J. Borsje

Rules & Legislation on Love Charms in Early Medieval Ireland

Love magic is defined as verbal and material instruments by which erotic and affectionate feelings are believed to be aroused or destroyed in a supernatural way. This is a discussion of love magic as it is presented in early medieval Hiberno-Latin penitentials and Irish legal texts.

The Secret of the Celts Revisited

What makes the Celts so popular today? Anton van Hamel and Joep Leerssen published on the popularity of imagery connected with pre-Christian Celts, Van Hamel seeing the holistic worldview and Leerssen mysteriousness as appealing characteristics. They explain waves of ‘Celtic revival’ that washed over Europe as reaction and romanticising movements that search for alternatives from contemporaneous dominant culture. Each period has produced its modernized versions of the Celtic past. Besides periodical heightened interest in things Celtic, Van Hamel saw a permanent basis of attraction in Celtic texts, which accommodate ‘primitive’ and romantic mentalities. This article also analyses Celtic Christianity (through The Celtic Way by Ian Bradley and The Celtic Way of Prayer by Esther de Waal) on the use of Celtic texts and imagery of Celtic culture. Two case studies are done (on the use of the Old-Irish Deer’s Cry and the description of a nineteenth-century Scottish ritual). Both the current search for ‘spirituality’ and the last wave of ‘Celtic revival’ seem to have sprung from a reaction movement that criticizes dominant religion/culture and seek inspiration and precursors in an idealized past. The roots of this romantic search for a lost paradise are, however, also present in medieval Irish literature itself. Elements such as aesthetics, imaginative worlds and the posited lost beauty of pre-industrial nature and traditional society are keys in explaining the bridges among the gap between ‘us’ and the Celts. The realization that Celtic languages are endangered or dead heightens the feeling of loss because they are the primary gates towards this lost way of (thinking about) life.

The Power of Words: Sacred and Forbidden Love Magic in Medieval Ireland

Everyday Life and the Sacred offers gender sensitive interdisciplinary perspectives from the fields of feminist theology and religious studies on the everyday and the sacred. The volume aims to re-configure the current domain of religion and gender studies.

Love magic in medieval Irish penitentials, law and literature: a dynamic perspective

One of the earliest medieval European witch trials took place in Ireland, when Alice Kyteler was prosecuted for being a witch in Kilkenny in 1324.1 On the whole, however, only a few witch trials took place in this country (cf. Borsje 2005). It may, therefore, be surprising to see a contribution on early medieval Ireland in a volume dedicated to early modern witch trials. In fact, when Christianity settled in Ireland in the fifth century, an attempt was made to eradicate belief in witches. We read this in The First Synod of St Patrick, a document concerning ecclesiastical discipline in the form of a letter, which may date from 457 CE (Bieler 1975: 2; Howlett 1998: 238, 253) or the sixth century (Hughes 1966: 44–50; Charles-Edwards 2000: 245–250). The belief in witchcraft and the public accusation of such is condemned as follows: