The Transformations of Magic: Illicit Learned Magic in the Later Middle Ages and Renaissance

Introduction

INTRODUCTION This book is about illicit learned magic in England and the ways in which it was transformed between 1300 and 1600. It concerns the changes, sometimes subtle and sometimes dramatic, that took place each time a medieval author, scribe, or collector set out to understand and practice learned magic, and then to copy the associated texts or write new ones. It also deals with the transformations that entire genres of this literature underwent in the later Middle Ages and the sixteenth century. It seeks to understand what motivated these changes and what this tells us about the intellectual culture of late medieval magic. The history of learned magic in the Latin West may be understood in part as a series of attempts to reconcile theologically problematic practices and ideas with Christian orthodoxy. This was a matter that concerned not only the authors of magic books but also the scribes and collectors who transmitted or preserved such texts. The nature of each reconciliation could, in principle , be quite distinctive and depended on a wide variety of factors, including the nature of the text received, any known authoritative reactions to it or the kind of magic it promoted, the context in which it was transmitted, and the copyist’s interests. A desire to see magic in terms of natural philosophy would, for example, demand a fundamentally different approach from a desire to regard it as a kind of mystical technology or religious exercise. A text known to have been condemned by an authoritative voice might generate a different response from one that had not. In addition, the intellectual world of late medieval scribes was not only a matter of solving abstract problems; it was circumscribed and informed by a number of broader conditions, such as the kinds of texts available and the professional context of the individual author, scribe, or collector. A monk’s interests, abilities, and resources were different from those of a medical doctor, student, or priest. A copyist’s profession affected not only what texts were available but also how they were interpreted, copied, and altered. The processes involved in copying were thus very complex, and even where the original text was not altered in any way, the act of copying was not the transformations of magic 2 passive. On the contrary, it involved a wide range of choices, conscious or otherwise , that might fundamentally alter the sense of the received text. Which text would one choose, and which version? How would one find the text one wanted if one did not already have it? How should its legitimacy and value be judged? Should one alter the contents, omit parts, or extract a portion from its original context? If it was corrupt or fragmentary, how would one correct or supplement it so that it made sense? Might it be incorporated into a new text? How would it be presented on the page? Did it deserve its own folios or was it fit only for the margins, some loose parchment, or a pastedown? Would it be copied in a notebook, a schoolbook, or an illuminated manuscript? Once written, would it be annotated, glossed, indexed, or cross-referenced? Would it be strictly for personal use or available in a library? Finally, assuming that the scribe had the luxury of such a choice, in what kind of book would it be placed, that is to say, with what other kinds of texts should it be gathered for easy reference? Evidence of at least some of these decisions remains in each manuscript. To appreciate the broader changes in magic across the two and a half centuries covered by this book, and the interests and assumptions that lay behind them, we must begin by examining such data. The transformations were far from random, and clear patterns emerge. The literature of illicit magic, and the way in which it was understood and treated, fall into two major streams. To illustrate the intellectual culture that in part determined the course of these streams, the first two sections of this book are introduced by the stories of two men, an unnamed apothecary and John of Morigny. In each case, the protagonist faces an essentially unsolvable problem. The apothecary must decide whether to believe that an astrological image that made him rich derived its power from occult natural properties or from deceptive demons. Brother John, by contrast, struggles to reconcile the fact that ritual magic was transmitted in books—books that one should assume were corrupt—but...