Enchanted Europe:Superstition, Reason, and Religion 1250-1750

Enchanted Europe:Superstition, Reason, and Religion 1250-1750

by Euan Cameron
Epub (Kobo), Epub (Adobe)
Publication Date: 16/09/2012

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Since the dawn of history people have used charms and spells to try to control their environment, and forms of divination to try to foresee the otherwise unpredictable chances of life. Many of these techniques were called 'superstitious' by educated elites.For centuries religious believers used 'superstition' as a term of abuse to denounce another religion that they thought inferior, or to criticize their fellow-believers for practising their faith 'wrongly'. From the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, scholars argued over what 'superstition' was, how to identify it, and how to persuade people to avoid it. Learned believers in demons and witchcraft, in their treatises and sermons, tried to make 'rational' sense of popular superstitions by blamingthem on the deceptive tricks of seductive demons.Every major movement in Christian thought, from rival schools of medieval theology through to the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment, added new twists to the debates over superstition. Protestants saw Catholics as superstitious, and vice versa. Enlightened philosophers mocked traditional cults as superstitions. Eventually, the learned lost their worry about popular belief, and turned instead to chronicling and preserving 'superstitious' customs as folklore and ethnic heritage.Enchanted Europe offers the first comprehensive, integrated account of western Europe's long, complex dialogue with its own folklore and popular beliefs. Drawing on many little-known and rarely used texts, Euan Cameron constructs a compelling narrative of the rise, diversification, and decline of popular 'superstition' in the European mind.

ISBN:
9780191613722
9780191613722
Category:
History of religion
Format:
Epub (Kobo), Epub (Adobe)
Publication Date:
16-09-2012
Language:
English
Publisher:
OUP Oxford
Euan Cameron

Euan Cameron is an editor and translator. Madeleine is his first novel. He worked in book publishing and as a literary journalist for many years before becoming a translator from French.

His translations include works by Julien Green, Paul Morand, Simone de Beauvoir, Patrick Modiano and Philippe Claudel, as well as biographies of Marcel Proust and Irene Nemirovsky.

He was appointed Chevalier dans l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2011.

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