Hazards of the Dark Arts

Advice for Medieval Princes on Witchcraft and Magic

Buch | Softcover

168 Seiten

2022
Pennsylvania State University Press (Verlag)
978-0-271-07840-3 (ISBN)

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English translations of two important fifteenth-century writings on witchcraft by Johannes Hartlieb and Ulrich Molitoris. Introduction discusses the writings, the authors, their historical environments, the ways they used sources, and their influence on the development of ideas about witchcraft.

This volume comprises English translations of two fundamentally important texts on magic and witchcraft in the fifteenth century: Johannes Hartlieb’s Book of All Forbidden Arts and Ulrich Molitoris’s On Witches and Pythonesses. Written by laymen and aimed at secular authorities, these works advocated that town leaders and royalty alike should vigorously uproot and prosecute practitioners of witchcraft and magic.

Though inquisitors and theologians promulgated the witch trials of late medieval times, lay rulers saw the prosecutions through. But local officials, princes, and kings could be unreliable; some were skeptical about the reality and danger of witchcraft, while others dabbled in the occult themselves. Borrowing from theological and secular sources, Hartlieb and Molitoris agitated against this order in favor of zealously persecuting occultists. Organized as a survey of the seven occult arts, Hartlieb’s text is a systematic treatise on the dangers of superstition and magic. Molitoris’s text presents a dialogue on the activities of witches, including vengeful sorcery, the transformation of humans into animals, and fornication with the devil. Taken together, these tracts show that laymen exerted significant influence on ridding society of their imagined threat.

Precisely translated by Richard Kieckhefer, Hazards of the Dark Arts includes an insightful introduction that discusses the authors, their sources and historical environments, the writings themselves, and the influence they had in the development of ideas about witchcraft.

Richard Kieckhefer is Sarah Rebecca Roland Professor of Religious Studies at Northwestern University and author of Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer’s Manual of the Fifteenth Century (Penn State, 1998).

Contents

List of illustrations

List of Abbreviations

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Johannes Hartlieb, The Book of All Forbidden Arts

[A.] Prologue

[B.] Powers of the Devil

[C.] An example from Caesarius of Heisterbach

[D.] Moral exhortation

[E.] Nygramancy (necromancy)

[F.] Geomancy

[G.] Correlation of arts with elements

[H.] Hydromancy

[I.] Aeromancy

[J.] Pyromancy

[K.] Chiromancy

[L.] Spatulamancy

[M.] General prohibition

Ulrich Molitoris, On witches and pythonesses, in German “Unholden” or “Hexen”

Letter

[Part I]

1.Weather magic

2. Harm to humans and infants

3. Impotence

4. Change of form

5. Riding on sticks or wolves

6. Intercourse of Devil with women

7. Children born to demons and witches

8. Foretelling future things

[Part II]

Chaps. 1-3 resumed

Chap. 4 resumed

Chap. 5 resumed

Chaps. 6-7 resumed

Epilogue

Short bibliography

Erscheinungsdatum	06.05.2017
Reihe/Serie	Magic in History Sourcebooks
Übersetzer	Richard Kieckhefer
Zusatzinfo	7 Halftones, black and white
Verlagsort	University Park
Sprache	englisch
Maße	140 x 216 mm
Gewicht	249 g
Themenwelt	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie ► Esoterik / Spiritualität
	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Mittelalter
	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Neuzeit (bis 1918)
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Religionsgeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Christentum
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Weitere Religionen
ISBN-10	0-271-07840-5 / 0271078405
ISBN-13	978-0-271-07840-3 / 9780271078403
Zustand	Neuware