Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer's Manual of the Fifteenth Century (review)

264 Reviews c.1400') present useful, synthesising overviews of their topics, which are nonetheless still thoroughly grounded in an understanding of the 'particulars'. Handsomely printed, with an adequate index and a very useful bibliography of Hans Mayer's works, the wide-ranging subject matter means that this is a book which is more likely to be bought by libraries than individual scholars. It is, however, an indispensable resource for any collection on crusading studies, both for its individual contents, and its significance as a volume. Adina Hamilton Department of History University ofMelbourne Kieckhefer, Richard, Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer's Manual of Fifteenth Century, University Park, Pennsylvania, Penn State University Press, 1997; pp. 384; 8 tables, 28 b / w plates; R.R.P. US$60.00 (cloth), US$19.95 (paper). Prospero, it will be remembered, on leaving his island breaks hi staff and drowns his book, renouncing his occult powers. It is with one such book that the present study is concerned. Half of this volume is a reproduction of the Latin text of a fifteenth-century necromancer's manuscript n o w in the Bayerische Staatsbibliotek. It starts with an invocation for gaining knowledge of the liberal arts, asking for a spirit to be sent as a master, which might s t i l l be useful to some university students and staff. The manuscript is a compilation of the sort that many interested in the occult arts must have assembled secretly for themselves, and like any collection of recipes not an integrally conceived work. The text is preceded by a long, lucid and informative Reviews 265 introduction in which Professor Kieckhefer discusses the wider nature ofritualand the parallels between church rituals and those of the mage seeking control over demons. Both types are believed to work ex opere operato, the formula incorporating a permanent and authoritative repository of power, although the mental and moral condition of the operator might affect his ability to maintain control. The use of young boys and occasionally girls, w h o were in a state of innocency, to see and report on the demons and images of the future was an important element in the rituals. Kieckhefer stresses that many of the necromancers were clerics, most part of an underworld although a few were important churchmen, and that the books of necromancy were in a sense sacred books, formally consecrated to assist their efficacy and certainly magical and powerful in themselves. A mere apprentice, attempting to use them could be overwhelmed. The church routinely burned books in which incantations were written d o w n as the only w a y to disperse the demons w h o clung to the book. Necromancy had a long history. It was the first of the seven forbidden arts—worse than the others, geomancy, hydromancy, aeromancy, pyromancy, chiromancy and spatulamancy—because i t involved services and sacrifices to devils. Such classifications go as far back as Isidore of Seville and had been reiterated in the midfifteenth century by Johannes Hartlieb and other royal servants in Bavaria. Linking these sorcerous practices to village witchcraft m a y help explain the sudden wave of persecution of witches, the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century witchcraze. Kieckhefer divides the incantations into three main types— illusionist, psychological and divinatory. H e then divides them by purpose, motivating impulse, tensions, central features and their correlation with Jubertus's spirits. Illusions were a movement of the imagination; psychological rituals sought power and 266 Reviews divinatory, knowledge. Each in turn is discussed—particularly in terms of the most c o m m o n spells, such as those to produce banquets or castles; those designed to establish love or hatred, find missing people or property and so on. Kieckhefer uses his wide familiarity with the subject to show h o w the spells in the volume relate to those in others. The formulas are analysed and the specific functions of the spirits s u m m o n e d are considered and the spirits themselves. The role and function of the magic circle, its relationship to astral magic, and the boundaries between such magic and necromancy are considered. Amongst the most valuable aspects of...