Tasso, Poet of Doubt Walter Stephens MLN, Volume 134 Supplement, September 2019, pp. S-252-S-271 (Article) Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

Tasso, Poet of Doubt
   Walter Stephens

   MLN, Volume 134 Supplement, September 2019, pp. S-252-S-271 (Article)

   Published by Johns Hopkins University Press
   DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/mln.2019.0071

       For additional information about this article
       https://muse.jhu.edu/article/743827

[ This content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the COVID-19 pandemic. ]

Tasso, Poet of Doubt
                                         ❦

                            Walter Stephens1

Torquato Tasso was the poet of doubt, at every level.2 After 1575, he
revised his works endlessly; not until much of the Gerusalemme liberata
had been repeatedly printed without his consent did he acquiesce
to its publication and, even then, he did so only to stem the flow of
partial, pirated editions. In 1581, he allowed Febo Bonnà to publish
the complete poem, thanks to the urging of his friends, and demand
was such that a second printing was necessary after a month. Friends
only overcame Tasso’s reluctance because for the previous twenty-seven
months he had been imprisoned in the hospital of Sant’Anna. Duke
Alfonso d’Este had ordered him confined on 11 March 1579, so as to
end Tasso’s public displays of erratic behavior over the previous several
years. As the dedicatee of the Liberata, Alfonso was anxious not only to
maintain control over the poet—and over a poem he considered his
personal property—but also to curb Tasso’s insistent self-denunciations
to the Inquisition, which threatened to compromise the ducal court.3
   Tasso claimed to have never shared the public’s enthusiasm for
his poem and did not even choose its definitive 1581 title. His own
preferred title had been Il Goffredo, in homage to Godfrey of Bouil-
lon. His mental breakdown had in considerable measure resulted
from his indecisiveness over the poem. During the final phases of
composition, hoping to guarantee it both critical acceptance and safe

  1
   This essay is affectionately dedicated to the memory of Pier Massimo Forni, my
esteemed colleague for twenty years at Johns Hopkins.
  2
   I here summarize my studies since 1989 of Torquato Tasso’s relation to Tridentine
Christianity. On Tasso and doubt, see Corsaro, Percorsi. See also Scianatico, Dubbio,
101–156; and Rossi, Io come filosofo.
  3
   See Gigante, Tasso, especially 13–51.

      MLN 134S (2019): S-252–271 © 2019 by Johns Hopkins University Press

M LN                                    S-253

passage through Roman censorship, he had chosen several friends
and acquaintances to serve as surrogate, pre-emptive censors. Unable
to agree with their conclusions, he broke off revisions in 1576 and
commenced the restless peregrinations that ended when, returning
suddenly to Ferrara, he felt himself excluded from the Duke’s wedding
festivities and ended in prison for his abusive behavior.
   Tasso was a master of indirection and dissimulation, in both life and
art, so we would do well to interrogate at least one coincidence in the
story just outlined. The date of his imprisonment, 11 March, was the
anniversary of Tasso’s birth, a fact we know from his own letters, and
on that date in 1579 he turned thirty-five. According to traditional read-
ings of Dante’s Divina Commedia, the age of thirty-five was the midpoint
of life, il mezzo del cammin di nostra vita. By reaching the nadir of his
life at the Dantean age of thirty-five, he consciously or unconsciously
inscribed himself in a literary typology and thus re-enacted Dante’s
psychic shipwreck (Inf. 1.22–27) and its antitype in Dante’s Ulysses,
the tireless seeker of virtù e canoscenza whom God destroyed for his
sacrilegious pursuit of forbidden knowledge. Both Tasso’s epic and
his lyric poetry reflect his fascination with Homer’s Odysseus as well
as Dante’s Ulysses. He confirmed his Ulyssean/Odyssean self-image
when dedicating his epic to Alfonso, posing as “peregrino errante, e
fra gli scogli / e fra l’onde agitato e quasi absorto” (GL 1.4). During
previous years, Tasso had enacted other imitations, most notably in
1577 when, overcome with nostalgia for the home he had not visited
since childhood, he appeared on his sister’s doorstep in Sorrento,
masquerading as a shepherd predicting the death of Torquato.4 Like
the disguised Odysseus, he had been absent for decades and appears
to have tested his sister’s and his elder nephew’s loyalty somewhat as
Odysseus tested Penelope and Telemachus. In his profound identifi-
cation with the ancient wanderer and the Dantean seeker of profane
knowledge, Tasso seems to have cast Odysseus/Ulysses as the proto-
typical philosopher.5
   The poet’s sense of himself as errant philosopher animates one of
the first letters he sent after his incarceration. Writing to his friend
Scipione Gonzaga on 15 April 1579, forty-five days after his imprison-
ment, Tasso identified his fundamental existential problem as a crisis
of faith. He cast Gonzaga as a father confessor and, through him,
confessed to God that his Catholic faith was undermined by inveterate
philosophical propensities:

   4
    See Gigante, Tasso, 37–38. Manso, who recorded the incident, probably embellished
it, but the gesture fits with other instances of Tasso’s self-image.
   5
    Stephens, “Tasso as Ulysses.”

S-254                        WALTER STEPHENS

  non mi scuso io, Signore, ma mi accuso, che tutto dentro e di fuori lordo
  e infetto de’ vizi de la carne e de la caligine del mondo andava pensando
  di te non altramente di quel che solessi talvolta pensare a l’idee di Platone
  e a gli atomi di Democrito, a la mente d’Anassagora, a la lite e a l’amicizia
  d’Empedocle, a la materia prima d’Aristotele, a la forma de la corporalità o
  a l’unità de l’intelletto sognata da Averroe o ad altre sì fatte cose de’ filosofi.6

Tasso ostentatiously dismisses all these concepts as products of the
philosophers’ imaginations, which misinterpret the reality of God’s
handiwork and that of Nature his minister.
  Nonetheless, he instantly reiterates and defines his own philosophi-
cal doubt in Aristotelian terms:
  [n]on è maraviglia, dunque, s’io ti conosceva solo come una certa cagione
  de l’universo, la quale, amata e desiderata, tira a sé tutte le cose; e ti con-
  osceva come un principio eterno e immobile di tutti i movimenti, e come
  signore che in universale provede a la salute del mondo e di tutte le specie
  che da lui sono contenute. Ma dubitava poi oltra modo se tu avessi creato il
  mondo o se pur ab eterno egli da te [solo] dipendesse; dubitava se tu avessi
  dotato l’uomo d’anima immortale e se tu fossi disceso a vestirti d’umanità;
  e dubitava di molte cose che da questi fonti, quasi fiumi, derivano.7

Lest there be any ambiguity as to the exact nature of his doubt, Tasso
continued:
  come poteva io fermamente credere ne i sacramenti, o ne l’autorità del
  tuo pontefice, o ne l’inferno, o nel purgatorio, se de l’incarnazion del tuo
  Figliuolo e de la immortalità de l’anima era dubbio?8

These terrible doubts, said Tasso, were not spontaneous but instead
sprang, like tree branches from a root, from doubts about the nature of
God: “I secondi dubbi, nondimeno, non da proprie radici nascevano,
ma da i primi, quasi rami, germogliavano.”9 That is, if God was merely
an Aristotelian impersonal force or ultimate reality, rather than the
omniscient, omnipotent, provident monarch described by Christian
theology, then Christianity had no evident basis.
  Tasso could not bring himself to make the ultimate causality of
his doubts any plainer but clearly named philosophy—particularly
metaphysics—as the root cause of his distress:

  6
   Tasso, Prose, 835. The phrase “la caligine del mondo” describes Rinaldo in GL 18.8
before his purgation in GL 18.14–17
  7
   Tasso, Prose, 835.
  8
   Tasso, Prose, 835.
  9
   Tasso, Prose, 835.

M LN                                   S-255

  volentieri da sì fatti pensieri avrei richiamato il mio intelletto, per se stesso
  curioso e vago de l’alte e sovrane investigazioni; e volentieri l’avrei acchetato
  a credere senza ripugnanza quanto di te crede e predica la santa Chiesa
  cattolica romana.10

He says his fear of hell drove him to confess these tendencies many
times, although he could not express their full extent:
  [n]el manifestare nondimeno i miei dubbi al confessore, non gli manifestava
  con tanta forza ne le parole, con quanta mi si facevan sentire ne l’animo,
  percioché alcuna volta era vicino al non credere; non tanto per vergogna o
  per malizia, quanto per timore ch’egli non mi volesse assolvere; e fra gli altri
  dubbi che io aveva, questo era il principale, che non mi sapeva risolvere se
  la mia fosse miscredenza o no, e s’io potessi o non potessi essere assoluto.11

Tasso’s doubt was radical yet involuntary: he goes on describing the
extent of his doubts and uncertainties and then attempts to rebuild
his faith from the ground up. Even in his darkest moments, he says,
  mi consolava credendo, e ciò più fermamente che ogni altra cosa, che tu
  dovessi perdonare anche a coloro che non avessero in te creduto purché
  la loro incredulità non da ostinazione e malignità fosse fomentata: i quali
  vizi tu sai, Signore (ed in questo la mia coscienza mi francheggia), che
  da me erano e sono lontanissimi. Percioché tu sai che sempre desiderai
  l’esaltazione de la tua fede (sebbene non creduta, o non interamente
  creduta da me) con affetto incredibile.12

If the phrase “l’esaltazione de la tua fede” reminds us of the Liberata,
there is good reason. The poem has often been read as a nearly trans-
parent—though highly conflicted—allegory for the Roman Church’s
crusade against Protestant heresy.13
   Appropriately, Tasso’s confessional letter goes on to proclaim that he
always desired that Rome should endure forever as the seat of Christian
faith and of the papacy. He hastens to remind God, “sai che il nome
di luterano e d’eretico era da me, come cosa pestifera, abborrito e
abominato,” even though he often frequented those who said that
their own faith was unstable for reason of state, that they were indeed
close to unbelief (“coloro che per ragion, com’essi dicevano, di stato,
vacillavano ne la tua fede e a l’intera incredulità erano assai vicini”).14
   Without pretending to know how far Tasso’s sincerity can be deter-
mined here, I will observe that he transferred the language of his

 10
   Tasso, Prose, 835.
 11
   Tasso, Prose, 836.
 12
   Tasso, Prose, 836.
 13
   See Zatti, Uniforme cristiano.
 14
   Tasso, Prose, 836.

S-256                         WALTER STEPHENS

prison letter, sometimes verbatim, into two philosophical dialogues
he began in the months following his imprisonment. Il Gonzaga, o del
piacere onesto repudiated any and all philosophy that did not affirm the
primacy of Christian theology, although its attitude toward Epicurean-
ism and Sadducism will merit more attention. The second dialogue, Il
messaggiero, was an exercise in Neoplatonic daemonology:15 it attempts
to demonstrate by purely philosophical arguments the real existence
of multiple intermediate species between God and humanity and thus
to explain the coherence, rationality, and purpose of the cosmos. As
their echoes of the prison letter reveal, these two dialogues are not
orthodox defenses of Christian doctrine—indeed some assertions of
the Messaggiero are so heterodox that Tasso’s dedicatory letter defends
the dialogue as the “opera d’uomo che scrive come filosofo e crede
come cristiano.”16
   The letter and dialogues translate into prose and linear thinking
a kind of faith-building exercise that Tasso seems to attempt in the
Liberata but which evidently left him profoundly dissatisfied. In his
Discorsi dell’arte poetica, published as a commentary on his epic, Tasso
translated his cosmological and metaphysical concerns into literary
theory. The Discorsi theorize the perfect epic as a “picciolo mondo,”
a microcosm, whose luxuriant detail faithfully represents “questo
mirabile magisterio di Dio, che mondo si chiama.”17 But such variety,
which Tasso expounds in a manner that recalls Homer’s ekphrasis of
Achilles’ shield, is held in check by unity, forming a concordant discord:
  nondimeno uno sia il poema che tanta varietà di materie contegna, una la
  forma e la favola sua, e che tutte queste cose siano di maniera composte
  che l’una l’altra riguardi, l’una a l’altra corrisponda, l’una da l’altra o
  necessariamente o verisimilmente dependa: sì che una sola parte o tolta
  via o mutata di sito, il tutto ruini.18

No one needs reminding that the tension between unity and variety
is the core of Tasso’s literary theory, and, as Sergio Zatti has shown,
of his religious thematics as well.19
   The meticulous extent to which Tasso planned his microcosm—and
how far that little world was meant to reflect Tridentine theology—has
  15
    I distinguish Christian demonology from Neoplatonic daemonology, as explained below;
see among others Luck, Arcana, 207–222.
  16
     Baffetti, Dialoghi, 1:310.
  17
     Tasso, Prose, 387.
  18
     Tasso, Prose, 387–388; compare Il. 18.478–608. See also Heffernan, Museum, 1–36;
and GL 17.58–82. Tasso expanded these arguments in his Discorsi del poema eroico; see
Prose, 588–589.
  19
     See Uniforme cristiano. See also Rhu, Genesis.

M LN                                      S-257

not always been evident but the architecture of the Liberata is filled with
seemingly magical correspondences: as printed in July, 1581, the epic
appears apotropaic, a talisman against subversive doubt.20 I would argue
that, rather than a model of the world as Tasso conceived it between
1576 and 1581, it represents the ideal cosmos he desired, a structure
that might consolidate his disordered Catholic faith.21 Hence, Tasso
imitated Dante, the symmetries of whose Commedia reflect principles
the Book of Wisdom (11:21) attributed to God’s creative act: number,
measure and weight. Like Dante’s, Tasso’s poetic architecture is pre-
cisely calibrated; it demonstrates an obsessive concern with numerical
order and balance.
   Like Dante’s hundred cantos, Tasso’s twenty books (rather than the
Vergilian twelve or Homeric twenty-four) are appropriate for Chris-
tian subject matter.22 Events in the first half of the Liberata are often
echoed thematically ten cantos later. At the level of the stanza, octaves
bearing numerological connotations are significant. The hundredth
stanza describes a crucial event whenever it occurs; in the first and
last cantos, seven, ten, thirty-three, one hundred, and one hundred
forty-four are prominent. The first canto begins when God scrutinizes
the Christian army in the seventh stanza, after six years of war, and
commands its reorganization. In the Christological stanza 33, the army
ratifies its transformation into a corps or corporation, “un corpo sol
de’ membri amici,” ruled by “un capo che gli altri indirizzi e frene,”
as Piero l’Eremita advised two stanzas earlier. The numerology and
corporeal language suggest that Goffredo’s election as general of the
Christian army reflects the Pauline Mystical Body signifying the unity
of the Church.
   Ironically, Goffredo’s army falls into disarray by the end of the
tenth canto; however, the poem’s crucial symmetry connects the
first and eleventh cantos. After the debacle, canto eleven allusively
reforms the failed incorporation that followed Goffredo’s election.
A liturgical procession inverts the political-military hierarchy of the
parade ten cantos earlier, in which the papal troops brought up the

   20
     Here I revisit my earlier studies, Stephens, “Saint Paul”; Stephens, “Metaphor”; and
Stephens, “Tasso and the Witches.”
   21
     While Tasso’s works make no explicit statement to this effect, the cosmos he de-
signed in the Liberata accords with Paul in Romans 1:20: “[i]nvisibilia enim ipsius, a
creatura mundi, per ea quae facta sunt, intellecta, conspiciuntur: sempiterna quoque
eius virtus, et divinitas” (“[f]or the invisible things of him, from the creation of the
world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power
also, and divinity”—Douai translation of Vulgate).
   22
     Significantly, the more orthodox (poetically and theologically) Gerusalemme con-
quistata (1593) contains twenty-four libri.

S-258                       WALTER STEPHENS

rear (GL 1.64). The clergy, led by Piero, now precedes the secular
soldiery (GL 11.5–6). The procession allusively reconstitutes the Mysti-
cal Body, emphasized by other manifestations of the Body of Christ.
Notably, the ceremonies culminate in the celebration of Mass on the
Mount of Olives: in theological terms, the Eucharistic Corpus Verum
reconstitutes the Corpus Mysticum on the spot where Christ ascended
bodily to Heaven.
   But the symmetries go far deeper: the procession and Mass occur
at the mathematical midpoint of the Liberata, as determined by the
number of stanzas in the Bonnà editions of June and July 1581 that
Tasso authorized. While not obviously significant in itself, the number
of stanzas is, so to speak, the measure of the poem’s weight. The July
printing displays a stanzaic arrangement of 958 + 958. That symmetry
was evidently intentional, for the July edition mainly revises the June
printing by eliminating one stanza (numbered 16.41 in Lanfranco
Caretti’s composite edition): in June, the poem divided stanzaically
as 958 + 959. Evidently, suppressing the extra stanza in July restored
or perfected an organizational principle of Tasso’s microcosm.23
   The July arrangement has a further symmetry. In it, the mathemati-
cal center of the poem is a hiatus between stanzas 958 and 959 (GL
11.9.8–11.10.1); on either side of the gap are six stanzas of Christian
ceremonies, creating a stanzaic symmetry of 952 + 6 + 6 + 952. The
twelve central stanzas describe the liturgical procession that ascends
the mountain (GL 11.4–9), and the celebration of Eucharist on its
summit (11.10–15). This architecture strongly recalls Christocentric
iconography in the visual arts, most notably in Raffaello’s Disputa del
sacramento (1509–1510), in which the ascended Christ and the Eucha-
rist ensconced in its monstrance share the central, vertical axis of the
image with God the Father and the Holy Spirit.
   In the eleventh canto of Tasso’s poem, the army as Corpus Mysticum
and the Eucharist as Corpus Verum converge on the site of Christ’s
final earthly footsteps, before his Corpus Historicum became the
Corpus Gloriosum at his Ascension. These convergences belatedly
fulfill Peter the Hermit’s admonition to create “un corpo sol de’
membri amici” with a solitary ruling “capo” (GL 1.31). The poem’s
new beginning is figural, in Erich Auerbach’s sense: it recapitulates,
explicates and accomplishes the covenant that God proposed and

  23
    Caretti (Gerusalemme 16.41, p. 486–487) observes that the Osanna edition of the
Liberata curated by Tasso’s friend Scipione Gonzaga in 1584 also omits 16.41, which
seems to confirm Tasso’s volition. Difference between stanza numbering of July 1981
text and Caretti’s edition unaccounted for in Røstvig 206–211.

M LN                                     S-259

Goffredo’s army accepted (GL 1.33) but failed to respect.24 Tasso’s
Christocentric poetic microcosm enacts the assertion in Wisdom that
God created everything according to number, measure and weight
and, therefore, suggests his desire to cast the center of the Liberata as
a sacrament—that is, in Tridentine theology, a holy sign that performs
the very action it signifies. In Tasso’s case, the structure of the poetic
microcosm should determine the poet’s perception of the macrocosm
as, in fact, a cosmos, a beautifully interlocked example of God’s art.25
   Beyond the obsessive arithmetical symmetry of its architecture,
crucial incidents in the Liberata act out the Council of Trent’s polemi-
cal defenses of Catholic theology: the life, death and transfiguration
of the warrior woman Clorinda exalt the sacrament of baptism;26 the
errant Rinaldo’s confession and washing clean by morning dew after
returning from the voluptuous magical kingdom of Armida (GL
18.16) illustrates the sacrament of penitence as a second baptism;
and Peter the Hermit’s authority over the army throughout the poem
celebrates the sacrality of ordination, particularly in the “rectified”
processional hierarchy of canto eleven. Perhaps most unmistakably,
the indissoluble sacrament of marriage is enacted by the English
lover-spouses “Gildippe ed Odoardo, amanti e sposi.” As the narra-
tor reminds us, this knightly couple, “giunti in uno” (GL 3.40) goes
into battle “congiunta” (20.35), fighting as one, and, pace Henry VIII,
cannot be divorced even by death, which claims them simultaneously
(20.100).27 Incidents involving Goffredo and Raimondo revindicate
Tridentine doctrine concerning guardian angels.28 While esthetically
satisfying, these symmetries nonetheless cannot erase the human
suffering and frailty of the poet or his characters, as Goffredo’s error
(GL 11.20–24) already demonstrates.29
   Tensions in the Gonzaga and in its comprehensive restructuring as Il
Nifo overo del piacere suggest Tasso’s potential motivation for constructing

  24
    Auerbach, “Figura,” 47: “[d]ie Figuraldeutung stellt einen Zusammenhang zwischen
zwei Geschehnissen oder Personen her, in dem eines von inhen nicht nur sich selbst,
sondern auch das andere bedeutet, das andere hingen das eine einschliesst oder erfüllt”
(Mannheim, “Figura,” 53: “[f]igural interpretation establishes a connection between
two events or persons, the first of which signifies not only itself but also the second,
while the second encompasses or fulfills the first”).
  25
     On the theology of sacramental energies, see Stephens, “Metaphor”; and Stephens,
Demon Lovers, 180–206.
  26
     Stephens, “Tasso’s Heliodorus.”
  27
     GL 1.56: “Ove voi me, di numerar già lasso, / Gildippe ed Odoardo, amanti e
sposi, / rapite? o ne la guerra anco consorti, / non sarete disgiunti ancor che morti!”
  28
     GL 7.80, 8.84, 11.72 and 20.21. See also Ossola, Angeli.
  29
     See Bruscagli, Studi, 167–198.

S-260                        WALTER STEPHENS

his poetic microcosm on sacramental principles.30 The conflict between
philosophy and faith, inquiry and authority, expressed in Tasso’s prison
letter to Scipione Gonzaga in 1579, still animates the Gonzaga com-
posed the following year. There, Tasso concedes the abstract necessity
of the inquisition. Agostino Sessa tells Cesare Gonzaga that “Non ci fu
mai […] alcuna città bene instituita in cui la relligione31 e ’l timore
e l’onor d’Iddio non fosse introdotta.” However,
  [q]uesto uso […] di punir così aspramente coloro ch’hanno alcuna nuova
  opinione nella relligione o diversa da quella che tengono i principi della
  città, è uso anzi moderno ch’antico: perciò che nell’antichissima relligione
  degli Ebrei, della quale la nostra cristiana si può dir che sia figliuola, i
  principi del popolo e della città seguivan l’opinioni che da’ Farisei erano
  approvate; due altre sette nondimeno erano tolerate, quella degli Esseni e
  quella de’ Saducei, tuttoch’ i Saducei, come coloro che riguardavano solo
  la scorza della Scrittura né penetravano ne’ profondi misteri che da essa
  son contenuti, non credessero l’immortalità dell’anima.32

This discourse on toleration focuses on the major anxiety Tasso had
expressed the previous year in the “confession” to Scipione Gonzaga.
Sessa draws a parallel between the Sadducees’ materialism and Epi-
curean philosophy in Roman culture:
  In Roma eziandio, se ben i senatori seguivano nelle publiche ceremonie
  e nel culto domestico la relligione introdotta da Numa, molti nondimeno
  vivevano, non dirò con l’opinioni degli Stoici o de’ Peripatetici, ma con
  quelle d’Epicuro, né pero erano castigati o esclusi dal governo della
  republica.33

Sessa observes that ancient Athens was less tolerant than Rome, that
Athenians accused both Pericles and Socrates of having wrong opin-
ions about the gods and that Aristotle prudently chose exile to avoid
the treatment those thinkers had received. Later, Roman emperors
discontinued the tolerant policies of the Republic and oppressed
the Christians. Then, once the emperors themselves converted, “fu
con molta severità proceduto contra gli eretici, e ultimamente Carlo

   30
     Marguerite Ferguson (Trials, 54–70) and Zatti, L’ombra del Tasso, 1–27; Uniforme
cristiano, 91–144) have linked Tasso’s Oedipal anxieties to Bernardo Tasso’s support
for Ferrante Sanseverino against the introduction of the Inquisition in Naples when
Torquato was a young child and to both poets’ struggles with exile and poetic success.
   31
     Sic: I preserve Raimondi’s rendering of Tasso’s orthography in the passages that
follow.
   32
     Raimondi, Dialoghi, 3:231–232. Compare the Nifo in Baffetti, Dialoghi, 1:279.
   33
     Raimondi, Dialoghi, 3:232–233. Compare the Nifo in Baffetti, Dialoghi, 1:279–280.

M LN                                      S-261

Quinto ha raccolto così grande essercito per acchettare i tumulti in
Germania.”34
   In the Gonzaga, Tasso discusses at some length the actual and ideal
roles of the Inquisition. Heresy, Sessa argues, should not expose a
citizen to torture and shame unless it is pertinacious or accompanied
by a perverse will to corrupt and infect other people. He invokes the
examples of Pietro Pomponazzi and his “follower” Simone Porzio,
“l’un mantovano e napolitano l’altro, [che] furono ne gli studi publici
tolerati, tutto che si sapesse publicamente che l’uno e l’altro di loro
non più oltre credesse di quel ch’Aristotele avesse creduto.”35 This pas-
sage recalls Tasso’s description of his own conflicted Aristotelianism in
the letter to Gonzaga, and Church officials’ habit of denouncing and
occasionally persecuting materialistic interpretations of Aristotle from
the thirteenth century onward, despite the philosopher’s importance
to Scholasticism.36
   To avoid even appearing to approve materialism in the Gonzaga,
Tasso has Sessa distance himself from the guilt-ridden attitude the
poet expressed in the 1579 letter:
  Né io ragiono di queste materie così clementemente perch’a me stesso
  d’alcun’empietà o d’alcuna rea opinione nella fede sia consapevole, ma
  solo perché, conoscendo l’imperfezione dell’umano intelletto, è ragionevole
  ch’io compatisca a coloro che dall’apparenza della verità sono ingannati; la
  quale, come ben diceva Democrito, è sommersa nel profondo, o più tosto
  in cielo nel grembo d’Iddio è nascosa nel quale ella nacque, e sol quanto
  alcun raggio suo di là traluce, tanto noi miseri mortali fra le tenebre e le
  caligini del senso ne possiamo conoscere.37

Despite “Christianizing” the materialist Democritus, Tasso apparently
felt that mentioning him, Pomponazzi, and Porta was too bold, because
he excised the entire passage when recasting Il Gonzaga as Il Nifo.
   Both versions declare that “[l]’opinioni contrarie alla fede o
derivano da ragion[e] […] o da auttorità di Scrittura male intesa
e di scrittore che male l’abbia interpretata”: the Gonzaga describes
such heterodox reasoning as “filosofica e naturale,” the Nifo only as

  34
    Raimondi, Dialoghi, 3:233–234; Baffetti, Dialoghi, 1:279–280. Tasso imagines the
dialogue preceding his father and Sanseverino’s embassy to Charles V in 1547. Signifi-
cantly, Nifo adds (Baffetti, Dialoghi, 1:282) that Italy “ora […] dee guardarsi dal morbo
de’ Luterani e Calvinisti.” On Gonzaga and the letter to Scipione Gonzaga, see Corsaro,
Percorsi dell’incredulità, 29–41.
  35
    Raimondi, Dialoghi, 3:240. Porzio authored De rerum naturalibus principiis and De
anima et mente humana and died in 1554.
  36
    See Thijssen, “Condemnation.”
  37
    Raimondi, Dialoghi, 3:241.

S-262                          WALTER STEPHENS

“naturale.”38 The Gonzaga went on to specify that an erroneous opinion
based on reasoning “non suol per sua natura esser accompagnata da
alcuno affetto d’animo o da alcuna animosità di parte,” because the
true philosopher recognizes the essential nexus between Christian and
civic virtues. Since he knows that no city can live without religion, he
will seek to reinforce religion among his acquaintances rather than
weaken it.
   Gonzaga declared with unrepressed ambivalence, however, that the
true philosopher will uphold Christianity publicly “quantunque egli
potesse avere opinione ch’alcuna altra relligione fosse meglio instituita
della sua.”39 This concession, so reminiscent of Michel de Montaigne
and of sixteenth-century Nicodemism, fell out of the Nifo. But in the
Gonzaga, a remarkable about-face followed, defending philosophy as
synonymous with Christianity:
   Ma s’egli filosofo cristiano sarà, non sol co’l lume della rivelazione e della
   fede, ma con quello eziandio della natura conoscerà che la nostra relligione
   tanto dell’altre è migliore e sovra più sante e più certe leggi fondata, quanto
   basta a persuaderci ch’ella non sia invenzion degli uomini ma più tosto del
   vero figliuol d’Iddio, il qual, degnandosi di sostenere in se stesso le colpe
   del nostro antico padre, la lassò scritta non men nel cuore degli uomini
   con la vita e con l’opere che nelle carte con gli inchiostri.

In context, this encomium of Christianity sounds a bit forced and,
indeed, the Gonzaga continues ambivalently: “e quando pure [il filo-
sofo] non così fermamente ciò creda che si possa dire ch’egli abbia il
lume della viva fede, non sarà mai in guisa miscredente che d’empio
meriti il titolo, percioché l’empietà e la filosofia non si possono insieme
accompagnare.”40 Unsurprisingly, the whole passage was eliminated
in the more cohesive, recognizably orthodox Nifo.
   In the Gonzaga, the reference to an appearance of outright unbelief
echoed Tasso’s anxious soul-searching in his 1579 letter and, indeed,
after a few paragraphs, the dialogue lifted whole passages from the
letter. The most extensive borrowing came from Tasso’s application
of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics to the question of belief. In both the
Gonzaga and the letter, Tasso used the term signore delle apparenze to
refer to the passage where Aristotle responds to the objection that “all
   38
     Raimondi, Dialoghi, 3:256; Baffetti, Dialoghi, 1:281: “[m]a perché due sogliono
essere i fonti de la eresia, l’uno la natural ragione, l’altro la maligna interpretazion de
la Scrittura, assai più pericoloso par questo secondo, percioch’ogni inganno procede
da alcuna simiglianza; laonde, quanto maggior similitudine è ne le opinioni, tanto più
agevolmente la peste de l’eresie suole appigliarsi.”
   39
     Raimondi, Dialoghi, 3:256–257.
   40
     Raimondi, Dialoghi, 3:257–258.

M LN                                      S-263

men aim at the apparent good, but have no control over how things
appear” to them.41 When Tasso attempted in the letter to excuse what
he feared were his own heretical tendencies, he indulged in a lengthy
praeteritio to stipulate that
  [n]é dirò già io che l’uomo non è signore de l’apparenze e che il credere non
  è operazione de la volontà, ma atto de l’intelletto, il quale crede ciò che da
  la ragione gli è mostrato per vero, onde in lui, non ne la volontà consiste
  la libertà de l’uomo; […] né dirò che quegli atti che non dipendono da
  la volontà meritano o lode o biasimo; né con questa dottrina de’ filosofi
  andrò mescolando qualche detto de’ cristiani, in mal senso convertito,
  come sarebbe a dire che se la volontà potesse comandare a l’intelletto
  assolutamente, ch’gli credesse o non credesse a suo modo, questo imperio
  de la volontà sarebbe tirannico; ma che fra le potenze de l’animo non si
  concede tirannide, ma solamente civile o regio comandamento: onde,
  quando ancora si concedesse che la volontà fosse superiore a l’intelletto
  (al che pare che ripugni l’umana ragione), non si dee però concedere
  ch’ella tirannicamente eserciti il suo impero. Non dirò queste cose, no.42

No, declared Tasso, he would instead recognize that both God’s own
people and other divinely inspired philosophers have agreed with
Aristotle that
  l’uomo in gran parte è signore de le apparenze; e che se ciascuno è cagione
  a se stesso de gli abiti suoi, è anche in conseguenza cagione che una cosa
  gli paia d’una o d’altra maniera: perché il giudicio seguita l’abito, e se
  l’abito è ne la parte morale o ne la volontà, ne segue che l’operazioni de
  l’intelletto dipendano da quelle de la volontà e da le morali.43

Here Tasso seemed to reprove unnamed modern philosophers who
misunderstood these passages of Aristotle: their ignorance extended
so far that “usano d’affermare certissimamente che la libertà de l’ar-
bitrio sia ne l’intelletto, non ne la volontà.” Faith was instead a gift
conceded to those who habituate themselves to believe in an orthodox
manner, thus making themselves worthy to receive it.44
   The entire discourse of this letter appears nonetheless focused on
Tasso’s intellect, rather than his will. And, though it is extensive, the

  41
    See the revised Oxford translation of Nicomachean Ethics 3.5 (1114b-1115a) in Aris-
totle, Complete Works, 2:1759–60.
  42
    Tasso, Prose, 833 (italics added). Here is the germ of the argument later made in
the Allegoria del poema that the Christian army’s hierarchy under Goffredo illustrates the
proper relationship among the powers of the soul. As I maintain elsewhere (Stephens,
“Metaphor,” 237–247), this allegoresis can be made to explain the Liberata but tells us
nothing about the structure of the discourse on human, political, and sacramental
bodies in the poem.
  43
    Tasso, Prose, 834. See also Nicomachean Ethics 3.5 (1114b).
  44
    Tasso, Prose, 834. See also Gonzaga (Raimondi, Dialoghi, 3:262–264).

S-264                           WALTER STEPHENS

discussion of mastering appearances does not stand alone but forms a
preamble to the confession that his Aristotelianism had prevented his
belief in a personal God, the Incarnation and the sacraments. Was Tasso
tacitly confessing himself one of the modern “filosofi” who declared
that man is not the master of appearances and that faith necessarily
follows intellect? Rather than answer, he went on to assert that by tak-
ing the Eucharist more frequently and reciting certain prayers daily,
  la mia fede s’andava di giorno in giorno più confermando; e col pensar
  di te, se non nel modo con che si dee, almeno con miglior maniera che
  io non soleva, cominciava il mio intelletto a presumere di se stesso meno
  che non era usato; e cominciava a conoscere chiaramente per prova ch’egli
  ubbidisce la volontà, almeno in esercitar se stesso a voglia di lei; e che in
  buone speculazioni e in santi pensieri esercitandosi, si fa degno di ricevere
  la fede in dono da Iddio: de la quale veramente si può dire che sia atto de
  l’intelletto comandato da la volontà.45

An equally long disquisition on negative theology ensued, in which
Tasso expressed orthodox opinions about the unknowability of God
and the mystery of the Incarnation, declaring that even natural history
remains largely mysterious.46
  Tasso’s confessional letter prepared his reader, at excruciating
length, for a conversion narrative, and indeed his confession seemed
headed for a happy resolution as he wound down.
  [q]uesti erano i miei pensieri e i ragionamenti che fra me stesso faceva, per
  li quali sempre più mi andava accorgendo de l’incertitudine de le scienze
  mondane e sempre meno di credenza prestando a tutto ciò che da’ filosofi
  contra la nostra religione può essere addotto, sì che ormai nulla, o molto
  poco, da quelle mie prime molestie era agitato. E se in ciò mento, tu Dio,
  che sei spiator de’ cuori e sei giustissimo giudice, in quel tanto da me
  temuto giorno non aspettar di rammentarlomi; ma qui con maravigliosa
  dimostrazione, simile a quella con la quale in vita m’hai conservato, la mia
  menzogna fa manifesta.47

The projected happy end, however, never came. Instead, Tasso redi-
rected his attention to his friend Gonzaga and referred to the entire
preceding confession as a “lunga digressione (la quale non mosso da
artificio oratorio, ma rapito da un certo spirito di verità ho fatta, non
contra mia voglia, ma certo oltre ogni mia intenzione).”48 After this

 45
   Tasso,   Prose,   837–838.
 46
   Tasso,   Prose,   838–841.
 47
   Tasso,   Prose,   841.
 48
   Tasso,   Prose,   841.

M LN                                   S-265

ambivalent coda Tasso enumerated his social difficulties with the court
and the Duke, both before and after his imprisonment.
   What to make of all this? The letter certainly bears the hallmarks
of genuine desolation, even if we can never know Tasso’s intentions
in writing it. An embryonic answer may perhaps be found when the
Gonzaga reprises this passage. After discussing philosophy and belief,
Sessa declares “[e] qui voglio che pognam fine al nostro grave e lungo
ragionamento, il qual non so se da voi altrui sarà riferito; ma quando
pur sia, piaccia a Dio che sia ascoltato intentamente da coloro a’
quali egli potrà recare alcuna utilità.”49 In an apparent digression, a
statue of the mythical Glaucus inspires Sessa to discuss the honorable
pleasures referred to in the dialogue’s title. He appears to contradict
Paradiso 1.64–72 by interpreting Glaucus’s trasumanar as a degradation,
figuring “l’uomo il qual, gustando il piacer sensuale […] s’immerge di
soverchio ne’ piaceri, ritrovati dalla natura affine della generazione,
tanto che quasi diventa bruto.”50 Sessa then literalizes the allegory
altogether, mentioning the “mille occulte proprietà” of plants, “le
quali, appropriate in tempo opportuno a soggetto convenevole, posson
fare mirabili effetti.”51
   But the pharmacological discussion suddenly veers into occultism.
Sessa mentions reading the metamorphoses of men into werewolves
in Olaus Magnus’s history of northern peoples,
  e in quel libro ancora che ’l signor Giovan Francesco Pico, nobilissimo
  ed eruditissimo signore, scrisse delle streghe, ho letto, dico, alcuna cosa
  delle trasformazioni, le quali ben ch’io creda che realmente non si fac-
  ciano, credo nondimeno che si possano fare unguenti o bevande le quali
  siano possenti a stordir l’uomo in guisa ch’egli s’imagini d’esser converso
  in bestia, come ne’ sogni parimente può imaginarselo.52

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, demonologists and their oppo-
nents among physicians and jurists debated the reality of witchcraft,
using as crucial examples the supposed metamorphoses of werewolves
and of witches into cats and other beasts.53 Sessa’s brief discussion of
witchcraft, drugs and hallucination leads into a broader philosophical
and theological consideration of body, soul, intellect and imagination.54

   Raimondi, Dialoghi, 3:264–265.
  49

   Raimondi, Dialoghi, 3:267–268.
  50
 51
   Raimondi, Dialoghi, 3:269.
 52
   Raimondi, Dialoghi, 3:269–270.
 53
   See Stephens, Demon Lovers, 125–179; and Ostling, “Babyfat.”
 54
   An encyclopedic source is Haskell, Diseases. There, Monica Calabritto (“Tasso’s
Melancholy”) discusses Tasso’s symptomology. See also Basile, Poëta.

S-266                          WALTER STEPHENS

   Ezio Raimondi understood the Gonzaga as half of a “dittico,” calling
its reference to Olaus and Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola “un
anticipo, una specie di scheda bibliografica dei ragionamenti «magici»
svolti nel Messaggiero,” begun in the same months.55 Indeed, the Messag-
giero elaborates the reference in the Gonzaga to Pico’s 1523 dialogue,
Strix sive de ludificatione daemonum (The Witch, or on the Deceptions Per-
petrated by Demons). Foreshadowing the Messaggiero, Pico showed scant
interest in pharmacology, instead preferring theological interpretations
of demonology and witchcraft. He both advocated and practiced the
persecution of witches as heretics who interacted socially, sexually, and
in reality with demons, providing detailed theological justifications.56
   Tasso abandoned the Gonzaga after reshaping it into the Nifo but
labored intermittently over the Messaggiero for more than a decade,
from August of 1580 to December of 1591; three surviving redac-
tions date between 1582 and 1587.57 The final text of the Messaggiero
is bizarre and recondite enough but its earliest surviving version is a
veritable fever dream, as openly anxious about God, human immor-
tality and faith as the prison letter and the original Gonzaga from the
same period. In all versions of the Messaggiero, a personage resem-
bling a Neoplatonic daemon visits “Tasso” in his prison cell at dawn.58
The daemon argues that his species have a natural but ethereal body,
making them ontologically intermediate between grossly embodied
humanity and incorporeal “separate spirits” (substantiae separatae)—the
angels and devils of Christianity. By eliminating the abrupt salto or
hiatus between human and angelic species, the daemones form a copula
mundi between mind and matter, revealing the great chain of being as
a continuous, smooth salita (ascent) from lower to higher forms, not
only of mind, but also of body.59 The seamless ontology described by
the daemon reveals the world as divinely planned. In short, the cosmos
resembles a perfect poem, just as the Discorsi suggest.

  55
    Raimondi, “Introduzione,” Dialoghi, 1:23.
  56
    Stephens, “Skepticism, Empiricism, and Proof in Gianfrancesco Pico della Miran-
dola’s Strix.” Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft, 11.1 (2016): 6–29.
  57
    See Raimondi, Dialoghi, 2.1:247–332 and 3:297–468, summarized in Basile, “Nota.”
In Rinascimento inquieto, Ezio Raimondi (161–187) reviews a range of demonological
and gnoseological parallels.
  58
    I paraphrase Stephens, “Tasso and the Witches”; Tasso’s authorial persona in the
Messaggiero is “Tasso.”
  59
     The arguments are lengthy: Raimondi, Dialoghi, 3:334–425; Baffetti, Dialoghi,
326–365. Basile’s notes to the Messaggiero (Dialoghi, 29–104), are particularly useful. The
daemon does not use the term copula mundi, though the concept structures his proofs
(see Raimondi, Dialoghi, 3:368–370; Baffetti, Dialoghi, 1:345–346). See Stephens, “De
dignitate”; Corsaro, Percorsi, 89–93; and Giunta, Magia, 67–73.

M LN                                         S-267

   Arguing that daemones—including himself—are not imaginary, the
spirito attempts unsuccessfully to convince “Tasso”: first empirically—
through sight, touch and voice—then by philosophical reasoning. The
unstated but evident goal is proof that spirit exists, that materialism
is invalid (remember the Gonzaga’s Sadducees and Epicureans). But
the spirito cannot overcome “Tasso’s” suspicion that their interaction
is a dream or somnolent hallucination. At the end of the original
redaction, the spirito takes leave of the poet, “spirando nello sparire
suavissimi odori d’ambrosia e lasciando la camera della sua celeste luce
mirabilmente luminosa.”60 But in the definitive version, “Tasso” con-
cludes that the experience has taken place entirely in his imagination.61
   This belated concession to the power of the imagination reflects
the widespread early modern suspicion that the demons of Christian
tradition might not exist (Christianity itself had rejected Neoplatonic
daemones like Tasso’s “messenger” since the time of St. Augustine, on
the grounds that some were supposedly beneficent).62 Thomas Aquinas
had complained that Aristotelians and even Aristotle himself did not
discuss the demons of Christianity, thus leading some “Peripatetics” to
conclude that devils existed only in the imagination of the ignorant
common folk.63 Although Aquinas’ remarks were merely parentheti-
cal, they irritated the demonological anxieties that haunted European
society between the 1430s and the 1700s. By the 1450s, witch-hunting
treatises often quoted Aquinas’s words to defend the existence of
demons and characterize doubt as a slippery slope toward Epicurean-
ism and Sadducism.64

  60
      Raimondi, Dialoghi, 3:468
  61
      Baffetti, Dialoghi, 1:383 (italics added): “ma io, riscotendomi, m’accorsi che ne l’alta
mia imaginazione aveva filosofato non altramente che gli uomini contemplativi sogliano
ne la lor contemplazione.” Baffetti notes that the phrase italicized here echoes Dante’s
“alta fantasia” in Par. 33.142.
   62
      Augustine, City of God 8.22.
   63
      Aquinas discusses angels and devils in his commentary on Peter Lombard’s Libri
Quattuor Sententiarum (2.8); in the Summa theologiae (1.51–64); in the Summa contra
Gentiles (2.50–51 and 2.91–101); in De spiritualibus creaturis (5–8); in the Quaestiones
disputatae de potentia dei (6); and in De malo (16). But the passages that most disturbed
fifteenth-century witchcraft theorists were three: the conclusion in De substantiis separatis
(4) that “de daemonibus nullam invenitur nec ipse [Aristoteles] nec eius sequaces
fecisse mentionem” (“we find that neither Aristotle nor any of his followers has made
mention of demons”); the concession in Quaestiones quodlibetales (11.9.1) that “quidam
dixerunt quod maleficium nihil est” (“some have said that witchcraft does not exist”)
and, therefore, that “daemones nihil sunt nisi imaginationes hominum” (“devils exist
only in the imagination of [common] people)”; and the elaboration of this contention
in the commentary to Lombard (4.34.1.3). See Stephens, Demon Lovers, 23–26, 58–80
and 318–321.
   64
     See Stephens, Demon Lovers, especially 318–321; Stephens, “Corporeality”; Stephens,
“Experiments”; Stephens, “Imagination”; and Stephens, “Tasso, Torquato.”

S-268                        WALTER STEPHENS

  But how to prove the existence of demons? These treatises, includ-
ing the Malleus maleficarum (1486) and Pico’s Strix, regularly accused
women of having sexual intercourse with fallen angels, an allegation
mercilessly punished in witchcraft trials until nearly 1700. Tasso
sought to replace the horrific demonological theories of witch-hunters
with his own eccentric daemonology. His Neoplatonic “spirito” avers
that witches copulate with beings like himself rather than the devils
of Christian theology.
  Ma que’ dèmoni che malvagi sono detti dall’officio loro, con le donne in quella
  guisa si congiungono che voi uomini solete; e perch’essi non potrebbono
  per sé generare, gittano il seme d’alcun uomo nel ventre della donna, che
  è di quelle che streghe sono da voi dimandate: e da sì fatti congiungimenti
  nascono i maghi, quale fu Merlino, che fu giudicato figliuolo del demonio.65

The difference is ostensibly moral: demonologists averred that dev-
ils couple with women out of malice, to procure their damnation;
Tasso’s novel daemones are semi-Christian guardians with assigned
duties (offici)—some tempt humans, others counsel good actions. But
the important distinction is ontological and cosmological: daemones
possess bodies that are intrinsic to their being, whereas the devils of
Christian demonology must confect temporary “assumed” bodies ad
hoc to interact with humans. The final proof of an ontological salita
that Tasso’s spirito offers is this copulation of witches with daemones:
the Messaggiero shows that Tasso intended it to assuage his dread of a
purely material cosmos.66 But it merely ends the discussion; instead
of accepting or rejecting it, “Tasso” changes the subject, asking the
daemon to discuss the ideal ambassador as human messaggiero.67
    Tasso’s copulating daemones are a very unsatisfactory hybrid of
Christianity and Ficinian Neoplatonism, which itself was already a
problematic solution to the Christian lack of a copula mundi that
would bridge the ontological gap between humans and angels.68 Early
modern Christian notions of witchcraft were even more bizarre than
Tasso’s, for they depended on a hypothesis of demonic copulation
that had arisen ad hoc. Attempting to understand whether the term
filius diaboli could be literal rather than figurative, Aquinas taught
  65
    Raimondi, Dialoghi, 3:421 (italics added). See also Baffetti, Dialoghi, 1:364; and
Stephens, Demon Lovers, 58–86. Tasso’s terminology and orthography do not normally
distinguish Neoplatonic dèmone (Greek daimon, Latin daemon) from Christian demonio
(devil, diavolo) though in context the difference is usually clear.
  66
    See Stephens, “Tasso and the Witches”; Stephens, “De dignitate”; Stephens, “In-
credible Sex.”
  67
    Raimondi, Dialoghi, 3:425; Baffetti, Dialoghi, 1:365.
  68
    Stephens, “Habeas Corpus.”

M LN                                         S-269

that the devils of Christian theology, who have neither bodies nor
gender, might form artificial bodies of compressed air and vapors and
copulate with women, impregnating them with semen stolen from
human males.69 That is, performing as a female-gendered succubus,
a prosthetically embodied devil might copulate with a man, steal his
semen, and then transgender itself, becoming a male incubus in order
to inseminate a woman.70
   For Aquinas, the bizarre hypothesis of copulation between nat-
urally-embodied humans and prosthetically-embodied devils was a
somewhat uneasy speculation. But by 1450, learned theorists of witch-
craft enthusiastically adopted Aquinas’s explanation for reasons that
foreshadowed Tasso’s daemonology, as proof that (1) demons were
not imaginary and (2) philosophical materialism and religious Sad-
ducism were false doctrines. In 1486, the Malleus maleficarum married
juridical and ontological proof to declare that witches’ confessions to
copulating with incubi were experta testimonia to the reality of demons.
Yet thousands of forced confessions—and occasional experiments with
living witchcraft defendants—failed to provide observable empirical
verification. Skeptical physicians and philosophers of the sixteenth
century denied that physical contact between women and demons was
real and, as Tasso understood, they attributed witchcraft confessions
to hallucinations caused by psychotropic drugs (or, alternatively, by
the effects of melancholia).71
   Tasso apparently espouses the pharmacological explanation in
Gonzaga when mentioning Pico, although the Liberata represents
witchcraft as a general “belief” that women copulated with incarnate
devils.72 The thoroughly evil demons of the Liberata became less dis-
concerting daemones in the Messaggiero. Tasso does not explain how
daemones transform their intrinsic natural bodies in order to inseminate
women, though he evidently modeled the procedure on the Thomis-
tic artificially-embodied incubus/succubus and on Pico’s Strix, which
he apparently read with some care. The witchcraft of Strix was even
more disconcerting than that of the Liberata: Pico’s pièce de résistance

   69
      See Quaestiones disputatae de potentia dei 6, responsio ad objecta and ad ea quae in con-
trarium obiciuntur; Summa theologiae 1.41.a3; and Aquinas’s commentary on Lombard,
Sentences (2.8.1.a4). Dante adapted Aquinas’s notion of angelic/demonic bodies for
the provisional corporeality of his ombre in hell and purgatory (see Purg. 25.79–108).
   70
      On incubi and succubi, see Stephens, “Corporeality”; and Christa Tuczay, “Incubus.”
   71
      See Ostling, “Babyfat”; and Di Simplicio, “Melancholy.”
   72
     “Così credeasi” (GL 13.4–5). Regarding belief in angels and demons, see the Discorsi
dell’arte poetica (Prose , 355–56: “basta al poeta in questo […] la opinion della moltitudine
[…] lassando l’esatta verità delle cose”), reprised in Discorsi sul poema eroico (Prose, 538).

S-270                        WALTER STEPHENS

is the “expert testimony” of a fictional condemned witch “proving”
that witches interact with embodied devils in external reality rather
than in dreams or hallucinations. Strix describes the mechanics of
demonic copulation in misogynistic detail but, crucially for Tasso’s
anxieties, Pico argues that belief in witchcraft—verifiable intimate
contact between humans and artificially embodied devils—is indis-
pensable to Christian faith.73
   Strix dramatically prefigured Tasso’s inability to shake off the
anxiety, evident in the prison letter, Gonzaga and the Messaggiero, that
materialists—Sadducees, Epicureans and modern Aristotelians such as
Pomponazzi—could be right. That dread—and the desire for intimate
contact with the “Wonders of the Invisible World,” as Cotton Mather
titled his 1693 witchcraft treatise—continued among Christian intel-
lectuals for a century after Tasso. About 1700, the Franciscan jurist
Ludovico Maria Sinistrari wrote Daemonialitas expensa, hoc est de carnis
commixtionis hominis cum daemone possibilitate, modo, ac varietate dissertatio
(Daemoniality, that is, a Dissertation on the Possibility, Means, and Variety
of Human Sexual Contact with Daemons). More thoroughly than Tasso,
Sinistrari defended the idea that incubi and succubi were a separate
species from fallen angels. Daemones were animalia that had intrinsic
bodies of an ethereal substance, not the artificial bodies of Aquinas’s
“separate spirits.” Venturing far beyond Tasso, Sinistrari affirmed that
sexual relations with incubi and succubi differed ethically from copula-
tion with artificially embodied devils. Whereas devils hoped to procure
their paramours’ damnation, incubi and succubi simply enjoyed sex,
owing to their natural corporeality. Unlike devils, daemones required
no pact or maleficium (harmful magic) from their paramours. “Daemo-
niality” was a sin, surely, but a mild one: whereas bestiality degraded
human sexuality, daemoniality exalted it, ontologically if not ethically.
Sinistrari claimed incubi and succubi were not only mortal but could
be saved or damned after death, since Jesus atoned for their sins
along with ours.74
   From mid-fifteenth-century witch-hunters to Pico, Tasso and Sinis-
trari, the possibility of intimate physical, even sexual contact with
suprahuman beings remained a repressed—and oppressive—daydream
of Christian pneumatology. It reassured unwilling skeptics that, as Tasso
imagined in the Messaggiero, the world was a cosmos upheld by a salita
from pure matter to pure spirit. We should not think condescend-
ingly about such anxieties. Desire to contact the “invisible world” has

   See Stephens, “Skepticism.”
  73

   See Stephens, “Sinistrari”; and Maggi, In the Company of Demons, 141–60.”
  74