Compendium
Maleficarum
Book I ☆ Chapter I
The Nature and Extent of the Force of Imagination.
Argument.
Many authors have written at length concerning the force of imagination: for example Pico della Mirandola,[1] De Imaginationibus; Marsilio Ficino,[2] De Theologia Platonica, Book 13; Alonso Tostado,[3] On Genesis, Chapter 30; Miguel de Medina,[4] De Recta in Deum Fide, II, 7; Leonard Vair,[5] De Fascino, II, 3; and countless others. All are agreed that the imagination is a most potent force; and both by argument and by experience they prove that a man’s own body may be most extensively affected by his imagination. For they argue that as the imagination examines the images of objects perceived by the senses, it excites in the appetitive faculty either fear or shame or anger or sorrow; and these emotions so affect a man with heat or cold that his body either grows pale or reddens, and he consequently becomes joyful and exultant, or torpid and dejected. Therefore S. Thomas (Contra Gent. III, 103) has well said that a man’s body can be affected by his imagination in every way which is naturally correspondent with the imaginative faculty, such as local motion in those
- ↑ “Mirandola.” Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, 1463–1494. There are many editions of his Complete Works: Bologna, 1496; Venice, 1498; Strasburg, 1504; Basle, 1557; 1573; 1601.
- ↑ “Marsilio Ficino.” 1433–1499. “Theologia Platonica de animarum Immortalitate,” perhaps his most important work, was published at Florence 1482.
- ↑ “Alonso Tostado.” Circa 1400–1455. A famous exegete often quoted as Abulensis or Alonso Abulensis owing to his having been consecrated Bishop of Avila in 1449. The latest edition of his works is 27 volumes, folio, Venice, 1728.
- ↑ “Miguel de Medina.’’ 1489–1578. A Spanish Franciscan, esteemed as one of the most distinguished theologians of his day. “Annales Ordinis Minorum,” xix, xxi.
- ↑ “Leonard Vair.” Born at Benevento, of Spanish descent, c. 1540; Bishop of Pozzuoli, where he died in 1603. His “De Fascino,” Libri III, Paris, 1583; Venetiis apud Aldum, 1589, is a work of singular erudition.
