Review by Choice Review
Historian Rider (Univ. of Exeter, UK) builds on her well-received first book, Magic and Impotence in the Middle Ages (2006), with a broader study on what educated medieval English churchmen considered the proper relationship between Christian religion and magic. She skillfully avoids earlier historiographical extremes of either labeling medieval religion as "Christian magic" or characterizing folk magic as popular religion, and she takes medieval sensibilities on their own terms. Clearly aware of both the value and the limitations of pastoral manuals, the author uses them to maximum benefit as her primary source base. There she finds a broad though skeptical pastoral tolerance for traditional folk customs--use of amulets, blessings, charms--directed against the dangers of an uncertain world. This thereby acknowledges a diverse middle ground between empowering Christian religious rituals and dangerous magical practices of divination or healing that invoked demonic power (though many churchmen were skeptical of this). A pragmatic clerical attitude toward human impulses proved the norm unless such folk rituals either were conflated with Christian religious rituals and objects or risked demonic magic. Rider herself evinces a pastoral appreciation of the human condition with its manifold worries while maintaining the medieval distinctions between folk customs, religion, and magic. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty. J. P. Huffman Messiah College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
