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1 magic and natural philosophy Magic, Orthodoxy, and Sin: Questions in the Mind of the Collector In his Dialogue on Miracles, the late twelfth- and early thirteenth-century Cistercian Caesarius of Heisterbach relates the story of a group of German students studying necromancy in Toledo. After several months of intense study, they had seen no concrete results. By threatening his life, they convinced their master to give them a demonstration of his art. He took them to a deserted place, drew a circle around them, and warned them not to leave the circle for any reason. The master then summoned a group of demons who first appeared as knights, attempting to frighten the students out of their protective circle. When this did not work, the demons took the form of voluptuous women, dancing seductively about them. One of the students was overcome by the display and accepted a ring from one of the demons. He was instantly dragged off to hell, and the whole apparition vanished. After they had recovered from the shock, the remaining students persuaded the master, with further threats to his life, to attempt to retrieve their friend. In turn, he managed to persuade the demonic forces to hold a sort of trial to decide whether the student had been dealt with justly. It was concluded that he did not deserve so radical a punishment, and he was returned in a predictably ruinous state. He subsequently entered a monastery, where he lived out the remainder of his days.1 The subject of magic rarely evokes weak reactions, largely because it serves to mediate basic tensions in the human psyche. Our desire for power accompanies a sense of powerlessness. We wish for control in a world where most things are beyond our control. We fear that there are hidden machinations affecting our lives, and we wish to discover them. We are drawn to, the apothecary’s dilemma 18 and fascinated by, the wondrous but fearful of the strange and unknown. The themes of magic and irrational evil persist in modern suspense and horror films. Not only did accounts of demonic magic evoke the same kind of reactions as the modern horror film evokes in us; they also tended to embrace that genre’s radical or simplistic moralizing. When the student of necromancy was whisked away to hell, a moment of weakness had dragged him into what was potentially eternal perdition. His reaction upon being saved from indescribable horrors was similarly radical. He entered a monastery, where he remained to the end of his days. As in modern horror films, there is a playful element to this story, but this does not obviate its horrific features: demons and the torments of hell were very real and immanent. Medieval condemnations of magic drew upon these powerful resources. Magic was a complex sin. Authors vary widely in how they classify magic, and the great variation in treatment testifies not only to the imagination of the authors but also to the variety of potentially sinful behavior that magic might involve. The diversity of the practices that magic included, and the variety of human impulses that drove it, made magic difficult to categorize. John Gower discussed it as a form of gluttony.2 Thomas of Chobham included some magical practices under luxuria.3 Bernardino of Siena’s classification of certain magical practices under the sin of pride is particularly resonant with the grandiose pretensions of learned magic.4 Much of the magic literature features the creation of illusions, presumably intended to impress others. It also proposes to make available powers over some very fearsome forces—powers usually attributed only to saints—and knowledge not available to the vast majority of humankind. The potential for the sin of pride is clearly high. The use of magical techniques suggests a certain lack of faith in providence, a pride in one’s ability to avoid misfortune through magic as opposed to faith in God, and a despair that God will not ultimately provide for one. As it involved images and sometimes apparently worshipful acts, it was sometimes associated with idolatry and paganism. Finally, most learned magic was not characterized as superstitious in the sense that it made undue use of holy things or involved, as it were, a surplus of religious fervor that flowed into dubious practices. Our purpose here, however, is not to catalogue the complex variations on this theme but rather to illustrate the ambivalence commonly associated with image magic. To this end, let...

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