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  THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES


  BY VIKTOR RYDBERG


  _Translated from the Swedish_
  BY AUGUST HJALMAR EDGREN


  NEW YORK
  HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
  1879




  Copyright 1879,
  BY HENRY HOLT & CO




CONTENTS.


                                                 PAGE.

    I. THE COSMIC PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES,
       AND ITS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT                1

   II. THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH                      56

  III. THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED                     95

   IV. THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE AND THE STRUGGLE
       OF THE CHURCH AGAINST IT                    158




I.

THE COSMIC PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES, AND ITS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT.


INTRODUCTORY.

It was the belief of Europe during the Middle Ages, that our globe was the
centre of the universe.

The earth, itself fixed and immovable, was encompassed by ten heavens
successively encircling one another, and all of these except the highest
in constant rotation about their centre.

This highest and immovable heaven, enveloping all the others and
constituting the boundary between created things and the void, infinite
space beyond, is the Empyrean, the heaven of fire, named also by the
Platonizing philosophers the world of archetypes. Here "in a light which
no one can enter," God in triune majesty is sitting on his throne, while
the tones of harmony from the nine