Paola Zambelli

Paola Zambelli (1932–2019) was a distinguished Italian historian of philosophy and science, focusing on the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

The Ambiguous Nature of Magic

Zambelli's extensive work on figures like Albertus Magnus, Cornelius Agrippa, and Giambattista della Porta highlighted the extreme ambiguity of the term "magic." She rigorously mapped the attempts of medieval and Renaissance scholars to separate licit "natural magic" from illicit "demonic magic" (necromancy). Zambelli showed that these boundaries were fluid, inherently unstable, and deeply political, fundamentally influencing how modern historiography handles the "reification" of magic.