Very complex and difficult to understand without background in the subject. Many untranslated passages in French and Latin

Eros and Magic in the Renaissance offers a compelling historical theory of modern Western culture, its institutions and their origins. Couliano suggests that modern Western culture was predominantly conceived and developed during the piques of the European Reformation – presented less as a progressive movement than a conservative one – against the idiosyncratic and imaginative excesses of Renaissance ideals. The Renaissance, then, is framed as a period of imaginative and creative acculturation culminating in the institutional reform of the European Reformation. A reform which ultimately sought to establish a ubiquitous social dogma under the pretense of shared communal values.

However, Couliano does not accuse any particular order or individual of the Reformation's apparent reactionary agenda, but, instead, explicates the broad stabilizing forces and attributes them to cultural trends emanating from the most influential intellectual circles of the time. The philosophical underpinnings of Western antiquity are mentioned regarding their distinction between reproduction and love and the importance of identifying the universal aspects of the eros and the human soul. By the time we arrive to sixteenth century Europe, this distinction – of reproduction and love – and its importance are found to be conflated not just with one another, but with many other arts, philosophies and theologies.

It is no surprise, then, that we find only a few intellects at the time were actually observant enough to see the confusion and also willing to speak out against the popular and appealing theories of the age. Seeing as these efforts were more akin to cultural critiques, Couliano leads us through the relevant works of Ficino and Bruno, among others, in an attempt to establish a potential origin of the modern social institutions.

The bulk of Couliano's theory concerns the sixteenth century notion of the Phantasm (roughly today's psychosomatic symptom) and the contested ideas of these terrifying emotional instabilities and their contraction. The leading idea of Phantasmic contraction at the time claimed that Women, in their possession of [fetishized] beauty, were primary vectors of infection. Of course, as this was sixteenth century Europe, the only potential victim here was the Man. The contraction of a Phantasm and its unfolding maladies were deemed quite serious, many even endowing the Phantasm with a deadly objective, and, so its cure was never a guarantee. The potential remedy of the time was one of indulgence. Indulgence in the images of Phantasy and their subsequent representation in the physical and creative work of the infected.

The baselessness and arbitrariness of such a simplistic theory was the primary incitation for Bruno's earliest work. He goes so far as to label Patrarch (a well respected Italian Renaissance poet) a "repressed sensualist" and that people like him were "lacking the intelligence to apply himself to better things … thereby yielding to the tyranny of base, idiotic and filthy bestiality." It is with these critiques that Bruno states with clarity that "the realm of physical love must be separated from the realm of divine contemplation," and from here, the germ of his further development of the Phantasm and their subsequent use in particular forms of "social magic".

Drawing further support from the culture of the same period, Couliano says that "Machiavelli's Prince is the forebear of the political adventurer, a type that is disappearing." So, it is with Bruno's De Viniculis, that he describes as "the prototype of the impersonal systems of mass media, indirect censorship, [and] global manipulation…" and so Bruno, as suggested by Couliano, appears to be among the first contributors of psychoanalytical theory. It is no wonder, then, that there was no better term for the informing of public opinion, its control and its ability to incite mass action, than the existing term "interpersonal magic."

In fact, Couliano makes clear that the Inquisition itself was, at least in part, a final attempt by the decaying institutions and officials of the Church to prevent the spread and further development of what they saw as a contentious and aberrant worldview. This interpretation becomes all the more apparent in considering how rampant the use of these "magicks" were and the Church's confusion in discerning and understanding them. Couliano reveals other cases of "magic" that, while still psychologically directed at particular individuals, were used to curry favors and heighten the prestige of anyone who was willing to determine and convincingly fulfill the desires of a needy patron or audience.

Ultimately, it is the cultural dialectic which drives and directs social trends in the immediate term and forms particular historical trends in the long term. Given the Reformation was enabled by the arrival of the printing press and the potential mass distribution of ideas, it certainly seems plausible, as Couliano suggests, that the modern theory of scientific philosophy and its social aims has a far more contentious and dubious history than is typically assumed.

Couliano includes so much information in this work that I'm hardly contented by my summary above, as it suggests far more linearity than I think is due. However, much of it was thought provoking and interesting and I'd recommend it to anyone with at least some knowledge of Western philosophy and some ideas of the Renaissance notion of magic and phantasy (insofar as they were treated in absolute sincerity), especially if you are interested in the history and/or philosophy of modern science. ( )

In this invaluable treatment of its topic, Couliano exposes some of the principal rationales underlying magic in early modernity, and explains how those now-antedated forms of sorcery became incomprehensible to moderns. Read alongside D.P. Walker's Spiritual and Demonic Magic, this book does more to illuminate traditional Western occult science than 99 percent of the historical works on the topic that have appeared since it was first published in the 1980s.