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The Basic Bibliography on Magic

The best starting place:

  • Kieckhefer, Richard, Magic in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). [See his extensive bibliography]
  • Thorndike, Lynn, A History of Magic and Experimental Science during the First Thirteen Centuries of our Era, 2 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1923). [Compendium of a full range of materials]

*indicates highly recommended reading

Theoretical Approaches from Anthropology, History, and Religion

  • Eliade, Mircea, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (Princeton, 1972).
  • Frazer, J. G., The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, 3rd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1911).
  • Hsu, Francis L. K., Exorcising the Trouble Makers: Magic, Science and Culture (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1983).
  • *Kieckhefer, Richard, "The Specific Rationality of Medieval Magic," American Historical Review 99 (1994), 813-36.
  • Loomis, Charles Grant, White Magic (Cambridge, Mass., 1948).
  • Malinowski, Bronislaw, Magic, Science and Other Essays (Boston: Beacon Press, 1948).
  • Merrifield, Ralph, The Archaeology of Ritual and Magic (London: Batsford, 1987).
  • Moore, R. I., The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950-1250 (Oxford, 1987).
  • *Murray, Alexander, "Missionaries and Magic in Dark-Age Europe," Past and Present 136 (1992), 186-205.
  • Neusner, Jacob, Ernest S. Frerichs, and Paul Virgil McCracken Flesher, eds., Religion, Science, and Magic: In Concert and In Conflict (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).
  • Nirenberg, David, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton, 1996).
  • *Tambiah, Stanley J., Magic, Science, Religion, and the Scope of Rationality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
  • *Thomas, Keith, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York: Scribners, 1971).
  • See also Geertz, Hildred, "An Anthropology of Religion and Magic, I" and Keith Thomas, "An Anthropology of Religion and Magic, II," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 6 (1975), 71-89, 91-109.
  • Thorndike, Lynn, The Place of Magic in the Intellectual History of Europe (New York: Columbia University Press, 1905).
  • Tylor, Edward B., Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religions, Language, Art, and Custom (New York, 1889).
  • Van Engen, John, "The Christian Middle Ages as an Historiographical Problem," American Historical Review 91 (1986), 519-52.

Magic, Science, Medicine, and Witchcraft in Medieval Europe

  • Aðalsteinsson, Jón Hnefill, "Sæmundr Fróði: a medieval master of magic," Arv: Nordic Yearbook of Folklore, 50 (1994), 117-32.
  • Aðalsteinsson, Jón Hnefill, "Six Icelandic magicians after the time of Sæmundr Fróði," Arv: Nordic Yearbook of Folklore 52 (1996), 49-61.
  • Barb, A.. A., "Birds and Medical Magic, " Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 13 (1950), 316-22.
  • Barber, Malcolm, The Trial of the Templars (Cambridge, 1978).
  • Barkley, Heather, "Liturgical Influences on the Anglo-Saxon Charms against Cattle Theft," Notes & Queries 44 (1997), 450-52.
  • Bayerschmidt, Carl F., "The Element of the Supernatural in the Sagas of Icelanders," Scandinavian Studies: essays presented to Dr. Henry Goddard Leach on the occasion of his eighty-fifth birthday, ed. Carl F. Bayerschmidt and Erik J. Friis (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1965), pp. 39-53.
  • Blauert, Andreas, ed., Ketzer, Zauberer, Hexen: Die Anfänge der europäischen Hexenverfolgung (Frankfurt, 1990).
  • Bozãky, Edina, "From matter of devotion to amulets," Medieval Folklore 3 (1994), 91-107.
  • Bozãky, Edina, "Mythic Mediation in Healing Incantations," in Health, Disease and Healing in Medieval Culture, ed. Sheila Campbell, Bert Hall, and David Klausner (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992), pp. 84-92.
  • Braekman, W.L., "Fortune-telling by the casting of dice: a Middle English poem and its background," Studia Neophilologica, 52 (1980), 3-29.
  • *Brown, Peter, "Sorcery, Demons and the Rise of Christianity: From Late Antiquity into the Middle Ages," Religion and Society in the Age of St. Augustine (London: Faber and Faber, 1972), 119-46.
  • Brucker, Gene A., "Sorcery in early Renaissance Florence," Studies in the Renaissance, 10 (1963).
  • B™hler, Curt F., "Prayers and charms in certain Middle English scrolls," Speculum 39 (1964), 270-78.
  • Burnett, Charles, Magic and Divination in the Middle Ages: Texts and Techniques in the Islamic and Christian Worlds (Aldershot: Variorum, 1996).
  • Caciola, Nancy, "Wraiths, Revenants, and Ritual," in Past and Present 152 (1996), 3-45.
  • Cholmeley, H. P., John of Gaddesden and the Rosa medicinae (Oxford: Clarendon, 1912).
  • Clark, Stuart, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford, 1997).
  • Cohn, Norman, Europe's Inner Demons: An Enquiry Inspired by the Great Witch-Hunt (New York, 1975).
  • Collins, Minta, Medieval Herbals: The Illustrative Tradition (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999).
  • Comparetti, Domenico, Vergil in the Middle Ages, trans. E. F. M. Benecke (1885; repr. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997).
  • Duffy, Eamon, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c. 1400-c. 1580 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992).
  • Eamon, William, "Technology as magic in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance," Janus 70 (1983).
  • Ellis, Henry, "Extracts in prose and verse from an old English medical manuscript, preserved in the Royal Library at Stockholm," Archaeologia, 30 (1844), 397.
  • Elsakkers, Marianne, "The Beekeeper's Magic: Taking a Closer Look at the Old Germanic Bee Charms," Mankind Quarterly 27 (1987), 447-61.
  • Evans, Joan, Magical Jewels of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, partiuclarly in England (Oxford: Clarendon, 1922).
  • Evans, Joan and Mary S. Serjeantson, English Medieval Lapidaries, EETS 190 (London: Oxford University Press, 1933).
  • Fanger, Claire, ed., Conjuring Spirits: Texts and Traditions of Medieval Ritual Magic (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998).
  • Ferreiro, Alberto, "Simon Magus: The Patristic-Medieval Traditions and Historiography," Apocrypha 7 (1996), 147-65.
  • Ferreiro, Alberto, ed. The Devil, Heresy and Witchcraft in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honor of Jeffrey B. Russell (Leiden: Brill, 1998).
  • *Flint, Valerie, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991).
  • Flowers, Stephen, Runes and Magic: Magical Formulaic Elements in the Older Runic Traditions (1986).
  • Forbes, Thomas Rogers, The Midwife and the Witch (New Haven: Yale UP, 1966).
  • Fuller, S. D., "Pagan Charms in Tenth-Century Saxony?," Monatshefte 72 (1980), pp. 162-70.
  • Ginzburg, Carolo, Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath, trans. Raymond Rosenthal (New York, 1991).
  • Glosecki, Stephen, Shamanism and Old English Poetry (New York: Garland, 1989).
  • Gurevich, Aron, Medieval Popular Culture: Problems of Belief and Perception, trans. János M. Bak and paul A. Hollingsworth (Cambridge, 1988).
  • Halpern, B.K. and J. M. Foley, "Power of the Word: Healing Charms as Oral Genre," Journal of American Folklore 91 (1978).
  • Harmening, Dieter, Superstitio: Überlieferungs- und theoriegeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur kirchlich-theologischen Aberglaubensliteratur des Mittelalters (Berlin, 1979).
  • Harmening, Dieter, "Magiciennes et sorcières: La mutation du concept de magie à la fin du moyen âge," Heresis 13-14, 421-445.
  • Higley, Sarah, "Dirty Magic: Seither, Science, and the Parturating Man in Old Norse and Medieval Welsh Literature," in Figures of Speech: The Body in Medieval Art, History, and Literature in Essays in Medieval Studies 11 (1995).
  • Higley, Sarah, "The Legend of the Learned Man's Android" in Retelling Tales: Essays in Honor of Russell Pick, ed. Thomas Hahn and Alan Lupack (Cambridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1997), 127-60.
  • Hill, Thomas D., "The Theme of the Cosmological Cross in Two Old English Cattle Theft Charms," Notes & Queries NS 25 (1978), 488-90.
  • Hollis, Stephanie, "Old English `Cattle Theft Charms:' Manuscript Contexts and Social Uses," Anglia 115 (1997), 139-64.
  • Holton, Frederick S., "Literary Tradition and the Old English Bee Charm," Journal of Indo-European Studies 21 (1993), 37-53.
  • Jochens, Jenny, "Magie et réparation entre hommes et femmes dans les mythes et la société germanico-nordiques à travers les sagas et les lois scandinaves," Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, Xe-XIIe siècles, 36 (1993), 375-89.
  • Jolly, Karen Louise, "Father God and Mother Earth: Nature-Mysticism in the Early Middle Ages," The Medieval World of Nature: A Book of Essays, ed. Joyce E.
  • Salisbury (Garland Press, 1992), pp. 221-52.
  • Jolly, Karen Louise, Popular Religion in Late Saxon England: Elf Charms in Context (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).
  • Karras, Ruth Mazo, "Pagan Survivals and Syncretism in the Conversion of Saxony," Catholic Historical Review 72 (1986), 553-72.
  • Keck, David, Angels and Angelology in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
  • Keefer, Sarah Larratt, "Ut in omnibus honorificetur Deus: the Corsnæd Ordeal in Anglo-Saxon England," The Community, the Family, and the Saint : Patterns of Power in Early Medieval Europe, ed. Joyce Hill and Mary Swan (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998), pp. 237-264.
  • Kelly, Henry Ansgar, The Devil, Demonology, and Witchcraft (New York, rev. 1974).
  • Kieckhefer, Richard, European Witch Trials: Their Foundations in Popular and Learned Culture, 1300-1500 (London: Routledge, 1976).
  • Kieckhefer, Richard, "The Holy and the Unholy: Sainthood, Witchcraft, and Magic in Late Medieval Europe," Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 24 (1994), 355-85.
  • Klaniczay, Göbor, The Uses of Supernatural Power: The Transformation of Popular Religion in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, trans. Susan Singerman, ed. Karen Margolis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).
  • Lea, Henry Charles, A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages (New York, 1955).
  • Lea, Henry Charles, Materials toward a History of Witchcraft (New York, 1957).
  • Levack, Brian P., ed. Articles on Witchcraft, Magic and Demonology: A Twleve Volume Anthology of Scholarly Articles (New York, 1992).
  • MacKinney, Loren C., "An Unpublished Treatise on Medicine and Magic from the Age of Charlemagne," Speculum 18 (1943), 494-96.
  • Meaney, Audrey L., "Women, Witchcraft and Magic in Anglo-Saxon England," Superstition and Popular Medicine in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. D. G. Scragg (Manchester: Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies, 1989), pp. 9-40.
  • Meens, Rob, "Magic and the Early Medieval World View," The Community, the Family and the Saint: Patterns of Power in Early Medieval Europe, ed. Joyce Hill and Mary Swan (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998), 285-95.
  • Monter, William, Ritual, Myth, and Magic in Early Modern Europe (Athens, Ohio, 1983).
  • Muchembled, Robert, ed., Magie et Sorcellerie en Europe du Moyen Age ù nos jours (Paris: Armand Colin, 1994).
  • Murdoch, Brian, "Peri hieres nousou: An Approach to the Old High German Medical Charms," Mit regulu bithungan, ed. J. L. Flood and D. N. Yeandle (Gðppingen, 1989), 142-60.
  • Murray, Alexander, "Medieval Origins of the Witch Hunt," The Cambridge Quarterly 7 (1976), 63-74.
  • Nelson, Marie, "`Wordsige and Worcsige': Speech Acts in Three Old English Charms," Language and Style 17 (1984), 57-66.
  • Nie, Giselle de, "Caesarius of Arles and Gregory of Tours: Two Sixth-Century Gallic Bishops and `Christian Magic,'" Cultural Identity and Cultural Integration: Ireland and Europe in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Doris Edel (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1995), 170-96.
  • Nðth, Winfried, "Semiotics of the Old English Charm," Semiotica 19 (1977), 59-83.
  • Pack, Roger A., "A treatise on prognostications by Venancius of Moerbeke, " Archives d'Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Age 43 (1976), 311-22.
  • Partner, Peter, The Murdered Magicians: The Templars and their Myth (Oxford, 1981).
  • *Peters, Edward. The Magician, The Witch, and The Law. Philadelphia, 1978.
  • Pinto, Lucille B., "Medical Science and Superstition: A Report on a Unique Medical Scroll of the Eleventh-Twelfth Century," Manuscripta 17 (1973), 12-21.
  • Remly, Lynn L., "Magic, Myth, and Medicine: The Veterinary Art in the Middle Ages (9th-15th Centuries)," Fifteenth Century Studies 2 (1979), 203-09.
  • Riché, Pierre, "La magie a l'époque carolingienne" Comptes Rendus des Séance de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres 1 (1973), 127-138.
  • Runeberg, Arne. Witches, Demons, and Fertility Magic (Helsingfors, 1947).
  • Russell, James C., The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity: A Sociohistorical Approach to Religious Transformation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
  • *Russell, Jeffrey B., A History of Witchcraft: Sorcerers, Heretics and Pagans (London: Thames and Hudson, 1980).
  • *Russell, Jeffrey B., Witchcraft in the Middle Ages. New York, 1972.
  • Russell, Jeffrey B., The Prince of Darkness: Radical Evil and the Power of Good in History (Ithaca: New York, 1988). See also the four volume series The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity (1977); Satan: The Early Christian Tradition (1981); Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages (1984); and Mephistopheles: The Devil in the Modern World (1986).
  • Schäfer, Peter, "Jewish Magic Literature in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages," Journal of Jewish Studies 41: 75-91.
  • Scragg, D. G., ed., Superstition and Popular Medicine in Anglo-Saxon England (Manchester: Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies, 1989).
  • Segl, Peter, ed., Der Hexenhammer: Entstehung und Umfeld des Malleus Maleficarum von 1487 (Colgone, 1988).
  • Smallwood, T.M., "`God was Born in Bethlehem...': The Tradition of a Middle English Charm," Medium Âvum 58 (1989), 206-23.
  • Spargo, John Webster, Virgil the Necromancer: Studies in Virgilian Legends (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934).
  • Stanley, Eric Gerald, The Search for Anglo-Saxon Paganism (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1975).
  • Stannard, Jerry, "Magiferous plants and magic in medieval medical botany," Maryland Historian 8 (1977), no. 2, 33-46.
  • Thompson, Stith, Motif-index of folk-literature; a classification of narrative elements in folktales, ballads, myths, fables, mediaeval romances, exempla, fabliaux, jest-books, and local legends, 6 vols. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1955-58).
  • Trachtenberg, Joshua, Jewish Magic and Superstition (New York, 1939; 1970).
  • Veenstra, J. R. Magic and Divination at the Courts of Burgundy and France: Text and Context of Laurens Pignon's Contre les devineurs (1411). Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1998).
  • Weston, L. M. C., "Women's Medicine, Women's Magic: The Old English Metrical Childbirth Charms," Modern Philology 92 (1995), 279-293.
  • Zier, Mark, "The Healing Power of the Hebrew Tongue: An Example from Late Thirteenth-Century England," in Health, Disease and Healing in Medieval Culture, ed. Sheila Campbell, Bert Hall, and David Klausner (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992).
  • Yates, Frances A., Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964).

Magic in other Times or Places (outside Western Europe or outside the Middle Ages)

  • Budge, E. A. W., Syriac Anatomy, Pathology and Therapeutic (London, 1913).
  • Gaster, Moses, Studies and Texts in Folklore, Magic, Mediaeval Romance, Hebrew Apocrypha and Samaritan Archaeology, (London, 1925-28, repr. New York: Ktav, 1971).
  • Graf, Fritz, Magic in the Ancient World (Cambridge, MA, 1997).
  • Greenfield, Richard P.H., Traditions of Belief in Late Byzantine Demonology (Amsterdam: Adolf M. Haddert, 1988).
  • Kee, Howard Clark, Medicine, Miracle and Magic in New Testament Times (Cambridge, 1986).
  • Lesses, Rebeca, "Speaking with angels: Jewish and Greco-Egyptian revelatory adjurations," Harvard Theological Review, 89 (1996), 41-60.
  • Luck, Georg, Arcana Mundi: Magic and the Occult in the Greek and Roman Worlds (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1985).
  • Maguire, Henry, ed. Byzantine Magic (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks and Harvard University Press, 1995).
  • Meyer, Marvin and Richard Smith, eds., Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual Power (1994).
  • Mirecki, Paul, "The Coptic Wizard's Hoard," Harvard Theological Review 87 (1994), 435-60.
  • Tavenner, Eugene, Studies in Magic from Latin Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1916; repr. AMS Press, 1966).

Primary Sources

  • St. Augustine, City of God, books 8-10.
  • Albertus Magnus, The book of secrets of Albertus Magnus of the virtues of herbs, stones and certain beasts, also A book of the marvels of the world. Edited by Michael R. Best and Frank H. Brightman (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1973).
  • Caesarius of Heisterbach, The Dialogue on Miracles, 2 vols., trans. H. von E. Scott and C. C. Swinton Bland (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1929).
  • Dawson, Warren R., ed. and trans., A Leechbook or Collection of Medical Recipes of the Fifteenth Century (London: Macmillan, 1934).
  • Davidson, L.S. and J. O. Ward, The Sorcery Trial of Alice Kyteler (Binghamton, 1993).
  • Ficino, Marsilio, Three Books on Life: A Critical Edition and Translation with Introduction and Notes, ed. and trans. Carol V. Kaske and John R. Clark (Bingampton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1988).
  • Grattan, J. H. G. and Charles Singer, Anglo-Saxon Magic and Medicine, illustrated specially from the semi-pagan text `Lacnunga' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952; repr. Folcroft, 1971).
  • Isidore of Seville, Isidori Hispalensis episcopi Etymologiarum sive Originvm libri XX, ed. W.M. Lindsay (Oxford, 1911).
  • Jacob de Voragine, The Golden Legend, 2 vols., trans. William Granger Ryan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).
  • John of Salisbury, Frivolities of Courtiers and Footprints of Philosophers, trans. Joseph B. Pike (London: Oxford University Press, 1938).
  • Kieckhefer, Richard, Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer's Manual of the Fifteenth Century (UK: Sutton Press, 1997; University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press).
  • Krämer, Heinrich and Jakob Sprenger, The Malleus maleficarum, trans. Montague Summers (London: Pushkin, 1928).
  • Pliny, Natural History, esp books 28-37.
  • Selmer, C., "An Unpublished Old High German Blood Charm," Journal of English and Germanic Philology 51 (1952), pp. 345-54.
  • Townsend, David, The Alexandreis of Walter of Ch¹tillon: A Twelfth Century Epic (Philadelphia, 1996).

collections

  • Cockayne, Oswald, ed. and trans., Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England, 3 vols. Rolls Series (London, 1864-66; repr. London: Holland Press, 1961).
  • Dutton, Paul Edward, ed., Carolingian Civilization: A Reader (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 1993).
  • Hampp, Irmgard, Beschwörung, Segen, Gebet: Untersuchungen zum Zauberspruch aus dem Bereich der Volksheilkunde (Stuttgart: Silberburg, 1961).
  • Hansen, Joseph, ed., Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Hexenwahns und der Hexenverfolgung im Mittelalter (Bonn: Georgi, 1901).
  • Hansen, Joseph, Zauberwahn, Inquisition und Hexen prozess im Mittelalter und die Entstehung der Grossen Hexenverfolgung (Munich, 1900).
  • Hillgarth, J. N., ed, Christianity and Paganism, 350-750: The Conversion of Western Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986).
  • Hunt, Tony, Popular Medicine in Thirteenth-Century England: Introduction and Texts (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1990).
  • Kors, Alan C., and Edward Peters, eds., Witchcraft in Europe, 1100-1700: A Documentary History (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1939).
  • McNeill, John T. and Helena M., Gamer, Medieval Handbooks of Penance (New York: Octagon Books, 1965).
  • Ohrt, F., Danmarks Trylleformler [The magic formulae of Denmark"] (Copenhagen, 1921).
  • Shinners, John, ed., Medieval Popular Religion, 1000-1500: A Reader (Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 1997).
  • Spamer, Adolf and Johanna Nickel, Romanusbüchlein: Historisch-philologischer Kommentar zu einem deutschen Zauberbuch (Berlin: Akademie-Berlag, 1958).
  • Storms, Godfrid, ed. and trans., Anglo-Saxon Magic (Halle: Nijhoff, 1948; repr. Folcroft, PA: Folcroft Library Editions, 1975).
  • Van Haver, Jozef, Nederlandse Incantatieliteratuur: Een gecommentarieerd compendium van Nederlandse bezweringsformules (Gent: Secretariaat van de Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie voor Taal-en Letterkunde, 1964).
  • Wakefield, Walter L. and Austin P. Evans, trans. and ed., Heresies of the High Middle Ages: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated (New York, Columbia University Press, 1969; rev. 1991).


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