Witchcraft and Magic in Europe, Volume 3: The Middle Ages (Witchcraft and Magic in Europe

Witchcraft and Magic in Europe #3

by Bengt Ankarloo (Editor), Stuart Clark (Editor)

During the Middle Ages a shared European concept of magic emerged. In the early period, pagan beliefs and practices were absorbed into everyday culture, including the rituals of the Church. The rise of the practice of "white magic" in the twelfth century became so popular that it caused a widespread determination in the Church to condemn any unsanctioned beliefs or practices. The Church and state, both centralized powers in a decentralized Europe, gradually sharpened their attitude toward magic in general, and sorcery and witchcraft in particular, paving the way for the violent outbreaks of witch persecutions in early modern Europe.

Witchcraft and Magic in Europe combines the traditional approaches of political, legal, and social historians with a critical synthesis of cultural anthropology, historical psychology, and gender studies. The series, complete in six volumes, provides a modern, scholarly survey of the supernatural beliefs of Europeans from ancient times to the present day. Each volume of this ambitious six-volume series contains the work of distinguished scholars chosen for their expertise in a particular era or region.

Genres: History, Witchcraft, Nonfiction, Religion, Research

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent if uneven trio of essays, but not uneven in the sense of quality, but rather in theme and maybe even more so: specificity.
The middle essay covers the trolldomr (a fancy North-of-the-Wall word for "witchcraft") of medieval Scandinavia and is thus incredibly hyper-specific. It is the most fun chapter, though, since it strays away from analysis unlike the other two chapters, and sticks to classificatory fun. It discusses ceremony, rite, and the borderline shamanism of the weird Norse.
The first essay is more analytical, though it might not come across so at first. Doing the best she can with the extant record, Jolly neatly partitions the rise of the concept of magic and its purveyors into three parts and then teases out what it meant during each of those three times. Her second section details objects and rites and meanings (kind of) of magical shizz. Unfortunately, Jolly is dogged by her own insistence on outright syncretism and falls into the trap of making evolving notions of superstition/witchcraft too dependent on a Christian lens. Sure, syncretism and symbiosis by their very nature are two-way streets but Jolly seems to assign too much weight to the overbearing spread of Christianity (counter to work such as Russell et al). But it only detracts some from the information she presents, the real value here.
The third section on what we can call institutional intolerance and its counterpart, penal brutality, is decent, but a retread of stuff you've probably already read if you're digging into the subject.

[Carl]

This book, and maybe whole series, would probably be good for me to skim in preparation for the section on magic in my Scandinavian Folklore course which I am teaching this Spring. Looks good so far, after reading maybe an 8th of the book.