La Scienza e i Segreti della Natura a Napoli nel Rinascimento. La Magia Maturale di Giovan Battista Della Porta by Donato Verardi (review)

This book focuses on the scientific and philosophical thought of Giovan Battista Della Porta (1535–1615), and in particular, on the analysis of the notion of “secret of nature” in Della Porta’s philosophy, and on his project for the reformation of natural magic. In the book, the author assigns an important role to the debate on astrology. Also, the author analyzes the meaning of the concept of “sympathy,” interpreted as celestial influence. For the first time, the problem is examined in the light of the debates underway in Naples at the time of Della Porta. As Verardi demonstrates, Della Porta’s rationalization of the “secret of nature” is connected either with demonological issues or with astrological problems.

In the first part of this book, the most recent studies on the philosophical thought of Della Porta are discussed. An accent is put on the meaning of “natural magic.” with particular regard to the role Della Porta assigns to demons. Here, the author shows that the problem is still debated in recent historiography. Particularly interesting are the pages that rediscuss the relationship between Della Porta and Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486–1535). The author shows how Della Porta evokes the lesson of Agrippa in several points. Differently from Agrippa, Della Porta interprets magic as free from religious and theurgical elements. However, the two authors both emphasize the role of optics, which they use to rationally explain the extraordinary phenomena of nature attributed by demonologists to diabolic action.

The second part introduces the relationship between Della Porta’s thought and the Neapolitan Aristotelianism. The author proposes, here, to understand the notion of “secret of nature” in the light of the debates related to the knowledge of the “singular.” Furthermore, Verardi demonstrates that the debate on natural magic is linked to discussions on medical epistemology and on the Avicennian conception of forma speciei. Among the authors examined by Verardi, Francesco Storella (about 1529–1575) plays a prominent role, a professor of logic in Naples at the time of Della Porta and promoter of a conception of Aristotelian science open to the needs of natural magic.

In the third part of this volume, the author shows that Della Porta reinterprets the concept of “sympathy” of Ficino as well as the notion of “astrological image” of Albert the Great. The relationship between the concepts of “friendship” and “sympathy” in the astrological debate is studied. Furthermore, the author examines the principle of “similarity” in Della Porta’s physiognomy books and in his research methodology about “secrets of nature.” Verardi shows that this research methodology is based on a concept of causality not concerning the substance, but the “accidents,” i.e., the “individual particularities”: the movement, the color, the figure, etc. According to Della Porta, the knowledge of the singular is based on these “individual particularities.”

Additionally, in the third part of the book, Verardi devotes ample space to explaining the relationship between Della Porta and witchcraft. The author focuses in particular on the secret of witches’ ointment, and on a series of secrets that demonologists explain as being produced by the Devil. As Verardi demonstrates, all these secrets are rationally explained by the laws of nature. The sublunar world is governed “by the inviolable law of nature,” i.e., by precise physical and astrological laws. The stars are considered as physical bodies that act on the human material plane through motion and heat.

In the conclusion to the volume, Verardi insists on the nuances of Della Porta’s proposal in the field of astrology, showing how not all the secrets of nature can be explained by astrological laws. For example, Della Porta explains the secrets of...