About the author
Armando Maggi is a professor of Italian literature at the University of Chicago whose scholarship focuses on demonology, mysticism and the language of the sacred in early modern Italy. His book In the Company of Demons: Unnatural Beings, Love, and Identity in the Italian Renaissance, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2008, examines how Renaissance Christian thought absorbed and reinterpreted the familiar spirits, household gods and semi-divine beings of classical antiquity, recasting them within a demonological framework. Maggi reads these figures through Latin and Greek sources alongside Christian theology, tracing how ideas about identity, love and the unnatural took shape around them. The book is an academic study rather than a practical or devotional text, intended for readers interested in the intellectual and religious history of the period. Maggi has written extensively elsewhere on related themes in Italian religious and literary history, including studies of Renaissance mysticism and language.
📖 Where to start with Armando Maggi
💬 What our editors say about Armando Maggi's books
“Maggi’s scholarly intervention is vital for correcting historical misconceptions about Renaissance spirits, presenting them as wise intermediaries rather than malicious demons. The analysis of Pico della Mirandola’s texts is…”
Esoterica Books editorial team, Occult literature desk · on In the Company of Demons: Unnatural Beings, Love, and Identity in the Italian Renaissance
“Maggi’s reinterpretation is intellectually rigorous and visually compelling in its argumentation, offering a necessary corrective to centuries of Christian dogma. However, this volume will not suit readers seeking straightforward…”
Esoterica Books editorial team, Occult literature desk · on In the Company of Demons: Unnatural Beings, Love, and Identity in the Italian Renaissance
