The Decline of Magic

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Do curso por Universitat de Barcelona

Magic in the Middle Ages

642 classificações

Universitat de Barcelona

Magic in the Middle Ages

642 classificações

Magical thought has always attracted human imagination. In this course we will introduce you to the Middle Ages through a wide conception of magic. Students will have an approach to medieval culture, beliefs and practices from the perspective of History and History of Science. Popular magic, as well as learned magic (alchemy, geomancy and necromancy) will be addressed. Moreover, we will also deal with how eastern practices and texts influenced western culture. In July 2016, the course will contain a brand-new module devoted to astrology. Magic in the Middle Ages offers a captivating overview of medieval society and promotes reflection about certain stereotypes associated with this period. At the end of the course, the students: a) will have overcome the usual prejudices about the Middle Ages, b) will be able to analyze historical documentation from the Middle Ages and recognize the most common patterns of juridical documents regarding witchcraft, and c) will be capable of distinguishing between popular magic and the magic of the learned people; will have a notion of which spiritual practices were allowed in medieval Europe and which ones were related to the devil, and will be aware of the link between a cultural product and the society that produced it. This course is taught in English, although subtitles in English, Catalan and Spanish will also be provided. COURSE SYLLABUS Week 1. Introduction to medieval magic (Pau Castell). Week 2. Magic & Heresy (Delfi I. Nieto-Isabel). Week 3. From Magic to Witchcraft (Pau Castell). Week 4. Magic in Islam (Godefroid de Callataÿ and Sébastien Moureau). Week 5. Astrology & Geomancy (Theo Loinaz, Delfi I. Nieto-Isabel, Godefroid de Callataÿ and Blanca Villuendas). © Gemma Pellissa Prades (coord.), Delfi I. Nieto-Isabel and Joana Palau Mumany Magic in the Middle Ages by Gemma Pellissa Prades (coord.), Delfi I. Nieto-Isabel and Joana Palau Mumany is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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UNIT 1: INTRODUCTION TO MEDIEVAL MAGIC

Introduction2:35

The Idea of Magic3:33

The Ancient Precedents5:26

Magic and Superstition in Christian Europe6:56

The Decline of Magic7:30

Weekly Video 1 (2015)5:22

Conheça os instrutores

Godefroid de Callataÿ - University of Louvain
Professor
Oriental Institute (University of Louvain)
Dr Pau Castell Granados
Research and Teaching Scholar at University of Barcelona
Sébastien Moureau - University of Louvain
Chargé de recherches du F.R.S.-FNRS
Institut Orientaliste (CIOL)
Dr Gemma Pellissa Prades
Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of the Classics, Harvard
Delfi I. Nieto-Isabel
BSc, BA, MA
Dept. of Medieval History, Palaeography & Diplomatics, Institute for Research on Medieval Cultures, University of Barcelona
Blanca Villuendas
PhD Candidate
Instituto de Lenguas y Culturas del Mediterráneo y Oriente Próximo, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas

[MUSIC]

During the last medieval centuries a change occurred in the perception of

magical practices.

On the one hand, the new rationalistic approaches issued from the universities

started to displace traditional magical practices,

thus extending a shadow of suspicion over sorcerers, diviners and conjurers.

On the other hand, the until then unsuccessful attempts made by the Church

to uproot magical activities started to pay off

thanks to the action of the mighty preachers of the Mendicant orders.

Those preachers undertook a massive evangelization campaign

among medieval society

through a series of compelling sermons, in which they demonized magical activities.

Both fronts, rationalistic science and Christian evangelization

will definitely contribute to the disapproval and discredit of magic

during the late medieval centuries and the early modern period.

To give you an idea of this change in mentality,

we are going to see some examples of those new conceptions of magic

based on the new scientific paradigms of the Late Middle Ages.

Let's take a look into a series of treatises written

by the 15th-century Castilian Bishop Lope de Barrientos.

Barrientos had studied at the University of Salamanca,

and was part of the humanist entourage of the Castillian King John II,

who appointed him as his own confessor and the preceptor of his first-born son.

During the central years of the 15th century, Bishop Barrientos wrote

a series of three books, dedicated to his king,

in which he advised him on the subject of magic and superstition.

Those three books were the so-called "Treatise on Sleeping and

Waking; of dreaming and of divinations; of presages and prophecies",

"Treatise on prophecies" and "Treatise on divination".

In all of them, this learned man analyzed human affairs related to magic

from a Thomistic perspective, relying on an empirical and

materialistic approach, and with a great amount of confidence in human reason.

As he himself stated at the beginning of this treatises, Barrientos's goal

was to educate and correct the King's credulity regarding magical activities.

When we read these treatises,

we realize that the Bishop's concept of magic included a wide range of rituals and

beliefs that went from astrology to divinatory arts, from the causes of

the evil eye and other illnesses to the rituals of sorcery and incantation.

While condemning this kind of practices and those who perform them,

Barrientos also tried to disprove the reality of such things.

For example, he criticized those who believed in the evil eye,

which he considered a simple optical illness,

susceptible of being cured by medical procedures.

While addressing the subject of premonitions and

divination, he attributed them to the operations of fantasy in people's minds,

which tricked them into believing things that were not real.

He also talked about the extended belief in the fact that some women

were capable of getting out of their bodies at night and, in that manner, enter closed

houses through the narrowest chinks with the purpose of harming little children.

On that regard, Barrientos argued the impossibility of such magical things,

since it was not possible for

a three-dimensional body to pass through such little spaces.

All those magical beliefs, according to Barrientos, were nothing but

the effect of mental or natural disorders,

or even worse, they were caused by the operations of bad spirits.

Learned men such as Barrientos and others,

contributed to the discredit of magical practices among the elites,

while reinforcing the confidence on experimental science and

medical procedures.

Apart from these men of science, the members of the Mendicant Orders

also contributed to the denigration of magical activities among the population.

To exemplify that, we can take a look at the sermons given by Mendicant preachers

during the last centuries of the Middle Ages,

always bearing in mind that these sermons, preached in the vernacular language,

had a compelling effect among the public that gathered by the hundreds, waiting for

the arrival of one of those admired preachers to their cities and villages.

Let's hear some parts of a sermon given by the Valencian preacher Vicent Ferrer at

the beginning of the 15th century.

"Because if your father, your wife or another person is sick, or you have lost

something, or if you are in distress, don't ever go to the diviners but to God.

And you, my daughters,

if your children are suffering some disease, do not make any sorceries nor

go to the sorceresses, because it would be better for your children to die.

The women will go to their confession and they will say: 'the child was sick and

there was no doctor around, and so I went to the conjurer'.

And the confessor will answer: 'A sin you have committed!'

And they will defend themselves arguing how could they let the child die.

It would be better that he died.

She went to male and female diviners,

to the demons, because everything they do, they do it by the action of demons.

Diabolical sorceries! That it is what male and female diviners are, sorcerers and

sorceresses that make things with charms, bread, bottles and plates.

Avoid their presence in your circumscription.

If not, God's wrath will fall on the village and its circumscription."

Such strong admonitions made by the influencing preachers

had a great impact among the crowd.

We often find local laws against magical activities promulgated by

the city councils shortly after the passing of one of these preachers.

The effect of this kind of preachings, together with the prominent role

taken by the new scientific paradigms,

contributed to the decline of magic during the Late Middle Ages.

Not only did they entail the discredit and denigration of magical practices,

but they also established a perilous link between those sorcerers

and diviners and the misdeeds that haunted society;

even relating those allegedly dangerous people to the action of demons and

encouraging the population to expel them from their villages.

As we will see in the following units,

the situation was the prelude of terrible persecutions to come,

in which hundreds of people were to be burned at the stake,

accused of a dark crime with explicit magical connotations:

the crime of <b>witchcraft</b>.

[MUSIC]

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