Trafficking with Demons: Magic, Ritual and Gender from Late Antiquity to 1000.

In the book review titled "Trafficking with Demons: Magic, Ritual and Gender from Late Antiquity to 1000," the author challenges the prevailing belief that women were particularly skilled in magic during the first millennium. The review argues that previous scholarship has often projected fifteenth-century stereotypes of witches onto earlier periods, overlooking the nuanced gendered dimensions of early medieval attitudes towards magic. The author of the book being reviewed, Rampton, analyzes various early Christian and medieval sources to argue that women were not considered the primary practitioners of magic. The review highlights Rampton's exploration of the relationship between ritual, authority, and gender in the early Christian and medieval context, offering a new perspective on elite Church views of magic. [Extracted from the article]