Superstitio: an Introduction to the Special Section

Abstract

The following contributions stem from a Call for Papers on “Superstitio from Ancient to Early Modern: Philosophy, Lexicography, and History of Ideas” that was presented in the previous issue of Lexicon Philosophicum (8, 2020). While historians have often studied ‘superstition’ tracing past practices of now sunken beliefs and systems of belief, we were especially interested in charting the intricate lexical and semantic field that originates from and surrounds ‘superstition’: the web of word usages, associations, and meanings, as well as of connected terms and concepts, that arose in the early modern
reception of ancient debates and in the transformation, extensions, and innovations that modernity brought about in this domain.