In 1717 the court at Nogaredo, a few miles down the valley from Rovereto, burned a woman named Domenica Pedrotti as a witch. Girolamo Tartarotti was a boy of eleven. Thirty years later, an abbot now and a scholar with a taste for a fight, he published this book against the whole machinery that had killed her.
Del Congresso Notturno delle Lammie, On the Nocturnal Congress of the Witches, takes the witches’ sabbat apart. The nocturnal gathering, Tartarotti argued, never happened anywhere. It was a delusion descended from the old pagan cult of Diana, and the women who confessed to it confessed out of torture or out of what he called mad brains — “a fantastic belief, the work of crazy brains and strange heads.” We should say, though, that Tartarotti still believed in magic. Demons were real, magicians were real; only the witches were invented. As our good Dr. Justin Sledge argues in the Esoterica channel’s short on this book, Tartarotti should be placed in the line of Weyer, Scot, and Bekker, the questioners who wore the witch craze down by “the ever unpopular business of public critical thinking.” That’s to say, they just asked, “is there any real evidence for any of this?” The Venetian Inquisition held the book up for two years before it could appear. It appeared anyway, argument intact, with Count Gianrinaldo Carli’s letter on the origin and falsity of the doctrine of magicians and witches bound in at the end (pp. 317–350), and Tartarotti’s response to it (pp. 351–447). Tartarotti was known for never letting anyone else have the last word.
The book was effective. Half the learned men of Italy were pulled into the quarrel that followed, jurisprudence began to reform, and the trials themselves were finished within a generation. When the witch craze ended in Italy, this book could take some of the credit.
Our copy is the first edition in its original state: a quarto in the period paper binding, the edges uncut from the printer: the book as it reached its first reader, never rebound, never trimmed. The frontispiece is printed in red and black. Some waterstaining toward the top of the pages, the usual foxing and browning; a wide-margined, honest copy of a book that is usually found rebound and cut down.
TARTAROTTI, Girolamo (1706–1761). Del Congresso Notturno delle Lammie. Rovereto: a spese di Giambatista Pasquali, 1749. First edition.
Physical Description: Quarto (230 x 180 mm). xxxii, 460 [i.e. 458], [2] pp. Frontispiece in red and black. With Count Gianrinaldo Carli’s “Lettera… intorno all’origine e falsità della dottrina de’ Maghi e delle Streghe” (pp. 317–350) and Tartarotti’s “Risposta” (pp. 351–447).
Binding: Period paper over boards, edges uncut from the printer.
Condition: Some waterstaining to the top of pages, typical foxing and browning. A good, unsophisticated copy in original state.
In 1717 the court at Nogaredo, a few miles down the valley from Rovereto, burned a woman named Domenica Pedrotti as a witch. Girolamo Tartarotti was a boy of eleven. Thirty years later, an abbot now and a scholar with a taste for a fight, he published this book against the whole machinery that had killed her.
Del Congresso Notturno delle Lammie, On the Nocturnal Congress of the Witches, takes the witches’ sabbat apart. The nocturnal gathering, Tartarotti argued, never happened anywhere. It was a delusion descended from the old pagan cult of Diana, and the women who confessed to it confessed out of torture or out of what he called mad brains — “a fantastic belief, the work of crazy brains and strange heads.” We should say, though, that Tartarotti still believed in magic. Demons were real, magicians were real; only the witches were invented. As our good Dr. Justin Sledge argues in the Esoterica channel’s short on this book, Tartarotti should be placed in the line of Weyer, Scot, and Bekker, the questioners who wore the witch craze down by “the ever unpopular business of public critical thinking.” That’s to say, they just asked, “is there any real evidence for any of this?” The Venetian Inquisition held the book up for two years before it could appear. It appeared anyway, argument intact, with Count Gianrinaldo Carli’s letter on the origin and falsity of the doctrine of magicians and witches bound in at the end (pp. 317–350), and Tartarotti’s response to it (pp. 351–447). Tartarotti was known for never letting anyone else have the last word.
The book was effective. Half the learned men of Italy were pulled into the quarrel that followed, jurisprudence began to reform, and the trials themselves were finished within a generation. When the witch craze ended in Italy, this book could take some of the credit.
Our copy is the first edition in its original state: a quarto in the period paper binding, the edges uncut from the printer: the book as it reached its first reader, never rebound, never trimmed. The frontispiece is printed in red and black. Some waterstaining toward the top of the pages, the usual foxing and browning; a wide-margined, honest copy of a book that is usually found rebound and cut down.
TARTAROTTI, Girolamo (1706–1761). Del Congresso Notturno delle Lammie. Rovereto: a spese di Giambatista Pasquali, 1749. First edition.
Physical Description: Quarto (230 x 180 mm). xxxii, 460 [i.e. 458], [2] pp. Frontispiece in red and black. With Count Gianrinaldo Carli’s “Lettera… intorno all’origine e falsità della dottrina de’ Maghi e delle Streghe” (pp. 317–350) and Tartarotti’s “Risposta” (pp. 351–447).
Binding: Period paper over boards, edges uncut from the printer.
Condition: Some waterstaining to the top of pages, typical foxing and browning. A good, unsophisticated copy in original state.
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