Abstract

In this article is studied a prosecution of 1589 against Francesco D’Aste, a jurist member of the radical wing of the popular movement: He was accused from the daughter of devil evocation. To move the woman toward the accusation was probably her husband, Filippo Bottaro, presuming that his wife was no more virgin at the marriage, the heaviest offence in the Ligurian patriarchal culture, where the father was the responsible of daughter’s integrity. The prosecution shows us the complications of inquisitorial procedures and medical knowledges, political and juridical power relationship, in the middle of which there was the control and the measurement of Leonora’s body and of the areas used by the appearing parts at the prosecution.