Sixteenth Century Journal

XLI/3 (2010)
ISSN 0361-0160

Love Magic and the Inquisition:

A Case from Seventeenth-Century Italy
Jeffrey R. Watt
University of Mississippi
Whenever she was in the presence of her husband, the newlywed Laura Coccapani
was plagued by extraordinary woes, which witnesses attributed to demons. Conventional wisdom held that certain spells could cause people to be repulsed by their
spouses, and many believed Valerio Trionfanti, a Franciscan with whom Coccapani
once had a lengthy but unconsummated affair, had cast a spell. Launching an investigation in November 1628, the Inquisition of Modena arrested Trionfanti and found
that he possessed several items, including some of the victims pubic hairs, which
were widely believed to be powerful instruments in magical spells. Trionfanti
acknowledged the affair but emphatically denied having cast a spell, and the skeptical
Congregation of the Inquisition in Rome acquitted him in February 1629. This case
reflects the strong popular belief in love magic, its close resemblance to maleficia,
and the Holy Offices efforts to discredit its alleged efficacy.

ON 16 NOVEMBER 1628 a man approached the Inquisition of Modena to announce

that a close relative, Laura Coccapani of the town of Carpi, was suffering from
some very unusual ills. He alleged that love magic was the likely cause, and the
Holy Office duly launched an investigation, the registers of which provide a
valuable window to attitudes toward magic in early seventeenth-century Italy. The
registers of the Holy Office in Modena and elsewhere are filled with investigations
of love magic, which the Malleus Maleficarum, the most famous late medieval
treatise on witchcraft, described as the best known and most common form of
witchcraft.1 It has been suggested that the Modenese had a special penchant for
love magic, which was in fact the most common type of witchcraft or magic cases
that the Inquisition of Modena heard in the late sixteenth century.2 In this case
witnesses came forward and depicted an intense, though unconsummated,
relationship between Laura and a cleric which had lasted about five years.
Testimony revealed that several years earlier the Observant Franciscan Valerio
Trionfanti fell madly in love with Laura, who in turn fell so hopelessly in love with
the friar that members of her family believed that he had cast a spell on her.3 A
1Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, The Malleus Maleficarum, trans. and ed. Montague Summers (New York: Dover, 1971), 170.
2
Romano Canosa, Sessualit e Inquisizione in Italia tra Cinquecento e Seicento (Rome: Sapere
2000, 1994), 223.
3
Archivio di Stato di Modena (hereafter ASM), Inquisizione di Modena (hereafter Inq.), busta
(hereafter b.) 86, filza (hereafter f.) 2, fols. 1rv, 6v. On love magic in early modern Italy, see Mary
ONeil, Magical Healing, Love Magic and the Inquisition in Late Sixteenth-Century Modena, in
Inquisition and Society in Early Modern Europe, ed. Stephen Haliczer (London: Croom Helm, 1987),
88114; Guido Ruggiero, Binding Passions: Tales of Magic, Marriage, and Power at the End of the
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careful examination of this case will show that there was strong popular belief in
early modern Italy in the efficacy of love magic, the effects of which could appear
indistinguishable from those of maleficia. The leading authorities of the Roman
Inquisition, however, did not share these fears and tended to view such purported
spells more as superstitions than as genuine threats.
The investigation revealed that when the relationship was just beginning to
bud, Fra Valerio reportedly asked for and received from Laura a lock of her hair
and a rag stained with her own menstrual blood. These requests, especially for the
bloody rag, strike the modern viewer as odd, but for early modern Europeans they
immediately raised the specter of magic. Conventional wisdom, evident in both
the treatises of demonologists and in the testimony at trials of common folk, held
that articles such as these could serve as instruments of magic. According to
Girolamo Menghi (d. 1609), an expert on exorcism who spent much of his adult
life in nearby Bologna, spells usually involved an instrument or exterior sign,
which the person casting the spell hid in some secret place. As long as the instrument remained hidden, the demon or demons continued to assist with the curse,
and the victim remained vexed until the instrument was destroyed.4 Hair, skin,
blood, perspiration, and other bodily fluids or materials were believed to be especially effective instruments since they supposedly contained a persons vital spirits, which could be manipulated to cause harm to or incite passions in the person
to whom they belonged. Even articles of clothing worn by a person were believed
to be effective instruments for either maleficent spells or love magic.5
Menstrual blood was particularly prevalent in spells that aimed to incite love
or passions in early modern Italy, but the case of Laura and Valerio was atypical in
one important sense. Spells that employed menstrual blood, like all forms of love
magic, were much more often cast by women to bind the love of men than vice
versa. According to medical theory, menstrual blood was viewed as a type of
female semen, and popular customs held that one could mix either male or female
semen with wine to incite love in the person who drank it. The use of menstrual
4

Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), chaps. entitled Love Bound: Andriana Savorgnan, Common Whore, Courtesan, and Noble Wife, 2456, and That Old Black Magic Called Love,
88129; David Gentilcore, From Bishop to Witch: The System of the Sacred in Early Modern Terra
dOtranto (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), 21114; Gene A. Brucker, Sorcery in
Early Renaissance Florence, Studies in the Renaissance 10 (1963): 724; and Marisa Milani, Piccole
storie di stregoneria nella Venezia del 500 (Verona: Essedue edizioni, 1989). For similar spells in Portugal and colonial Brazil, see respectively Francisco Bethencourt, O imaginrio da magia: Feiticeiras, adivinhos e curandeiros em Portugal no sculo XVI, rev. ed. (So Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2004), 109
12; and Laura de Mello e Souza, O diabo e a Terra de Santa Cruz: Feitiaria e religiosidade popular no
Brasil colonial (So Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1986), 22742.
4
Girolamo Menghi, Compendio dellarte essorcistica, et possibilit delle mirabili, et stupende operationi delli Demoni, et de i Malefici con li rimedii opportuni alle infermit Maleficiali (1572; repr., Venice:
Paolo Ugolino, 1601), 49394. For evidence on instruments in maleficia in early modern Emilia and
Romagna, see Giuliana Zanelli, Streghe e societ nellEmilia e Romagna del Cinque-Seicento (Ravenna:
Longo, 1992), 6367.
5
Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 43738.

Watt / Love Magic & the Inquisition

677

blood in hexes may originally have been linked to fertility, though Trionfanti obviously was not hoping to father any children in this post-Tridentine era that witnessed aggressive actions against clerical concubinage.6
The love affair between Laura and Fra Valerio lasted until 1627 when Laura
broke off the relationship to marry Giovan Pietro Bellentani. A witness mentioned
that up until her engagement, Laura and Valerio had maintained a surreptitious
but steady correspondence, which was made possible by Sister Dealta Martinelli, a
Clarisse nun at the convent of Santa Chiara in Carpi. Valerio and Laura regularly
wrote letters to each other but addressed them to Sister Dealta, who in turn sent
them to the other parties, perhaps keeping copies of the letters herself. As soon as
he learned of the pending marriage, Valerio, then living in Mirandola, allegedly
wrote a letter to Laura, which her husband later burned, warning her that she
would regret the marriage and would never be happy in it.7 Members of her and
her husbands families testified that within three or four months of her wedding,
Laura felt the effects of a powerful spell. Whenever she was in the presence of her
husband, blood flowed copiously from her breasts and she felt tormented by a
demon. When she and her husband were not together, she was fine, and prevailing
wisdom on magic held that certain spells could cause people to be utterly repulsed
physically and emotionally by their spouses.8 Whenever Bellentani tried to return
to her, the demon not only tormented Lauraone witness said the demon struck
her with stones and a clubbut also broke utensils in the house, violently shook
the walls and the bed frame, and tore up the beds curtains, sheets, and covers. All
members of Bellentanis family had witnessed this violence, but Laura presently
was not afflicted because she was temporarily living with some friends, with her
husbands consent, to avoid the demonic attacks. In light of these incredible
impediments, contemporary authorities on witchcraft would have easily concluded that Laura was the victim of a form of love magic that aimed to prevent
intimacy between a couple.9 Two local priests, Girolamo Cabassi and Domenico
Verrini, performed exorcisms but to no avail. One evening Fra Valerio supposedly
appeared to Laura, who was in her abode with a young girl and a servant, even
though it was later verified that the friar was actually in Modena, a dozen miles
away, at that time. What Laura saw, therefore, was not Valerio but a demonic specter that had taken on his appearance. Making the sign of the cross and saying the
word Jesus sufficed to make this specter disappear.10 Experts on demonology
and exorcism, such as Menghi, had also indicated that appeals to God through
words or gestures could suffice to banish demons and even bring an abrupt end to

See Ruggiero, Old Black Magic, 11718, 124.

ASM, Inq., b. 86, f. 2, fols. 1rv, 6v.
8
Francesco Maria Guazzo, Compendium Maleficarum, ed. Montague Summers, trans. E. A.
Ashwin (New York: Dover, 1988), 9195.
9
See, for example, Candido Brognolo, Manuale Exorcistarum ac Parochorum, hoc est Tractatus de
curatione, ac Protectione Divina (1651; repr., Venice: Nicol Pezzana, 1720), 70.
10
ASM, Inq., b. 86, f. 2, fols. 1v2r, 6r7v, 10v11r.
7

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Sixteenth Century Journal XLI/3 (2010)

witches sabbats.11 Witnesses at trials elsewhere in Europe similarly reported that

sabbats suddenly disappeared when someone uttered the word Jesus or made the
sign of the cross.12
The day after he opened the investigation, the inquisitor of Modena, Giacomo
Tinti, decided that there was a real danger that Valerio Trionfanti might flee.
Accordingly, he and a notary went to the monastery of Santa Margherita in
Modena, where Valerio then lived, took him into custody, and performed a perquisition of his cell. There they found a large number of letters, that appeared to
have been written by women. Most of these were signed L.C., which the inquisitor assumed stood for Laura Coccapani. They also found a braid of hair, bound
by a string, which was between shades of gold and light brown. Looking through
the letters, they found another lock of hair, golden in color, as well as some short
curly hairs of the same color. These latter, which were undoubtedly pubic hairs
that Laura had given Valerio, were contained in a letter which began, My dearest
Sir, and ended with the words, The woman who loves you. L.C.13
Inquisitor Tinti also found a letter which Fra Valerio had written to Laura
apparently Valerio had made a copy of it for himself before sending it to her. Two
pages long and full of warnings and insults, it began with the words, Most cruel
and unfaithful woman, and ordered her to stop embracing her husband. Yet
another was written by Laura in which she indicated that she wanted to put an end
to, as the inquisitor put it, this illicit friendship. She terminated that letter with
the words, I take leave, never to write you again.14
On 21 November, the Inquisitions vicar interrogated Laura Coccapani, age
twenty-two, in Carpi at the home where she was residing. She said that as a result
of the spell, whenever she was with her husband, her breasts started to bleed.
Another physical symptom she experienced was that often when she was eating
with her husband, she felt as if there were rags in her mouth. Spitting out the
mouthfuls, she in fact discovered mixed in with the masticated food little pieces of
cloth, which she then burned. And when she was at home with her husband, great
noises were heard throughout the houseone could hear the bed frame being
overturned, the sheets torn to shreds, and similar confusion. On several occasions,
objects such as an inkwell and drinking glasses, on their own, started floating
slowly, in a hopping manner, and then fell and shattered on the floor. All of this
11Menghi, Compendio, 4089. Menghi recounted a case of a sabbat disappearing when a man
offered a blessing when he was about to eat at a table with witches. This anecdote was repeated in many
standard early modern works on witchcraft, e.g., Guazzo, Compendium Maleficarum, 4243; Jean
Bodin, De la Demonomanie des sorciers (Paris: Jacques du Puys, 1580), fols. 62v, 82v85r.
12
For examples, see Kramer and Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarum, 97; Silvia Mantini, Et chi vi
andava una volta vi sarebbe tornata sempre: Una storia di strega, in Gostanza, la strega di San Miniato:
Processo a una guaritrice nella Toscana medicea, ed. Franco Cardini (Rome: Laterza, 1989), 6; Thomas,
Religion and Decline of Magic, 494; Robin Briggs, Witches and Neighbors: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft (New York: Penguin, 1996), 4445.
13
ASM, Inq., b. 86, f. 2, fols. 2v3v. These various letters have not been preserved in the Holy
Offices registers. The scribe merely noted the content of them and quoted the opening and closing
words of these missives.
14
ASM, Inq., b. 86, f. 2, fol. 3v.

Watt / Love Magic & the Inquisition

679

obliged her to take refuge some distance from her home. Though insisting that she
did not know who had placed this maleficent spell on her, Laura suspected Fra
Valerio with whom she admitted having had a very close relationship for five
years. She mentioned the angry letter she received from him when she announced
her engagement to Bellentani and the end of her affair with the friar. She also
acknowledged giving Valerio a braid of her hair and a rag stained with her menstrual blood, which she suspected were used in a spell. The lock of hair may have
played a special role, as she provided an interesting image of the effects of the spell:
When I was in bed with my husband, in the midst of those noises, movements,
and the tearing [of things], the entire bed would be covered with hair exactly the
color of mine. Afterwards my maid would clean up the hair and, on orders from
my husband and me, would burn it. And [these incidents] with the hair occurred
five or six times.15 Laura also claimed that on several occasions Valerio had
appeared to her suddenly in her room but never spoke, and vanished as soon as
she said Jesus and made the sign of the cross. Looking out her window, she twice
saw Valerio walking down the road with another friar. In and of itself, this did not
sound incriminating, but Laura added that she later learned that Valerio and his
colleague had not been in Carpi at that time. She therefore believed that what she
saw, both in her room and from her window, were diabolical specters.16
In response to queries, Laura acknowledged that she had also given Valerio
more secret hairs and identified one of the braids as her own. The fact that he
had possessed this hair and that hair had covered her bed several times when
Laura was afflicted by the spell made her most suspicious of Valerio. Coccapani
also reported that she had burned all the letters he had sent her during their affair,
no doubt out of fear that they might be enchanted. As for how she fell in love with
him, that too, Laura affirmed, was cause for suspicion. When she met him for the
first time at the home of a neighbor, Valerio gave her a bouquet of silk flowers in
the shape of carnations and roses. Immediately thereafter, she fell in love with him,
which later led her to think that the bouquet was enchanted and that she had been
under a spell ad amorem from the beginning of their relationship. Under questioning, she further confirmed that during the early phases of their friendship she proclaimed that she would die if a day passed that she could not see him.17

15ASM, Inq., b. 86, f. 2, fol. 8v. The bed itself was considered a very likely medium for the application of spells to win the love of or cause harm to the person who slept in it. Both learned and popular
belief held that mattresses and pillows were most likely places to put objects, such as needles or pieces
of bones, for maleficent purposes. Objects such as these that were found in the mattress of the suspect
or of the ailing person could be considered evidence of witchcraft. See, for example, Cesare Carena,
Tractatus de Officio Sanctissimae Inquisitionis et modo procedendi in causis fidei (1631; repr., Bologna:
Jacobus Montius, 1668), part 2, titulus 9, De Sortilegii, 23, De nonnullis aliis Inditiis in hoc Crimine, no. 200.
16
ASM, Inq., b. 86, f. 2, fols. 7v9v, 17r. For attitudes toward specters in early modern Germany,
see David Lederer, Living with the Dead: Ghosts in Early Modern Bavaria, in Werewolves, Witches,
and Wandering Spirits: Traditional Belief and Folklore in Early Modern Europe, ed. Kathryn A. Edwards
(Kirksville: Truman State University Press, 2002), 2553.
17
ASM, Inq., b. 86, f. 2, fol. 17r.

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Sixteenth Century Journal XLI/3 (2010)

Lauras suspicions were strengthened when Father Domenico Verrini

performed exorcisms and concluded that this was a most cruel maleficium.18
Questioned about the exorcisms he had performed, Verrini said that he had seen
firsthand the flow of blood from her breasts, though not most of the other ills she
suffered. Verrini added that he had a conversation with Girolamo Cabassi, another
exorcist who had ministered to Laura, who had an interesting take on her ills.
Cabassi believed that Coccapani was suffering because she was not living with her
husband, intimating that the demonic torments were a form of divine punishment
for this separation.19
The testimony of Lauras servant and husband closely paralleled her own. Her
maid, Maria Corade, age thirty-two, claimed to have seen with her own eyes the
couples bed shake all by itself and the bed columns leap out of their positions and
fall down. She had seen stones thrown by unseen forces at the windows of the
abode, glasses and vases jump from the shelves and break to pieces on the floor,
and chunks of plaster suddenly break off from the walls and drop to the floor. But
she was above all amazed by the heaps of hair that suddenly covered the couples
bed whenever they were both in it. Four or five times this occurred, and each time
she cleaned up the hair, which was identical to Lauras, and burned it by order of
her master and mistress. Corade also reported that two or three times she and
Laura looked out a window and saw Valerio and another friar pass by on the road
below, even though they later learned that the two friars were not in Carpi at the
time. According to Corade, upon hearing of these visions, more than once Father
Verrini went to the monastery to see if Valerio and his colleague had recently been
in Carpi; each time, he was told they had not. The maid was also with Laura several times when her mistress claimed to see Valerio in her room, but Corade could
not see him herself. Lauras husband, Giovan Pietro Bellentani, seventeen years her
senior, recounted the same incidentsthe unprovoked breaking of glasses and
vases, the tearing up of bedding, the overturning of the bed and its columns, the
bleeding breasts, and the hairy bed. He added that while eating, she often ended up
vomiting, and all these ills, which started about last Easter, afflicted her only when
he was around her.20
Probably the most important question asked of Laura was why she suspected
Valerio of causing her all this harm in light of the strong affection he held for her.
She responded:
I had a suspicion concerning this Fra Valerio because I had a relationship
with him for five years, during all of which we maintained a secret familiarity. And I believe that he also was thinking of impeding me [from
forming another relationship] for the future. But when he saw that I was
promised to another and lost the hope of being with me, I suspect that he
did these evils to prevent me from living with my husband, perhaps
18

ASM, Inq., b. 86, f. 2, fols. 9r10v.

ASM, Inq., b. 86, f. 2, fols. 15v16r.
20
See ASM, Inq., b. 86, f. 2, fols. 11v14r.
19

Watt / Love Magic & the Inquisition

681

thinking that he could freely have me in the future, even though I never
had carnal commerce with him, nor did he ever try to have it with me.21
As modern behavioral scientists know, romances that go sour can result in
extremely violent behavior. In the early seventeenth century, a man suspected of
having won the affection of a woman through magic and then lost it could easily
be transformed into a witch who cast maleficent spells to render the life of his
erstwhile lover miserable.
Witnesses added that before denouncing Valerio Trionfanti to the Holy
Office, they had first asked Fra Alfonso Pio, an Observant Franciscan in Carpi, to
beseech Valerio to cure Laura. Pio did so but told Lauras friends and family that
Valerio denied having anything to do with her malaise. Denouncing him to the
Inquisition was apparently a last resort after all efforts to persuade Valerio to lift
the spell had failed.22
Valerio Trionfanti, thirty-one, was incarcerated for several weeks during this
investigation. When the friar first appeared before the Holy Office, Inquisitor Tinti
asked him if he knew why he had been summoned. Fra Valerio replied that he
assumed that it was because of the long friendship he once had with the now
married Laura Coccapani. Since her ills coincided with her marriage and since she
had dropped the friar for Bellentani, Valerio, who had left Carpi in December
1625, said he understood why her family suspected him of playing a part in this
maleficium but emphatically denied the charge. Shown the letters that were found
in his cell, Valerio readily acknowledged that they were from Laura. Shown the
samples of hair, the friar indicated that one braid was Lauras and another belonged
to a certain Caterina Bartoli, now deceased. He identified some short, curly hairs
as pubic hair belonging to Caterina and admitted that Laura had given him some
as well, which he had kept enclosed in one of the letters found in his cell. Valerio
also recognized the angry letter as a copy of the one he wrote to Laura after she had
announced the end of their relationship, adding that he wrote it in a momentary
fit of anger.23
In his second round of interrogation, Valerio provided some interesting
details concerning the breakup of this long relationship. Her decision to end the
affair did not come as a complete surprise, since she had already told him that Bellentani had expressed a strong interest in her. She told Valerio that she was not particularly interested in Bellentani, but the friar claimed that he personally advised
her to marry him: Knowing the poverty of this young woman, even though she is
from a noble house, [I thought] this could be her good luck. Though of a certain
age and a widower, [Bellentani] was nonetheless a genuine person and financially
comfortable. I urged her to accept him, because she knew full well that not having
wealth, she would not find a husband unless a man was enamored of her beauty.24
Valerio added that he became angry not so much because she ended the relation21

ASM, Inq., b. 86, f. 2, fol. 17v.

ASM, Inq., b. 86, f. 2, fols. 6r7v.
23
ASM, Inq., b. 86, f. 2, fols.4r5v, 18v.
24
ASM, Inq., b. 86, f. 2, fol. 19v.
22

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Sixteenth Century Journal XLI/3 (2010)

ship but because of the way she did so. He was upset, among other reasons,
because she broke off the affair just eight or ten days after he had sent her some
money which she had earnestly requested. Although he acknowledged receiving a
braid, some pubic hairs, and some more traditional gifts from Laura (some handkerchiefs, a pair of cuffs), Valerio got on his knees and swore before God that he
never received from Laura a rag stained with her menstrual blood.25
During questioning, Inquisitor Tinti certainly gave the impression that he was
strongly suspicions of Valerio. Mentioning the evidence against him, Tinti asked if
it were not reasonable to presume that Valerio was guilty of maleficia.26 But in a
letter to the cardinal-inquisitors of the Congregation of the Holy Office in Rome,
which served as the supreme court over all inquisitions in Italy, Tinti revealed what
were probably his true feelings, asserting that the evidence was not strong enough
for a conviction. Tinti also indicated that Valerio demonstrated real remorse for
the illicit, though unconsummated, relationship that he had maintained for several years. Asking forgiveness a thousand times for this indiscretion, Valerio
promised that he would henceforth lead the life of a good friar.27 On 10 February
1629, Cardinal Giovanni Garzia Millino of the Congregation wrote to Tinti and
demonstrated an even greater degree of skepticism. Not only did he deem the evidence insufficient for a conviction; Millino declared that the case against Valerio
was without any foundation whatsoever. He ordered that the friar be released,
and nine days later Valerio walked out of prison a free man, three months after his
incarceration had begun.28
Neither Valerio nor Laura was ever again questioned by the Holy Office, and
they both disappeared almost entirely from the historical record in 1629. In 1638,
however, another investigation by the Inquisition showed that the case of Laura
and Fra Valerio continued to intrigue and trouble the residents of Carpi. At that
time, a very lengthy probe into an alleged case of group possession and witchcraft
in the convent of Santa Chiara yielded some further references to Lauras possession. One of the principal suspects behind the reputed maleficia in the convent
was Sister Dealta Martinelli, a nun who, like so many others, had been obliged to
take the veil by her parents but, unlike her fellow sisters, had never adjusted to life
in the convent.29 Dealta was a close friend to both Valerio Trionfanti and Laura
Coccapani and apparently had served as a liaison between the two. All agreed that
facilitating a romantic affair between a clergyman and a laywomaneven if it did
not involve sexual relationswas hardly an appropriate activity for a nun. This
testimony, which obviously was intended to put Dealta in a bad light, also indicated that the release of Valerio did not put an end to Laura Coccapanis travails.
Indeed, she was still suffering in 1638, and some residents of Carpi continued to
25

ASM, Inq., b. 86, f. 2, fols. 18v20r.

ASM, Inq., b. 86, f. 2, fols. 20rv.
27
ASM, Inq., b. 86, f. 2, loose letter, 5 December 1628.
28
ASM, Inq., b. 86, f. 2, fols. 23rv, and a loose letter, 10 February 1629.
29
See ASM, Inq. 108, f. 1A, fols. 13; Jeffrey R. Watt, The Demons of Carpi: Exorcism, Witchcraft, and the Inquisition in a Seventeenth-Century Convent, Archive for Reformation History 98
(2007): 10733.
26

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683

view her ills as the effects of love magic, even if Fra Valerio played no role in it.
Among the nuns who were interrogated, more than one averred that Laura
Coccapani continued to be plagued by demons, and some wondered whether
Dealta rather than Valerio may have played a part in her possession. Harboring
suspicions against her fellow Clarisse, Sister Silveria Chechi reported that a few
years earlier, Dealta had twice told her an extraordinary story about the origin of
Lauras misfortunes. Exceedingly fond of Laura, Dealta reputedly claimed that
Coccapanis woes had their origins in actions taken by Lauras mother and paternal
grandmother, who, hoping to secure a suitable match for her, had cast a spell that
would force a certain cavalier from the city of Reggio to marry Laura. The cavalier
had left Carpi for Milan, much to their disappointment, but once the spell was
cast, he duly returned and earnestly professed his desire to marry Laura immediately. Even though Lauras father was not home at the time, the couple celebrated
the wedding that very evening and slept together that night. The next morning the
young cavalier left but promised to return soon. As it turned out, the cavalier
never came back because he had actually been killed on his trip to Milan several
days before the wedding. The being Laura had married and slept with was not the
cavalier but rather an incubus, a demon in the guise of Lauras would-be husband.
According to Chechi, Dealta maintained that this was the origin of Lauras tribulations. The devil did not allow Laura to have sexual relations with the man she later
married, Giovan Pietro Bellentani, because he considered her his own wife.30
Contemporary experts on witchcraft and exorcism reported similar cases in
which demons tricked women into having sex with them by assuming the physical
appearance of their husbands at night.31 The authorities on sorcery strongly
believed that demons could assume bodily form and have sexual relations with
people, not because the devils sought pleasuresince they were spiritual beings
they experienced no carnal pleasuresbut because this made individuals more
inclined to commit a wide range of sins.32 Moreover, the alleged actions of Laura
Coccapanis mother and grandmother were not implausible, as even prominent
Italians were known to cast spells in hopes of securing favorable marriages for
family members.33
According to Chechi, Dealta also recounted that after the death of the cavalier
Bellentani broached the subject of marriage with members of the Coccapani family. Her mother and grandmother were receptive to the proposal and, in order to
facilitate the match, gave him a rag tainted with Lauras menstrual blood to be used
in love magic.34 Dealta perhaps hoped that this story might deflect suspicions
away from her onto members of the Coccapani family. She herself was rumored to
be very strongly attached to Laura. A fellow nun heard Dealta utter many terms of
30

ASM, Inq., b. 108, f. 1A, fol. 42r.

Brognolo, Manuale Exorcistarum, 41; Kramer and Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarum, 136;
Guazzo, Compendium Maleficarum, 31, 7380; Lyndal Roper, Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in
Baroque Germany (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 8283, 94.
32
Menghi, Compendio, 16970. See also Dyan Elliott, Fallen Bodies: Pollution, Sexuality, and
Demonology in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), esp. 3560.
33
See Guido Ruggiero, Binding Passions, 5787.
34
ASM, Inq., b. 108, f. 1A, fol. 43r.
31

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Sixteenth Century Journal XLI/3 (2010)

endearment to Laura in the parlor one day,35 and another reported that Martinelli
often wrote to Laura twice a day and had an indescribable friendship with her.36
The tenor of this testimony implies that, like Fra Valerio, Dealta, too, may have had
amorous inclinations toward Laura. Whether true or not, hints about Martinellis
alleged romantic or sexual desires tended to reinforce suspicions of witchcraft by
fitting neatly into the stereotype of the lustful and perverted witch. At any rate, if
Dealta thought that this account might shift attention or blame away from her, she
was sadly mistaken. The extensive knowledge she claimed to have about the factors behind Lauras woes actually made some suspect that Dealta had played a role
in causing that affliction. The testimony concerning Laura Coccapani was rather
tangential to the investigation of the Santa Chiara case, and the records from
162829 made no mention of a previous marriage for Laura Coccapani (be it to a
cavalier or an incubus). But this story was quite provocative regardless of whether
Dealta actually recounted it to Chechi; the fact that it was repeated before the
Inquisition showed at the very least that some people found it believable.37
More broadly, the bewitchment of Laura Coccapani effectively revealed the
extent to which people in Carpi believed in the strength of magic. The manner in
which Laura was initially smitten by the friar was, for some, likely the result of love
magic, and Valerios possession of Lauras braid and pubic hairs only exacerbated
suspicions. How do we explain the fantastic testimony concerning the breaking
glasses, shaking walls, bleeding breasts, and hair-covered bed? Since Fra Valerio
said that Laura was not particularly fond of Bellentani, should this be understood
as a ruse on her part to separate from her husband? Although the shaking walls,
the noises, and the hairy bed would have been challenges, she could have feigned
seeing specters of Valerio and pricked her breasts to make them bleed when her
husband was near. Why, though, would Bellentani have agreed to go along with
this? True, Valerio also repeated a rumor that Bellentani had in a way been forced
into the marriageallegedly her parents caught them in bed together and then
demanded that Bellentani marry her.38 If the goal was just to live separately, however, the couple needed the collusion of many peoplerelatives, friends, the maid,
maybe even the exorcistswho agreed to testify under oath before the Inquisition
and to put all the blame on Valerio. Although we cannot know what was truly
behind the reports of the apparently preternatural events, the case revealed that
the people of Carpi certainly believed in them and that the Inquisition of Modena
gave them enough credence to conduct a thorough investigation and to incarcerate a wayward priest for three months on the basis of those suspicions.
35ASM, Inq., b. 108, f. 1A, fol. 25v.
36

ASM, Inq., b. 108, f. 1A, fol. 35v.

As with the earlier investigation of Valerio Trionfanti, the chief skeptics in the Santa Chiara case
were the cardinal-inquisitors in Rome. Convinced that the ailing nuns were suffering from melancholic
humors that were exacerbated by exorcisms, the Congregation of the Holy Office exonerated Dealta
Martinelli and the other principal suspect, a Franciscan who had served as the convents confessor, on
all charges of witchcraft. After the cardinals forbade exorcisms in the convent, the nuns were one by
one cured of their ills in the spring of 1639. See Jeffrey R. Watt, The Scourge of Demons: Possession, Lust,
and Power in a Seventeenth-Century Convent (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2009).
38
ASM, Inq., b. 86, f. 2, fol. 21r.
37

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685

This case also keenly showed how closely intertwined love magic and maleficia could be. It demonstrated that magic ad amorem might cause the victim to
suffer terribly in the presence of her or his spouse or, alternatively, to experience
utter misery when separated from the person who cast the spell. It also revealed
that there was a certain logic behind the belief that a person in love with another
might, if rejected, cast a spell on the erstwhile beloved. In the influential instructions for inquisitors that he wrote in the 1620s, Cardinal Desiderio Scaglia (1567
1639), who served on the Congregation of the Inquisition in Rome, wrote that the
techniques employed in love magic and in maleficia were often quite similar. To
win anothers love, one might throw salt or blessed beans into a fire. Or one
might recite or write down holy words, a reflection of the widespread belief in the
magical power of certain words, especially those of a religious nature.39 One might
also make powders out of certain herbs and mix them with food that the victim
ate. Desiring anothers love, a witch might also use, in combination with an explicit
or tacit invocation of the devil, a consecrated host or a magnet noteworthy for its
ability to attract, which had been illicitly baptized.40 Quite often, Scaglia wrote,
people seeking love might also create wax statues of the victims, which they
pierced with pins or held over a fire, uttering incantations to light the fire of love
in the other person. Other objects deemed useful instruments for love magic were
locks of hair or nail clippings over which one uttered invocations to demons and
then buried, preferably under a threshold through which the beloved often passed.
Significantly, it was commonly believed that practically all these objects could also
be used as instruments of maleficia.41
How seriously was love magic taken by authorities of the Inquisition and of
the Roman Catholic Church in general? On the one hand, the church officially
rejected as anathema the belief that one can force a person to love another against
his or her own will. Girolamo Menghi and other experts on demonology declared
that it is false and impious to say that demons can force people to commit a
39Many magical spells, be they for love or something else, included reciting or writing down the
Lords Prayer or the Hail Mary, based on the belief that these words had intrinsic supernatural power.
Stuart Clark, Witchcraft and Magic in Early Modern Culture, in Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The
Period of the Witch Trials, ed. Bengt Ankarloo and Stuart Clark (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 1089.
40
Nicolau Eymerich and Francisco Pea, Il manuale dellInquisitore, trans. and ed. Louis SalaMolins (Rome: Fanucci, 2000), 76, 78.
41
ASM, Manoscritti biblioteca, no. 166, Prattica per procedere nelle cause di S. Officio, 6364.
See also Eymerich and Pea, Manuale dellInquisitore, 8182. In Brazil hair, nail clippings, sperm, or
urine were used in spells for good or ill; Souza, Diabo e Terra de Santa Cruz, 17172. On Scaglia, see
Albano Biondi, Linordinata devozione nella Prattica del Cardinale Scaglia (ca. 1635), in Finzione e
santit tra medioevo ed et moderna, ed. Gabriella Zarri (Turin: Rosenberg and Sellier, 1991), 30625;
Anne Jacobson Schutte, Aspiring Saints: Pretense of Holiness, Inquisition, and Gender in the Republic of
Venice, 16181750 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 6771; John Tedeschi, The Prosecution of Heresy: Collected Studies on the Inquisition in Early Modern Italy (Binghamton: Medieval and
Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1991), 22958; Angelo Turchini, Il modello ideale dellinquisitore: La
Prattica del Cardinale Desiderio Scaglia, in LInquisizione romana: Metodologia delle fonti e storia istituzionale: Atti del Seminario internazionale, Montereale Valcellini, 23 e 24 settembre 1999, ed. Andrea
Del Col and Giovanna Paolin (Trieste: Centro Studi Storici Menocchio, 2000), 18798.

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Sixteenth Century Journal XLI/3 (2010)

mortal sin against their will; demons did not have the power to take away the free
will of humans unless they first voluntarily made a pact with the devil. On the
other hand, demons could definitely increase the temptation to sin. Menghi
affirmed that demons could excite various thoughts and feelings in people that
could stimulate lust. Love magic, therefore, could strongly increase ones sexual
desires toward a person but ultimately could not make one give in to those
impulses.42 Similarly, Cardinal Scaglia condemned as heretical the view that
demons could force a human to love another but recognized that they could,
through dreams or the movement of blood or other humors, stimulate passions
and fantasies, which could increase the likelihood of being attracted to a particular
person.43 The fear of the sexual impulse and of demonic powers engendered a
strong belief that love magic could incite even in the faithful powerful libidinous
passions which one had to resist most tenaciously.44
The case of the possession of Laura Coccapani also demonstrated that the
Inquisition demanded very high standards of proof in order to convict someone of
witchcraft or magic. The Roman Inquisition was founded in 1542 to combat Protestantism, but by 1600 the most common type of cases it heard pertained to
superstitions, magic, or sorcery, which together comprised probably at least 40
percent of trials, inquests, and denunciations heard by Italian inquisitions at that
time. More numerous than actions against maleficent witches were investigations
of alleged magic used to win anothers love, discover buried treasure, cure illnesses, or protect oneself against harmful spells.45 Spain and Italy both had low
execution rates in witchcraft trials compared to those of various regions of northern and central Europe, largely because the Inquisition in both countries showed
considerable skepticism toward reputed diabolical pacts, even when suspects con-

42
Menghi, Compendio, 322; ASM, Fuga Daemonum, Adiurationes potentissimas, et Exorcismos
formidabiles, atque efficaces in malignos spiritus propulsandos, et maleficia ab energumenis pellenda
(Venice: apud Haeredes Iohannis Varisci, 1596), fols. 83r89r. For virtually identical conclusions, see
Candido Brognolo, Alexicacon, Hoc est Opus de Maleficiis ac Morbis Maleficiis, 2 vols. (Venice: Giovan
Battista Catanei, 1668), 1:8687.
43ASM, Manoscritti biblioteca, no. 166, Prattica per procedere nelle cause di S. Officio, 5860.
44
See also Nancy Caciola, Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 197, 200.
45E. William Monter and John Tedeschi, Toward a Statistical Profile of the Italian Inquisitions,
Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries, in The Inquisition in Early Modern Europe: Studies on Sources and
Methods, ed. Gustav Henningsen and John Tedeschi, with Charles Amiel (Dekalb: Northern Illinois
University Press, 1986), 13057; John Tedeschi, Inquisitorial Law and the Witch, in Early Modern
European Witchcraft, ed. Bengt Ankarloo and Gustav Henningsen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 85;
Edward Peters, Inquisition (New York: Free Press, 1988), 112; Giovanni Romeo, Inquisitori, esorcisti e
streghe nellItalia della Controriforma (Florence: Sansoni, 1990), 17677, 20146; Ruggiero, Binding
Passions, 9; Schutte, Aspiring Saints, 2829; E. William Monter, Ritual, Myth and Magic in Early Modern
Europe (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1983), 6466. For the Inquisition of Modena, see Maria Carolina Capucci, Una societ di delatori? Appunti da processi modenesi del Santo Uffizio (15901630),
in Il piacere del testo: Saggi e studi per Albano Biondi, ed. Adriano Prosperi (Rome: Bulzoni, 2001), esp.
4952. See also Oscar Di Simplicio, Autunno della stregoneria: Maleficio e magia nellItalia moderna
(Bologna: Il Mulino, 2005), 8990.

Watt / Love Magic & the Inquisition

687

fessed to having made such a pact.46 This outlook played a very significant role in
avoiding the domino effect seen in some of the most infamous mass trials of
witches, most numerous in certain regions of Germany. The Holy Offices mild
treatment of witches also may have stemmed from the fact that it stressed the
heretical aspects of witchcraft and was accordingly less interested in punishing
witches than in effecting repentance in them and bringing them back, contrite,
into the Roman Catholic fold.47
In this specific case, the skepticism of Cardinal Millino of the Congregation of
the Inquisition also reflected the churchs changing attitudes toward superstition.
In 1607 the church council of Malines declared, it is superstitious to expect any
effect from anything when such an effect cannot be produced by natural causes, by
divine institutions, or by the ordination and approval of the church.48 Downplaying the demonic aspects of superstition, the church in effect was saying that trying
to conjure powers that were independent of both nature and the Roman Catholic
Church was more a case of slighting the powers of the church than of practicing
heresy or a false religion.
Although the Congregation of the Holy Office declared him innocent of all
charges concerning love magic, one must not forget that Fra Valerio Trionfanti was
incarcerated for three months during this investigation. It was not uncommon to
find clergymen among those investigated for indulging in types of magic, particularly for allegedly taking part in superstitious attempts to find buried or lost treasure or, as with Trionfanti, to win a womans love. Why so? In its various forms,
magic was believed to involve either the conjuring of demons or the co-opting of
divine power. By the 1620s, the Inquisition, or at least the Congregation of Cardinals in Rome, exhibited considerable skepticism toward pacts with Satan and the
conjuring of demons. Various magical spells, including those designed to win the
love of another, could involve attempts to exploit and misuse divine powers. Most
notable in this regard was the alleged abuse of the sacraments or, more often, of
sacramentals, the latter referring to ceremonies, benedictions, exorcisms, or
objects that resemble or are related to the sacraments. In the celebration of the
Eucharist, Roman Catholic doctrine holds that, once consecrated, the host is
46See E. William Monter, Frontiers of Heresy: The Spanish Inquisition from the Basque Lands to Sicily
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 26061; Romeo, Inquisitori, esorcisti e streghe, 324.
47
See, for example, Ruth Martin, Witchcraft and the Inquisition in Venice, 15501650 (Oxford:
Basil Blackwell, 1989); Bethencourt, Imaginrio da magia, 24445. Henry Charles Lea was struck by
the leniency of both the Spanish and Roman Inquisitions toward witchcraft; Lea, A History of the Inquisition of Spain, 4 vols. (London: Macmillan, 19067), 4:23547. In the early seventeenth century, the
Spanish Inquisition undertook an intense hunt in the Basque region that involved almost two thousand
alleged witches, but this resulted ultimately in the executions of only six people. Gustav Henningsen,
The Witches Advocate: Basque Witchcraft and the Spanish Inquisition, 16091614 (Reno: University of
Nevada Press, 1980). These cases, however, did help incite a witch scare in Catalonia between 1610 and
1620, over which secular courts claimed and exercised jurisdiction, resulting in the executions of
nearly a hundred purported witches; Monter, Frontiers of Heresy, 25575.
48
Jean Baptiste Thiers, Trait des superstitions qui regardent les Sacremens, 5th ed. (1679; repr.,
Paris: La compagnie des libraires, 1741), 2:8; quoted in Mary Rose ONeil, Discerning Superstition:
Popular Errors and Orthodox Response in Late Sixteenth Century Italy (PhD dissertation, Stanford
University, 1981), 2021.

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transformed into the body of Jesus and is therefore sacred. In early modern popular culture, the consecrated host was commonly believed to be endowed with
supernatural powers, and experts on demonology affirmed that both consecrated
and unconsecrated hosts could be used for magical purposes, especially in regard
to love magic.49 In early modern Catholic Europe, popular opinion also held that
the physical sacramentalsitems such as bread, water, oil, or salt, which had been
blessed or exorcised by priestswielded some supernatural power, especially in
the form of protection from harm. Various objects associated with the Eucharist,
such as the altar cloth or the corporal on which the priest placed the consecrated
host were believed to possess healing power, as did objects that were placed illicitly
beneath the altar during Mass.50 If they fell into the wrong hands, however, these
same objects could be misused, as holy candles, oil, or wine could purportedly be
employed in love magic or harmful spells. Similarly, it was generally believed that
the recitation of prayers or scripture, perhaps with a few words altered, wielded
power that could be used to effect evil rather than good.51 In short, there were any
of a number of sacred objects, prayers, and ceremonies that might be misappropriated as instruments of magic. Only clergymen could administer the sacraments,
and they also had the greatest access to all sacramentals. This, combined with their
knowledge of prayers and scripture, meant that wayward priests could be prominent among those allegedly practicing magic and superstitions.
By the 1620s, the Congregation of the Inquisition no longer viewed most such
priests as serious threats but reproached them primarily for lacking respect for the
Roman Catholic Church or for misusing its rites. The Inquisition in Italy and
Spain took very seriously accusations against priests who purportedly misused
sacraments, aptly seen in actions against clerics who were accused of abusing the
sacrament of penance by soliciting in the confessional.52 Like other clerics, Fra
Valerio Trionfanti had easy access to communion hosts, holy oil, and all other sacramentals. Had he wished to do so, he could have illicitly baptized a magnet, which
was popularly believed to be an especially useful instrument for attracting the love
49
According to Candido Brognolo, an unconsecrated host could be a powerful weapon in love
magic, a consecrated host even more potent, and burning a consecrated host rendered it a still more
powerful tool for winning the love of another; Brognolo, Alexicacon, 1:264. Layfolk in the Middle Ages
often viewed the consecrated host as a type of amulet that could protect them from harm. Richard
Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 7980. See also
Kramer and Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarum, 11617; Mantini, Et chi vi andava una volta, in Gostanza, 7; Walter Stephens, Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex, and the Crisis of Belief (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2002), 20740.
50Eymerich and Pea, Manuale dellInquisitore, 7778n21; Robert W. Scribner, Popular Culture
and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany (London: Hambledon, 1987), 36, 3940, 26061.
51
See Michael D. Bailey, Battling Demons: Witchcraft, Heresy, and Reform in the Late Middle Ages
(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), 13233.
52
See, for example, Stephen Haliczer, Sexuality in the Confessional: A Sacrament Profaned
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); Adelina Sarrin Mora, Sexualidad y confesin: La solicitatin
ante el Tribunal del Santo Oficio (siglos XVIXIX) (Madrid: Alianza, 1994); Juan Antonio Alejandre
Garcia, El veneno de Dios: La Inquisicin de Sevilla ante el delito de solicitatin en confesin (Madrid:
Siglo XXI de Espaa, 1994); Michle Escamilla-Colin, Crimes et chtiments dans lEspagne inquisitoriale (Paris: Berg International, 1992), 2:167214.

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689

of another. Be that as it may, at no time did anyone accuse him of misusing anything sacred.
In the eyes of the Inquisition, Fra Valerio Trionfanti clearly had carried on a
long-term inappropriate relationship with Laura Coccapani. He himself acknowledged that he had requested and received pubic hairs from her (and previously
from another woman as well), and this gave contemporaries good reason to
wonder whether he was indulging in love magic. But if Trionfanti dabbled in
magic, it was apparently a form of body magic, effected through hair and perhaps menstrual blood, which made no explicit conjuration of demons and did not
involve the abuse of sacraments, sacramentals, or his spiritual authority in general.53 As such, cardinals of the Holy Office viewed him as a misguided friar but
not as a heretic or witch. The Inquisition sought to eliminate not only heresy but
also superstitions, but the evidence of superstitions against Fra Valerio was, for
Millino and other cardinals, extremely weak. Without accusations of heresy or
abuse of sacraments, the Inquisition ordinarily did not even have jurisdiction over
the sexual misconduct of clergymen. To be sure, the post-Tridentine church
actively sought to eliminate the inappropriate relationships of Valerio Trionfanti
and other clergymen of his ilk. But bishops and the superiors of religious orders,
not the Inquisition, were charged with this responsibility. Although local officials,
such as Inquisitor Tinti, were ever vigilant for anything that smacked of magic and
witchcraft, Cardinal Millino and other members of the Congregation in Rome,
though certainly believing in the power of demons, were very skeptical about what
constituted proof of making pacts with Satan or casting spells to cause harm or
incite love.
This case shows that in Italy in the 1620s there was a certain disconnect
between the fears of witchcraft and magic among the rank and file, demonologists,
exorcists, and to a degree, even local inquisitors, on the one hand, and the standards
of proof governing cases of magic as mandated by the Congregation of the Holy
Office, on the other. This gap was mirrored in the respective fates of this storys two
protagonists: the Congregation of the Inquisitions decision allowed Fra Valerio Trionfanti to put an end to his troubles in February 1629, but those of Laura Coccapani
persisted for several years to come.54 Popular belief held that magic, regardless of
whether the goal was to harm or win the love of another, could cause intense suffering, and Lauras chronic woes surely reflected this mentality. By contrast, the cardinal-inquisitors were much less apt to believe that the travails of Laura and others
were of demonic rather than natural origins. Accordingly, they were unwilling to
convict anyone of magic or witchcraft solely on the basis of reports of preternatural
phenomena which, by definition, could not be empirically verified. The evidence
from cases against magic and witchcraft suggests that thanks largely to the cardinalinquisitors, the Roman Inquisition probably provided the best criminal justice,
from a defendants perspective, in early modern Europe.55
53

On body magic see Ruggiero, Binding Passions, 11725.

For a very similar case heard before the Inquisition of Naples in 1574, also ending in acquittal,
see Romeo, Inquisitori, esorcisti e streghe, 10912.
55
See various essays in Tedeschi, Frontiers of Heresy.
54

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