Contesting Orthodoxy in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Heresy, Magic and Witchcraft (Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic)

✍ Scribed by Louise Nyholm Kallestrup (editor), Raisa Maria Toivo (editor)

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 354
• Edition: 1st ed. 2017
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

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. 

✦ Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Contents
Notes on Contributors
List of Figures
List of Table
Approaches to Magic, Heresy and Witchcraft in Time, Space and Faith
Witchcraft
Magic
Heresy
Notes
Part I: Heresy
‘Night is conceded to the dead’: Revenant Congregations in the Middle Ages
A Gathering of the Dead, or of Demons?
Marvelous, Ancient Sacrifices
Thinking with the Dead
Notes
Heresy and Heterodoxy in Medieval Scandinavia
Introduction
Terminology
Heresy in Medieval Scandinavia
Concluding Discussion
Notes
Caught Between Unorthodox Medicine and Unorthodox Religion: Revisiting the Case of Costantino Saccardini, Charlatan-Heretic
Notes
Part II: Magic
Angel Magic and the Cult of Angels in the Later Middle Ages
The Issues at Stake
Four Texts of Angel Magic from the Later Medieval West
Efforts to Regulate the Veneration of Angels
Devotion to Angels and Conceptions of Angels: The Scope of Toleration
The Hazards of Conjuration
Notes
Polyphony and Pragmatism in Scandinavian Spells c.1300–1600
Notes
The Divining Rod: Origins, Explanations and Uses in the Thirteenth to Eighteenth Centuries
Notes
Ignorant Superstition? Popular Education on Magic in Early Seventeenth-Century Confessionalist Finland: The Case of Mary and the Rosaries
Magic, Superstition and Witchcraft in Early Modern Finland
Idolatry and Lip Service vs Obedient Mary
Traces of the Cult of Mary in the Lutheran County of Satakunta
A Tradition of Catholic Reformation and Lutheran Superstition?
Early Seventeenth-Century Magic and Superstition as Ignorance
Notes
Part III: Witchcraft
The Witch of Endor Before the Witch Trials
Notes
Preaching on Witchcraft? The Sermons of Johannes Geiler of Kaysersberg (1445–1510)
Johannes Geiler of Kaysersberg (1445–1510): Some Introductory Remarks
No Place for Witches: Johannes Geiler of Kaysersberg and His Concept of Urban Reform
Superstition, Sorcery and Witchcraft in the Sermons of Johannes Geiler (Until 1509)
Johannes Geiler and His Concepts of Witchcraft (1509)
Conclusion
Notes
Law, Nature, Theology and Witchcraft in Ponzinibio’s De lamiis (1511)
Notes
The Infected and the Guilty: On Heresy and Witchcraft in Post-Reformation Denmark
The Concept of Heresy
First-Generation Reformers, Witchcraft and Heresy
The Admonitions of Niels Hemmingsen on Heresy and Witchcraft
Legislation on Witchcraft and Heresy
In Court
Conclusion
Notes
The Laughing Witch: Notes on the Relationship Between Literature and History in the Early Fifteenth Century
The centrepiece of this chapter is an early fifteenth-century play in the Dutch language, now known by the anachronistic name Die Hexe (The Witch), a name I will keep here for convenience sake. The main question I will pose here is how this play shou
A Farce
The Waning of the Middle Ages
Ascribed Witchcraft
Contemporary Concepts
A Popular Wizard
Fictional Witchcraft
Notes
Images, Representations and the Self-­Perception of Magic among the Sami Shamans of Arctic Norway, 1592–1692
‘Nordmythos’
The Septentrionale Region and the Big Dipper
Wind Knots and Weather Magic
The Sami and the Witch Trials
Sorcery Persecutions of the Sami
The Self-Perception of Magic among the Sami Shamans
Witchcraft Conspiracy at the Frontiers of European Civilization
Territorial Expansion, State-Building and Witchcraft
Notes
Bibliography
Archival (Unprinted) Sources
Sources and Bibliography Printed Before 1900
Sources and Bibliography Printed Since 1900
Index