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Article: Shaping superstition in late medieval England.(Report)
- Article from:
- Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft
- Article date:
- June 22, 2008
- Author:
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Copyright informationCOPYRIGHT 2008 University of Pennsylvania Press. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Superstition occupied an ambiguous place in late medieval England. While elsewhere in fifteenth-century Europe the clergy increasingly reviled superstitions in everyday practices as the fearful portal allowing the devil's entry into human affairs, this certainty faltered in England. (1) The English clergy never ignored beliefs and practices they termed "superstitious," describing, analyzing, and denouncing them in preachers' handbooks, confessors' manuals, and especially vernacular religious treatises intended for lay women and men. Church courts heard cases of superstition, divination, prophesying, and charm making, prohibited activities whose kinship led them to be treated ...
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