Richard Kieckhefer (born 1946) is an American

medievalist The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , ''asteriskos'', "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star. Computer scientists and mathematicians often v ...

, religious historian, scholar of

church architecture Church architecture refers to the architecture of buildings of churches, convents, seminaries etc. It has evolved over the two thousand years of the Christian religion, partly by innovation and partly by borrowing other architectural styles as ...

, and author. He is Professor of History and John Evans Professor of Religious Studies at

Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Charte ...

Education

After an undergraduate education at

Saint Louis University Saint Louis University (SLU) is a private university, private Society of Jesus, Jesuit research university with campuses in St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, United States, and Madrid, Spain. Founded in 1818 by Louis William Valentine DuBourg, ...

, Kieckhefer earned a PhD in history from the

University of Texas The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

in 1972, spending a year in

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and ...

at the

Monumenta Germaniae Historica The ''Monumenta Germaniae Historica'' (''MGH'') is a comprehensive series of carefully edited and published primary sources, both chronicle and archival, for the study of Northwestern and Central European history from the end of the Roman Empir ...

Institute with the support of the

German Academic Exchange Service The German Academic Exchange Service, or DAAD (german: Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst), was founded in 1925 and is the largest German support organisation in the field of international academic co-operation. Organisation ''DAAD'' is a ...

(DAAD).

Career

Kieckhefer has written on

sainthood In religious belief, a saint is a person who is recognized as having an exceptional degree of holiness, likeness, or closeness to God. However, the use of the term ''saint'' depends on the context and denomination. In Catholic, Eastern Orth ...

, medieval ritual magic,

witchcraft Witchcraft traditionally means the use of magic or supernatural powers to harm others. A practitioner is a witch. In medieval and early modern Europe, where the term originated, accused witches were usually women who were believed to have ...

, medieval and contemporary

hoopoe Hoopoes () are colourful birds found across Africa, Asia, and Europe, notable for their distinctive "crown" of feathers. Three living and one extinct species are recognized, though for many years all of the extant species were lumped as a single ...

s, and mystical literature; he has also edited and translated important texts from medieval Latin. He has taught at Northwestern University since 1975. His ''Magic in the Middle Ages'', first published in 1989, has been translated into Spanish, German, Polish, Czech, Italian, and Greek, and is forthcoming in Turkish, Portuguese, and Korean. He was President of the American Society of Church History in 1997 and of the Societas Magica from 1995 to 2004.

Awards

In addition to the DAAD, his research has been supported by the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the

National Endowment for the Humanities The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...

. In 2006, he was elected a member of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

Works

''European Witch Trials: Their Foundations in Popular and Learned Culture, 1300–1500''
(1976)
''Repression of Heresy in Medieval Germany''
(1979)
''Magic in the Middle Ages''
(1989)
''Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer's Manual of the Fifteenth Century''
(1997)
''Theology in Stone: Church Architecture From Byzantium to Berkeley''
(2004)
''There Once Was a Serpent: A History of Theology in Limericks''
(2010)

References

External links

Kieckhefer's publications on Northwestern Scholars

Richard Kieckhefer on Library Thing

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kieckhefer, Richard American medievalists Northwestern University faculty Living people 20th-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers University of Texas alumni Saint Louis University alumni Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Writers from Illinois Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America Western esotericism scholars Presidents of the American Society of Church History 1946 births