Woodcut by Jan van der Straet illustrating some forms of treatment for syphilis during the sixteenth century.
Originally published in Nova Reperta (Antwerp, 1600).
The Strange Death of Margarita Marcellini: Male, Signs,
and the Everyday World of Pre-Modern Medicine
GUIDO RUGGIERO
after a long illness in the late spring of 1617,
it seemed that no one who knew her in Venice was particularly surprised: not her
second husband of four years, Pietro Marcellini, a well-known doctor who had read
the signs of her demise in the progressively more serious illnesses, or male, that
afflicted her; not the servants of the family, including her faithful maid Giulia
Boziola, who had watched over her in her slow decline; not Friar Ottavio Rati, who
had tried to care for her spiritual needs; not the members of her natal family,
especially her sister Grazimana, who had visited regularly her sickbed.
No, they were not surprised at all. Margarita was no longer young and had
reached a stage in life where death was no surprise; but, more significantly, her long
series of progressively more debilitating male, including terrible headaches, violent
pains throughout her body, open running sores and high fevers, all of which resisted
cure, had promised her demise. Still, they all found her death strange, primarily
because the signs that had marked her as ill and anticipated her death were
disquieting—so disquieting that they eventually engendered an institutional response. In the fall of that same year, the Holy Office of Venice decided to
investigate the cause of her death and in the process created a rich record' that
reads like an early modern detective story and a postmodern mini-parable on the
historical slipperiness of signs.2
WHEN MARGARITA MARCELLINI DIED
This article was originally delivered as the inaugural Josephine Berry Weiss Lecture at the Pennsylvania
State University. I would also like to thank the students and faculty involved in the seminar "Culture
and Civilization: New Approaches for the New Millennium" at Arizona State University for their
suggestions on an earlier form of this essay.
1 Archivio di Stato, Venice, Sant'Ufficio (hereafter, S.U.), Busta 72, case of Domeniga cameriera
della Signora Margarita, unfoliated.
2 Both make it an ideal candidate for a microhistory. For a theoretical overview of this approach,
see the essay by Edward Muir, "Observing Trifles," in Microhistoly and the Lost Peoples of Europe:
Selections from Quaderni Storici, Edward Muir and Guido Ruggiero, eds. (Baltimore, 1991), vii—mscviii.
There, Muir identifies the pathbreaking Italian school of microhistory as growing out of a program set
by Carlo Ginzburg and Carlo Poni in the late 1970s and developed by a group of scholars associated
with Edoardo Grendi and the Italian journal Quademi storici. For a sample of the innovative
microhistorical work produced there, see Microhistoty as well as the two other volumes of translations
that we edited: Sex and Gender in Historical Perspective (Baltimore, 1990) and Histoly from Crime
(Baltimore, 1994). Also crucial for the development of microhistory, especially in the English-speaking
academie community, were the studies of Carlo Ginzburg, The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian
Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, John and Anne Tedeschi, trans. (Baltimore, 1983), and
The Cheese and the Worms, John and Anne Tedeschi, trans. (Baltimore, 1980), as well as Ginzburg's
volume of theoretical essays, Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method, John and Anne Tedeschi, trans.
(Baltimore, 1989). It should be noted, however, that not all Italian microhistorians shared Ginzburg's
1141
1142
Guido Ruggiero
Before looking more closely at that story and the signs surrounding Margarita's
death, however, a word is necessary on the Holy Office that recorded both. The
Holy Office was Venice's own local branch of that Roman Inquisition that had been
reformed in the sixteenth century by the Catholic Church to deal with the new
dangerous heresies of the time. Venice, while it was also concerned with heresy, was
not prepared to allow an alien bureaucracy the kind of power that this renewed
Inquisition claimed within its territories; thus it created a compromise local council
that was staffed by both representatives of the church and Venetian notables. In
theory, the local notables were to protect Venetian interests, as they and the
ecclesiastics on the body pursued heresy. A particular institution, then, the Holy
Office, nonetheless much like the regular Inquisition, pursued heresy while
functioning with considerable moderation and bureaucratie rigor, given the standards of the time. 3
By the end of the sixteenth century, in fact, both the Venetian Holy Office and
the Roman Inquisition seem to have felt that major heresy was fairly well in check
in Italy and that they could safely give some of their time to another concern. As
they had pursued heresy, aggressively investigating the spiritual beliefs of the
general population, they had become aware of a more nebulous problem—a wide
range of what were labeled common errors concerning the nature of Christianity,
spirituality, and the world that existed deeply embedded in the "everyday culture"
of the time. 4 Essentially, many people were discovered to be living a life that they
vision. Giovanni Levi, representing a more social-science approach, attacked Ginzburg's over-reliance
on anthropology, especially the work of Clifford Geertz. For this critique, see Levi's "On MicroHistory," in New Perspectives on Historical Writing, Peter Burke, ed. (University Park, Pa., 1992),
93-113; and for an example of his approach, see Levi, Inheriting Power: The Story of an Exorcist, Lydia
G. Cochrane, trans. (Chicago, 1988).
3 The literature on the Venetian Holy Office is large and growing rapidly. For an excellent
discussion of its organization and operation, see Brian Pullan, The Jews of Europe and the Inquisition
of Venice, 1550-1670 (Totowa, N.J., 1983), 3-142. Paul Grendler has also published several important
works that draw heavily on documents from the Holy Office and provide a careful analysis of it as an
institution, especially The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 1540-1605 (Princeton, N.J., 1977).
Perhaps the institution has been most studied, as one might expect, from the perspective of how it dealt
with heresy; for this, John J. Martin, Venice's Hidden Enemies• Italian Heretics in a Renaissance City
(Berkeley, Calif., 1993), provides a significant new understanding and a thorough review of previous
scholarship. Finally, for an important overview of its creation, relationship with the Roman Inquisition,
and early activities in Venice and its territories, see Andrea Del Col, "Organizzazione, composizione
e giurisdizione dei tribunali dell'Inquisitione romana nella Repubblica di Venezia (1500-1550)," in
Critica storica/Bollettino A.S.E. 25, no. 2 (1988): 244-94.
4 In this article, I am using the term "everyday" culture to refer to that range of discourses and
practices that were widely shared in everyday life in the early modern period. At a general level, this
is perhaps largely an artificial distinction to group together those aspects of culture shared across social
boundaries and cultural divisions while not denying that there were significant discontinuities as well.
Thus, for example, while today an American parade speaks largely to an everyday shared culture
understood by virtually everyone, there are almost invariably local references or specific details that to
be understood or analyzed need to be put in more specific cultural contexts. See Mary Ryan, "The
American Parade: Representations of the Nineteenth-Century Social Order," in The New Cultural
History, Lynn Hunt, ed. (Berkeley, Calif., 1989), 131-53; and for an early modern perspective, Robert
Darnton, "A Bourgeois Puts His World in Order: The City as a Text," in Darnton, The Great Cat
Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York, 1984). For the closely related
German Alltagsgeschichte approach, see Alf Lndtke, The History of Evetyday Life: Reconstructing
Historical Experiences and Ways of Life, William Templer, trans. (Princeton, N.J., 1995); and for a
French take, see Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Evetyday Life, Steve Randal, trans. (Berkeley,
1984). For this essay, this approach allows one to acknowledge the strength of the current critique of
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
OCTOBER 2001
The Strange Death of Margarita Marcellini 1143
believed was Christian, that often their local priests and friars believed was
Christian, but that was at best from the perspective of a newer stricter orthodoxy
incorrect and at worst a breeding ground for heresy. As a result, both the Holy
Office and the broader Inquisition became heavily involved in investigating,
documenting, and trying to discipline everyday culture in order to bring its
spirituality and understanding of the world into line with the formal teachings of the
church.5 It was in this context that the Holy Office became involved in the strange
death of Margarita Marcellini. For it seemed to them a death that was deeply
intertwined with the misuse of the spiritual in everyday culture.
In their more general concern with everyday culture and popular errors, they
were not alone. "What do you stupid people think? Do you think that a poor old
hag might know something [about healing] when she has spent all her days in some
shack [balza] spinning with the geese and the hens? What do you commoners think
that she could know, if she were not a witch? And if she is a witch, do you want to
be cured and returned to health by the Devil's work? . . . I say freely that I would
rather die than regain my health with the Devil's art. . . Therefore, common people,
I teil you for your own good when you are sick go to male doctors, and . . . do not
believe in those old ignorant women."6
So Cosimo Aldana advised his late sixteenth-century Italian readers in his
Discourse against the Common Herd: In Which Good Reason Calls to Task Many of
Their False Opinions. Clearly, Aldana, along with many other male intellectuals of
the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, was very unenthusiastic about
women healers. And warning that their cures were the work of witchcraft was a
the overly Manichean distinction between popular and high culture, and especially popular and
educated medicine in the early modern period, without sacrificing the ability to recognize areas where
culture was not shared. Perhaps the most pertinent critique of the dangers of an overly dualistic vision
for Italian medical practice is to be found in David Gentilcore, Healers and Healing in Early Modern
Italy (Manchester, 1998).
5 See Guido Ruggiero, Binding Passions: Ta les of Magic, Marriage and Power at the End of the
Renaissance (New York, 1993); for a more traditional approach that draws this same conclusion, see
Ruth Martin, Witchcraft and the Inquisition in Venice 1550-1650 (Oxford, 1989); for the broader
context, see Adriano Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza: Inquisitori, confessori, missionari (Turin, 1996);
and Giovanni Romeo, Inquisitore, esorcisti e streghe nell'Italia della controriforma (Florence, 1990).
6 Cosimo Aldana, Discorso contro ii volgo; In cui con buone ragioni si reprovano molte sue false
opinioni . . . (Florence, 1578), 235-36. For an important study of popular healers largely in the context
of southern Italy, see Gentilcore, Healers and Healing; as well as his earlier From Bishop to Witch: The
System of the Sacred in Early Modern Terra d'Otranto (Manchester, 1992), esp. 102-15, 129-61. In
Healers and Healing, Gentilcore argues that in Naples, as in most of northern Italy, there were multiple
approaches to healing, including medical, ecclesiastical, and popular, and a wide range of practitioners
were accepted by the general populace—a finding confirmed by my own studies on Venice. A broader
but equally significant examination of the theme can be found in William Eamon, Science and the
Secrets of Nature in Medieval and Early Modern Culture (Princeton, N.J., 1994), esp. 168-266, plus the
excellent bibliography on 431-79. On medical practice and healing, see Gianna Pomata, Contra cting a
Cure: Patients, Healers, and the Law in Early Modern Bologna, Gianna Pomata, trans., with Rosemarie
Foy and Anna Taraboletti-Segre (Baltimore, 1998); Nancy G. Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance
Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice (Chicago, 1990); Katherine Park, Doctors and
Medicine in Early Renaissance Florence (Princeton, 1985); and Patients and Practitioners: Lay Perceptions
of Medicine in Pre-Industrial England, Roy S. Porter, ed. (Cambridge, 1985). See also Mary O'Neil,
"Sacerdote ovvero strione: Ecclesiastical and Superstitious Remedies in Sixteenth-Century Italy," in
Understanding Popular Culture, Steven Kaplan, ed. (Berlin, 1984), 53-83; and O'Neil, "Magical Healing,
Love Magic and the Inquisition in Late Sixteenth-Century Modena," in Inquisition and Society in Early
Modern Europe, Stephen Haliczer, ed. (London, 1987), 88-114, both based on inquisition documents
from Modena.
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
OCTOBER 2001
1144
Guido Ruggiero
powerful argument against their widely recognized power. Who, at the time, would
have wanted to be cured at the expense of putting themselves in the hands of a witch
and indirectly the devil? But Aldana's diatribe had a broader target: the cultural
world of common people and common wisdom. In fact, as is well known and
documented, the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century saw an increasingly
virulent attack on what is often labeled today popular culture from a host of
sources: humanists, university professors, ever more aristocratic elites, and the
reformed churches of Europe, both Catholic and Protestant.' The central role that
gender stereotyping played in that attack has been more noted than studied,
however, and the broader implications of that attack on what I would like to call
everyday culture, especially the aspects of that culture related most closely to magic
and early science, have been largely overlooked. And, of course, when one begins
to read in the literature of popular errors, as it is often labeled, one can understand
why it has not been extensively studied; much of it is so distorted and negative that
it is difficult to see what it has of interest to a modern reader—unless one is
interested in the history of insults.
One has to look elsewhere to get a clearer idea of what was being attacked. And
although it might seem a highly unreliable source, one of the best places to look is
in the records of the renewed Roman Inquisition and of the Holy Office of
Venice—both concerned with investigating just that culture. In fact, this essay is
drawn from a larger research project that focuses on documenting the way that
culture understood illness, the body, and the cosmos, using materials from both the
Inquisition and the Holy Office, along with books of common errors like Aldana's
and literature as well, to gain a clearer understanding of the cultural world from
which early science to some extent developed and which it then largely left behind. 8
For it is my underlying hypothesis that the program of knowledge we label science 9
7 Peter Burke broadly sketched the issues involved in his pioneering Popular Culture in Early Modern
Europe (New York, 1978), 207-43; a stronger vision of an aggressive general attack on popular culture
was advanced by Robert Muchembled in his 1978 work published in English as Popular Culture and Elite
Culture in France 1400-1750, Lydia Cochrane, trans. (Baton Rouge, La., 1988). Recently, William
Eamon has reviewed the issues involved from the perspective of science and medicine and suggestively
shifted the ground of the debate in Science and the Secrets of Nature. Although this rejebtion of popular
errors and the winnowing out of secrets deemed incorrect by learned culture presents a problem for
those who reject the notion of a popular/elite split in culture, it might be viewed as a form of labeling
aimed at eliminating traditionally shared practices from everyday culture. My own view is that we
cannot eliminate the culture divisions in early modern society, even if in many cases we can refer to a
shared everyday culture; see note 4 above.
8 As a result, although this essay follows one case closely, it is based primarily on an analysis of
documents contained in the Archivio di Stato, Venice, Buste 6-75 (1547-1620) of the Holy Office
(Sant'Ufficio), approximately 1,519 partial and complete cases. Among these cases, more than one in
five are concerned with practices labeled witchcraft or magie, most commonly love magie or healing
magie and often both; unfortunately, statistica become less exact as one becomes more specific, because
individual cases were often concerned with several issues. I give this rough estimate primarily to
counter the assumption that seems to be widely held that microhistories are based normally on a
reading of one archival case; most, in fact, are focused studies based on massive archival research. For
a brief discussion of the issues involved, see note 11 below.
9 At one level, the simplest definition of science is that it is what scientists do in a specific culture
and society at a specific moment. But here I am trying to extend that definition by suggesting that we
think about science as a "program of knowledge" that is labeled science either within a society and
culture or by later students (although clearly the Jatter should not be equated with the former). This
is a rather inelegant way of making clear that I use the term not so much as a noun, describing a finished
thing called science, but as a developing, complex, at times contradictory and unclear program of
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW OCTOBER 2001
The Strange Death of Margarita Marcellini 1145
developed not just from intellectual changes in the high tradition of ideas, not just
from new social structures of knowing, but also in crucial and little understood ways
by breaking away from everyday ways of knowing and strategies of dealing with the
world—breaking away, that is, from everyday culture.1°
THE STRANGE DEATH OF MARGARITA MARCELLINI serves not just as a nice medical
mystery tale, then, but also as a window on the richness of a culture left behind and
the complexity of pre-modern medical practice» On September 5, 1617, the friar
knowledge never quite finished, never quite unified but, nonetheless, with programmatic qualities that
it seems with the advantage of a historical vision slowly were made more systematic as that program of
knowledge became modern. In this vision, magic and science could coexist in that program of
knowledge both in everyday culture and in different but often intimately related ways in the high
intellectual tradition of the early modern period. With time, however, that program of knowledge
"delegitimated" a range of practices associated with magic at least as belonging within the parameters
of science. It is important to realize that a program of knowledge like science (or magic for that matter
as it separated off from science) is not simply driven by its own inner logic; in fact, it might be suggested
that more often its programmatic imperatives derive from a strange serendipity of social and cultural
factors seemingly unrelated. This essay shows a small but I hope suggestive moment in the long slow
transition that broke spirit from matter and deeply changed the program of knowledge we call modern
science. My thinking on this has been much influenced by my colleagues Robert N. Proctor and Londa
Schiebinger; see especially Proctor's Value-Free Science? Purity and Power in Modern Knowledge
(Cambridge, Mass., 1991).
10 Although Keith Thomas in his magisterial Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York, 1971)
examines a similar break in England from a much broader perspective, his vision of the "partnership"
between science and magic collapsing in the seventeenth century (p. 644) has been pivotal for my
thinking. For his general perspective on this break, see 631-68; for an interesting comparative
perspective on magical healing, see esp. 177-211. See also Laurence Brockliss and Colin Jones, The
Medical World of Early Modern France (Oxford, 1997), 1-19, 73-84, 230-319. While they tend to
minimize the significance of non-professional medical practitioners, they do claim and document a
circularity of medical knowledge between popular healers and physicians and a common culture where
the spiritual and the medical overlapped (see esp. 17-20, 73-84). For Germany, see the innovative work
of Mary Lindemann, especially Health and Healing in Eighteenth-Centwy Germany (Baltimore, 1996),
3-21, 144-235, 289-315; for a later period, Matthew Ramsey, Professional and Popular Medicine in
France, 1770-1830 (Cambridge, 1988). See also, however, Ruggiero, Binding Passions, 223-28, 130-74,
and the literature cited there. Clearly, the emphasis placed here on "breaking away" is not meant to
deny the well-established significance of the traditional scholarship that has charted the changes in
learned knowledge that were central for the development of the modern program of science or the
newer scholarship that over the last few decades has rethought these issues from the perspective of the
sociology of knowledge and the new cultural history. Rather, such complex processes seem so
multidimensional and overdetermined, so intertwined with the deep dynamics of cultural and social
change, that any monocausal or perhaps even causal explanation would be overly reductionist; my goal
is merely to suggest that we need to shift our vision to consider the complex relationship between
everyday culture and science as well.
" This essay, then, is conceived of as a narrative history as well as a microhistory. When in 1975
Lawrence Stone called for a revival of narrative in history ("The Revival of Narrative: Reflections on
a New Old History," Past and Present 85 [1975]: 3-24), he could have hardly anticipated that narrative
history was about to find a significant new outlet in the emerging area of microhistory—or maybe he
could, given the fact that some of the most important new narrative history was about to be published
by his colleagues Natalie Zemon Davis and Robert Darnton. While they may not have been conceived
of as microhistory, both Davis's Return of Martin Guenr (Cambridge, Mass., 1983) and Darnton's Great
Gat Massacre provided powerful examples of how well narratives could work in a microhistorical
context. Along with the work of Carlo Ginzburg, Gene Brucker in Giovanni and Lusanna: Love and
Marriage in Renaissance Florence (Berkeley, Calif., 1986), and a growing number of others, the melding
of microhistory and narrative had arrived and revived a classic form of historical writing in a rather
unexpected area. The wedding of microhistory and narrative, however, did not go unchallenged. Best
known perhaps is the debate published in these pages between Davis and Robert Finlay in an "AHR
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
OCTOBER 2001
1146
Guido Ruggiero
and priest Ottavio Rati was called before the Holy Office of Venice to testify about
that death. When asked the standard opening question of the Holy Office—if he
knew why he had been called—he replied with alacrity for a man of eighty-two
years: "My lords, yes, I know why I have been called . I was told [the reason] by
the doctor who asked me if I remembered when I visited his house . . . to examine
his wife for her illness."12 What, one might well ask, was an eighty-year-old friar
doing diagnosing the illness of the wife of a doctor? Clearly, part of the answer is
related to the fact that we are in a different time and culture, where an illness, male,
was recognized and treated in ways that are no longer familiar. And equally clearly,
the doctor who had summoned Rati to examine his wife believed that the old friar
had skills that would allow him to read signs of her illness that he himself was not
as adept at reading.
The Holy Office, like Rati, already had a clear idea where their investigation was
heading, and thus when they asked him next a question that sounds very similar to
the one just posed, they were not asking it with a modern curiosity about diagnostic
friars but, rather, because they wanted to establish his diagnosis as part of the
evidence for the case they were developing. They asked: "What illness did his wife
have? Why were you called in as a religious person?" Rati's response begins to
answer our question as well: "His wife was the victim of evil magie and bewitched
[fatturata et strigata], and I was called in because I go about exorcizing [scongiurando] people."13 Magic and witchcraft"—one begins to understand why the Holy
Office was questioning Rati about the death of a doctor's wife and why they too
were involved in diagnosing the cause of Margarita Mareellini's death.
But before we hear Rati's diagnosis, he had used several terms from the everyday
culture of the time that require a moment's discussion. First, he referred to the
Forum," AHR 93 (June 1988): 553-603. Critics have tended to focus on the way in which narrative
forms seem to encourage too imaginative a reconstruction of the past as well as anachronistic readings
of emotions and the way decisions were made. They have also tended to call into question the validity
of arguments based on single cases. This last critique is more easily dealt with, for while many
microhistorical narratives focus on one case, they are usually based on much broader research; see note
8 above. For a more sympathetic discussion of the dangers and possibilities of a narrative approach to
microhistory, see Ruggiero, Binding Passions, 19-20; and for a broader discussion of the issues, see
Natalie Zemon Davis, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in Sixteenth-Centuty France
(Stanford, Calif., 1987).
12 s.u., Busta 72.
13 S.U., Busta 72.
14 Until recently, the main debate on early modern witchcraft was about whether witches actually
existed or were merely the creation of a learned vision imposed on society by repressive institutions
such as the Roman Inquisition, local church courts, and secular authorities. Such studies focused on
three areas: the development of a learned consensus about what constituted witchcraft (focusing on a
pact with the devil and attendance at the Sabbat); how and when this consensus broke apart ending
witch hunts (earlier in Italy, later in Northern Europe); the organization and personnel responsible for
the persecution of witches. In recent years, however, there has been a kind of Copernican revolution
in witchcraft studies motivated in part by an interest in popular culture, which has sought to discover
what everyday people thought about witches and witchcraft and more specifically if there were people
who considered themselves witches in their own terms. From this perspective, the issue has become
what were witchcraft beliefs and how did they work in particular societies and cultures of the early
modern period: such studies focus more on healing magie, punishing magic (a significant form of
vendetta and protection of honor for lower-class people with less ability to pursue a vendetta in other
ways, as I have argued), and magie that controlled love and affection. Significantly, this approach also
tends to see everyday Christian culture as much more deeply integrated into early modern witchcraft.
See Ruggiero, Binding Passions, 88-174.
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW OCTOBER 2001
The Strange Death of Margarita Marcellini
1147
doctor's wife as being fatturata as well as strigata. In modern parlance, these terms
are roughly synonymous and would both be translated as "bewitched." At the turn
of the seventeenth century, however, there were a host of terms to refer to the
various levels of illness associated with having been harmed magically by others: for
example, one could be martellato—hammered, guasto—wrecked, legato—tied,
stregato—bewitched, indemoniato—possessed, or fatturato.
In the case of fatturato, the term was often used in a generic sense to mean
magically harmed, leaving open the question of whether it was by witchcraft or
magie. Given the fact that there were a host of people who practiced such magie
across the social and intellectual spectrum at the time, Rati's specification that he
had diagnosed Margarita as first fatturata, that is, the victim of magie, and then
strigata, the victim of a witch, was not the simple redundancy that it might seem. In
turn, when Rati said that he went about exorcising (scongiurando) people for these
illnesses, the translation "exorcising" is both correct and confusing. For clearly, the
term was used here as it was often used at the time in a more general sense.
Scongiuri were used to drive out evil spirits, but they also served to drive out of the
body evil magie, illness, and evil in general. The term male included all these
afflictions." Crucially, as this terminology suggests, at the turn of the seventeenth
century when one became sick—amalato—the male that had to be diagnosed and
overcome were much more complex than the physical illness of a modern body;"
thus, simply, a doctor could call in a friar to examine the male of his wife.
The Holy Office, then, saw nothing strange in this and continued questioning him
as an expert witness in diagnosing the male of those who had been the victims of
magic—their original reason for calling him. Thus they asked him how he knew that
she had been fatturata. "I was certain ... ," he answered, "because I had them look
in the bed, and there they found the witchcraft, that is, quills of feathers wrapped
up together, beans, grains of millet, some nails, and other things that I don't
remember." 17 Today, a bed loaded with such unlikely things would signify little
more than a bad night's rest and some questionable housekeeping perhaps, but for
Rati and his interrogators these were telling signs, and without even looking at the
15 Malie, coming from the same root as male, also had the meaning of an evil condition caused by
magic. In the strict sense, male was the general term that included malie and other afflictions, but the
terms were often used in an overlapping manner.
16 There are some interesting apparent parallels with diagnostic practices and visions of illness in
Africa. The classic work remains E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the
Azande (Oxford, 1937). Also very important has been the seminal article by Robin Horton, "African
Traditional Thought and Western Science," Africa 37 (1967): 50-71, 155-87, which sees African
approaches to these issues as closing out modern science. A newer wave of work has been more
sympathetic to African traditions; for example, Roy S. Porter's synthetic volume, The Greatest Benefit
to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity from Antiquity to Present (New York, 1997), is more
balanced in its treatment of folk healers and the negative impact of colonial medicine in Africa and
South Asia. The work of Steven Feierman has added further complexity and nuance to the field; see
especially "Explanation and Uncertainty in the Medical World of Ghaambo," Bulletin of the History of
Medicine 74 (2000): 317-44; as well as Peasant Intellectuals: Anthropology and History in Tanzania
(Madison, Wis., 1990); and the volume that he edited with John Janzen, The Social Base of Health and
Healing in Africa (Berkeley, Calif., 1992). Without romanticizing folk healing practices and diagnosis,
Feierman closely examines how those practices worked and had meaning in a specific time and place;
as a result, his work suggests interesting comparisons with early modern European practices and
crucially undercuts the all too facile comparisons that are sometimes drawn.
17 S.U., Busta 72. Such bed magie was fairly common; see, for example, Ruggiero, Binding Passions,
78, 114-15, 168.
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW OCTOBER 2001
1148
Guido Ruggiero
patient or in her bed himself, he had begun to discover what was wrong with
Margarita. 18
As in a good mystery, however, there remained doubts about the authenticity of
these signs, since the doctor's wife did not recover completely when her bed-magic
was burned. Eight days later, however, her bed was searched again, and Rati
reported, "There were found . . . some new bewitching things." He then initiated his
cure: "I remember that there were found some sores on her legs caused by
witchcraft, and I know that I gave her some Holy Oil to apply to those mate, . . . and
she was cured." 19 Given Rati's reading of the signs of illness and the general belief
in the healing power of Holy Oil, Rati's cure was completely logical and
appropriate. And it succeeded where all the doctor's earlier attempts had failed.
IN FACT, THE USE OF OILS for healing, especially Holy Oil, was widespread at the time,
so widespread that it is difficult to sort out when oils were seen as curing because
they were holy and when they were seen as curing because of their physical
qualities. To a great extent, this apparent confusion represents an anachronistic
attempt to separate things that were not separated at the time, at least in everyday
culture: in that culture, oils were made holy by the prayers that were said over them
by healers, especially those women healers who Aldana railed against, and by
priests. In turn, oils were revealed to be holy by the cures they worked on those who
had been fatturato and strigato. 2 °
A good example of the broader use of oils is provided by the case of Lucia Nicetta
heard by the Holy Office in 1590. Lucia, a widow of about seventy, would seem to
be virtually a witch waiting to happen, given the stereotypes of witchcraft
accusations—poor, on her own, and scraping out a meager existence healing babies.
Given the high mortality rates of infants, as I have argued elsewhere, it was
probably only a matter of time and enough failed cures before she was accused of
having bewitched one of her charges. Adding to her witchly potential was the report
that she was able to read the signs of a sick baby and tell when that baby would die.
To the Holy Office and many others, the ability to tell the future was in itself a sign
that Lucia was no mere healer but rather a witch who knew the future of ill children
because she was in league with the forces of evil.
18 It should be noted that "signs" also had a technical meaning in the academie world of medicine at
the time. As this essay focuses on the segni or signs of illness as they were seen in everyday practice,
however, there is only limited crossover, since the term is used primarily to label things that needed to
be read to deal with something that was not immediately understood. For a discussion of the academie
tradition of signs as it related to the diagnosis of cancer, see Luke De Maitre, "Medieval Notions of
Cancer: Malignancy and Metaphor," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 72 (1998): 609-37, esp. 626-30
and 634-36. In a suggestive, but perhaps not perfect, way, the signs discussed here seem closer to the
"clues" that Carlo Ginzburg associated with Giovanni Morelli, Sherlock Holmes, medical diagnosis,
and ancient hunters in "Clues: Roots of an Evidential Paradigm," in Clues, Myths, 96-125.
9 S.U., Busta 72.
20 Moreover, Holy Oil was used in the same way as common oil and empowered with the same
prayers. It may be that there was a conception that true Holy Oil, that is, oil prepared by ecclesiastics
for the rituals of the church, was more effective in curing. This seems to have been the case in certain
forms of love magie. Suggestively, however, in love magic cases that used Holy Oil, practitioners and
victims were frequently concerned about authenticity, while in curing cases the issue was virtually never
considered.
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW OCTOBER 2001
The Strange Death of Margarita Marcellini 1149
Needless to say, Lucia did not share the Holy Office's view of her practice, and
presented herself before them in quite a different light. "My lords, yes, I am called
to heal the sick, but against my will," she claimed, "and normally I oil them
externally with oil that the Lord God has blessed . . . on the legs, feet, hands, back
and nothing more." Then she added, "Poor me, I do everything for the love of God
. . . I am a good Christian, I go to confession and I take communion."21 In her eyes,
then, Lucia saw herself as a good Christian who healed using oils empowered by
God, certainly not a witch. Whether that self-representation was true or not, it was
a common one among the numerous women healers of the time; most claimed to
cure as Christian healers, and their cures suggest that, if anything, they were
important practitioners of a rich and complex medical area of everyday Christian
culture, to a great extent dominated and perpetuated by women.22
Lucia's use of oils to cure babies just begins to suggest this richness. In response
to a question about her techniques, Lucia replied: "I take oil of dill, chamomile, and
mastic and other oils, depending on the illness. In addition I take regular oil to
which I add some garlic and rue and ambrosia and boil it. This is good for worms
and for the tremors [la bruttal of children."23 Lucia's oils, then, were several and
devised to be used according to the various illnesses she treated. Suggestively, as
she began to describe her cures, their range increased: at first, she had admitted
merely external oiling, but quickly her treatments expanded to include the use of
oils taken orally to cure. Also noteworthy is the fact that the oils here so briefiy
described seem to have had the potential to work in a simple physical sense, for
example, chamomile, garlic, and rue are still used in "natural" cures.24
But crucially, Lucia's pharmacology did not stop at the physical properties of her
oils. Rapidly, she slid into areas that were more problematic to her examiners when
she began to recount the prayers that she used to empower her oils: "And I say this
prayer [as I oil them]: 'In the name of God and the Virgin Mary who put their hands
before mine and would do as I do.' Then I say an Our Father and a Hail Mary,
[saying] 'In praise and worship of God and the glorious Virgin Mary and of San
Liberale that this creature is liberated from this disease.' "25 Here again, Lucia has
taken us into a broader world of medicine where her oils are applied not simply
physically but with a prayer that calls for the hands of God and the Virgin Mary to
go before her own and empower them. In addition, the most common prayers to
God and the Virgin reinforce her call for divine aid, with, in the end, St. Liberale
S.U., Busta 66, case of Lucia Nicetta, July 31, 1590, unfoliated.
See Ruggiero, Binding Passions, esp. chap. 4, 130-74.
23 S.U., Busta 66, case of Lucia Nicetta, July 31, 1590. La brutta was one of the most common forms
of illness causing infant death in Venice. Its symptoms were violent tremors and loss of muscular
control. For a description of the disease, see Scipione Mercurio, La comare o raccoglitrice
dell'eccellentissimo Signor Scipione Mercurio, filosofo, medico, cittadino romano (Venice, 1676), 283; for
its impact on children in Venice, see Laura Giannetti, "Venezia alla fine del XVI secolo: Le parrocchie
di S. Maria Nuova e S. Canciano" (Tesi di Laurea, Università degli Studi di Venezia, 1977-78), 332.
24 S.U., Busta 66. "These things," she continued, "I learned from Maritana Malanona, who is now
dead. She was a midwife in Murano and Venice and a knowledgeable woman who went to study with
the doctors tche andava a far collegio con le medici]." There was a long if intermittent tradition of
medical training for midwives in Venice, and it may have been that Lucia's teacher Maritana had
profited from this training; if so, she and her pupil were once again not so much exponents of a popular
culture of healing as practitioners of a fascinating mixture of the everyday Christian tradition of healing
and a more classical tradition of medical practice.
25 S.U., Busta 66.
21
22
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
OCTOBER 2001
1 150
Guido Ruggiero
being called upon to help liberate the infirm person from his or her disease, a form
of metaphorical empowerment that was very popular in such healing.
In this use of prayers by healers—often quite inventive and elaborate prayerschurch authorities saw an area of error in everyday culture that needed to be
disciplined. Thus the Holy Office asked Lucia if she used other prayers, but she
used their query to follow her own strategy of establishing her status as a good and
obedient Christian. "I used to use another prayer," she admitted, "but my confessor
told me it was wrong and he did not want me to say it. But for the first prayers he
gave me license [to use them]." 26 And it seems that her self-portrayal as a good and
obedient Christian was working, for the Holy Office moved quickly on to their last
concern about Lucia's healing: her reputed ability to read the future for her
patients, asking, "Do you know how to teil or predict when a baby is about to die
or recover, and do you have any signs of this like the swelling of your hands or other
things?" 27 Her reply to their leading question was again virtually perfect: "I am
seventy years old, and because I am old when I oil [babies] my hands give me pain.
I do not know how to tell the future, those are things of our Lord God. What would
I know about whether a baby will die or not . . . nor is it true that I say that my hands
lose their swelling when a child is about to die, rather I am half paralyzed and I
complain that my hands hurt." 28
Without her actually stating, "I am just a little old woman who knows nothing,"
in her claim of ignorance she was playing directly to the prejudices of those who
attacked popular errors, such as Aldana and perhaps her male interrogators. And
it may be that her claim was true, but at the least she was aware of what she was not
supposed to know, that is, how to read signs that would allow her to tell the future.
And her response that those things were only for God to know and not for little old
women was perfect. Without wishing to retry Lucia three hundred years later, it is
interesting to note that she filled in the Holy Office's question about the signs one
might use to tell if a child was going to recover or not by explaining that she did not
read the unswelling of her hands as a sign that a baby would die. Perhaps it is that
we are tempted to look too closely at signs here, but could it be that inadvertently
Lucia has revealed to us what the Holy Office let pass, convinced that she was in fact
an ignorant old woman, that is, that she read the recovery or death of the children
she treated in the signs of her hands? In the end, the Holy Office was won over by
Lucia's self-representation and freed her, requiring only that in the future she
abstain from the use of any prayers in her healing. Nicely, in a way, it seems that
they were requiring that her oils lose their holy and spiritual nature and become
medicinal in the merely physical sense—the Holy Office, if this reading is accurate,
here and with their disciplining of many other women who used holy oils to cure,
was preparing the ground for modern medicine and science!
BE THAT AS IT MAY, Lucia's unread signs in her healing hands bring us back to how
difficult it was to read the signs of male in the pre-modern world and understand
26 S.U., Busta 66.
27 S.U., Busta 66.
28 S.U., Busta 66, emphasis added.
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
OCTOBER 2001
The Strange Death of Margarita Marcellini
1151
things like the strange death of Margarita Marcellini. Still, one key to understanding her demise is recognizing that her body was incorporated literally in a world that
was much broader and, strange to admit, more complex than the one inhabited by
modern bodies. Clearly, her husband, Pietro Marcellini, understood this world.
Pietro was about fifty years old, a successful doctor, and with the death of his wife
already a widower two times over, when he was called before the Holy Office. He
began, "My wife was called Margarita, and it is three full months since she died.
After she became my wife a little more than four years ago . . . she was always sick
. . . As much as possible I tried to cure her with natural remedies, but the male got
worse and continued to consume her. At that time I got the opinion of many other
doctors, and they gave her medicines without any positive results."29 Here, Pietro
might appear to be following a familiar path—trying various "natural remedies" to
cure his wife and calling in his fellow medical practitioners to get their advice on
treatment—but again the familiarity of his approach is misleading. For in emphasizing the failed "natural" cures to the Holy Office, Pietro was establishing a crucial
sign that his wife's male were induced by witchcraft.
And that meant in turn that, as a good doctor, he was explaining the signs that
led him to call in the priest and friar Ottavio Rati. This became clear as Pietro
continued: "Finally, however, I began to understand the male. My wife was confined
to bed with a great open sore on one leg so painful that she could not get up. One
day while she was lying there preparing to eat, surrounded by various little pillows,
several of them were found to be tied together with so many knots that it was
impossible to untie them even in two hours, and in the end it was necessary to cut
them."3° The signs of witchcraft once again were clear in the context of the everyday
culture of the early seventeenth century. And although in Pietro's account they
were slightly different and he was the one to discover them, still the incurable
illness, the things bound—little pillows—and the binding things—knots that were
impossible to untie—all were signs that pointed toward a traditional kind of magie
used frequently to punish or destroy. The Holy Office had heard similar accounts
often from those who had been fatturato, and in turn, as a doctor Pietro Marcellini
had to be aware of such lore to be able to diagnose male and know if he could cure
them.
But Pietro had more telling signs yet for the Holy Office: "from these signs,
suspecting some evil magic, we looked inside the mattress and those little pillows
knotted together, and we found about a half basket of evil things of various kinds,
including a small statue made of solder, which from the waist down was virtually
totally consumed, and in the little pillows there was a tie of the type used for tying
the vines, which had many knots. . . of various types with feathers. And I confirmed
that this was evil magic that evening when . . . I applied to . . her body some holy
relics and the pains disappeared."31 For Pietro, his wife's pains ceased when he
correctly read the signs and applied the appropriate cure for her male, holy relics.
Again, the emphasis on things that tied and bound in the magical materials found
in Margarita's bed stands out, as does the statuette that was mutilated in the same
S.U., Busta 72, emphasis added.
S.U., Busta 72.
31 S.U., Busta 72.
29
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW OCTOBER 2001
1
152
Guido Ruggiero
area of the body where Margarita was suffering the most. These were telling and
familiar signs that she had been hammered by evil magic. 32 Pietro also revealed
that, as a doctor, he was capable of reading these signs and that he was ready to use
holy relics, at least for his wife in his program of curing.
But, of course, even in his telling of the case, Pietro was only a doctor, and as he
moved into the area of magical male and the use of relics (which implied a spiritual
cure), he was from the perspective of the church out of his league. Thus based on
his diagnosis and reading of the signs, he did the correct thing and called in the true
professional, Friar Rati. "And this was the reason that made me believe that she
was bewitched, so I called several clerics to examine her, particularly the priest and
friar Ottavio . . . who burned the evil magie and signed her several times." 33
was a form of healing
that had been associated with the church and holy people since the earliest days of
Christianity. It was also closely associated with baptism and early forms of what
would eventually become the sacrament of extreme unction. Both were rituals that
gave a prominent place to signing and were considered to be so powerful that they
literally reformed body and soul and in that reforming had the potential to cure all
ills. 34 In early modern Italy, however, signing was a prominent part of the curing
techniques found in everyday culture, and although priests and friars used it
regularly, women healers with good signing hands were much sought out for such
cures. 35
The case of Benedetta Maranese reveals some of the range of signing cures used
by women, as well as how effectively such cures could compete with the cures of
doctors even at the upper levels of society. One of the first people to testify about
her curing in 1591 was Gaspara, wife of a shop owner in Venice. Although she was
called "lady" by the Holy Office, it seems clear that she was not a noble; the label
probably represented merely a certain status and wealth. Gaspara told the Holy
Office, "My husband became very seriously ill, and he was in the care of the doctors,
and he had many medicines, but he did not recover. In ... church one day, finding
myself together with several other women and discussing his sickness, I was asked
THE FRIAR'S MAKING THE SIGN OF THE CROSS OVER MARGARITA
See Ruggiero, Binding Passions, 100-07,112-17,120-25.
S.U., Busta 72, emphasis added.
34 In fact, even today it is noted in the most authoritative theological texts that the signing aspect of
extreme unction is often associated with miraculous cures. See Catholic Encyclopedia, "Extreme
Unction." Segnare (to sign) is the term used most widely to describe this practice. As the signs (segni)
of illness (male) mark one as ill, signing someone marked an attempt to return someone to a purer,
re-formed state. The deeper relationship, if any, between these terms in everyday usage remains to be
worked out. Unfortunately, the extensive testimony on signing in the records of the Holy Office and in
the literature on healing and popular errors that I have read does not comment on any relationship
between the terms. Still, it is suggestive that healers, both women and clerics, were diagnosing illness
by signs and healing them by signing.
35 In Venice and the Veneto in this period, it often seemed that women were the true controllers of
the spiritual world and the positive powers of Christianity, and for women healers one of the most
powerful elements in their spiritual arsenal was signing. See Ruggiero, Binding Passions, 135-44,
149-67,170-72.
32
33
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW OCTOBER 2001
The Strange Death of Margarita Marcellini 1 153
if he had been signed . . . When I replied no, a woman said that there was a person
called Benedetta . . . who signed and had good hands for signing."36
Gaspara and her husband, failed by male doctors, on the advice of local women
turned to a healing woman with good hands. The first time they went to visit
Benedetta, Gaspara did not observe her signing, but she reported, "She said to me
that my husband would recover . . . and she told me to bring her a shirt of his so that
she could sign [over] it. So the next day I brought her one of my husband's shirts . . .
She took it and began . . . making the sign of the cross with her hand over the shirt,
saying, 'In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen,' adding
'Sweet God, Sweet Virgin Mary I cannot do this without you, thus I pray that you
must liberate this poor person from this infirmity."37 Once the signing was
completed, Benedetta assured her that her husband would be cured, and Gaspara
confirmed that he had recovered quickly. In fact, she was so pleased with the signing
cure that she recommended Benedetta to others unsatisfied with their doctors.
Benedetta was quite proud of her signing cures when called before the Holy
Office. She began her testimony, "I am called Benedetta . My profession is to sign
with Easter candles that are lighted and with holy water. I sign children who have
some male." Her interrogators encouraged her to continue, and she explained:
"The child that has a male . . . T ask its name. And let's say its name is Benedetta,
I say, `Benedetta you have come here because you wish to be signed so that Christ
and the Blessed Virgin Mary give you your health and San Liberale is able to
liberate you from this sickness. Christ, with the Sweet Virgin Mary, first puts
forward his holy hand, and then I put forward mine [so that] San Liberale is able
to liberate you totally from this male.' Then I make the sign of the cross over that
creature starting at the head, and as I sign I say, 'In the name of the Father and the
Son and the Holy Spirit the mate that is found on Benedetta is lifted off her
completely.. . .' And while I say these words I go on signing the baby and I hold an
Easter candle lighted in one hand. Then I have the sick child put out the candle if
they are able to do so, if not I do it myself. When they have put out the candle I say,
`Thus you have put out all your male . . . Finally I take some holy water and with that
I sign the child again."38
Although the signing cures of healers show a wide and fascinating variation, most
share common features with Benedetta's. Crossing is the central aspect of the ritual.
As I have discussed elsewhere, the making of the sign of the cross was a common
gesture in the early modern Catholic world.39 It carried with it a host of meanings,
but what was perhaps most controversial in signing to heal was that it was not a
personal gesture but a social one—Benedetta signed another person. In a society
very visually attuned to the meaning of gestures, every gesture had the potential to
express deep meaning, and making the sign of the cross over another had the
potential to express the deepest powers of Christianity. No wonder that healers
were so eager to appropriate this gesture in their holy cures, and in turn it is small
wonder that when the church began to examine more closely how Christianity fit
S.U., Busta 68, case of Benedetta Maranese, January 12, 1591.
S.U., Busta 68.
38 S.U., Busta 68.
39 See Ruggiero, Binding Passions, 153-54, 161-62.
36
37
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
OCTOBER 2001
1154
Guido Ruggiero
into the lives of everyday people, they decided that the signing of others was
something that should belong to the church alone.
THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF BENEDETTA'S SIGNING was as important, then, as the
spiritual, and, as already noted, this same mixing of social and spiritual was central
in reading the signs of illness. In this social evaluation of illness, gossip played a
crucial role and not necessarily a negative one. Neighbors who kept track of
disagreements and at a higher level ongoing vendettas were often ideally placed for
evaluating if a male was the result of some hammering magie or not. In this case,
most of the accusations before the Holy Office took a gossip-like form, suggesting
that very few people were willing directly to accuse anyone of witchcraft; rather,
they reported what others said to them on the issue. It should be noted, however,
such people put the accusations of witchcraft in the mouths of others at the same
time they were constructing a record of signs that virtually required the Holy Office
to conclude witchcraft was the cause of Margarita's death.
Returning to Margarita's fatal illness, the social context of her suffering was
stressed in the testimony of one of her servants, Giulia Boziola. Giulia had lived
with Margarita for more than twenty-two years and considered herself a close friend
of the deceased. When the Holy Office asked her if she knew if Margarita had been
bewitched, she answered, "It is difficult to judge securely whether she was
bewitched or not, but in my opinion from the signs that were seen, I truly believe
that she was bewitched." The Holy Office asked immediately about those signs, and
she took them along the now familiar path already outlined by Ottavio Rati and
Pietro Marcellini." Giulia, however, added some new signs: "That very day that the
witchcraft material was found . . . there came to visit the sick woman, Madonna
Grazimana, her sister." Although a visit by a sister might seem an unexceptional
event, Giulia's phrase "that very day" may well be another sign. Timing was also
crucial in the social dimension of witchcraft, for witches knew when their spells had
been disturbed and often reacted immediately.
An interesting case that reveals this aspect of timing in a witch's monitoring and
responding to his own spells, even being forced to respond to his own spell, was
tried in Modena in the 1590s. There, a certain Gasparo Massacci was accused of
having bewitched various people. The husband of one of his victims, Pietro Navis,
used some counter-magic involving the beating and boiling of articles of clothing
that had touched the skin of his wife to force a response from the witch responsible.
In fact, while he boiled stockings and a kerchief of hers, two servants beat one of
her blouses. As they were carrying out these tortures of her clothing, a large,
strange black cat showed up to observe the proceedings. Everyone was aware that
this was her bewitcher, and the cat was chased with clubs, only just managing to
40 S.U., Busta 72. Her tale and signs are by now familiar: "First she [Margarita] had a sore over her
lip. It was very large and not like normal ones that last three or four days. It lasted the whole month
of August even though it was treated and medicated carefully." She continued: "When she had
recovered from that she got three sores on one leg that lasted three entire months, even though the
barber surgeon came every morning and evening to treat her. Then she began to have various pains in
the head, in the chest, and the flanks and her whole body was tormented." Again, these symptoms
persisted until the extensive witchcraft material was found in Margarita's bed.
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW OCTOBER 2001
The Strange Death of Margarita Marcellini 1 155
avoid one small cat massacre. But tellingly the very next day, the presumed witch,
Gasparo, showed up in person to speak with his victim. After some interesting
threats and diplomacy, he left, and Pietro's wife was suddenly liberated from her
suffering.41
Grazimana's visit elicited similar suspicions. "I told her about all those things that
we had found," Giulia noted, "and I wanted to show her, but she did not want to
see them." Grazimana's lack of curiosity was telling and along with the timing of her
visit aroused Giulia's suspicions. "She left immediately, and I looked in the mattress
again but did not find anything. But when I decided to remake the bed I found there
two beans and some millet, which seemed as if they had just come fresh from the
fields." The signs pointed at Grazimana in Giulia's account. But nicely, she put her
accusation in the mouth of another, reporting, "The surgeon who had been treating
Margarita's sores . . . was surprised that he could not cure her . .. and suggested
that some relative who visited her in her house had had her bewitched."42 Still, one
might wonder why Margarita's own sister would want to cause her death. Never
fear, for Giulia and others the reason was evident—Margarita had taken a
handsome dowry with her to her second husband, and that dowry would remain in
his hands until her death. Then it would be returned to her natal family, as required
by Venetian law. In the social and economie context of the transfer of women from
one family to another through marriage, Margarita was a significant asset to her
husband and a discrete loss to her own family.43 Her sister's suspicious visits took
on a whole new meaning in this light, and Giulia thoughtfully informed the Holy
Office about several comments made by relatives of Grazimana regarding how
Margarita's wealth would return to them at her death. Again, telling signs.
A CASE OF WITCHCRAFT required one last element—Giulia's tale had arrived at the
point where a witch was necessary. Pietro Marcellini had already testified that
suspicions had pointed at a maid in his service named Menega who had always been
close to his wife's family. Giulia's account nicely reinforced Pietro's. She reported
that one day she had found Menega with a daughter of Grazimana's, named
Lucieta, in their home practicing love magie designed to bind to the latter a lover."
The innuendo was clear: if Menega knew binding love magie, she most probably
knew the binding and hammering magie that was used against Margarita, as much
love magie was based on a similar approach.45 Giulia reported that she had
encountered that same niece of Margarita's at the door of the kitchen upstairs, "and
I found . . . that Menega with Lucieta had put out the lights. I asked them where
they had been and where they were going, but they did not answer me . . . Lucieta
later told my mistress [Margarita] that Menega had been teaching her love magie
41
Modena, Inquisitione, Busta 9, fase. 4, pt. e, case of Gasparo Massacci f. q. Gasparo, 1598-1604.
42
S.U., Busta 72.
The dowry system of Venice has been extensively studied by Stanley Chojnacki; see Women and
Men in Renaissance Venice: Twelve Essays on Patrician Society (Baltimore, 2000), a collection of his most
important articles on the subject.
44 S.U., Busta 72. According to Pietro's account, his wife had also been very suspicious of this maid,
and eventually they had sent her away, but not in time to save Margarita.
45 See Ruggiero, Binding Passions, esp. 88-129.
43
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
OCTOBER 2001
1
156
Guido Ruggiero
in the kitchen in order to win her lover Pietro and that Menega had made her enter
a circle drawn with coal . . . , and she said to my mistress that she should not tell me
as I was too scrupulous about such things. But the next morning she told me the
whole story and told me that I was not to tell anyone." 46
Giulia in turn told Pietro about the love magie, and that added to his suspicions;
as he reported to the Holy Office, "my maid told me about some witchcraft done by
Menega. Specifically Giulia said that Menega had taught some kind of witchcraft to
a niece of Margarita's ... to make herself loved." 47 Menega's knowledge and use of
love magic was the smoking gun. Along with all the signs found in Margarita's bed
and the strange incurable nature of her male—which responded only to holy
objects, holy oils, and signing—for all intents and purposes, it proved that poor
Margarita had died a painful death bewitched by her own maid at the behest of her
natal family.
The strange death of Margarita was virtually solved for the early seventeenth
century, but Pietro had one last sign to drop—common opinion: "It was a common
opinion in my house and outside as well," he noted, "that these ills were caused or
made to be caused by those who wanted her property, that is, in order to make her
die quickly. And my wife never directly told me this . . . but I noticed that she was
very wary of her natal family . . . And moreover, her sister is . . . a friend of the said
Menega." 48 The case against Menega and Margarita's family seems clear from the
perspective of early modern medicine and its signs, and Pietro had laid it out
nicely. 49
There was, however, another side to the strange death of Margarita, another tale
of signs to be read and worth briefly recounting here for the sake of our detective
story and also to underscore what should be clear by now, that reading the signs of
illness was a very complex and difficult business in the pre-modern world. The best
account of that other reading comes from a member of her natal family, Lucieta,
wife of Giovanni Vendramin, the same Lucieta who had been supposedly involved
with Menega in using love magic to win a lover. She denied any involvement in such
things, claiming that she was young and optimistic about her chances in love without
magic. She also strongly denied that Menega was a witch. 50 But the key to Lucieta's
counter-case came when she was asked directly by the Holy Office, "Do you know
if the said Madonna Margarita was bewitched by anyone and [if so] by whom?" She
replied, "My lords, no. I do not know that she was bewitched. I know very well that
they were saying that in her house, but they did not know it." 5 ' In fact, she had her
S.U., Busta 72.
S.U., Busta 72.
48 S.U., Busta 72.
46 But in laying before the Holy Office the signs that pointed toward witchcraft, Pietro may not have
been entirely concerned with seeing a witch punished and justice done to the murderers of his wife; for
conveniently if he proved his case against Menega and his wife's natal family, he would have had a good
case for claiming that he should not return her dowry. Perhaps this is an unkind and modern reading
of yet another set of signs in the strange death of Margarita, but it is certainly another possible reading.
50 S.U., Busta 72. In this context, she added, "It is very true, however, that Giulia is a disgrace, but
I still would not claim that she is a witch, because one must tell the truth." Cleverly showing her
moderation in not labeling Giulia a witch, she nonetheless began to undermine her damaging testimony
by suggesting that she was a disgrace and thus not reliable.
51 S.U., Busta 72. She then went on to narrate briefly a failed marriage proposal between herself and
a son of Pietro by a previous marriage, intimating that Margarita had broken up the affair, creating
46
47
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW OCTOBER 2001
The Strange Death of Margarita Marcellini
1157
own theory about the strange death of Margarita. "And as far as I am concerned,"
she added, "I believe that it was that doctor, her husband, who was the cause of her
death. He filled her up with the mal francese [syphilis]. He did it just like he did to
that other woman, that is, his first wife, who died of it also."52
Suddenly, the signs so carefully marshaled to prove witchcraft take on another
meaning Suddenly, our detective story has become a postmodern parable on signs
and their disconcerting ability to shift in meaning. Re-reading those signs: those
open sores that would not go away even with the best cures now read syphilis, those
bodily aches and pains that could not be diagnosed or cured now read syphilis. And
when finally the local friar was called in to sign poor Margarita and her condition
seemed to improve, it was not the signing or the Holy Oil or relics that cured her,
but merely that the symptoms of syphilis had gone into remission. When they
reappeared, it was not due to some new bewitching materials added to her bed fresh
from the fields, it was because the syphilis given her by her husband had reentered
its active phase.
The strange death of Margarita seems not so strange at all. But, of course, we
think we have solved the death of Margarita, because at the turn of a new
millennium syphilis makes the best case for the signs that we accept. Yet have we
already forgotten all those strange things in her bed? Have we forgotten the
animosities that swirled around Margarita in her social world and the good reasons
that her natal family had to use such magic against her? Have we forgotten the
telling timing of her sister's visit? Have we forgotten that Menega seems to have
practiced similar forms of magie, was very close to Grazimana, and had every
opportunity to bewitch her mistress? And have we forgotten the spiritual cures that
relieved Margarita's suffering? In sum, we need to forget a host of early modern
signs to have our modern diagnosis of the male that took Margarita's life.
In the end, we will not know for sure what caused the strange death of Margarita
Marcellini, but I hope this small detective story has revealed the parameters of a
much more complex world of signs that had to be left behind (a long, slow, and
never entirely successful process) before the program of modern medicine and
science could be fully realized. Certainly medicine would be professionalized and
women and folk healers disempowered, but crucially the world and the body had to
be reduced to simple physical propositions before modern medicine and science
could be fully practiced. And in turn, a complex everyday world and culture loaded
with signs and meanings had to be cut away. In that world, Menega could have been
a witch and Margarita her victim.
animosities within her marital family that led to her death. She reported that Pietro's son in the face
of his stepmother's opposition to their marriage had said simply, "She [Margarita] is quite old, and her
eyes will soon be closed." Tit for tat, sign for sign, if Margarita's marital family claimed that she had
been bewitched by her natal family to regain her dowry, her natal family could claim that her eyes had
been closed by her marital family! One is tempted to ruefully remark, "what tangled webs these sorry
mortals weave," if it had not already been said.
52 S.U., Busta 72. On the mal francese in the early modern period, see John Arrizabalaga, John
Henderson, and Roger French, The Great Pox: The French Disease in Renaissance Europe (New Haven,
Conn., 1997), published, unfortunately, without a bibliography. A wide-ranging and suggestive essay
still worth consulting is Anna Foa, "The New and the Old: The Spread of Syphilis (1494-1530)," in
Muir and Ruggiero, Sex and Gender, 26-45.
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW OCTOBER 2001
1158
Guido Ruggiero
Tellingly, however, for some, that world was already beginning to pass away, and
curiously institutions like the Holy Office and Inquisition, often antithetical to the
modern and to science, were playing a significant, if rather unintentional, role in
delegitimizing it, as the final words in Margarita's case suggest. On the back of the
folios that make up the case there is written nihil probatum, "nothing proven," and
the case was dropped. 53 All the signs so carefully presented to the Holy Office were
no longer sufficient in their eyes to prove the cause of Margarita's strange death.
53
S.U., Busta 72.
Guido Ruggiero holds the Josephine Berry Weiss Chair in the Humanities and
is a professor of history and women's studies at Pennsylvania State University.
He received his PhD from UCLA in 1972 and has published widely on the
history of crime, sex, gender, and the everyday culture of the Renaissance.
Although he began his career as a social-science social historian with an
interest in quantitative history, his interests have expanded toward yet more
interdisciplinary approaches, including microhistory, narrative history, and the
melding of literature, literary criticism, and archival history. He has lectured
and taught in Italy, England, France, and Argentina, as well as Canada and the
United States, and won fellowships from the American Philosophical Society,
the Delmas Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the
Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, Harvard's Villa I Tatti, and the
Guggenheim Foundation. He has served on the executive board of the
Renaissance Society of America and on the Committee for Women Historians
of the AHA. Among other volumes, he has published Sex and Gender in
Historical Perspective (1990), Microhistoty and the Lost Peoples of Europe
(1991), and History from Crime (1994), all edited with Edward Muir, as well as
Violente in Early Renaissance Venice (1980), The Boundaries of Eros: Sex Crime
and Sexuality in Renaissance Venice (1985), and Binding Passions: Tales of
Magic, Marriage and Power at the End of the Renaissance (1993). In addition, he
has edited with Judith Brown the series "Studies in the History of Sexuality" for
Oxford University Press and was a co-editor of the six-volume Encyclopedia of
European Social History for Scribner's (2000). His forthcoming publications
include The Blackwell Companion to the Worlds of the Renaissance (a volume
with twenty-eight essays by major scholars in the field that rethinks the idea of
the Renaissance), in press at Blackwell's, and Five Comedies from the Italian
Renaissance (Machiavelli's "The Mandrake Root," Bibbiena's "La Calandra,"
Aretino's "Il Marescalco," the Intronati's "The Deceived," and the anonymous
"La Veniexiana"), translated and edited with Laura Giannetti, in press at Johns
Hopkins. At present, he is working on a long-term study of conceptions of the
body, the spirit, and the cosmos in the everyday culture of the Renaissance
(from which the present article is drawn) and a volume of studies on sex and
identity in the Renaissance based on archival and literary material tentatively
titled "Machiavelli in Love and Other Essays on Sex and Identity in the
Renaissance."
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW OCTOBER 2001