Love Spells and Lost Treasure
Service Magic in England from the Later Middle Ages to the Early Modern Era

A ground-breaking book which introduces the concept of 'service magic' while re-evaluating magic in medieval and early modern English society.

Tabitha Stanmore (Author)

9781009286701, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 22 December 2022

320 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2 cm, 0.61 kg

'The attention paid by the author to both magicians and clients is a strength of this volume. Her detailed discussion of popular practices – such as the use of clay balls, and of sieves balanced on shears – is very engaging.' Anne Lawrence-Mathers, Professor of History, University of Reading

Magic is ubiquitous across the world and throughout history. Yet if witchcraft is acknowledged as a persistent presence in the medieval and early modern eras, practical magic by contrast – performed to a useful end for payment, and actually more common than malign spellcasting – has been overlooked. Exploring many hundred instances of daily magical usage, and setting these alongside a range of imaginative and didactic literatures, Tabitha Stanmore demonstrates the entrenched nature of 'service' magic in premodern English society. This, she shows, was a type of spellcraft for needs that nothing else could address: one well established by the time of the infamous witch trials. The book explores perceptions of magical practitioners by clients and neighbours, and the way such magic was utilised by everyone: from lowliest labourer to highest lord. Stanmore reveals that – even if technically illicit – magic was for most people an accepted, even welcome, aspect of everyday life.

1. Practical Magic: Practices and Demands
2. Service Magicians
3. Magicians in Society
4. Clients
5. Magic and the Elite
6. Magic on Retainer.

Subject Areas: Mysticism, magic & ritual [VXW], History of ideas [JFCX], Magic, alchemy & hermetic thought [HRQX2], History of religion [HRAX], Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], British & Irish history [HBJD1]