Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies

Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies
Author :
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Total Pages : 313
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780801467301
ISBN-13 : 0801467306
Rating : 4/5 (306 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies by : Michael D. Bailey

Download or read book Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies written by Michael D. Bailey and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2017-11-15 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Superstitions are commonplace in the modern world. Mostly, however, they evoke innocuous images of people reading their horoscopes or avoiding black cats. Certain religious practices might also come to mind—praying to St. Christopher or lighting candles for the dead. Benign as they might seem today, such practices were not always perceived that way. In medieval Europe superstitions were considered serious offenses, violations of essential precepts of Christian doctrine or immutable natural laws. But how and why did this come to be? In Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies, Michael D. Bailey explores the thorny concept of superstition as it was understood and debated in the Middle Ages. Bailey begins by tracing Christian thinking about superstition from the patristic period through the early and high Middle Ages. He then turns to the later Middle Ages, a period that witnessed an outpouring of writings devoted to superstition—tracts and treatises with titles such as De superstitionibus and Contra vitia superstitionum. Most were written by theologians and other academics based in Europe’s universities and courts, men who were increasingly anxious about the proliferation of suspect beliefs and practices, from elite ritual magic to common healing charms, from astrological divination to the observance of signs and omens. As Bailey shows, however, authorities were far more sophisticated in their reasoning than one might suspect, using accusations of superstition in a calculated way to control the boundaries of legitimate religion and acceptable science. This in turn would lay the conceptual groundwork for future discussions of religion, science, and magic in the early modern world. Indeed, by revealing the extent to which early modern thinkers took up old questions about the operation of natural properties and forces using the vocabulary of science rather than of belief, Bailey exposes the powerful but in many ways false dichotomy between the "superstitious" Middle Ages and "rational" European modernity.


Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies Related Books

Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies
Language: en
Pages: 313
Authors: Michael D. Bailey
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2017-11-15 - Publisher: Cornell University Press

GET EBOOK

Superstitions are commonplace in the modern world. Mostly, however, they evoke innocuous images of people reading their horoscopes or avoiding black cats. Certa
Archaeology of the Unconscious
Language: en
Pages: 301
Authors: Alessandra Aloisi
Categories: Literary Collections
Type: BOOK - Published: 2019-07-10 - Publisher: Routledge

GET EBOOK

In reconstructing the birth and development of the notion of ‘unconscious’, historians of ideas have heavily relied on the Freudian concept of Unbewussten,
Demonology and Witch-Hunting in Early Modern Europe
Language: en
Pages: 408
Authors: Julian Goodare
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2020-08-11 - Publisher: Routledge

GET EBOOK

Demonology – the intellectual study of demons and their powers – contributed to the prosecution of thousands of witches. But how exactly did intellectual id
Christianization and Commonwealth in Early Medieval Europe
Language: en
Pages: 273
Authors: Nathan J. Ristuccia
Categories: Religion
Type: BOOK - Published: 2018-02-09 - Publisher: Oxford University Press

GET EBOOK

Christianization and Commonwealth in Early Medieval Europe re-examines the alterations in Western European life that followed widespread conversion to Christian
Current Trends in the Historiography of Inquisitions
Language: en
Pages: 482
Authors: Autori Vari
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2024-03-28T10:04:00+01:00 - Publisher: Viella Libreria Editrice

GET EBOOK

This volume launches the book series of “Inquire – International Centre for Research on Inquisitions” of the University of Bologna, a research network tha