let’s Send Up Some Incense to the Lord!’

    • Marina Montesano
    Pages 133-171

  8. The Italian Quattrocento

    • Marina Montesano
    Pages 173-211

  9. ‘Twelve Thousand Circes’

    • Marina Montesano
    Pages 213-246

  10. Back Matter

    Pages 247-278
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Keywords

About this book

This book explores the relationships between ancient witchcraft and its modern incarnation, and by doing so fills an important gap in the historiography. It is often noted that stories of witchcraft circulated in Greek and Latin classical texts, and that treatises dealing with witch-beliefs referenced them. Still, the role of humanistic culture and classical revival in the developing of the witch-hunts has not yet been fully researched. Marina Montesano examines Greek and Latin literature, revealing how particular features of ancient striges were carried into the Late Middle Ages, through the Renaissance and into the fifteenth century, when early Italian trials recall the myth of the strix common in ancient Latin sources and in popular memory. The final chapter also serves as a conclusion, to show how in Renaissance Italy and beyond, classical accounts of witchcraft ceased to be just stories, as they had formerly been, and were instead used to attest to the reality of witches’ powers.

Reviews

“This volume … is a study that is genuinely valuable and that should be of interest to all historians interested in the origins of the European witch-hunt.” (Jan Machielsen, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 70 (4), 2019)

Authors and Affiliations

  • University of Messina, Messina, Italy

    Marina Montesano

About the author

Marina Montesano is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Messina, Italy. She is also fellow of Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance. Her research interests focus on cultural history in relation to a range of topics, such as witch-beliefs, imagery of travellers, preaching and crossdressing.

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