Book ID: CBB212132197

Trafficking with Demons: Magic, Ritual, and Gender from Late Antiquity to 1000 (2021)

unapi

Rampton, Martha (Author)


Cornell University Press


Publication Date: 2021
Physical Details: 465
Language: English

Trafficking with Demons explores how magic was perceived, practiced, and prohibited in western Europe during the first millennium CE. Through the overlapping frameworks of religion, ritual, and gender, Martha Rampton connects early Christian reckonings with pagan magic to later doctrines and dogmas. Challenging established views on the role of women in ritual magic during this period, Rampton provides a new narrative of the ways in which magic was embedded within the foundational assumptions of western European society, informing how people understood the cosmos, divinity, and their own Christian faith. As Rampton shows, throughout the first Christian millennium, magic was thought to play a natural role within the functioning of the universe and existed within a rational cosmos hierarchically arranged according to a "great chain of being." Trafficking with the "demons of the lower air" was the essense of magic. Interactions with those demons occurred both in highly formalistic, ritual settings and on a routine and casual basis. Rampton tracks the competition between pagan magic and Christian belief from the first century CE, when it was fiercest, through the early Middle Ages, as atavistic forms of magic mutated and found sanctuary in the daily habits of the converted peoples and new paganisms entered Europe with their own forms of magic. By the year 1000, she concludes, many forms of magic had been tamed and were, by the reckoning of the elite, essentially ineffective, as were the women who practiced it and the rituals that attended it.

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB212132197/

Similar Citations

Book Bailey, Michael David; (2007)
Magic and Superstition in Europe: A Concise History from Antiquity to the Present (/isis/citation/CBB001232135/)

Book Cryer, Frederick H.; Thomsen, Marie-Louise; (2001)
Witchcraft and Magic in Europe. Vol. 1: Biblical and Pagan Societies (/isis/citation/CBB000101593/)

Book Ankarloo, Bengt; Clark, Stuart; (2002)
Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The Middle Ages (/isis/citation/CBB000201866/)

Book Cameron, Euan; (2010)
Enchanted Europe: Superstition, Reason, and Religion, 1250--1750 (/isis/citation/CBB001231073/)

Book Janowitz, Naomi; (2002)
Icons of Power: Ritual Practices in Late Antiquity (/isis/citation/CBB000201864/)

Book Klaassen, Frank F.; (2013)
The Transformations of Magic: Illicit Learned Magic in the Later Middle Ages and Renaissance (/isis/citation/CBB001321244/)

Article Lavrov, Aleksandr S.; (2007)
Witchcraft and Religion in Russia, 1700--1740: Popular Orthodoxy (/isis/citation/CBB001030531/)

Book Hanegraaff, Wouter J.; (2012)
Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture (/isis/citation/CBB001201630/)

Article George Latura; (2018)
Milky Way Vicissitudes: Macrobius to Galileo (/isis/citation/CBB398306024/)

Book Csepregi, Ildikó; Burnett, Charles; (2012)
Ritual Healing: Magic, Ritual and Medical Therapy from Antiquity until the Early Modern Period (/isis/citation/CBB001251699/)

Article Bailey, Michael David; (2002)
The Feminization of Magic and the Emerging Idea of the Female Witch in the Late Middle Ages (/isis/citation/CBB000660559/)

Article Mandosio, Jean-Marc; (2013)
Les vies légendaires d'Apollonius de Tyane, mage et philosophe (/isis/citation/CBB001420829/)

Book Coudert, Allison P.; (2011)
Religion, Magic, and Science in Early Modern Europe and America (/isis/citation/CBB001201259/)

Book Christopher Partridge; (2014)
The Occult World (/isis/citation/CBB544694972/)

Book Janowitz, Naomi; (2001)
Magic in the Roman World: Pagans, Jews and Christians (/isis/citation/CBB000101628/)

Book Salvatore Califano; (2015)
Storia dell'alchimia: misticismo ed esoterismo all'origine della chimica moderna (/isis/citation/CBB559415425/)

Book Ostorero, Martine; Modestin, Georg; Utz Tremp, Kathrin; (2010)
Chasses aux sorcières et démonologie: entre discours et pratiques (XIVe-XVIIe siècles) (/isis/citation/CBB001200354/)

Authors & Contributors
Janowitz, Naomi
Bailey, Michael David
Paul B. Moyer
Latura, George
Christopher Partridge
Califano, Salvatore
Concepts
Occult sciences
Magic
Science and religion
Witchcraft; demonology
Christianity
Paganism
Time Periods
Medieval
Ancient
Early modern
Renaissance
15th century
17th century
Places
Europe
United States
Mesopotamia
Atlantic world
Middle and Near East
New England (U.S.)
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment