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Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic Series Editors Jonathan Barry University of Exeter, UK Willem de Blécourt Meertens Institute, Amsterdam the Netherlands Owen Davies University of Hertfordshire UK Aim of the series The history of European witchcraft and magic continues to fascinate and challenge students and scholars. There is certainly no shortage of books on the subject. Several general surveys of the witch trials and numerous regional and micro studies have been published for an English-speaking readership. While the quality of publications on witchcraft has been high, some regions and topics have received less attention over the years. The aim of this series is to help illuminate these lesser known or little studied aspects of the history of witchcraft and magic. It will also encourage the development of a broader corpus of work in other related areas of magic and the supernatural, such as angels, devils, spirits, ghosts, folk healing and divination. To help further our understanding and interest in this wider history of beliefs and practices, the series will include research that looks beyond the usual focus on Western Europe and that also explores their relevance and influence from the medieval to the modern period. ‘Avaluable series.’ – Magic, Ritual and Witchcraft. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14693 Louise Nyholm Kallestrup • Raisa Maria Toivo Editors Contesting Orthodoxy in Medieval and Early Modern Europe Heresy, Magic and Witchcraft Editors Louise Nyholm Kallestrup Raisa Maria Toivo Department of History University of Tampere University of Southern Denmark Tampere, Finland Odense, Denmark Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic ISBN 978-3-319-32384-8 ISBN 978-3-319-32385-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-32385-5 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016946333 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Cover illustration © Andrew Dernie Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We thank everyone who has made it possible to turn the idea that began as a conference on Witchcraft, Heresy and Natural Philosophy (University of Southern Denmark 2010) into a real collection of articles. The confer- ence was organized by Louise Nyholm Kallestrup, Janus Møller Jensen, Britt Istoft and Leif Søndergaard and held as the annual Symposium of the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Southern Denmark (SDU). This volume is the 32nd in the series of symposium proceedings. The con- ference was financed by the Nordic Centre of Excellence, Nordic Centre for Medieval Studies, Bergen, Helsinki, Gothenburg and Odense. Raisa thanks the Academy of Finland Center of Excellence in History ‘Rethinking Finland 1400–2000’ and Louise the Carlsberg Foundation for providing research support and funding. v CONTENTS Approaches to Magic, Heresy and Witchcraft in Time, Space and Faith 1 Louise Nyholm Kallestrup and Raisa Maria Toivo Part I Heresy 15 ‘Night is conceded to the dead’: Revenant Congregations in the Middle Ages 17 Nancy Mandeville Caciola Heresy and Heterodoxy in Medieval Scandinavia 35 Stephen Mitchell Caught Between Unorthodox Medicine and Unorthodox Religion: Revisiting the Case of Costantino Saccardini, Charlatan-Heretic 57 David Gentilcore vii viii CONTENTS Part II Magic 69 Angel Magic and the Cult of Angels in the Later Middle Ages 71 Richard Kieckhefer Polyphony and Pragmatism in Scandinavian Spells c.1300–1600 111 Leif Søndergaard The Divining Rod: Origins, Explanations and Uses in the Thirteenth to Eighteenth Centuries 127 Johannes Dillinger Ignorant Superstition? Popular Education on Magic in Early Seventeenth-Century Confessionalist Finland: The Case of Mary and the Rosaries 145 Raisa Maria Toivo Part III Witchcraft 165 The Witch of Endor Before the Witch Trials 167 Charles Zika Preaching on Witchcraft? The Sermons of Johannes Geiler of Kaysersberg (1445–1510) 193 Rita Voltmer Law, Nature, Theology and Witchcraft in Ponzinibio’s De lamiis (1511) 217 Matteo Duni The Infected and the Guilty: On Heresy and Witchcraft in Post-Reformation Denmark 233 Louise Nyholm Kallestrup CONTENTS ix The Laughing Witch: Notes on the Relationship Between Literature and History in the Early Fifteenth Century 255 Willem de Blécourt Images, Representations and the Self- Perception of Magic among the Sami Shamans of Arctic Norway, 1592–1692 279 Rune Blix Hagen Bibliography 301 Index 345 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Willem de Blécourt is a historical anthropologist. He works as an independent researcher and is attached to the Amsterdam Meertens Institute as an honorary research fellow. His main interests are, apart from the history of European witch- craft, the history of fairy tales and legends, as well as of werewolves. Occasionally he dabbles in analyses of films and television series with the (superficially) same subjects. His latest books are: Tales of Magic, Tales in Print (2012) and Werewolf Histories (ed. 2015). At the moment he is working on another edited collection Precursors of the Witches’ Sabbat and a major book, The Cat and the Cauldron about the history of witchcraft in the Low Countries. Nancy Mandeville Caciola is Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego. She is the author of Afterlives: The Return of the Dead in the Middle Ages (Cornell University Press, 2016) and Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages (Cornell University Press, 2003). Johannes Dillinger Professor of Early Modern History, Oxford Brookes University/Johannes Gutenberg Universitaet Mainz, published a number of monographs and articles about witch trials, magical treasure hunting and early modern folk belief. Matteo Duni teaches Renaissance History at both Syracuse University’s and New York University’s centers in Florence. He is the author, among other publications, of Under the Devil’s Spell: Witches, Sorcerers, and the Inquisition in Renaissance Italy (Syracuse University in Florence, 2007). David Gentilcore Professor of Early Modern History, University of Leicester. His most recent book is Food and Health in Early Modern Europe (Bloomsbury 2016). xi xii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Rune Blix Hagen (1951) is associate professor of Early Modern History at The Department of History and Religious Studies (IHS), UiT The Arctic University of Norway. His main fields of research are witch trials and witchcraft in Northern Norway, including topics like demonology and Sami Shamanism. He has also writ- ten books and articles on discovery, exploration, rivalry, and early modern images of the far North. For the moment, he is finishing a critical study of Jean Bodin’s writings. Louise Nyholm Kallestrup is Associate Professor, Department of History, SDU (University of Southern Denmark). She is the author of a number of publications in English and Danish, most recently Agents of Witchcraft in Early Modern Italy and Denmark (Palgrave 2015). Richard Kieckhefer teaches at Northwestern University, in Religious Studies and in History. He works on the religious culture of late medieval Europe, including the history of witchcraft and magic. Among his books are European Witch Trials, Magic in the Middle Ages, and Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer’s Manual of the Fifteenth Century. Stephen A. Mitchell is Professor of Scandinavian and Folklore at Harvard University and the author of Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic Middle Ages. He is a working member of The Royal Gustav Adolf Academy and has been a Fellow of the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, the Viking and Medieval Center of the University of Aarhus, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies. Leif Søndergaard (emeritus), Department for the Study of Culture, SDU (University of Southern Denmark). Raisa Maria Toivo is research fellow, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tampere. She is the author of a number of publications in Finnish and English, including Witchcraft and Gender in Early Modern Society: Finland and the Wider European Experience, published in 2008. And most recently Faith And Magic in Early Modern Finland (Palgrave 2016). Rita Voltmer is a senior lecturer in Medieval and Early modern History, University of Trier. From 2013 until 2015 she was Visiting Professor
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