[1218] Yet but little remained of the wonders attributed to her. For probably the last metamorphosis of a man into an ass, in the eleventh century under Leo IX., see Giul. Malmesbur. ii. 171.

[1219] This was probably the case with the possessed woman, who in 1513 at Ferrara and elsewhere was consulted by distinguished Lombards as to future events. Her name was Rodogine. See Rabelais, Pantagruel, iv. 58.

[1220] Jovian. Pontan. Antonius.

[1221] How widespread the belief in witches then was, is shown by the fact that in 1483 Politian gave a ‘praelectio’ ‘in priora Aristotelis Analytica cui titulus Lamia’ (Italian trans. by Isidore del Lungo, Flor. 1864) Comp. Reumont, Lorenzo, ii. 75-77. Fiesole, according to this, was, in a certain sense, a witches’ nest.

[1222] Graziani, Arch. Stor. xvi. i. p. 565, ad a. 1445, speaking of a witch at Nocera, who only offered half the sum, and was accordingly burnt. The law was aimed at such persons as ‘facciono le fature overo venefitie overo encantatione d’ommunde spirite a nuocere,’ l. c. note 1, 2.

[1223] Lib. i. ep. 46, Opera, p. 531 sqq. For ‘umbra’ p. 552 read ‘Umbria,’ and for ‘lacum’ read ‘locum.’

[1224] He calls him later on: ‘Medicus Ducis Saxoniæ, homo tum dives tum potens.’

[1225] In the fourteenth century there existed a kind of hell-gate near Ansedonia in Tuscany. It was a cave, with footprints of men and animals in the sand, which whenever they were effaced, reappeared the next day. Uberti. Il Dittamondo, l. iii. cap. 9.

[1226] Pii II. Comment. l. i. p. 10.

[1227] Benv. Cellini, l. i. cap. 65.

[1228] L’Italia Liberata da’ Goti, canto xiv. It may be questioned whether Trissino himself believed in the possibility of his description, or whether he was not rather romancing. The same doubt is permissible in the case of his probable model, Lucan (book vi.), who represents the Thessalian witch conjuring up a corpse before Sextus Pompejus.

[1229] Septimo Decretal, lib. v. tit. xii. It begins: ‘Summis desiderantes affectibus’ &c. I may here remark that a full consideration of the subject has convinced me that there are in this case no grounds for believing in a survival of pagan beliefs. To satisfy ourselves that the imagination of the mendicant friars is solely responsible for this delusion, we have only to study, in the Memoirs of Jacques du Clerc, the so-called trial of the Waldenses of Arras in the year 1459. A century’s prosecutions and persecutions brought the popular imagination into such a state that witchcraft was accepted as a matter of course and reproduced itself naturally.

[1230] Of Alexander VI., Leo X., Hadrian VI.

[1231] Proverbial as the country of witches, e.g. Orlandino, i. 12.

[1232] E.g. Bandello, iii. nov. 29, 52. Prato, Arch. Stor. iii. 409. Bursellis, Ann. Bon. in Murat. xxiii. col. 897, mentions the condemnation of a prior in 1468, who kept a ghostly brothel: ‘cives Bononienses coire faciebat cum dæmonibus in specie puellarum.’ He offered sacrifices to the dæmons. See for a parallel case, Procop. Hist. Arcana, c. 12, where a real brothel is frequented by a dæmon, who turns the other visitors out of doors. The Galateo (p. 116) confirms the existence of the belief in witches: ‘volare per longinquas regiones, choreas per paludes dicere et dæmonibus cnogredi, ingredi et egredi per clausa ostia et foramina.’

[1233] For the loathsome apparatus of the witches’ kitchens, see Maccaroneide, Phant. xvi. xxi., where the whole procedure is described.

[1234] In the Ragionamento del Zoppino. He is of opinion that the courtesans learn their arts from certain Jewish women, who are in possession of ‘malie.’ The following passage is very remarkable. Bembo says in the life of Guidobaldo (Opera, i. 614): ‘Guid. constat sive corporis et naturae vitio, seu quod vulgo creditum est, actibus magicis ab Octaviano patruo propter regni cupiditatem impeditum, quarum omnino ille artium expeditissimus habebatur, nulla cum femina coire unquam in tota vita potuisse, nec unquam fuisse ad rem uxoriam idoneum.’

[1235] Varchi, Stor. Fior. ii. p. 153.

[1236] Curious information is given by Landi, in the Commentario, fol. 36 a and 37 a, about two magicians, a Sicilian and a Jew; we read of magical mirrors, of a death’s-head speaking, and of birds stopped short in their flight.

[1237] Stress is laid on this reservation. Corn. Agrippa, De Occulta Philosophia, cap. 39.

[1238] Septimo Decretal, l. c.

[1239] Zodiacus Vitae, xv. 363-549, comp. x. 393 sqq.

[1240] Ibid. ix. 291 sqq.

[1241] Ibid. x. 770 sqq.

[1242] The mythical type of the magician among the poets of the time was Malagigi. Speaking of him, Pulci (Morgante, canto xxiv. 106 sqq.) gives his theoretical view of the limits of dæmonic and magic influence. It is hard to say how far he was in earnest. Comp. canto xxi.

[1243] Polydorus Virgilius was an Italian by birth, but his work De Prodigiis treats chiefly of superstition in England, where his life was passed. Speaking of the prescience of the dæmons, he makes a curious reference to the sack of Rome in 1527.

[1244] Yet murder is hardly ever the end, and never, perhaps, the means. A monster like Gilles de Retz (about 1440) who sacrificed more than 100 children to the dæmons has scarcely a distant counterpart in Italy.

[1245] See the treatise of Roth ‘Ueber den Zauberer Virgilius’ in Pfeiffer’s Germania, iv., and Comparetti’s Virgil in the Middle Ages. That Virgil began to take the place of the older Telestæ may be explained partly by the fact that the frequent visits made to his grave even in the time of the Empire struck the popular imagination.

[1246] Uberti, Dittamondo, 1. iii. cap. 4.

[1247] For what follows, see Gio. Villani, i. 42, 60, ii. 1, iii. v. 38, xi. He himself does not believe such godless superstitions. Comp. Dante, Inferno xiii. 146.

[1248] According to a fragment given in Baluz. Miscell ix. 119, the Perugians had a quarrel in ancient times with the Ravennates, ‘et militem marmoreum qui juxta Ravennam se continue volvebat ad solem usurpaverunt et ad eorum civitatem virtuosissime transtulerunt.’

[1249] The local belief on the matter is given in Annal. Forolivens. Murat. xxii. col. 207, 238; more fully in Fil. Villani, Vite, p 33.

[1250] Platina, Vitae Pontiff. p. 320: ‘Veteres potius hac in re quam Petrum, Anacletum, et Linum imitatus.’

[1251] Which it is easy to recognise e.g. in Sugerius, De Consecratione Ecclesiae (Duchesne, Scriptores, iv. 355) and in Chron. Petershusanum, i. 13 and 16.

[1252] Comp. the Calandra of Bibiena.

[1253] Bandello, iii. nov. 52. Fr. Filelfo (Epist. Venet. lib. 34, fol. 240 sqq.) attacks nercromancy fiercely. He is tolerably free from superstition (Sat. iv. 4) but believes in the ‘mali effectus,’ of a comet (Epist. fol. 246 b).

[1254] Bandello, iii. 29. The magician exacts a promise of secrecy strengthened by solemn oaths, in this case by an oath at the high altar of S. Petronio at Bologna, at a time when no one else was in the church. There is a good deal of magic in the Maccaroneide, Phant. xviii.

[1255] Benv. Cellini, i. cap. 64.

[1256] Vasari, viii. 143, Vita di Andrea da Fiesole. It was Silvio Cosini, who also ‘went after magical formulæ and other follies.’

[1257] Uberti, Dittamondo, iii. cap. 1. In the March of Ancona he visits Scariotto, the supposed birthplace of Judas, and observes: ‘I must not here pass over Mount Pilatus, with its lake, where throughout the summer the guards are changed regularly. For he who understands magic comes up hither to have his books consecrated, whereupon, as the people of the place say, a great storm arises.’ (The consecration of books, as has been remarked, p. 527, is a special ceremony, distinct from the rest.) In the sixteenth century the ascent of Pilatus near Luzern was forbidden ‘by lib und guot,’ as Diebold Schilling records. It was believed that a ghost lay in the lake on the mountain, which was the spirit of Pilate. When people ascended the mountain or threw anything into the lake, fearful storms sprang up.

[1258] De Obsedione Tiphernatium, 1474 (Rer. Ital. Scrippt. ex Florent. codicibus, tom. ii.).

[1259] This superstition, which was widely spread among the soldiery (about 1520), is ridiculed by Limerno Pitocco, in the Orlandino, v. 60.

[1260] Paul. Jov. Elog. Lit. p. 106, sub voce ‘Cocles.’

[1261] It is the enthusiastic collector of portraits who is here speaking.

[1262] From the stars, since Gauricus did not know physiognomy. For his own fate he had to refer to the prophecies of Cocle, since his father had omitted to draw his horoscope.

[1263] Paul. Jov. l. c. p. 100 sqq. s. v. Tibertus.

[1264] The most essential facts as to these side-branches of divination, are given by Corn. Agrippa, De Occulta Philosophia, cap. 57.

[1265] Libri, Hist. des Sciences Mathém. ii. 122.

[1266] ‘Novi nihil narro, mos est publicus’ (Remed. Utr. Fort. p. 93), one of the lively passages of this book, written ‘ab irato.’

[1267] Chief passage in Trithem. Ann. Hirsaug. ii. 286 sqq.

[1268] ‘Neque enim desunt,’ Paul. Jov. Elog. Lit. p. 150, s. v. ‘Pomp, Gauricus;’ comp. ibid. p. 130, s. v. Aurel. Augurellus, Maccaroneide. Phant. xii.

[1269] In writing a history of Italian unbelief it would be necessary to refer to the so-called Averrhoism, which was prevalent in Italy and especially in Venice, about the middle of the fourteenth century. It was opposed by Boccaccio and Petrarch in various letters, and by the latter in his work: De Sui Ipsius et Aliorum Ignorantia. Although Petrarch’s opposition may have been increased by misunderstanding and exaggeration, he was nevertheless fully convinced that the Averrhoists ridiculed and rejected the Christian religion.

[1270] Ariosto, Sonetto, 34: ‘Non credere sopra il tetto.’ The poet uses the words of an official who had decided against him in a matter of property.

[1271] We may here again refer to Gemisthos Plethon, whose disregard of Christianity had an important influence on the Italians, and particularly on the Florentines of that period.

[1272] Narrazione del Caso del Boscoli, Arch. Stor. i. 273 sqq. The standing phrase was ‘non aver fede;’ comp. Vasari, vii. 122, Vita di Piero di Cosimo.

[1273] Jovian. Pontan. Charon, Opp. ii. 1128-1195.

[1274] Faustini Terdocei Triumphus Stultitiae, l. ii.

[1275] E.g. Borbone Morosini about 1460; comp. Sansovino, Venezia l. xiii. p. 243. He wrote ‘de immortalite animæ ad mentem Aristotelis.’ Pomponius Lætus, as a means of effecting his release from prison, pointed to the fact that he had written an epistle on the immortality of the soul. See the remarkable defence in Gregorovius, vii. 580 sqq. See on the other hand Pulci’s ridicule of this belief in a sonnet, quoted by Galeotti, Arch. Stor. Ital. n. s. ix. 49 sqq.

[1276] Vespas. Fiorent. p. 260.

[1277] Orationes Philelphi, fol. 8.

[1278] Septimo Decretal. lib. v. tit. iii. cap. 8.

[1279] Ariosto, Orlando, vii. 61. Ridiculed in Orlandino, iv. 67, 68. Cariteo, a member of the Neapolitan Academy of Pontanus, uses the idea of the pre-existence of the soul in order to glorify the House of Aragon. Roscoe, Leone X. ed. Bossi, ii. 288.

[1280] Orelli, ad Cic. De Republ. l. vi. Comp. Lucan, Pharsalia, at the beginning.

[1281] Petrarca, Epp. Fam. iv. 3, iv. 6.

[1282] Fil. Villani, Vite, p. 15. This remarkable passage is as follows: ‘Che agli uomini fortissimi poichè hanno vinto le mostruose fatiche della terra, debitamente sieno date le stelle.’

[1283] Inferno, iv. 24 sqq. Comp. Purgatorio, vii. 28, xxii. 100.

[1284] This pagan heaven is referred to in the epitaph on the artist Niccolò dell’Arca:

In Bursellis, Ann. Bonon. Murat. xxiii. col. 912.

[1285] In his late work Actius.

[1286] Cardanus, De Propria Vita, cap. 13: ‘Non pœnitere ullius rei quam voluntarie effecerim, etiam quæ male cessisset;’ else I should be of all men the most miserable.

[1287] Discorsi, ii. cap. 2.

[1288] Del Governo della Famiglia, p. 114.

[1289] Comp. the short ode of M. Antonio Flaminio in the Coryciana (see p. 269):