Girolamo Tartarotti

[3] For a time, he formed part of the entourage of Marco Foscarini, who later served as doge of Venice.

[3] Following the execution of the elderly nun Maria Renata Singer on charges of witchcraft,[1] he took part in the academic debate over the witchcraft trials of his time,[3] attempting to strike a middle ground which—against Martin Delrio and Benedetto Bonelli[1]—dismissed most purported claims of witchcraft while, on the grounds of its appearance in scripture,[4] upholding the existence of sorcery[3] against the skepticism of Scipione Maffei[1] and Count Carli.

[5] Abbot Tartarotti's Three Books on the Nocturnal Congress of the Lamia—composed in 1748 but delayed from publication by the Venetian Inquisition until 1750[1]—proposed that witchcraft was an organized religion descended from the Romans' cults of Diana and Erodiade.

[7] He had the sermons of the Jesuit Georg Gaar, one of the clerics responsible for Sister Maria's execution, translated into Italian so as to publish his own attacks against the man's points.

[8] He defended the existence of witchcraft, however, and won the vast majority of Italian academics to his side of the debate.