[MUSIC] During the last medieval centuries

a change occurred in the perception of magical practices. On the one hand, the new
rationalistic
approaches issued from the universities started to displace
traditional magical practices, thus extending a shadow of suspicion
over sorcerers, diviners and conjurers. On the other hand, the until then
unsuccessful attempts made by the Church to uproot magical activities
started to pay off thanks to the action of the mighty
preachers of the Mendicant orders. Those preachers undertook
a massive evangelization campaign among medieval society through a series of
compelling sermons, in
which they demonized magical activities. Both fronts, rationalistic science and
Christian evangelization will definitely contribute to
the disapproval and discredit of magic during the late medieval centuries and
the early modern period. To give you an idea of
this change in mentality, we are going to see some examples
of those new conceptions of magic based on the new scientific
paradigms of the Late Middle Ages. Let's take a look into
a series of treatises written by the 15th-century
Castilian Bishop Lope de Barrientos. Barrientos had studied at
the University of Salamanca, and was part of the humanist entourage
of the Castillian King John II, who appointed him as his own confessor and
the preceptor of his first-born son. During the central years of the 15th
century, Bishop Barrientos wrote a series of three books,
dedicated to his king, in which he advised him on the subject
of magic and superstition. Those three books were the so-called
"Treatise on Sleeping and Waking; of dreaming and of divinations;
of presages and prophecies", "Treatise on prophecies" and
"Treatise on divination". In all of them, this learned man
analyzed human affairs related to magic from a Thomistic perspective,
relying on an empirical and materialistic approach, and with a great
amount of confidence in human reason. As he himself stated at the beginning
of this treatises, Barrientos's goal was to educate and correct the King's
credulity regarding magical activities. When we read these treatises, we realize
that the Bishop's concept of
magic included a wide range of rituals and beliefs that went from astrology to
divinatory arts, from the causes of the evil eye and other illnesses
to the rituals of sorcery and incantation. While condemning this kind of
practices and those who perform them, Barrientos also tried to disprove
the reality of such things. For example, he criticized those
who believed in the evil eye, which he considered
a simple optical illness, susceptible of being cured
by medical procedures. While addressing the subject
of premonitions and divination, he attributed them to the
operations of fantasy in people's minds, which tricked them into believing
things that were not real. He also talked about the extended
belief in the fact that some women were capable of getting out of their bodies
at night and, in that manner, enter closed houses through the narrowest chinks with
the purpose of harming little children. On that regard, Barrientos argued
the impossibility of such magical things, since it was not possible for a three-
dimensional body to pass
through such little spaces. All those magical beliefs,
according to Barrientos, were nothing but the effect of mental or natural
disorders, or even worse, they were caused
by the operations of bad spirits. Learned men such as Barrientos and others,
contributed to the discredit of magical
practices among the elites, while reinforcing the confidence
on experimental science and medical procedures. Apart from these men of science,
the members of the Mendicant Orders also contributed to the denigration of
magical activities among the population. To exemplify that, we can take a look at
the sermons given by Mendicant preachers during the last centuries
of the Middle Ages, always bearing in mind that these sermons,
preached in the vernacular language, had a compelling effect among the public
that gathered by the hundreds, waiting for the arrival of one of those admired
preachers to their cities and villages. Let's hear some parts of a sermon given
by the Valencian preacher Vicent Ferrer at the beginning of the 15th century.
"Because if your father, your wife or
another person is sick, or you have lost something, or if you are in distress,
don't ever go to the diviners but to God. And you, my daughters, if your children
are suffering some
disease, do not make any sorceries nor go to the sorceresses, because it would
be better for your children to die. The women will go to their confession and
they will say: 'the child was sick and there was no doctor around, and
so I went to the conjurer'. And the confessor will answer:
'A sin you have committed!' And they will defend themselves arguing
how could they let the child die. It would be better that he died. She went to male
and female diviners, to the demons, because everything they do,
they do it by the action of demons. Diabolical sorceries! That it is what male
and female diviners are, sorcerers and sorceresses that make things with charms,
bread, bottles and plates. Avoid their presence in
your circumscription. If not, God's wrath will fall on
the village and its circumscription." Such strong admonitions made
by the influencing preachers had a great impact among the crowd. We often find
local laws against
magical activities promulgated by the city councils shortly after
the passing of one of these preachers. The effect of this kind of preachings,
together with the prominent role taken by the new scientific paradigms, contributed
to the decline of
magic during the Late Middle Ages. Not only did they entail the discredit and
denigration of magical practices, but they also established a perilous
link between those sorcerers and diviners and
the misdeeds that haunted society; even relating those allegedly dangerous
people to the action of demons and encouraging the population to
expel them from their villages. As we will see in the following units, the
situation was the prelude of
terrible persecutions to come, in which hundreds of people
were to be burned at the stake, accused of a dark crime with
explicit magical connotations: the crime of <b>witchcraft</b>. [MUSIC]