Classical Culture and Witchcraft in Medieval and Renaissance Italy

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

   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

    PDF

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.

• myths
• Ancient Greece
• folklore
• Ancient Rome
• religion

“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)

• University of Messina, Messina, Italy

  Marina Montesano

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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