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The rise of magic in early medieval Europe (review)
- Parergon
- Australian and New Zealand Association of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (Inc.)
- Volume 10, Number 2, December 1992
- pp. 200-202
- 10.1353/pgn.1992.0060
- Review
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
200 Reviews was a far more drastic reorganization of land holding than has ordinarily been acknowledged. There are several misprints which cause no bother, but one wonders whether profferment (p. 6), proported (p. 86), Graem (p. 16, for Graeme) and parimeter (p. 195) were not in fact intentional. There are also numerous editorial failures which need amendment Thus: p. 26, footnote 28,1. 5 remove the apostrophe s; p. 60,1. 17 remove 'of; p. 131,11. 23-24 insert 'of before Robert and remove 'of after Malet and BerUng; p. 135,1. 13 for 'had' read 'was'; p. 151, footnote 34,1. 4 insert divisione before alique; p. 158,1. 25 for 'Osbert' read 'Osbern' (and enter the reference in the index, p. 254); p. 172,1. 5 for 'antecession' read 'succession'. Footnote 64 on p. 30 repeats (with a slight difference) what already appears in the text. Footnote 6 on p. 218 refers to 'thistext'without previous identification. O n p. 202, 11. 31, 33 the word 'temerity', as a translation of Latin timor is used as if it meant duress. On p. 126,1. 17 'he' should read 'him' and on p. 34,1. 16 and p. 48,1. 9 many would prefer 'whom' rather than 'who'. Are colloquialisms or slang acceptable in a learned work, even in this age of decay? Thus we find 'pinched' (p. 190,1.16) and 'grab a . . . chunk' (p. 196,11. 28-29). The Cambridge University Press has evidently wished to convert the author's language from American to British practice. This exercise has failed conspicuously since numerous original spellings remain (for example pp. 32, 35,134,186), and there are differences of grammar and idiom. The bibliography of original sources and secondarytextsis excellent. L. J. Downer Canberra Flint, Valerie I. J., The rise of magic in early medieval Europe, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1991; cloth; pp. xii, 452; R.R.P. A U S $ ?. Valerie Hint wants to try to make us 'think again about the hardly thinkable', namely the working of magic in the early Middle Ages, 'and, as far as possible, to demonstrate both its thinkability and its likelihood' (p. 395) Hint's original desire to think creatively and humanely about magic between the fourth and eleventh centuries arose, she says, because of the overwhelmingly dismissive and anachronistic attitude that virtually all Early Modern historians (and Keith Thomas in particular) have towards religion and the magical in the mdienium before Columbus. In this early modernist evolutionary vision of the past the historically thinkable, namely aU things rational and reasonable to the early-modem human and to the late-twentieth-century scholar, begins with printing and potatoes. Everything before this, the entire Middle Ages, lies in an unthinkable cloud of Dark Age superstition and irrationality. Flint's efforts to try to show the very human, the very rational, need for magic in the early Reviews 201 medieval world, as well as to emphasize the desperately hard task the historian has in trying to imagine a past culture, is what makes The rise of magic in early medieval Europe such a necessary and important book. Briefly, Flint's argument is that magic, primarily non-or pre-Christian, was incorporated into the process of Christianizing Europe by churchmen who were both opportunistic and rational (in the early modern sense). In the early medieval period the Church was not actively opposed to magic, despite outward displays of annoyance in the sermons of Agobard of Lyon or the penitenials of Burchard of Worms. O n the contrary, it viewed magic as a way offittingthe rhythms of Christianity into the previous magical rhythms of men and women in the European town and countryside. The rise in magic went hand in hand with the spread of Christianity. Flint even suggests that magic was a way in which a Christianizing culture maintained continuity with its past as bishops and monks endeavoured to alter the present. Flint teUs this story deftly and clearly. Nevertheless, there are pockets in the book, more to do with editing than scholarship, where her style is a little confusing, a touch clumsy, and overly mannered. The same is true of her use...