Medieval Magic and the Supernatural

On Thursday 29th May, the Oxford Medieval Society welcomed Dr Sophie Page and Dr Carl Watkins to discuss 'Medieval Magic and the Supernatural.' This topic challenges us methodologically to unravel complex cultural concepts, as 'magic' and 'supernatural' are hard to define. Sophie and Carl are familiar with these challenges, as they have both worked extensively on these issues in the High Middle Ages. Sophie's interest in magic has grown out of her studies of the manuscript traditions of texts about magic theory and astrology. Carl takes a literary approach to systems of belief, working with narrative sources such as chronicles and hagiography. Together, they were able to talk us through how they approach some issues that come up in their research in this field.

Sophie introduced the topic of magic by exploring some issues of definitions. The boundaries around magic are blurred for the historian who might want to separate it from 'rational' aspects of intellectual culture; but this very blurring of boundaries was fundamental to medieval concepts of magic as a form of knowledge that was at once non-mainstream and elite. Sophie challenged the assumption that those who wrote about or read about magic were subversive - in particular, Richard Kieckhefer's suggestion that this was a vent for disgruntled clerics who had missed out on promotions seems too simplistic. Magical manuscripts produced by the community of St Augustine's Abbey Canterbury (which is the focus of Sophie's recent book) demonstrate that magic could be studied even in highly prestigious, mainstream contexts. Sophie argued that magic needs to be viewed as an intellectual activity integrated into its context, complete with all of its paradoxes. She suggested that we adopt a broad working definition for magic, as 'a practical art that offered the tools to manipulate the cosmos.' Such a holistic approach to magic allows us to see how it could relate to both the natural world of animals and the spiritual world of angels and demons, all in the same tradition. Likewise, such a broad definition of magic allows us to see more variety in the ways that it was deployed by writers and communities. For example, Sophie explained how the translation of theoretical texts from Arabic into Latin was an opportunity for different approaches to emerge, with some translators removing magical content from their texts, and others keeping it.

Carl explained similar issues of definitions in his recent research on visions of the dead. Medieval texts display two traditions for describing apparitions of the dead. On the one hand, moralising ghosts were portrayed as abstract visions warning the living of the threat of purgatory and hell. On the other hand, the dead who played a more central role in narratives, interacting with the living in diverse ways, were often described in tangible bodily terms. This distinction seems to be a specific feature of Medieval texts, as descriptions of visions of the dead from the Early Modern period follow only the second model, of tangible ghosts. Carl therefore encouraged us to think sensitively about how this variety of apparitions of the dead functioned in medieval thought. The historiographical and hagiographical sources that Carl works with employ these two forms of describing the living-dead in complex ways that don't fit some common assumptions about text and belief. For example, Carl pointed out that this is by no means a distinction between 'high' intellectual culture that employed accounts of the dead for moralistic metaphors, and 'low' uneducated culture that foolishly believed that the dead could return physically to earth. Like Sophie, Carl also suggested that medievalists need broader views and more sophisticated categories in order to grapple with this complex cultural phenomenon. For example, Carl pointed out that much of this literature has resonances with theories of purgatory, so we should view narratives about ghosts in the context of theological changes. In social terms, it is also possible that these narratives were used to articulate anxieties about death and community relationships - we can look to anthropology for comparative insights on these issues.

Laura Varnam, President of the Oxford Medieval Society, chaired a variety of questions that explored in more detail the case-studies presented by Sophie and Carl. It was particularly interesting to see that two distinct genres, the theoretical texts used by Sophie and the narrative texts used by Carl, brought out similar issues of contextualising the knowledge of authors and their place in broader intellectual traditions. We would like to thank Sophie and Carl for bringing together such interesting research issues.