Three Books on Fascination: On the Evil Eye, its Species and Causes

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Original title: De fascino libri tres A Latin scholastic-demonological treatise in three books on the fascinum, the malignant force of the evil eye. Vairo affirms the reality of fascination on scriptural grounds and then, following an Aristotelian method of airing and refuting adversaries' opinions, examines and rejects each proposed natural cause—intense imagination, the radiating eye, contagion by touch or voice, observation of the heavens, and the passions of love and hatred—before reassigning its efficient cause to the operation of demons through a tacit or express pact (pactum tacitum vel expressum). Book I affirms fascination's existence and canvasses natural explanations; Book II refutes them, treating words and characters as signifying only by human convention and metamorphosis as demonic illusion in appearance only; Book III resolves the question theologically, redefining fascination as a pernicious quality wrought by demonic art, moralizing it as disobedience to divine law, and relocating legitimate remedies from pagan amuleta to the sacramentals of the Church. The work includes a dedicatory epistle to Juan de Zúñiga y Requesens and an appended forensic-medical epistle by the physician Horatius Albinus (Orazio Albini) on the poisoning of Vairo at Santa Sofia di Benevento in 1573. 👉 Read our introductory primer, full report, and finding guide here 📜 View the original source file This text was transcribed and translated as part of the ExLatinis project—an effort by Leo to make English translations of every published text in Latin in early modern Europe (between 1450 and 1750) available to the public for free online.

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Document excerpt

Roma. Dono Auctoris, Iunij mensis die. 12. 1586. / vel circiter,