730 william eamon
safely back in Padua, began preparing a series of lectures on the plague
intended to bolster his case. in the end, the epidemic itself decided the
issue. The number of victims increased dramatically, and by 1577, tens of
thousands had succumbed to the epidemic. although Mercuriale, thanks
to his treatise on plague, De Pestilentia, recovered his reputation among
the academic community, his blunder in misdiagnosing the epidemic of
1576 was never forgotten in Venice. even so, when the plague struck Ven-
ice again in 1630–31, another Padua professor, Santorio Santorio, was put
in charge of organizing the city’s response to the epidemic. like Mercuri-
ale, Santorio denied that the disease was plague, in opposition to the city’s
chief health officer. in that epidemic, deaths totaled more than 46,000.
Venice’s struggle with—and ultimately victory over—plague was com-
memorated in the city’s architecture. The church of redentore was built
following the cessation of the plague of 1576, and in 1631, following the last
great plague epidemic of 1630, the church of Santa Maria della Salute was
erected on the Grand canal.
Medicine and the Supernaturalit was not just on matters relating to the control of epidemics that the
authorities called upon physicians to serve as experts. The inquisition also
relied on the testimony of doctors to determine whether alleged cases of
witchcraft were caused by demons or occurred by natural means. direct
evidence of witchcraft was fragile. How, for example, does one tell a case
of witchcraft from a case of poisoning or the French disease? Who can
provide the expertise to make such determinations? in practice, cases of
witchcraft often turned on definitions of “natural” and “supernatural”—
and how to tell them apart. With the reformation drumming in the
background, such issues were crucial to civic authorities in the 16th and
17th centuries.
The medical profession thus gained a new set of tasks in the 17th cen-
tury. increasingly, as denunciations of malificio drew skepticism, Vene-
tians relied on the opinions of specialists, particularly medical specialists,
to support their allegations about the operation of supernatural forces. it
is hardly surprising that the authorities turned to physicians as experts
to distinguish between the natural and the supernatural. Most witchcraft
denunciations involved physical maladies of some sort, and the education
of physicians would have inclined them toward naturalistic explanations.
Moreover, the borderline between natural and demonic was practically