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7 Medieval Ritual Magic and Renaissance Magic Surviving sixteenth-century manuscripts of illicit magic betray no dramatic changes in ritual magical traditions following the publication of works by Pico, Ficino, and Agrippa. The few changes that the library of ritual magic underwent in the sixteenth century were, in almost every way, natural continuations of transformations already under way during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. How, then, do we account for the apparent disjuncture between the interests of the famous Renaissance proponents of magic and those represented in the surviving manuscripts? How is it that the traditions of Scholastic image magic, so strongly represented in Renaissance writers, could suffer such a drastic decline in popularity among specialists? It seems counterintuitive that sixteenth-century scribes would choose to copy a poorly transmitted, disorganized , sprawling work of ritual magic written in poor Latin, rather than a work of reasonably well-written and ordered astrological image magic. But, as we have seen, after 1500 ritual magic texts were chosen far more often by those who copied magic texts, and when the classics of Scholastic image magic were copied, it was increasingly by those interested primarily in ritual magic. Ritual magic might have been inherently more attractive to Renaissance or humanist sensibilities. Charles Nauert has suggested that an enthusiasm for antiquity may have made more acceptable a tradition that “claimed to stem from ancient Persian Magic, the sages of Egypt, and the Hebrew elders.” Since it “expressed the divine power in man,” the tradition of medieval magic also connected with Renaissance conceptions of man as microcosm and as mediator between the mundane and the divine. Finally, Nauert sees the magician as standing outside rationality and an ordered universe; his magic defies bounds and disrupts order.1 To put it another way, man is the hero in the story of magic, as he is in the mythology of the Renaissance. While there may be some truth MAGIC AFTER 1580 188 in Nauert’s ideas, the situation is much more complex than what he describes. The suggestion that medieval magic disrupted the order of the Scholastic universe is problematic since, as we have seen, it was precisely the possibility that magic was natural according to Scholastic standards that made it attractive to most of its medieval scribes. Even demonic magic, which certainly lay outside the conventionally defined moral order, was not external to the natural order. Demons were quite natural and had characteristics and powers that could be defined and discussed in philosophical terms.2 An enthusiasm for antiquity may have encouraged the copying of medieval ritual magic texts attributed to Solomon. Yet it evidently did not do so for Thetel’s work on the images carved by the “Sons of Israel” while in the desert, or for the Hermetic De quindecim stellis, both of which appear in drastically reduced numbers in the sixteenth century. Finally, while the Promethean aspects of magic, and especially of ritual magic, might have been attractive to Renaissance writers, these cannot explain the pattern of copying. The desire for literature in which man, or more specifically a magus, was the hero might have recommended ritual magic texts to readers, but it would not have driven scribes to neglect Scholastic image magic. So we must push beyond Nauert’s suggestions. The pattern of manuscript copying suggests that an anti-Scholastic attitude could have been an important feature of the way in which the texts were vetted : all else being equal, a humanist scribe might prefer a text not associated with Scholastic thought. More to the point, he might be less inclined to browse a codex containing medieval natural philosophy in the first place than a volume dedicated solely to ritual magic. Assuming that the scribe was in a position to choose between the two, he might opt for ritual magic precisely because it often explicitly positioned itself outside the mainstream of medieval thought and ran counter to Scholastic sensibilities. This scenario does not entirely match up with the evidence either. Many image magic texts claimed great antiquity, usually predated Scholasticism, and, although supported by a certain portion of the Scholastic tradition, did not explicitly appeal to its authority themselves. In short, an anti-Scholastic attitude could just as easily have driven interest in image magic. Aquinas, along with most authoritative Scholastic writers, rejected magical images as demonic. In Catholic territories, Aquinas’s corpus formed the core of moral theology in the sixteenth century and, even for humanists, was very much the standard by...

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