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Loading... Hazards of the Dark Arts: Advice for Medieval Princes on Witchcraft and Magic (Magic in History Sourcebooks) (2017)by Richard Kieckhefer
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. The title is a conscious reference to Harry Potter, but these are straightforward ytanslations of two fifteenth century texts denouncing a wide range of magical practices, both learned and popular one originally in German and the other originally in Latin. Hartlieb, the author of the German text, and the noble patron for whom he wrote it, Margrave Johann "the Alchemist" of Brandenburg-Kulmbach, both had a reputations for knowing more about the dark arts than was quite respectable, and Hartlieb' s main patron, Duke Albrecht III of Austria, had had a mistress (or wife) drowned as a witch, whose daughter Hartlieb may have married. The book combines very informed descriptions of magic (chiefly divination) with apparently earnest pleas to suppress it. Molitoris had a more conventional posito as a lcreical eemy of magic. ( ) no reviews | add a review
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. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)133.4Philosophy and Psychology Parapsychology And Occultism Specific Topics Witchcraft - SorceryLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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