This book offers an examination of a significant number of largely unedited minuscule texts that were transcribed in the marginal spaces of manuscripts and generated by intercessory, apotropaic and healing practices in the early Middle Ages. As they were produced in different languages, these ‘words of power’ have rarely been studied as a single corpus. By placing them into dialogue, this volume allows us to see both typological similarities and cultural differences in their production across Western Europe and the Mediterranean world. The collected essays approach these texts with similar questions, while bringing methodologies and perspectives from different academic disciplines and traditions. In doing so, they provide a timely synthetic analysis of these ambiguous, often overlooked texts located in the grey zone between ‘liturgy’ and ‘magic’.
