Rituals and Practice in Italian Theatre and Culture, 1520–1650
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City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 2-2019 Magic Performances: Rituals and Practice in Italian Theatre and Culture, 1520–1650 Erika Mazzer The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/3051 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] MAGIC PERFORMANCES: RITUALS AND PRACTICE IN ITALIAN THEATRE AND CULTURE 1520 – 1650 by ERIKA MAZZER A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Comparative Literature, Italian Specialization, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2019 i © 2019 ERIKA MAZZER All Rights Reserved ii Magic Performances: Rituals and practice in Italian Theatre and Culture 1520 – 1650 by Erika Mazzer This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Comparative Literature, Italian Specialization in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Date Monica Calabritto Chair of Examining Committee Date Giancarlo Lombardi Executive Officer Supervisory Committee: Monica Calabritto Paolo Fasoli Clare Carroll THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii ABSTRACT Magic Performances: Rituals and practice in Italian Theatre and Culture 1520 – 1650 by Mazzer Erika Advisor: Monica Calabritto Abstract: My dissertation investigates theatrical and historical sources that deal with early modern magic, in order to re-evaluate its role in Italian society between the 16th and the mid-17th century. During this period, many were the attempts carried out by the Catholic Church to avoid the spread of heretical beliefs among people. By the middle of the 16th century, the battle against heresy focused on magic, which was considered a dangerous practice. Despite the Inquisition’s prohibition of books of magic and the condemnation of magic rituals, magic still survived in literary works, especially theatrical. Many performances brought magic on the Italian stage. By examining several Italian plays written between 1520 and 1650, I argue that many of the ironical representations through which magic was brought on stage allowed playwrights to conceal their real attitude towards it. I demonstrate how theatrical performances offered ambivalent interpretations of magic and, in several instances, contributed to its spreading in early modern society. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………………..1 CHAPTER 1 Historical Background of Magic Theory and Practice ………………....................12 1.1 Defining Magic in the Ancient World ……………………………………………………….15 1.2 The Middle Ages: from the East to the West, from Natural to Ritual Magic…………………20 1.3 The reception of Magic in the Renaissance: Ficino, Pico, Agrippa’s theoretical approach…...41 1.4 Performing Magic in the Renaissance: the Hunt of the Heretics……………………………..51 1.5 Magic on trials: Natural and Ritual Magic before the Venetian Inquisition………………….68 1.6 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………82 CHAPTER 2 Magic on the Renaissance Stage…………………………………………………..85 2.1 Dangers on Stage……………………………………………………………………………..87 2.2 Comedies to educate, Comedies to entertain…………………………………………………93 2.3 Magic in the Learned Comedies……………………………………………………………...97 2.4 Magic in Commedia dell’Arte Scenarios……………………………………………………110 2.5 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………..124 CHAPTER 3 Magic in Arcadia…………………………………………………………………127 3.1 Defining Magic: Pastoral Tragicomedies, Marvelous and Verisimilar……………………..129 3.2 Printed Pastoral Plays: Natural and Ritual Magic…………………………………………..136 3.3 Magic in Pastoral Scenarios of Commedia dell’Arte………………………………………..165 3.4 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………..176 CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………………179 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………………188 v 1. Introduction Daß ich erkenne, was die Welt Im Innersten zusammenhält, Schau alle Wirkenskraft und Samen, Und tu nicht mehr in Worten kramen. That I may understand whatever Binds the world’s innermost core together, See all its workings, and its seeds, Deal no more in words’ empty reeds. - Goethe, Faust, 382-5 In his tragic play Faust, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe expresses, through the words of his fictional character Heinrich Faust, desires shared by mankind: to unveil the secrets of the world, to unravel the invisible thread that can lead to the ultimate truth of the world. Frustrated by the religious, philosophical and scientific inquiries that he has carried out as a scholar, Faust realizes the necessity to overcome the limits of his own sensible experience in order to obtain the infinite knowledge he is striving for. He thus resolves to resort to magic: Seizing a book of magic, he pronounces mysterious words to invoke a spirit that suddenly appears in his study. Through the magic ritual and the appearance of Mephistopheles, the devilish spirit invoked, Faust starts his journey to transcend the boundaries of human cognition. The urge to understand and control natural and supernatural forces embedded in the universe, and the drive to employ the magic arts in order to grasp such knowledge, have been represented by many fictional characters in literary works and theatrical plays, mostly famously perhaps in the legend of Faust. Do these fictional characters reflect the societies that produce them? To what extent, in other words, can these representations of magicians inform us about the dissemination of magic practice among the society that produces such works? This dissertation focuses its investigation on a particularly tumultuous period in Renaissance Italy, a time in which, after Luther’s Reform and the Council of Trent, Italian society 1 was shaken by an overall crisis of religious and moral values. Many individuals resorted thus to different disciplines and beliefs in order to satisfy their need to understand the supernatural forces embedded in the universe. This project stems from the desire to better understand the urge manifested by many members of the Italian society, who employed magic in order to explain the occult phenomena of the world and to eventually control them. It focuses particularly on a specific branch of magic practice that involves the invocation of spirits, ritual magic, and its dissemination. Even though this project takes into consideration the historical and socio-cultural aspects of such diffusion, carried out through the analysis of Inquisition trials, it focuses specifically on the theatrical production of the period. Despite the many attempts by the Catholic Church to prevent the spread of heretical beliefs among people, magic in particular, and the many restrictions imposed by the religious and civic authorities on literary and theatrical works, magic still survived on the Italian stages. Many theatrical representations of the time—printed learned comedies but especially Commedia dell’Arte’s performances—brought magicians, magic rituals, and invocations of spirits onstage. From this analysis, I argue that, in many of the performances represented between 1520 and1650, ritual or ceremonial magic was perceived onstage as an instrument of knowledge and wisdom. In many instances, theatrical performances became thus an alternative channel for the transmission of magic knowledge that eventually contributed to its dissemination in early modern Italy. Many scholars, like Brian Copenhaver (2015), have analyzed the diffusion of magic knowledge and practice, and its dissemination, through different social strata from antiquity to the early modern era. Lynn Thorndike (1941) provided a complete study, analyzing the first thirteen centuries of our era, of the history of magic in relation to the development of experimental science, underlining how the latter cannot be understood without the former. 2 Other studies, such as Richard Kieckhefer (1976) and Stuart Clark (1997), focus on the persecution of magic knowledge and of witchcraft primarily led by the Christian Church in early modern Europe. Clergymen considered witchcraft partly as reminiscent of pagan beliefs and rituals, but it was mainly understood by the religious authorities as a practice associated with the worshipping of the Devil. The studies by Norman Cohn (2000), John Tedeschi (1991), and Adriano Prosperi (2009) devote particular attention to the historical development of the battle conducted by religious authorities against magic, in which the Church tried to eliminate superstitious beliefs and rituals very popular especially among the lower classes. Analyzing the development of magic knowledge from the point of view of the history of its textual sources, the scholarship that focused its attention on the dissemination on magic in medieval Western culture has highlighted the numerous facets that magic practice entailed, as in the case of the research of Richard Kieckhefer (1989), Sophie Page (2004), Claire Fanger (2012; 2015; 2017), and Frank Klaassen (2013). These practices included natural magic, dealing with the manipulation of herbs and stones; astral magic that exploits natural channels of astral influence; image magic that combines astrological knowledge to the manufacturing of images or talismans; and mainly ritual magic - whose extreme practice can be identified as necromancy - that deals with the conjuring of the spirits.