Michael D. Bailey

The Meanings of Magic

The establishment of a new journal titled Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft begs the question: what do these words mean? In what sense do they comprise a useful academic category or field of inquiry? The history of magic and the cultural functions it has played and continues to play in many societies have been a focus of scholarship for well over one hundred years. Grand anthropological and sociological theories developed mostly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries offer clear structures, and the classic definitions of Edward Burnett Taylor, James Frazer, Emile Durkheim, and others still reverberate through much scholarly work on this topic. While aspects of these theories remain useful, more recent studies have tended to take a much narrower approach, examining the specific forms that magic, magical rites, or witchcraft assume and the issues they create in particular periods and within particular societies. This has led to laudable focus and precision, yet it has also stifled communication between scholars working in different periods, regions, or disciplines. This journal is intended to promote such communication, and to provide a forum in which issues common to the study of magic in all contexts can be raised. Therefore, it will prove useful at the outset to present some thoughts about the significance of magic as a category, about the meanings it has carried and the approaches it has evoked, about some of the ways in which the study of magic might be advanced, and about some of the areas to which such further study might contribute. Scholars in many fields recognize magic as an important topic. In its rites, rituals, taboos, and attendant beliefs, magic might be said to comprise, or at least describe, a system for comprehending the entire world. It provides a means for navigating among the varied forces that comprise and shape material creation, and promises its practitioners methods of controlling or at least

The Age of Magicians: Periodization in the History of European Magic

John Maynard Keynes once described Sir Isaac Newton, perhaps the greatest figure of the scientific revolution, as being ‘‘not the first of the age of reason’’ but ‘‘the last of the magicians.’’1 Keynes was commenting, among other things, on Newton’s fascination with alchemy and the influence it may have had on his mathematical studies of gravitation and optics.2 This quip, no doubt originally deployed for its pithiness, raises broad questions of historical periodization. Was there an age of magicians, sharply distinct from the modern era of scientific reason, and if so when did one age pass into the other? Did the premodern world comprise, as Keynes’s remark might be taken to imply, an unbroken epoch uniformly benighted by its magical beliefs and superstitions, or were there, in fact, distinct ages of magic into which the past might be divided? Unpacking these questions will involve mapping the history of magic onto the standard scheme of European periodization, from late antique to early modern, and seeing what concurrences or disruptions occur. As Joan Kelly-Gadol once famously asked concerning women, one can also ask about magicians—did they have a Renaissance?3 Similarly, did magic un-

Provincializing European Witchcraft: Thoughts on Peter Geschiere’s Latest Synthesis

This review essay offers a reaction to Peter Geschiere’s Witchcraft, Intimacy and Trust. Geschiere’s book argues hat witchcraft is essentially about the paradox that the group of people with whom we are most intimate (neighbors and kin) has, by virtue of its intimacy, tremendous power and a potentially dangerous hold over us. The remedy for this paradox is trust; when trust fails, witchcraft appears. While Geschiere’s study is primarily grounded in African witchcraft, the present essay considers the possibilities these ideas may hold for the study of witchcraft phenomena on a global scale, both historically and sociology, in other parts of the world, and especially for those who focus on Western Europe

Religion, the Supernatural and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe: An Album Amicorum for Charles Zika

This volume developed from a 2009 conference held in honor of Charles Zika at the University of Melbourne, where he spent most of his long career. In addition to an introductory essay by the editors, which provides a brief intellectual biography of Zika and establishes the major themes of the volume, there are seventeen contributions. Befitting Zika’s own interdisciplinarity and pioneering work incorporating visual records into historical analysis, most of the contributors are historians, many of whom draw in some way on art or other visual material, while four are art historians who situate their analysis within particular historical contexts. Befitting Zika’s internationalism, the majority of contributors are Australian, but four work in Europe and another four in North America. Disciplines Australian Studies | Cultural History | European History | History of Religion | Medieval History Comments This article is published as Jennifer Spinks and Dagmar Eichberger, eds., Religion, the Supernatural and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe: An Album Amicorum for Charles Zika, reviewed in Renaissance Quarterly 69 (2016): 1048-49. 10.1086/689063. Posted with permission. This book review is available at Iowa State University Digital Repository: http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/history_pubs/76 Religion, the Supernatural, and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe: An Album Amicorum for Charles Zika. Jennifer Spinks and Dagmar Eichberger, eds. Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions 191. Leiden: Brill, 2015. xix þ 418 pp.

Everyday Magic in Early Modern Europe

218. This volume developed from a 2009 conference held in honor of Charles Zika at the University of Melbourne, where he spent most of his long career. In addition to an introductory essay by the editors, which provides a brief intellectual biography of Zika and establishes the major themes of the volume, there are seventeen contributions. Befitting Zika’s own interdisciplinarity and pioneering work incorporating visual records into historical analysis, most of the contributors are historians, many of whom draw in 1048 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY VOLUME LXIX, NO. 3 This content downloaded from 129.186.176.224 on October 31, 2017 10:50:19 AM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). some way on art or other visual material, while four are art historians who situate their analysis within particular historical contexts. Befitting Zika’s internationalism, the majority of contributors are Australian, but four work in Europe and another four in North America. The essays cover a broad swath of territory. A number of them focus on England, Germany, or the Low Countries, and these tend to address aspects of the Reformation. Italy is also well represented, and a few essays extend the reach of the collection to colonial North and South America. Topics range from demonic possession and witch trials, including a reconsideration of the famous witch hunt at Salem, to observations of comets and depictions of beached whales. What holds them all together are their attempts to follow lines of analysis or methodological approaches derived from the work of Zika. These Zikanian elements may be more or less pronounced, but in some way or another virtually every essay in this collection endeavors to read strange but oftenfamiliar evidence from a slightly new and revealing angle. As with any collection, some of the essays are more successful or reach sharper conclusions than others. Also, some of the groupings chosen by the editors hang together and inform one another better than others. The essays gathered in part 3, “The (Un)natural World,” all address signs or portents in some way (including reading reports of New World cannibalism as a sign of savagery imposed on natives by European authors). The authors do not explicitly reference each other, but between them they begin to build up a coherent picture of the changing place of signs and portents in the early modern world. Likewise, in part 4, “Artefacts and Material Culture,” Lyndal Roper reviews the place of “Luther Relics” in Protestant culture, finding that they were in some ways more akin to modern tourist souvenirs than medieval saints’ relics. This insight is carried forward by the next essay, in which Peter Sherlock analyzes the epitaphs and other inscriptions of Westminster Abbey as, in part, placards intended to guide tourists through the building’s sights. Alexandra Walsham closes the section, and the book, with a survey of the place of post-Reformation relics in England, mainly items or remnants of executed Catholics. While she does not introduce any idea of sacral tourism into her analysis, her discussion of martyrdom and memory rounds out the section nicely. Following the model of Charles Zika, almost all of these essays seek to examine the evidence on which they focus in some kind of new light. Often this involves seeing what insights can arise when a piece of visual evidence is incorporated into analysis of some historical event, or in certain cases seeing what new perspectives are gained when a visual image is linked to and analyzed in light of some particular historical development. Not all the essays break substantial new ground, nor would one expect them to. A number are content to reinforce existing conclusions or assumptions, but their fresh perspectives remain valuable. Overall the collection is a fitting tribute to the career of a pathbreaking scholar. Michael D. Bailey, Iowa State University 1049 REVIEWS This content downloaded from 129.186.176.224 on October 31, 2017 10:50:19 AM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).

A History of Science, Magic, and Belief: From Medieval to Early Modern Europe by Steven P. Marrone (review)

Kathryn Edwards begins her introduction to this well-conceived volume by noting the “explosion of research on magical practices and the attitudes about them in late medieval and early modern Europe” (1) over the last several decades. Witchcraft has continued to be the fiery epicenter of this explosion, despite scholarship’s increasing recognition that occasional eruptions of witch-hunting were surrounded by a vast and typically much more benign “magical universe” (the phrase is from Stephen Wilson’s 2003 book of the same title, frequently cited throughout this volume). The scholars Edwards has assembled each probe various areas of that universe, in order to understand forms of magic that were more widely and more openly practiced than harmful maleficium. Disciplines Cultural History | European History | History of Science, Technology, and Medicine | Medieval History Comments This book chapter is published as Kathryn A. Edwards, ed., Everyday Magic in Early Modern Europe, reviewed in Renaissance Quarterly 69 (2016): 1462-64. 10.1086/690350. Posted with permission. This book review is available at Iowa State University Digital Repository: http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/history_pubs/75 Everyday Magic in Early Modern Europe. Kathryn A. Edwards, ed. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015. ix þ 188 pp.

Reformers on Sorcery and Superstition

119.95. Kathryn Edwards begins her introduction to this well-conceived volume by noting the “explosion of research on magical practices and the attitudes about them in late medieval and early modern Europe” (1) over the last several decades. Witchcraft has continued to be the fiery epicenter of this explosion, despite scholarship’s increasing recognition that 1462 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY VOLUME LXIX, NO. 4 This content downloaded from 129.186.176.224 on October 31, 2017 10:43:52 AM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). occasional eruptions of witch-hunting were surrounded by a vast and typically much more benign “magical universe” (the phrase is from Stephen Wilson’s 2003 book of the same title, frequently cited throughout this volume). The scholars Edwards has assembled each probe various areas of that universe, in order to understand forms of magic that were more widely and more openly practiced than harmful maleficium. Edwards’s valuable introduction frames the historiographical issues these scholars will confront. There is no absolute agreement on where to draw the lines demarcating “everyday magic.”This modern, academic uncertainty reflects early modern ambiguities. For example, would an early modern peasant have considered an herbal potion taken while reciting a few prayers to be magical, religious, or simply an effective application of a time-honored remedy for an illness? Neither is there clear agreement among modern experts about what to call this range of practices: common religion? Traditional? Popular? Lived? Early modern authorities, when they were not rushing to designate all this as witchcraft, most often called it superstition, but that term is so vast as to be little help either. Given the breadth of the topic and these problems inherent in any investigation of it, the essays in this volume mostly take the form of case studies. Yet they cover enough ground and engage often enough with similar issues that the volume as a whole becomes an effective survey. Geographically the essays range from Spain to Finland. They touch on witchcraft in places but also cover healing and divination, the interpretation of dreams, magical treasure hunting, and the presence of guardian angels and ghosts in the early modern world. We are introduced to women in Catholic nunneries feigning ecstatic spirituality and a Huguenot minister who chats with a spirit haunting his house. A key point through many of the essays is ambiguity. Ordinary people, and sometimes even educated elites, did not always conceive of or respond to various manifestations of everyday magic in coherent ways. For example, the Huguenot minister whose house was beset by a spirit, and who, following strict Calvinist theology, should have conceived of that spirit as a malevolent demon, in fact reacted much like his Catholic neighbors, regarding the haunting with some curiosity but not necessarily with pious dread. Of course, religious authorities often tried to impose some level of dread, arguing that many forms of everyday magic were in fact witchcraft. To this, people might respond in one of two ways, either asserting the pious and religious nature of their actions (e.g., a blessing rather than a spell) or claiming that whatever they were doing was in fact an aspect of purely natural craft. Likewise, authorities, when not castigating common magic as dangerously demonic, took the quite different (from the modern perspective) tack of dismissing it as foolish and ineffective superstition. Another methodological commonality found in most of the essays is the inevitable need to discern everyday practices through the lens of elite sources— above all, learned demonological treatises and court records. Such maneuvers are old hat to those working in the field of premodern magic, so none of the authors belabor the issue. What emerges from a number of the essays, however, is a clear sense of how many subtle changes in everyday magical beliefs and practices were driven, in this period, by the growing obsession of elite authorities to parse, categorize, and more stringently condemn the 1463 REVIEWS This content downloaded from 129.186.176.224 on October 31, 2017 10:43:52 AM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). broad field of magic/superstition. This obsession was spurred, according to this volume, mainly by reformist impulses, and then of course by the Reformation and CounterReformation themselves (although, interestingly, a couple of essays also focus on early modern economic developments and how protocapitalism influencedmagical concerns). In a concluding essay, Sarah Ferber valuably reminds readers how much of everyday life in this era was shaped by official religious doctrine and church rituals. Thus a final ambiguity: the complex interplay between elite discourse and quotidian reality. Michael D. Bailey, Iowa State University 1464 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY VOLUME LXIX, NO. 4 This content downloaded from 129.186.176.224 on October 31, 2017 10:43:52 AM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).

Superstition and Dissimulation: Discerning False Religion in the Fifteenth Century

Steven Marrone begins this useful survey by declaring that the early-modern “witchcraze” and scientific revolution “both arose from a single process of broad change sweeping Europe” (p. viii). While general readers, at whom Marrone is in part aiming, might be shocked to find witchcraft related to science in any way, experts in these fields will be interested in the nature of the connections he draws.

Reivew of "Des Teufels Lug und Trug: Nikolaus Magni von Jauer, Ein Reformtheologe des 15. Jahrhunderts gegen Aberglaube und Götzendienst"

The Observant Movement was a widespread effort to reform religious life across Europe. It took root around 1400, and for a century and more thereafter it inspired or shaped much that became central to European religion and culture. The Observants produced many of the leading religious figures of the later Middle Ages—Catherine of Siena, Bernardino of Siena and Savonarola in Italy, Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros in Spain, and in Germany Martin Luther himself. This volume provides scholars with a current, synthetic introduction to the Observant Movement. Its essays also seek collectively to expand the horizons of our study of Observant reform, and to open new avenues for future scholarship. Disciplines Cultural History | European History | History of Science, Technology, and Medicine | Medieval History Comments This book chapter is published as “Reformers on Sorcery and Superstition,” in A Companion to Observant Reform in the Late Middle Ages and Beyond, ed. James D. Mixson and Bert Roest (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 230-54. Posted with permission. This book chapter is available at Iowa State University Digital Repository: http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/history_pubs/86 1 Reformers on Sorcery and Superstition

Des Teufels Lug und Trug: Nikolaus Magni von Jauer: Ein Reformtheologe des 15. Jahrhunderts gegen Aberglaube und Götzendienst by Krzysztof Bracha (review)

Most religions claim special access to the truth and often depict those who do not accept their revelation or doctrine as living in error.1 As Christianity emerged in the late ancient world, and certainly as it developed an increasingly centralized clerical hierarchy in medieval Europe, it became particularly exercised by issues of dissimulation and deceit.2 What interests the historian is how this concern shifted over time. From antiquity onwards, fear of false religion and religious falsity (which are not necessarily the same thing) had lurked in charges of paganism, heresy, apostasy, Judaizing, sorcery, and superstition. Many of these trends culminated in the early modern period, when the ruptures of the Protestant Reformation caused Christians of different creeds to hurl charges of false religion at one another with an intensity rarely felt before, and when individuals living under the domination of another religious confession frequently had to resort to pretence and dissimulation for survival.3