Contagion: perspectives from pre-modern societies

and necromancy; and magic as entertainment. Readers of this journal will be particularly interested in her section on medical magic. Jolly explains that this was an especially "fuzzy" area. Medieval medicine embraced both a material and spiritual understanding of illness in which physical and religious factors played a part. Within this context, it is often difficult to distinguish magical medicine from religious healing. Both the materials of medicine (herbs, animal parts and stones) and the ritual performance of words and signs (prayers and charms) provided occasions for the use of medical magic to cure and ward off illness. The second part of the volume contains Catharina Raudvere's discussion of trolldomr, or witchcraft, in early medieval Scandinavia. She analyses uses of the term trolldomr in two groups of Old Norse texts, the sagas and the mythological narratives. Composed during the thirteenth century, these mainly Icelandic and Norwegian texts are written accounts of an oral tradition stretching back to the ninth century when Christianity first reached Scandinavia. Raudvere is primarily interested in exploring mentalities concerning trolldomr, that is, the widely held beliefs and associated rituals concerning certain individuals who, it was assumed, could influence the physical world around them. This, of course, is a literary rather than an historical exercise, but in so far as the texts constitute a collective social memory, they embody an ideal of the past in which magic played a part. This literary analysis, then, is designed to illuminate the cultural past of Scandinavian magic. Raudvere points out that trolldomr could be used for either good or malevolent ends. For example, public rituals such as the seitr served to ward off various sorts of evil, including physical or mental disease, and runic verses were chanted to bring about healing or secure the safe delivery of a baby. As in many other preChristian societies, Scandinavian beliefs about the medical efficacy of witchcraft merged imperceptibly into broader attitudes concerning folk medicine. The volume ends with Edward Peters' excellent survey of the Church and State's attitude to magic from the fifth to the sixteenth century. Drawing upon his extensive knowledge of the sources, Peters fleshes out the tripartite periodization of medieval magic outlined by Jolly. Although this essay does not directly address medical magic, Peters does underline the importance of healing miracles in medieval hagiography and the role they played in distinguishing the legitimate use of God-given supernatural powers for good purposes (miracula) from the mere wonderworking of magicians (mira). This superb piece of synthetic intellectual history will be essential background reading for students of medieval magic. Admittedly, these are three rather diverse essays, but their different perspectives (and their excellent bibliographies) will definitely be appreciated by students and scholars of medieval magic alike.