Massoni, streghe e vampiri nella storiografia italiana del primo Settecento

The work revises in detail several authoritative historical sources, both contemporary and most recent ones, about freemasons, witches and vampires. Based on the freemasons, who gathered (from Annali d'Italia by Muratori) "...di tanto in tanto in una casa eletta per loro congresso, chiamata la Loggia, dove passavano il tempo in lieti ragionamenti e in deliziosi conviti...", and probably on the model of the ancient Epicureans, it analyzes the debate between Muratori and Maffei on witchcraft. The basic topic of discussion is the distinction between witches and wizards, the magic as an illusory idea that you may trade with the supernatural world. In his "Filosofia Morale", and in particular throughout the twenty chapters of "La forza della fantasia umana", Muratori reconstructed, in a plain and persuasive style, from which you can perceive the lesson of the nascent "Illuminismo", the several operations performed by many superstitious beliefs that have steeped the world in blood. Finally, it examines the entirely handwritten literary production by Davanzati, focused on the analysis of the phenomena to which tradition ascribed a supernatural origin and including the epidemic of vampirism (in Moravia, Silesia, and Hungary). In the late thirties of the Eighteenth century, Viennese newspapers and magazines didn't speak of anything else.