Witchcraft, Superstition, and Observant Franciscan Preachers
Pastoral Approach and Intellectual Debate in Renaissance Milan
By (author) Fabrizio Conti
Explores sermons and pastoral views on superstition and the reality of witchcraft in Renaissance Milan.
This book offers a new and innovative approach to the study of magic and witchcraft in Italy between the late Middle Ages and the early modern period. Unusually, this subject is explored not through inquisitorial trial records or demonological literature, but through the sermons and confession manuals produced by Observant Franciscan friars, focusing on the so-called ‘pastoral’ approach to folklore, superstition, and witchcraft–an approach that appears to have been notably less harsh than that taken by inquisitors and dedicated demonologists. Central to this research are the writings of a number of friars active at the friary of St Angelo’s in Milan. Among them were preachers and confessors such as Bernardino Busti, who treated superstition as part of a model that categorized the beliefs and behaviours of the faithful, as well as dedicated intellectuals such as Samuele Cassini, who took scepticism towards elements of belief in witchcraft still further, ultimately leading to a clash with groups such as the Dominicans. By considering the writings of these men in their wider literary and pastoral context, and in the light of the broader reforming aims of the Franciscans, this unique study not only offers new insights into the late medieval understanding of superstition and witchcraft, but also makes an important contribution to the history of pastoral care.
- By (author) Fabrizio Conti
Other Titles in this Series
The Sacred and the Secular in Renaissance Florence
Vallombrosan Exorcisms and the Rise of Observant Mendicancy
Volume 31
Orthodoxy and Controversy in Twelfth-Century Religious Discourse
Peter Lombard's 'Sentences' and the Development of Theology
Volume 8
Careers and Opportunities at the Roman Curia, 1300-1500
A Socio-Economic History of Papal Administration
Volume 29
Nature, Virtue, and the Boundaries of Encyclopaedic Knowledge
The Tropological Universe of Alexander Neckam (1157-1217)
Volume 13
Mulieres Religiosae
Shaping Female Spiritual Authority in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods
Volume 12
Gendered Identities in Bernard of Clairvaux’s ‘Sermons on the Song of Songs’
Performing the Bride
Volume 15
Communities of Learning
Networks and the Shaping of Intellectual Identity in Europe, 1100-1500
Volume 9
Confraternity, Mendicant Orders, and Salvation in the Middle Ages
The Contribution of the Hungarian Sources (c.1270-c.1530)
Volume 23
Similar Books
A Companion to Christianity and Sport in Europe and North America (19th-21st centuries)
Volume 1: Western and Eastern Europe
A Connecting Polemic in the Medieval Mediterranean
The Correspondence of Leo III and ʿUmar II
Volume 6
Ars Prophetica
Theology in the Poetry of Twentieth-Century Hebrew Poets Avraham Halfi, Shin Shalom, Amir Gilboa, and T. Carmi
As Messianism Turns to Heresy
The Regenstein Chair Lectures On Lurianic Kabbalah and Shabbatai Tzevi at Hebrew Union College - Cincinnati
Balthasar Caymox of Nuremberg
Early Modern German Print Publishers: Popular Prints of the Seventeenth Century
Beyond Sovereign Courts
Agents and Practices in Early Modern Spanish and Habsburg Diplomacy
Volume 3
Circulation, Use, Impact
The Consumption of Architectural Books in the Early Modern Eastern Adriatic
Volume 1
Councils, Conflicts, Correspondence
Urban Diplomacy in Reval (Tallinn) and Lübeck (c. 1470–1570)
Volume 67
Creating the Woman in Antiquity
Proceedings of the 16th Melammu Workshop, Innsbruck, 2–3 June 2022
Volume 13
Cultic Kisses
Fruitful Encounters Between Deities and Humans. Festschrift for Angelika Berlejung on the Occasion of Her 65th Birthday
De/colonizing Theologies
Glocal Histories, Contemporary Challenges, Theoretical Reflections
Volume 4
Drunk the Potion, No Whit Charmed
The Doctrine of Pure and Perfect Souls from Iamblichus to Damascius
