Copyrighted material – 978–1–137– 44748–7 Selection and editorial matter © Miriam Eliav- Feldon and Tamar Herzig 2015 Remaining chapters © Contributors 2015 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6– 10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978– 1– 137– 44748– 7 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dissimulation and deceit in early modern Europe / [edited by] Miriam Eliav-Feldon (professor emerita of early modern history, Tel Aviv University, Israel), Tamar Herzig (associate professor of early modern history, Tel Aviv University, Israel). pages cm Papers from an international conference entitled “Cultural and Religious Dissimulation in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” held at Tel Aviv University, Israel, on June 10-11, 2012. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–1–137–44748–7 (hardback) 1. Europe—History—1492–1648—Congresses. 2. Europe— Social life and customs—Congresses. 3. Europe—Religious life and customs—Congresses. 4. Truthfulness and falsehood—Social aspects—Europe—History—Congresses. 5. Deception—Social aspects—Europe—History—Congresses. 6. Fraud—Social aspects— Europe—History—Congresses. 7. Impostors and imposture— Europe—History—Congresses. 8. Identity (Psychology—Social aspects—Europe—History—Congresses. 9. Identity (Psychology)— Europe—Religious aspects—History—Congresses. I. Eliav-Feldon, Miriam, 1946– II. Herzig, Tamar. D231.D57 2015 940.2'32—dc23 2015020071 Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India. Copyrighted material – 978–1–137– 44748–7 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137– 44748–7 Contents List of Figures and Tables vii Acknowledgements viii Notes on Contributors x 1 Introduction 1 Miriam Eliav- Feldon 2 Superstition and Dissimulation: Discerning False Religion in the Fifteenth Century 9 Michael D. Bailey 3 ‘Mendacium officiosum’: Alberico Gentili’s Ways of Lying 27 Vincenzo Lavenia 4 Dissimulation and Conversion: Francesco Pucci’s Return to Catholicism 45 Giorgio Caravale 5 The Identity Game: Ambiguous Religious Attachments in Seventeenth- Century Lyon 67 Monica Martinat 6 From ‘Marranos’ to ‘Unbelievers’: The Spanish Peccadillo in Sixteenth- Century Italy 79 Stefania Pastore 7 Recidivist Converts in Early Modern Europe 94 Moshe Sluhovsky 8 A Hybrid Identity: Jewish Convert, Christian Mystic and Demoniac 110 Adelisa Malena 9 Beyond Simulation: An Enquiry Concerning Demonic Possession 130 Guido Dall’Olio 10 Genuine and Fraudulent Stigmatics in the Sixteenth Century 142 Tamar Herzig v Copyrighted material – 978–1–137– 44748–7 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137– 44748–7 vi Contents 11 Real, Fake or Megalomaniacs? Three Suspicious Ambassadors, 1450– 1600 165 Giorgio Rota 12 Between Madrid and Ophir: Erédia, a Deceitful Discoverer? 184 Jorge Flores Bibliography 211 Index 243 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137– 44748–7 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137– 44748–7 1 Introduction Miriam Eliav- Feldon All religions agree that lying is a sin, and yet in the period when Europe was more possessed by religious fervour than at any other time in its history, telling lies and living a lie were more rampant than ever. Moreover, religious affiliation became the major cause for deceit; and perhaps all the more unexpected, Muslim, Jewish and Christian theo- logians, together with certain lay moralists, were openly condoning subterfuge and justifying the ‘honest lie’ (on the history of attitudes to lying and dissimulation in Christendom and among humanists, see below the essays by Michael Bailey and Vincenzo Lavenia). As the bibliography to this volume amply demonstrates, many his- torians in recent decades have become captivated by the widespread phenomenon of imposture and pretence in the early modern world. Montaigne’s observation that ‘dissimulation is one of the most notable qualities of this century’1 has become a motto for many a scholarly study of the various manifestations of deception in that period. Discussions of deceit are to be found in innumerable sixteenth- and seventeenth- century texts: endorsements of self- fashioning and sprezzatura on the way to becoming the ideal courtier; either condemnations or justifica- tions of religious dissimulation; discussions of ‘discernment of spirits’ in dealing with the multitude of possession cases, or of stigmatics and other aspiring saints; as well as fulminations against cross- dressing and crossing class boundaries, whether by dressing up and putting on airs, or by dressing down by people trying to pass for legitimate beggars. Special institutions and bureaucratic machineries were then set up to unmask impostors of all kinds, and trial records – of both ecclesiastical and secular courts – reveal that the early modern obsession with false identities emerged from repeated confirmations that an ever growing number of individuals were not who they claimed to be. 1 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137– 44748–7 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137– 44748–7 2 Miriam Eliav-Feldon A few of these exposed impostors attained lasting fame thanks to sensationalist printed reports at the time and to latter- day studies: from royal pretenders in England, Portugal or Russia to peasants such as Martin Guerre, from cross- dressers such as Catalina de Erauso, the ‘Lieutenant Nun’,2 to false visionaries such as Benedetta Carlini,3 from arch- heresiarchs who, like David Joris,4 succeeded for decades in evad- ing exposure, to poor and obscure crypto- Jews whose autos- da- fé were grand public spectacles. The panic that arose among early modern authorities who felt that too many people were not who they claimed to be, generated in turn a search for reliable means of identification – with unsatisfactory results from the authorities’ point of view.5 However, perplexity concerning the veracity or falsehood as to who or what a person claimed to be afflicted not only pre- modern minds, frustrating inquisitors, judges and princes. Despite great efforts made by quite a few historians, and despite modern- day psychological insights, we still remain baffled in very many cases, even – or perhaps all the more so – when the person in question left an ‘ ego- document’ for posterity, as in the case of Alvisa Zambelli, analysed in Adelisa Malena’s essay in this volume, or as in the famous case of Benvenuto Cellini and his fanciful autobiography.6 In fact, as most of the contributors to this volume emphasise, since we are unequipped nowadays with the necessary divine gift, we are not very successful in ‘discernment of spirits’ and thus the ‘true’ identity of our historical protagonists continues to evade us. Out of the multiple facets of deceit and counterfeit identities, the chapters below discuss three types of cases which exhibit the com- plexity of separating the genuine from the fraudulent: first, religious dissimulation; second, pretence to direct communication with the oth- erworldly (holiness as well as witchcraft and demonic possession); and third, offers of contact with or knowledge about distant lands. Religious dissimulation, meaning inwardly or secretly adhering to one confession while outwardly practising another, was by far the most extensive form of identity forgery: first mostly by conversos and Moriscos in the Iberian Peninsula, and after the Reformation through- out Central and Western Europe by all manner of Christians who refused to accept the ‘cuius regio, eius religio’ principle. This very wide field has been discussed by now in an enormous corpus of scholarly works. Those men and women who chose dissimulation over martyr- dom or exile, have been dubbed ‘two faced’ by their contemporaries and ‘divided souls’7 or ‘hybrid identities’ by modern- day scholars, and by and large the assumption was that they had remained staunchly Copyrighted material – 978–1–137– 44748–7 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137– 44748–7 Introduction 3 faithful to one confession while reluctantly masquerading obedience to another. Nonetheless, as the authors of several essays in this book argue, during those troubled times, when all rulers were attempting to impose religious