{"id":11659,"date":"2019-03-14T20:16:26","date_gmt":"2019-03-14T20:16:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/?page_id=11659"},"modified":"2019-08-13T22:05:42","modified_gmt":"2019-08-13T22:05:42","slug":"bellusci-2019-congress","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/abstracts\/bellusci-2019-congress\/","title":{"rendered":"Bellusci (2019 Congress)"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><strong>Alessia Bellusci<br \/>\n(<em>Yale University<\/em>)<\/strong><\/h2>\n<h2>&#8220;Jewish Pizza in Exchange for Invisibility:<\/h2>\n<h2>Reconstructing a Recipe for Achieving Invisibility<br \/>\nfrom an Early Modern Italian Hebrew Codex and Its Earlier Analogues&#8221;<\/h2>\n<h3>Abstract of Paper<br \/>\nTo be presented at the 54th International Congress on Medieval Studies<br \/>\n(Kalamazoo, 2019)<\/h3>\n<h4>Session on<br \/>\n&#8220;In the Absence of Manuscript Evidence:\u00a0 Considering Lacunae in Manuscript Studies&#8221;<\/h4>\n<h4>Sponsored by the <strong>Research Group on Manuscript Evidence<\/strong><br \/>\nOrganized by Justin A. Hastings and Derek Shank<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/2019-international-congress-on-medieval-studies-program\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">2019 Congress Program<\/a><\/h4>\n<p>[<em>Published on 14 March 2019<\/em>]<\/p>\n<p>*****<\/p>\n<h4>Abstract<\/h4>\n<p>Of all the different magical techniques, those for becoming invisible are perhaps the most puzzling.\u00a0 Not only did the detractors of the magical art vehemently denounce\u00a0 the unlikelihood of achieving invisibility, but sometimes even the magicians themselves admitted their skepticism for operations of this kind.\u00a0 Yet, despite its implausibility, becoming invisible and disappearing by magical means at one\u2019s convenience exercised great fascination in the pre-modern world, and a considerable number of recipes for invisibility have been found in magical compendia from different chronological and geographical contexts, thus demonstrating that certain individuals pursued invisibility also on a practical and ritual level.<\/p>\n<p>In my contribution, I wish to discuss the magical pursuit of invisibility within Jewish culture, by focusing on a recipe for this purpose preserved in an unpublished early modern Hebrew manuscript.\u00a0 It was copied in Italy by an Italian native speaker with fair knowledge of Hebrew, possibly working on a commissioned work for a Christian intellectual interested in occult knowledge.\u00a0 The recipe under examination describes a complex multi-stage ritual based on both linguistic magic and the manipulation of specific <em>materia magica<\/em>.\u00a0 It instructs users to go to a site of execution and conjure a mysterious \u2014 quite sinister \u2014 non-human entity, with whom they are expected to interact and exchange a \u201cpizza\u201d (!) for a garment of invisibility.<\/p>\n<p>I will attempt to demonstrate that this specific experiment for invisibility documents a form of magical knowledge which precedes by several centuries the final redaction of the codex itself and which, to a certain extent, crosses the borders of Jewish magic, revealing a lively encounter with other magical traditions.\u00a0 The recipe finds, in fact, close parallels both in Jewish and non-Jewish earlier magical texts.\u00a0 Together they attest to the lively circulation of this specific magical technique within pre-modern Mediterranean and Middle Eastern regions.<\/p>\n<p>*****<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Alessia Bellusci (Yale University) &#8220;Jewish Pizza in Exchange for Invisibility: Reconstructing a Recipe for Achieving Invisibility from an Early Modern Italian Hebrew Codex and Its Earlier Analogues&#8221; Abstract of Paper To be presented at the 54th International Congress on Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo, 2019) Session on &#8220;In the Absence of Manuscript Evidence:\u00a0 Considering Lacunae in Manuscript [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":1023,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11659"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11659"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11660,"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11659\/revisions\/11660"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}