-
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
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the
Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
.http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars,
researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information
technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new
formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please
contact [email protected].
.
University of Texas Press is collaborating with JSTOR to
digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal ofLibrary History,
Philosophy, and Comparative Librarianship.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 71.172.222.252 on Sat, 4 May 2013
09:26:40 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
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
This content downloaded from 71.172.222.252 on Sat, 4 May 2013
09:26:40 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
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
This content downloaded from 71.172.222.252 on Sat, 4 May 2013
09:26:40 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
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
This content downloaded from 71.172.222.252 on Sat, 4 May 2013
09:26:40 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
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
This content downloaded from 71.172.222.252 on Sat, 4 May 2013
09:26:40 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
Journal of Library History
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
This content downloaded from 71.172.222.252 on Sat, 4 May 2013
09:26:40 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
Bibliothecae Arcanae
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
This content downloaded from 71.172.222.252 on Sat, 4 May 2013
09:26:40 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
Journal of Library History
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
This content downloaded from 71.172.222.252 on Sat, 4 May 2013
09:26:40 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
Bibliothecae Arcanae
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
This content downloaded from 71.172.222.252 on Sat, 4 May 2013
09:26:40 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
Journal of Library History
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
This content downloaded from 71.172.222.252 on Sat, 4 May 2013
09:26:40 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
Bibliothecae Arcanae
^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.
"^Estopanan, Processos de hechicerias, pp. 16 21.
^Thorndike, History of Magic, VI, 105-6.
mIbid., VI, 129-33.
^Ibid., 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.
^Estopanan, 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.
^Estopanan, 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.
^Eric 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.
95
This content downloaded from 71.172.222.252 on Sat, 4 May 2013
09:26:40 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
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]
Back Matter