Communicating with the Spirits

Table of Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Illustrations ..................................................................................... vii Introduction by Gábor Klaniczay and Éva Pócs ............................... 1 Part I Discernment of Spirits and Possession Nancy Caciola, Breath, Heart, Guts: The Body and Spirits in the Middle Ages ................................................................................... 21 Renata Mikolajczyk, Non sunt nisi phantasiae et imaginationes: a Medieval Attempt at Explaining Demons ............................... 40 Moshe Sluhovsky, Discerning Spirits in Early Modern Europe . 53 Sophie Houdard, Mystics or Visionaries? Discernment of Spirits in the First Part of the Seventeenth Century in France ............ 71 Éva Pócs, Possession Phenomena, Possession-systems. Some East-Central European Examples ................................................. 84 Part II Contacts with the Other World Wolfgang Behringer, How Waldensians Became Witches: Heretics and Their Journey to the Other World ........................ 155 Tok Thompson, Hosting the Dead: Thanotopic Aspects of the Irish Sidhe ............................................................................................. 193 Roberto Dapit, Visions of the Other World as Narrated in Contemporary Belief Legends from Resia .................................. 204 vi Part III Divination, Shamanism Christa Tuczay, Trance Prophets and Diviners in the Middle Ages ......................................................................................................... 215 Peter Buchholz, Shamanism in Medieval Scandinavian Literature .............................................................................................. 234 Rune Blix Hagen, The King, the Cat, and the Chaplain. King Christian IV’s Encounter with the Sami Shamans of Northern Norway and Northern Russia in 1599 ................................ 246 List of Contributors ................................................................................... 264 Index .............................................................................................................. 269 Compiled by Ágnes Hesz (notions) and Judit Kis-Halas (personal names and place names) ...