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Chapter  Canon Law and Chaucer on Licit and Illicit Magic Henry Ansgar Kelly Natural magic was considered a legitimate science in the Middle Ages, one that had as its object the hidden properties and powers of the cosmos. It was sanctioned by the Gospel itself, which told of Magi who sought out the infant Jesus through their reading of the heavens, and who were venerated as the Three Kings of Cologne. Magic, of course, was often put to bad purposes and its practitioners denounced as malefactors, malefici , and their deeds as maleficia. But fault was found even with some magic practices intended as beneficia (benefits). Canon law provided little guidance on the subject of good and not-good magic. True, Gratian’s unof- ficial collection of competing canons, the Decretum, had a whole ‘‘case’’ on the subject, namely, Cause , centering around a priest convicted as a sorcerer , sortilegus (the word means, literally, ‘‘sort-reader’’ or fortuneteller, but it was inclusive of other kinds of prohibited magic). The three dozen excerpts gathered here range from discussions by St. Augustine to conciliar pronouncements, including the celebrated chapter Episcopi (on the delusions of women flying to the Sabbath).1 But the modern relevance of these canons was unclear, since there was no Ordinary Gloss to this part of Gratian . Finally, John of God, who taught at Bologna from  until ,2 made an attempt to supply a commentary, begun and completed in .3 His commentary in turn was supplemented by the Rosary of ‘‘the Archdeacon ,’’ that is, Guy of Baisio, Archdeacon of Bologna, compiled around .4 In this chapter I concentrate on the subject of medicinal magic, which is addressed by several of Gratian’s canons. The focal point of the inquiry will be the prohibition of John Peckham, archbishop of Canterbury, against sorceries and superstitions, and the commentary on this prohibition by William Lyndwood in his Provinciale (composed in the s).5 I also draw  Henry Ansgar Kelly upon literary evidence, particularly the works of Chaucer, and also examples from medical recipe books. Our goal will be to see some of the ways in which magic was thought to work, on both learned and popular levels, and to discover lines that were drawn between licit and illicit practices. Lyndwood and the Canonists I should note at the beginning that Lyndwood shows no sign of any independent knowledge on the subject of charms and magic; he simply refers to Gratian’s canons and to the Archdeacon’s commentary and to other authorities . Archbishop Peckham’s strictures, on which Lyndwood is commenting , come in his constitution Ignorantia sacerdotum, issued in , at the point where he says that under the First Commandment ‘‘are implicitly prohibited all sorceries and all charms [incantationes], along with superstitions of characters and other suchlike figments.’’6 Lyndwood defines ‘‘all sorceries’’ as ‘‘divinations and malefices.’’7 He illustrates charms (incantations ) by simply quoting from the canon Non liceat Christianis in Gratian, forbidding observances called for in collections of medicinal herbs, unless it is simply a matter of saying the Creed or the Lord’s Prayer.8 Gratian identifies Non liceat as coming from the ‘‘Council of Pope Martin,’’ but it is really from the Capitula of Martin of Braga in the sixth century, a collection of canons of Eastern, African, and Spanish synods.9 The canon forbids Christians to perform ‘‘observations’’ or ‘‘incantations prescribed in collections of medicinal herbs, except only with the Creed or the Lord’s Prayer.’’10 Lyndwood adds that ‘‘enchanters’’ (incantatores) is the word for people who ‘‘exercise art with words,’’ as one reads in the canon Igitur,11 where St. Augustine quotes Varro as saying that there are two kinds of divination, art and madness; enchanters are those who practice their art with words. Lyndwood also refers here to the Archdeacon’s commentary, which says, among other things, that the term medicinales in Non liceat indicates that there is power (virtus) in herbs, just as there is in words (directing us to the canon Nec mirum) and in stones (as is indicated in the canon Demonium , which also deals with herbs).12 There is nothing in Nec mirum that meets the eye concerning the power of words, but we will see below why it is referred to. The canon Demonium itself reads: ‘‘It is lawful for one who endures a demon to have stones and herbs, without incantations’’—that is, as long as [18.218.168.16] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 22...

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