The Transformations of Magic: Illicit Learned Magic in the Later Middle Ages and Renaissance

292 Pages·2013·11.33 MB·English

by  Frank Klaassen

conTenTs
Preface ix
Introduction 1
Part I: The Apothecary’s Dilemma 13
1 Magic and Natural Philosophy 17
2 Scholastic Image Magic Before 1500 33
3 Some Apparent Exceptions: Image Magic or Necromancy? 57
Part II: Brother John’s Dilemma 81
4 The Ars notoria and the Sworn Book of Honorius 89
5 The Magic of Demons and Angels 115
Part III: Magic After 1580 157
6 Sixteenth-Century Collections of Magic Texts 161
7 Medieval Ritual Magic and Renaissance Magic 187
notes 219
bibliography 249
index 267
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Preface
Manuscripts of illicit magic present considerable methodological challenges for
modern historians. While they may communicate in excruciating detail their
constituent operations, they simultaneously give little explicit information
about their authors, scribes, and collectors. Because magic texts often claim
ancient lineage, they unsurprisingly deemphasize their more modern transmit-
ters; good counsel would also have suggested the value of anonymity when cop-
ying an illicit work. As a result, that someone chose to transmit a magic text tells
us that he thought it was worth the effort, but little more. Was the transmitter a
practitioner, a kind of antiquarian, or just a slavish scribe copying the next text
in a volume? Did he copy it so as to develop arguments against magic, as a kind
of curiosity, or just to make money? With few exceptions, what we know about
the people behind the letters has been revealed unselfconsciously or inferred
from the broader historical context. And, in fact, historians of medieval magic
are usually delighted just to find a new m anuscript, anonymous or not.
In an unusually stimulating seminar with Brian Stock at the University
of Toronto, the intellectual spark that gave rise to this study was first struck.
I began to wonder what could be learned about medieval magic by focusing on
the manuscripts themselves: their mise-en-page, their organization, the works
with which they were bound together, and how they were recorded in inventories
and catalogues. I was also interested to know whether a broad survey of surviving
manuscripts might reveal patterns that could help us understand the intellectual
culture surrounding learned magic in the later Middle Ages and Renaissance.
This gave rise to my doctoral dissertation and to much of my intellectual produc-
tion since that time. As in any study of magic, I have had to move well beyond
the skeletal evidence this approach provides, but the manuscript of magic and
the codex that contains it have remained my intellectual rudders.
In this study I do not seek to provide a comprehensive treatment of the tra-
ditions of illicit learned magic in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Instead,
I follow two principal genres of magic manuscripts, identify some of the defin-
ing features of the intellectual cultures they represent, and attempt to draw
some general conclusions about the history of magic. Although I believe that
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