Ignorant Superstition? Popular Education on Magic in Early Seventeenth-Century Confessionalist Finland: The Case of Mary and the Rosaries

Abstract

The essay shows a remnant of Catholic practice in early modern Finland that only a hundred years after the reformation slowly began to be treated as ‘papist superstition’. It discusses how such practices were, in the beginning of the seventeenth century considered reprehensible but essentially harmless superstitions, but by the middle of the century began to be treated as forms of magic or even witchcraft. The rosary practices are looked at as a crossroads of the beginnings of history of the Confessionalist Lutheran church in Sweden and the religious life of early modern lay people. The essay uses church popular education material from the early seventeenth century with the model sermon collection of Bishop Ericus Erici Sorolainen to see what it teaches about Catholicism and Rosaries and then contrasts it with (secular) court records in order to look at popular attitudes in practice. These are then put in the context of historiography on magic and superstition in Sweden and Finland.