GETTY IMAGES X3
Want to get rid of an unwanted husband? Coat yourself in honey, roll naked in grain and cook him some deadly bread with flour milled from this mixture. What if you want to increase the amount of supplies in your barn? Simply leave out child-sized shoes and bows and arrows for the satyrs and goblins to play with. If you’re lucky, they might steal some of your neighbour’s goods for you in return.
The unusual charms and medical tips such as these, which featured in medieval books, sound suspiciously like magic. But alongside these weird and wonderful spells and superstitions, medieval history paints a picture of a people who were, in some ways, actually more enlightened than their Renaissance successors. But what was medieval magic really like?