Page 212 - Culture Society and the Media

202 COMMUNICATIONS, POWER AND SOCIAL ORDER
communication, and in particular to religious magic, in shaping the outlooks and
(7)
perspectives of the mass population in the middle ages . Yet the whole
paraphernalia of ecclesiastical sorcery and ritual was of crucial importance in
mediating an ecclesiastical construction of reality that underpinned papal
hegemony.
The medieval Church acted as a repository of magical power which it
dispensed to the faithful to help them cope with a wide range of daily activities
and secular problems. In this way, it symbolically affirmed the indivisibility of
the Church, while at the same time asserting the magical potency of God and the
special role of the Church as the mediator of divine power. Thus the rites of
passage (baptism, confirmation, marriage, purification after childbirth, last
unction and burial) administered by the Church invested with religious
significance each stage of the life cycle, thereby affirming that every aspect of
human existence fell within the compass of the Church. Their impact was
reinforced by the cluster of superstitions that developed around each rite.
Baptism, for instance, did not merely signify the entry of the new-born child into
membership of the Church: many believed that it was essential if the child was
not to die and be condemned to an eternal limbo or, as some churchmen insisted,
to the tortures of hell and damnation. Similarly, the Church both sanctioned and
fostered the medieval cult of the saints: the superstitious belief in miracleworking
spirits whose aid could be enlisted through pilgrimages to their shrines, through
acts of propitiation before their images or by simple invocation. While clergy
were mere general practitioners in sacred magic, the saints were prestigious
specialists whose help could be invoked in situations requiring special skills. St
Agatha, for instance, was popularly thought to be best for sore breasts, St
Margaret for reducing the pangs of labour, and so on. The Church also
administered a battery of rituals, normally entailing the presence of a priest, holy
water and the use of the appropriate incantations, as stipulated in medieval
liturgical books, for blessing homes, purifying wells, preventing kilns from
breaking, making tools safe and efficient, making cattle or women fertile,
ensuring a good harvest or a safe journey. Indeed, there were few secular
activities for which the Church did not issue a form of liturgical insurance policy
and few secular problems for which the Church did not offer a magical specific.
Religious charms, talismans and amulets were worn as prophylactic agents
against evil and bad luck. Such devices were the essential props of medieval
superstition, symbolically expressing the potency of religious magic mediated by
the Church. The Church also daily displayed an impressive feat of magic in its
celebration of mass: inanimate objects were transformed into flesh and blood, or
so it was proclaimed, in the sacrament of the eucharist. In order to emphasize the
mediational role of the clergy, this demonstration of magical prowess was given
special significance through being employed for a variety of secular as well as
spiritual purposes, from curing the sick and guarding travellers against danger to
shortening people’s stay in purgatory. In addition to this powerful arsenal of
sacred magic, the Church expressed through religious architecture and art basic