By skyforbes 
Los Angeles, 1948. Everyone used magic.
– Cast a Deadly Spell
Today I’m reviewing In the Room of the Circles: The Inquisition and Books of Magic in Early Modern Venice, by Federico Barbierato. This is an English translation and update of his 2002 work Nella stanza dei circoli.
Disclaimers: This is a purchased copy of the book. Also, going forward, I’m exploring a broader range of publishers who might want to work with me right now, which might include various academic publishers. I don’t want to talk about anything that’s tentative, however, so I’m going to just put a placeholder on this.
The focus of Barbierato’s work is a deep dive into the archives of the Venetian Inquisition from the sixteenth to early eighteenth centuries, and other contemporary legal records.
When today’s readers hear of the “Inquisition,” it often comes with associations of secretive tribunals, torture, shadowy figures, grisly executions, and overwhelming fear.
Barbierato tells another story, of a harried, overworked bureaucrats who rarely engaged in torture (perhaps only one example appears in the book) and substituted penance, exile, or (rarely) galley service for executions. Moreover, they seem to be intimidated by an overwhelming tide of magical literature, making its way into and through Venice through surreptitious channels of merchants, diplomats, and friars, where it was embraced and practiced at all levels of society.
The works discussed, concentrating on the Clavicula Salomonis, are almost entirely manuscript works, copied by hand. It was easier for copyists to avoid censorship by avoiding printing, and a copied book or scrap of paper could be revised for the copyist’s interest and to disguise its nature by change of title or contents. Barbierato lets these processes play out through a plethora of narratives from the trials, displaying the dizzying array of magical works and usages that could be found in Venice. We learn about sex workers, rabbis, cobblers, booksellers, clergy, and a wide array of other individuals who crossed paths with the Inquisition as practitioners, clients, or witnesses.
A while ago, I did slowly make my way through the 2002 Italian publication, which was somewhat dated with regard to the scholarship of magic. Thanks to Barbierato’s consultation with Joseph Peterson, his work is now up to date with the latest discoveries, including the revelations from The Secrets of Solomon (my review here) which appears in the trial record of Francesco Viola. We have an entire chapter on the trial surrounding those events, filled with strange magical ceremonies, a room where the devil is summoned, and a guy with a guitar under attack by another guy with a sword.
As was the case with the Secrets of Solomon, the Venetian Inquisition sometimes kept the confiscated magical books in their archives, although this retention was inconsistent. Barbierato treats these with some attention, but his focus is on the legal proceedings themselves. It does mean there is the potential for a more in-depth examination of such manuscripts for a future scholar. Nonetheless, those interested in details of magical rituals will find many intriguing passages, as well as some semi-familiar titles among the works and many fascinating anecdotes about the practitioners thereof.
Barbierato documents all of this with extensive and valuable footnotes. The Venetian Inquisition archives have not been digitized, so one would need to visit or make arrangements for reproductions to explore further. Nonetheless, there are enough intriguing details in them to make them worthwhile and revealing.
The book does have its flaws and omissions. A section near the beginning deals with the Lemegeton, although that work seems to have little influence in the Venetian setting. The book lacks the illustrations of magical and inquisitorial documents from the Italian edition. Most notably, the whole book has no index, a surprising omission from an academic publisher.
The book seems to have significance not only to Venice, but to (likely more limited) networks of exchange of magical texts in other European settings. It is definitely of interest to anyone writing about ritual magic in Europe. The print book is quite expensive, but the electronic editions are considerably cheaper, so check those out first.