Richard Kieckhefer

A fascinating 2000 study of natural and demonic magic within the broad context of medieval culture.

Magic in the Middle Ages

Forbidden Rites consists of an edition of one of the most interesting and important manuscripts of medieval magic that has yet come to light. In addition to the Latin text, Kieckhefer provides full commentary, including detailed analysis of the text and its contents, discussion of the historical context, translation of representative sections, and comparison with other necromantic texts of the late Middle Ages.

A Necromancer's Manual of the Fifteenth Century

Forbidden Rites

Nicholas Watson

Claire Fanger

Conjuring Spirits contains both general surveys and analyses of magical texts and manuscripts by distinguished scholars in a variety of disciplines. Included are chapters by Richard Kieckhefer and Robert Mathiesen on the Sworn Book of Honorius, Michael Camille on the Ars Notoria, John B. Friedman on the Secretum Philosophorum, Nicholas Watson on the McMaster text, and Elizabeth Wade on Lullian divination. The work also includes Juris Lidaka's edition of the Liber de Angelis, and an overview of late medieval English ritual manuscripts by Frank Klaassen. This book will be invaluable for scholars and other readers interested in ritual magic in the later Middle Ages.

Texts and Traditions of Medieval Ritual Magic

Conjuring Spirits

El exito obtenido por la Historia del tiempo, de Stephen Hawking, propicio la creacion, en 1991, de esta coleccion de divulgacion cientifica que fue dirigida durante largo tiempo por dos personas de formacion humanistica: de ahi ciertas contaminaciones al inicio de la coleccion. Sin embargo, cuando Jose Manuel Sanchez Ron se hizo cargo de ella, dio un aprobado a la gestion anterior. En esta coleccion, quiza la mas ambiciosa de todas las de divulgacion cientifica que se editan en espanol, se han publicado obras de Stephen Jay Gould, Carl Sagan, lan Stewart, Edward O. Wilson, Antonio Damasio, Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Ilya Prigogine, John D. Barrow, Rita Levi Montalcini, Richard P. Feynman, Roger Penrose, Steven Weinberg, Rachel Carson, Francisco Garcia Olmedo, Francisco Yndurain o Jose Manuel Sanchez Ron. La magia, tuvo, en la Europa medieval, un papel mucho mas importante de lo que solemos imaginar: es como una encrucijada donde confluyen ciencia y religion, la cultura popular con el mundo intelectual, donde se mezclan la vida cotidiana y ficcion.

La magia en la Edad Media

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1976.

Their Foundations in Popular and Learned Culture, 1300-1500

European Witch Trials

Preserved in the Bavarian State Library in Munich is a manuscript that few scholars have noticed and that no one in modern times has treated with the seriousness it deserves. Forbidden Rites consists of an edition of this medieval Latin text with a full commentary, including detailed analysis of the text and its contents, discussion of the historical context, translation of representative sections of the text, and comparison with other necromantic texts of the late Middle Ages. The result is the most vivid and readable introduction to medieval magic now available. Like many medieval texts for the use of magicians, this handbook is a miscellany rather than a systematic treatise. It is exceptional, however, in the scope and variety of its contents—prayers and conjurations, rituals of sympathetic magic, procedures involving astral magic, a catalogue of spirits, lengthy ceremonies for consecrating a book of magic, and other materials. With more detail on particular experiments than the famous thirteenth-century Picatrix and more variety than the Thesaurus Necromantiae ascribed to Roger Bacon, the manual is one of the most interesting and important manuscripts of medieval magic that has yet come to light.

A Necromancer’s Manual of the Fifteenth Century

Richard Alan Kieckhefer

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

Repression of Heresy in Medieval Germany

Thinking about church architecture has come to an impasse. Reformers and traditionalists are talking past each other. Statements from both sides are often strident and dogmatic. In Theology in Stone, Richard Kieckhefer seeks to help both sides move beyond the standoff toward a fruitful conversation about houses of worship. Drawing on a wide range of historical examples with an eye to their contemporary relevance, he offers new ideas about the meanings and uses of church architecture.

Church Architecture from Byzantium to Berkeley

Theology in Stone

In popular tradition witches were either practitioners of magic or people who were objectionable in some way, but for early European courts witches were heretics and worshippers of the Devil. This study concentrates on the period between 1300 and 1500 when ideas about witchcraft were being formed and witch-hunting was gathering momentum. It is concerned with distinguishing between the popular and learned ideas of witchcraft. The author has developed his own methodology for distinguishing popular from learned concepts, which provides adequate substantiation for the acceptance of some documents and the rejection of others. This distinction is followed by an analysis of the contents of folk tradition regarding witchcraft, the most basic feature of which is its emphasis on sorcery, including bodily harm, love magic, and weather magic, rather than diabolism. The author then shows how and why learned traditions became superimposed on popular notions âe" how people taken to court for sorcery were eventually convicted on the further charge of devil worship. The book ends with a description of the social context of witch accusations and witch trials.

This book gives a concise history of Christian theology based on a mysteriously discovered set of seventy-four limericks. Readers who already know the history of theology will read about it from an unfamiliar perspective ? and beginners will learn the basics in an accessible form. The limericks range from Gnostic theology through to the Reformation, and on to Karl Barth and Paul Tillich. If all of this seems unfamiliar, the accompanying text should help sort it all out.

A Short History of Theology

There Once Was a Serpent

George D. Bond

Every major religion exalts certain individuals who occupy a dual role. On the one hand they serve as exemplars of virtue to be imitated, and on the other hand they stand removed from other mortals, privileged and unique. Christianity knows them as saints, and in the study of religion the term has been taken over and applied to similar figures in other traditions. The essays in this volume analyze the role of the saint in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism, providing both a comparative and an interpretive view of sainthood. The notion of sainthood is problematic in two ways. First, can the category be usefully applied to individuals in religious traditions other than Christianity? How has it manifested itself, and what differences are there in the various manifestations of sainthood? Second, where individuals are considered to have risen above the norms in these different traditions, how is it possible to resolve the tension between the saint's imitability and his or her otherness, between imitating and venerating the saint? The authors consider these questions in relation to a wide range of individuals in all the major traditions.

Its Manifestations in World Religions

Sainthood

In popular tradition witches were either practitioners of magic or people who were objectionable in some way, but for early European courts witches were heretics and worshippers of the Devil. This study concentrates on the period between 1300 and 1500 when ideas about witchcraft were being formed and witch-hunting was gathering momentum. It is concerned with distinguishing between the popular and learned ideas of witchcraft. The author has developed his own methodology for distinguishing popular from learned concepts, which provides adequate substantiation for the acceptance of some documents and the rejection of others. This distinction is followed by an analysis of the contents of folk tradition regarding witchcraft, the most basic feature of which is its emphasis on sorcery, including bodily harm, love magic, and weather magic, rather than diabolism. The author then shows how and why learned traditions became superimposed on popular notions – how people taken to court for sorcery were eventually convicted on the further charge of devil worship. The book ends with a description of the social context of witch accusations and witch trials.

Richard Kieckhefer

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