Words and Deeds in Renaissance Rome: Trials Before the Papal Magistrates

M. Morgan Holmes teaches English at McGill University.

This is a state-of-the-art contribution to recent debates in
historiographic theory. New considerations have illustrated the need for
an archeology of the past that includes testimony from outside the ranks
of upper-class males; a consideration of the role that narrative
conventions have on the retelling of evidence; and a recognition of the
impact that subsequent interpretation has on historical reconstruction.
This book problematizes the reading of evidence as mimetic truth, and,
taking its place among other Foucauldian revisions, demonstrates the way
authority rules by a dialectical production and containment of disorder.

The eight trials reprinted here are taken from the records of the papal
courts administered by the state governor. Six date from 1558–59,
while one is from 1542 and another from 1574. In addition to a 25-page
introduction detailing the themes, social conditions, and interpretive
strategies most relevant to the cases, each transcription is accompanied
by a commentary in which the authors analyze relevant interpersonal
dynamics and political resonances.

The close chronological concentration of cases allows for an intriguing
glimpse into Catholic society at the dawn of the Counter-Reformation. As
the authors’ point out, the impact of the Roman Inquisition and the
proscription by Pope Paul IV of popular practices such as soothsaying,
love magic, and folk cosmology attests to a general shift in European
society toward tighter control of human affairs by centralized
authorities. The trial of “The Exorcist and the Spell-Catcher,” for
example, in which Danese, a cobbler, is punished for having performed a
lay exorcism, is interpreted as an instance of state and church
collusion in the policing of society through the supernatural. But not
all containment is absolute; even severe marginality, such as that
represented by the supposedly possessed Maddalena, can be paradoxically
a woman’s sole vehicle through which to critique repressive social
norms and values.

For undergraduate and more advanced readers, Words and Deeds is a
remarkable introduction to the artfulness of politics and to the
politically biased nature of supposedly neutral law and order. Blurring
the line between fiction and reality, it is as much of a delight to read
as the works of contemporary novellieri Bandello, Straparola, and
Giraldi.