Magic And Superstition In Europe

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Magic and Superstition in Europe

Author : Michael David Bailey
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 9780742533875
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (338 download)

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Book Synopsis Magic and Superstition in Europe by : Michael David Bailey

Download or read book Magic and Superstition in Europe written by Michael David Bailey and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2007 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The only comprehensive, single-volume survey of magic available, this compelling book traces the history of magic and superstition in Europe from antiquity to the present. Focusing mainly on the medieval and early modern era, Michael Bailey also explores the ancient Near East, classical Greece and Rome, and the spread of magical systems_particularly modern witchcraft or Wicca_from Europe to the United States. He explains how magic was understood, constructed, and frequently condemned and how magical beliefs and practices have changed over time yet also remain vital even today.

Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies

Author : Michael D. Bailey
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 0801467306
Total Pages : 313 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (14 download)

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Book Synopsis Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies by : Michael D. Bailey

Download or read book Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies written by Michael D. Bailey and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2017-11-15 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Superstitions are commonplace in the modern world. Mostly, however, they evoke innocuous images of people reading their horoscopes or avoiding black cats. Certain religious practices might also come to mind—praying to St. Christopher or lighting candles for the dead. Benign as they might seem today, such practices were not always perceived that way. In medieval Europe superstitions were considered serious offenses, violations of essential precepts of Christian doctrine or immutable natural laws. But how and why did this come to be? In Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies, Michael D. Bailey explores the thorny concept of superstition as it was understood and debated in the Middle Ages. Bailey begins by tracing Christian thinking about superstition from the patristic period through the early and high Middle Ages. He then turns to the later Middle Ages, a period that witnessed an outpouring of writings devoted to superstition—tracts and treatises with titles such as De superstitionibus and Contra vitia superstitionum. Most were written by theologians and other academics based in Europe’s universities and courts, men who were increasingly anxious about the proliferation of suspect beliefs and practices, from elite ritual magic to common healing charms, from astrological divination to the observance of signs and omens. As Bailey shows, however, authorities were far more sophisticated in their reasoning than one might suspect, using accusations of superstition in a calculated way to control the boundaries of legitimate religion and acceptable science. This in turn would lay the conceptual groundwork for future discussions of religion, science, and magic in the early modern world. Indeed, by revealing the extent to which early modern thinkers took up old questions about the operation of natural properties and forces using the vocabulary of science rather than of belief, Bailey exposes the powerful but in many ways false dichotomy between the "superstitious" Middle Ages and "rational" European modernity.

Witchcraft continued

Author : Willem De Blecourt
Publisher : Manchester University Press
ISBN 13 : 1526137976
Total Pages : 228 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (261 download)

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Book Synopsis Witchcraft continued by : Willem De Blecourt

Download or read book Witchcraft continued written by Willem De Blecourt and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-30 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. The study of witchcraft accusations in Europe during the period after the end of the witch trials is still in its infancy. Witches were scratched in England, swum in Germany, beaten in the Netherlands and shot in France. The continued widespread belief in witchcraft and magic in nineteenth- and twentieth-century France has received considerable academic attention. The book discusses the extent and nature of witchcraft accusations in the period and provides a general survey of the published work on the subject for an English audience. It explores the presence of magical elements in everyday life during the modern period in Spain. The book provides a general overview of vernacular magical beliefs and practices in Italy from the time of unification to the present, with particular attention to how these traditions have been studied. By functioning as mechanisms of social ethos and control, narratives of magical harm were assured a place at the very heart of rural Finnish social dynamics into the twentieth century. The book draws upon over 300 narratives recorded in rural Finland in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that provide information concerning the social relations, tensions and strategies that framed sorcery and the counter-magic employed against it. It is concerned with a special form of witchcraft that is practised only amongst Hungarians living in Transylvania.

Superstition and Magic in Early Modern Europe: A Reader

Author : Helen L. Parish
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1441100326
Total Pages : 409 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (411 download)

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Book Synopsis Superstition and Magic in Early Modern Europe: A Reader by : Helen L. Parish

Download or read book Superstition and Magic in Early Modern Europe: A Reader written by Helen L. Parish and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-11-20 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Superstition and Magic in Early Modern Europe brings together a rich selection of essays which represent the most important historical research on religion, magic and superstition in early modern Europe. Each essay makes a significant contribution to the history of magic and religion in its own right, while together they demonstrate how debates over the topic have evolved over time, providing invaluable intellectual, historical, and socio-political context for readers approaching the subject for the first time. The essays are organised around five key themes and areas of controversy. Part One tackles superstition; Part Two, the tension between miracles and magic; Part Three, ghosts and apparitions; Part Four, witchcraft and witch trials; and Part Five, the gradual disintegration of the 'magical universe' in the face of scientific, religious and practical opposition. Each part is prefaced by an introduction that provides an outline of the historiography and engages with recent scholarship and debate, setting the context for the essays that follow and providing a foundation for further study. This collection is an invaluable toolkit for students of early modern Europe, providing both a focused overview and a springboard for broader thinking about the underlying continuities and discontinuities that make the study of magic and superstition a perennially fascinating topic.

Magic, Science, and Religion in Early Modern Europe

Author : Mark A. Waddell
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108425283
Total Pages : 231 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (84 download)

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Book Synopsis Magic, Science, and Religion in Early Modern Europe by : Mark A. Waddell

Download or read book Magic, Science, and Religion in Early Modern Europe written by Mark A. Waddell and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-28 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An accessible new exploration of the vibrant world of early modern Europe through a focus on magic, science, and religion.

Beyond the witch trials

Author : Owen Davies
Publisher : Manchester University Press
ISBN 13 : 1526137267
Total Pages : 220 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (261 download)

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Book Synopsis Beyond the witch trials by : Owen Davies

Download or read book Beyond the witch trials written by Owen Davies and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-30 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. This book looks at aspects of the continuation of witchcraft and magic in Europe from the last of the secular and ecclesiastical trials during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, through to the nineteenth century. It provides a brief outline of witch trials in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Finland. By the second half of the seventeenth century, as the witch trials reached their climax in Sweden, belief in the interventionist powers of the Devil had become a major preoccupation of the educated classes. Having acknowledged the slight possibility of real possession by the Devil, Benito Feijoo threw himself wholeheartedly into his real objective: to expose the falseness of the majority of the possessed. The book is concerned with accusations of magic, which were formalised as denunciations heard by the Inquisition of the Archdiocese of Capua, a city twelve miles north of Naples, during the first half of the eighteenth century. One aspect of the study of witchcraft and magic, which has not yet been absorbed into the main stream of literature on the subject, is the archaeological record of the subject. As a part of the increasing interest in 'popular' culture, historians have become more conscious of the presence of witchcraft after the witch trials. The aftermath of the major witch trials in Dalarna, Sweden, demonstrates how the authorities began the awkward process of divorcing themselves from popular concerns and beliefs regarding witchcraft.

Enchanted Europe

Author : Euan Cameron
Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 019161372X
Total Pages : 488 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (916 download)

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Book Synopsis Enchanted Europe by : Euan Cameron

Download or read book Enchanted Europe written by Euan Cameron and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2010-03-18 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the dawn of history people have used charms and spells to try to control their environment, and forms of divination to try to foresee the otherwise unpredictable chances of life. Many of these techniques were called 'superstitious' by educated elites. For centuries religious believers used 'superstition' as a term of abuse to denounce another religion that they thought inferior, or to criticize their fellow-believers for practising their faith 'wrongly'. From the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, scholars argued over what 'superstition' was, how to identify it, and how to persuade people to avoid it. Learned believers in demons and witchcraft, in their treatises and sermons, tried to make 'rational' sense of popular superstitions by blaming them on the deceptive tricks of seductive demons. Every major movement in Christian thought, from rival schools of medieval theology through to the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment, added new twists to the debates over superstition. Protestants saw Catholics as superstitious, and vice versa. Enlightened philosophers mocked traditional cults as superstitions. Eventually, the learned lost their worry about popular belief, and turned instead to chronicling and preserving 'superstitious' customs as folklore and ethnic heritage. Enchanted Europe is the first comprehensive, integrated account of western Europe's long, complex dialogue with its own folklore and popular beliefs. Drawing on many little-known and rarely used texts, Euan Cameron constructs a compelling narrative of the rise, diversification, and decline of popular 'superstition' in the European mind.

Staging the Superstitions of Early Modern Europe

Author : Andrew D. McCarthy
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317050681
Total Pages : 308 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis Staging the Superstitions of Early Modern Europe by : Andrew D. McCarthy

Download or read book Staging the Superstitions of Early Modern Europe written by Andrew D. McCarthy and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-01 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Engaging with fiction and history-and reading both genres as texts permeated with early modern anxieties, desires, and apprehensions-this collection scrutinizes the historical intersection of early modern European superstitions and English stage literature. Contributors analyze the cultural mechanisms that shape, preserve, and transmit beliefs. They investigate where superstitions come from and how they are sustained and communicated within early modern European society. It has been proposed by scholars that once enacted on stage and thus brought into contact with the literary-dramatic perspective, belief systems that had been preserved and reinforced by historical-literary texts underwent a drastic change. By highlighting the connection between historical-literary and literary-dramatic culture, this volume tests and explores the theory that performance of superstitions opened the way to disbelief.

Religion, Magic, and Science in Early Modern Europe and America

Author : Allison P. Coudert
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 422 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (161 download)

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Book Synopsis Religion, Magic, and Science in Early Modern Europe and America by : Allison P. Coudert

Download or read book Religion, Magic, and Science in Early Modern Europe and America written by Allison P. Coudert and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2011-10-17 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fascinating study looks at how the seemingly incompatible forces of science, magic, and religion came together in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries to form the foundations of modern culture. As Religion, Magic, and Science in Early Modern Europe and America makes clear, the early modern period was one of stark contrasts: witch burnings and the brilliant mathematical physics of Isaac Newton; John Locke's plea for tolerance and the palpable lack of it; the richness of intellectual and artistic life, and the poverty of material existence for all but a tiny percentage of the population. Yet, for all the poverty, insecurity, and superstition, the period produced a stunning galaxy of writers, artists, philosophers, and scientists. This book looks at the conditions that fomented the emergence of such outstanding talent, innovation, and invention in the period 1450 to 1800. It examines the interaction between religion, magic, and science during that time, the impossibility of clearly differentiating between the three, and the impact of these forces on the geniuses who laid the foundation for modern science and culture.

Witchcraft and Magic in Europe, Volume 5

Author : Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra
Publisher : A&C Black
ISBN 13 : 0485890054
Total Pages : 353 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (858 download)

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Book Synopsis Witchcraft and Magic in Europe, Volume 5 by : Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra

Download or read book Witchcraft and Magic in Europe, Volume 5 written by Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The end of the eighteenth century saw the end of the witch trials everywhere. This volume charts the processes and reasons for the decriminalisation of witchcraft but also challenges the widespread assumption that Europe has been 'disenchanted'. For the first time surveys are given of the social role of witchcraft in European communities down to the end of the nineteenth century and of the continued importance of witchcraft and magic as topics of debate among intellectuals and other writers>

The Realities of Witchcraft and Popular Magic in Early Modern Europe

Author : E. Bever
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 0230582117
Total Pages : 627 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (35 download)

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Book Synopsis The Realities of Witchcraft and Popular Magic in Early Modern Europe by : E. Bever

Download or read book The Realities of Witchcraft and Popular Magic in Early Modern Europe written by E. Bever and published by Springer. This book was released on 2008-06-11 with total page 627 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the elements of reality in early modern witchcraft and popular magic, through a combination of detailed archival research and broad-ranging interdisciplinary analyses, this book complements and challenges existing scholarship, and offers unique insights into this murky aspect of early modern history.

The Cambridge History of Magic and Witchcraft in the West

Author : David J. Collins, S. J.
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1316239497
Total Pages : 1240 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (162 download)

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Book Synopsis The Cambridge History of Magic and Witchcraft in the West by : David J. Collins, S. J.

Download or read book The Cambridge History of Magic and Witchcraft in the West written by David J. Collins, S. J. and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-02 with total page 1240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents twenty chapters by experts in their fields, providing a thorough and interdisciplinary overview of the theory and practice of magic in the West. Its chronological scope extends from the Ancient Near East to twenty-first-century North America; its objects of analysis range from Persian curse tablets to US neo-paganism. For comparative purposes, the volume includes chapters on developments in the Jewish and Muslim worlds, evaluated not simply for what they contributed at various points to European notions of magic, but also as models of alternative development in ancient Mediterranean legacy. Similarly, the volume highlights the transformative and challenging encounters of Europeans with non-Europeans, regarding the practice of magic in both early modern colonization and more recent decolonization.

Witchcraft and Masculinities in Early Modern Europe

Author : A. Rowlands
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 0230248373
Total Pages : 271 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (32 download)

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Book Synopsis Witchcraft and Masculinities in Early Modern Europe by : A. Rowlands

Download or read book Witchcraft and Masculinities in Early Modern Europe written by A. Rowlands and published by Springer. This book was released on 2009-10-22 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Men – as accused witches, witch-hunters, werewolves and the demonically possessed – are the focus of analysis in this collection of essays by leading scholars of early modern European witchcraft. The gendering of witch persecution and witchcraft belief is explored through original case-studies from England, Scotland, Italy, Germany and France.

European Magic and Witchcraft

Author : Martha Rampton
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
ISBN 13 : 1442634200
Total Pages : 481 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (426 download)

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Book Synopsis European Magic and Witchcraft by : Martha Rampton

Download or read book European Magic and Witchcraft written by Martha Rampton and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Magic, witches, and demons have drawn interest and fear throughout human history. In this comprehensive primary source reader, Martha Rampton traces the history of our fascination with magic and witchcraft from the first through to the seventeenth century. In over 80 readings presented chronologically, Rampton demonstrates how understandings of and reactions toward magic changed and developed over time, and how these ideas were influenced by various factors such as religion, science, and law. The wide-ranging texts emphasize social history and include early Merovingian law codes, the Picatrix, Lombard's Sentences, The Golden Legend, and A Midsummer Night's Dream. By presenting a full spectrum of source types including hagiography, law codes, literature, and handbooks, this collection provides readers with a broad view of how magic was understood through the medieval and early modern eras. Rampton's introduction to the volume is a passionate appeal to students to use tolerance, imagination, and empathy when travelling back in time. The introductions to individual readings are deliberately minimal, providing just enough context so that students can hear medieval voices for themselves.

Contesting Orthodoxy in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Author : Louise Nyholm Kallestrup
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 3319323857
Total Pages : 349 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (193 download)

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Book Synopsis Contesting Orthodoxy in Medieval and Early Modern Europe by : Louise Nyholm Kallestrup

Download or read book Contesting Orthodoxy in Medieval and Early Modern Europe written by Louise Nyholm Kallestrup and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-02-04 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book breaks with three common scholarly barriers of periodization, discipline and geography in its exploration of the related themes of heresy, magic and witchcraft. It sets aside constructed chronological boundaries, and in doing so aims to achieve a clearer picture of what ‘went before’, as well as what ‘came after’. Thus the volume demonstrates continuity as well as change in the concepts and understandings of magic, heresy and witchcraft. In addition, the geographical pattern of similarities and diversities suggests a comparative approach, transcending confessional as well as national borders. Throughout the medieval and early modern period, the orthodoxy of the Christian Church was continuously contested. The challenge of heterodoxy, especially as expressed in various kinds of heresy, magic and witchcraft, was constantly present during the period 1200-1650. Neither contesters nor followers of orthodoxy were homogeneous groups or fractions. They themselves and their ideas changed from one century to the next, from region to region, even from city to city, but within a common framework of interpretation. This collection of essays focuses on this complex.

Trafficking with Demons

Author : Martha Rampton
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501735314
Total Pages : 409 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis Trafficking with Demons by : Martha Rampton

Download or read book Trafficking with Demons written by Martha Rampton and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2022-01-15 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Jewish Magic and Superstition

Author : Joshua Trachtenberg
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812208331
Total Pages : 393 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (122 download)

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Book Synopsis Jewish Magic and Superstition by : Joshua Trachtenberg

Download or read book Jewish Magic and Superstition written by Joshua Trachtenberg and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2012-10-08 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alongside the formal development of Judaism from the eleventh through the sixteenth centuries, a robust Jewish folk religion flourished—ideas and practices that never met with wholehearted approval by religious leaders yet enjoyed such wide popularity that they could not be altogether excluded from the religion. According to Joshua Trachtenberg, it is not possible truly to understand the experience and history of the Jewish people without attempting to recover their folklife and beliefs from centuries past. Jewish Magic and Superstition is a masterful and utterly fascinating exploration of religious forms that have all but disappeared yet persist in the imagination. The volume begins with legends of Jewish sorcery and proceeds to discuss beliefs about the evil eye, spirits of the dead, powers of good, the famous legend of the golem, procedures for casting spells, the use of gems and amulets, how to battle spirits, the ritual of circumcision, herbal folk remedies, fortune telling, astrology, and the interpretation of dreams. First published more than sixty years ago, Trachtenberg's study remains the foundational scholarship on magical practices in the Jewish world and offers an understanding of folk beliefs that expressed most eloquently the everyday religion of the Jewish people.