In celebration of St. Patrick’s Day, here are some great books on medieval Ireland!
Witchcraft Trials In Sweden: With Neighbours Like These, Who Needs Enemies?!
January 19, 2015 By
Everyone has “that” neighbour on their floor, or street who they’d secretly love to move to Mars and never see again. Well, the Early Modern Swedes had a way of dealing with those kinds of nasty neighbours…
Trolls in the Middle Ages
January 6, 2015 By
Where did trolls come from? What did medieval and early modern people think of trolls? How did the concept of the modern day troll evolve?
How Witches Looked in Medieval Art
December 13, 2014 By
I recently visited the British Museum and enjoyed their Witches and Wicked Bodies exhibit which runs until January 11th, 2015. It displays art depicting witches from the middle ages up to the late nineteenth century. This post looks at a few late medieval interpretations of witches and the artists behind these works.
‘Hag of the Castle:’ Women, Family, and Community in Later Medieval Ireland
November 30, 2014 By
In a letter written as part of his work for the Irish Department of the Ordnance Survey in 1840, Thomas O’Conor recorded his reaction to a “Sheela- na-gig” sculpture—the image of a naked woman shown exposing her genitalia (fig. 1)—that he saw on the old church at Kiltinane, Co. Tipperary.
Crafting the witch: Gendering magic in medieval and early modern England
November 2, 2014 By
This project documents and analyzes the gendered transformation of magical figures occurring in Arthurian romance in England from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries.
10 Terrifying Reads for Halloween!
October 23, 2014 By
Here are some spooky medieval books for you to celebrate with over Halloween!
The American Dark Ages and the Terrorist Witch in Season of the Witch
July 21, 2014 By
In this article we argue that medieval films are not to be analyzed according to their faithfulness to the known historical sources, but that they can only be fully analyzed by understanding medievalist codes, traditions and (filmic) intertextuality.
Plague and Persecution: The Black Death and Early Modern Witch Hunts
January 27, 2014 By
The century or so from approximately 1550 to 1650 is a period during which witch-hunts reached unprecedented frequency and intensity. The circumstances that fomented the witch- hunts—persistent warfare, religious conflict, and harvest failures—had occurred before, but witch-hunts had never been so ubiquitous or severe.
Devil Worship in the Middle Ages
December 6, 2013 By
Probably the most reasonable explanation of the Devil worship phenomenon at this time is a combination of both of these hypotheses. Lingering ideas of pre-Christian cults of Diana and the Homed God became entwined with the doctrine of the Catholic Church concerning evil.
Blood beliefs in early modern Europe
June 29, 2013 By
This thesis focuses on the significance of blood and the perception of the body in both learned and popular culture in order to investigate problems of identity and social exclusion in early modern Europe.
Sexuality in the Natural and Demonic Magic of the Middle Ages
March 27, 2013 By
Throughout the Middle Ages – especially the later Middle Ages – ideas of magic played a large part in the formation of deviant sexual behaviours and it was believed that magic played a main role in sexual malfunctions and abilities.
The Light was retreating before Darkness: Tales of the Witch hunt and climate change
March 10, 2013 By
Little by little, out of the old conviction —pagan and Christian— of evil interference in atmospheric phenomena evolved the belief that some people may use malign sorcery to set off whirlwinds hail, frosts, floods and other destructive weather events.
Myths and mandrakes
March 4, 2013 By
Others, however, began to wonder whether the possession of roots might not bring them success in other areas as well—wealth, popularity, or the power to control their own and other people’s destinies, and took to wearing them as good luck charms.
Drauginir: Revenants in Old Icelandic Sagas
December 22, 2012 By
It is this humanity in a monster that helps to show why these draugar fascinate us so much. The “others” that exist outside the boundaries of society: the weird old ladies that people label as evil witches, the misshapen, the “freaks” that Tod Browning made famous are funhouse mirror images of ourselves.
Nordic Witchcraft in Transition: Impotence, Heresy and Diabolism in 14th-century Bergen
November 26, 2012 By
Within the orbit of witchcraft, what is the relationship between sexuality, heresy, and diabolism?
Reflections on The Malleus Maleficarum in Light of the Trial of Joan of Arc
June 27, 2012 By
Although Joan’s trial took place in France and The Malleus Maleficarum was published in Germany, they are suitable for comparison because this text became the definitive manual for witchcraft inquisitors across Europe.
From Magic to Maleficium: The Crafting of Witchery in Late Medieval Text
March 31, 2012 By
This paper will elucidate the importance of the interdependency among maleficium, gender, heresy and church doctrine in the cauldron of witch fears which bubbled forth in the late middle ages and boiled over in the early modern world.
Seduction, Abandonment, and Sorcery in Middle English Lyrics
March 11, 2012 By
My purpose in writing this article is to expose a different view of romantic relationships that exist in medieval literature, a view that is in opposition to courtly love.
“The World on the End of a Reed”: Marguerite Porete and the annihilation of an identity in medieval and modern representations – a reassessment
February 20, 2012 By
Central to the aims of this thesis is the question “how did Porete „fit‟ the religious landscape of her period?” A seeming obstacle to this pursuit are claims from within the scholarship that Porete did not „fit‟ at all, but was, rather, as an aberration amidst other female mystics of the period.
The Saints of Epilepsy
February 5, 2012 By
It will be seen below that many of the legendary happenings on which belief in the curative powers of saints was based were ridiculously improbable or impossible.
Seeking the Supernatural: The Exorcisms of John Darrell and the Formation of an Orthodox Identity in Early Modern England
February 1, 2012 By
This thesis examines the questions raised by Darrell‘s exorcisms and the ways in which they were shaped by relations of power. I hope that it will shed new light on the ways in which people formed their religious and ideological identities in this pivotal period in English history.
Magic
January 16, 2012 By
No one knew the risks and rewards of magic better than Agrippa. His notorious handbook, De occulta philosophia, circulated in manuscript by 1510, though it was printed only in 1533, over the complaints of Dominican inquisitors.
Fossils as Drugs: pharmaceutical palaeontology
January 8, 2012 By
The present paper surveys the medicinal applications of a number of fossils which were well known in classical, mediaeval and renaissance times….
Dreaming of dwarves: Nightmares and Shamanism in Anglo-Saxon Poetics and the Wid Dweorh Charm
January 8, 2012 By
Psychological and psychiatric ailments must have baffled early medical practitioners.
How you can Follow Us!