Fanger - Rewriting Magic: An Exegesis of the Visionary Autobiography of a Fourteenth-Century French Monk

Rewriting Magic

THE MAGIC IN HISTORY SERIES

FORBIDDEN RITES

A Necromancers Manual of the Fifteenth Century

Richard Kieckhefer

CONJURING SPIRITS

Texts and Traditions of Medieval Ritual Magic

Edited by Claire Fanger

RITUAL MAGIC

Elizabeth M. Butler

THE FORTUNES OF FAUST

Elizabeth M. Butler

THE BATHHOUSE AT MIDNIGHT

An Historical Survey of Magic and Divination in Russia

W. F. Ryan

SPIRITUAL AND DEMONIC MAGIC

From Ficino to Campanella

D. P. Walker

ICONS OF POWER

Ritual Practices in Late Antiquity

Naomi Janowitz

BATTLING DEMONS

Witchcraft, Heresy, and Reform in the Late Middle Ages

Michael D. Bailey

PRAYER, MAGIC, AND THE STARS IN THE ANCIENT AND LATE ANTIQUE WORLD

Edited by Scott Noegel, Joel Walker, and Brannon Wheeler

BINDING WORDS

Textual Amulets in the Middle Ages

Don C. Skemer

STRANGE REVELATIONS

Magic, Poison, and Sacrilege in Louis XIVs France

Lynn Wood Mollenauer

UNLOCKED BOOKS

Manuscripts of Learned Magic in the Medieval Libraries of Central Europe

Benedek Lng

ALCHEMICAL BELIEF

Occultism in the Religious Culture of Early Modern England

Bruce Janacek

INVOKING ANGELS

Theurgic Ideas and Practices, Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries

Edited by Claire Fanger

THE TRANSFORMATIONS OF MAGIC

Illicit Learned Magic in the Later Middle Ages and Renaissance

Frank Klaassen

MAGIC IN THE CLOISTER

Pious Motives, Illicit Interests, and Occult Approaches to the Medieval Universe

Sophie Page

The Magic in History series explores the role magic and the occult have played in European culture, religion, science, and politics. Titles in the series bring the resources of cultural, literary, and social history to bear on the history of the magic arts, and they contribute to an understanding of why the theory and practice of magic have elicited fascination at every level of European society. Volumes include both editions of important texts and significant new research in the field.

Rewriting Magic

An Exegesis of the Visionary Autobiography of a Fourteenth-Century French Monk

Claire Fanger

The Pennsylvania State University Press

University Park, Pennsylvania

of Rewriting Magic appeared in a preliminary form as Libri Nigromantici: The Good, the Bad, and the Ambiguous in John of Morignys Flowers of Heavenly Teaching.Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 7, no. 2 (2012): 16489. 2012 University of Pennsylvania Press.

The following extracts are reprinted with permission from:

Polity Press, excerpt from Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations. This translation 2000, Polity Press.

Springer Science + Business Media, excerpt from Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophy: Sections 8693 (pp. 40535) of the so-called Big Typescript (Catalog number 213), trans. C. G. Luckhardt and M. A. E. Auel, Synthese 87 (1991): 322. This translation 1991 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

The C. S. Lewis Company Ltd., excerpt from The Silver Chair copyright C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. 1953.

Wiley Books, excerpt from Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker, and Joachim Schulte, 4th ed., rev. Hacker and Schulte (Malden, Mass.: Wiley Blackwell, 2009). Copyright 1953,1958, 2001 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Random House, excerpt from Possession: A Romance by A. S. Byatt, copyright 1991 by A. S. Byatt. Used by permission of Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited. interested parties must apply directly to Penguin Random House LLC for permission.

Library of Congress
Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fanger, Claire, author.

Rewriting magic : an exegesis of the visionary autobiography of a fourteenth-century French monk / Claire Fanger.

pagescm (Magic in history)

Summary: Examines the text and background of The Flowers of Heavenly Teaching, an autobiography by the fourteenth-century Benedictine monk John of Morigny. Explores how the author negotiated the categories of magic and heresy in relation to ChristianityProvided by publisher.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-271-06650-9 (cloth : alk. paper)

1. John, of Morigny, active 13th century14th century. Liber florum celestis doctrine.
2. MagicReligious aspectsChristianity.
3. Christian heresies.
I. Title. II. Series: Magic in history.

BR 115. M 25 F 36 2015

271'.102dc23 2014046791

Copyright 2015
The Pennsylvania State University

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

Published by
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University Park, PA 168021003

The Pennsylvania State University Press
is a member of the
Association of American University Presses.

It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to
use acid-free paper. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy
the minimum requirements of American National Standard
for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for
Printed Library Material, ansi z39.481992.

Part 1:
Foundation

Part 2:
Restoration

As I write this, the Latin edition of John of Morignys Liber florum, which I have edited with Nicholas Watson, is in press at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies and scheduled for release in the summer of 2015. This edition will be an important resource for all serious readers of Rewriting Magic, since it makes available not only Johns original Latin text in both its versions, but also more of the background data on which my readings and interpretations here are based. We have a collaborative English translation in progress that we hope will shortly make this remarkable work still more accessible to a broad audience.

Over the two decades involved in the making of our edition, manuscript discoveries have continued to yield new information that has gradually reconfigured our picture of John and his world. Inevitably in this process some of what we described or conjectured in our earlier publications has become outdated. In order to ease readers who are familiar with our old work into the purview of the more recent hypotheses and better readings represented by the new edition, I take this opportunity to correct a few points where names, locations, facts, or probabilities have shifted from our earlier projections.

In this book, as in our edition, following our sense of the most authoritative manuscripts of Johns text, I adopt Burgeta (Bridget) as the name of Johns sister, not Gurgeta (Georgette) as she appeared in our 2001 edition of the Liber visionum.

Liber visionum itself is now obsolete as a title for the whole text; we retain its more limited use as a title for the first of the texts three books, the visionary autobiography (which we edited as the Prologue in 2001). In the Old Compilation, John lists twelve titles for the work, one of which was in fact Liber visionum; however, by the end of the New Compilation, he explicitly wants Liber florum celestis doctrine