An original study of how food, magic, medicine, and religion intertwined in everyday life in the early Middle Ages.

In the early Middle Ages, food was never just nourishment. It was a means to heal, to protect, to curse, to seduce — and to negotiate with the supernatural. This book offers a fresh contribution to medieval studies, food history, and the anthropology of belief by exploring how everyday foods were used to understand and influence reality. Bread, salt, milk, herbs, meat, and bodily substances appear in magical formulas, medical remedies, and religious practices, revealing a world in which the boundaries between the ordinary and the marvelous were remarkably fluid. Drawing on a wide range of sources — penitential texts, pastoral literature, hagiographies, medical recipes, and theological treatises — Maraschi shows that magic in the early Middle Ages was not marginal or deviant, but deeply embedded in daily life and closely intertwined with medicine and faith. Centered on early medieval Western Europe and open to a broader Mediterranean perspective, this book offers a new lens on how people made sense of the world — and sought to act upon it — through what they ate.