of love magic as it enabled a timid person to approach the unapproachable. With the dominance of Christianity and Catholicism in Europe during the Renaissance, elements of Christianity seeped its way into the magic rituals themselves. Often, clay dolls or written spell scrolls would be hidden in the altar at churches, or holy candles would be lit in the rituals. The Host from a Catholic Mass would sometimes be taken and used in rituals to gain the desired result. Thus, love magic within the Renaissance period was both Christian and pagan. Love magic in literature and art In literature and art, the motif of a genuine love spell is interwoven more often, and is sometimes made the starting point of tragic setbacks and complications. One of the earliest manifestations of the theme in the Western world is the story of Heracles and Deianeira. A famous treatment of the subject is in Richard Wagner's 1865 opera Tristan and Isolde, which in turn goes back to the same epic by Gottfried von Strassburg. Other examples of the use of love magic motif are Donizetti's 1832 opera The Elixir of Love (L'Elisir d'amore) and Manuel de Falla's 1915 ballet El amor brujo (The magic of love). Women in love magic Love magic was seen as drawing "…heavily upon what was perceived as quintessentially feminine: fertility, birth, menstruation (seen as closely related to both fertility and birth), and a woman’s ‘nature’ or ‘shameful parts,’ that is, genitals". This feminine attribute is reflected within the literature such as the Malleus Maleficarum, and in the trials of the Holy Office in which most of the cases brought before the council were women accused of bewitching men. This illustrates the common stereotype that men did not do magic. According to historians Guido Ruggiero and Christopher A. Faraone, love magic often was associated with prostitutes and courtesans. Women in these professions often held psychological power over their partners, with resentment sometimes resulting in drastic measures such as witchcraft accusations. In the Early Middle Ages there is some evidence that women were considered more likely to be practitioners of love magic, which was considered to be a lesser intellectual type of magic. For instance, in the works of Regino of Prüm, Burchard of Worms and Hincmar the practitioners of love magic are usually gendered as female. The view of women within the Renaissance can best be illustrated by the