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36 results

Page 1 of 2

  • Chapter 2 - Visions of the Afterlife in the Early Medieval West

  • from Part I - Chronological Surveys
  • Edited by Richard Matthew Pollard, Université du Québec à Montréal
  • Book:
    Imagining the Medieval Afterlife
    Published online:
    07 December 2020
    Print publication:
    17 December 2020, pp 25-39

  • Summary

    From the sixth century onwards, numerous visions of the afterlife and the otherworld were recorded by authors who operated in the post-Roman barbarian West. The most prevailing characteristics of all these accounts are their brevity and conciseness. More often than not, these stories were integrated into a larger historical or hagiographic narrative, in an attempt to stress various political, religious, or cultural points. It was only towards the end of the Merovingian period, with the composition of the so-called Visio Baronti, that more comprehensive accounts of the afterlife began to appear in the West, and thus paved the way for the emergence of a new literary genre. This chapter discusses the evolution of these narratives, as well as the various possible reasons why travels to the otherworld became a seminal component in the historiographical and hagiographical tradition of the early medieval West.

East and West in the Early Middle Ages
  • Edited by Stefan Esders, Yaniv Fox, Yitzhak Hen, Laury Sarti
  • Published online:
    29 March 2019
    Print publication:
    04 April 2019
  • From their crystallisation in the late fifth century to their ultimate decline in the eighth, the Merovingian kingdoms were a product of a vibrant Mediterranean society with both a cultural past and a dynamic and ongoing dialogue between the member communities. By bringing together the scholarship of historians, archaeologists, art historians, and manuscript researchers, this volume examines the Merovingian world's Mediterranean connections. The Franks' cultural horizons spanned not only the Latin-speaking world, but also the Byzantine Empire, northern Europe, Sassanid Persia, and, after the seventh century, a quickly ascendant Islamic culture. Traces of a constant movement of people and cultural artefacts through this world are ubiquitous. As simultaneous consumers, adapters, and disseminators of culture, the degree to which the Merovingian kingdoms were thought to engage with their neighbours is re-evaluated as this volume analyses written accounts, archaeological findings and artefacts to provide new perspectives on Merovingian wide-ranging relations.

  • Chapter 6 - The Early Medieval West

  • from Part II - The Early Latin West
  • Edited by David J. Collins, S. J., Georgetown University, Washington DC
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Magic and Witchcraft in the West
    Published online:
    05 March 2015
    Print publication:
    02 March 2015, pp 183-206

  • Summary

    A curse tablet from fourth-century Attica exemplifies many aspects of what has come to be considered magic in Western thought/ Inscribed on a thick tablet. This chapter surveys the history of magic in Greece and Rome, up to and including the Republic, with the goal of illuminating both the emergence of magic as a discourse of alterity, or othering strategy, in Western thought. The corresponding influence this discourse had on the practice of rituals that came to be considered magic. Magic operated as a discourse of alterity that was part and parcel of the discourse of barbarism to marginalize certain people and practices, including peripatetic venders of cathartic healing, curse tablets, and unregulated domestic religion and women's control over it. The chapter also briefly surveys the debate among scholars of antiquity over defining magic and its use as a heuristic category for ancient societies in order to clarify how the operation of magic is understood as a social discourse.

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