Magic In The Cloister

Author : Sophie Page
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 0271060964
Total Pages : 246 pages
Book Rating : 4.65/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Magic in the Cloister written by Sophie Page and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2015-06-26 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries a group of monks with occult interests donated what became a remarkable collection of more than thirty magic texts to the library of the Benedictine abbey of St. Augustine's in Canterbury. The monks collected texts that provided positive justifications for the practice of magic and books in which works of magic were copied side by side with works of more licit genres. In Magic in the Cloister, Sophie Page uses this collection to explore the gradual shift toward more positive attitudes to magical texts and ideas in medieval Europe. She examines what attracted monks to magic texts, works, and how they combined magic with their intellectual interests and monastic life. By showing how it was possible for religious insiders to integrate magical studies with their orthodox worldview, Magic in the Cloister contributes to a broader understanding of the role of magical texts and ideas and their acceptance in the late Middle Ages.

Author : Frank Klaassen
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 0271061758
Total Pages : 292 pages
Book Rating : 4.57/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Transformations of Magic written by Frank Klaassen and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2015-06-26 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this original, provocative, well-reasoned, and thoroughly documented book, Frank Klaassen proposes that two principal genres of illicit learned magic occur in late medieval manuscripts: image magic, which could be interpreted and justified in scholastic terms, and ritual magic (in its extreme form, overt necromancy), which could not. Image magic tended to be recopied faithfully; ritual magic tended to be adapted and reworked. These two forms of magic did not usually become intermingled in the manuscripts, but were presented separately. While image magic was often copied in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, The Transformations of Magic demonstrates that interest in it as an independent genre declined precipitously around 1500. Instead, what persisted was the other, more problematic form of magic: ritual magic. Klaassen shows that texts of medieval ritual magic were cherished in the sixteenth century, and writers of new magical treatises, such as Agrippa von Nettesheim and John Dee, were far more deeply indebted to medieval tradition—and specifically to the medieval tradition of ritual magic—than previous scholars have thought them to be.

Author : David J. Collins, S. J.
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 0271084375
Total Pages : 294 pages
Book Rating : 4.74/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Sacred and the Sinister written by David J. Collins, S. J. and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2019-03-20 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by the work of eminent scholar Richard Kieckhefer, The Sacred and the Sinister explores the ambiguities that made (and make) medieval religion and magic so difficult to differentiate. The essays in this collection investigate how the holy and unholy were distinguished in medieval Europe, where their characteristics diverged, and the implications of that deviation. In the Middle Ages, the natural world was understood as divinely created and infused with mysterious power. This world was accessible to human knowledge and susceptible to human manipulation through three modes of engagement: religion, magic, and science. How these ways of understanding developed in light of modern notions of rationality is an important element of ongoing scholarly conversation. As Kieckhefer has emphasized, ambiguity and ambivalence characterize medieval understandings of the divine and demonic powers at work in the world. The ten chapters in this volume focus on four main aspects of this assertion: the cult of the saints, contested devotional relationships and practices, unsettled judgments between magic and religion, and inconclusive distinctions between magic and science. Freshly insightful, this study of ambiguity between magic and religion will be of special interest to scholars in the fields of medieval studies, religious studies, European history, and the history of science. In addition to the editor, the contributors to this volume are Michael D. Bailey, Kristi Woodward Bain, Maeve B. Callan, Elizabeth Casteen, Claire Fanger, Sean L. Field, Anne M. Koenig, Katelyn Mesler, and Sophie Page.

Author : Benedek Lang
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 0271033789
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.85/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Unlocked Books written by Benedek Lang and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Middle Ages, the Western world translated the incredible Arabic scientific corpus and imported it into Western culture: Arabic philosophy, optics, and physics, as well as alchemy, astrology, and talismanic magic. The line between the scientific and the magical was blurred. According to popular lore, magicians of the Middle Ages were trained in the art of magic in &“magician schools&” located in various metropolitan areas, such as Naples, Athens, and Toledo. It was common knowledge that magic was learned and that cities had schools designed to teach the dark arts. The Spanish city of Toledo, for example, was so renowned for its magic training schools that &“the art of Toledo&” was synonymous with &“the art of magic.&” Until Benedek L&áng&’s work on Unlocked Books, little had been known about the place of magic outside these major cities. A principal aim of Unlocked Books is to situate the role of central Europe as a center for the study of magic. L&áng helps chart for us how the thinkers of that day&—clerics, courtiers, and university masters&—included in their libraries not only scientific and religious treatises but also texts related to the field of learned magic. These texts were all enlisted to solve life&’s questions, whether they related to the outcome of an illness or the meaning of lines on one&’s palm. Texts summoned angels or transmitted the recipe for a magic potion. L&áng gathers magical texts that could have been used by practitioners in late fifteenth-century central Europe.

Author : Sophie Page
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
ISBN 13 : 9780802037978
Total Pages : 70 pages
Book Rating : 4.76/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Magic in Medieval Manuscripts written by Sophie Page and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Magic in Medieval Manuscripts explores the place of magic in the medieval world and the contradictory responses it evoked, through an exploration of images and texts in British Library manuscripts.

Author : Frank Klaassen
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 0271085177
Total Pages : 160 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Making Magic in Elizabethan England written by Frank Klaassen and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2019-12-11 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents editions of two fascinating anonymous and untitled manuscripts of magic produced in Elizabethan England: the Antiphoner Notebook and the Boxgrove Manual. Frank Klaassen uses these texts, which he argues are representative of the overwhelming majority of magical practitioners, to explain how magic changed during this period and why these developments were crucial to the formation of modern magic. The Boxgrove Manual is a work of learned ritual magic that synthesizes material from Henry Cornelius Agrippa, the Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy, Heptameron, and various medieval conjuring works. The Antiphoner Notebook concerns the common magic of treasure hunting, healing, and protection, blending medieval conjuring and charm literature with materials drawn from Reginald Scot’s famous anti-magic work, Discoverie of Witchcraft. Klaassen painstakingly traces how the scribes who created these two manuscripts adapted and transformed their original sources. In so doing, he demonstrates the varied and subtle ways in which the Renaissance, the Reformation, new currents in science, the birth of printing, and vernacularization changed the practice of magic. Illuminating the processes by which two sixteenth-century English scribes went about making a book of magic, this volume provides insight into the wider intellectual culture surrounding the practice of magic in the early modern period.

Author :
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 0271042419
Total Pages : 309 pages
Book Rating : 4.11/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Conjuring Spirits: Texts and Traditions of Medieval Ritual Magic written by and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Albrecht Classen
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 3110556529
Total Pages : 767 pages
Book Rating : 4.20/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Magic and Magicians in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Time written by Albrecht Classen and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2017-10-23 with total page 767 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are no clear demarcation lines between magic, astrology, necromancy, medicine, and even sciences in the pre-modern world. Under the umbrella term 'magic,' the contributors to this volume examine a wide range of texts, both literary and religious, both medical and philosophical, in which the topic is discussed from many different perspectives. The fundamental concerns address issue such as how people perceived magic, whether they accepted it and utilized it for their own purposes, and what impact magic might have had on the mental structures of that time. While some papers examine the specific appearance of magicians in literary texts, others analyze the practical application of magic in medical contexts. In addition, this volume includes studies that deal with the rise of the witch craze in the late fifteenth century and then also investigate whether the Weberian notion of disenchantment pertaining to the modern world can be maintained. Magic is, oddly but significantly, still around us and exerts its influence. Focusing on magic in the medieval world thus helps us to shed light on human culture at large.

Author : Jean Bodin
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 0271047100
Total Pages : 598 pages
Book Rating : 4.02/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Colloquium of the Seven about Secrets of the Sublime written by Jean Bodin and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 598 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Jeff Bach
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 0271027444
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.49/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Voices of the Turtledoves written by Jeff Bach and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner, 2004 Dale W. Brown Book Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Anabaptist and Pietist Studies Winner, 2005 Outstanding Publication, Communal Studies Association Co-published with the Pennsylvania German Society/Vandenhoeck && Ruprecht The Ephrata Cloister was a community of radical Pietists founded by Georg Conrad Beissel (1691&–1768), a charismatic mystic who had been a journeyman baker in Europe. In 1720 he and a few companions sought a new life in William Penn&’s land of religious freedom, eventually settling on the banks of the Cocalico Creek in what is now Lancaster County. They called their community &“Ephrata,&” after the Hebrew name for the area around Bethlehem. Voices of the Turtledoves is a fascinating look at the sacred world that flourished at Ephrata. In Voices of the Turtledoves, Jeff Bach is the first to draw extensively on Ephrata&’s manuscript resources and on recent archaeological investigations to present an overarching look at the community. He concludes that the key to understanding all the various aspects of life at Ephrata&—its architecture, manuscript art, and social organization&—is the religious thought of Beissel and his co-leaders.