Giambattista Della Porta and the Roman Inquisition: censorship and the definition of Nature's limits in sixteenth-century Italy

1 Valente, Michaela, ‘Della Porta e l'Inquisizione: Nuove documenti dell'archivo del Sant'Uffizio’, Bruniana e campanelliana (1999) 5, pp. 415–434, which makes available these important new documents. See too Francesco Fiorentino, ‘Giovan Battista de la Porta: I, Della vita e opere di Giovan Battista De La Porta’, in L. Fiorentino (ed.), Studi e ritratti della rinascenza, Bari: G. Laterza 1911, pp. 235–293 (originally published in Nuova antologia, 14 May 1880, pp. 251–84) – on Fiorentino's dating, and speculation on the causes, of Della Porta's encounter with the Inquisition, see especially pp. 245 and 258–60; Amabile, Luigi, Il Santo Officio della Inquisizione in Napoli, narrazione con molti documenti inediti, 2 vols., Città di Castello: Lapi, 1892, vol. 1, pp. 326–328, but see especially p. 327 n. 1; Aquilecchia, Giovanni, ‘Appunti su G.B. Della Porta e l'Inquisizione’, Studi secenteschi (1968) 9, pp. 3–31.

2 These trends were identified by Thorndike, Lynn, History of Magic and Experimental Science, 8 vols., New York: Columbia University Press, 1923–1958, vol. 6, Chapter 34. For more recent discussions of the censorship of magic see William B. Ashworth, ‘Catholicism and early modern science’, in David Lindberg and Ronald Numbers, God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986, pp. 19–48; and more recently, Ugo Baldini, ‘Le Congregazioni Romane dell'Inquisizione e dell'Indice e le scienze, dal 1542 al 1615’, in L'inquisizione e gli storici: un cantiere aperto, Rome: Accademia dei Lincei, 2000, pp. 329–364.

3 Henry, John, ‘The fragmentation of Renaissance occultism and the decline of magic’, History of Science (2008) 46, pp. 1–48, 11.

4 Henry, op. cit. (3), p. 16.

5 I have made extensive use of a recent body of literature that has exposed significant divisions within the hierarchy of the Catholic Church during the sixteenth century. See, inter alia, Frajese, Vittorio, ‘La revoca dell'Index Sistino e la curia romana, (1588–1596)’, Nouvelles de la république des lettres (1986), pp. 15–49; idem, ‘La politica dell'Indice dal Tridentino al Clementino (1571–1596)’, Archivio italiano per la storia della pietà (1998) 11, pp. 269–356; Fragnito, Gigliola, La Bibbia al rogo: la censura ecclesiastica e i volgarizzamenti della scrittura, Bologna: il Mulino, 1997.

6 For a discussion of the concepts of orthodoxy and heterodoxy and the elaboration of the concept of heresy in the medieval period see Peters, Edward, Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe: Documents in Translation, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1980, introduction; Moore, R.I., The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250, Oxford: Blackwell, 1990, especially pp. 68–72.

7 On the theological, legal and philosophical status of magic and divination see, for example, Kieckhefer, Richard, European Witch Trials: Their Foundations in Popular and Learned Culture, 1300–1500, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976, especially Chapters 1 and 3; and Peters, Edward, The Magician, the Witch and the Law, Hassocks: The Harvester Press, 1978, especially Chapter 4.

8 In framing my discussion of the manner in which contemporaries distinguished between the categories of natural, preternatural and supernatural, I have drawn on Stewart Clark's excellent Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, especially Part II, Science.

9 I have followed Kieckhefer's definition of sorcery, op. cit. (7), pp. 6–7. On the various types of demonic magic see Cohn, Norman, Europe's Inner Demons: The Demonisation of Christians in Medieval Christendom, St Albans: Paladin, 1976, Chapter 9.

10 On Alexander IV's letter see Peters, op. cit. (7), pp. 99–100, italics Peters's.

11 See Cohn, op. cit. (9), Chapter 9, especially pp. 169–170. For a fascinating discussion of a dispute over the orthodoxy of ritual magic in fifteenth-century Bologna see Herzig, Tamar, ‘The demons and the friars: illicit magic and mendicant rivalry in Renaissance Bologna’, Renaissance Quarterly (2011) 64, pp. 1025–1058.

12 See for example, Kieckhefer, op. cit. (7), Chapter 4; idem, Magic in the Middle Ages, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, especially Chapter 4.

13 See Thorndike, op. cit. (2), vol. 2, Chapter 52, especially pp. 342–343; on Albertus and magic see pp. 548–560.

14 The essential work on these matters remains Walker, D.P., Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella, London: The Warburg Institute, 1958; see too Yates, Frances, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964, Chapters 4 and 5.

15 On the importance of Cabbala in elite clerical circles in early sixteenth-century Rome see, for instance, O'Malley, John William, ‘Giles of Viterbo: a reformer's thought on Renaissance Rome’, Renaissance Quarterly (1967) 20, pp. 1–11. For a discussion of Pico's problems with ecclesiastical censors see Yates, op. cit. (14), pp. 120–121; and Charles Lohr, ‘Metaphysics’, in Charles Schmitt et al. (eds.), The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp. 537–638, 581.

16 On Trithemius see Brann, Noel L., Trithemius and Magical Theology: A Chapter in the Controversies over Occult Studies in Early Modern Europe, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999; on Agrippa, see Yates op. cit. (14), Chapter 7.

17 On the consumption of astrological prognostication in sixteenth-century Europe see Westman, Robert, The Copernican Question: Prognostication, Skepticism and Celestial Order, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011, especially Part 1; and amongst the Catholic ecclesiastical hierarchy see Thorndike, op. cit. (2), vol. 5, especially pp. 252–274. For popular uses of prognosticatory arts see, for example: Niccoli, Ottavia, Prophecy and People in Renaissance Italy (tr. Lydia Cochrane), Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. On astrology and medicine see Siraisi, Nancy, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice, 2nd edn, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990, pp. 67–69.

18 On fate and prognostication see Antonio Poppi, ‘Fate, fortune, providence and human freedom’, in Schmitt, op. cit. (15), pp. 641–667. On medieval discussions of and justifications for forms of judicial astrology see Smoller, Laura Ackerman, History, Prophecy, and the Stars: The Christian Astrology of Pierre d'Ailly, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994, especially Chapter 2.

19 Tricasso, Patritio, Expositione del Tricasso Mantuano sopra Il Cocle al Illustrissimo Signore S. Federico Gonzaga Marchese Mantua, Venice: H. de Rusconi, 1525. For a discussion of the importance of the role of book dedications in the patronage structures of early modern Italy see Biagioli, Mario, Galileo, Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993, pp. 36–54.

20 Tricasso, Patritio, Epitoma chyromantico di Patritio Tricasso da Cerasari Mantouano, Venice: Agostino de Bindoni, 1538.

21 Tricasso, op. cit. (20), Chapter 4: ‘Delli principi naturali di questa Scientia Chyromantia’. On the influence of the planets, see Chapter 19, especially pp. 55–56.

22 Tricasso, op. cit. (20), Chapters 12, ‘Della Linea Vitale’, and 13, ‘D'alcuni accidenti particolori della Vitale’, especially p. 72.

23 On Gaurico and Cardinal Medici see Thorndike, op. cit. (2), vol. 5, p. 252, on his predictions for Farnese, see p. 256.

24 For the origins of these orders see Brooke, Rosalind B., The Coming of the Friars, Oxford: G. Allen and Unwin, 1975. For a more detailed history of the Dominicans see Hinnebusch, William A., The History of the Dominican Order, 2 vols., New York: Alba House, 1966–1973. For a discussion of the friars' attitudes to Judaism see Cohen, Jeremy, The Friars and the Jews: Evolution of Mediaeval Anti-Judaism, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982.

25 The bibliography on the Inquisition is extremely large, but for an overview of its history see Peters, Edward, Inquisition, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989; del Col, Andrea, L'inquisizione in Italia dal XII al XXI secolo, Milan: Mondadori, 2006. In focusing on the standards of orthodoxy utilized within the Inquisition, I have drawn on the approach of Beretta, Francesco; see especially ‘Orthodoxie philosophique et Inquisition Romaine au 16e–17e siècles: Un essai d'interprétation’, Historia philosophica (2005) 3, pp. 67–96.

26 Cohn, op. cit. (9), p. 175.

27 For Aquinas's views see The Summa Theologica of St Thomas Aquinas, 2nd edn (tr. by Fathers of the English Dominican Province), London: Thomas Baker, 1920, (hereafter Summa), secunda secundae partis, Question 96, Article 1.

28 For Aquinas's discussion of natural, albeit occult, qualities see Summa, secunda secundae partis, Question 96, Article 2. On the legitimate use of natural substances see too Walker, op. cit. (14), p. 43.

29 William Newman, ‘Art, nature, alchemy, and demons’, in Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and William Newman (eds.), The Artificial and the Natural: An Evolving Polarity, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2007, pp. 109–133, especially 124–126. Alchemy has long been pushed to the margins of the history of science, because of its supposedly spurious character. Recent work on the history of alchemy has clarified earlier misconceptions about this art. See especially Newman, William and Principe, Lawrence, ‘Alchemy vs chemistry: the etymological origins of a historiographic mistake’, Early Science and Medicine (1998) 3, pp. 32–65; see too William Newman and Lawrence Principe, ‘Some problems with the historiography of alchemy’, in William Newman and Anthony Grafton (eds.), Secrets of Nature: Astrology and Alchemy in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001, pp. 385–432.

30 Aquinas, Summa, secunda secundae partis, Question 95, Articles 1, 2 and 3. On his condemnation of prediction through the stars see Article 5. For Aquinas on astrological prediction in large populations see Smoller, op. cit. (18), pp. 31–32.

31 Gui, Bernard, The Inquisitor's Guide: A Medieval Manual on Heretics (tr. Janet Shirley), Welwyn Garden City: Ravenhall Books, 2006. For Gui's discussion of magic see pp. 149–151.

32 For a discussion of the early reception of Aquinas's ideas within his own order see Lowe, Elizabeth A., The Dominican Order and the Theological Authority of Thomas Aquinas: The Controversies between Hervaeus Natalis and Durandus of St Pourcain, 1307–1323, New York: Routledge, 2003.

33 Eymerich, Nicholas, Manuale dell'inquisitore (ed. Rino Cammilieri), 4th edn, Casale Monferrato: Pieme, 2000, p. 171.

34 On the Inquisition's assault on popular magic from the fourteenth century onwards see Kieckhefer, op. cit. (7), Chapter 5; Edward Peters, ‘Sorcerer and Witch’, in Bengt Ankaloo and Stewart Clark (eds.), The Athlone History of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe, vol. 3: The Middle Ages, London: The Athlone Press, 2002, pp. 223–237. For a discussion of the anti-magical atmosphere within the Dominican order during the fifteenth century see Collins, David J., ‘Albertus, Magnus or Magus? Magic, natural philosophy, and religious reform in the late Middle Ages’, Renaissance Quarterly (2010) 63, pp. 1–44, especially 22–25.

35 On the developing structures of censorship see del Col, op. cit. (25), p. 315; Gigliola Fragnito, ‘The central and peripheral organisation of censorship’, in idem (ed.), Church, Censorship and Culture in Early Modern Italy (tr. Adrian Belton), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 13–49.

36 Paul Grendler, ‘Printing and Censorship’, in Schmitt, op. cit. (15), pp. 25–53. For an overview of the indices of the sixteenth century see Jesús Martínez de Bujanda, ‘Squadro panoramico sugli indici dei libri proibiti del XVI secolo’, in Ugo Rozzo (ed.), La censura libraria nell'Europa del secolo XVI, Udine: Forum, 1997, pp. 1–14.

37 For the indices of Louvain and Paris see de Bujanda, Jesús Martínez (ed.), Index des livres interdits, 10 vols., Sherbrooke: Centre d’études de la Renaissance, Université de Sherbrooke, 1985–1996 (hereafter ILI), vols. 1 and 2 respectively. See too Grendler, Paul, The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 1540–1605, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977, pp. 94–95; Fausto Parente, ‘The Index, the Holy Office, the condemnation of the Talmud and publication of Clement VIII's Index’, in Fragnito, Church, Censorship and Culture, op. cit. (35), p. 164.

38 For the Venetian Index see ILI, op. cit. (37), vol. 3.

39 Quotation from Porta, Giambattista Della, Dei miracoli et maravigliosi effetti dalla natura prodotti, Italian translation of the 1558 edition of the Magia naturalis, Venice: Ludovico Avanzi, 1560, p. 1r–v.

40 Della Porta, op. cit. (39), p. 104v.

41 Della Porta, op. cit. (39), p. 105v.

42 Della Porta, op. cit. (39), pp. 120v–121v.

43 Della Porta, op. cit. (39), Book II, Chapter 24, esp. p. 100r–v;

44 Della Porta, op. cit. (39), on finding a thief see p. 86v; and on the detection of infidelity see pp. 88r–89v.

45 For the Roman Index of 1559 see ILI, op. cit. (37), vol. 8. For the production of the 1559 Index and its rules see Grendler, op. cit. (37), pp. 115–116. On the expanding power of the Inquisition see Fragnito, ‘The central and peripheral organisation of censorship’, op. cit. (35), p. 16.

46 On the works condemned in 1559 see Luigi Firpo, ‘The flowering and withering of speculative philosophy – Italian philosophy and the Counter-Reformation: the condemnation of Francesco Patrizi’, in Eric Cochrane (ed.), The Late Italian Renaissance, London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 266–267. See too Grendler, op. cit. (37), pp. 266–284. On the censorship of literature see Ugo Rozzo, ‘Italian literature on the Index’, in Fragnito, Church, Censorship and Culture, op. cit. (35), pp. 194–222.

47 See the 1559 Index, ILI, op. cit. (37), vol. 8; for the injunction on the divinatory arts see pp. 291–292.

48 1559 Index, ILI, op. cit. (37), vol. 8.

49 For the 1564 Index see ILI, op. cit. (37), vol. 8. On the preparation of this Index see Grendler, op. cit. (37), pp. 144–149.

50 Clubb, Louise, Giambattista Della Porta Dramatist, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965, pp. 12–13, dates Della Porta's departure to 1563–1564; compare with Aquilecchia, op. cit. (1), p. 5, who dated it to between 1561 and 1566. On Della Porta's Neapolitan circle see Badaloni, Nicola, ‘I fratelli Della Porta e la cultura magica e astrologica a Napoli nel' 500’, Studi storici (1959) 1, pp. 677–715.

51 Valente, op. cit. (1), pp. 420–422.

52 On the date of the closure of Della Porta's academy see Eamon, William, ‘Natural magic and utopia in the cinquecento: Campanella, the Della Porta Circle and the revolt of Calabria’, Memorie domenicanae (1995) 26, pp. 369–402, 374.

53 On the dates of Della Porta's trial see Valente, op. cit. (1), p. 421. Eymerich, op. cit. (33), pp. 193–196.

54 Eymerich, op. cit. (33), pp. 193–196, 193.

55 Eymerich, op. cit. (33), pp. 193–196, 193.

56 Pena's commentary is published in Eymerich, op. cit. (33), pp. 171–172.

57 Eymerich, op. cit. (33), pp. 172–173.

58 See Valente, op. cit. (1), p. 423.

59 Porta, Giambattista Della, De humana physiognomonia, Hannover: G. Antonium, 1593, Epistola dedicatoria lectoris, pp. 3r, 173 and 158.

60 On the prohibition of the Italian edition of the Phyisognomonia see Aquilecchia, op. cit. (1), p. 22; and Valente, op. cit. (1), pp. 415–434, quotation from document 1, p. 432.

61 Valente, op. cit. (1), pp. 433–434.

62 Porta, Giambattista Della, Natural Magick by John Baptista Porta, a Neapolitane, London: T. Young and S. Speed, 1658, Preface and Introduction.

63 On alchemy see Della Porta, op. cit. (62), Book V, p. 160, on the power of certain foods to affect dreams, Book VIII, Chapter 3, p. 220.

64 Della Porta, op. cit. (62), Book 7, Chapter 17: ‘How to make an army of sand to fight before you’, p. 199.

65 Valente, op. cit. (1), pp. 427–428.