ABSTRACT

How do we de ne magic in relation to post-Byzantine Greek society? When does religion end and magic begin? Or is even this distinction erroneous? ese are some of the questions which Charles Stewart takes up in Chapter 15, in his brief survey of the Orthodox Church’s approach to the evil eye from the time of the Cappadocian Fathers to the present. In at least one instance, that of the o - cial prayer against evil eye bewitchment which was introduced by the seventeenth century, it is obvious that a body of beliefs and practices which the Church initially denounced and outlawed as ‘superstitious’ and ‘diabolical’ can in time be validated by this very agency. What is just as striking is that the converse may occur: a once-valid set of Church beliefs and practices may subsequently be rede ned by the Church as ‘magic’.