He applied the "Page 99 Test" to his new book, Defining Nature’s Limits: The Roman Inquisition and the Boundaries of Science, and reported the following:
A reader turning to page 99 of my book would find the title page of the second section ‘Mendicant Reform and the Inquisition of Magic’ rather than a section of prose. While the reader may not be able to get a sense of my writing style or the manner in which I construct my arguments, it does offer a succinct summary of the main themes of the book. Historians have often maintained that the Roman Inquisition (founded in 1543 to combat Protestantism) only began to investigate magic after it had successfully eliminated the Protestant threat in Italy. I have set out to trace a longer history of the inquisition of learned magic, one that traces connections between the medieval and early modern periods. I argue that Observant reform – a movement that revitalized religious orders such as the Franciscans and Dominicans – played a crucial role in transforming clerical attitudes towards learned magic. Since their foundation in the thirteenth century, both orders of mendicant friars had been closely involved in efforts to promote orthodox belief and combat heresy and superstition among the people of Europe by preaching, offering cure of souls and by serving as inquisitors. My book shows how Observant reform encouraged the friars to renew their efforts to combat deviance from the fifteenth century onward. When the Roman Inquisition was founded, the friars imported these ambitions into the Roman Inquisition. From the outset they sought to use it not only to combat Protestantism, but to continue their efforts to purify and reform Catholic society.Learn more about Defining Nature’s Limits at the University of Chicago Press website.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
