Volume 12 (2025)

“The chief end of the constitution is to allow the people as much time as is necessary for the improvement of their minds, in which they think the happiness of life consists.” (Thomas More, Utopia)

If the secret to happiness truly lies in the improvement of the mind, there is surely great satisfaction to be found in the pages of Volume 12 of Ceræ. Picking up from last year, the articles in this volume continue to explore our previous theme of ‘Metamorphosis, Transformation, and Transmutation’ and ultimately settle into the equally enigmatic space of ‘Dreams, Visions, and Utopias’. While these concepts may sometimes be regarded as intangible and out of reach, there is nevertheless something powerful about the possibilities they envisage. The fantastic contributions presented over the forthcoming pages offer an optimistic vision of a bright future for academia in a world full of change.

Kyna Noelle Bullard begins this volume in the Iberian Peninsula, focusing on a fascinating sixteenth-century treatise on superstition and witchcraft by the Franciscan friar, Martín de Castañega. Bullard uses a comprehensive examination of de Castañega’s thoughts on medicine and healing to highlight growing institutional attempts to regulate informal networks of popular healers, as well as consequent attempts to regulate the female body. From medicine we turn to alchemy in the second article by Elisabeth Genter Montevecchio about the hybrid figure of the serpent-woman, who transgresses natural boundaries in a myriad of ways. Deftly moving from alchemy to literature to theology, and drawing insightful comparisons with religious icons like Mary and Eve, Genter Montevecchio highlights a radical mode of thinking inherent in this figure of the ‘melusine’. On an even larger temporal scale, Dunja Haufe next compares the medieval Sir Gawain and the Green Knight with its 2021 film adaptation through the lens of metamorphosis. Underpinned by theory from ecocritical and monster studies, Haufe skilfully reveals an enhancement of the supernatural qualities of the film’s titular figure that extends greater agency to nature itself. The final article by Agustín Méndez considers seventeenth-century concerns about and responses to demonic possession on both sides of the pond. Numerous quotes from demonological treatises and pamphlets make for captivating reading, and their analysis by Méndez offers a nuanced exploration of the emotions (or lack thereof) of the possessed.

Alongside these four articles, this volume features an impressive slate of fifteen reviews of recently-published books in medieval and early modern studies. It is always wonderful to see the great breadth and depth of research by colleagues, with subjects ranging from English queens to French dreams, from prophecy to Paradise to Twitter. I commend Maria Gloria Tumminelli and Quinn Bouabsa Marriott for their enormous efforts in putting these reviews together and for strengthening our relationships with a suite of publishers, who also have my gratitude for their kind collaboration.

This volume would not have been possible without the dedication and keen eyes of the entire Ceræ committee, who have spent their time reading and editing submissions, attending lengthy meetings at all hours of the day, and organising an excellent annual conference that has become key to generating enthusiasm and ideas for the journal. Special mention must be made of Michele Seah and Erica Steiner for tirelessly keeping the wheels of the journal turning, and of Barbara Taylor, our accomplished Deputy Editor, to whom I am personally indebted.

I am especially grateful this year for our network of external peer reviewers, who have generously donated their time and expertise to offer guidance to authors. In an undoubtedly difficult and far-from-utopian time for academia, marked by precarity and bursting schedules, their support has not been taken for granted. Journals like ours must constantly find new ways to adapt to the changing academic landscape, and it is possible that the publishing system as a whole will face a complete overhaul in the not-so-distant future. In the meantime, however, Ceræ will continue to be a space for early career and other researchers to find community through the global exchange of knowledge. I will personally be watching these changes more from the sidelines as I come to the end of my tenure as Editor of this wonderful journal, but I step down at ease, knowing that I leave the editorial team in the extremely competent hands of Ela Sefcikova.

Ashley Castelino, University of Notre Dame

Abstract: The Iberian Peninsula, in comparison to the rest of Western Europe, had a lower level of enforced restriction on popular healers until the eighteenth century at the state level, with the regulation often being determined by municipal governments. However, while secular legal texts may have been more concerned with guaranteeing the competence and skill of healers, texts from the ecclesiastical powers were more preoccupied with guaranteeing that the proper religious expectations were carried out in the case of emergencies. This article analyzes a sixteenth-century treatise of Fray Martín de Castañega, a Franciscan friar writing in the aftermath of the Navarre Witch Trials (1525–27). His work, the Tratado Muy Sotil y Bien Fundado de las Supersticiones y Hechicerias y Vanos Conjuros y Abusiones; y Otros Cosas al Caso Tocantes y de la Posibilidad e Remedio Dellas, covers witchcraft and superstition, dedicating a significant amount of space to the correct and moral behavior of popular healers, and what counted as sorcery and witchcraft amongst them. This paper seeks to argue that, while his arguments regarding the validity of various popular beliefs regarding witchcraft and folk medicine are more tentative and skeptical than those of his contemporaries, his work still displays the presence of popular beliefs regarding the practice of female healers, as well as the inherently dangerous nature of the aging female body. Ultimately, by examining the contents and circulation of this treatise, and the context in which it was written, this article seeks to illustrate ecclesiastical and theological concerns regarding individuals who worked as popular healers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, attempting to illuminate both the role they were expected to fill and the shifts occurring in popular belief in the world around them.

Kyna Noelle Bullard, University of Colorado Boulder

Abstract: In the long and esoteric tradition of alchemical imagery, the hybrid serpent-woman is a curious and obscure figure who appears in several important texts, including the Buch der heiligen Dreifaltigkeit (Book of the Holy Trinity) and the writings of Paracelsus. The symbolic meaning of this figure is often ambiguous, but an exploration of medieval literary representations and later alchemical discourse on the serpent-woman will help to elucidate the layered meaning of the image. An investigation into medieval theological discussions on Eve, Mary, and the serpent will assist in this evaluation, as early modern alchemists constructively used theology and theological images to illustrate their ideas. Additionally, this article explores the serpent-woman as she appears in the alchemical writings of Paracelsus and the prose text by Jean d’Arras, Le Roman de Mélusine. By examining the serpent-woman image in these late medieval literary, theological, and alchemical sources, we can ascribe a clearer meaning to this unique symbolic figure. This article posits that the alchemical serpentwoman represents a kind of sympathetic monster possessing a non-normative body whose liminality and hybridity allow her to transgress the boundaries of nature.

Elisabeth Genter Montevecchio, University of Rochester

Abstract: In the recent film adaptation, The Green Knight (2021), director David Lowery incorporates a number of alterations to the fourteenth-century source material, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. One impactful change is the omission of the metamorphic potential of the Green Knight and the resulting disconnection between the supernatural challenger and Bertilak, the human character. Drawing on theoretical frameworks such as monster studies and ecocriticism, this article analyses the major effects of both the transformation in the poem and its cinematic exclusion. Due to the lack of transformation in the film, the Green Knight does not undergo a process of humanisation, which leads to a strengthening of his supernatural quality instead of the original’s lessening of it. This transposition to the non-human realm is furthered by emphasising his link to nature, and heavily affects the power dynamics within the narrative. All these alterations ultimately favour an ecocritical reading of the film and lay the foundation for a potential re-evaluation of the medieval poem’s relationship to nature.

Dunja Haufe, University of Freiburg

Abstract: Although phenomena with independent histories and distinctive characteristics, demonic possession and witchcraft demonstrated a profound connection during the Early Modern period. Between 1500 and 1700, the well-known idea that demons could invade a human body was intertwined with the belief that such invasions could occur at the behest of a witch. In seventeenth-century Old and New England, the association between these two concepts was particularly strong: the terms ʽpossessedʼ and ʽbewitchedʼ practically became synonymous. Drawing on the analysis of demonological treatises and pamphlets on witchcraft and demonic possession, this article examines whether emotions played a significant role in the experiences of the possessed in England and the New England colonies. A review of the symptoms described in the aforementioned primary sources suggests that the emotions of demoniacs were not given explicit attention. Although they might foam at the mouth, consume unusual objects, experience muscular spasms, and lose consciousness for extended periods, possessed individuals did not appear to exhibit any emotional response. This study argues that the absence of references to emotions and affect can be attributed to a foundational principle of diabolical possession: demons were believed to exert complete control over the bodies they inhabited, including the areas from which human emotions originate. It was not that the victims of spiritual invasion did not express emotions; rather, these emotions were attributed to the malevolent spirit possessing them. Based on this subtle distinction, I propose that demonologists and pamphleteers deliberately excluded the feelings of demoniacs from the symptoms and experiences of diabolical possession because those emotions were not considered their own.

Agustín Méndez, University of Buenos Aires / National Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina (CONICET) / National University of La Matanza

Jacob Abell, Spiritual and Material Boundaries in Old French Verse: Contemplating the Walls of the Earthly Paradise (Medieval Institute Publications/De Gruyter, 2023). Hardcover, 131 pp., € 129.00, ISBN: 9781501520570.

Reviewed by: Erika Dell’Acquila, Università degli Studi di Trento

Laurie Atkinson, Ideas of Authorship in the English and Scottish Dream Vision: Skelton, Dunbar, Hawes, Douglas (Boydell & Brewer, 2024). Hardcover, 236 pp., £ 65.00, ISBN: 9781843846925.

Reviewed by: Reilly O’Hagan, University of Sydney

Mary Elizabeth Blanchard and Christopher Riedel, eds, The Reigns of Edmund, Eadred and Eadwig, 939–959: New Interpretations (Boydell Press, 2024). Hardcover, 236 pp., £ 85.00, ISBN: 9781783277643.

Reviewed by: Julian Calcagno, Flinders University

Michelle P. Brown, Bede and the Theory of Everything (Reaktion Books, 2023). Hardcover, 312 pp., £ 16.95, ISBN: 9781789147889.

Reviewed by: Scott Royle, Concordia University

Kimm Curran and Janet Burton, eds, Medieval Women Religious c. 800–c.1500: New Perspectives (Boydell & Brewer, 2025). Hardcover, 278 pp., £ 95.00, ISBN: 9781837650293.

Reviewed by: Caitríona Spratt, University of Iceland

John A. Dempsey, Bonizo of Sutri. Portrait in a Landscape (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023). Hardcover, 374 pp., 90.00, ISBN: 9781793608239.

Reviewed by: Alessandra Bucci, Politecnico di Milano & Daniele Ottolenghi, Università degli Studi di Milano

Simona Feci, L’aquetta di Giulia. Mogli avvelenatrici e mariti violenti nella Roma del Seicento [Giulia’s Aquetta. Poisoning Wives and Violent Husbands in Seventeenth-Century Rome] (Viella, 2024). Paperback, 368 pp., € 28.00, ISBN 9791254696699.

Reviewed by: Daniele Ottolenghi Università degli Studi di Milano

Jennifer Hemphill, Ségdae Richardson-Read, and Solveig Marie Wang, eds, Performing Magic in the Pre-Modern North: Practice and Transgressions (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024). Hardcover, 294 pp., £ 129.99, ISBN: 9783031612046.

Reviewed by: Ela Sefcikova, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Marina Montesano, Maleficia. Storie di streghe dall’Antichità al Rinascimento [Maleficia. Histories of Witches from Antiquity to the Renaissance] (Carocci, 2023). Paperback, 284 pp., € 27.00, ISBN: 9788829016501.

Reviewed by: Francesco Malaguti, Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Storici

Marco Nievergelt, Medieval Allegory as Epistemology: DreamVision Poetry on Language, Cognition, and Experience (Oxford University Press, 2023). Hardcover, 572 pp., £ 125.00, ISBN: 9780192849212.

Reviewed by: James Russell, Rio Salgado College, Tempe, Arizona

Michele L. C. Seah, Financing Queenship in Late Fifteenth Century England (Boydell & Brewer, 2025). Hardcover, 298 pp., £ 85.00, ISBN: 9781837650460.

Reviewed by: Maria Gloria Tumminelli, University of Cambridge

Andrew H. Sorber, Prophecy and Politics in the Early Carolingian World (Routledge, 2024). Hardcover, 284 pp., £ 145.00, ISBN: 9781032422725.

Reviewed by: Lynn Riehl, Purdue University

Alicia Spencer-Hall, Medieval Twitter (Arc Humanities, 2024). E-book, 228 pp., $ 143.00, ISBN: 9781802702644.

Reviewed by: Ashley Castelino, University of Notre Dame

Noëlle L. W. Streeton, Tine Frøysaker, and Peter Bjerregaard, eds, Sacred Medieval Objects and Their Afterlives in Scandinavia (Brill, 2024). Hardcover, XXVI + 570 pp., € 124.00, ISBN: 9789004707573.

Reviewed by: Pablo Barruezo-Vaquero, University of Iceland & University of Oslo

Theresa Tinkle, Imagining Jesus Christ in Middle English Literature, 1275–1475: Royal Traitor, Heroic Lamb (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024). E-book, 251 pp., € 135.19, ISBN: 9783031650765.

Reviewed by: Lilith Cole, University of Iceland