Angels or Demons? Interactions and Borrowings between Folk Traditions, Religion and Demonology in Early Modern Italian Witchcraft Trials

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3512840
AutoresDebora Moretti (0000-0002-2523-9152, Independent Scholar, Leeds LS27 8JW, UK, autor de correspondencia)
Año2019
Volumen10
Número5
Páginas326
Fecha de publicación2019-05-15
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaReligions (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444
EditorialMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/rel10050326
OpenAlexW2946821391
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas2
Referencias citadas26

In 1638 Caterina di Francesco, from the town of Siena (Tuscany), was accused by the Roman Inquisition of invoking the devil through a spell called "the white angel spell" or "the spell of the carafe" (incantesimo della caraffa). She was interrogated, tortured and kept in and out of prison for nine years. Despite the accusations of the witnesses being focused on her practice of love magic, specifically her ability to bind men to "other" women rather than their wives and to help the disgruntled wives to have their husbands back with the use of a baptised magnet, the Inquisition focused its attention on her practice of the white angel spell, a divination spell to find lost or stolen objects with the help of shadows seen inside the carafe. This was a well-known spell not only among all levels of Italian lay society but also well known to the Inquisition, so much so that the 17th-century Inquisition manual Prattica per Procedere nelle Cause del Sant'Officio lists this spell among the sortilegij qualificati: Those spells presenting serious heretical elements. Using archival sources, this article will examine the effects of borrowed concepts between the theological/elite and folk witchcraft traditions within a specific case-study

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Demonology · Divination · Literature · Prison · Sociology · Spell · Anthropology · Early Modern Women Writers · History · Medieval Literature and History · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity