Stephen Wilson (2) (1941–)

The world is a strange and terrifying place in which arbitrary events often determine our happiness and even survival. While modern medicine, adequate food supplies and stable governments have done much to decrease random pain and suffering in this era, it was not always so. This book details medieval man and woman's attempts to control the forces of nature that acted on and in their everyday lives.

The book catalogues the magical practices and beliefs of the unpriveleged classes. Ritual magic of the more scholarly kind, a la Nostradamus, is mostly untouched. We are instead treated to an exhaustive treatment of the folk magic and religious beliefs which governed every aspect of lower class lives. The five sections of the book deal with agriculture, the human life cycle from conception to death, disease and healing, divination and signs and finally magical elements. The latter two sections are fairly brief while the bulk of the book treats the human life cycle.

My primary complaint about the book is that the author injects very little in the way of analysis. Instead a long list of detailed practices related to a given topic - for example christening - is presented. While the lack of analysis prevents the book from becoming a controversial diatribe, it also makes it read like one long review paper and leaves more questions than answers. Why, for example, did certain places seem plagued by werewolves, while others had witches or vampires as boogie men? What are the origins of the lucky numbers 3 and 7? How are ancient religious ideas (Roman, Celtic, Norse) involved in folk magic? This concentration on factual detail - the myriad ways of avoiding the evil eye, for example - leaves a very erudite book feeling just a little shallow. It's as if the author spent his whole life collecting anecdotes but never looked for overarching themes.

That said, I would strongly recommend this book as a scholarly resource for sociologic studies of medieval thought. It contains extensive reference notes and a very deep bibliography as well as a fine index. The enormous depth of detail might also be useful to those interested in the history of medicine or the medieval church. Finally, the book's wealth of anecdotes is a treasure trove for those who like to go to dinner parties and drop lines like "Did you know that the fifth consecutive child of the same sex was considered a werewolf in medieval Portugal."… (altro)