In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Invoking Angels: Theurgic Ideas and Practices, Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries ed. by Claire Fanger
  • Laura Mitchell
Claire Fanger , ed. Invoking Angels: Theurgic Ideas and Practices, Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012. Pp. 396. ISBN 978-0-27-105142-0.

Invoking Angels is the follow-up volume to Conjuring Spirits: Texts and Traditions of Medieval Ritual Magic, edited by Claire Fanger and published in 1998 by Pennsylvania State University Press. At the time of its publication Conjuring Spirits answered a need in scholarship for a serious work on medieval ritual magic. It was—and is—an important work that brought to light various issues in the idea of ritual magic and its status in later medieval Europe. Its aims—to bring these issues and new texts to broader attention—served, in essence, as the [End Page 214] foundation for the chapters that appear in Invoking Angels. In this new volume Fanger and the other contributors have shifted the conversation to focus on angelic magic, or more accurately, theurgy. As Fanger notes in her introduction, the use of the term has a long and complex history. Even within this volume its connotations can change from chapter to chapter according to the background and context in which each author is working. Fanger, therefore, does a great service to the reader by tackling some of the history surrounding the term and its variant definitions. The problems associated with studying texts as theurgic, especially in such a variety as is found in this volume, will be familiar to anyone who has spent any time debating the use of the term "magic" (the changes in definition over time and in different contexts, for example, come to mind), and the contributors to Invoking Angels have undertaken this difficult topic very well and in general have kept their use of the term "theurgy" coherent between chapters.

Fanger states in her introduction that Invoking Angels is aimed at "a broader audience of readers interested in contiguous areas of medieval social, cultural, and religious history" (3). To engage this broader audience, Fanger does an excellent job in placing the chapters within their historiographic context and provides succinct descriptions of the texts and people discussed in the volume. Additionally, a number of authors have included appendices with their contributions, detailing existing manuscripts or the contents of some of the more obscure texts. These explanations and appendices will be useful not only for the seasoned scholar, but also for newcomers to the field.

Invoking Angels progresses chronologically in two parts: the first looks at texts from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; the second, texts from the late fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries. The contributors have chosen to focus on one or two texts, or even individual manuscripts in some cases. In many respects, this approach fills the need that Richard Kieckhefer noted in Forbidden Rites to turn the attention of magic scholarship to individual, representative manuscripts of magic and how they are influenced by the whims of their compilers. Throughout the volume there is a focus on the shaping of magical texts and their respective influences. This detailed work on distinct texts sets Invoking Angels apart.

Julien Véronèse's article, which opens Invoking Angels, uses one representative manuscript of the Ars notoria to address a fundamental question: what is it? Theurgy? Magic? Devotional text? Véronèse's goal in examining the nature of the Ars notoria is to situate it properly within the broader historical context. To that end, Véronèse offers an incisive examination of the ritual itself. Véronèse uses his explication of the text to argue that there may be some connection [End Page 215] between the Ars notoria and Neoplatonic theurgy. As he rightly points out, caution must be taken with such a claim; nevertheless, he draws intriguing threads of comparison between the Ars notoria's emphasis on experience of the divine in secrecy and through contemplation and similar beliefs found in the much older traditions of Neoplatonic theurgy.

Sophie Page looks at two little-studied ritual magic texts, the Liber razielis and the Liber de essentia spirituum, the latter of which survives only in one...

pdf