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Author: Catherine Rider Publisher: OUP Oxford ISBN: 0191536040 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 270
Book Description
Magic and Impotence in the Middle Ages investigates the common medieval belief that magic could cause impotence, focusing particularly on the period 1150-1450. The subject has never been studied in detail before, but there is a surprisingly large amount of information about it in four kinds of source: confessors' manuals; medical compendia that discussed many illnesses; commentaries on canon law; and theological commentaries on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. Although most historians of medieval culture focus on only one or two of these kinds of source, a broader comparison reveals that medieval writers held surprisingly diverse opinions about what magic was, how it worked, and whether it was ever legitimate to use it. Medieval discussions of magically caused impotence also include a great deal of information about magical practices, most of which have not been studied before. In particular, these sources say a great deal about popular magic, a subject which has been particularly neglected by historians because the evidence is scanty and difficult to interpret. Magic and Impotence makes new information about popular magic available for the first time. Magic and Impotence also examines why the authors of legal, medical, and theological texts were so interested in popular magical practices relating to impotence. It therefore uses magically caused impotence as a case-study to explore the relationship between elite and popular culture. In particular, this study emphasizes the importance of the thirteenth-century pastoral reform movement, which sought to enforce more orthodox religious practices. Historians have often noted that this movement brought churchmen into contact with popular beliefs, but this is the first study to demonstrate the profound effect it had on theological and legal ideas about magic.
Author: Catherine Rider Publisher: OUP Oxford ISBN: 0191536040 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 270
Book Description
Magic and Impotence in the Middle Ages investigates the common medieval belief that magic could cause impotence, focusing particularly on the period 1150-1450. The subject has never been studied in detail before, but there is a surprisingly large amount of information about it in four kinds of source: confessors' manuals; medical compendia that discussed many illnesses; commentaries on canon law; and theological commentaries on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. Although most historians of medieval culture focus on only one or two of these kinds of source, a broader comparison reveals that medieval writers held surprisingly diverse opinions about what magic was, how it worked, and whether it was ever legitimate to use it. Medieval discussions of magically caused impotence also include a great deal of information about magical practices, most of which have not been studied before. In particular, these sources say a great deal about popular magic, a subject which has been particularly neglected by historians because the evidence is scanty and difficult to interpret. Magic and Impotence makes new information about popular magic available for the first time. Magic and Impotence also examines why the authors of legal, medical, and theological texts were so interested in popular magical practices relating to impotence. It therefore uses magically caused impotence as a case-study to explore the relationship between elite and popular culture. In particular, this study emphasizes the importance of the thirteenth-century pastoral reform movement, which sought to enforce more orthodox religious practices. Historians have often noted that this movement brought churchmen into contact with popular beliefs, but this is the first study to demonstrate the profound effect it had on theological and legal ideas about magic.
Author: Catherine Rider Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand ISBN: 0199282226 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 269
Book Description
'Magic and Impotence in the Middle Ages' investigates the common medieval belief that magic could cause impotence, focusing particularly on the period 1150-1450. The book also examines why the authors of legal, medical, and theological texts were so interested in popular magical practices relating to impotence.--Résumé de l'éditeur.
Author: Catherine Rider Publisher: Reaktion Books ISBN: 1780230745 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 222
Book Description
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.
Author: Stephen A. Mitchell Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press ISBN: 0812203712 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 384
Book Description
Stephen A. Mitchell here offers the fullest examination available of witchcraft in late medieval Scandinavia. He focuses on those people believed to be able—and who in some instances thought themselves able—to manipulate the world around them through magical practices, and on the responses to these beliefs in the legal, literary, and popular cultures of the Nordic Middle Ages. His sources range from the Icelandic sagas to cultural monuments much less familiar to the nonspecialist, including legal cases, church art, law codes, ecclesiastical records, and runic spells. Mitchell's starting point is the year 1100, by which time Christianity was well established in elite circles throughout Scandinavia, even as some pre-Christian practices and beliefs persisted in various forms. The book's endpoint coincides with the coming of the Reformation and the onset of the early modern Scandinavian witch hunts. The terrain covered is complex, home to the Germanic Scandinavians as well as their non-Indo-European neighbors, the Sámi and Finns, and it encompasses such diverse areas as the important trade cities of Copenhagen, Bergen, and Stockholm, with their large foreign populations; the rural hinterlands; and the insular outposts of Iceland and Greenland. By examining witches, wizards, and seeresses in literature, lore, and law, as well as surviving charm magic directed toward love, prophecy, health, and weather, Mitchell provides a portrait of both the practitioners of medieval Nordic magic and its performance. With an understanding of mythology as a living system of cultural signs (not just ancient sacred narratives), this study also focuses on such powerful evolving myths as those of "the milk-stealing witch," the diabolical pact, and the witches' journey to Blåkulla. Court cases involving witchcraft, charm magic, and apostasy demonstrate that witchcraft ideologies played a key role in conceptualizing gender and were themselves an important means of exercising social control.
Author: Corinne J. Saunders Publisher: Boydell & Brewer ISBN: 1843842211 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 314
Book Description
"This study looks at a wide range of medieval Englisih romance texts, including the works of Chaucer and Malory, from a broad cultural perspective, to show that while they employ magic in order to create exotic, escapist worlds, they are also grounded in a sense of possibility, and reflect a complex web of inherited and current ideas." --Book Jacket.
Author: Christopher A. FARAONE Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674036700 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 239
Book Description
The ancient Greeks commonly resorted to magic spells to attract and keep lovers. Surveying and analyzing various texts and artifacts, the author reveals that gender is the crucial factor in understanding love spells.
Author: Katherine Harvey Publisher: Reaktion Books ISBN: 1789144884 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 297
Book Description
An illuminating exploration of the surprisingly familiar sex lives of ordinary medieval people. The medieval humoral system of medicine suggested that it was possible to die from having too much—or too little—sex, while the Roman Catholic Church taught that virginity was the ideal state. Holy men and women committed themselves to lifelong abstinence in the name of religion. Everyone was forced to conform to restrictive rules about who they could have sex with, in what way, how often, and even when, and could be harshly punished for getting it wrong. Other experiences are more familiar. Like us, medieval people faced challenges in finding a suitable partner or trying to get pregnant (or trying not to). They also struggled with many of the same social issues, such as whether prostitution should be legalized. Above all, they shared our fondness for dirty jokes and erotic images. By exploring their sex lives, the book brings ordinary medieval people to life and reveals details of their most personal thoughts and experiences. Ultimately, it provides us with an important and intimate connection to the past.
Author: Valerie I. J. Flint Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA ISBN: 9780198205227 Category : Church history Languages : en Pages : 452
Book Description
This is a study of magic in Western Europe in the early Middle Ages. Valerie Flint explores its practice and belief in Christian society, and examines the problems raised by so-called pagan survivals and superstition. She unravels the complex processes at work in the early medieval Christian church to show how the rejection of non-Christian magic came to be tempered by a more accommodating attitude: confrontation was replaced by negotiation, and certain practices previously condemned were not merely accepted, but actively encouraged. The forms of magic which were retained, as well as those the Church set out to obliterate, are analyzed. The superstitions condemned at the Reformation are shown to be, in origin, rational and intelligent concessions intended to reconcile coexisting cultures.
Author: Catherine Rider
Author: Catherine Rider
Author: Catherine Rider
Author: Catherine Rider
Author: Richard Kieckhefer
Author: Bronach Christina Kane
Author: Stephen A. Mitchell
Author: Corinne J. Saunders
Author: Christopher A. FARAONE
Author: Katherine Harvey
Author: Valerie I. J. Flint