Demonology as textual scholarship: Martin Delrio's Disquisitiones magicae

Machielsen, Jan ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8492-0263 2026. Demonology as textual scholarship: Martin Delrio's Disquisitiones magicae. Machielsen, Jan, ed. The Science of Demons: Early Modern Authors Facing Witchcraft and the Devil, 2 edition. Routledge, pp. 173-187. (10.4324/9781003476153-15)

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Abstract

The closest that Martin Delrio (Martín del Río; 1551–1608) ever came to being threatened by witchcraft was in the spring of 1578. As a young magistrate, he had taken part in the capture of Leuven, a small university town in the Low Countries, by forces loyal to the Catholic King Philip II of Spain. Among the papers of one of the university graduates who fled was found a book ‘full of magical characters’ and ‘a small box shaped like a coffin’ which contained a mandrake root that resembled a little man, ‘black and covered with mould and filth, with a large head of hair but no beard’. Such a root was ‘generally believed to be wonderfully effective for divination, for profit, and for many other things’. When Delrio received the book, the capsule and ‘the fictitious cadaver’, he instantly tore off its arms, astonishing all those who were present his bravado.

Item Type:	Book Section
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Global Humanities
Publisher:	Routledge
ISBN:	9781032759135
Last Modified:	01 Sep 2026 10:18
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/189262

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