Avant-propos, A. Paravicini Bagliani. M. Ostorero, Décrire le sabbat: les textes des années 1430-... more Avant-propos, A. Paravicini Bagliani. M. Ostorero, Décrire le sabbat: les textes des années 1430-1440 - M. Ostorero, Aperçu de la démonologie chrétienne - M. Montesano, Le rôle de la culture classique dans la définition des "maleficia". Une démonologie alternative? - B. Delaurenti, La sorcière en son milieu naturel. Démon et "vetula" dans les écrits sur le pouvoir des incantations - R. Kieckhefer, Witchcraft, Necromancy, and Sorcey as Heresy - D. Bailey, Witchcraft, Superstition, and Astrology in the Late Middle Ages - C. Renoux, Du statut de l'obsession chez les démonologues (XVe-XVIIe siècles) - J. Véronèse, Nigromancie et hérésie: le "De jurisdictione inquisitorum in et contra christianos demones invocantes" (1359) de Nicolas Eymerich (O.P.) - C. Chène, Entre discours pastoral et réflexion démonologique: le cas du livre V du "Formicarius" de Jean Nider O.P. (ca. 1380-1438) - F. Mercier-M. Ostorero, L'imaginaire du sabbat dans la "Vauderye de Lyonois" - M. Ostorero, L'odeur fétide des démons: une preuve de leur présence corporelle au sabbat - R. Voltmer, Die politischen Funktionen der frühneuzeitlichen Hexenverfolgungen: Machtdemonstration, Kontrolle und Herrschaftsverdichtung im Rhein-Maas-Raum.
Contesting Orthodoxy in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, 2017
The famous preacher Johannes Geiler was installed in the Strasbourgian pulpit in 1478. His extens... more The famous preacher Johannes Geiler was installed in the Strasbourgian pulpit in 1478. His extensive programme was to bring true purification to the whole body of the urban society. Standing in the reform tradition of the councils of Constance and Basel, Geiler wanted to model Strasbourg into a city of God, ruled by the Ten Commandments. Distracting, infecting elements should be either converted to Christian life or be banished. The sinful and unpersuadable members of the city body like sodomites and witches should be eradicated. In line with Jean Gerson, Johannes Nider and Bernardino of Siena, and knowing the new concepts of witchcraft mediated by Heinrich Institoris, Johannes Geiler battled against all kinds of superstition, against beneficia, maleficia, learned and popular magic. His sermons show how the old scholastic concepts of magic and superstition started to intermingle with the new ideas about diabolic witchcraft. Thus, preachers of reform like Johannes Geiler of Kaysersberg acted as mediators of the new concept, even if they were not ardent followers of the Malleus Maleficarum.
in Western Europe, mainly because Central Europe’s universities were later foundations and hence ... more in Western Europe, mainly because Central Europe’s universities were later foundations and hence the intellectual milieu that produced such texts was slower to develop there than in the West, he still finds a number of significant texts produced in this region mainly in the fifteenth century. He also cautiously asserts that the atmosphere at these younger universities and their attendant royal and noble courts was less stringently hostile at least to some forms of magic than was the case in the West, where in Paris the theological faculty condemned a long list of superstitious errors in 1398, the great occult library of Jean de Bar was burned in that same year, and in 1402 the leading theologian of his era, Jean Gerson, wrote specifically On Errors Surrounding the Magic Art. Of course, magic was condemned in Central Europe, and the decrees of Paris and the writings of Gerson were influential there, but in general, according to Láng, there was more overall tolerance. Throughout his book, Láng carefully nuances the notion of Central Europe as a unique region. In addition to being somewhat more tolerant of magic generally, for example, he argues that Central Europe saw particular innovations in alchemy. Yet he also acknowledges that his region participated fully in general European trends. Many magical texts produced in the West, including such famous tomes as Picatrix, Speculum astronomiae, and the Liber visionum entered Central European libraries and influenced texts produced in that region. In analyzing the themes found in his texts, Láng often, indeed almost always, finds himself discussing general themes of a pan-European learned magical tradition, not ones unique to the geography he specifies. This, of course, illustrates the reality of border-spanning elite magical culture, and indeed of Latinate intellectual culture generally, in medieval Europe. Ultimately, then, Láng’s book is partly a study of his region, carefully identifying its unique traits, and partly a study of medieval learned magic in general, usefully illustrated (especially for Western European and American scholars whose language limitations often cut them off from Polish, Czech, and Hungarian scholarship) by mainly Central European examples.
Bertram Resmini (Bearb.), Die Benediktinerabtei St. Maximin vor Trier. Im Auftrage der Akademie d... more Bertram Resmini (Bearb.), Die Benediktinerabtei St. Maximin vor Trier. Im Auftrage der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Berlin, Boston, MA (De Gruyter) 2016, XVII–700 u. X–1461 S., 20 Abb., 3 Kt. (Germania sacra. Die Kirche des Alten Reiches und ihre Institutionen. Dritte Folge, 11,1 u. 11,2. Das Erzbistum Trier, 13), ISBN 978-3-11-040944-4, EUR 239,95; Michael Embach, Bernhard Simon (Hg.), Die Abtei Trier-St. Maximin von der späten Antike bis zur frühen Neuzeit. Beiträge der Trierer Tagung vom 16.–17. Juli 2015, Mainz (Verlag der Gesellschaft für mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte) 2018, 271 S., 65 Abb. (Quellen und Abhandlungen zur mittelrheinischen Kirchengeschichte, 142), ISBN 978-3-929135-78-7, EUR 38,00.
Dargestellt wird anhand von Quellen und Literatur ein Uberblick zur Hexenverfolgung im Wittlicher... more Dargestellt wird anhand von Quellen und Literatur ein Uberblick zur Hexenverfolgung im Wittlicher Land. Im Mittelpunkt stehen die gangige Gerichtspraxis und die sozialen Hintergrunde dieser Prozesse.
Klaus Bergdolt, Lothar Schmidt, Andreas Tonnesmann (Hg.), Armut in der Renaissance, Wiesbaden (Ha... more Klaus Bergdolt, Lothar Schmidt, Andreas Tonnesmann (Hg.), Armut in der Renaissance, Wiesbaden (Harrassowitz Verlag) 2013, 335 S., zahlr. s/w, 10 farb. Abb. (Wolfenbutteler Abhandlungen zur Renaissanceforschung, 30 ), ISBN 978-3-447-10017-5, EUR 92,00.
In extending the perspective developed through studies on witch trials in Lutheran regions (e.g. ... more In extending the perspective developed through studies on witch trials in Lutheran regions (e.g. Wurttemberg), the chapter emphasizes the difficulties besetting the attempts to use local witch-trial records stemming from intense, mostly Catholic witch-hunts, to recover the emotions of the persons involved. This chapter argues first that we do not find emotions in the records, but representations of emotions. Second, it cannot be neglected that torture, interrogation, confession and the respective representations of emotion were intrinsically tied together in a threefold legal, religious and political sense. Third, witch-hunts generated different kinds of source material providing us with different perspectives on the lost world of past emotions (e.g. trial records from local courts; records from appeal courts; secret letters of the accused) with their inherent problems of interpretation. Fourth, courts with legally trained assessors formed a certain kind of emotional community. Certain semantics determined the norms of the emotional habits of the accused as well as the judges. Finally, further research into the emotional norms, narratives or labels of alleged witches has to move from appreciating local trial records as ‘windows’ onto lost emotions of the past.
Dargestellt wird anhand von Quellen und Literatur ein Uberblick zur Hexenverfolgung im Wittlicher... more Dargestellt wird anhand von Quellen und Literatur ein Uberblick zur Hexenverfolgung im Wittlicher Land. Im Mittelpunkt stehen die gangige Gerichtspraxis und die sozialen Hintergrunde dieser Prozesse.
Medical and psychological approaches claiming to show the ''truth'' or ''reality'' behind the so-... more Medical and psychological approaches claiming to show the ''truth'' or ''reality'' behind the so-called witch craze have a long-standing tradition. In a way, these approaches can be subsumed under the so-called ''romantic paradigm,'' insofar as they assume that presumed witches and their ''cult'' had some kind of material reality. Other approaches in this vein have tried to explain the ''craze'' as the result of drug abuse, ergotism, or as a more tangential consequence of syphilis, mental illness, hysteria, or schizophrenia. All of these arguments have been shown to be of little relevance and-sharing the fate of other monocausal explanations of witch-hunting-have been superseded by well-balanced arguments grounded in historical research. Nonetheless, approaches like these that seem to simplify the very complex phenomena of magic, sorcery, and witchcraft are still vivid both in popular culture and in misapprehensions about the witch hunts. A classic example of such aendlessly fascinating-misapprehension is the mysogynistic idea about the use of supposed witches' salves, which holds that single, widowed, unmarried, and elderly women used hallucinogenic drugs in order to escape from their bleak everyday lives into a fantasy world of banquets, good-looking lovers, and orgies. Another misapprehension is the more gender-neutral idea that the deliberate or inadvertant consumption of beer strengthened with henbane or of bread poisoned with the ergot fungus or the use of other psychotropic substances led early modern people to have vivid dreams about feasting and copulation. Movies, the popular press, and new media do their best to keep these misapprehensions alive. Of course, historians should attempt to lift the veil masking the past, but they should do this knowing that there is always more than one veil to raise and that perhaps behind the raised one, another veil still obscures the lost land of the past. Therefore, the question about the realities of popular magic and witchcraft in early modern Europe that Edward Bever has put at the
Die Geschichte der europäischen wie auch der transkontinentalen Hexenverfolgungen gehört ohne Zwe... more Die Geschichte der europäischen wie auch der transkontinentalen Hexenverfolgungen gehört ohne Zweifel zu jenen historischen Themen, die seit den 1960er Jahren ungebrochen große Aufmerksamkeit innerhalb wie außerhalb der mit ihrer Erforschung befassten Wissenschaften erfährt. Triebkräfte für dieses neu entfachte Interesse entfalteten sich in der Frauenund Studentenbewegung, in der Auseinandersetzung mit dem Justizunrecht der NS-Diktatur sowie allgemein durch die Beschäftigung mit Menschenrechts-und Toleranzfragen. Nicht wenig haben auch die Anhänger von Esoterik und Okkultismus zur erwachten Neugier an den historischen Hexenverfolgungen beigetragen[1]. Dabei wird gerade das populäre Interesse meist von einer unverhohlenen Faszination durch das okkulte Thema geleitet, die sich inzwischen mancherorts auch der Fremdenverkehr zunutze macht; so ist beispielsweise der "Hexentourismus" auf dem Brocken im Harz schon längst an die Grenzen des Erträglichen gelangt. Bei der Suche nach der folkloristischen Nutzung der berüchtigten "Schlernhexen" (gemeint sind die 1506 und 1510
Avant-propos, A. Paravicini Bagliani. M. Ostorero, Décrire le sabbat: les textes des années 1430-... more Avant-propos, A. Paravicini Bagliani. M. Ostorero, Décrire le sabbat: les textes des années 1430-1440 - M. Ostorero, Aperçu de la démonologie chrétienne - M. Montesano, Le rôle de la culture classique dans la définition des "maleficia". Une démonologie alternative? - B. Delaurenti, La sorcière en son milieu naturel. Démon et "vetula" dans les écrits sur le pouvoir des incantations - R. Kieckhefer, Witchcraft, Necromancy, and Sorcey as Heresy - D. Bailey, Witchcraft, Superstition, and Astrology in the Late Middle Ages - C. Renoux, Du statut de l'obsession chez les démonologues (XVe-XVIIe siècles) - J. Véronèse, Nigromancie et hérésie: le "De jurisdictione inquisitorum in et contra christianos demones invocantes" (1359) de Nicolas Eymerich (O.P.) - C. Chène, Entre discours pastoral et réflexion démonologique: le cas du livre V du "Formicarius" de Jean Nider O.P. (ca. 1380-1438) - F. Mercier-M. Ostorero, L'imaginaire du sabbat dans la "Vauderye de Lyonois" - M. Ostorero, L'odeur fétide des démons: une preuve de leur présence corporelle au sabbat - R. Voltmer, Die politischen Funktionen der frühneuzeitlichen Hexenverfolgungen: Machtdemonstration, Kontrolle und Herrschaftsverdichtung im Rhein-Maas-Raum.
Contesting Orthodoxy in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, 2017
The famous preacher Johannes Geiler was installed in the Strasbourgian pulpit in 1478. His extens... more The famous preacher Johannes Geiler was installed in the Strasbourgian pulpit in 1478. His extensive programme was to bring true purification to the whole body of the urban society. Standing in the reform tradition of the councils of Constance and Basel, Geiler wanted to model Strasbourg into a city of God, ruled by the Ten Commandments. Distracting, infecting elements should be either converted to Christian life or be banished. The sinful and unpersuadable members of the city body like sodomites and witches should be eradicated. In line with Jean Gerson, Johannes Nider and Bernardino of Siena, and knowing the new concepts of witchcraft mediated by Heinrich Institoris, Johannes Geiler battled against all kinds of superstition, against beneficia, maleficia, learned and popular magic. His sermons show how the old scholastic concepts of magic and superstition started to intermingle with the new ideas about diabolic witchcraft. Thus, preachers of reform like Johannes Geiler of Kaysersberg acted as mediators of the new concept, even if they were not ardent followers of the Malleus Maleficarum.
in Western Europe, mainly because Central Europe’s universities were later foundations and hence ... more in Western Europe, mainly because Central Europe’s universities were later foundations and hence the intellectual milieu that produced such texts was slower to develop there than in the West, he still finds a number of significant texts produced in this region mainly in the fifteenth century. He also cautiously asserts that the atmosphere at these younger universities and their attendant royal and noble courts was less stringently hostile at least to some forms of magic than was the case in the West, where in Paris the theological faculty condemned a long list of superstitious errors in 1398, the great occult library of Jean de Bar was burned in that same year, and in 1402 the leading theologian of his era, Jean Gerson, wrote specifically On Errors Surrounding the Magic Art. Of course, magic was condemned in Central Europe, and the decrees of Paris and the writings of Gerson were influential there, but in general, according to Láng, there was more overall tolerance. Throughout his book, Láng carefully nuances the notion of Central Europe as a unique region. In addition to being somewhat more tolerant of magic generally, for example, he argues that Central Europe saw particular innovations in alchemy. Yet he also acknowledges that his region participated fully in general European trends. Many magical texts produced in the West, including such famous tomes as Picatrix, Speculum astronomiae, and the Liber visionum entered Central European libraries and influenced texts produced in that region. In analyzing the themes found in his texts, Láng often, indeed almost always, finds himself discussing general themes of a pan-European learned magical tradition, not ones unique to the geography he specifies. This, of course, illustrates the reality of border-spanning elite magical culture, and indeed of Latinate intellectual culture generally, in medieval Europe. Ultimately, then, Láng’s book is partly a study of his region, carefully identifying its unique traits, and partly a study of medieval learned magic in general, usefully illustrated (especially for Western European and American scholars whose language limitations often cut them off from Polish, Czech, and Hungarian scholarship) by mainly Central European examples.
Bertram Resmini (Bearb.), Die Benediktinerabtei St. Maximin vor Trier. Im Auftrage der Akademie d... more Bertram Resmini (Bearb.), Die Benediktinerabtei St. Maximin vor Trier. Im Auftrage der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Berlin, Boston, MA (De Gruyter) 2016, XVII–700 u. X–1461 S., 20 Abb., 3 Kt. (Germania sacra. Die Kirche des Alten Reiches und ihre Institutionen. Dritte Folge, 11,1 u. 11,2. Das Erzbistum Trier, 13), ISBN 978-3-11-040944-4, EUR 239,95; Michael Embach, Bernhard Simon (Hg.), Die Abtei Trier-St. Maximin von der späten Antike bis zur frühen Neuzeit. Beiträge der Trierer Tagung vom 16.–17. Juli 2015, Mainz (Verlag der Gesellschaft für mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte) 2018, 271 S., 65 Abb. (Quellen und Abhandlungen zur mittelrheinischen Kirchengeschichte, 142), ISBN 978-3-929135-78-7, EUR 38,00.
Dargestellt wird anhand von Quellen und Literatur ein Uberblick zur Hexenverfolgung im Wittlicher... more Dargestellt wird anhand von Quellen und Literatur ein Uberblick zur Hexenverfolgung im Wittlicher Land. Im Mittelpunkt stehen die gangige Gerichtspraxis und die sozialen Hintergrunde dieser Prozesse.
Klaus Bergdolt, Lothar Schmidt, Andreas Tonnesmann (Hg.), Armut in der Renaissance, Wiesbaden (Ha... more Klaus Bergdolt, Lothar Schmidt, Andreas Tonnesmann (Hg.), Armut in der Renaissance, Wiesbaden (Harrassowitz Verlag) 2013, 335 S., zahlr. s/w, 10 farb. Abb. (Wolfenbutteler Abhandlungen zur Renaissanceforschung, 30 ), ISBN 978-3-447-10017-5, EUR 92,00.
In extending the perspective developed through studies on witch trials in Lutheran regions (e.g. ... more In extending the perspective developed through studies on witch trials in Lutheran regions (e.g. Wurttemberg), the chapter emphasizes the difficulties besetting the attempts to use local witch-trial records stemming from intense, mostly Catholic witch-hunts, to recover the emotions of the persons involved. This chapter argues first that we do not find emotions in the records, but representations of emotions. Second, it cannot be neglected that torture, interrogation, confession and the respective representations of emotion were intrinsically tied together in a threefold legal, religious and political sense. Third, witch-hunts generated different kinds of source material providing us with different perspectives on the lost world of past emotions (e.g. trial records from local courts; records from appeal courts; secret letters of the accused) with their inherent problems of interpretation. Fourth, courts with legally trained assessors formed a certain kind of emotional community. Certain semantics determined the norms of the emotional habits of the accused as well as the judges. Finally, further research into the emotional norms, narratives or labels of alleged witches has to move from appreciating local trial records as ‘windows’ onto lost emotions of the past.
Dargestellt wird anhand von Quellen und Literatur ein Uberblick zur Hexenverfolgung im Wittlicher... more Dargestellt wird anhand von Quellen und Literatur ein Uberblick zur Hexenverfolgung im Wittlicher Land. Im Mittelpunkt stehen die gangige Gerichtspraxis und die sozialen Hintergrunde dieser Prozesse.
Medical and psychological approaches claiming to show the ''truth'' or ''reality'' behind the so-... more Medical and psychological approaches claiming to show the ''truth'' or ''reality'' behind the so-called witch craze have a long-standing tradition. In a way, these approaches can be subsumed under the so-called ''romantic paradigm,'' insofar as they assume that presumed witches and their ''cult'' had some kind of material reality. Other approaches in this vein have tried to explain the ''craze'' as the result of drug abuse, ergotism, or as a more tangential consequence of syphilis, mental illness, hysteria, or schizophrenia. All of these arguments have been shown to be of little relevance and-sharing the fate of other monocausal explanations of witch-hunting-have been superseded by well-balanced arguments grounded in historical research. Nonetheless, approaches like these that seem to simplify the very complex phenomena of magic, sorcery, and witchcraft are still vivid both in popular culture and in misapprehensions about the witch hunts. A classic example of such aendlessly fascinating-misapprehension is the mysogynistic idea about the use of supposed witches' salves, which holds that single, widowed, unmarried, and elderly women used hallucinogenic drugs in order to escape from their bleak everyday lives into a fantasy world of banquets, good-looking lovers, and orgies. Another misapprehension is the more gender-neutral idea that the deliberate or inadvertant consumption of beer strengthened with henbane or of bread poisoned with the ergot fungus or the use of other psychotropic substances led early modern people to have vivid dreams about feasting and copulation. Movies, the popular press, and new media do their best to keep these misapprehensions alive. Of course, historians should attempt to lift the veil masking the past, but they should do this knowing that there is always more than one veil to raise and that perhaps behind the raised one, another veil still obscures the lost land of the past. Therefore, the question about the realities of popular magic and witchcraft in early modern Europe that Edward Bever has put at the
Die Geschichte der europäischen wie auch der transkontinentalen Hexenverfolgungen gehört ohne Zwe... more Die Geschichte der europäischen wie auch der transkontinentalen Hexenverfolgungen gehört ohne Zweifel zu jenen historischen Themen, die seit den 1960er Jahren ungebrochen große Aufmerksamkeit innerhalb wie außerhalb der mit ihrer Erforschung befassten Wissenschaften erfährt. Triebkräfte für dieses neu entfachte Interesse entfalteten sich in der Frauenund Studentenbewegung, in der Auseinandersetzung mit dem Justizunrecht der NS-Diktatur sowie allgemein durch die Beschäftigung mit Menschenrechts-und Toleranzfragen. Nicht wenig haben auch die Anhänger von Esoterik und Okkultismus zur erwachten Neugier an den historischen Hexenverfolgungen beigetragen[1]. Dabei wird gerade das populäre Interesse meist von einer unverhohlenen Faszination durch das okkulte Thema geleitet, die sich inzwischen mancherorts auch der Fremdenverkehr zunutze macht; so ist beispielsweise der "Hexentourismus" auf dem Brocken im Harz schon längst an die Grenzen des Erträglichen gelangt. Bei der Suche nach der folkloristischen Nutzung der berüchtigten "Schlernhexen" (gemeint sind die 1506 und 1510
Marko Nenonen, Raisa Maria Toivo (ed.), Writing Witch-Hunt Histories. Challenging the Paradigm, L... more Marko Nenonen, Raisa Maria Toivo (ed.), Writing Witch-Hunt Histories. Challenging the Paradigm, Leiden (Brill Academic Publishers) 2014, XIV–220 p., 27 ill., 1 map (Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions, 173), ISBN 978-90-04-25790-0, EUR 119,00; H. C. Erik Midelfort, Witchcraft, Madness, Society, and Religion in Early Modern Germany. A Ship of Fools, Farnham, Surrey (Ashgate Publishing) 2013, XIV–348 p. (Variorum Collected Studies Series, 1029), ISBN 978-1-4094-5733-6, GBP 85,50; Jonathan B. Durrant, Witchcraft, Gender and Society in Early Modern Germany, Leiden (Brill Academic Publishers) 2007, XXVII–288 p. (Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions, 124), ISBN 978-90-04-16093-4, EUR 99,00.
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