Introduction
Rob Meens
In the late seventh century an anonymous compiler of a penitential handbook included following phrase: ‘If someone [is] magician and is able to provoke storms, he should do penance for seven years, three on bread water.’ This short sentence can be entrance into world in which farmers fear their crops because heavy hail thunderstorms try protect them by supernatural means. Some people, sources period referred as tempestarii, term that one could translate ‘stormmakers’, apparently played these fears offered protection against such meteorological disasters return material rewards. A treatise composed ninth-century bishop Lyon, Agobard, arguing beliefs, provides useful background this canon. Agobard describes belief magical ships travelling through sky coming from land called Magonia communicating with tempestarii where ship, provoking storm robbing its taking aboard ship. Farmers gave reward, they canonicum, so informs us, used fact excuse not pay tithe owed church. Thanks Agobard’s terse formulation text cited above reveals broader context, yet there still remain unsolved riddles. One concerns question who were. Were pagan priests competing Christian clerics, has recently been maintained? Or are we dealing independent village sorcerers, were nominally Christian, dabbled sorcery witchcraft? even argue was combatting or monks offering liturgical thunderstorms. The small number source materials makes it hard provide definite answers basic questions. Penitential texts essential information regarding ways ward off bad weather, but reach any definitive solutions. As shall see, uncertainty also characterizes debate about medieval penance, particularly earlier before c. 1200.
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