Keywords

• The essay focuses on the trial of Paolo Barbieri for the murder of his wife Isabella Caccianemici in Bologna in 1588. Doctors diagnosed the murderer as affected with «melancholic humours»
• which apparently led him to kill in a fit of madness. During the trial
• witnesses defined Paolo's behaviour with words ranging from «odd» to «melancholic» to «lunatic »
• while the defence lawyers for Paolo's alleged accomplices presented arguments drawn from legal treatises and consilia dealing with the condition of furor
• while trying to apply it to Paolo's alleged «furor». A comparison of the witness's and defendant's depositions
• and the judge's questioning
• with the textual tradition found in legal treatises and consilia
• demonstrates the complex way legal practices in Bologna dealt with matters of madness