It could happen that the fear of a spirit, put in motion by another deeper anxiety, provoked a
- so immense was the power of the imaginary - not in some remote Apennine village, but in a ducal city of the plain: Modena. Not in the 'barbaric' centuries of the 'dark' Middle Ages, but in a [...] century, [...] on the path of the pre-Enlightenment."
(Camporesi 1996, '8. Night-time'', pp. 92-94)
, which dwelt under the sign of the divinities of the night, disorder and the protector of thieves,
. As Sabba Castiglione apprehensively warned in his
which the darkness covered in its deep, faceless anonymity; to ghosts, spirits of the dead returned among the living, incubi, goblins, and witches, who silently glided to suck the blood of children or, atop brooms and pitchforks, went to the witches' sabbath.
"
The peasants, who saw in the dark like cats, loped along silently,
feeling the articulations, divisions and fragments of the nocturnal hours almost physically, measuring them by the stars with an awareness so precise as to appear astonishing today.
After sunset they wandered along footpaths shadowed by the night,
living almost a second life, finally free of every control: hunting with a reflecting lantern [...], of the kind used in night fishing. The anonymous author of the
De natura rusticorum [15th C] speaks of them in terms of nocturnal animals, children of the devil, 'cursed dragons', mobile like birds in their movements.
'Vagabundi sunt ut oves' ['
They are vagabonds like the birds'], stirring in the shadows and softly breathing, with their cloaks hovering like owls: 'Nocte vadunt ut bubones' ['
At night they make their way like owls'].
They went to secret enclosures in order to abandon themselves to forbidden games and dances. 'They are to be found at licentious threshings and prohibited games,' anathematized the members of the curia, obsessed by that ghost of the agrarian orgy, the demonic sabbath (the 'licentious threshings'), and its lunar variant,
entrusted to the authority of the Lady of the Night."
"
The night, experienced as a time of anguish, was held in sharp contrast to the solar day: a kind of day
à l'envers. It
was a criminal time that filled every statute, and which jurisprudence (medieval as well as seventeenth century) took into consideration in order to stiffen the punishments for certain crimes perpetrated after sunset. 'It is not by chance that medieval
legislation punished crimes committed at night with an extraordinary force.' [J. Le Goff, quoted in J.-L. Goglin, Les misérables dans l'Occident médiéval (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1976), p. 204)] For
nocturnal stercoratio ('defecating') on walls and doors the
1567 statutes of Ferrara provided severe punishments."
(Camporesi 1996, '8. Night-time'', p. 98)
[In
1605 Strozzi Cicogna published
Palagio degli Incanti, a Thomistic treatise. In this work, the author affirms that to "defeat" demons we should look for their past, be it angelic or demonic. It is an attempt to reconstruct the demons' biography in order to find out its connections with human beings. (
Project Muse, dd. 17/06/2016)(zie ook Armando Maggi. In the Company of Demons: Unnatural Beings, Love, and Identity in the Italian Renaissance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006)]
"
Terrifying apparitions, ghosts, goblins, spells and collective hallucinations spread by uncontrollable rumours,
disturbed the nights (difficult and uneasy like the days) of 'modern' age men:
un-sought-after supplements of shivers and frights that were added to the terror of plague, hunger and war ('a bello, peste e fame libera nos Domine'; 'from war, plague and hunger deliver us O Lord'). The
spirits of evil were the
masters of the elements: arbiters of the meteorological and climatic mysteries. The subterranean goblins conspired to increase human anguish with earthquakes.
Demons, spectres and angels roamed about the streets of the city in the heart of darkness:
'All the people,' recounted Strozzi Cicogna, 'saw every night with their own eyes one of these spectres who wandered about the city at midnight with an angel.' [Cicogna, Strozzi.
Del palagio de gl’incanti, & delle gran meraviglie de gli spiriti, & di tutta la natura loro. Diviso in libri XXXXV. & in III. prospettive. Spirituale, celeste, et elementare. Vicenza, Roberto Miglietti, 1605, p. 275]
The angels who brandished swords were threathening signals of
imminent calamities. Several of
Pompeo Viz[z]ani's [1540-1607] pages offer a not exhaustive yet strongly indicative sampling of the natural scourges and imaginary fears that tormented the existence of other times. A page of the Bolognese chronicle relating to
1504 told how:
'already
a great living famine had begun... where cries and laments were heard everywhere. Furthermore, the citizens were sorrowful because they oftentimes saw several
fearful signs, which indicated impending ruin: since there blew strong and violent
winds which destroyed many houses and uprooted quite a few trees; and from the sky descended water and
storm in such quantity and accompanied by so much lightning, thunder and flashing that everyone was left dumbfounded. Still another amazing thing appeared in the so-called 'Sala' fields twelve miles from Bologna: at midday in those fields several
shadows were seen from afar which, caused by
meteorological impressions,
seemed to be eighteen or twenty men dressed in white, red and black, and they seemed to be fighting among themselves. And when anyone approached to try and see them
at close range, they saw
nothing at all; and to those who remained far away i
t seemed as if those who had approached were conversing with the ghosts, which appeared for a good many days, during which time many curious citizens went to see them. It was during this time that certain Observant Friars, who lived in the monastery of Saint Paul of the Observance, located in the Apennines two miles from the city, related that they had seen an
Angel, who, situated above Bologna, threatened the people with his unsheathed sword in hand. While the citizens were full of bewilderment because of these things, Giovanni Bentivogli was waiting to celebrate.
During this year in the month of
December it seemed as if sweet spring wanted to appear, since the weather was so pleasing and the air so
mild that the trees began to
bloom and send forth their flowerlets, and everywhere was seen roses, lilies, violets and other
flowers and many
fruits that usually appear at the beginning of spring. But prudent men did not have a very good opinion of this; in fact, they doubted whether this unusual novelty did not
threaten some great ruin. Nor were they exactly misled in their thinking, because on the last day of that year the
earth began to
tremble during the night, and that trembling lasted for around a quarter of an hour, causing much damage and ruin to the houses throughout the whole city, where the citizens were very much afraid. And so with e
veryone frightened of the coming of the year 1505 and the
earthquake often becoming stronger, it
lasted for forty days, so that every hour there were seen new ruins and ravages of churches, towers, palaces and finally, of almost all the citizens' houses, who,
in attempting to escape death... lived outside the houses, in gardens and other uncovered places, under awnings and canopies, and many even in wine barrels...
At the same time the living
famine continued to grow in such a way that many poor men died of hunger, not being able to find nourishment for themselves. And when some bakery occasionally made bread to sell, the magistrates had to supply an armed guard for its defence, otherwise it was put to the sack by the famished populace. Even the peasants, who suffered the same hunger, were forced to eat the roots of herbs, and other less nourishing things... With the oats beginning to ripen in the month of
June,
the famine began to let up little by little; and finally, because of the very good harvest, there was an abundance of everything.
But, since the
plague had been discovered in many cities of Italy, and in the end in Bologna as well, the citizens could not live without much difficulty, because of this as well as another disease called the
hammer sickness...
Of this disease died not only a very large number of commoners but sixteen doctors as well, all of them important. [P. Viz[z]ani,
Diece libri delle historie della sua patria (Bologna, 1596) (ch. 7, n. 6), pp. 452-5. For the 'symptoms of collective anguish', cf. B. Farolfi,
Strutture agrarie e crisi cittadina nel primo Cinquecento bolognese (Bologna: Patron, 1977), pp. 41 ff. For 'signs' and prophetic omens, cf. O. Niccoli, 'Profezie in piazza. Note sul profetismo popolare nell'Ialia del primo Cinquecento',
Quaderni Storici, 14 (1979),:
Religioni delle classi popolari, ed. C. Ginzburg, pp. 300-39.)]
Murderous
wolves in winter, and in summer swarms of
mosquitoes, flies and fleas (spreaders of the plague) tormented the poveri homini of the Apennine villages like those in Friuli. At least until the eighteenth century the image of the wolf as slaughterer of children and assassin of men (other than of sheep) was a fairly common nightmare everywhere. Numerous Friulian preenti (
'spells') survive in Inquisitorial trials begun against those who searched for a magical defence against those beasts and, in general, against the hostile forces of incomprehensible nature. The
plague was continually lying in wait, along with
cholera and
intestinal fevers.
Medicine and magical practices (hellebore root cut and applied to the extremity of the limbs) confusedly attempted to keep away the diseases of unknown aetiology. One of the pages written by
Dr Spinelli in
1598 offers a striking picture of the merciless harshness of living.
'At Cividale del Friuli wolves had killed abandoned animals, children and men during the winter; in summer, with the heat and dryness at their worst, along with many apricots, there were gnats,
fleas and many flies, and recurring
fevers with rashes grew strong and continuous, as well as
diarrhoea and
cholera which were soon treated with minor cutting of a vein [
blood-letting] or purgation.
With summer and the real heat increasing, burning fevers, rashes, worms, diarrhoea and vomiting raged, although veins were repaired surgically. Children marked by rashes and spots, despite having bad symptoms, were almost all saved.
At the beginning of autumn the plague appeared, with its agonizing and putrid fever, accompanied by worms and abundant diarrhoea. Those whose pulses were strong at the beginning suffered from
watery urine and most
severe headaches: looking like owls, their pains were always assuaged in cavernous gloom.
Hellebore root [zie onder] had to be cut and fixed to certain peoples' extremities before the flesh benefited. Suffering from urine on the third day, as from most disorders, on the fourth day one finally died, pulse indistinct and weak: neither
bezoar [zie
Bread of Dreams - Digest: '5. 'They Rotted in Their Own Dung'']
nor
Armenian stone [zie onder] was of any use. This plague was milder at the beginning; the meaner and viler of the oppressed were afflicted. [quoted in Moreali,
Della febbri maligne e contagiose [ca. 1746] (ch. 3, n. 30), p. 117.)]'
 |
| 19th century illustration of Helleborus niger |
"
In the early days of medicine, two kinds of hellebore [nieskruid] were recognized: black hellebore, which included various species of Helleborus, and white hellebore, now known as Veratrum album, which belongs to a different plant family, the Melanthiaceae. Although the latter plant is highly toxic, containing veratrine and the teratogens cyclopamine and jervine, it is believed to be the "hellebore" used by Hippocrates as a purgative.
"Black hellebore" was used by the ancients in paralysis, gout and other diseases, more particularly in insanity. "Black hellebore" is also toxic, causing tinnitus, vertigo, stupor, thirst, a feeling of suffocation, swelling of the tongue and throat, emesis (vomiting), catharsis, bradycardia (slowing of the heart rate), and finally, collapse and death from cardiac arrest. Although Helleborus niger (black hellebore) contains protoanemonin, or ranunculin, which has an acrid taste and can cause burning of the eyes, mouth, and throat, oral ulceration, gastroenteritis, and hematemesis, research in the 1970s showed that the roots of H. niger do not contain the cardiotoxic compounds helleborin, hellebrin, and helleborein that are responsible for the lethal reputation of "black hellebore". It seems that earlier studies may have used a commercial preparation containing a mixture of material from other species such as Helleborus viridis, green hellebore." (Wikipedia, dd. 19/06/2016)
"De Helleborus soorten zijn vaste winter- of lentebloeiende planten met vlezige wortels, soms rizomen (Helleborus vesicarius). De oudere wortels zijn dikwijls donkerder, zelfs zwart. (...) De naam nieskruid danken de planten aan de medicinale toepassing. De gedroogde en tot poeder vermalen wortels zorgen bij opsnuiven ervan dat er flink geniesd moet worden. De wortel is zeer giftig door het aanwezige helleborine, dat een diglycoside is en bitter smaakt. Verdere aanwezige gifstoffen zijn saponine en protoanemonine.
Door de Grieken werd het wortelpoeder gebruikt bij krankzinnigheid en aanvallen van epilepsie. Laxeermiddelen bevatten nog wel eens bestanddelen van de wortel van het nieskruid. Alexander de Grote (356 v.Chr. tot 323 v.Chr.) is mogelijk overleden aan een overdosis Nieskruid. Zekerheid is er niet, maar men speculeert al eeuwen over zijn eventuele overmatig gebruik van nieskruid." (Wikipedia, dd. 19/06/2016)]
"Lapis armenus, also known as Armenian stone or lapis stellatus, in natural history, is a variety of precious stone, resembling lapis lazuli, except that it is softer, and instead of veins of pyrite, is intermixed with green. "The Armenian stone" is so nearly identical to lapis lazuli that it has often not been distinguished from it;[...] British History Online defines lapis armenus as "Armenian stone, or azurite, a naturally occurring basic COPPER carbonate, originally from Armenia, but later from Germany, from which BLUE BICE was prepared. It was often found in association with another copper carbonate, malachite from which GREEN BICE was prepared (...) [Jo Kirby of the National Gallery London notes the occurrence of the pigment bice in three grades in an account of Tudor painting at Greenwich Palace in 1527. In this case, the three grades indicate the use of the mineral azurite rather than a manufactured blue copper carbonate. Similarly, green bice in other 16th century-records may sometimes have been the mineral malachite. Ian Bristow, a historian of paint, concluded that the pigment blue bice found in records of British interior-decoration until the first half of the 17th century was azurite. The expensive natural mineral azurite was superseded by manufactured blue verditer (Wikipedia, dd. 19/06/2016)]
Herman Boerhaave believed it rather to rank among semi-metals, and supposed it was composed of both metal and earth. He added that it only differs from lazuli in degree of maturity, and that both of them seem to contain arsenic.
The Encyclopedia Perthensis of 1816 notes that Armenian stone "was anciently brought of Armenia" [...] It has been found in Tirol, Hungary, and Transylvania, and used [...] both in mosaic work, to make the blue color azure, and as a treatment of melancholia. (Wikipedia, dd. 19/06/2016)"
'Bracketed between the brief and rare moments of anxious and astonished tranquility, as soon as one scourge let up or disappeared, another still more terrifying punctually made its appearance, in a perverse alternation of illusory mirages of calm followed by pitiless gusts of horrible calamities. The demonically wicked direction of human events added the extra of an almost permanent social marasmus to the tangled situation. To the 'brawls, disputes, [and] killings' in the cities corresponded exactly the 'continuous killings, burning down of houses, rapes, thefts and thousand other sorts of despoiling' in the countryside, tormented by the bloody struggles and feuds of peasant gangs and clans: by 'evil killers', 'ruffians', and by 'cutthroats, by thieves and by bandits'. [Viz[z]ani, I due ultimi libri delle historie della sua patria, (ch. 7, n. 2), pp. 81-2]
The douceur de vivre of the ancien regime was a myth enjoyed solely by a few privileged aristocrats, [...] or by the scerni del villaggio ('village idiots'), luckily graced with the sad privilege of insanity, the only one available to the wretched poor.'"
(Camporesi 1996, '8. Night-time'', pp. 99-102)
