Book Review: Dissimulation and deceit in early modern Europe, edited by Miriam Eliav-Feldon and Tamar Herzig

If the changing ways of lying say something about each historical period of our world and the people who live in it, then early modern Europe surely provides scholars with a fertile field of research. In an age of uncertainties marked by the rise of new powers and religions that occasioned forced conversions and exiles, many individuals – whether by choice or necessity – adopted multiple identities, or boasted of attributes and signs that changed the way they appeared to their contemporaries. The plethora of assumed identities includes heretics, visionaries, conversos, neophytes by profession, mystics, women under demonic possession, stigmatics, diplomats, seekers of imaginary lands – all of which made the already variegated human landscape of medieval society even more complex. This volume, edited by Miriam Eliav-Feldon and Tamar Herzig, which originates from a conference held at Tel Aviv University in 2012, commendably avoids any all-encompassing interpretation of the meanings, intentions and consequences of such an extreme diversity of practices and behaviours. With 11 chapters largely written by Italian specialists in religious history, the book extends a field already explored by the two editors in previous works on imposture and pretended sanctity. Reconstructing stories that differ significantly from one another, the volume takes into account a plurality of levels, including individual interiority and beliefs, belonging to groups and collective entities, social conditioning, theoretical debates and legal control, as well as the inherent distance between the personal sensitivities of these early modern women and men and those of their counterparts studying them today