Conti, Fabrizio

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Fabrizio Conti received a dual Ph.D. in History and Medieval Studies from the Central European University, Budapest, Hungary. He is a graduate in the Humanities (History) from the University of Rome “La Sapienza,” and has earned certificates from the Pontifical Institute for Christian Archaeology in Rome and the School of the Vatican Secret Archive. Professor Conti has arrived at John Cabot University in 2016 after having taught in the Department of History at the Ohio State University in Columbus (USA) in the previous year. His teaching and research interests span the Antique/Late Antique, Medieval, and Renaissance periods, with an interdisciplinary approach to cultural and religious developments, with special focus on the history of magic and witchcraft. He has published extensively in these fields. Professor Conti has worked in the catacombs of Rome as a docent and in the Vatican Secret Archive as an archivist, besides appearing in several TV documentary series. He also serves as an Arts and Humanities Advisor at the American Academy in Rome.

Publication Search Results

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  • Publication
    Notes on the Nature of Beliefs in Witchcraft: Folklore and Classical Culture in Fifteenth Century Mendicant Traditions
    (2019) Conti, Fabrizio
    Witchcraft is a varied historical phenomenon with changing sociocultural aspects according to the times and the places considered. Nonetheless, it is possible to trace the different cultural substrata giving shape to witch-beliefs in order to shed light on their process of amalgamation. The aim of this study is to show how the folkloric and the Classical literary motives were intertwined in the fifteenth century by figures lauded as the high intellectuals of the time, Franciscan and Dominican preachers and inquisitors, to produce a coherent and multifaceted picture of witchcraft-related beliefs. By putting some of the most significant sources that I have analyzed in my monograph Witchcraft, Superstition, and Observant Franciscan Preachers in relation to others that I have not considered before composed by the same or different authors, my aim is to show how this process of combination of various cultural traditions gave shape to the creation and the understanding of the witchcraft phenomenon. Furthermore, I also intend to highlight how the at times contradictory views concerning witch-beliefs, pointing either to realistic or to skeptical stances, are related to specific declensions of those different traditions on the part of the friars.