Trafficking with Demons is a dense and textured analysis of roughly a thousand years of material pertaining to the topics of magic, demons, and gender as Christian communities adopt and modify previous pagan understandings of the three subject areas. Rampton's goal in the book is to illuminate the “social and intellectual evolution” (14) that occurred in this adoption and modification over the first millennium, with particular attention paid to the elite Carolingian rejection of the efficacy of women's magical practices. Given this rather large goal and the time period which the book covers, it is hard to offer comparable monographs that attempt to do the same sort of work, though Richard Kieckhefer's Magic in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), Valerie I. J. Flint's The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), and Brian P. Copenhaver's Magic in Western Culture: From Antiquity to the Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015) spring to mind as volumes that cover comparable time frames with equally far-reaching conclusions.
The book is separated into four parts which consist of fourteen chapters. In “Part 1: Studying Magic,” Rampton begins by defining the terms used in the book (for example, witch, ritual, magic) and the source material for magic (broken into four categories: pastoral, polemic, and didactic; legal records; narrative sources; and medical materials). In chapter two, “Demons of the Lower Air,” the book addresses perceptions of demons, those things which they can and cannot do, and how they interacted with human beings.
“Part 2: Breaking In: Christianity in Classical Rome” features several chapters that deal with Christians facing the intellectual legacy of their Roman pagan forebears. Chapter three covers the way in which certain rituals (for example, feasts) and practices (for example, juggling) were either deemed fit for Christians or the provenance of the demonic. The next chapter, “A Thousand Vacuous Observances,” explores how traditional categories of magic (for example, divination, sortes, ligatures) came to be associated with the demonic. Chapter five offers various ways in which the needle is threaded between illicit practices of necromancy and the licit miracles of the Bible. Finally, the last chapter in the section deals with the literary figures of the striae and lamiae, articulating the various layers of reality to which these beings belonged and how their characteristics gendered practices of magic and impacted women.
The third part, “Traffic with Demons: Post-Roman Europe,” returns to many of the same categories and condemnations as they developed in the Merovingian period. At issue is the further codification of Christian practice which brings increasingly more observances under the rubric of magic. “Sub Dio,” chapter seven, particularly returns to the sacred spaces of chapter three to address the trend of destroying outdoor shrines and replacing them with churches, while chapter eight revisits many of the categories from chapter four, arguing for both consistency in their condemnation by church officials and consistency of practice among the laity. “The Awesome Power of the Woman's Craft” returns once again to the topic of women's (perceived) magical practice and its construction as terrifying and villainous but also efficacious.
“Part 4: Skepticism: The Carolingian Era” represents the meatiest part of Rampton's argument. In chapter ten, Carolingian elites are shown to be “dubious about the efficacy of magical rituals” (292), a dubiousness reflected in a greater concern for the intention of those thought to be dealing with demons rather than any harm that might come from such empty practices. Chapter 11 tracks how this same Carolingian critique of efficacy was also applied to those engaging in divinatory practices (including superstition and unsanctioned veneration of angels and saints). “Women's Magic Challenged” addresses gendered magical practices (for example, love magic, birth magic) and gendered magical beings (for example, lamiae, striae) in the wake of Carolingian rejection, arguing that Carolingian elites had largely rejected the reality of the magical beings and had relegated the practices almost exclusively to penitentials. Chapter 13 addresses the cases of Judith, Theutberga, and Waldrada, arguing that the three were charged with sorcery which was perceived as actual but ineffectual, “the worst of both worlds” (358). Finally, the last chapter looks at the presence of magic in the materia medica (for example, Lacnunga, Bald's Leechbook, Herbariancorpus) and argues that feminine imagery is used widely throughout the corpus, both positively and negatively.
Peculiarly, what some might consider a weakness of the book is the feature that guarantees its longevity and usefulness. Rampton is encyclopedic in her treatment of the subject matter, carefully categorizing practices and perceptions of magic through extensive source use. At times, this can even take the form of brief conversational asides as she weighs the value of different scholars’ perspectives for the material at hand, offering useful generalizations and qualifying what can and cannot be known within them. As a result, there are sometimes whole chapters in which it is difficult to discern her argument, only functioning as background to issues which will eventually be raised. By the conclusion – which nicely ties all the elements back together – the reader may be under the impression that they have read three books: one on magic, one on demons, and one on gender, all as seen across a longue durée.
Yet, this is precisely why the book belongs on every early medievalist's shelf. The chapters are eminently readable and exceptionally well-sourced. For those looking for a refresher on the major issues in a field or those coming to the material for the first time, they are invaluable reads. They could easily be given to graduate students as an introduction to the field or even to advanced undergraduates. My own copy is – after the first read – thoroughly dog-eared with reminders to myself regarding sources, and I am already restructuring some syllabi around the intention of using individual chapters as student resources. Rampton's Trafficking with Demons may not be your typical work, but it does far more work than is typical as well.
