Binding Passions: Tales of Magic, Marriage, and Power at the End of the Renaissance

by Guido Ruggiero

Overview

Mining the rich Venetian archives, especially the unusually detailed records of Venice's own branch of the Roman Inquisition, Guido Ruggiero provides a strikingly new and provocative interpretation of the end of the Renaissance in Italy. In this boldly structured work, he develops five narrative accounts of individual encounters with the Inquisition that illustrate the double-edged metaphor of how passions were both bound by late Renaissance society and were seen in turn as binding people. In this way new perspectives are opened on magic, witchcraft, love, marriage, gender, and discipline at the level of the community and beyond. Witches, courtesans, prostitutes, women healers, nobles, Cardinals, and renegade priests and monks speak from these pages describing their lives, beliefs, hopes, fears, and lies. With an imaginative flair for storytelling and impeccable scholarship, Ruggiero exposes the rich complexity of the culture and poetics of the everyday at the end of the Renaissance and illuminates a previously unexplored chapter in Italian history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195083200
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	06/10/1993
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.13(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.82(d)
Lexile:	1460L (what's this?)

About the Author

University of Connecticut

Editorial Reviews

"This is a colorful book, lively, very teachable. It exposes beliefs and customs that only occasionally surface in the records of high culture, but clearly pullulated."—Journal of Social History

"These tales introduce historians to a fascinating cast of characters, and historians of sexuality can find much of interest here."—Journal of the History of Sexuality

"Good tales abound in this book...tales of the magical binding of love and lust within and without marriage, often across boundaries of class and status."—Sixteenth Century Journal

"Ruggiero has interesting stories to tell. He draws out the implications of the stories without inflicting dreary theory on the reader. And he obviously knows his Venetian sources well."—American Historical Review

"This imaginative work on the history of marriage, magic, witchcraft, and sexuality in the Republic of Venice in the late-sixteenth century offers a fascinating glimpse into the world of the 'illicit' through a series of carefully constructed 'dossiers' of the Inquisition. Guido Ruggiero has written an important and provocative book; his approach is novel; and the result is sure to engage a broad range of readers."—John Martin, Trinity University

"A fascinating account of women, gender, magic, and love in sixteenth-century Italy. Beautifully written and thought-provoking."—Dr. Susan Wabuda, Fordham University

"An excellent piece of 'microhistory' that offers some of the best insights we have into the role of magic in popular culture. First rate for students studying magic or witchcraft."—Steven Sargent, Union College

"Another stimulating and provocative study of the boundaries of behavior and belief in early modern Venice...This book will certainly be of interest not only to historians but also to literary scholars and art historians."—Rivista Di Studi Italiani

From the Publisher