PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Michael D. Bailey is Associate Professor of History at Iowa State University. He is the author of Battling Demons: Witchcraft, Heresy, and Reform in the Late Middle Ages; Historical Dictionary of Witchcraft; and Magic and Superstition in Europe: A Concise History from Antiquity to the Present.
Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies is an extensively researched and clearly composed inquiry into the ways in which intellectuals at the leading universities of France and Germany defined the concept of superstition during the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. These men, who were developing new ways of knowing testing, verification, and internal consistency of all data factors still lived in a world in which the boundary between the natural and the supernatural was fraught. Michael D. Bailey deftly guides us through these complex, multilateral debates. In the process, he shows us how the struggle to refine taxonomies of human perception ultimately led to the disenchantment of the world. Nancy Caciola, University of California, San Diego, author of Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages
