One look can kill. It can make you mute, destroy crops, splash blood on a mirror. Whether we call it fascination, evil eye, Evil Eye, Böser Blick, malocchio or jettatura, the destructive power of the gaze has been attested for more than a millennium, in various places on the planet, by beliefs, practices and speech. In the Middle Ages, it was in scholarly sources that he left the most traces. Philosophers, doctors and theologians have wondered about the causes of the evil eye. They reacted to reading a text translated into Latin in the 12th century: in its Of animationAvicenna affirms that man can act on other bodies through his gaze alone, thanks to the strength of his soul.
This polemical proposition has had an impressive legacy, the idea of a power of the soul outside the body posing all kinds of problems for Latin authors. The reception of this doctrine of Avicenna constitutes the common thread of an investigation into the debates and scholarly practices of the Middle Ages.
The work shows how, in the years 1140-1440, intellectuals took advantage of the belief in the evil eye to transform it into a scientific problem.
2023-10-12 22:50:06
#Béatrice #Delaurenti #Fascination #intellectual #history #evil #eye
