Michael D. Bailey

Biography

His research focuses on late medieval religious history, particularly the history of magic, witchcraft, and superstition, as well as heresy and religious reform. He also study the history of magic globally from antiquity to the present day. His work has appeared in such journals as Speculum, the journal of the Medieval Academy of America, and the American Historical Review. He have written four books, the most recent of which is Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies: The Boundaries of Superstition in Late Medieval Europe, published by Cornell University Press in 2013, and he edited a multi-volume collection, Magic and Witchcraft: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies, published by Routledge in 2014. He is currently completing another book for Routledge, Magic: The Basics, and he serves as an editor of the interdisciplinary journal Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft, which he helped to found in 2006. His current major research project, tentatively titled Religious Falsity in an Age of Faith, examines multiple forms of religious “error” in medieval Europe from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, including clerical corruption, heresy, questionable mysticism, and magic.

Research Interest

Medieval religious history, The history of magic, Witchcraft, and superstition.