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PART II brother john’s dilemma Do not believe or acquiesce lightly to all visions, but by council of the Saviour, try the spirits whether they are of God, and seek discernment from the Holy Spirit in prayers. Brother John of Morigny thirsted after enlightenment.1 But its pursuit by necromantic means filled him with dread and fear for his soul. He unburdened himself to Jacob, a doctor friend, who suggested that the Ars notoria was his best alternative, since it employed angels instead of demons. Through this art John might achieve intellectual gifts and complete knowledge of the arts and sciences. After a program of prayers and meditations, the Holy Spirit would infuse him with these gifts. The suggestion launched John, who from an early age had been given to visions that filled the sky and shook the earth, upon a lengthy exploration of this art. Some of the resulting visions he believed legitimate , but toward others he was ambivalent, for they were frightening, puzzling, suspicious. John learned a great deal from the spirits, including information about magical practices, and he employed the art to understand the meaning of his visionary experiences. He assisted two others in practicing the art as well. His younger sister used it with great success to learn Latin but was plagued by terrifying visions. Another monk, who had persuaded John to instruct him, was ultimately warned in a vision that the art was without spiritual value. John also had visions warning him against his practices. In one, an angel demonstrated that the prayers of the Solomonic Ars notoria he was using had been imperceptibly woven together with necromantic incantations. Unknowingly, he and his associates had been calling upon demons for assistance, not angels. So John gave up all hope of practicing a good form of magic and, despite his fears, began dabbling in necromancy. He became so proficient that he began, 82 the transformations of magic and, by his later account, finished, a book on the subject. But he was already being plagued by a new set of visions. In one, an angel delivered John over to a demon to be killed; in another, Christ himself appeared and convinced John that he should abandon his explorations in magic altogether by having him beaten severely. When John finally renounced all of these magic arts, his visions no longer involved demons but rather the Virgin, angels, saints, and even Christ on the cross. Instead of filling him with dread, they suffused him with joy. He was sure that the divine had inspired these visions. He was no longer plagued by the terrifying and explosive appearances he had experienced before. Yet this did not stop him from desiring knowledge from spiritual sources. In the short term, he continued to use dreams to seek answers to questions. In the end, John asked the Virgin for permission to compose a new book of thirty simple prayers that would provoke the infusion of knowledge of scripture, the arts, and the sciences, a book that would destroy and supersede the old and evil Ars notoria: And lo, that wooden image was transformed into the human likeness of the same undefiled virgin, and she spoke with me, saying, as though unwilling and heavily, and as though she tired herself by speaking, “It pleases me that you should compose such a book as you have asked for.” And I said to her, “Hey, my lady, how will I recognize it and be able to compose it?” And she responded: “When you do it, I will give you such eloquence that you will fashion it well.”2 John then wrote and compiled the Liber florum celestis doctrine. The autobiographical stories recounted here are drawn from its prologue, the Liber visionum, the title of which has hitherto been applied to the entire work.3 The apothecary with whom we began this book could interpret the operation of a magical image in two ways. One was morally neutral and legitimate because, like any other tool or natural force available to human beings, it could be used by bad and good alike and could be judged as bad or good only on the basis of how it was used. While most authorities argued that such “natural magic” was not possible, the traditions of Arabic astrology and the influence of the Speculum astronomiae were evidently enough to give some hope that it was. The other option, drawing on a considerable range of authoritative statements extending back to Augustine...

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