There are those who say that evil spirits exist but deny that this type of magic is done by means of evil spirits or devils (diaboli), attributing its effects either to God operating directly through magicians of this kind, or to God using good angels in order to produce these effects. The soul is immortal and cannot be damaged or wounded by an evil spirit. So those people who think they have been transformed into something else are always labouring under an illusion, just as those who think they are seeing something they are not in fact seeing at all are often deluded, too. Death is a separation of the soul from the body. If this separation takes place, the person dies. Only God can separate the soul from the body by means of a trance and still keep the body alive.

Del Rio lists points made by Farinacci concerning the discretion judges may use in cases of malefice when the attendant circumstances are taken into account. These are: it spreads a bad example; it takes place at night when people are off their guard; it takes place in secret, like the more serious kinds of murder; and it harms those who are bound by close relationship. There is general agreement that the indications required at each stage of a judicial process which is particularly serious for the accused must be clearer, more plausible, and more relevant than for the preceding stage. It is common legal opinion that workers of harmful magic and astrologers can be questioned under torture about their associates. Del Rio quotes a variety of both Medieval and modem sources, showing that the Devil tries to persuade people that magic is not as harmful as is usually maintained.

This chapter starts from Jacob Burkchardt’s famous contention that Renaissance Italy saw the birth of the modern individual. While acknowledging the limitations of this thesis, the chapter argues that a reconfigured notion of individualism can still have value in capturing aspects of Italian Renaissance culture. Renaissance Italians invested considerable energies in crafting attractive and distinctive social selves, and practices of self-fashioning, ranging from verbal and visual self-portraiture to dress and material culture, attained a high degree of sophistication. This phenomenon has generally been studied within elite contexts, but evidence is emerging that, by the Late Renaissance, such practices extended into lower strata of society. Case studies considered in the chapter range from famous elite self-fashioners such as Isabella d’Este and Pietro Bembo, to the disruptive, socially mobile figure of Pietro Aretino, born the son of a shoemaker, to actual shoemakers, tailors, and woodcarvers of the mid to late sixteenth century, whose material possessions, recorded in inventories, give evidence of intriguingly sophisticated and culturally aspirational selves.

This chapter considers Renaissance Italy and its culture from the perspective of its relations with the European and extra-European world. From an initial focus on religious and ethnic diversity within Italy with discussion of Greek, Jewish, and Ethiopian diaspora cultures, the chapter moves to consider the diffusion of the cultural innovations of the Italian Renaissance beyond the Alps. This is examined first within Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and then within Europe’s colonial and missionary ‘contact zones’ in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. The next section of the chapter focuses on a particularly rich intersection between Renaissance culture and extra-European transcultural exchange in the form of the work of Italian Jesuit missionaries in China, India, and Japan. A final section explores similarities between missionary practices of ‘accommodation’ and cultural outreach and those adopted by secular figures such as the Florentine merchant Filippo Sassetti and the traveller, diplomat, and early scholar of Persian Giovanni Battista Vecchietti.

Prognostication proceeds from the consideration of causes or signs, and so one has to ask whether one has genuinely understood these or whether one is jumping to foolish conclusions. Divination differs from prognostication because it does not proceed from signs or argument, as prognostication does. Divination deals with things in the past and present as much as with things in the future, and so it is far beyond the reach of human understanding. Magicians use various aids to assist their divinations. These people have an overt pact with an evil spirit because they know that nothing is more pleasing to him than when humans fall into idolatrous worship. There are two main types of divination: oracles or demonomancy, and magical trickery. These include a lot of prognostication and little bits of prophecy.

Soft revisionism' is the term coined to describe the efforts of a range of post-war historians to discredit the Marxist 'orthodoxy'. Led by Alfred Cobban, these writers still put the emphasis on social and economic history; but they had serious concerns about the narrowness and 'scientific' nature of the Marxist line. This chapter explores the nature and significance of this school of thinking. It examines a series of issues: Why did the Marxist interpretation require 'revision'? How distinct are 'orthodox' and 'revisionist' interpretations? Why did Anglo-American historians have a different perspective on the Revolution from French historians? The chapter begins by examining the essence of 'soft revisionism', and then moves on to a consideration of individual historians. It finishes by assessing the overall significance of this brand of revolutionary historiography.

Against the backdrop of a new, progressive regime - the Third Republic - historians came to re-evaluate the Revolution, often in overtly political and ideological terms. The two most important names of this era were Hippolyte Taine and Alphonse Aulard. Taine offered a sociological interpretation of events that, in time, marked him out as the archetypal conservative onlooker. Aulard was the first professional historian of the French Revolution, and he devoted his life to this study. This chapter focuses on the disagreement between Taine and Aulard. It also discusses other themes: the (republican) political context, the centenary of the Revolution, as well as the gradual professionalising and radicalising of revolutionary historiography. The chapter proves that the seven decades of the Third Republic were particularly fertile years for revolutionary history. They produced the first 'professional' historian of the Revolution (Aulard) and also a giant of the counter-revolutionary tradition (Taine).