2010 was a busy year in the relatively small field of "medieval superstition studies." Lasson's book, based on her 2007 doctoral thesis, joined Euan Cameron's Enchanted Europe: Superstition, Reason, and Religion 1250-1750, and Patrick Hersperger's Kirche, Magie, und Aberglaube: Superstitio in der Kanonistik des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts. This little swell of books focusing on superstitio represents the continuation of an important trend away from strictly "witchcraft" studies and toward more capacious explorations of the history of magic (long underway) and now superstition in pre-modern Europe. While her book is not so expansive as Cameron's sweeping study, Lasson's topic is broader than her title might appear to indicate. Decalogue commentaries were an important and popular genre within late-medieval catechetical literature, and they were one of the main vehicles through which authors could address the subject of superstitious beliefs and practices, treated as a form of idolatry under the rubric of the First Commandment. She wants to use Ulrich's treatise, therefore, to explore common practices and the clerical concerns they evoked in southern Germany and Austria, particularly the region around Vienna, at the outset of the fifteenth century.
This is by no means entirely uncharted ground. Over thirty years ago Dieter Harmening published the pioneering Superstitio: Überlieferungs- und theoriegeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur kirchlich-theologischen Aberglaubensliteratur des Mittelalters (1979), although he ended his study with the high medieval scholastics and did not extend his work into the late medieval period. His student Karin Baumann did, however, and her book, Aberglaube für Laien: Zur Programmatik und Überlieferung mittelalterlicher Superstitionenkritik (1989), is an essential basis for Lasson's study. Baumann specifically examined criticism and condemnation of superstition in the late-medieval German vernacular catechetical literature of which Ulrich of Pottenstein's Decalogue commentary is an example. While she mentioned Ulrich himself only once in her work, Baumann dealt extensively with other authors of the so-called Vienna school, including such Decalogue exegetes as Nicholas of Dinkelsbühl and Thomas Ebendorfer, whom Lasson also discusses at some length by way of comparison to Ulrich's work. Ulrich himself has become more accessible in the two decades separating Baumann's book from Lasson's, thanks to Gabriele Baptist-Hlawatsch's study and edition of his Decalogue commentary, specifically the material on the First Commandment (1995).
Ulrich may or may not have been born in the town of Pottenstein, about twenty-five miles south-west from Vienna, but by 1396 he was serving as curate there. Later he served parishes in Mödling, even closer to Vienna, and Enns, in the diocese of Passau. He was also a court chaplain in Vienna for a time. The only official notice connecting him to the University of Vienna is a brief record of 1397, but Lasson argues that he participated in the intellectual life of the city and its university, and she counts him as a member of the Vienna school-–a group of theologians and other intellectuals who sought to apply theology to practical, pastoral problems. Many, therefore, authored catechetical works, a number of which were either composed in the German vernacular or were translated into it, in order to reach a widening audience of literate laity.
In the first part of her tripartite study, Lasson develops the necessary background and context, introducing Ulrich, the University of Vienna, the issue of superstition, and the nature of late medieval catechesis. Her work is solid, although her tone is often uneven. At times she seems to be aiming for that much-sought-after audience, the general educated reader, offering fairly basic background on medieval universities and scholastic method, for example. At others, she delves deeply into the intricacies of Ulrich's life and work. And at yet others, she seems to write still very much in the style of a dissertation. After rehearsing several other scholars' slightly differing judgments of who the major members of the Vienna school were, she presents short biographies of her own choices, filling ten pages with general information that does not really bear on her analysis here, seemingly just to show that she has done her background research fully. There is also a four-page excursus on the Devotio Moderna in the Low Countries that might help illuminate some aspects of late medieval lay piety for general readers, but bears little direct relation to the situation in Austria. By whatever routes they are led, however, readers will reach the end of Part I with the background information they need.
In Part II, Lasson begins her analysis of Ulrich's treatment of the First Commandment. She dedicates the entire section to unpacking his main sources, which she determines to be the Bible, Gratian's Decretum, and Aquinas's Summa theologiae. The groundwork for this part of her book was firmly laid by Baptist- Hlawatsch's edition, which identifies every Latin source quoted in Ulrich's German text. Here too Lasson varies her tone considerably. Any exposition of the sources of a scholastic commentary will necessarily entail a great deal of highly technical work. Yet she also presents very basic background information on Gratian and Thomas, on canon law and scholastic theology. Despite this thoroughgoing approach, she offers no particularly startling insights into how Ulrich used his sources. That the Bible was foundational for a late- medieval theologian, and that he employed Gratian and Thomas essentially as "reference works," mining them, in turn, for citations from even earlier authors, will not surprise any expert. Although working in a somewhat new or at least newly important genre, Ulrich appears to have been entirely traditional in his method.
In Part III, Lasson analyzes the specific beliefs and practices mentioned in Ulrich's Decalogue commentary. She proceeds by means of overarching categorizations, dividing reported superstitions first into three broad groups-–observation, divination, and magic arts-–and then examining individual practices. She draws her distinctions not just from Ulrich but from a group of fifteen other late-medieval southern-German and Austrian authors, as well as considerable comparison to categorical listings of earlier authorities, mainly Augustine and Aquinas. Her list of fifteen is not exhaustive of all possible authors who could be used for comparison in this time and region. While she includes two other major Viennese authors of Decalogue treatises, Nicholas of Dinkelsbühl and Thomas Ebendorfer, she excludes from her list (although not entirely from her analysis) the Vienna theologian Johannes Nider, author of a widely circulated Preceptorium divine legis and even more famously the early witchcraft treatise Formicarius. Also included in her list (although not really all that extensively discussed) is the later witchcraft theorist Heinrich Kramer, who hunted some witches in Austrian territory but actually wrote his Malleus maleficarum in Cologne. We get, in Part III, a rich enumeration of beliefs and practices that were condemned as superstitious in and around late medieval Vienna. The extensive comparisons among a broad selection of other texts extend the value of this study far beyond an examination of Ulrich's treatise alone. But the analysis is fairly limited. Lasson is clearly most comfortable simply cataloging and cross-referencing. This is exemplified by her quite useful appendix, listing terms and concepts associated with superstition and providing citations. The list starts with aeromancy, aiguille, air, alcyon, Alp, amulette and proceeds through such terms as astrologie, demon, herbe, pyromancie, and Unholden. Since much of the terminology used by late medieval authors derived from earlier authorities, an inevitable question in this as in all research on medieval superstition is whether and to what degree continued use of certain terms and categories indicates truly perennial practices persisting across many centuries, or only the inherent conservatism of medieval authors themselves. Lasson notes this dilemma at one point (180), but then basically confines herself to unpacking the literary tradition and its internal connections. This is fine, except that the book does claim, in part, to offer a window onto actual practices in late medieval and lower Austria. As far as it extends, however, her systematic discussion of terminology and the varieties of practice it might indicate provides useful guidance through this complex issue. In this her work is similar to Bernadette Filotas's foundational study of early medieval references to superstitions, Pagan Survivals, Superstitions, and Popular Cultures (2005). Filotas delivered a much more exhaustive survey, but then, early medieval sources pertaining to superstition are much more limited than the voluminous treatises of the fifteenth century. A final hesitation about Lasson's work concerns her bibliography. While she never seems uninformed about any of the issues she addresses, still one generally wants to see all of the best scholarship on a given topic put to use. This is not the case here, particularly where English-language scholarship is concerned. Filotas appears in Lasson's bibliography, for example, but does not seem to have been cited directly anywhere in her footnotes. Similarly, Richard Kieckhefer's fundamental study of Magic in the Middle Ages, present in the bibliography, also seems absent from the notes. Kieckhefer's study of a fifteenth-century southern German manual of necromancy is nowhere in either notes or bibliography, although necromancy is one of the specific categories of superstition Lasson discusses. When discussing amulets, she does not reference the now-essential work of Don Skemer. Nor are omissions solely in English. Jean-Patrice Boudet's extremely rich Entre science et nigromance (2006) covers innumerable issues with which Lasson deals, but she does not refer to him. Instead there is extensive reliance on reference works, particularly the Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens and Dieter Harmening's Wörterbuch des Aberglaubens. The multivolume Handwörterbuch is an eminent and admirable scholarly project, and Harmening is certainly well- attuned to medieval developments and contexts. Nevertheless, compilations such as these inevitably reinforce Lasson's own rigidly categorical analysis.