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Abstract

In the late medieval and early Renaissance eras, attitudes towards science, religion, and magic were in upheaval. The Reformation was heavily critiquing Catholicism as being too closely related to magic, there were pushes for leaving long-held beliefs behind in favor of newer science, and society as a whole was in a massive period of change. One of the places all three topics intersect is medicine. Normal medicine during this period was often ineffective, furthering the need for people seek out magical cures, which were in turn often intertwined with religion. By looking at the question of whether it would have been considered moral to use magical cures at the time, a window into how societal values were changing, and the battle between the established and the new, can be seen. This paper pulls from many primary sources and modern secondary sources to create an idea of what influenced society at the time on both sides in regard to the morality of using magical cures. Using that information, this paper argues that using magical cures should have been generally morally permissible in the late medieval and early Renaissance eras.

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