Before the Fire Burns: Trials for Superstition, Magic, and Witchcraft in Sixteenth-Century Bologna^†

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is an excellent article and well-founded on archival sources. It should certainly be published with a few minor adjustments in the English.

General observations: Consistency is required with respect to people's names, either all Italian form or all English, not a mixture. (Preferably Italian, since the subjects are Italian.)

I don't see why superstition should be in inverted commas. One might as well put 'magic' and 'maleficium' etc. in inverted commas, too. There does not appear to be a good reason for it.

Specific observations:  p.3, line 8, 'ignore' should be 'don't know'. last line, 'only needed' should be 'needed only'.

p.5, line 30: 'with cautions that, in her intentions' is very awkward. Re-phrase for the sake of clarity. line 33, Nosters ... Marias. line 39: 'prayers' should be 'prayer'. p.6, line7 'the time present were' should be 'the present time was'. p.6 last paragraph: 'measuring earth by the pan' ....last line, 'she measured by spans the earth'. I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. 'Spannare' means 'to skim'. If the author knows what the original is talking about, it should be explained to the reader. If not, it should be allowed to stand with a note saying it is obscure. p.7, line 4: span = measuring? That is true in English, but not in Italian, so the reference to measuring clothing needs to be dismissed or tied to 'spannare' with a clear explanation. p.8, line 8, 'constitutes' does not make sense. Use another noun. p.8, line12, 'where the devil are you going ... where the devil are you coming from' as in the Italian, not 'Hell', line 14, 'Sir Francis' = Master or Messer Francesco. p.9, line line 35, omit 'in any case' which does not make sense. p.9, penultimate line, 'she was no less so much so' does not make sense. p.10, line 26, 'on the account of her sister', change to 'because of something her sister Ginevra had said'. line 27, 'death of a child, a son/the son'. line 30, one can't "do" curses. Use another verb. p.11, 3 lines from bottom of page, 'went to the inquisition where...' The inquisition is not a place, so one can't go there. Does this mean 'the inquisition's prison'? Note, too, the odd use throughout of the word 'bishopric'.  In the third line of the last paragraph on p.11, the reference is probably to 'the bishop's prison'. Note 45: Dall'Ollio should have a page or pages reference. p.13, line 4, 'treat me worse than how' should be 'than the way'. The last line of the initial quotation on p.13 should read 'do to me the worst you know.' line 8, omit the word 'why'. p.14, line 2, 'bishop's prison'. line 13, 'a book on which', 'on' should be 'in'. line 15: what is meant by the word 'Again' here? Next paragraph second line: Anna was arrested, not captured, and the notary was recording, not verbalising. p.15, line 15 'what does 'put' mean in 'put peace, love, etc? Different verb required.  note 62: 'modes of execution' should be 'details of these practices'. p.16, line 9 why 'inconsistent'?line 15, 'fact' should be 'deed'. 9 lines from bottom of page, one does not 'make' maleficia: 'performed' instead. p.18, line 7, 'attributed' is the wrong verb = 'accused .... of'. line 11, 'was begun' should be 'had begun'. Note 75, 'I ignore' should be 'I don't know'. p. 21, line 6, add 'the judge' after 'she had told'. Next line: deleted or omitted? Cf. p.18, first line of last paragraph. p.21, lines 25 & 26; omit 'she' and change 'repented' to 'repentant'. line 31: who is 'him'? himself or someone else? If someone else, who is he? p.22, line 14 from bottom, compared to should be compared with. 9 lines from bottom, omit 'as many'. p.23, line 11, what does 'even' mean here? penultimate line, 'demonologists'.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

I think this is an excellent article. I have included the minor changes which are requisite or desirable above.

Author Response

Thank you!

You will find my reply in the attached file.

I am going to submit my article with your corrections.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is an excellent microhistory and work of this sort can contribute a great deal to our understanding of the Reformation, the Witch Craze, and Early Modern history more generally. I have a few notes:

Clarify your argument. One page two the authors write: "I will attempt here to answer these questions, thus trying to make a contribution to the understanding of a phenomenon that has now been widely investigated but always requires our attention." Okay, what is your answer?

Based on what you've written, it would seem to be intimately connected to this event: "In 1553, Giovanni Campeggi was appointed bishop of Bologna; unlike all his predecessors, from the following year he established his residence in the city, where he remained until at least 1559." The authors suggest that a couple of times, but don't dig into it. First, what more do we know about Campeggi, either before he became bishop or later? Is there anything in his biography to suggest why he might have taken an interest in the pursuit of maleficium in Bologna? It is at the very least highly suspicious that he becomes bishop, and suddenly there are this series of trials. Push this a bit further. As I read your account, with Campeggi taking up residence in Bologna in the wake of the Council of Trent, given the innovatory nature of his residence there, it seems to me most likely that he came in with a mission to clean up his diocese and these unfortunate women got caught up in the crossfire. Based on the evidence you provide, they seem to have been undertaking fairly mundane magical practices that had been tolerated or ignored for ages, Campeggi comes in and suddenly there's a great deal of concern. That's worth thinking about.

Also worth thinking about is how many of these deeds the women actually committed. As you note in FN 13: "already the Malleus Maleficarum devoted several pages to love magic," and in several other places the authors note that actions these women were accused of committing were things already mentioned in the Malleus. So did they do these things? There was a growing literature of inquisitorial handbooks from Bernardo Gui forward that provided a vocabulary, set of ideas about what witches presumably did, and procedures about how to get at the truth. In the cases you examine, it's clear that there was threat of torture at least once and actual torture at another point. Furthermore, there are multiple instances of women confessing, receiving the penalty of penance, and being sent on their way. This suggests that these women who were executed had reason to believe that they could save their own lives by confessing, whether they had carried out these acts or not. 

The events you describe are plausible and I very much like the extended quotes from the primary sources you provide. However, the authors should at least acknowledge that the inquisitors may have been asking leading questions based on what THEY had read in the Malleus and other handbooks, and that these women, intimidated, in fear for their lives, and otherwise coerced, simply admitted to what the inquisitors were telling them they knew the women had done. You mention once that such leading questions weren't supposed to occur in the bishop's court, but it was common practice for papal inquisitors and I have my doubts that any such niceties would have been respected in Bologna. 

After all, you provide evidence that some of these women admitted to participating in sabbats, but we know that there is no evidence that such sabbats actually occurred (see Bailey, Kieckhefer, Levack, Hendrix, others). These were clearly women admitting to things the inquisitors were suggesting they had done. 

Finally, a minor note. This might be a language thing and overall this article is very well written. There are a couple of places (page 3, FN 75), where the authors write "we ignore..." Don't do that. It's better scholarly practice to write something like "For the purposes of this study, we will focus on the seven who were recognized as..." (p. 3) or "for reasons that are beyond the scope of our current study" (FN 75).

 

This is an excellent study. It needs just a tiny bit of work, acknowledging that at least some of the things the women confessed to, could have possibly been the result of coerced confessions, and a clearer thesis. 

Author Response

Thank you for your comments. I did my best to increase the clarity of my article (especially in the first part), and I hope I made it.

I wrote the details in the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The essay reveals a campaign of repression against a wide range of so-called superstitions carried out by the Bishopric of Bologna’s Curia around 1559. The trials primarily focus on "sortilegia ad amorem," and as the author demonstrates, these religious crimes often masked concerns about improper sexual morality. An important finding of this research is that, in some cases, the charges eventually shifted to participation in the sabbath with the presence of the devil, leading the cases onto the more perilous ground of witchcraft accusations and witch hunts. As a result of this evolution, four trials ended with death sentences handed down by the Congregation of the Holy Office and the Pope himself.

The article is written with expertise, precision, and a rare ability to clearly illustrate the complexity of the local phenomenon.

This essay is valuable because it makes the findings of research conducted on the Italian peninsula accessible to a broader audience of non-Italian speakers.

Author Response

Thank you for your appreciation!