Girolamo Tartarotti


Girolamo Tartarotti was an Italian abbot, Neo-Platonist, and writer, primarily famed for his works on witchcraft.

Life

Tartarotti was born at Rovereto near Trent and studied at the University of Padua. For a time, he formed part of the entourage of Marco Foscarini, who later served as doge of Venice.
Following the execution of the elderly nun Maria Renata Singer on charges of witchcraft, he took part in the academic debate over the witchcraft trials of his time, attempting to strike a middle ground which—against Martin Delrio and Benedetto Bonelli—dismissed most purported claims of witchcraft while, on the grounds of its appearance in scripture, upholding the existence of sorcery against the skepticism of Scipione Maffei and Count Carli. The equivocation such a position entailed was first refuted by Bonelli in 1751.

Works

Abbot Tartarotti's on the Nocturnal Congress of the Lamia—composed in 1748 but delayed from publication by the Venetian Inquisition until 1750—proposed that witchcraft was an organized religion descended from the Romans' cults of Diana and Erodiade. This was an unpopular and heterodox idea, and he was obliged to restate some points in an apologia two years later. He had the sermons of the Jesuit Georg Gaar, one of the clerics responsible for Sister Maria's execution, translated into Italian so as to publish his own attacks against the man's points. He defended the existence of witchcraft, however, and won the vast majority of Italian academics to his side of the debate.
Published in Raccolta d'opuscoli scientifici e filologici edited by Angelo Calogerà:
Published posthumously:
revived the concept of witchcraft as a survival of the cult of Diana in the 1970s.

Citations