Magic and Disbelief in Carolingian Lyon

The Middle Ages are often associated with credulity, especially toward magic, compared to modern Western society, which is often regarded as thoroughly disenchanted. Yet not all medieval people believed unhesitatingly in all magical practices. The early ninth-century Carolingian archbishop Agobard of Lyon described a remarkable system of weather-magic widely believed by people in his diocese of which he was completely skeptical. He justified his disbelief through references to biblical texts, but this study argues that his disbelief was grounded in his own encounters with and investigations of these magical practices, and focused only on certain elements within them.

Prayer and Incantation on Early Christian Amulets: Authoritative Traditions, Ritual Practices, and Material Objects

In this paper, I examine the manifold ways late antique Christian practitioners (ca. III–VII CE) negotiated the boundaries between Christian prayers and traditional amuletic practices. I supplement recent research, which has usefully demonstrated the overlapping characteristics of prayers and incantations, by focusing on the semantic range and principal traits of the term euchê (and its cognates) when it is present on Greek and Coptic amulets and ritual handbooks. My analysis is further augmented by a discussion of how some practitioners diminished or highlighted the material properties of prayers in their apotropaic and curative rituals.