Medieval people practised magic. To think about the history of medieval magic is to think about a wide swathe of human activities and anxieties, from the prevention of illness to the pursuit of wealth, from the hunt for military glory to ensuring personal safety during travel. Magical practices were everywhere. and practised at every level of society. Medieval people also, worried about magic. The line between scholarship and heresy, the miracles of saints, and the practices of witches and necromancers was fine and contested. For some medieval thinkers, religion and magic were as obviously opposed as scientific method and magical thinking are in the twenty-first century. For others, magic was a respectable branch of learning, supported by authority and tradition, new learning from the Muslim world, and precedent from Christian teaching. Magic in the Medieval West explores this important area of medieval life. It presents the challenges and the opportunities of discovering what practices were actually followed by medieval people, what they thought others were up to, and how these related to their wider understanding of the world they inhabited. It takes advantage of the unique manuscript resources available in Oxford, the expanding body of primary sources now available in translation, and the increasingly rich scholarship on this important area of medieval social and cultural history.
4-5 units · Letter (ABCD/NP) · GER: WAY-SI
Medieval people practised magic. To think about the history of medieval magic is to think about a wide swathe of human activities and anxieties, from the prevention of illness to the pursuit of wealth, from the hunt for military glory to ensuring personal safety during travel. Magical practices were everywhere. and practised at every level of society. Medieval people also, worried about magic. The line between scholarship and heresy, the miracles of saints, and the practices of witches and necromancers was fine and contested. For some medieval thinkers, religion and magic were as obviously opposed as scientific method and magical thinking are in the twenty-first century. For others, magic was a respectable branch of learning, supported by authority and tradition, new learning from the Muslim world, and precedent from Christian teaching. Magic in the Medieval West explores this important area of medieval life. It presents the challenges and the opportunities of discovering what practices were actually followed by medieval people, what they thought others were up to, and how these related to their wider understanding of the world they inhabited. It takes advantage of the unique manuscript resources available in Oxford, the expanding body of primary sources now available in translation, and the increasingly rich scholarship on this important area of medieval social and cultural history.
Offered in Autumn 2025, Spring 2026 at Stanford University.