The Disenchantment of Magic: Spells, Charms, and Superstition in Early European Witchcraft Literature

Bailey, Michael D.

doi:10.1086/ahr.111.2.383

Cited by 65 publications

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“…35 Michael Bailey has advanced the persuasive argument that the tensions and ambiguities inherent in late medieval thought about magic and ritual were themselves a force driving European culture along a trajectory of disenchantment, while Robert Bartlett has recently contended, using the decline of trial by ordeal in the twelfth century as an illustrative example, that the medieval period should not be viewed "as the cartoon Other to modern pragmatic rationalist society but as a stage on the path to it." 36 For all Bartlett's sophistication and subtlety, he too may be guilty of perpetuating the paradigm of modernization that we are all trying so hard to elude. Nevertheless, the effect of this and other current work has been to cast inherited models of periodization into disarray.…”

Section: Periodization and Its Problemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Migrations of the Holy: Explaining Religious Change in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Walsham

2014

Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies

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This reflective essay focuses upon the theoretical problem of explaining religious change in medieval and early modern Europe without perpetuating inherited paradigms of progress and modernization. First, it assesses and challenges prevailing models of periodization through an analytical overview of recent historiographical interpretations of four interconnected processes: conversion and Christianization, reform and reformation, “disenchantment” and desacralization, and religious persecution and pluralization. Secondly, it examines the consequences of the range of methodological approaches and conceptual frameworks adopted by scholars of these topics, together with the impact of interdisciplinary tendencies and influences. Thirdly, it explores the strengths and weaknesses of thinking less in terms of linear historical development than in terms of a series of cycles of religious change. A critical theme underpinning the discussion is the insight that the epistemological conventions that shape our understanding of the past are the product of the very religious and intellectual movements that are the subject of our study.

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Section: Periodization and Its Problemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Migrations of the Holy: Explaining Religious Change in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Walsham

2014

Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies

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“…By the fifteenth century, this had developed into an obsession with witches, who were believed to surrender themselves to demons. While theologians considered witches’ rituals, potions and cures to be ineffectual, they were nonetheless considered dangerous because they signified a willingness to enter into a pact with the devil (Bailey 2006: 386). At this time, there was a proliferation of treatises dealing with superstition and how to identify improper ritual acts.…”

Section: On Pigeons and Ill‐prepared Students: Science And The Psychomentioning

confidence: 99%

“…At this time, there was a proliferation of treatises dealing with superstition and how to identify improper ritual acts. Yet the historical development of disenchantment cannot be located solely in Protestant thought, scientific rationalism and Enlightenment philosophy, ‘elements of disenchantment existed already within premodern European conceptions of magical and other ritual operations’ (Bailey 2006: 403). The denial and intellectual dismissal of ‘magic’ and ‘superstition’ preceded the ontological order of modernity.…”

Section: On Pigeons and Ill‐prepared Students: Science And The Psychomentioning

confidence: 99%

The Evil Eye (għajn) in Malta: Grappling with Skinner’s pigeons and rehabilitating lame ducks¹

Baldacchino

2010

Australian J of Anthropology

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In this paper, I construct a plea for superstition and examine the ways in which contemporary scholars use the term to denote irrational belief. ‘Superstition’ has, throughout history, been used as a derogatory term denoting inferior and dangerous beliefs. Examining the process whereby people continue to believe that which they deem irrational, I adopt a reflexive and phenomenological approach. Focussing on the evil eye (għajn) in Malta and the Mediterranean, I redefine ‘superstition’ as the product of an intrasubjective antinomy between orthodoxy and its subversion.

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“…Ed., 7:32 (De anima, 1.2.6): ''nos ipsi sumus experti in magicis. '' 8 Two excellent surveys of the history of magic are Bailey, 2007;Kieckhefer, 2000. For learned magic, see Boudet,[18][19][20] The translation report is edited in ''Monumenta,'' 349-51.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… 132 For the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, see Davies; Meyer and Pels; Owen. For the later Middle Ages, see Bailey, 2006, 2008a, and 2009. …”

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confidence: 99%

Albertus,MagnusorMagus?Magic, Natural Philosophy, and Religious Reform in the Late Middle Ages^*

Collins

2010

Renaiss. Q.

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This article analyzes the fifteenth-century attempt by the Dominican order, especially in Cologne, to win canonization for the thirteenth-century natural philosopher Albert the Great. It shows how Albert's thought on natural philosophy and magic was understood and variously applied, how the Dominicans at Cologne composed his vitae, and how the order's Observant movement participated in these developments. It situates the canonization attempt at the intersection of two significant trends in which the order was a leading participant: first, the late medieval efforts to reform Christian society beginning with the religious life of monks and mendicants; second, the increasing concerns about the practice of learned and demonic mafic that laid groundwork for the witch-hunting of the early modern period. This article aims to shed light on intersections of science and religion -- their apprehension and negotiation -- at a decisive moment in European history for both fields of human endeavor.

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The Disenchantment of Magic: Spells, Charms, and Superstition in Early European Witchcraft Literature

Cited by 65 publications

References 0 publications

Migrations of the Holy: Explaining Religious Change in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Migrations of the Holy: Explaining Religious Change in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

The Evil Eye (għajn) in Malta: Grappling with Skinner’s pigeons and rehabilitating lame ducks¹

Albertus,MagnusorMagus?Magic, Natural Philosophy, and Religious Reform in the Late Middle Ages^*

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The Disenchantment of Magic: Spells, Charms, and Superstition in Early European Witchcraft Literature

Cited by 65 publications

References 0 publications

Migrations of the Holy: Explaining Religious Change in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Migrations of the Holy: Explaining Religious Change in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

The Evil Eye (għajn) in Malta: Grappling with Skinner’s pigeons and rehabilitating lame ducks1

Albertus,MagnusorMagus?Magic, Natural Philosophy, and Religious Reform in the Late Middle Ages*

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About

The Evil Eye (għajn) in Malta: Grappling with Skinner’s pigeons and rehabilitating lame ducks¹

Albertus,MagnusorMagus?Magic, Natural Philosophy, and Religious Reform in the Late Middle Ages^*