Specific Knowledge: Viktor Athelstan on Medieval Magic and Necromancy

Introduction

As someone who wrote his master’s dissertation on medieval European magic, it drives me bonkers to see it portrayed poorly in the media. Contrary to what you may see in shows like BBC1’s Merlin or in books like Harry Potter, magic alone wasn’t likely to get you killed by authorities during the majority of the Middle Ages. There are a few exceptions of course, especially toward the later Middle Ages, but these cases were usually politically based. For example, in 1441 the duchess of Gloucester, Eleanor Cobham and her accomplices were accused of treasonable witchcraft.¹ Several people involved, including a canon and a chaplain, were executed. However, their crime was less magic and more that they had predicted the future to see when the king would die.

There were many different types of medieval magic, including but not limited to astrology, alchemy, divination, medical charms, and the various forms of ritual magic. Different religions had their own forms of magic. There was Christian, Islamic, and Jewish magic. It was common for different types of religious magic to intertwine. Christian writers often took aspects of magic from Islamic and Jewish texts and changed the rites to be more Christian. For example, the magical text Picatrix is a medieval Latin translation of the Arabic text Ghāyat al-Hakīm (The Goal of the Sage).²

My area of expertise is in Christian ritual magic, so I will be focusing on that here. What I write may not apply to medieval Jewish or Islamic magic or magical practices outside of Europe. Furthermore, I am defining the Middle Ages as the period between 500 and 1500 CE.

Historical Context for Magic in the Middle Ages

In the Middle Ages, using magic was generally frowned upon by the Church. However, whether or not they would actually do something about it depended on what type of magic it was, how it was used, and who was using it. Another important thing to remember is that what 21st century people might consider magical may not be considered magical in medieval Christianity. For example, a talisman like a birthing girdle with prayers written on it³ was not really considered magic. Monasteries actually would rent out birthing girdles to local women in labor.⁴

In the Middle Ages, magic was a tool to influence the natural world to get something you wanted.⁵

“But wait!” I can hear you saying, “Doesn’t prayer and science do the same thing?”

Yes. Yes, it does.

In the medieval world, the lines between magic, religion, and science were extremely blurred. So blurred, in fact, that if you ask any medieval magic historian what the difference is, you will usually get a sigh, a shrug, and a very long explanation that even amongst medieval people there was a huge debate between the laity and different factions of the clergy. This is partially due to magic often using materials used in Christian liturgy, such as prayers, altars, incense, holy water, candles, etc.

What is ritual magic?

Ritual magic involves complicated instructions and actions necessary to conjure supernatural/otherworldly beings.⁶ It was not as easy as taking out a book, drawing some circles, and chanting some Latin. Rituals like the Ars Notoria could take several months to a year of fasting, celibacy, and praying at specific times.⁷ If any of these steps were done incorrectly, then the ritual would not work.

There were several kinds of ritual magic: image magic, necromancy, theurgy/angel magic, and astral magic.⁸ Aspects of these often overlapped to the point one could be mistaken for the other. Richard Kieckhefer explains this well with this hypothetical scenario: If you woke up to your roommate dressed in a hooded robe, burning incense with symbols written on the floor, would you believe them if they claimed they were summoning an angel, not a demon?⁹

What was necromancy in the Middle Ages?

Unlike ancient or modern definitions, medieval necromancy was NOT summoning the dead. Medieval necromancy summoned or conjured a variety of supernatural beings. A necromancer could summon demons, angels, jinn, or a generic earth spirit. Many necromancy manuals refer to the beings being summoned as “spirits” as a catch-all term for anything supernatural, giving them plausible deniability in case of discovery.

Historical Context for Medieval Necromancy, Using John of Morigny

In theory, necromancy was a secret amongst practitioners. In practice, it was easier than you might think to get your hands on a necromantic text. The 14th century Benedictine monk John of Morigny was lent one such text by a cleric at his monastery and again while studying at university. Eventually he had a bad experience with Ars Notoria and wrote his own magical text to make it more in line with the Catholic faith. He claimed the Virgin Mary gave him permission so it was okay. Authorities were not convinced, and they burned his book. So he wrote another version. Copies of both the old and new versions survive. John of Morigny’s text, Liber florum celestis doctrine, is particularly interesting in magical scholarship. It was only rediscovered in the 1980s, and as of the time of writing, there are twenty known manuscripts.¹⁰ This just goes to show the extent to which magic and religion could overlap in the Middle Ages and beyond.

Magic in the university was such a problem that the University of Paris officially condemned magic arts in 1398. Condemnations include: seeking friendship with demons is idolatry, using magic even for good is forbidden by God and the Church, and magic is not condemned by the Church irrationally.¹¹ Condemnations are insightful into how practitioners viewed magical practices.

Who performed necromancy in the Middle Ages?

Practitioners were almost always university educated men. At university, scholars would join the minor orders, making them a part of the clergy. Monks, priests, and friars were also sent to university to be educated in theology and philosophy. Even if clergy didn’t go to university, the clergy were supposed to be able to read and write, and usually had at least some degree of Latin. (Even if it was very poor.) They also had access to the liturgical materials needed for necromancy rituals.

Historical and literary based medieval primary sources describe clergy performing magical rituals and being hired to do so. While it is tempting to claim that these accounts do not prove clergy actually did magic, the amount of surviving manuscripts suggests that it was at the very least a subject of scholarly interest. However, many clergymen like John of Morigny, William of Auvergne, and John of Salisbury admitted to dabbling in magic in their youth.¹² That they were able to freely admit to this is evidence that while magic was not licit behavior, it was not something that would get you killed for the majority of the Middle Ages.

In addition to universities, monasteries such as Saint Augustine’s Abbey in Canterbury were hotbeds for magical texts.¹³ Even though many medieval manuscripts no longer survive, monastic library catalogs list books that once existed. These catalogs are an excellent resource for the magic historian. They list lost magical texts that are mentioned elsewhere. They also list magical texts that can be found in another book, even if the manuscript listed has long since been destroyed or lost.

Conclusion

In conclusion, if a writer wants to properly write about medieval necromancy or demon summoning in their works, there should be at least one clergy member doing it on the sly! (Or at least what he thinks is on the sly.)

Bio: Viktor Athelstan is the author of the 2022 Shirley Jackson Award nominated story “Brother Maternitas.” His story “Okehampton Fog” can be heard on the Creepy Podcast. He recently completed his masters degree in Medieval Studies. When Viktor isn’t writing short stories, he writes webnovels about medieval monks (some of whom are necromancers). You can follow him on Tumblr or Instagram.

^{1. Freeman, Jessica. 2004. “Sorcery at Court and Manor: Margery Jourdemayne, the Witch of Eye next Westminster.” Journal of Medieval History 30 (4): 343–57. doi:10.1016/j.jmedhist.2004.08.001.; Ralley, Robert. 2010. “Stars, demons and the body in fifteenth-century England.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 41 (2010): 109–116. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369848610000154.↩}

^{2. Picatrix: A Medieval Treatise on Astral Magic. Translated by Dan Attrell and David Porreca. Magic in History. University Park, USA: Penn State University Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780271084152.↩}

^{3. “Medieval ‘birthing Girdle’ Parchment Was Worn during Labour, Study Suggests,” University of Cambridge, March 10, 2021, https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/medieval-birthing-girdle-parchment-was-worn-during-labour-study-suggests.↩}

^{4. Sarah Fiddyment, et al. “Girding the loins? Direct evidence of the use of a medieval English parchment birthing girdle from biomolecular analysis.” Royal Society Open Science 8, no. 2 (2021): http://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.202055.↩}

^{5. Rider, Catherine. Magic and Religion in Medieval England. London: Reaktion Books, 2012.↩}

^{6. Timbers, Frances. “For the ‘Uninitiated’.” In Magic and Masculinity: Ritual Magic and Gender in the Early Modern Era, 6–33. London: I.B.Tauris, 2014. Accessed November 9, 2024. http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9780755621439.ch-001.↩}

^{7. Ars Notoria: The Notary Art of Solomon. Edited by Benjamin Rowe. Translated by Robert Turner, 1656. https://archive.org/details/ars_notoria.↩}

^{8. Fanger, Claire. “Christian Ritual Magic in the Middle Ages.” History Compass 11, no. 8 (2013): 610-18. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12068.; Timbers, Frances. “For the ‘Uninitiated’.” In Magic and Masculinity: Ritual Magic and Gender in the Early Modern Era, 6–33. London: I.B.Tauris, 2014. Accessed November 9, 2024. http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9780755621439.ch-001.↩}

^{9. Kieckhefer, R., Kallestrup, L. N., & Toivo, R. M. (2017). Angel Magic and the Cult of Angels in the Later Middle Ages. In Contesting Orthodoxy in Medieval and Early Modern Europe(pp. 71–110). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32385-5_5.↩}

^{10. Morigny, John of. Prologue to the Liber Visionum. Translated by Claire Fanger and Nicholas Watson.; The Project Gutenberg Ebook of Les Grandes Chroniques De France (5/6). Project Gutenberg M. PAULIN PARIS, De l’Académie royale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres., 1837. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/45679/pg45679-images.html#footnotetag356.; Fanger, Claire, and Nicholas Watson. “John of Morigny.” In The Routledge History of Medieval Magic, edited by Sophie Page and Catherine Rider, 212-24. London: Routledge, 2019.; Fanger, Claire. “Introduction: Lost and Found Knowledge”. Rewriting Magic: An Exegesis of the Visionary Autobiography of a Fourteenth-Century French Monk, University Park, USA: Penn State University Press, 2015, pp. 1-12.↩}

^{11. “Conclusion of the Faculty of Theology on a Matter of the Faith Recently Raised and Just Now Settled: September 19, 1398,” Edited and Translated by Lynn Thorndike. Chap. 101: Magic Arts Condemned, Paris, 1398. In University Records and Life in the Middle Ages, 14-15. New York: W.W. Norton, 1975.↩}

^{12. Klaassen, Frank. “Subjective Experience and the Practice of Medieval Ritual Magic.” Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 7, no. 1 (2012): 19-51. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/mrw.2012.0011.; Morigny, John of. Prologue to the Liber Visionum. Translated by Claire Fanger and Nicholas Watson.; Rider, Catherine. Magic and Religion in Medieval England. London: Reaktion Books, 2012.↩}

^{13. Page, Sophie. Magic in the Cloister : Pious Motives, Illicit Interests, and Occult Approaches to the Medieval Universe. University Park, Pennsylvania : The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013.↩}