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 S. Bailey, Kristi Woodward Bain, Maeve B. Callan, Elizabeth Casteen, Claire Fanger, Sean L. Field, Anne M. Koenig, Katelyn Mesler, and Sophie Page.
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Flirting Between Heaven and Hell
David J. Collins, S.J.
Part 1: Traditional Holiness
1. Extreme Sanctity at the Turn of the Thirteenth Century: The Metamorphosis of Body and Community in the Vitae of Christina Mirabilis and Francis of Assisi
Claire Fanger
2. The Sources and Significance of Stefania’s New Statement on Margherita Colonna’s Perfection of the Virtues
Sean L. Field
Part 2: Conflicts over the Holy
3. Materializing Conflict: How Parish Communities Remember
Their Medieval Pasts
Kristi Woodward Bain
4. Rape and Rapture: Violence, Ambiguity, and Raptus in Medieval Thought
Elizabeth Casteen
5. Syneisaktism : Sacred Partnership and Sinister Scandal
Maeve B. Callan
Part 3: Identifying and Grappling with the Unholy
6. Was Magic a Religious Movement?
Michael D. Bailey
7. The Jurisdiction of Medieval Inquisitors over Jews and Muslims: Nicholas Eymeric’s Contra infideles demones invocantes
Katelyn Mesler
8. Magicking Madness: Secret Workings and Public Narratives of Disordered Minds in Late Medieval Germany
Anne M. Koenig
Part 4: Magic and the Cosmos
9. A Late Medieval Demonic Invasion of the Heavens
Sophie Page
10. Scholastics, Stars, and Magi: Albert the Great on Matthew 2
David J. Collins, S.J.
Selected Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index
“This fascinating collection explores, as its dedicatee has done throughout his career, the fundamental ambivalence between ‘the holy and the unholy.’ Perfectly capturing Richard Kieckhefer’s eclectic interests, the book includes essays on topics ranging from saints and their hagiographers, to church buildings (and their embodiments of identities and meanings), to heresy, demons, and magic. Kieckhefer once quipped that his scholarship has a right hand and a left hand. Both sides are delightfully represented here.”
—Laura Ackerman Smoller, author of The Saint and the Chopped-Up Baby: The Cult of Vincent Ferrer in Medieval and Early Modern Europe
