Ritual, Myth and Magic in Early Modern Europe - University of Reading

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Primary Sources
Thomas a Kempis: Preparation for Death
Image from The Art of Dying Well 1416
Erasmus, Treatise on Preparing for Death
The Book of the Craft of Dying
Thomas Becon, The Solace of the Soul 1549
Dying well: the case of Martin Luther
Selection of Documents: Obits and Anniversaries; Chantries and Almshouses
Wills: The Wills of John Port
Secondary Sources
Aries, P., Western Attitudes Towards Death from the Middle Ages to the Present
(Baltimore, 1974).
The Hour of Our Death (London, 1981).
Aston, M., ‗Death‘, in Fifteenth Century Perceptions, ed R.Horrox (Cambridge, 1994).
Binski, P., Medieval death : ritual and representation (London, 1996).
Clark, P. and Claydon, T., The Church, the Afterlife and the fate of the soul
(Woodbridge, 2009)
Daniell, C., Death and Burial in Medieval England 1066-1550 (London, 1997).
Eire, C.M.N., From Madrid to Purgatory : the art and craft of dying in sixteenthcentury
Spain (Cambridge, 1995).
Gittings, C., Death, burial and the individual in early modern England (London,
1984)
Houlbrooke, R.A., Death, Religion and the Family in England 1480-1750 (Oxford,
1998). (esp. ch2)
Death, Ritual and Bereavement (London, 1989).
Huizinga, J., The Waning of the Middle Ages (London, 1955).
Koslofsky, C., The Reformation of the Dead (Basingstoke, 2000).
Le Goff, J., The birth of purgatory (London, 1984).
Marshall, P., Gordon, B., The Place of the dead : death and remembrance in late
medieval and early modern Europe (Cambridge, 2000).
More, T., The Supplication of Souls ed. F. Manley (New Haven, 1990).
Naphy, W.G., Roberts, P., Fear in Early Modern Society (Manchester, 1997).
Seminar 8 : Ghosts and Apparitions
Summary
The map of the afterlife in late medieval Europe left open the possibility that the dead
might revisit the living, and appearances of the restless dead were not uncommon.
Catholic belief allowed for the possibility that the souls in purgatory might be
permitted by God to return to the earth, most often with the mission to warn
individuals to amend their ways. St Augustine had concluded that communication
between the living and the dead was not only a possibility, but in fact a likely
occurrence. Dreams and visions were already a fact of life, but as Finucane suggests,
the doctrine of purgatory ‗provided a greatly expanded stage‘ on which confrontations
between the living and the dead might occur. The appearance of ghosts allowed the
living to learn about the afterlife from those who had gone before them, and it seemed