Ensuenos de Razon: El cuento inserto en tratados de magia (Siglos XVI y XVII).
Burnett, Charles
Maria Jesus Zamora Calvo. Ensuenos de Razon: El cuento inserto en
tratados de magia (Siglos XVI y XVII).
Biblioteca Aurea Hispanica 31. Frankfurt: Vervuert, 2005. 252 pp.
index. bibl. [euro]36. ISBN: 84-8489-131-3.
The title of this book implies that the main subject matter will be
the stories included in books of magic in the sixteenth and seventeenth
century. This would have added a valuable new element to the extensive
recent literature on Renaissance and early modern magic. One is a little
disappointed to find that only forty pages of the book give examples of
the stories themselves, and that the majority of these come from only
three sources: the works of Martino del Rio, Francesco Maria Guaccio
(who is largely dependent on del Rio), and Strozzi Cigogna. Zamora Calvo
claims that she has compiled some 2,500 stories that she will catalogue
in future publications. This book may turn out to be a kind of
introduction to such a catalogue, when it appears.
The book's aim is very laudable: to rescue from oblivion a
genre of literature (the stories within texts concerning magic) and to
study the contents, structure, and style of this genre. Zamora Calvo
wishes to counter the popular view that magic is incompatible with a
period that is regarded as an age of reason, but rather sees the
transition from Renaissance to Baroque as a period more conducive than
any previous period for the cohabitation of magic and reason. This is
what makes this age particularly rich in texts on magic. And these texts
are full of imaginative illustrative narrations, which are little known
to the modern reader.
More than half of the book is devoted to describing these books on
magic. Zamora Calvo catalogues them under the categories of general
magic, natural magic, occult philosophy, divinatory magic, love magic,
and demonology, which is subdivided into manuals for exorcists, texts on
witches, and manuals for inquisitors. Zamora Calvo's perspective
embraces the whole of Europe, but there is, as one might expect, a
significant Spanish component, which includes the authors Juan Perez de
Moya (1513-96), Martin de Castanega (ca. 1485-1555), Pedro Ciruelo (ca.
1475-ca. 1555), Paulo Grillando (fl. 1525-34), Francisco de Vitoria (ca.
1486-1546), Martin del Rio (1551-1608), Francisco Torreblanca
Villalpando (fl. 1618), and Pedro de Valencia (fl. 1610).
The second part of the book is entitled "the stories (cuentos)
inserted in the treatises on magic," but before dealing with the
stories themselves Zamora Calvo discusses at some length the terminology
for story--cuento, fabliella, estoria, novella, and so on--and defines
the categories exempla, nova, lai, fabliau, myth, miracle, and novellae.
This is interesting in itself, but deals with the subject in a general
way rather than through reference to magical texts themselves. These are
only brought in for the next section in which stories found in magical
texts are quoted to illustrate their subject matter (mysogyny, heresy,
the pact with the devil, intercourse with demons), their dramatis
personae (the witch, the magician, the devil, demons) and certain
characteristics (the world being populated with spirits, the importance
of personal testimony). Quotations from the stories are given, with
little comment. The reader has been led to expect more discussion of the
style, context, and purpose of the stories, and at least some reference
to which of the genres (exempla, lai, etc.) that have been previously
discussed they fall into. Zamora Calvo cites Huarte de San Juan as a
critic of the Latin written by Spanish writers, but does not discuss how
the Latin of her sources fails to meet classical standards. It is
unclear whether the several errors in the Latin--168,
"vistitu" for "vestitu"; 171, "vatiis" for
"variis"; 182, "fic" for "sic"; 198,
"recuta" for "reducta" (?); 200, "necio"
for "nescio," etc.--are due to the unreliability of sixteenth-
and seventeenth-century editions or are modern misprints.
In conclusion, this book remains more useful for its bibliography
on magic in the early modern period (understandably Spanish centered)
than for its account of the stories in textbooks on magic, which is a
topic that remains to be fully exploited.
CHARLES BURNETT
Warburg Institute
