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A review by mburnamfink
Binding Passions: Tales of Magic, Marriage, and Power at the End of the Renaissance by Guido Ruggiero
4.0
Binding Passions is a fascinating microhistory that is both serious scholarship, and also might have been substantially more interesting in the hands of a narrative non-fiction writer rather than a historian.
The subject is Venice in the late 16th century, as revealed by the archives of the Venetian Inquisition, and relating to matters of marriage, sex, and magic. Of these, marriage in a society defined by Catholicism and aristocratic lineages is a big deal. The wrong marriage can cause a spiral of ruin, wrecking not just the lives of the people involved, but also the fortunes of their families. Matters of class, promised engagement, and willing consent all were tested in these times. One of my favorite cases involved a claimed marriage between two young people, where the man was found in bed with the woman by her father and brothers, was hastily married that night, and took off for the hinterlands with a "uh, sike!"
While marriage is bound by time and place, horniness is a human universal. Another area that gets covered is how people have sex, and in particular female sexuality in a deeply patrichal era. At the top are courtesans, who can choose their suitors, relying on looks and good culture. The best venetian courtesans had a different man for every night of the week in a long term stable arrangement, and absolute freedom in their days. The book opens where one of them was accused of bewitching a young noble into marrying her, a sudden social catapult that threatened the peace of the Most Serene Republic.
Which leads to magic. In the pre-scientific 16th century, there is a blurring between esoteric real knowledge, prayer, and sorcery. People made figures of wax, wrote up contracts selling their soul to the devil, and used enchanted oils as love potions. And as a quote goes, 60% of the time, it works every time.
This book is dense, a fascinating exploration through the archives, but it fails to give a real sense of what it was like to live in these times. I wanted to know why a young woman might turn to magic to resolve difficulties in her love life, or how a pater familias might worry about his wife's strange friends. And the book was a little too scattered and objective to give me that sense
The subject is Venice in the late 16th century, as revealed by the archives of the Venetian Inquisition, and relating to matters of marriage, sex, and magic. Of these, marriage in a society defined by Catholicism and aristocratic lineages is a big deal. The wrong marriage can cause a spiral of ruin, wrecking not just the lives of the people involved, but also the fortunes of their families. Matters of class, promised engagement, and willing consent all were tested in these times. One of my favorite cases involved a claimed marriage between two young people, where the man was found in bed with the woman by her father and brothers, was hastily married that night, and took off for the hinterlands with a "uh, sike!"
While marriage is bound by time and place, horniness is a human universal. Another area that gets covered is how people have sex, and in particular female sexuality in a deeply patrichal era. At the top are courtesans, who can choose their suitors, relying on looks and good culture. The best venetian courtesans had a different man for every night of the week in a long term stable arrangement, and absolute freedom in their days. The book opens where one of them was accused of bewitching a young noble into marrying her, a sudden social catapult that threatened the peace of the Most Serene Republic.
Which leads to magic. In the pre-scientific 16th century, there is a blurring between esoteric real knowledge, prayer, and sorcery. People made figures of wax, wrote up contracts selling their soul to the devil, and used enchanted oils as love potions. And as a quote goes, 60% of the time, it works every time.
This book is dense, a fascinating exploration through the archives, but it fails to give a real sense of what it was like to live in these times. I wanted to know why a young woman might turn to magic to resolve difficulties in her love life, or how a pater familias might worry about his wife's strange friends. And the book was a little too scattered and objective to give me that sense