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Elite and Popular Superstitions in the Exempla of Stephen of Bourbon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Catherine Rider
Catherine Rider*
Affiliation:
Christ’s College, University of Cambridge
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Extract

‘When I was preaching against sorcery and hearing confessions…’.

With these words, the thirteenth-century Dominican friar Stephen of Bourbon recalled how in a village in the Auvergne he had found a group of women venerating a dog as a saint. He then went on to describe how he had preached against the cult and persuaded the local lord to demolish the dog’s woodland shrine. Thanks to a detailed study by Jean-Claude Schmitt, this encounter between educated friar and unorthodox peasants has become a famous example of interaction between elite and popular religion in the Middle Ages. But it is only one of many such encounters that Stephen describes under the heading of ‘Superstitio’, or Superstition. Part of the interest of these tales for the modern reader is that they provide a window on to some of the unorthodox religious practices of the Middle Ages. Even more interesting, however, is the way in which Stephen links these practices to a clear but flexible idea of the relationship between elite and popular religion.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 42: Elite and Popular Religion , 2006 , pp. 78 - 88
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2006

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References

1 ‘Cum ego predicarem contra sortilegia et confessiones audirem …’: Stephen of Bourbon, ed. A. Lecoy de la Marche, Anecdotes historiques, légendes et apologues tirés du recueil inédit d’Etienne de Bourhon (Paris, 1877), 325.

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3 For two recent surveys of the debate see Watkins, Carl, ‘“Folklore” and “Popular Religion” in Britain during the Middle Ages’, Folklore 115 (2004), 140–50 Google Scholar, at 141–2, and Biller, Peter, ‘Popular Religion in the Central and Later Middle Ages’, in Bentley, Michael, ed., Companion to Historiography (London and New York, 1997), 221–46.Google Scholar

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18 MS Oriel 68, fol. 222V.

19 Stephen, ed. Lecoy de la Marche, 314–15.

20 Ibid., 316.

21 Ibid., 315–16.

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23 Stephen, ed. Lecoy de la Marche, 316–17.

24 Ibid., 317–18.

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27 Ibid., 322–3.

28 Ibid., 319.

29 Ibid., 321.

30 Ibid., 324.

31 On ‘strigae’, see Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons, 162–6.

32 Stephen, ed. Lecoy de la Marche, 319–21.

33 Ibid., 325–8.

34 Wolfgang Behringer, Shaman of Oberstdorf: Chonrad Stoeckhlin and the Phantoms of the Night, trans. Erik Midelfort (Charlottesville, VA, 1998), 23.

35 Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons, 167–72.

36 Harmening, Superstitio, 278–9.

37 Flint,Rise, 233–5, 124.

38 MS Oriel 68, fol. 225V.

39 Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogue on Miracles, trans. H. von E. Scott and C. C. Swinton Bland, vol. 1 (London, 1929), 42–3, 315–20.

40 Pingree, David, ‘The Diffusion of Arabic Magical Texts in Western Europe’, in La Diffusione delle Scienze Islamiche nel Medio Evo Europeo (Rome, 1987), 79–82.Google Scholar

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42 Stephen, ed. Lecoy de la Marche, 319.

43 Ibid., 324.

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