It is exceptional, however, in the scope and variety of its contents-prayers and conjurations, rituals of sympathetic magic, procedures involving astral magic, a catalogue of spirits, lengthy ceremonies for consecrating a book of magic, and other materials. Like many medieval texts for the use of magicians, this handbook is a miscellany rather than a systematic treatise. The result is the most vivid and readable introduction to medieval magic now available.

Forbidden Rites consists of an edition of this medieval Latin text with a full commentary, including detailed analysis of the text and its contents, discussion of the historical context, translation of representative sections of the text, and comparison with other necromantic texts of the late Middle Ages. In 2006, he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.Preserved in the Bavarian State Library in Munich is a manuscript that few scholars have noticed and that no one in modern times has treated with the seriousness it deserves.

'In addition to the DAAD, his research has been supported by the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. A theme underlying much of his research is the way in which communities create and sustain a sense of shared culture in the face of difference, dissention, and dispute.' Books include European Witch Trials (Routledge & Kegan Paul 1976),Repression of Heresy in Medieval Germanyi (Pennsylvania, 1979), Unquiet Souls (Chicago, 1984), Magic in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1989),Forbidden Rites (Sutton and Penn State, 1997), and Theology in Stone(Oxford, 2004). Currently writing books on 'the mystical presence of Christ' in the late Middle Ages (an exploration of the relationship between ordinary and extraordinary piety, between shared religious culture and exceptional religious experience) and late medieval church-building (an inquiry into the collaboration and conflict among different interest groups in the creation of monuments meant to serve and symbolize communal interests).

Research interests focus mainly on the late Middle Ages, with special interest in church architecture and in the history of witchcraft and magic. 'John Evans Professor of Religious Studies.

Forbidden rites richard kieckhefer