The computer revolution is upon us. The future of books and of reading are debated. Will there be books in the next millennium? Will we still be reading? As uncertain as the answers to these questions might be, as clear is the message about the value of the book expressed by medieval writers. The contributors to the volume The Book and the Magic of Reading in the Middle Ages explore the significance of the written document as the key icon of a whole era. Both philosophers and artists, both poets and clerics wholeheartedly subscribed to the notion that reading and writing represented essential epistemological tools for spiritual, political, religious, and philosophical quests. To gain a deeper understanding of the cultural significance of the medieval book, the contributors to this volume examine pertinent statements by medieval philosophers and French, German, English, Spanish, and Italian poets.

How was magic practiced in medieval times? How did it relate to the diverse beliefs and practices that characterized this fascinating period? This much revised and expanded new edition of Magic in the Middle Ages surveys the growth and development of magic in medieval Europe. It takes into account the extensive new developments in the history of medieval magic in recent years, featuring new material on angel magic, the archaeology of magic, and the magical efficacy of words and imagination. Richard Kieckhefer shows how magic represents a crossroads in medieval life and culture, examining its relationship and relevance to religion, science, philosophy, art, literature, and politics. In surveying the different types of magic that were used, the kinds of people who practiced magic, and the reasoning behind their beliefs, Kieckhefer shows how magic served as a point of contact between the popular and elite classes, how the reality of magical beliefs is reflected in the fiction of medieval literature, and how the persecution of magic and witchcraft led to changes in the law.

"Explores two principal genres of illicit learned magic in late Medieval manuscripts: image magic, which could be interpreted and justified in scholastic terms, and ritual magic, which could not"--Provided by publisher.

A young apprentice learns to tap his own wellspring of creativity with the help of the magical margins of an illuminated manuscript in this story about patience, talent, and imagination. Full color.

Stephen A. Mitchell here offers the fullest examination available of witchcraft in late medieval Scandinavia. He focuses on those people believed to be able—and who in some instances thought themselves able—to manipulate the world around them through magical practices, and on the responses to these beliefs in the legal, literary, and popular cultures of the Nordic Middle Ages. His sources range from the Icelandic sagas to cultural monuments much less familiar to the nonspecialist, including legal cases, church art, law codes, ecclesiastical records, and runic spells. Mitchell's starting point is the year 1100, by which time Christianity was well established in elite circles throughout Scandinavia, even as some pre-Christian practices and beliefs persisted in various forms. The book's endpoint coincides with the coming of the Reformation and the onset of the early modern Scandinavian witch hunts. The terrain covered is complex, home to the Germanic Scandinavians as well as their non-Indo-European neighbors, the Sámi and Finns, and it encompasses such diverse areas as the important trade cities of Copenhagen, Bergen, and Stockholm, with their large foreign populations; the rural hinterlands; and the insular outposts of Iceland and Greenland. By examining witches, wizards, and seeresses in literature, lore, and law, as well as surviving charm magic directed toward love, prophecy, health, and weather, Mitchell provides a portrait of both the practitioners of medieval Nordic magic and its performance. With an understanding of mythology as a living system of cultural signs (not just ancient sacred narratives), this study also focuses on such powerful evolving myths as those of "the milk-stealing witch," the diabolical pact, and the witches' journey to Blåkulla. Court cases involving witchcraft, charm magic, and apostasy demonstrate that witchcraft ideologies played a key role in conceptualizing gender and were themselves an important means of exercising social control.

During the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries a group of monks with occult interests donated what became a remarkable collection of more than thirty magic texts to the library of the Benedictine abbey of St. Augustine’s in Canterbury. The monks collected texts that provided positive justifications for the practice of magic and books in which works of magic were copied side by side with works of more licit genres. In Magic in the Cloister, Sophie Page uses this collection to explore the gradual shift toward more positive attitudes to magical texts and ideas in medieval Europe. She examines what attracted monks to magic texts, in spite of the dangers involved in studying condemned works, and how the monks combined magic with their intellectual interests and monastic life. By showing how it was possible for religious insiders to integrate magical studies with their orthodox worldview, Magic in the Cloister contributes to a broader understanding of the role of magical texts and ideas and their acceptance in the late Middle Ages.

After discussing the terminology of talismanic magic (or necromancy) and its position in divisions of science in the Middle Ages, this book traces the history of talismanic texts from the Classical period through the Arabic world to the Latin Middle Ages. The principal authorities are Hermes and Aristotle, and the search for the ’secret knowledge’ of these ancient sages is shown to have been a catalyst for the translating activity from Arabic into Latin in 12th-century Spain. The second half of the volume is devoted to examples of the kinds of divination prevalent in Arabic and Latin-reading societies: chiromancy, onomancy, scapulimancy, geomancy and fortune-telling. The book ends with advice on when to practice alchemy and a prophetic letter of supposed Arabic provenance, warning of the coming of the Mongols. Several editions of previously unedited texts are included, with translations.

Having tried for years to unlock the secrets of the magical Book Without Words, old man Thorston dies in failure and the book is passed on to his servant, Sybil, and her magical raven who eagerly begin the process of breaking the code.