Giambattista Della Porta and the Roman Inquisition

Censorship and the definition of Nature's limits in sixteenth-century Italy

Dados Bibliográficos

ID8395017
AutoresNeil Tarrant (0000-0001-7597-0210, Imperial College London, autor correspondente)
Ano2013
Volume46
Fascículo4
Páginas601-625
Data de publicação2013-12-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoThe British Journal for the History of Science (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0007-0874 • E-ISSN: 1474-001X
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0007087412000684
OpenAlexW2116225490
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas4
Referências citadas23

It has long been noted that towards the end of the sixteenth century the Catholic Church began to use its instruments of censorship – the Inquisition and the Index of Forbidden Books – to prosecute magic with increased vigour. These developments are often deemed to have had important consequences for the development of modern science in Italy, for they delimited areas of legitimate investigation of the natural world. Previous accounts of the censorship of magic have tended to suggest that the Church as an institution was opposed to, and sought to eradicate, the practice of magic. I do not seek to contest the fact that ecclesiastical censors prosecuted various magical and divinatory practices with greater enthusiasm at this time, but I suggest that in order to understand this development more fully it is necessary to offer a more complex picture of the Church. In this article I use the case of the Neapolitan magus Giambattista Della Porta to argue that during the course of the century the acceptable boundaries of magical speculation became increasingly clearly defined. Consequently, many practices and techniques that had previously been of contested orthodoxy were categorically defined as heterodox and therefore liable to prosecution and censorship. I argue, however, that this development was not driven by the Church asserting a ‘traditional’ hostility towards magic, but was instead the result of one particular faction within the Church embedding their conception of orthodox philosophical investigation of the natural world within the machinery of censorship

Art · Censorship · Literature · MAGIC (telescope · Orthodoxy · Political science · Theology · Classics · Diverse Historical and Scientific Studies · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · History · History of Science and Medicine · Law · Philosophy