Suono e Spettacolo. Athanasius Kircher, un percorso nelle Immagini sonore.

The Society of Jesus made great propaganda efforts throughout the seventeenth century and chose the images and the play as a privileged means to communicate and persuade. Athanasius Kircher, a key figure of the seventeenth century, he decided to dominate the wild nature of sound through Phonurgia Nova, which includes a gallery of powerful symbolic images for Baroque aesthetics. The essay, through the grant of the images from the Library of the Department of Mathematics "Guido Castelnuovo" Sapienza University of Rome, aims to understand, through the pictures offered by Kircher, the sound phenomenon and the spectacle that this produces. In Phonurgia Nova a process of dramatization sound effects takes place, often through machines and "visions" applied to the theatrical reality, as experimental and astonishing environment beloved in baroque. Kircher illustrates the sound through explanatory figures, so to dominate the sound through the eyes. Sound is seen, admired and represented: its spectacle not only takes place through the implementation of sound machines or the "wonders" applied to the theater, but even through images, creating create a sense of wonder in in the erudite person of the seventeenth century

Discerning spirits: Sanctity and possession in the later Middle Ages. (Volumes I and II).

Discerning Spirits: Sanctity and Possession in the Later Middle Ages examines the responses of different cultural strata to spirit possession from the mid-twelfth through the fifteenth century in Western Europe. I argue that in Medieval Europe spirit possession was ambiguous: malignly, it was expressed as diabolic possession, while benignly it appeared as unitive mysticism. While only the former was described as spirit possession within medieval culture, unitive mystics, with their stress on the indwelling quality of their experience of God, may also be considered possessed--by the Holy Spirit. Indeed, so closely parallel were mystics and demoniacs considered to be, contemporaries had difficulty discerning one from the other. As a result, a great deal of suspicion and anxiety surrounded the vocations of unitive mystics, who often were accused of being demonically inspired. Adding to this perplexity were general ideas about body and spirit that pervaded medieval culture. Although the civilization of the Middle Ages is often thought of as dualistic in its conceptions of body and spirit, my work shows that the boundaries between the two actually were quite fluid. Spirits were conceived as having a material basis, and conversely the body, in certain areas, was thought to have a basic spiritual vitality. Tales of corpses coming back to life, and folkloric ideas about shamanistic spirit journeys, reveal a broad cultural preoccupation both with the ways in which bodies and spirits acted independently, and with the ways they interacted. By the fifteenth century, the juxtaposition between the divinely and the demonically possessed had begun to elicit responses: new demonological treatises, manuals of exorcism, and a textual tradition devoted to the discernment of spirits. Yet, the attempt to discern spirits on a purely abstract plane was doomed to failure: ultimately, one could only evaluate exterior signs of comportment, since visions and revelations were private and hence unverifiable. Thus the discernment of spirits eventually was worked out as a discernment of the body: judging the comportment and physical control of the individual became paramount. Sanctity was increasingly associated with incorporeality, while possession became defined by a connection with fallen physicality.Ph.D.FolkloreMedieval historyPhilosophy, Religion and TheologyReligious historySocial SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/129427/2/9513310.pd

A Guglielmite Trinity?

In the Abbey of Viboldone, in suburban Milan, there is a medieval Trinitarian sinopia that never before has received an in-depth analysis. This paper proposes that the sinopia is related to a group known as the Guglielmites, prosecuted in this region of Milan in 1300. The Guglielmites believed that a woman named Guglielma was the Holy Spirit, the third person in the Christian Trinity, come to earth incarnate in female form. The sinopia appears to portray a female Holy Spirit, and the history of the Abbey in which it is located suggests some intriguing relationships with this heretical group

The wicked and the damned

Whereas representatives of the medieval church insisted that possessing spirits were demons or fallen angels, many medieval Italians attributed spirit possession to ghosts. In particular, the untimely dead who had perished through violence were thought to seize the bodies of the possessed in order to re-experience embodiment. Such beliefs had a long genealogy, predating the spread of Christianity. I argue that those elements of culture that persist unchanged over a long period of time are not retained unthinkingly, but are chosen because they serve the needs of the communities that employ them. In this case, belief in ghosts as possessors was an opportunity for several types of healing for the benefit of the victim, the ghost itself, and the whole community

A Guglielmite Trinity?

In the Abbey of Viboldone, in suburban Milan, there is a medieval Trinitarian sinopia that never before has received an in-depth analysis. This paper proposes that the sinopia is related to a group known as the Guglielmites, prosecuted in this region of Milan in 1300. The Guglielmites believed that a woman named Guglielma was the Holy Spirit, the third person in the Christian Trinity, come to earth incarnate in female form. The sinopia appears to portray a female Holy Spirit, and the history of the Abbey in which it is located suggests some intriguing relationships with this heretical group

Le dévoyé et le damné

Au Moyen Âge, en Italie, les représentants de l’Église considéraient les esprits venus posséder les vivants comme des démons ou des anges déchus, tandis que le peuple avait plutôt tendance à y voir des revenants. D’après une croyance préchrétienne, les personnes décédées de façon violente et prématurée pouvaient prendre possession du corps d’une personne vivante pour revivre une incarnation. Or, ces éléments de culture n’ont pas traversé le temps par inadvertance : ils ont été retenus parce qu’ils servaient les besoins des communautés qui en avaient l’usage. En l’occurrence, l’idée que les morts puissent posséder les vivants permettait d’opérer plusieurs types de guérison, au bénéfice de la victime, mais aussi du revenant et de la communauté tout entière