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‘Charlatans, mountebanks and other similar people’ : The regulation and role of itinerant practitioners in early modern Italy∗

1995; Routledge; Volume: 20; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/03071029508567944

1470-1200

David Gentilcore,

Byzantine Studies and History

I995 'Charlatans and mountebanks', in Italy 299 different types of charlatannot by any means a homogeneous group -their marketing of 'secrets' and their use of theatre.GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS In his encyclopedic description of 'all the world's professions', first published in I585, Tommaso Garzoni did not leave out the charlatan.Indeed, this off-quoted entry is one of the most memorable for its sheer carnivalesque mayhem.Garzoni conjures up a lively scene in a city square, where theatrically named charlatans appear from all corners, performing tricks and skits, and selling trinkets and dubious remedies, all competing for the attention of the public.Garzoni's square has become a stage, upon which each charlatan acted out a role in order to sell his own medical 'secret'.8In early modern Italy the charlatan was not always deemed to be perforce a fake, though fraud was often thought to lie behind his selling technique.A closer look at the word itself may be helpful.'Charlatan' was not yet used to indicate impostors in general.The Latin word used to indicate a charlatan was the generic-sounding circulator (stroller, pedlar; the same root gives us circus).The English word 'charlatan' derives, via French, from the Italian ciarlatano, itself a result of the intromission of the verb ciarlare (to chatter, prattle) into the word cerretano.The latter term designated someone from the Umbrian town of Cerreto, whose inhabitants had the ill fame of wandering about dressed as pilgrims, collecting alms under false pretences.They eventually gave their name 'to all kinds of importunate mendicants and vagabonds'.9By the end of the fifteenth century ciarlatano added to this the connotation of the 'subtle and insidious eloquence'10 which lay behind the sales pitch of these pedlars of unguents and powders.During the sixteenth century ciarlatano and cerretano were often used synonymously, as were the terms montimbanco (in English as 'mountebank') and saltimbanco, referring to their mounting a stage or platform to sell their wares.In Tuscany, however, the term ciurmatore (from ciurmare, to charm or bewitch) was generally used, reminding us that the sacred is never far away.In i632 an ex-vice-protomedico for the Papal States defined a 'charlatan or mountebank' as 'those people who appear in the square and sell various things by means of entertainments and buffoonery'.11 The word 'empiric' (empirico) was also used, though it was not nearly as common.Many of the above labels contain value judgements.In fact, as Alison Lingo has observed with regard to French charlatans, the charlatan was always considered the other', in usage if not in fact.12As far as the medical profession was concerned, charlatans were depicted as malicious and manipulating, while those who bought and made use of their secret remedies were gullible and foolish.13And yet, in the language they used and the remedies they sold, charlatans were not so different from the regular physicians and apothecaries.Indeed, many charlatans were educated, to judge from their detailed 8 Tommaso Garzoni, La piazza universale di tutte le professioni del mondo (Venice, i6i6), 32I-5.