Below are some selected passages from Ruth Martin's book,
Witchcraft and the Inquisition in Venice, 1550-1650, (Blackwell, 1989). These quotes from Ruth Martin's book all appeared in an earlier post in this blog:
"A Different World"? (Ronald Hutton's Recantations, Part Deux) :
"[t]here is clear evidence of a great deal of interpenetration of 'popular' and 'learned' beliefs throughout this period ... but the actual mingling of these two strands, if they ever were entirely separate, seems to have taken place earlier [that is, prior to 1550] ...."
[p. 225]
"Until more work is done on Venetian social history as a
whole it will be hard to draw ... conclusions .... Even so, it seems
that witchcraft of one type or another held an interest for people from
all levels of society .... Womens' social standing ranged from the
gentildonne who would often consult witches or even try the experiments
themselves, through wives of retailers and craftsmen, to washerwomen,
arsenal workers (making sails or ropes), the wives of boatmen,
prostitutes, to some with no visible means of income at all. Witchcraft
had in fact become the main craft of many, hence their titles: la Pirotta, la Caballada, l'Astrologo and la medegha."
[p. 234]
"There
was also a close degree of contact between the different classes of
Venetian society. The rich and poor lived side by side and the flow of
ideas and beliefs between them must have been considerable. As we have
seen, the distinction between the 'learned' and the 'popular' elements
of witchcraft beliefs in Venice was not always easy to define. This
distinction has perhaps been overemphasized in the past in any case.
Christina Larner's recent work on Scottish witchcraft, for instance, has
revealed a considerable degree of interpenetration between the
so-called learned and popular beliefs. In Venice this sharing of beliefs
by popular and learned elements of society was even closer."
[p. 243]
"It
is clear that Venetian witchcraft was by no means unique. Each category
of witchcraft in Venice ... paralleled what is known to have existed
elsewhere in Europe during the period and, no doubt, outside this period
as well ....
"Necromancy, or the practice of the
learned tradition of magic, was current throughout a great part of
Europe, and certainly throughout Italy during this period. Some records
still survive for the Holy Office of the Roman Inquisition which contain
copies of certain processi,
usually just the sentence and/or abjuration, which were forwarded to
Rome from all over Italy. Necromantic exploits feature prominently in
these records. The sentence of the 1580 Vicentine trial against Antonio
de Franci, for instance, refers to the work of Pietro d'Abbano and to
the Clavicula Salomonis being
used used in the celebration of a mass as part of a love magic ceremony.
There is little doubt that these and other books of magic like them
circulated widely in Europe during this period as did the corrupted
versions of traditions evident in many of the conjurations and
divinatory experiments seen in Venice.
"At a different
level of society other forms of witchcraft also were all part of what
was presumably a Europen-wide system of popular beliefs. Mary O'Neil
describes the same experiments, with some local modifications, being
practiced in Modena. The Udine records, and those in Trinity College,
Dublin, covering the whole of Italy contain references to similar
practices. Indeed, whenever the available records provide us with a
glimpse into traditional beliefs and activities, for instance those of
the so-called 'cunning folk' in England, we see time and time again what
were basically the same types of witchcraft as those observed in
Venice.
"England is indeed the one country outside
Italy to display the most obvious similarities with Venice as far as
witchcraft practices are concerned .... [T]he nature of the records in
each area enables us to see beyond the large trails, the epidemics of
witch-hunting, to the day-to-day beliefs and attitudes of the population
as a whole .... The Venetian records provide us ... with a detailed
picture of a way of life ... [W]hat Venice shows us was, broadly
speaking, the picture throughout most of Europe."
[pp. 239-241]
