Incantatio An International Journal on Charms, Charmers and Charming http://www.folklore.ee/incantatio Print version Issue 7 2018 ISNFR Committee on Charms, Charmers and Charming Incantatio An International Journal on Charms, Charmers and Charming Issue 7 Editor: Haralampos Passalis Tartu 2018 General Editor: Mare Kõiva Editors for this issue: Haralampos Passalis Managing editor: Jonathan Roper Copy editor: Liisa Vesik Language editor: Jonathan Roper Editorial board: Elenora Cianci, University of Chieti- Pescara, Italy James Kapalo, University College Cork, Ireland Alaric Hall, Leeds University, UK Claude Lecouteux, Paris-Sorbonne University, France Lea Olsan, University of Louisiana at Monroe, USA Éva Pócs, Janus Pannonius University, Pecs, Hungary Haralampos Passalis, Intercultural School-Evosmos-Thessaloniki, Greece Jonathan Roper, Tartu University, Estonia Will Ryan, The Folklore Society, London, UK. Emanuela Timotin, Institute of Linguistics, Bucharest, Romania Andrey Toporkov, Institute of World Literature, Moscow, Russia Daiva Vaitkevičiene, Lithuanian Institute of Literature and Folklore, Vilnius, Lihtuania Editorial contacts: http://www.foklore.ee/incantatio [email protected] Vanemuise 42, Tartu 51003, Estonia Supported by and affiliated to the Centre of Excellence in Estonian Studies (CEES, European Regional Development Fund) and is related to research projects IRG 22-5 (Estonian Research Council) and EKKM14-344 (Estonian Ministry of Education and Research). Indexed by the MLA Directory of Periodicals (EBSCO), Central and Eastern European Online Library (C.E.E.O.L.), Open Folklore Project. Copyright belongs to the authors and the ISFNR Committee on Charms, Charmers and Charming ISSN 2228-1355 https://doi.org/10.7592/Incantatio Contents https://doi.org/10.7592/Incantatio2018 Introduction Haralampos Passalis 7 https://doi.org/10.7592/Incantatio_2018_7_Introduction Writing on the Hand in Ink: A Late Medieval Innovation in Fever Charms in England Lea Olsan 9 https://doi.org/10.7592/Incantatio_2018_7_Olsan “Sitte ge sigewif, sigað to eorðe”: Settling the Anglo-Saxon Bee Charm within its Christian Manuscript Context Patricia O Connor 46 https://doi.org/10.7592/Incantatio2018_7_O’Connor Text over time: The written word in English charm before 1350 Katherine Hindley 72 https://doi.org/10.7592/Incantatio2018_7_Hindley The Pervinca charm: A medieval German love charm Eleonora Cianci 94 https://doi.org/10.7592/Incantatio2018_7_Cianci Charmers on the folk practise of charming of charming in Serbia Sonja Petrović 131 https://doi.org/10.7592/Incantatio2018_7_Petrović What to say while using dust from the Saints’ eyes? A Romanian case Laura Jiga Iliescu 160 https://doi.org/10.7592/Incantatio2018_7_Iliescu A Hidden Pot of Charm Scholarship: The History of Critical Reflections on Charms in Croatian Folkloristics Davor Nikolić, Josipa Tomašić 176 https://doi.org/10.7592/Incantatio2018_7_Nikolić_Tomašić BOOK REVIEWS 193 https://doi.org/10.7592/Incantatio2018_7_BookReview Emanuela Timotin, Paroles protectrices, paroles guérisseuses. La tradition manuscrite des charmes roumains (XVIIe-XIXe siècle), Paris, P.U.P.S., 2015 (collection Traditions et croyances), 385 p., 4 il- lustrations, 8 cartes. (Claude Lecouteux) Jesús Suárez López, Fórmulas mágicas de la tradición oral asturiana. Invocaciones, ensalmos, conjuros, Gobierno del Principado de Asturias, Ediciones Trea, 2016, 701 p. (Emanuela Timotin) Jukka Saarinen, Runolaulun poetiikka. Säe, syntaksi ja parallelismi Arhippa Perttusen runoissa. Akateeminen väitöskirja. Helsinki 2018.- 417 lk. (Mare Kõiva) Sorcery texts from Ancient Mesopotamia by Amar Annus Bibliotheca Antiqua. Tallinn 2017: TLÜ Kirjastus (Mare Kõiva) https://doi.org/10.7592/Incantatio_2018_7_Introduction INTRODUCTION The seventh issue of Incantatio continues the publication of research papers presented at the 9th conference of the Charms, Charmers and Charming Com- mittee of the ISFNR, which was held at University College Cork (May 6th-7th, 2016), that began in our sixth issue, but it also contains additional research articles as well as reviews of important recent charms studies. The first four articles in this issue deal with the written tradition and trans- mission of medieval English and German charms, with special attention being paid to manuscript contexts. In the first paper, Lea Olsan reviews the types of charms employed in order to relieve fevers in medieval England from the Anglo-Saxon period to the end of the fifteenth century, and turns an especial focus upon practical rituals (the method of writing sacred words on the hand with ink for consumption in a liquid potion) for healing fevers that involve inscribing and consuming communion hosts. Patricia O’ Connor focuses on the Anglo-Saxon Bee Charm, a charm which accompanies a passage from Chapter XVII of Book III of the Old English Bede. Her critical reconsideration of the Bee Charm within its immediate manuscript context contributes to our understanding both of the function of this type of charms within Anglo-Saxon society, especially of how these charms were per- ceived and circulated within late Anglo-Saxon England. Continuing the theme of Anglo-Saxon charms, Katherine Hindley systemati- cally approaches the techniques of charming found in England after the Nor- man Conquest. More specifically she deals with the sudden striking increase in the proportion of charms using written words and explores this post-Conquest change by examining examples preserved in manuscripts written or owned in England from the Anglo-Saxon period to 1350. A medieval German love charm, the Pervinca love charm, is thoroughly examined by Eleonora Cianci. Her article is the first attempt to make the com- plete unedited 15th century German text available to researchers. The author does not only provide the transcription from the manuscript and translation into English, but also a brief description of its content as part of her holistic approach to the text. The next two papers focus on the ethnographic context of charm practices. Sonja Petrović investigates how charming practices continue to be transmitted, valued and questioned in contemporary Serbia, work based on field material and scholarly literature. Taking into account the constant motifs in the narra- tive accounts of charmers concerning not only their practice, receiving, passing on and protecting magical knowledge, but also their relation towards patients and official medicine, she sheds light on the social, cultural and symbolic roles of traditional charmers. Laura Jiga Iliescu investigates a very interesting religious practice of hidden rituals, whose traces are preserved in the Christian churches’ frescoes from the Romanian Orthodox space, which is represented by the act of voluntarily scratching the eyes of the saints painted on the wall. The paper systematizes the few references concerning this ritual entirety as well as seeking information about the relations established between the official dogma and the religious practices as actuated in the case of the icon and the saint’s figure in the nine- teenth century Romania. Last but not least, Davor Nikolić and Josipa Tomašić offer an overview of critical reflections on charms in Croatian folkloristics and related disciplines, such as literary theory and history, and paleoslavistics. By highlighting the most important steps in the institutionalization of folklore research in Croatia, the authors cast light on the status of verbal charms both in the process of field research and the scholarly sphere. I wish to express my gratitude to all the authors who have contributed with their papers to the successful completion of this issue. I am also immensely grateful to Jonathan Roper for all his kind advice and support in editing the journal, as well as to the anonymous reviewers of the journal for their sugges- tions and comments. Thanks to their cooperation, Incantatio remains a serious scholarly journal and a fascinatingly broad view on charm studies. Haralampos Passalis, guest editor 8 www.folklore.ee/incantatio https://doi.org/10.7592/Incantatio_2018_7_Olsan WRITING ON THE HAND IN INK: A LATE MEDIEVAL INNOVATION IN FEVER CHARMS IN ENGLAND Lea T. Olsan This paper reviews the types of charms employed to relieve fevers in medieval England from the Anglo-Saxon period to the end of the fifteenth century with at- tention to the manuscript contexts in which the charms are found. In the second part, the paper focuses more closely on charms and practical rituals for healing fevers that involve inscribing and consuming communion hosts. It argues that the method of writing sacred words on the hand with ink to be washed into a potion and consumed came into favour in the late Middle Ages at a time when writing on wafers was becoming problematic. Keywords: verbal charms, textual amulets, medieval medicine, writing, fevers, medieval manuscripts INTRODUCTION Unlike charms to stop bleeding, which people expected to take effect quickly, fever charms offered relief from the symptoms of a sickness with an expecta- tion that it would have an effect over time, often days, from the time of the performance. Unlike charms for toothache, which prevented painful attacks in the future, fever charms and some lengthy religious rituals including masses, addressed the possibility that the patient might die if the current fever did not abate. The variation known as the Petrus ante portam acted as a preventative. It relied on a narrative formula or historiola (Roper 2005, Bozoky 2003) that could be written