Thursday, 28 April 2016

Riccarda Suitner presents a workshop paper on "The Powerlessness of the Devil: Scientific Knowledge and Demonology in Clemente Baroni Cavalcabò (1726-1796)"

This time I would like to submit to the participants in my Kolloquium something different from my usual papers on Antitrinitarianism. This is a text I have written for a collective volume on "profanation" in the early modern period, for which I would be very grateful to receive comments/suggestions for improvements. The Italian Enlightenment thinker Clemente Baroni Cavalcabò is an unknown figure. He is the author of a treatise, which tries to demonstrate, using scientific, philosophical, and exegetical arguments, the powerlessness of the devil, interpreting, in particular, German sources in an original way. This attempt was not anachronistic at all at the time, as in the mid- 18th century many European regions – especially southern Germany and northern Italy - were still theaters of public executions of witches.

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