Chapter 3, “Invoking the Name of Mary,” reconstructs the resonance of Marian invocation for charm participants of the late-Saxon period. While the elaborate monastic cult of the Virgin had not yet spread into popular devotion at this time, the Church urged Christians to trust Mary with their needs. It taught the people that she would advocate for them in response to their prayers. Church festivals, liturgy, homily, and poetry expose laity to narratives about Mary’s intervention on behalf of the faithful. The Mother of Christ could intercede with her son; the Queen of Heaven and Hell could command saints and overcome the devil. Charms that invoke Mary call on her by name, relate stories about the Virgin’s miraculous bearing of Christ, and prescribe her Magnificat or Masses said in her honor. Through the operation of charms’ semiotic systems, the Virgin known from vernacular and ecclesiastical traditions becomes immanent for the charm audience. By identifying the ways in which Mary is invoked, this chapter demonstrates Mary’s contributions to remedies for acute physical and spiritual conditions.

Antisemitism in medieval art is explored through selected images that develop the popular pictorial themes of “Christ-killing,” spiritual blindness, demonic allegiance, conspiracy, and animality. The imagery is linked to long-standing Christian theological beliefs and considers the social functions and material consequences for medieval Jews.

In 525 Dionysius Exiguus compiled his 95-year continuation of the Alexandrian Paschal table, which eventually scheduled the celebration of Pasch for the entire western Church. He also stated that the Council of Nicaea had authorized the 19-year Alexandrian Paschal cycle and that this had been maintained by subsequent Alexandrian bishops. These statements were challenged by Jan in 1718, and since then the question of Nicaean authority has been disputed. However, while the Synoptic Gospels agree that the Crucifixion took place on the day after the Jewish Passover, John’s Gospel places it on the day of the Passover and hence on the fourteenth day of the spring moon. Thus the Evangelistic accounts of Jesus’s Crucifixion conflict chronologically. Consequently, the Asian churches chose to emphasize the Crucifixion by celebrating Pasch on the fourteenth day of the moon, while other churches emphasized the Resurrection by celebrating it on Sunday. At Nicaea Constantine sought to resolve this conflict, and contemporaneous accounts agree that the Council decreed that Pasch be celebrated only on Sunday, and forbade celebration on the fourteenth day. This chapter concludes that the origin of the Alexandrian Paschal table lies rather with bishop Theophilus in the last decades of the fourth century.