From A Discoverie to The Triall

Let us examine in detail the structural differences that corroborate Cotta's change of attitude between the two treatises. At first sight, Cotta seems to have partly changed his mind.

From Cases to Anecdotes

In A Discoverie, the rhetorical construction of the whole book is quite typical of the medical treatises of the period. The arguments are built upon individual cases, usually from the physician's own practice, and are then paralleled in margins by Latin or Greek references to the medical authorities, quite signifi­cant in volume. These in turn are followed by a commentary and a generalisa­tion. The empiricist, inductive method that Marion Gibson ascribes to Cotta is such only in appearance for there is a constant dialogue between inductive and deductive logic, as each personal case is systematically related to an authority quoted in Latin or Greek. There is an average of 3 or 4 cases per chapter, and the one on witchcraft is articulated around four personal cases spanning over a decade of practice.^{[1135] [1136]}

The most striking change in the argumentative construction is the near dis­appearance of medical cases and of the medical theories that were expounded from them. In The Triall, only three personal cases survive: in chapter 2, inserted between several cases borrowed from Jacques Houllier, Antonio Benivieni and Christophorus Sillinchus,3⁸ are two short cases unrelated to witchcraft, proving the limits of knowledge and diagnosis of diseases, and chapter 9 a case which Cotta had already amply commented in 1612 about a gentlewoman from Warwickshire suffering from convulsions who suspected that she had been bewitched.^[1137] Those medical cases are much shorter and tend to be replaced by anecdotes.

Marginalia

The change of argumentative rhetoric is accompanied by a dramatic reduc­tion of marginal notes. A Discoverie is a medical treatise amply illustrated with quotations from learned authors and cases from Cotta's own practice. On most pages we may notice the simultaneous presence of English marginal notes in italics, corresponding either to Cotta's opinion or to personal cases, and Latin or Greek marginal notes in roman, providing the theoretical background of dif­ferent phenomena. And few pages are devoid of marginalia.

In The Triall the contrast is striking: the majority of the pages have no margi­nalia, and the most crowded ones are still much lightened. Even if there are still occasional references to Galen, Fernel or Scaliger there are many pages where no medical authority is called for. At the same time the remaining marginalia are often more precise, providing the reader with the exact book, chapter and sometimes even the page number. There actually seems to be a correlation between the accuracy of the marginalia and the fact that they become more allusive. The change in the character of the notes espouses the logic of the demonological production of the period, where the notes are above all referen­tial, helping the reader locating the anecdotes or opinions from other sources.

The Scripture

A third change confirms a generic specificity. In A Discoverie, there are very few Biblical references. Only three notes give precise chapters from the Bible. The first one is to Ecclesiastes 9:11 and accompanies a Latin quotation “Casus & tem­pus omnibus rebus accidunt” denouncing people who become “worshippers of medicines.”^[1139] Another series of scriptural references comes in chapter 3 from Ecclesiasticus 38, and is a common place in the medical debate (especially in the debate between Paracelsians and Galenists), as is the quoting of Saint Paul (1 Cor 7:20-24) about the exclusivity of physicians in their field of expertise.

The trend is radically reversed in The Triall. There is not one chapter devoid of Scriptural authority, which often becomes the starting point and the con­cluding word of the demonstration. The omnipresence of the Biblical quota­tions and allusions is reinforced by a change in style. Cotta adopts words and phrases that suit a devotional work and which were nearly absent in his previ­ous treatise. Thus a word like “Gospel” occurs only once in A Discoverie and 11 times in The Triall; “Holy Scripture”, “godly” and “Almighty God” are never used in A Discoverie, whereas they are recurrent in The Triall.

An interesting illustration of this difference is the case of floating the witches. In A Discoverie, Cotta merely discards this practice among others:

Neither can I beleeue [...] that the forced coming of men or women to the burning of bewitched cattell, or to the burning of the dung or vrine of such as are bewitched, orfloating of bodies aboue the water, or the like, are any trial of a witch^[1141]

Even if this statement is immediately followed by the example of Job's over­throw, the latter has a general value of proving the devil's actions and no corre­lation is made with the “floating”. In The Triall the same practice is thoroughly examined and Cotta devotes a whole chapter before finally rejecting its validity. However, most of his arguments and reservations are founded on Biblical evi­dence not medical experience. The only authorities quoted here are Aristotle (supported by Scaliger), Augustine, Peter Lombard and Pierre Gregoire,^[1142] and the gist of his demonstration rests on the comparison between floating the witch and Baptism, then further compared with Eucharist: like water bread should run away from the mouth of the witch yet it does not, which conse­quently invalidates the floating test^[1143]

The importance of scriptural references and of the Bible in general in The Triall might be reminiscent of the Paracelsian approach to medicine which returns to the Scripture, often to criticise Galen's atheistic and unchristian the­ories.

All those structural and rhetorical differences suggest that Cotta forsakes his usual medical style and professional identity in favour of a more ministerial tone and content. He shifts the focus of his argumentation from the medical to the religious as is made clear by his 1616 preface:

The enuious haply may cauill, that a Physicion out of his owne sup­posed precincts, should rush into sacred lists, or enter vpon so high points of Diuinitie, as by an vnauoidable intercurrence, do | necessarily insert themselues in this proposed subiect. Diuinitie it selfe doth herein answere them. In the theory of Theologie, it is the duety and praise of euery man, to bee without curiositie fruitfully exercised^[1144]

We are far from the antagonism between the two professions, when Cotta reproached “Vicars and Parsons” with usurping his privileges. Rather than drawing the subject towards his own field of expertise, Cotta boldly enters that of divinity. This in turn has an impact not only on his style but on his compos­ing strategy and especially on the choice of his sources.

The Choice of Sources

There is indeed a different economy of sources in the composition of the two treatises. Besides Cotta's favourite authorities—Aristotle, Hippocrates, Galen, Fernel and Scaliger—significant disparities arise among the remain­ing sources.

TABLE 20.1

a In 1612 only one sixteenth century historian is mentioned in a single marginal note, the others being mainly Roman and Greek, while in 1616 half are contemporary.

Such redistribution is typical of the demonological writings which draw on a large variety of sources from all those fields^[1146] They confirm that in choosing to tread on the ground of Divinity, Cotta adopted its codes and conventions, whether in style, in structure or in authorities.

An interesting test is to compare the distribution of sources with his last polemical text. Contra Antonium displays almost exactly the proportions of A Discoverie, which confirms that the choice of sources does not correspond to an evolution in the author's reading habits, but a choice dictated by the genre of the discourse he adopts. Moreover, the 1624 revision of The Triall, brings in a few more sources which reflect the same trend: a demonological treatise writ­ten by Petrus Binsfeld^[1147] and another one composed by the French poet and polygraph Jean-Jacques Boissard.^[1148]

Perkins vs. Scot

Apart from a few catholic champions of the witch-hunts, like Heinrich Institoris, Bartolomeo Spina, or later Petrus Binsfeld, Cotta mainly sum­mons protestant and more precisely Calvinist theologians—and in particular Andrew Willet and William Perkins—among his chief theological authori­ties in The Triall, which betrays his puritan sympathies. Willet is alluded to only once in a marginal note, but Perkins becomes an essential authority with four quotations, plus an additional one in the revised edition of 1624. Cotta resided in Cambridge at least throughout the 1590s, where he could have met Perkins who was a fellow of Christ's College. The fact that A Discoverie bears no trace of Perkins' work, which was posthumously published in 1608 by Thomas Pickering, might simply mean that there was no need for such a source, if my hypothesis of a later addition of the witchcraft chapter is correct.

Peter Elmer has shown how deeply involved Cotta was with the Puritan lead­ership both in his hometown Coventry and in Northamptonshire.^[1149] Cotta was close to such puritans as Sir William Tate (according to his preface of 1612), Sir Richard Knightley (involved as Elmer showed in an examination of suspected witches in 1608), Adam Winthrop, auditor of Trinity College^^[1150] and above all Sir Edward Coke, to whom both Cotta and Thomas Pickering wrote dedications and whose puritan connections and sympathies are well-known.5^{[1151] [1152]}

In The Triall, there are more quotations from Perkins than from any other theologian. In fact, Cotta seems to found his rationale on Perkins' postulate expressed in the long title of his Damned Art: “as is reuealed in the Scriptures and manifest by true experience”. This is exactly what Cotta is trying to achieve in his attempt to reconcile experience with theory. Such an agenda makes him also close to Reginald Scot's ideas (borrowed from Pomponazzi) according to which one should not look for occult and improbable explanations where more obvious ones are available. This is what Cotta suggests in 1612 when he claims he desires “onely to moderate the generall madnesse of this age, which ascribeth vnto witchcraft whatsoeuer falleth out vnknowne or strange vnto a vulgar sense.”54

Although Perkins discarded Scot's ideas in a lapidary remark in his preface— “(as the *gainsayer hath unlearnedly and improperly termed it)”^[1153]—Cotta seems to have tried to reach a synthesis of their positions, albeit leaning much more towards Perkins'. Scot is quoted twice in The Triall and, significantly, rather than being derided, anathematized or criticised for his Sadducean or ungodly opinions, he is merely blamed for confusion or excess in his argumen­tation. In the first allusion the Kentish writer is reproached with misevaluating the probabilities of witchcraft:

See Reginald Scot in his discouerie of Witchcraft, where in regard of the seeming likenesse of Impostures and Witchcraft, erroneously he confoundeth them as one and the selfe same sinne.^{[1154] [1155] [1156] [1157]}

In the second, the only point of disagreement about the impostures of witches lies in their extent:

In examples of this kind, Reignald Scott doth ouer-abound in his dis- couery. It is not vnknowne vnto my owne proofe, how vsuall it is with many, by the reputation of a Witch only, imposturously to promise and vndertake the miraculous curations, and prognostications of diseases and their issues...57

It is interesting to notice that in the 1624 revision the same passage is expanded as follows:

I haue my selfe noted and knowne some men (I could say some men of the Clergie) who to draw wonder and custome vnto their practise in Physicke (wherein Sacriligiously they spend their best and chiefe time and howers, with open neglect of God and his seruice.) I know some I say, who are not ashamed prophanely and most irreligiously, to affect among vulgars, to gaine the opinion of skill in Coniuration, Magicke, and Diuell charming.5⁸

Here is evidence that Cotta's theological position appears as an excursion into divinity during which he is forced to forsake his usual medical tools. But after the publication of Contra Antonium, in the second edition of The Triall, it seems that Cotta cannot help but return to his first battle against anyone that is a threat to his profession.

I think we may catch a glimpse of this uncomfortable situation in the way Cotta quotes Perkins. In one of the quotations, he accidently refers to A Discourse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft as “discouery of Witchcraft,’^⁹ which is of course reminiscent of Scot's The Discouerie of Witchcraft. This slip of a tongue, or pen, is all the more intriguing as the same echo may be noticed in the chapter written on witchcraft in 1612: “The explication of the true discouerie of witchcraft”, although Scot is never quoted in A Discoverie. It is maybe his proximity with Perkins and the puritan circles that prevents Cotta (unlike Jorden for instance) to take up Scot's mockery of bad physicians who use witchcraft to hide their incompetence.^[1158] And when in 1623 he writes more freely about aurum potabile, he still refers to Scot though in a much more compliant way:

Concerning the multitude of testimonies, touching good issues in impos­tures, and deceitfull curations, in regard both of the honour and eminence of personages, it would bee tedious and scandalous to write. Reginald Scot doth fulfil more then measure in this kinde in his discouery^[1159]