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Fever, sun, and blood: sermons, amulets, and incantations as sources for magical practices in Medieval Europe
Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Centre for Medieval Studies.ORCID iD: 0009-0004-4602-2747
Number of Authors: 12024 (English)In: Scandinavian Journal of History, ISSN 0346-8755, E-ISSN 1502-7716, Vol. 49, no 4, p. 421-444Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

This paper presents a novel method to access lived religion and magical practices of a Medieval congregation via sermons combined with material culture. Previously, scholars have dismissed sermons as having low ‘truth value’ due to the copying inherent in the genre. In this paper, I first examine how one Danish sermon was adapted from a German model to fit a local context. This adaptation reveals specific local practices that the preacher thought were relevant to his congregation. Secondly, I demonstrate how several practices described in the sermons are mirrored in surviving non-normative material evidence such as amulets and incantations in manuscripts. This interdisciplinary combination of sermon studies, magic studies, archaeology, and medieval studies yields an as-yet-untapped source group. The paper concludes that 1) sermons can indeed be used as sources for magical practices and lived religion, and 2) they can be used as sources for practices that did not leave material evidence. Finally, discussions of the importance of material evidence in sermon studies and how magical practices were both locally anchored and part of an international network are broached.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2024. Vol. 49, no 4, p. 421-444
Keywords [en]
Magic, sermons, amulets, incantations, late middle ages, Denmark
National Category
History
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:su:diva-229363DOI: 10.1080/03468755.2024.2345406ISI: 001217219600001Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85192169265OAI: oai:DiVA.org:su-229363DiVA, id: diva2:1860361
Available from: 2024-05-24 Created: 2024-05-24 Last updated: 2024-09-05Bibliographically approved

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Dalsgaard, Clara

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CiteExportLink to record
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Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
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  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
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Output format
  • html
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  • asciidoc
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