generated controversy, some of which is not entirely free from apologetic
tendencies; see, for example, Susan Garrett, ‘Light on a Dark Subject and Vice-
Versa: Magic and Magicians in the New Testament’ (1989). In terms of work
on magic, we may refer to Richard Kieckhefer’s overview, Magic in the Middle
Ages(1989), and to his theoretical discussion, ‘The Specific Rationality of
Medieval Magic’ (1994). Concerning relics, Patrick Geary’s Furta sacra
(1978/1990), dealing as it does with the power attributed to stolen relics, forces
one to think about the uncertain boundaries between religion and morality,
serving as a reminder of the fact that virtus refers to both power and ‘virtue’
in the everyday sense of the word (much as does Chinese de, familiar from the
Daodejing; consider, too, the interaction between Japanese dÿtokuand kudoku,
as discussed in Ian Reader’s and George Tanabe’s Practically Religious, 1998).
Similarly, ‘superstition’, a term frequently employed in a manner that replicates
normative clerical usage, has been the subject of Dale Martin’s Inventing
Superstition(2004). That an inquisitorial attitude is still in use can be seen in
the ‘Introductory Interpretative Essay’ to the translation of Marguerite Porete’s
The Mirror of Simple Souls, published by the University of Notre Dame Press
(1999). There the translators write with enviable confidence about what
constitutes ‘genuine mysticism’ (p. lxxi); they pretend to know what spiritual
abilities the author of the Mirrorpossessed (p. lxxxvi), while also purporting
to honor Marguerite for dying ‘for what she believed to be true’ (p. lxxxvii).
A sympathetic treatment of the woman burned to death on 1 June 1310 can
be found in Joanne Robinson’s Nobility and Annihilation in Marguerite
Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls(2001); in fact, Robinson is eager to defend
Marguerite against not unjustified charges of spiritual elitism (p. 14).
Exceptional in the field of medieval and of early modern Christianity on
both sides of the Atlantic is Richard Trexler’s work. Some of his studies have
been collected in two volumes of essays, Church and Community (1200–1600)
(1987) and Religion in Social Context in Europe and America, 1200–1700
(2002). Scholars interested in the theory of religion would do well to pay
attention to Trexler’s work, at the very least to theoretical essays such as
‘Reverence and Profanity in the Study of Early Modern Religion’ (1984/2002)
and to Gender Rhetorics: Postures of Dominance and Submission in History
(1994), a volume edited by Trexler. Having mentioned work on both sides of
the Atlantic, one may also refer to Sabine McCormack, who, after working
on Late Antiquity, turned her attention to the Andean world a millennium
later. In regard to explicitly comparative studies involving Late Antiquity and
the New World, mention must be made of Plagues, Priests and Demons
(2005), a book in which Daniel Reff studies the parallels between the
Christianization of the Mediterranean world and that of New Spain, in a
manner that takes into account the role of epidemics.
In regard to Latin America, Christian and non-Christian, we may begin with
Lawrence Sullivan’s immense attempt at synthesis, Icanchu’s Drum(1988).266
GUSTAVO BENAVIDES