Witchcraft and Inquisition in Early Modern Venice

Jonathan Seitz received his Ph.D. from the Department of the History of Science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 2006. He is an Assistant Teaching Professor at Drexel University, where he has lectured since 2006. Seitz's awards include an American Historical Association Schmitt Grant, a Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowship, and a John Neu Wisconsin Distinguished Graduate Fellowship. He researched this book in the libraries and archives of Venice and of the Vatican, supported by a Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation fellowship and a National Science Foundation Dissertation Research fellowship. He has been published in Renaissance Quarterly, Isis, Gender and History, The Sixteenth Century Journal and at H-net.org (H-ITALY).

Introduction; 1. Witchcraft and the inquisition in the most serene republic; 2. Blackened fingernails and bones in the bedclothes; 3. Appeals to experts; 4. 'Spiritual remedies' for possession and witchcraft; 5. The exorcist's library; 6. 'Not my profession': physicians' naturalism; 7. Physicians as believers; 8. The inquisitor's library; 9. 'Nothing proven': the practical difficulties of witchcraft prosecution; Conclusion.