If a man will take a view of all popery, he shall easily see that a great part of it is mere magic. – William Perkins, Puritan Divine"Work, justice and religion on a mediaeval English village by Ron Embleton"image sourceThe era of the Middle Ages between the thirteenth and the sixteenth century A.D. was a time when the Church was still working to superimpose its beliefs and monotheistic structure on rural society across Europe. The main points of resistance to a smooth changeover were that firstly, the villagers had been using techniques to aid their everyday living which had been passed down to them from many generations before and were seen to be working to keep their lives orderly; secondly, being practical people utilising any and all tools available to them, the villagers had begun to blend both the traditional with the newer ecclesiastical information, as perhaps a way of ‘hedging their bets’ or ‘covering all bases’ and they saw the two worlds complimenting each other well; and thirdly, it was not only resistance by the lay villagers the Church had to contend with, but with many of their own village clerics, who not only utilised the blending of the two practices to aid their villagers’ everyday lives, it was very likely that they did not differentiate between – or defined differently – what was ‘religious’ and what was ‘pagan or magical’ and being under so-called demonic influence. To them, it was probable that many of the simple everyday charms and rituals were ‘harmless’ and in fact used to invoke God’s good will, and they may not have often struck an incident which was of far more malicious intent and pointing to demonic interference. Whether a ritual, charm, celebration, shrine or other means by which a rural village member – or group of members – was either based on or intended to be some form of pagan, magic, superstitious or religious work in all likelihood simply came down to a matter of perception and expediency, by both the user and the judger.
