Binding Words: Textual Amulets in the Middle Ages (review)

The topic of "magic" never fails to arouse interest, even in what Weber described as our "disenchanted" modern world. Yet I would contend that hardly any two of us can be found today to agree on exactly what the word "magic" means. Convinced that empirical historical research will do much to dispel the confusion, the Pennsylvania State University Press recently began its monograph series, "Magic in History." Don Skemer's study on medieval textual amulets represents the latest return on what is already proving to be a remarkably profitable investment of scholarly and publishing resources.

As Skemer makes clear at the start, the object of his investigation consists of "apotropaic texts, handwritten or mechanically printed on . . . writing supports of varying dimensions" and "worn around the neck or placed elsewhere on the body" for protection against harmful enemies and spirits or to bring health and good fortune (p. 1). He emphasizes that such "textual amulets" are to be distinguished from "talismans"—reserved for "astrological seals and figures" procured and worn for similar purposes—and "charms"—referring simply to "speech acts" though again performed with much the same ends in mind (pp. 8-9). The Latin terms signifying his intended objects were, among the church fathers, "ligatura" and "phylacterium," but for most of the Middle Ages "charta," "cedula," "littera," "scriptura," or "breve." Most common among Middle English equivalents were "brief" and "writ." Though the author announces his intention to focus on textual amulets and their use from the thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries, in fact his book covers the subject well for the whole of the European Middle Ages.

What stands out in Skemer's approach is the commendable determination not to fall prey to preconceptions about the dividing line between magic and religion. Warning us that rationalism and Orientalism have encouraged most modern scholars to regard medieval textual amulets as residues of the "primitive" in ritual practices of the lower orders of society, he insists that an unbiased look reveals them instead as prevalent in the most orthodox Christian circles and just as—perhaps more—common among the elite as in the ranks of illiterate peasants. Late-antique intellectuals like Augustine might have fulminated against textual amulets as either fraudulent or dependent on demonic intervention, and Caesarius of Arles condemned their use as at best a sacrilege. But for most of the centuries between the sixth and the sixteenth, they were accepted by the majority of clergy and laity alike as—in Skemer's words—"a renewable source of Christian empowerment" (p. 1).

No doubt the primary use to which Skemer's volume will be put is as guidebook to actual amulets that have survived from the Middle Ages and index of amuletic practices witnessed in the extant sources. Though the quantity of material he has unearthed is well-nigh overwhelming, following his presentation through from beginning to end constitutes a first step in coming to grips with an historical world most of us can scarcely comprehend. From the seventh- or eighth-century pectoral cross found in Lausanne and inscribed with crosses and variations on the ancient charm "ABRACADABRA," through Roger Bacon's thirteenth-century praise of a textual amulet against epilepsy comprised of verses on the names of the Three Kings, to the fifteenth-century Malleus maleficarum's counseling inquisitors to protect themselves from evil spells by carrying on their person a parchment sheet bearing the Seven Last Words of Christ, the astounding variety of amulets and the diversity of purposes to which they were put defies any neat, modernizing understanding of their cultural valence.

Equally significant, however, is the historical progression Skemer has discerned beneath the mountain of evidence he has amassed. For the early centuries, ecclesiastics were the primary producers of amulets, even when they were intended for the laity. Only in the thirteenth century, with universities and increased lay literacy, did the situation start to change...