Approaches to Magic, Heresy and Witchcraft

This chapter explores the definitions and intertwinedness of the concepts of magic, heresy and witchcraft, and how they can help to form approaches across boundaries in geography, traditional chronology and divisions of religious denomination in Europe. Throughout the medieval and early modern period, the Christian church represented an orthodoxy that was continuously contested. The challenge of heterodoxy, especially as expressed in various kinds of heresy, magic and witchcraft, was constantly present during the period 1200–1650. With this volume we aim to break down three common scholarly barriers – of periodization, discipline and geography – in the exploration of the related themes of heresy, magic and witchcraft. By setting aside constructed chronological boundaries, inherent in periodizations such as medieval, early modern, Reformation and Counter Reformation, we hope to achieve a clearer and more continuous picture of what ‘went before’ and what ‘went after’, thus demonstrating continuity as well as change in the concepts and understandings of magic, heresy and witchcraft.