[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.