IMC 2017: Sessions

This session contains three discussions of the relations between religious ideas and society in the late medieval world. The first paper looks in particular at the rhetoric and language of devotional prayers and songs in late medieval Dutch manuscripts in order to understand the functioning of these texts and the ways in which prayer and songs were combined. The second paper looks at accusations of witchcraft in 15th-century Utrecht, one of the largest and most powerful towns in the Northern Netherlands. It examines the cases of sorcery brought before the own council and seeks to explain them by comparing them to other crimes dealt with by the council, and by placing the (changing) attitudes and actions of the town council in a European context. The third paper looks at the famous enigmatic 16th-century scholar Dr. John Dee. After a close scrutiny of the question whether his most famous work Mysteriorum Libri Quinque (1581-1584) survives in an autograph copy, this paper will discuss the influence of Dee's magic on his changing self-image. The question is whether his seeing himself as Godlike is inspired by arrogance, or if it is inherently part of the late medieval occult sciences.