libraries sorcerers jones

Bibliothecae Arcanae: The Private Libraries of Some European SorcerersAuthor(s): W. R. JonesSource: Journal of Library History, Philosophy, and Comparative Librarianship, Vol. 8, No. 2(Apr., 1973), pp. 86-95Published by: University of Texas PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25540406 .Accessed: 04/05/2013 09:26

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Bibliothecae Arcanae:

The Private Libraries

of Some European

Sorcerers

Along with charms, crystal balls, and images of wax, some ancient sorcerers also used books. Those

who assembled private libraries of occult literature generally catered to urban clientele and university audiences^ The books ranged from conjuring

manual to astrological literature to phar macological texts. The contents of the libraries reveal the professional interests and pretended competency of Renaissance and Reformation

magicians.

86


By W. R. Jones

Dr. Jones is Chairman, Department of History, University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire. He has a PhD. from Harvard University in medieval history.

The image of the sorcerer, crouched among books of magic in his laboratory-study, has circulated widely through European literature and art in the myth of Dr. Faust us.* Although the Faust legend was mainly the product of imagination, modern historians appreciate the fact that magicians and sorcerers actually existed in medieval and early

modern Europe and that their neighbors credited them with possessing extraordinary powers for

good or evil. At the historical center of the idea of sorcery was the village wizard, called a "cunning

man" in England, who served the peasants and townspeople of pre-modern Europe by making and selling love-spells and charms, foretelling the future, curing sickness, preventing misfortune, and

divining the location of lost or stolen property, missing persons, and treasure-trove.* Among the

instruments of his craft were charms, ligatures,

crystal balls, images of wax and lead, and, less frequently, books of magic.

During the eras of the Renaissance and Reformation there occasionally appeared more exalted practitioners of magic, who, like the

mythical Faustus, combined occult interests with various scientific and pseudoscientific in vestigations. Social, economic, and intellectual differences separated the humble village wizards, who did not need books, writing, or even literacy,

from the handful of scholarly magicians, who catered to urban clienteles and university audiences, and who assembled private libraries of occult literature. The contents of these can occa

sionally be reconstructed from surviving catalogs and the citations of titles in the judicial records of the time. These sources, augmented with examples of books of magic preserved in libraries and ar chives and the lists of proscribed books compiled by the enemies of magic, reveal the professional in terests and pretended competency of European

magicians of the Renaissance and Reformation. The literature of European magic is very old.

Horace mentioned the libros carminum of the magicians of his time."* The Roman historians, Suetonius and Dio Cassius, reported the whole-sale destruction of books of magic by the Roman government on orders of the Emperor Augustus, who probably feared their subversive use A Although much of this literature disappeared from Europe during the cultural decline of the early middle ages, from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries forward individual magical texts were imported into the Christian West from the Byzantine, Muslim, and Jewish communities of the Mediterranean world. These sources stimulated the growth of European traditions of literary occultism, which reached a peak of development in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

87


Journal of Library History

The source par excellence of European

demonology was the book of "conjurations" or "experiments," many versions of which were at

tributed to the authorship of King Solomon or to other mythical magicians like Enoch, Apollonius of Tyana, Virgil, Cyprian, or Simon Magus. Sub sequently, Albert us Magnus, Roger Bacon, Peter of Abaiio, Henry Cornelius Agrippa, John Trithemius, and a host of "necromantic" popes were added to the roster of alleged authors df books of magic. These books were manuals for

practicing magicians, offering instruction in what contemporaries called the "notory art" (Ars notoria).5 Some of the more famous of them, like the Key of Solomon (Clavicula Salomonis), which

was an elaborate compendium of magical in

cantations, rites, and diagrams, dated back to the ancient period and continued to appear in many

manuscript versions as late as the seventeenth and

eighteenth centuries.^ The judicial records of the later middle ages

report the circulation and use of conjuring manuals, although frequently their titles were not given and it is difficult to identify particular works. In 1371, for instance, a sorcerer was arrested in

Southampton, England, and a severed human head

and a book of magic in his possession were seized and destroyed.^In 1419 an English sorcerer, Rich ard Walker, was accused of possessing magical paraphernalia consisting of a beryl stone (useful for conjuring demons and divining), two small yellow wax images, and two books of magic filled with

conjurations and drawings.** In 1466 a diviner of treasure-trove (known as a "hill-digger") was given the penance of marching around the market places of Ely and Cambridge bearing "a book, and a roll of black art containing characters, circles, exorcisms

and conjurations; a hexagonal sheet with strange figures; six metal plates with diverse figures engraved; a chart with hexagonal and pentagonal

figures and characters; and a gilded wand," which the accused, Robert Barker, had allegedly used to search for buried wealth.^ Another professional sorcerer, William Wycherley, was accused in 1539 of using "Solomon's circle" to detect the whereabouts of lost or stolen property and buried treasure;^ and in 1590 the secret meeting place of a gang of Elizabethan sorcerers was discovered by the authorities, who found several

magical circles inscribed on the ground, a crystal, a

red cock, some mysterious pots, a stool, scepter, wax seals, and "certen lattyn bookes."**

Occasionally the titles or contents of specific books were identified. In 1527, for instance, the former English Benedictine, William Stapleton, acquired from another cleric two books for use in divining the location of buried treasure. These were a Thesaurus spirituum, probably a conjuring manual, and a copy of the Secreta secretorum, which was a very old and immensely popular medieval work of astrological theor>, alchemical

lore, numerology, and herbalism, attributed to the

Greek philosopher, Aristotle.^ The seventeenth century English astrologer, William Lilly, who once became involved in an outlandish scheme to get rich quick by divining the location of treasure buried in Westminster Abbey, confessed in his autobiography to having owned a copy of the Ars notoria, pawned with him for forty shillings, and to being acquainted with another work of incantatory magic, the pseudo-Agrippa's Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy.*3

The invocation of spirits was often combined with astrological prediction. Various works at tributed to real or mythical authors such as

Hermes Trismegistus, Tot Graecus or Toz Grecus

(the Egyptian divinity Thoth), Ptolemy, and the mysterious Picatrix taught the use of astrological "images" or "seals" to conjure demons.^ An ec clesiastical commission in Paris in 1290 condemned in general terms "all books of divination and

magic?treatises of necromancy, geomancy,

pyromancy, hydromancy, and chiromancy," and by title several astrological tracts.^ In his Speculum astronomiae Albertus Magnus denounced a number of books of magic and astrological demonology, including five attributed to Solomon's authorship;*" and at the beginning of the sixteenth century John Trithemius, Benedictine abbot of Sponheim in German, identified seventy-two

magical and astrological works, which he

characterized as "vain," "ignorant," and "super stitious."^

The records of the Spanish inquisition show that such books were actually used for superstitious and

illegal purposes. The personal library of one ac cused sorcerer, Jeronimo de Liebana, contained

several books of conjuring and astrology: a copy of a work called Libro sacro, which may have been an

edition of the "Sworn Book" ascribed to the mythical Spanish magician, Honorius, and later to Pope Honorius IIIr? the book of Toz Grecus, condemned by Albertus Magnus in the thirteenth century and Trithemius in the sixteenth; and a

88


Bibliothecae Arcanae

Kill' t^^^^HSi^^^&J^^B^HI^BH^nK^BE^H^^^^^^^H

?!>, HI. FAUST IN HIS STUDY, WATCHING A MAGIC DISK- (IMS)

Dr. Faustus, etching by Rembrandt

Spanish version of the popular work of astrological demonology called Picatrix, which taught how astrological images could be manipulated and

spirits invoked "to drive away mice, free captives, throw an army into a town, either render buildings safe and stable or impede the erection of them, the

acquisition of wealth, making the king angry with someone, curing a scorpion's sting, walking on

water, assuming animal form, causing rain in dry weather and preventing it in rainy weather, [and!

making the stars fall or sun and moon appear divided into many parts." The combination of

astrology with sorcery was also represented in the

books of another Spanish wizard, the ex-Carmelite

Jeronimo de San Juan. His occult library included a copy of the Images of Apollonius; a treatise called Semphoras or Eschemanphoras and the Book of the

Angel Raziel to Adam, two works condemned by Trithemius; the Key of Solomon; Trithemius' own work on cryptography; and Agrippa's book on occult philosophy.^

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

the reading of explicitly demonological works like those criticized by Albertus Magnus and John Trithemius was combined with the study of books of astrology, which portrayed the field as a "pure science," not requiring the invocation of spirits. The expansion of astrological research during the

89



early modern period created an extensive body of pseudoscientific scholarship represented, on its

lower levels, in innumerable editions of astrological almanacs and calendars, and, on its higher levels, in

the learned treatises of an army of professional

astrologers. This relatively innocuous astrological literature, sometimes mixed with pharmacological, alchemical, and medical treatises, often figured in the libraries of the more literate magicians.

In Tudor and Stuart England diviner astrologers, especially among the lower clergy,

acquired small collections of cheap, evanescent

editions of popular astrological calendars and

tables, some of which were modern renditions of

very old originals. This was the point that Gabriel Harvey, the poet friend of Spenser, was trying to

make when he sarcastically described some of

these books: "These be their great masters and in this manner their whole library, with some old parchement rolls, tables and instruments.. .Erra

Pater, their hornbook; the Shepherd's Kalendar, their primer; the Compost of Ptolemeus, their Bible; Arcandam, their New Testament."^ All of the books listed by Harvey were non-demonological

works of popular astrology. But even these were

beyond the means of many practicing diviners and

fortune-tellers. William Lilly, the English "Christian astrologer," reported his disap

pointment that the London astrologer-diviner, Arise Evans, from whom he had learned the art of using astrology to divine the location of lost or stolen goods, owned only two books.** These were

a version of the medieval Arabic astrological treatise by Haly (Haly Heben Rodan), titled De iudiciis, and an astrological calendar of the genre known as

"Ephemerides" by David Origanus, the

German mathematician and astronomer who

compiled such a calendar for the period 1595 to 1630. 3 Both were standard reference works in the field of "judicial" astrology, which predicted the future of individuals and nations according to the

positions of the stars.

Such low-level astrological literature provided a

bibliographical and conceptual basis for the per formance of a variety of supernatural feats. In 1564

the Northern Court of High Commission ordered the confiscation of the books of a certain John Betson, an English sorcerer, who had allegedly used them to recover lost property.** They were identified as

copies of Plato's Sphere and Pythagoras' Sphere? versions of a very old kind of astrological literature which purported to predict the future of individuals

and answer questions about them by calculating the numerical equivalent of their names.^ This kind of popular astrology derived authority from its alleged association with Greek philosophers or early Christian saints, had been used by the Romans to predict the results of gladiatorial combats, and was perpetuated in early modern

Europe in a large number of printed editions. A more extensive astrological library was seized in 1591 from Stephen Trefulacke, an accused sor cerer, who surrendered the following: (1) two Ephemerides; (2) a work of judicial astrology entitled Arcandam, which had been translated from the French by the sixteenth-century Cam bridge professor, William Warde, and was

reprinted several times during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; (3) an English translation of

The Judgment of Nativities by Ogier Ferrier (Augerius Ferrerius), a physician and astrologer of

Toulouse, who published the original French edition of his book at Lyons in 1550; and (4) various

magical formulae such as:

figures to know how long one shall live and whether they shall obtain the treasures hoped for; figures to know things lost; a book of conjuration for diverse things,. . .sundry conjurations of raising spirits and binding them and loosing them;.. .figures to know

whether a man be dead or alive or whether he

has another wife; to obtain the love of any woman and other like matters.*"

The combination of conjuring and divination with more reputable scientific research was also

revealed by the reading habits of the Oxford scholar, John Bowckeley, who in 1570 was accused before Justice John Southcot and Thomas Stan dley, Treasurer of the Mint, of practicing sorcery. The Commissary of Oxford had seized Bowckeley's books of

"estromancy, gematry, and alcamistrye," and a witness deposed to having seen the accused at Oxford "lowkyng upon a booke made by John Baptist a Porta Neappolitanus who wretyth of naturall magyge wherin there were soundry ex

perymentes as well of metalles as of other thinges."**^ The latter was a copy of Giovanni

Battista Porta's Magia naturalis, which was a

sixteenth-century scientific treatise sometimes

condemned for promoting demonic magic under the guise of natural magic.*?

In contrast to the majority of wizards, diviners, and

"cunning" people who did not own books or who satisfied the bibliographical needs of their

90



profession with a few tattered copies of spells, charms, and conjurations or one or two astrological tables, were the few illustrious scholar-magicians

who collected sizable research libraries. One of the earliest of these was the fifteenth-century French

magus and astrologer, Simon de Phares, whose

unusual interests eventually got him into trouble with the church. Simon was denounced as a diviner

by the archbishop of Lyons, who confiscated his library of astrological literature. Simon appealed to the Parlement de Paris, which ordered the faculty of the University of Paris to examine his books. Out of two hundred separate volumes, the faculty identified seven as objectionable and urged their

destruction. These were: books of divinatory

astrology, consisting of several works by the Arab astrologer, Albumasar; Abraham Judaeus on

nativities; John of Spain's Isagoge; a treatise by William of England on the diagnosis of disease from

the inspection of urine; Peter of Abano's trans

lation of a work by the pseudo-Hippocrates on lunar prognostication; and Firminus de Bellavalle's book of weather forecasting.^ According to the report of the Parlement de Paris, Simon had confessed at Lyons to having divined thefts, buried treasure, and men's thoughts. On March 26, 1494, Simon was condemned as a relapsed heretic and his entire library was cited as contrary to the faith. Simon's close ties with the court and the aristocracy, for whom he had served as astrologer,

probably saved him from punishment and may even have obtained the restitution to him of his books.

Tudor and Stuart England provided more examples of the erudite wizard. "Doctor" John Dee

was a noted Elizabethan mathematician,

astrologer, spiritualist, and bibliophile, whose

serious scientific interests attracted the attention of a wide audience at home and abroad.??0 His

reputation as a magician derived from his

astrological and alchemical studies and his protracted friendship with Edward Kelley, who served as Dee's

"scryer" or medium for a series of

spiritualist seances. An account of these sessions

has been presorved in manuscripts purporting to

be transcripts of conversations between the two

investigators and "certain good angels," including their spirit "mascot," Uriel. Dee was an arden

bibliophile, who once addressed a plea to Mary Tudor asking her endorsement of his plan to create a royal library and manuscript collection from

materials to be acquired from disbanded English

monasteries and by purchase on the continent.^ Although nothing came of this ingenious scheme, Dee himself collected a large private library.

The surviving catalogs of his manuscript and book collections show his acquaintance with most of the fashionable literary sources of Renaissance

magic?cabalistic, Neoplatonic, and Hermetic; and

from other evidence we know that Dee used his library in various occult experiments.^* According to reports of contemporaries like the scholar and theologian, Meric Casaubon, who recorded the experiments of Dee and Kelley, and Elias Ashmole, who acquired many of Dee's books and papers, Dee employed certain books in his spiritualist in vestigations. Ashmole said that Dee possessed a "booke of Spirits" and an inlaid table for conjuring them; a Liber Enoch; and a work titled Liber scientiae terrestris auxiUi & victoriae, filled with diagrams and names of spirits.^ A transcript by Kelley of the Book of Enoch and Dee's holograph copy of the Liber scientiae are preserved in the British Museum's Sloane collection.^ A document composed by Dee and preserved by Casaubon provides additional details concerning Dee's collection of occult literature. According to this report, which has been published in full, Dee burned twenty-eight books of magic in the spring of 1586, while he and Kelley were resident in

Bohemia.^ Three of these books were, however,

mysteriously re-materialized a short while later. They were a copy of the Book of Enoch; a volume titled 48 Claves angelicae, reputedly written in the "Angelick language," with an interlinear English translation; and a "Book of my gathering of the thirty Aires, and entitled Liber scientiae." One of the modern editors of Dee's catalog of manuscripts has found references in Casaubon to other books?a

De heptarchia mystica collectaneorum and a Booke

of Supplications and Invocations.3" The Book of Enoch was an immensely popular textbook of magic attributed to the Old Testament hero, Enoch, which throughout the middle ages had been consulted as a major source of information on the powers of angels and spirits and their abilities to teach the secrets of nature, magic, astrology, divination, and occult pharmacology.^ The De heptarchia mystica, Liber scientiae, 48 Claves

angelicae, and the otherwise unidentified "Booke of Supplications and Invocations" were transcripts of his conversations with the spirit world and manuals of instruction for conducting: seances.

The records of the Spanish inquisition are very

91



helpful in acquiring information concerning the libraries of scholar-magicians. One of these was

Master Amador de Velasco, who was arrested as a

sorcerer in Vallodolid on July 17, 1576.^ Amador had enjoyed a lucrative practice among the better families of Madrid, for whom he prepared amatory spells, told fortunes, and administered magical cures. In the summer of 1576 Amador was

denounced to the authorities by a young colleague, Juan Alonso de Contreras, who served as a sort of "sorcerer's apprentice." Amador was tried, found

guilty, and exiled by decree of the church on April 18, 1578. Prior to his disappearance he petitioned the judges for the restitution to him of his library, which had been confiscated in Vallodolid. The contents of Amador's library can be reconstructed

from a sixteen-page handwritten list of books compiled for his defense and from other citations in the court record.^ This catalog constitutes the

most detailed record which has survived of a

professional sorcerer's library and it shows the

reading habits of a man who seems actually to have been guilty of the crimes alleged against him.

Amador owned over forty books, in addition to an indeterminate number of manuscript notebooks

and papers, some of which had been taken as evidence against him by young Contreras. Among his printed books judicial astrology was strongly represented by: (1) the sixteenth-century work of the French astrologer and Calvinist Claude Dariot,

Ad astrorum iudicia facilis introduction* (2) Francesco Giuntini's (Junctinus') book On Judging the Revolutions of Nativities f* (3) the defense of judicial astrology composed by the German

mathematician, Valentine Nabod, and the Milanese

physician, Gabriel Pirovano, against the criticism

of Pico della Mirandola;^ (4) the famous astrological treatise of the thirteenth-century

Italian, Guido Bonatti, whom Dante had put in the eighth circle of Hell;^ (5) Jean Ganivet's Amicus

medicorum, which was a work owned by at least

one other Spanish magician;^ and (6) several tracts on astrological images by Hermes

Trismegistus.*" The related arts of chiromancy

(palmistry) and physiognomy were represented in Amador's library by the works of Andreas Corvus, Bartholomaeus Codes, and John ab Indagine?

popular reference works which had already been

put on the Index of prohibited reading?and by the treatises of Jean Taisner and Michael Scot.'*'

Amador possessed three works of eastern an

cestry: (1) a book entitled "Abraham-Aben-Harris,"

which may have been Peter of Abano's Latin translation of the astrological treatise of the twelfth-century Jew, Abraham aben Ezra;^ (2) a book of "fortunes" (Suertes) attributed to the Arab astrologer, Haly Heben Raghel or Rodan;^ and,(3) a work called "Almanzor," which probably dealt with judicial astrology.^ He also owned the medical secrets by the sixteenth-century French astrologer, Antoine Mizauld (Mizaldus);^ works on poisons (a subject closely related to sorcery) by a certain "Ferdinand Partitas" and the early fif teenth-century author, Sante Ardoino;^** a version

of the pseudo-Aristotelian Secreta secretorum;

Raymond Lull's De secretis naturaer3 Roger Bacon's Epistola de secretis operibus; and a copy of

the Key of Solomon. Ancient sources were

represented by editions of the works of Cato, Varro, Columella, Pliny, Boethius, Josephus, and St. John of Damascus. Several obscure books were

cited: Compendia de salud humana; De in terrogationibus; a Spanish medical and herbal

work called El Porque; a Tesoro de pobres; and a book entitled Bibliotheca sacra, dealing with the

"image of Christ's birth" and the "eight grades of the Virgin." In addition, Amador owned a copy of

Pythagoras' Sphere; and he confessed to carrying about with him a paper containing the names and

attributes of God, a prayer to the Virgin, and another paper inscribed with "Chaldean" words de

mucho signification* Amador was obviously an

exceptionally learned and successful wizard; his

library shows how pseudoscientific literature could be used to dignify and rationalize the most

outrageous superstitions. Several of the works in Amador's library figured

among books owned by another sorcerer, a French

man, who had joined with a compatriot and the Spanish mathematician-astrologer, Cristobal

Rodriguez, to divine the location of buried treasure and to practice other occult arts.^ Following their arrest in 1636 a search of the apartment of one of the conspirators disclosed a cache of unlawful books consisting of pseudo-Lullian work called Codicillus; Francesco Giuntini's treatise, On

Judging the Revolutions of Nativities; Erasmus Reinhold's Prutenic Tables, which was a summary of the astrological calculations of Copernicus;^" Philip Lamberg's Tabulae motuum caelestium; a work (vaguely identified) by the famous Danish astronomer, Tycho Brahe; an almanac by a certain

"Rutilius Bencase;" a book entitled Astrolabium

planum ac nativitatis tractatus, which may have

92



been Johann Engel's printed astrological predictions;^ a book called Summa astrologica y arte "to teach how to make predictions;" an

Epitome of a medical diagnostic nature; Jean Ganivet's Amicus medicorum, which Amador de Velasco had also owned; Albertus Magnus' Speculum astronomiae; and the published work of the Spanish cleric, mathematician, and astronomer, Jerome Munoz, entitled Arithmetical Institutes requisite for Learning Astrology

Some Spanish sorcerers relied entirely on manuscript books of magic. Because of the premium placed on the possession of authentic texts of the major conjuring manuals, some

manuscripts passed from hand to hand over several generations; and one English book descended to the fourth generation of readers.^ Jaime Manobel, a Spanish sorcerer who was arrested in 1590, was found to own a notebook filled with "Judaeo cabalistic" invocations and bits of astrological,

medical, and magical lore useful for a variety of occult purposes.^ Similarly, Antonio de la Fuente y Sandoval, the royal offical and silk merchant who was seized by the inquisition in 1600, was accused of having paid a certain Roman cleric to consecrate a book for him and of possessing a Solomonic work on images and a manual for fortune-telling called

Las suertes apostoUcas. The notorious magician alchemist, Diego Alfonso de Medrano, who was said to disavow belief in astrology because of the contradictory arguments of its advocates, was

arrested and his manuscript library confiscated. This comprised an alchemical work on the philospher's stone; a sixteen-page tract on

geomancy and judicial astrology; a treatise on the occult properties of gems and the magical power of

names; and an illustrated book of seals and diagrams.^ During the course of his prosecution,

Medrano's fate was probably sealed by the discovery that he also possessed a manuscript copy of the Key of Solomon. The latter was apparently very popular among Spanish magicians, since one

group of diviners was said to have owned two copies of it.

Both the practice of magic and an enthusiasm for reading books of magic endured into the modern period.^ In the winter of 1715 two German amateur diviners asphyxiated themselves over a

charcoal fire in an attempt to conjure demons according to rites contained in the pseudo-Faust's

Harrowing of Hell, the pseudo-Agrippa's Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy, and the Key of

Solomon. Giacomo Casanova, the famous memoirist and charlatan, confessed to owning a small library of occult literature, comprising the

Key of Solomon; the Zekor-ben or Zekerboni, a conjuring manual attributed to the obscure seventeenth-century Milanese alchemist, Peter

Mora; the Picatrix; a work called Instructions concerning Planetary Hours, which may have been Peter of Abano's Heptameron; and a book of conjuring, identified as the Lemegeton or Lesser

Key of Solomon 6$ Finally, among the effects of a deceased Victorian

"cunning man," James Murrell, who had supported himself as a healer, for tune teller, and exorcist in his home town of

Hadleigh, Essex, was found a trunk filled with manuscript and printed materials.**' It contained, among other things, a nineteenth-century treatise

of astrology, physiognomy, and phrenology by J. T. Hacket; an edition of the New Tables of the

Motions of the Planets published in 1728; books of herbal recipes; several issues of Raphael's astrological almanac for the period 1806 to 1850; and a manuscript "Book of Magic and Con jurations," which appears to have been a conjuring

manual.

Although books were never necessary for the performance of most magical tasks and although the majority of medieval and early modern sor cerers and

"cunning" people never possessed them,

nevertheless, a considerable body of magical literature did exist and was employed for various occult purposes. The principal source of European

magic was the conjuring manual. From the thir teenth century forward there also circulated a large body of astrological literature, often of Greek

or Muslim ancestry, which associated astrological

prediction with the invocation of spirits. The in vention of printing, the growth of literacy, and the

multiplication of books circulating on all levels of European society encouraged diviners, fortune

tellers, and hucksters of potions and spells to acquire a variety of bibliographical materials. Usually these were inexpensive editions of popular astrological calendars and tables, which were used in crude ways to predict private fortunes or locate lost goods. A handful of great scholar-magicians, like John Dee in England and Amador de Velasco in Spain, were sufficiently erudite and prosperous to assemble impressive collections of occult literature, comprising, together with conjuring manuals like the Key of Solomon and ancient fortune-tellers' handbooks like Plato's Sphere, some relatively

93



sophisticated astrological, alchemical, medical, and

pharmacological texts. During the fifteenth, six teenth, and seventeenth centuries professional

wizards employed various lawful and unlawful sources* of different levels of scientific value, in the practice of their trade. The significance of this development was not that the average village wonder-worker was able to use the abstruse

learning of philosophers and scientists (which was seldom the case), but, rather, that the superstitions of the peasantry were drawn into the speculative systems of the European intelligentsia.**

FOOTNOTES

*See E. M. Butler, The Myth of the Magus (Cambridge and New York, 1948).

%or the varieties of popular magic and magician's tools, see G. L. Kittredge, Witchcraft in Old and New England (Cambridge, Mass., 1929). The best discussion of the cunning man is in Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York, 1971), pp: 212-52; also A. D. J. Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England (New York and Evanston, 1970), pp. 115-30.

%orace, Epodes, xvii, 4, cited by Julio Caro Baroja, The World of the Witches, trans, by 0. N. V. Giendinning (Chicago, 1964), p. 27.

*A. A. Barb, "The Survival of Magic Arts," in The Conflict between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century, ed. by Arnaldo Momigliano (Oxford, 1963), p. 102, n. 4.

*See Lynn Thqrndike's discussion of "Solomon and the Ars Notoria," A History of Magic and

Experimental Science {S vols.; New York, 1923-58), II, 278-89. For some English examples, see K. M.

Briggs, Pale Hecate's Team {London, 1962), pp. 256-63; and her article, "Some Seventeenth

Century Books of Magic," Folklore, 64 (1953), 445 62.."

'

^A discussion of the Solomonic corpus (but with a confused chronology) is provided by E. M. Butler, Ritual Magic (New York, 1959), pp. 47-99. See also D. SebastiaTi Cirac Estopaiian, Los processos de hechicerias en la inquisicion de Cos tula la Nueva [Tribunates de Toledo y Cuencal (Madrid, 1942), p. 13, n. 8.

Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 230.

%ittredge, Witchcraft, p. 80.

9Ibid:, p. 207! V

10Ibid., p. 211. **W. H. Hart, "Observations on some

Documents relating to Magic in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth;* Archaeohgia, 40 (1866), 397. According

to Butler, Ritual Magic, pp. 103,125, Gilles de Rais' personal sorcerer, Prelati, and Benvenuto Cellini both used versions of the Key of Solomon to conjure demons.

^Kittredge, Witchraft, pp. 110, 210; Hart, "Observations on some Documents," pp. 57-64. British Museum Sloane MS. 3853, a collection of

magical "experiments," ascribed a Thesaurus

spirituum to Robert the Turk and Roger Bacon, Thorndike, History of Magic, II, 808, n. 4. For the Secreta secretorum, see 'ibid., II, 267-78.

*3Dictionary of National Biography, ed. by Sir Leslie Stephen and Sir Sidney Lee (22 vols.; Ox ford, 1921-22), XI, 1137-41; William Lilly's History of His Life and Times from the Year 1602 to 1681

written by Himself... to Elias Ashmole, Esq. (London, 1822), pp. 76, 83.

** Thorndike, History of Magic, II, 214-28.

^Henry Charles Lea, A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages {3 vols.; New York, 1888), III, 438. Lea errs in saying that the books condemned by the Paris commission did not include astrology.

*"B. Alberti Magni Ratisbonensis Episcopi, Ordinis Praedieatorum, Opera omnia, ed. by August Borgnet (39 vols.; Paris, 1890-99), X, 640-42.

^'Will-Erich Peuckert, Pqnsophie: ein Versuck zur Geschichte der weissen und schwarzen Magie (Stuttgart, 1936), pp. 55-65.

^?Estopanan, Processor de hechicerias, p. 33; Thorndike, History of Magic, II, 283-89; Butler, Ritual Magic, pp. 89-99.

f9History of Magic, 11, 821. The Spanish version claims to be-a thirteenth-century work. A German translation of the Arabic original has been made by

He 11mlit Ritter and Martin Plessnerv "Picatrix"; das Zieldes Weisen, von Pseudo-Magriti, Studies of the Warburg Institute, 24 (London, 1962).

*^Estopanan, Processos de hechicerias, pp. 34 35.-:

* ^Quoted by Thom as, Religion and the Decline of

Magic, p. 296. *^ William Lilly's History of His Life and Times,

pp. 54-55.

*^For Origanus, see Thorndike, History of Magic, VI, 60-61.

*^Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 276.

^Thorndike, History of Magic, I, 682-84.

^Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 302. For Arcandam, see ibid., p. 238; for Ferrier, see Thorndike, History of Magic, VI, 478-80.

g7Hart, "Observations on some Documents," p. 391.

^Thorndike, History of Magic, VI, 418-21.

94



^Thorndike, History ofMagic> IV, 549; and, for his biography, pp. 544-61. Francesco Barozzi was a

sixteenth-century Italian bibliophile and fancier of the occult, for whom see ibid., VI, 154.

30Dictionary of National Biography, V, 721-29. See the recent biography by Peter J. French, John Dee: The World of an Elizabethan Magus (London, 1972), esp. pp. 40-61.

^Thomas Hearne, Johannis, confratris & monachi Glastoniensis, Chronica sive historia de rebus Glastoniensibus (2 vols.; Oxford, 1726), II, 490-95.

^The catalog of Dee's manuscript collection has been published twice: The Private Diary of Dr. John Dee, and the Catalogue of His Library of

Manuscripts, ed. by James Orchard Halliwell Phillipps (London, 1842), pp. 65 ff.; M. R. James, Lists of Manuscripts formerly Owned by Dr. John Dee (Oxford, 1921). Peter French has promised a new edition.

33 Elias Ashmole (1617-1692), ed. with biographical introduction by C. H. Josten (5 vols.; Oxford, 1966) III, 1272-73; IV, 1298.

^Brit. Mus. Sloane MS. 3189; Sloane MS. 3191, fols. 14-31v.

^C. H. Josten, "An Unknown Chapter in the Life of John Dee," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 28 (1965), 249-57; see also

Butler, Ritual Magic, pp. 268-69.

36Private Diary, ed. by Halliwell-Phillipps, p. 89. ^7Thorndike, History of Magic, I, 340-47. The 48

Claves angelicae, dated 1584 at Cracow, is preserved in Sloane MS. 3191, fols. 1-13 and in Ash

mole's copy, Sloane MS. 3678, fols. 1-13.

See Julio Caro Baroja, Vidas magicas e inquisicion (2 vols.; Madrid, 1967), I, 135-51; and

Estopanan, Processos de hechicerias, pp. 11-38.

^Baroja, Vidas magicas e inquisicion, I, 267-308.

"Êstopanan, Processos de hechicerias, pp. 16 21.

^Thorndike, History of Magic, VI, 105-6.

mIbid., VI, 129-33.

Îbid., VI, 119-20, V, 159.

uIbid., II, 825-40.

*5Ibid., V, 159; Estopanan, Processos de hechicerias, p. 28.

^Thorndike, History of Magic, II, 214-28.

"^'Estopanan, Processos de hechicerias, pp. 12 13; and Thorndike, History of Magic, V, 55-56; VI, 147; V, 50-65; V, 65-66; V, 580-88; II, 331; VI, 164.

-^Thorndike, History of Magic, II, 877-78. *9Ibid., Ill, 308, 589.

Êstopanan, Processos de hechicerias, p. 17, n. 17.

51Thorndike, History of Magic, VI, 216. 52Ibid., V, 472-73; but Thorndike does not list

Partitas.

^Listed by Amador as De sigillis. See Estopanan, Processos de hechicerias, p. 19, n. 38.

54 Ibid., p. 21. 55 Ibid., p. 28.

5%horndike, History of Magic, VI, 3-6. For the close association of science and superstition, see

Marie Boas, The Scientific Renaissance: H50-1630 (New York, 1962), pp. 166 ff.

57Thorndike, History of Magic, V, 344-47. Thorndike does not list works by Lamberg or Bencase.

^"Estopanan, Processos de hechicerias, p. 28, n. 67.

^Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 230, n. 1.

Êstopanan, Processos de hechicerias, p. 23. 61 Ibid., p. 24. 62 Ibid., pp. 24-25. 63 Ibid., p. 27; for the combination of lawful and

proscribed literature in the library of an accused sorcerer, see the books of Miguel Perez de Huesca, ibid., pp. 26-27.

^Const^ntin Bila, La Croyance a la magie au XVIII? siecle en France (Paris, 1925); Butler, Ritual Magic, pp. 154 ff. For examples of books of magic owned by private persons, see the catalog of Amplonius Ratinck's library, W. Schum, Beschreibendes verzeichniss der Amphnianischen handschriften-sammlung zu Erfurt (Berlin, 1887), pp. 800 (No. 14), 806 (No. 54); the occult library of the Marquis of Villena, see Lea, History of the Inquisition, III, 489-90; the books of magic owned by Lord John Somers, see Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the

Years MDCCCC-MDCCCCV (London, 1907), pp. 183-86; and, on a lower level, the copies of the Key of Solomon and the Constitution of Honorius, "in the infernal library of an illiterate Swabian peasant," Butler, Ritual Magic, p. 154.

tf5Butler, Ritual Magic, pp. 218-25. Ibid., p. 135. For Casanova's account, see

Giacomo de Casanova, Chevalier de Seingault, History of My Life, trans, by Willard R. Trask (4 vols, in 8; New York, 1966-69), IV, 200-1.

Êric Maple, "Cunning Murrell: A Study of a Nineteenth-Century Cunning Man in Hadleigh, Essex," Folklore, 71 (1960), 37-43; Arthur Morrison, "A Wizard of Yesterday," Strand Magazine, 20 (1900), 438.

??Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 229.

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Article Contentsp. 86p. 87p. 88p. 89p. 90p. 91p. 92p. 93p. 94p. 95

Issue Table of ContentsJournal of Library History, Philosophy, and Comparative Librarianship, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Apr., 1973), pp. 49-108Front MatterEditorial [pp. 50-51]Library Conventions of 1853, 1876, and 1877 [pp. 52-69]The Winston Churchill Memorial and Library in the United States [pp. 70-77]Planning Library Development in Latin America [pp. 78-85]Bibliothecae Arcanae: The Private Libraries of Some European Sorcerers [pp. 86-95]Sources: The Joseph L. Wheeler Papers [pp. 96-98]Vignettes of Library History: No. 13: The Rarest Reprint of the Last Issue of J. P. Marat's Newspaper 'The Friend of the People' [pp. 99-101]Of Librarians and Historians: Books,...Things,...and...Saturday...Mornings.... [pp. 102-103]JLH BookshelfReview: untitled [pp. 104-107]

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