medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On Saturday, December 15, 2007, at 11:32 am, V. Kerry Inman wrote:
> >Magic or superstition has a way of creeping into religion as sort of
> a
> psychological universal--it seems to me--I have no citation. It seems
> that it
> happened particularly during the middle ages,...
This is a rather modern viewpoint. For some intimation of what may be thought wrong with it as far as Roman antiquity is concerned (also, I would submit, as far as much of the European Middle Ages is concerned), see this BMCR review by C. Robert Phillips III of Fritz Graf's _Magic in the Ancient World_ (Harvard U. P., 1997):
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/1998/98.3.15.html
> The mixing of
> magic and religion, particularly in the middle ages, is something that
> should
> be made a study of. Or has this already happened?
There is a considerable volume of recent scholarship on this matter. If you have access to JSTOR, check out some of the reviews of Valerie Flint's _The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe_ (Oxford University Press / Pricenton University Press, 1991). For a thoughtful approach to one specific instance, have a look at Claire Fanger's and Nicholas Watson's Introduction to their edition and translation of the prologue to John of Morigny's _Liber visionum_, conveniently online at:
http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/VolumeIII/pdf-folder/MorignyIntro.pdf
Catherine Rider's "Magic and Impotence: Recent Developments in Medieval Historiography", _History Compass_ 5 (3), 955–962 (May 2007) has good bibliography on magic and medieval religion.
Best,
John Dillon
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