Magic And Religion In Medieval England

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Magic and Religion in Medieval England

Author : Catherine Rider
Publisher : Reaktion Books
Page : 222 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 2013-02-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9781780230740

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Magic and Religion in Medieval England by Catherine Rider Pdf

During the Middle Ages, many occult rituals and beliefs existed and were practiced alongside those officially sanctioned by the church. While educated clergy condemned some of these as magic, many of these practices involved religious language, rituals, or objects. For instance, charms recited to cure illnesses invoked God and the saints, and love spells used consecrated substances such as the Eucharist. Magic and Religion in Medieval England explores the entanglement of magical practices and the clergy during the Middle Ages, uncovering how churchmen decided which of these practices to deem acceptable and examining the ways they persuaded others to adopt their views. Covering the period from 1215 to the Reformation, Catherine Rider traces the change in the church’s attitude to vernacular forms of magic. She shows how this period brought the clergy more closely into contact with unofficial religious practices than ever before, and how this proximity prompted them to draw up precise guidelines on distinguishing magic from legitimate religion. Revealing the necessity of improving clerical education and the pastoral care of the laity, Magic and Religion in Medieval England provides a fascinating picture of religious life during this period.

Religion and the Decline of Magic

Author : Keith Thomas
Publisher : Penguin UK
Page : 931 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2003-01-30
Category : History
ISBN : 9780141932408

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Religion and the Decline of Magic by Keith Thomas Pdf

Witchcraft, astrology, divination and every kind of popular magic flourished in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from the belief that a blessed amulet could prevent the assaults of the Devil to the use of the same charms to recover stolen goods. At the same time the Protestant Reformation attempted to take the magic out of religion, and scientists were developing new explanations of the universe. Keith Thomas's classic analysis of beliefs held on every level of English society begins with the collapse of the medieval Church and ends with the changing intellectual atmosphere around 1700, when science and rationalism began to challenge the older systems of belief.

The Sacred and the Sinister

Author : David J. Collins, S. J.
Publisher : Penn State Press
Page : 301 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2019-05-17
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780271084398

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The Sacred and the Sinister by David J. Collins, S. J. Pdf

Inspired by the work of eminent scholar Richard Kieckhefer, The Sacred and the Sinister explores the ambiguities that made (and make) medieval religion and magic so difficult to differentiate. The essays in this collection investigate how the holy and unholy were distinguished in medieval Europe, where their characteristics diverged, and the implications of that deviation. In the Middle Ages, the natural world was understood as divinely created and infused with mysterious power. This world was accessible to human knowledge and susceptible to human manipulation through three modes of engagement: religion, magic, and science. How these ways of understanding developed in light of modern notions of rationality is an important element of ongoing scholarly conversation. As Kieckhefer has emphasized, ambiguity and ambivalence characterize medieval understandings of the divine and demonic powers at work in the world. The ten chapters in this volume focus on four main aspects of this assertion: the cult of the saints, contested devotional relationships and practices, unsettled judgments between magic and religion, and inconclusive distinctions between magic and science. Freshly insightful, this study of ambiguity between magic and religion will be of special interest to scholars in the fields of medieval studies, religious studies, European history, and the history of science. In addition to the editor, the contributors to this volume are Michael D. Bailey, Kristi Woodward Bain, Maeve B. Callan, Elizabeth Casteen, Claire Fanger, Sean L. Field, Anne M. Koenig, Katelyn Mesler, and Sophie Page.

Magic in the Middle Ages

Author : Richard Kieckhefer
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 239 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2014-11-06
Category : History
ISBN : 9781107431829

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Magic in the Middle Ages by Richard Kieckhefer Pdf

A fascinating study of natural and demonic magic within the broad context of medieval culture.

Magic and Magicians in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Time

Author : Albrecht Classen
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 767 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2017-10-23
Category : History
ISBN : 9783110556520

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Magic and Magicians in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Time by Albrecht Classen Pdf

There are no clear demarcation lines between magic, astrology, necromancy, medicine, and even sciences in the pre-modern world. Under the umbrella term 'magic,' the contributors to this volume examine a wide range of texts, both literary and religious, both medical and philosophical, in which the topic is discussed from many different perspectives. The fundamental concerns address issue such as how people perceived magic, whether they accepted it and utilized it for their own purposes, and what impact magic might have had on the mental structures of that time. While some papers examine the specific appearance of magicians in literary texts, others analyze the practical application of magic in medical contexts. In addition, this volume includes studies that deal with the rise of the witch craze in the late fifteenth century and then also investigate whether the Weberian notion of disenchantment pertaining to the modern world can be maintained. Magic is, oddly but significantly, still around us and exerts its influence. Focusing on magic in the medieval world thus helps us to shed light on human culture at large.

Making Magic in Elizabethan England

Author : Frank Klaassen
Publisher : Penn State Press
Page : 160 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2019-12-11
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN : 9780271085173

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Making Magic in Elizabethan England by Frank Klaassen Pdf

This volume presents editions of two fascinating anonymous and untitled manuscripts of magic produced in Elizabethan England: the Antiphoner Notebook and the Boxgrove Manual. Frank Klaassen uses these texts, which he argues are representative of the overwhelming majority of magical practitioners, to explain how magic changed during this period and why these developments were crucial to the formation of modern magic. The Boxgrove Manual is a work of learned ritual magic that synthesizes material from Henry Cornelius Agrippa, the Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy, Heptameron, and various medieval conjuring works. The Antiphoner Notebook concerns the common magic of treasure hunting, healing, and protection, blending medieval conjuring and charm literature with materials drawn from Reginald Scot’s famous anti-magic work, Discoverie of Witchcraft. Klaassen painstakingly traces how the scribes who created these two manuscripts adapted and transformed their original sources. In so doing, he demonstrates the varied and subtle ways in which the Renaissance, the Reformation, new currents in science, the birth of printing, and vernacularization changed the practice of magic. Illuminating the processes by which two sixteenth-century English scribes went about making a book of magic, this volume provides insight into the wider intellectual culture surrounding the practice of magic in the early modern period.

Magic in the Cloister

Author : Sophie Page
Publisher : Penn State Press
Page : 246 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2013-10-21
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780271062976

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Magic in the Cloister by Sophie Page Pdf

During the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries a group of monks with occult interests donated what became a remarkable collection of more than thirty magic texts to the library of the Benedictine abbey of St. Augustine’s in Canterbury. The monks collected texts that provided positive justifications for the practice of magic and books in which works of magic were copied side by side with works of more licit genres. In Magic in the Cloister, Sophie Page uses this collection to explore the gradual shift toward more positive attitudes to magical texts and ideas in medieval Europe. She examines what attracted monks to magic texts, in spite of the dangers involved in studying condemned works, and how the monks combined magic with their intellectual interests and monastic life. By showing how it was possible for religious insiders to integrate magical studies with their orthodox worldview, Magic in the Cloister contributes to a broader understanding of the role of magical texts and ideas and their acceptance in the late Middle Ages.

The Transformations of Magic

Author : Frank Klaassen
Publisher : Penn State Press
Page : 292 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2015-06-26
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780271061757

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The Transformations of Magic by Frank Klaassen Pdf

In this original, provocative, well-reasoned, and thoroughly documented book, Frank Klaassen proposes that two principal genres of illicit learned magic occur in late medieval manuscripts: image magic, which could be interpreted and justified in scholastic terms, and ritual magic (in its extreme form, overt necromancy), which could not. Image magic tended to be recopied faithfully; ritual magic tended to be adapted and reworked. These two forms of magic did not usually become intermingled in the manuscripts, but were presented separately. While image magic was often copied in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, The Transformations of Magic demonstrates that interest in it as an independent genre declined precipitously around 1500. Instead, what persisted was the other, more problematic form of magic: ritual magic. Klaassen shows that texts of medieval ritual magic were cherished in the sixteenth century, and writers of new magical treatises, such as Agrippa von Nettesheim and John Dee, were far more deeply indebted to medieval tradition—and specifically to the medieval tradition of ritual magic—than previous scholars have thought them to be.

History and the Supernatural in Medieval England

Author : C. S. Watkins
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 46,9 Mb
Release : 2010-11-25
Category : History
ISBN : 0521154812

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History and the Supernatural in Medieval England by C. S. Watkins Pdf

This is a fascinating study of religious culture in England from 1050 to 1250. Drawing on the wealth of material about religious belief and practice that survives in the chronicles, Carl Watkins explores the accounts of signs, prophecies, astrology, magic, beliefs about death, and the miraculous and demonic. He challenges some of the prevailing assumptions about religious belief, questioning in particular the attachment of many historians to terms such as 'clerical' and 'lay', 'popular' and 'elite', 'Christian' and 'pagan' as explanatory categories. The evidence of the chronicles is also set in its broader context through explorations of miracle collections, penitential manuals, exempla and sermons. The book traces shifts in the way the supernatural was conceptualized by learned writers and the ways in which broader patterns of belief evolved during this period. This original account sheds important light on belief during a period in which the religious landscape was transformed.

Popular Religion in Late Saxon England

Author : Karen Louise Jolly
Publisher : UNC Press Books
Page : 398 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2015-06-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9781469611143

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Popular Religion in Late Saxon England by Karen Louise Jolly Pdf

In tenth- and eleventh-century England, Anglo-Saxon Christians retained an old folk belief in elves as extremely dangerous creatures capable of harming unwary humans. To ward off the afflictions caused by these invisible beings, Christian priests modified traditional elf charms by adding liturgical chants to herbal remedies. In Popular Religion in Late Saxon England, Karen Jolly traces this cultural intermingling of Christian liturgy and indigenous Germanic customs and argues that elf charms and similar practices represent the successful Christianization of native folklore. Jolly describes a dual process of conversion in which Anglo-Saxon culture became Christianized but at the same time left its own distinct imprint on Christianity. Illuminating the creative aspects of this dynamic relationship, she identifies liturgical folk medicine as a middle ground between popular and elite, pagan and Christian, magic and miracle. Her analysis, drawing on the model of popular religion to redefine folklore and magic, reveals the richness and diversity of late Saxon Christianity.

Trafficking with Demons

Author : Martha Rampton
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 409 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2022-01-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9781501735318

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Trafficking with Demons by Martha Rampton Pdf

Trafficking with Demons explores how magic was perceived, practiced, and prohibited in western Europe during the first millennium CE. Through the overlapping frameworks of religion, ritual, and gender, Martha Rampton connects early Christian reckonings with pagan magic to later doctrines and dogmas. Challenging established views on the role of women in ritual magic during this period, Rampton provides a new narrative of the ways in which magic was embedded within the foundational assumptions of western European society, informing how people understood the cosmos, divinity, and their own Christian faith. As Rampton shows, throughout the first Christian millennium, magic was thought to play a natural role within the functioning of the universe and existed within a rational cosmos hierarchically arranged according to a "great chain of being." Trafficking with the "demons of the lower air" was the essense of magic. Interactions with those demons occurred both in highly formalistic, ritual settings and on a routine and casual basis. Rampton tracks the competition between pagan magic and Christian belief from the first century CE, when it was fiercest, through the early Middle Ages, as atavistic forms of magic mutated and found sanctuary in the daily habits of the converted peoples and new paganisms entered Europe with their own forms of magic. By the year 1000, she concludes, many forms of magic had been tamed and were, by the reckoning of the elite, essentially ineffective, as were the women who practiced it and the rituals that attended it.

Christianity and Romance in Medieval England

Author : Rosalind Field,Phillipa Hardman,Michelle Sweeney
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
Page : 228 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2010
Category : Education
ISBN : 9781843842194

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Christianity and Romance in Medieval England by Rosalind Field,Phillipa Hardman,Michelle Sweeney Pdf

The essays collected here show how the romances of medieval England engaged with contemporary Christian culture, and demonstrate the importance of reading them with an awareness of that culture.

Witchcraft and Magic in Europe, Volume 3

Author : Karen Jolly,Catharina Raudvere,Edward Peters
Publisher : A&C Black
Page : 295 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2002-01-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9780485890037

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Witchcraft and Magic in Europe, Volume 3 by Karen Jolly,Catharina Raudvere,Edward Peters Pdf

Between the age of St. Augustine and the sixteenth century reformations magic continued to be both a matter of popular practice and of learned inquiry. This volume deals with its use in such contexts as healing and divination and as an aspect of the knowledge of nature's occult virtues and secrets.>

The Magic of the Middle Ages

Author : Viktor Rydberg
Publisher : Good Press
Page : 118 pages
File Size : 40,5 Mb
Release : 2021-04-26
Category : History
ISBN : EAN:4057664608659

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The Magic of the Middle Ages by Viktor Rydberg Pdf

The Magic of the Middle Ages by Viktor Rydberg is about the occult in the Middle Ages. Rydberg writes informed and engrossing passages about medieval history. Contents: "The Cosmic Mythology of the Middle Ages and its Historical Development, The Magic of the Church, The Magic of the Learned, The Magic of the People and the Struggle of the Church Against It"

Magic as a Political Crime in Medieval and Early Modern England

Author : Francis Young
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 275 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2017-10-30
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781786722911

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Magic as a Political Crime in Medieval and Early Modern England by Francis Young Pdf

Treason and magic were first linked together during the reign of Edward II. Theories of occult conspiracy then regularly led to major political scandals, such as the trial of Eleanor Cobham Duchess of Gloucester in 1441. While accusations of magical treason against high-ranking figures were indeed a staple of late medieval English power politics, they acquired new significance at the Reformation when the 'superstition' embodied by magic came to be associated with proscribed Catholic belief. Francis Young here offers the first concerted historical analysis of allegations of the use of magic either to harm or kill the monarch, or else manipulate the course of political events in England, between the fourteenth century and the dawn of the Enlightenment. His book addresses a subject usually either passed over or elided with witchcraft: a quite different historical phenomenon. He argues that while charges of treasonable magic certainly were used to destroy reputations or to ensure the convictions of undesirables, magic was also perceived as a genuine threat by English governments into the Civil War era and beyond.