Monsters, Sorcerers, and Witches of Northwestern Europe
The Medieval and Early Modern Construction of Otherness in Literature
The construction of monsters, witches, and sorcerers – as well as the processes through which otherness is defined and disseminated – has long been a fertile field for interdisciplinary inquiry. Throughout medieval and early modern times, the portrayal of monstrous beings or events, preternatural phenomena and illicit magical practices in Northwestern Europe developed and operated both as a reflection of prevailing social anxieties and as a potent instrument apt to reinforce moral and religious order. The present volume, which seeks to interrogate these processes through a close examination of non‐canonical texts specifically produced for popular audiences, emerges from the PRIN 2022 research project entitled “Monsters, Sorcerers, and Witches of Northwestern Europe: The Medieval and Early Modern Construction of Otherness in Literature for Popular Audiences”, which foresees the collaboration of scholars from the Italian universities of Siena, Turin, Naples “L’Orientale”, and Florence. Object of the investigation is a geographically and chronologically coherent corpus of non-canonical texts that were produced throughout the late Middle Ages and the early modern era in some representative regions of Northwestern Europe – England, Northern Germany, and Iceland – most notably sermons, ballads, broadsheets, pamphlets, treatises, manuals, and annals. Most crucially, the survey aims at explaining how popular media accommodated and disseminated learned theological and demonological discourses (which contributed significantly to the stigmatisation and marginalisation of certain groups, most commonly women), how such discourses were filtered into popular culture and, concurrently, how popular non-canonical texts contributed to the construction of marginality and otherness in the districts of Northwestern Europe. In similar fashion, focussing on categories of magic and witchcraft described and discussed in the most diverse medieval and early modern literary genres, the present volume intends to explore how Middle English sermons, Icelandic annals, and learned theological treatises may find parallel solutions in the construction of the demonological concepts which underlie the received image of the witch.
State of the Art
Over the past decades, scholars have increasingly recognised that the perception of the marvellous, the uncanny, and the magical provides a unique window onto the underlying structures of society. As Daston and Park (1998) assert in Wonders and the Order of Nature, the way in which a given society perceives and defines wonders is intimately connected to its broader paradigm for understanding reality. This insight is particularly evident when one considers the representation of the marvellous and the magical in medieval texts, which not only articulate the boundaries between the natural and the supernatural but also mirror the ethical, political, and religious tensions of a given age. In medieval and early modern Europe, the marvellous was not merely an object of curiosity. As Platt (1999) and Jones and Sprunger (2002) have shown, miraculous events, monstrous births, and instances of diabolic magic were often read as portents of social disorder – a clear sign that the natural order had been disrupted. Cohen’s (1996) seminal concept of the monster “as a cultural body” (Cohen 1996, 4) further emphasised that the ambiguous, multi-layered nature of monstrous figures allowed them to serve as vehicles for projecting collective anxieties. Simultaneously, the “cumulative concept of witchcraft” – elaborated by Levack (2006) – illustrated how popular and learned elements converged to shape a singular, pervasive image of the witch as an embodiment of evil and transgression. Gender studies have played a crucial role in reinterpreting these phenomena. Bradbury (Bradbury, Moseley-Christian 2017) argues that the polarities exemplified by figures such as the Virgin Mary and Eve offer a dual framework for assessing the moral status of women. In this context, women frequently emerge in medieval texts as symbols of both redemption and sin; Bynum (1987) notably discussed how the same female body could be portrayed as a source of life through childbirth and as an emblem of fallibility through sexual transgression. This gendered dichotomy is not confined to theological treatises but is vividly dramatised in the popular sermons and annals of the period. McAvoy (2004) further contends that the stereotyping of women in these texts reflects broader cultural anxieties regarding female power and its potential to subvert established social orders. The study of magic and demonology has similarly evolved over time. Early medieval scepticism of magic gradually gave way to a systematic denunciation of practices deemed heretical and diabolical. Russell’s Witchcraft in the Middle Ages (1972) and Cohn’s Europe’s Inner Demons (1975) offer comprehensive accounts of how magical practices were increasingly conflated with demonic pacts and heresy. Texts such as Bernard Gui’s Practica inquisitionis heretice pravitatis (1886) and Nicolai Eymerici’s Directorium inquisitorum (1578) exemplified this shift by categorising magic into “simple” (or rustic) forms – associated with ignorance and deception – and learned necromancy, which involved the deliberate invocation of demons and was consequently subject to harsher condemnation. Kieckhefer’s (1989)work underscored that, while these distinctions were sometimes blurred in practice, the tendency to attribute a demonic origin to magical acts was a central tenet of medieval demonological thought. The multidisciplinary perspective of cultural history has further revealed how the interpretation of preternatural phenomena is deeply intertwined with processes of social marginalisation and exclusion. As Brown noted in Marginal Figures in the Global Middle Ages and the Renaissance (2021), abnormal events – whether births, deaths, or other cataclysmic occurrences – were frequently read as signs of a breakdown in social order, thereby justifying the stigmatisation of those associated with such phenomena. This insight is corroborated by studies on the role of popular literature in transmitting and reinforcing these ideas. For instance, the examination of ballads, sermons, and pamphlets (O’Mara, Paul 2007; Raymond 2011; Delcorno 2017) demonstrated how texts intended for wide audiences became vehicles for both the dissemination of learned theological doctrines and the consolidation of communal moral values.