Demonic Possession and Lived Religion in Later Medieval Europe

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sari Katajala-Peltomaa
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Physical Symptoms ◽  
Lived Religion ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
Demonic Possession ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Significant Case ◽  
And Inversion ◽  
The Church ◽  
Spiritual State

This book focuses on conceptualizations of lived religion by analysing significant case studies from canonization processes (c. 1240–1450). Geographically it covers Western Europe and one of its aims is to compare Northern and Southern material and customs. ‘Lived religion’ is both a thematic approach and a methodology: a focus on rituals, symbols, and gestures as well as sensitivity to nuances and careful contextualizing of the sources are constitutive elements of the argumentation. Demonic possession was a spiritual state that often had physical symptoms. The main argument developed throughout is, however, that demonic possession was a social phenomenon which should be understood with regard to the community and culture. Each set of sources formed its own specific context, in which demonic presence derived from different motivations, reasonings, and methods of categorization. Rituals, gestures, emotions, and sensory elements in constructing demonic presence reveal negotiations over authority and agency. In the argumentation, the hierarchy between the ‘learned’ and ‘popular’ within religion is contested, as is a strict polarity between individual and collective religious participation. Cases of demonic possession demonstrate how the personal affected the communal, and vice versa, and how they were eventually transformed into discourses and institutions of the Church; that is, definitions of the miraculous and the diabolical. Alterity and inversion of identity, gender, and various forms of corporeality and the interplay between the sacred and diabolical are themes running throughout the volume.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Sari Katajala-Peltomaa
Keyword(s):  
Canon Law ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Lived Religion ◽  
Demonic Possession ◽  
Fields Of Study ◽  
Performative Space ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Way

This chapter contextualizes the phenomenon of demonic possession and discusses its medieval interpretations as well as demonstrating its connections to fields of study such as heresy, demonology, and witchcraft. It sets out the main analytical concept of lived religion and shows how demons were integral within it, intersecting cultural, communal, and individual levels. Religion created a performative space and demonic presence was a fluid and multifaceted category within it. This chapter introduces the corpus of source material and methodological elements of canonization processes: the final records were an outcome of collaboration between lay witnesses and the inquisitorial committee, an amalgam of personal choices in the use of rhetoric, communal memories of actual past events, and the demands of canon law and the miracle genre. Therefore, depositions reveal inconsistencies in the universalizing discourse of the Church and manifest local nuances in the way people lived their religion.

scholarly journals Civil war and religion in medieval Japan and medieval Europe: War for the Gods, emotions at death and treason

2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-287
Author(s):  
Philippe Buc
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Specific Form ◽  
Christian Belief ◽  
Holy War ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
Medieval Japan ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Compare And Contrast ◽  
The Church

To compare and contrast medieval Japan and medieval Western Europe allows one to discover three things. First, analogous to Catholic holy war, in Japan becomes visible a potential for war (albeit seldom actualised) for the sake, quite surprisingly, of Buddhism. Second, the different role played by emotions during war: in Europe, when vicious (and motivated by emotions such as greed, ambition or lust), they endanger the victors; thus the concern for right emotions foster, to a point, proper behavior during war; in Japan, however, the focus is on the emotions of the defeated, which may hamper a good reincarnation and produce vengeful spirits harmful to the victors and to the community at large. Finally, while Japanese warriors could and often did switch sides, the archipelago did not know for centuries anything approaching the European concept of treason, ideally punished with the highest cruelty, hated and feared to the point of generating collective paranoia and conspiracy theories. Western treason was (and is still) a secularised offspring of the Christian belief in the internal enemy of the Church, the false brethren. Arguably, the texture of the religions present in the two ensembles gave their specific form to these three aspects of warfare.

Conclusions

2020 ◽  
pp. 178-184
Author(s):  
Sari Katajala-Peltomaa
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Lived Religion ◽  
Geographical Differences ◽  
Demonic Possession ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Methodological Tool ◽  
Performative Space ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Demonic

This chapter shows how demonic possession was conceptualized as a lived experience of religion and argues that the diabolical had many functions within the miraculous. Lived religion as a methodological tool, a way to read the depositions of canonization processes, displays the way lay people used demons (not vice versa) in singling out and dealing with uncertainties in their lives. Religion-as-lived was built upon corporeal experiences; the performative space religion created was made real for the individual and the community by embodied signs and practices. As a fluid rhetorical resource, demons also facilitated a contribution to the construction of society and culture. The differences between lay and clerical spheres were visible when demonic possession involved female sexuality or the position of the clergy. Geographical differences demonstrate the limits of the Church’s universalizing discourse and challenge strict categorizations concerning gender, the demonic, and even medieval Europe as a single, coherent unity.

At the Edge of Reformation

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Linehan
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Black Death ◽  
The West ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
History Of ◽  
Portuguese Society ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

This book springs from its author’s continuing interest in the history of Spain and Portugal—on this occasion in the first half of the fourteenth century between the recovery of each kingdom from widespread anarchy and civil war and the onset of the Black Death. Focussing on ecclesiastical aspects of the period in that region (Galicia in particular) and secular attitudes to the privatization of the Church, it raises inter alios the question why developments there did not lead to a permanent sundering of the relationship with Rome (or Avignon) two centuries ahead of that outcome elsewhere in the West. In addressing such issues, as well as of neglected material in Spanish and Portuguese archives, use is made of the also unpublished so-called ‘secret’ registers of the popes of the period. The issues it raises concern not only Spanish and Portuguese society in general but also the developing relationship further afield of the components of the eternal quadrilateral (pope, king, episcopate, and secular nobility) in late medieval Europe, as well as of the activity in that period of those caterpillars of the commonwealth, the secular-minded sapientes. In this context, attention is given to the hitherto neglected attempt of Afonso IV of Portugal to appropriate the privileges of the primatial church of his kingdom and to advance the glorification of his Castilian son-in-law, Alfonso XI, as God’s vicegerent in his.

scholarly journals Old Russian Graffito Inscription in the Abbey of Saint-Gilles, South of France

Slovene ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 110-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne-Sophie Brun ◽  
Andreas Hartmann-Virnich ◽  
Estelle Ingrand-Varenne ◽  
Savva M. Mikheev
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Linguistic Analysis ◽  
The South ◽  
Archaeological Investigation ◽  
Southern France ◽  
Santiago De Compostela ◽  
Old Russian ◽  
Medieval Europe

The abbey of Saint-Gilles-du-Gard near Arles in the south of France was one of the most prominent pilgrimage sites in medieval Europe. Recent archaeological investigation has shown that construction of the abbey church, one of the most significant Romanesque pilgrimage churches in southern France, began ca. 1170/1180. The lower church (crypt) with the tomb of St. Giles (Lat. Aegidius, Fr. Gilles) and some of the walls of the upper church belong to that period. A well-preserved Cyrillic graffito was discovered on a pier of the upper church, close to the spot where the tomb of St. Giles is located in the crypt below. The text contains a prayer with a common formula: GI POMЪZI | RABU SVЪ|EMU SЬMKЪ|VI NINOSLA|VICHIU ‘Lord, help your servant Semko, son of Ninoslav.’ Palaeographic and linguistic analysis shows that the graffito is of Russian origin. It was probably made at some time between 1180 and 1250 by a pilgrim travelling from Russia to Santiago de Compostela, and it is the most geographically remote Old Russian graffito inscription discovered so far in western Europe.

scholarly journals Die liminale ruimte vir inkongruensie tussen predikant en lidmaat: ’n Narratief gebaseerde prakties-teologiese ondersoek in gemeentes van die Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk van Afrika

2010 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hein Delport ◽  
Julian C. Müller
Keyword(s):  
Practical Theology ◽  
Suspension Bridge ◽  
Church Member ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
Liminal Space ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
The Social ◽  
Unresolved Conflict ◽  
Practical Theological ◽  
The Church

Disagreements between pastors and church members in the Netherdutch Reformed Church of Africa (NRCH) require a unique space in the church in terms of a postmodern society. Different perspectives can easily lead to conflict in the Church. Unresolved conflict may jeopardise the work of the clergy in a congregation. In this research, I follow a contextual approach to the pursuit of practical theology. A postfundamental practical theological framework is followed in the research. The social construction discourse and narrative epistemology offer new perspectives for developing a liminal space where more than one perspective can exist. Within a society characterised by secularism and privatisation, I examine the possibility of a space of unity amid diversity in the Church. I involved six fellow researchers who have experienced conflict in a specific context within the Church. We also examined the possibility of an alternative space where moments of communitas can once again occur in these stories. The research found space for this in the description of two metaphors, namely the liminal suspension bridge of grace and the dance of peace. The stories of the fellow researchers are retold within these two metaphors. My research highlights the important contribution of an interdisciplinary conversation in research. In the study, the journey theme plays an important role, and the reader is invited along with the fellow researchers into a (liminal) space to explore the conflict between the church minister and the church member.

The Rise of the Dutch Spice Trade in the Middle Ages

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-12
Author(s):  
Wei Zheng ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Spice Trade ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
The Way

For medieval Europe, spices have always been of great significance, so the spice trade has become the object of competition for various countries in Western Europe. With the improvement of navigation technology, countries obsessed with spices have opened up the way to explore the origin of spices and monopolize the spices trade. Among them, the most typical country is the Netherlands. From the perspective of the spice trade, this paper discusses how the beneficiary of the spice trade, the Netherlands, has become a generation of marine hegemons by transferring spice to monopolizing the spice trade.

Segregation or Choice?

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maristella Botticini ◽  
Zvi Eckstein
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Iberian Peninsula ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Alternative Explanation ◽  
Historical Information ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
History Of ◽  
Salient Features ◽  
The Middle Ages

This chapter assesses the argument that both their exclusion from craft and merchant guilds and usury bans on Christians segregated European Jews into moneylending during the Middle Ages. Already during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, moneylending was the occupation par excellence of the Jews in England, France, and Germany and one of the main professions of the Jews in the Iberian Peninsula, Italy, and other locations in western Europe. Based on the historical information and the economic theory presented in earlier chapters, the chapter advances an alternative explanation that is consistent with the salient features that mark the history of the Jews: the Jews in medieval Europe voluntarily entered and later specialized in moneylending because they had the key assets for being successful players in credit markets—capital, networking, literacy and numeracy, and contract-enforcement institutions.

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