Thesis ID: CBB001560867

Natural or Supernatural? Witchcraft, Inquisition and Views of Nature at the Dawn of the Scientific Revolution (2006)

unapi

Seitz, Jonathan (Author)


University of Wisconsin at Madison
Shank, Michael


Publication Date: 2006
Edition Details: Advisor: Shank, Michael
Physical Details: 340 pp.
Language: English

This dissertation is a study of the ways in which the categories of "natural" and "supernatural" were demarcated and distinguished in early modern Venice, based on the records of magic and witchcraft trials held there before the Catholic Inquisition, between 1550 and 1650. These trials brought together a very broad cross-section of the populace and so reveal social and cultural pressures shaping views of nature and the supernatural throughout society. This dissertation demonstrates the coexistence within Venetian society of multiple conceptions of the interface between, and characteristics of, natural and supernatural. I examine, in turn, the views of physicians, healing clerics (exorcists), the Catholic Church officials who ran and oversaw the Inquisition, and "ordinary" Venetians---those having no specialized training in religion, science or medicine. This analysis reveals two principal approaches to the problem of distinguishing natural phenomena from supernatural. On the one hand, Church officials used a restrictive, "negative" definition of the supernatural---as the marginalia of nature, those phenomena inexplicable in natural terms. In contrast, most Venetians (including exorcists) believed that supernatural activity could be positively identified, that certain signs, either occult or manifest, directly indicated such activity. This approach to the problem of distinguishing natural from supernatural gave the latter category particular resilience. Physicians present a particularly intriguing crossover case, embracing the "negative" approach when testifying in trials as medical experts but the positive one of their non-physician neighbors when acting in different roles, such as plaintiff. Their attitudes undermine the assumption that an early modern Venetian's universe could not contain multiple ways of analyzing and categorizing natural and supernatural events, or that the use of one approach required the abolition of another. Although some historians have posited an expansion of the category of the natural at the expense of that of the supernatural during the Scientific Revolution, such does not appear to be the case for most Venetians. Because their definition of the supernatural did not depend on the explanatory power of the natural, there was no zero-sum relationship between the two categories and no shift towards a more disenchanted or "secularized" view of the world.

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Description Focus is on early modern Venice. Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 67/06 (2006). UMI pub. no. 3222849.


Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001560867/

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Authors & Contributors
Pierroberto Scaramella
Young, Francis
Walker, D. P.
Simon, Sophie
Silver, Victoria
Seitz, Jonathan
Concepts
Occult sciences
Witchcraft; demonology
Magic
Exorcisms; exorcists
Supernatural
Trials (law)
Time Periods
17th century
16th century
Renaissance
15th century
Early modern
19th century
Places
England
United States
Italy
Europe
Naples (Italy)
New England (U.S.)
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