A new
book of magic was to be consecrated, and the best place for the
ceremony was among the mountains in that district. The master of the
magician had once, it is true, done the same thing near the abbey of
Farfa, but had there found difficulties which did not present
themselves at Norcia; further, the peasants in the latter neighborhood
were trustworthy people who had had practice in the matter, and who
could afford considerable help in case of need. The expedition did not
take place, else Benvenuto would probably have been able to tell us
something of the impostor's assistants. The whole neighborhood was then
proverbial. Aretino says somewhere of an enchanted well, 'there dwell
the sisters of the sibyl of Norcia and the aunt of the Fata Gloriana.'
And about the same time Trissino could still celebrate the place in his
great epic with all the resources of poetry and allegory as the home of
authentic prophecy.
After the notorious Bull of Innocent VIII (1484), witchcraft and the
persecution of witches grew into a great and revolting system. The
chief representatives of this system of persecution were German
Dominicans; and Germany and, curiously enough, those parts of Italy
nearest Germany were the countries most afflicted by this plague. The
bulls and injunctions of the Popes themselves refer, for example, to
the Dominican Province of Lombardy, to Cremona, to the dioceses of
Brescia and Bergamo.
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