Magic in the Middle Ages by Richard Kieckhefer (review)

REVIEWS of Lampeter, Dyfed, appeared in 1990, and my completed edition of University of Glasgow, Hunterian 83 will appear with a new edition of Shirley's Cronycle ofthe Dethe of]amesStewarde. I have recently published "King Arthur and the Medieval English Chronicles" in Valerie M. Lagorio and Mildred Day Leake, eds., King Arthur Through the Ages (New York and London: Garland, 1990), and my contribution, entitled "A Great Divide: Historical Principles in Early and Middle Scots Literature," is forthcoming in ACTA, ed. David Lampe. Such interest in Middle English historical writings can only be enhanced, and future research facilitated and directed, by Donald Kennedy's fine guide. LISTER M. MATHESON Michigan State University RICHARD KIECKHEFER. Magic in the Middle Ages. Cambridge Medieval Textbooks. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Pp. X, 219. $39.50. As one of a new series of specially commissioned introductory texts for teachers and students, Richard Kieckhefer's book on medieval magic should find a wide and diverse audience. It is comprehensive both chrono­ logically and thematically, surveying practices and beliefs, attitudes and responses from late antiquity through the fifteenth century and ranging from the unambiguously magical outward in a number of directions to where magic merged almost imperceptibly with science, medicine, and religion. True to its introductory nature, the book provides elementary background information on every topic covered, but with such great economy that the author has ample room to develop arguments that should stimulate the thinking of almost anyone interested in medieval cultural history. Magic, as Kieckhefer demonstrates, is peculiarly revealing of the char­ acter of medieval life since it occupied a place at the intersections of religion and science, popular and learned culture, fiction and reality, and the cultural streams that flowed into European Christendom from the Greeks, Romans, Celts, Teutons, Arabs, andJews. Two late-medieval manuscripts introduced in the first chapter and referred to regularly throughout the book exemplify this point. The first is a vernacular handbook for an estate 213 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER manager replete with prescriptions that freely mix folk medicine, liturgical formulas, pseudo-Greek and Latin letters and words, and ingredients such as bat's blood to cure disease and bolster health. The other is a Latin text that merges "astral" magic and Christian exorcisms in the pursuit of necromancy-the art ofconjuring spirits to do the bidding of a magician. These two manuscripts exemplify as well two basic distinctions that the author would like to maintain-i.e., between "natural" and "demonic" magic and between a common magical tradition that spanned the whole of the Middle Ages and a more specialized tradition that arose among literate clerics after the twelfth century, when translations of Greco-Arabic astro­ logical and magical works provided a new basis for both types ofmagic. The German manuscript, whose prescriptions would not have been perceived by its users asparticularly demonic, belongs to thatcommon tradition. The necromancer's manual is a product ofa secretive late-medieval magical elite and does not attempt to hide its explicitly demonic character. A final distinction, which I am not sure the author has quite managed to maintain, involves the definition ofmagic itself. Kieckhefer rejects the view that an act is magical ifit attempts to coerce spiritual forces into action and religious ifit is supplicatory. His own definitionlocates magic in contradis­ tinction to both religion and science by focusing on the kind of power invoked. Where religion and science call on divine action or the manifest powers of nature, magic relies on demonic aid or occult (hidden) powers in nature. This definition nicely clarifies the difference between demonic and natural magic, but what are we to make of an "explicitly demonic" conjura­ tion like that on pages 166-67, which calls on the power of God to compel demons to do the magician's will? Instances like this point up the difficulty of creating almost any simple definition of magic in the Middle Ages. But that is a minor problem, for, while Kieckhefer's definition may not fit every example he cites, he takes great care in mapping the shifting and overlapping borders ofmagic, science, and religion and often reminds his readers that the handy...