Middle Ages
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Further information Medieval European magic
In the first century CE, early Christian authors absorbed the Greco-Roman concept
of magic and incorporated it into their developing Christian theology.[67] These
Christians retained the already implied Greco-Roman negative stereotypes of the
term and extended them by incorporating conceptual patterns borrowed from Jewish
thought, in particular the opposition of magic and miracle.[67] Some early
Christian authors followed the Greek-Roman thinking by ascribing the origin of
magic to the human realm, mainly to Zoroaster and Osthanes. The Christian view was
that magic was a product of the Babylonians, Persians, or Egyptians.[77] The
Christians shared with earlier classical culture the idea that magic was something
distinct from proper religion, although drew their distinction between the two in
different ways.[78]
A 17th-century depiction of the medieval writer Isidore of Seville, who provided a
list of activities he regarded as magical
For early Christian writers like Augustine of Hippo, magic did not merely
constitute fraudulent and unsanctioned ritual practices, but was the very opposite
of religion because it relied upon cooperation from demons, the henchmen of Satan.
[67] In this, Christian ideas of magic were closely linked to the Christian
category of paganism,[79] and both magic and paganism were regarded as belonging
under the broader category of superstitio (superstition), another term borrowed
from pre-Christian Roman culture.[78] This Christian emphasis on the inherent
immorality and wrongness of magic as something conflicting with good religion was
far starker than the approach in the other large monotheistic religions of the
period, Judaism and Islam.[80] For instance, while Christians regarded demons as
inherently evil, the jinn—comparable entities in Islamic mythology—were perceived
as more ambivalent figures by Muslims.[80]
The model of the magician in Christian thought was provided by Simon Magus, (Simon
the Magician), a figure who opposed Saint Peter in both the Acts of the Apostles
and the apocryphal yet influential Acts of Peter.[81] The historian Michael D.
Bailey stated that in medieval Europe, magic was a relatively broad and
encompassing category.[82] Christian theologians believed that there were multiple
different forms of magic, the majority of which were types of divination, for
instance, Isidore of Seville produced a catalogue of things he regarded as magic in
which he listed divination by the four elements i.e. geomancy, hydromancy,
aeromancy, and pyromancy, as well as by observation of natural phenomena e.g. the
flight of birds and astrology. He also mentioned enchantment and ligatures (the
medical use of magical objects bound to the patient) as being magical.[83] Medieval
Europe also saw magic come to be associated with the Old Testament figure of
Solomon; various grimoires, or books outlining magical practices, were written that
claimed to have been written by Solomon, most notably the Key of Solomon.[84]
In early medieval Europe, magia was a term of condemnation.[85] In medieval Europe,
Christians often suspected Muslims and Jews of engaging in magical practices;[86]
in certain cases, these perceived magical rites—including the alleged Jewish
sacrifice of Christian children—resulted in Christians massacring these religious
minorities.[87] Christian groups often also accused other, rival Christian groups—
which they regarded as heretical—of engaging in magical activities.[81] Medieval
Europe also saw the term maleficium applied to forms of magic that were conducted
with the intention of causing harm.[82] The later Middle Ages saw words for these
practitioners of harmful magical acts appear in various European languages sorcière
in French, Hexe in German, strega in Italian, and bruja in Spanish.[88] The English
term for malevolent practitioners of magic, witch, derived from the earlier Old
English term wicce.[88]
Ars Magica or magic is a major component and supporting contribution to the belief
and practice of spiritual, and in many cases, physical healing throughout the
Middle Ages. Emanating from many modern interpretations lies a trail of
misconceptions about magic, one of the largest revolving around wickedness or the
existence of nefarious beings who practice it. These misinterpretations stem from
numerous acts or rituals that have been performed throughout antiquity, and due to
their exoticism from the commoner's perspective, the rituals invoked uneasiness and
an even stronger sense of dismissal.[89][90]
An excerpt from Sefer Raziel HaMalakh, featuring various magical sigils (סגולות
segulot in Hebrew)
In the Medieval Jewish view, the separation of the mystical and magical elements of
Kabbalah, dividing it into speculative theological Kabbalah (Kabbalah Iyyunit) with
its meditative traditions, and theurgic practical Kabbalah (Kabbalah Ma'asit), had
occurred by the beginning of the 14th century.[91]
One societal force in the Middle Ages more powerful than the singular commoner, the
Christian Church, rejected magic as a whole because it was viewed as a means of
tampering with the natural world in a supernatural manner associated with the
biblical verses of Deuteronomy 189–12. Despite the many negative connotations which
surround the term magic, there exist many elements that are seen in a divine or
holy light.[92]
Diversified instruments or rituals used in medieval magic include, but are not
limited to various amulets, talismans, potions, as well as specific chants, dances,
and prayers. Along with these rituals are the adversely imbued notions of demonic
participation which influence of them. The idea that magic was devised, taught, and
worked by demons would have seemed reasonable to anyone who read the Greek magical
papyri or the Sefer-ha-Razim and found that healing magic appeared alongside
rituals for killing people, gaining wealth, or personal advantage, and coercing
women into sexual submission.[93] Archaeology is contributing to a fuller
understanding of ritual practices performed in the home, on the body and in
monastic and church settings.[94][95]
The Islamic reaction towards magic did not condemn magic in general and
distinguished between magic which can heal sickness and possession, and sorcery.
The former is therefore a special gift from God, while the latter is achieved
through help of Jinn and devils. Ibn al-Nadim held that exorcists gain their power
by their obedience to God, while sorcerers please the devils by acts of
disobedience and sacrifices and they in return do him a favor.[96] According to Ibn
Arabi, Al-Ḥajjāj ibn Yusuf al-Shubarbuli was able to walk on water due to his
piety.[97] According to the Quran 2102, magic was also taught to humans by devils
and the fallen angels Harut and Marut.[98]
Frontispiece of an English translation of Natural Magick published in London in
1658
During the early modern period, the concept of magic underwent a more positive
reassessment through the development of the concept of magia naturalis (natural
magic).[67] This was a term introduced and developed by two Italian humanists,
Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.[67] For them, magia was viewed
as an elemental force pervading many natural processes,[67] and thus was
fundamentally distinct from the mainstream Christian idea of demonic magic.[99]
Their ideas influenced an array of later philosophers and writers, among them
Paracelsus, Giordano Bruno, Johannes Reuchlin, and Johannes Trithemius.[67]
According to the historian Richard Kieckhefer, the concept of magia naturalis took
firm hold in European culture during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,[100]
attracting the interest of natural philosophers of various theoretical
orientations, including Aristotelians, Neoplatonists, and Hermeticists.[101]
Adherents of this position argued that magia could appear in both good and bad
forms; in 1625, the French librarian Gabriel Naudé wrote his Apology for all the
Wise Men Falsely Suspected of Magic, in which he distinguished Mosoaicall Magick—
which he claimed came from God and included prophecies, miracles, and speaking in
tongues—from geotick magic caused by demons.[102] While the proponents of magia
naturalis insisted that this did not rely on the actions of demons, critics
disagreed, arguing that the demons had simply deceived these magicians.[103] By the
seventeenth century the concept of magia naturalis had moved in increasingly
'naturalistic' directions, with the distinctions between it and science becoming
blurred.[104] The validity of magia naturalis as a concept for understanding the
universe then came under increasing criticism during the Age of Enlightenment in
the eighteenth century.[105]
Despite the attempt to reclaim the term magia for use in a positive sense, it did
not supplant traditional attitudes toward magic in the West, which remained largely
negative.[105] At the same time as magia naturalis was attracting interest and was
largely tolerated, Europe saw an active persecution of accused witches believed to
be guilty of maleficia.[101] Reflecting the term's continued negative associations,
Protestants often sought to denigrate Roman Catholic sacramental and devotional
practices as being magical rather than religious.[106] Many Roman Catholics were
concerned by this allegation and for several centuries various Roman Catholic
writers devoted attention to arguing that their practices were religious rather
than magical.[107] At the same time, Protestants often used the accusation of magic
against other Protestant groups which they were in contest with.[108] In this way,
the concept of magic was used to prescribe what was appropriate as religious belief
and practice.[107] Similar claims were also being made in the Islamic world during
this period. The Arabian cleric Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab—founder of Wahhabism—for
instance condemned a range of customs and practices such as divination and the
veneration of spirits as sihr, which he in turn claimed was a form of shirk, the
sin of idolatry.[109]
Witchcraft in Medieval Europe
Main articles European witchcraft and Witch hunt
See also Witch trials in England, Witch trials in the Holy Roman Empire, and Witch
trials in France
In the early Middle Ages, there were those who both spoke against witchcraft, and
those who spoke against accusing others of witchcraft (at all). For example, the
Pactus Legis Alamannorum, an early 7th-century code of laws of the Alemanni
confederation of Germanic tribes, lists witchcraft as a punishable crime on equal
terms with poisoning. If a free man accuses a free woman of witchcraft or
poisoning, the accused may be disculpated either by twelve people swearing an oath
on her innocence or by one of her relatives defending her in a trial by combat. In
this case, the accuser is required to pay a fine (Pactus Legis Alamannorum 13). In
contrast, Charlemagne prescribed the death penalty for anyone who would burn
witches,[110] as seen when he imposed Christianity upon the people of Saxony in 789
and he proclaimed
If anyone, deceived by the Devil, shall believe, as is customary among pagans, that
any man or woman is a night-witch, and eats men, and on that account burn that
person to death... he shall be executed.[111]
Similarly, the Lombard code of 643 states
Let nobody presume to kill a foreign serving maid or female slave as a witch, for
it is not possible, nor ought to be believed by Christian minds.[111]
This conforms to the thoughts of Saint Augustine of Hippo, who taught that
witchcraft did not exist and that the belief in it was heretical.[112]
In the Late Middle Ages, witch trials started becoming more accepted if the
accusations of witchcraft were related to heresy. However, accusations of
witchcraft could be for political reasons too, such as in 1425 when Veronika of
Desenice was accused of witchcraft and murdered even though she was acquitted by a
court because her father-in-law did not want her to marry his son.[113] The trial
of Joan of Arc in 1431 may be the most famous witch trial of the Middle Ages and
can be seen as the beginning of the witch trials of the early modern era. A young
woman who led France to victory during the Hundred Years' War, she was sold to the
English and accused of heresy because she believed God had designated her to defend
her country from invasion. While her capture was initially political, the trial
quickly turned to focusing on her claims of divine guidance, leading to heresy and
witchcraft being the main focus of her trial. She was given the choice to renounce
her divine visions and to stop wearing soldier's clothing, or to be put to death.
She renounced her visions and stopped wearing soldier's clothing, but only for four
days. Since she again had professed her belief in divine guidance and began wearing
men's clothes, she was convicted of heresy and burnt alive at the stake—a
punishment that at the time was felt only necessary for witches.[114]
Renaissance practitioners
Main article Renaissance magic
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Woodcut illustration from an edition of Pliny the Elder's Naturalis Historia (1582)
The term Renaissance magic originates in 16th-century Renaissance magic, referring
to practices described in various Medieval and Renaissance grimoires and in
collections such as that of Johannes Hartlieb. Georg Pictor uses the term
synonymously with goetia.
James Sanford in his 1569 translation of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa's 1526 De
incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum has The partes of ceremoniall Magicke be
Geocie, and Theurgie. For Agrippa, ceremonial magic was in opposition to natural
magic. While he had his misgivings about natural magic, which included astrology,
alchemy, and also what we would today consider fields of natural science, such as
botany, he was nevertheless prepared to accept it as the highest peak of natural
philosophy. Ceremonial magic, on the other hand, which included all sorts of
communication with spirits, including necromancy and witchcraft, he denounced in
its entirety as impious disobedience towards God.[115]
Portrait of Gemistus Pletho, detail of a fresco by acquaintance Benozzo Gozzoli,
Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Florence, Italy
Both bourgeoisie and nobility in the 15th and 16th centuries showed great
fascination with the seven artes magicae, which exerted an exotic charm by their
ascription to Arabic, Jewish, Romani, and Egyptian sources. There was great
uncertainty in distinguishing practices of vain superstition, blasphemous
occultism, and perfectly sound scholarly knowledge or pious ritual. Intellectual
and spiritual tensions erupted in the Early Modern witch craze, further reinforced
by the turmoils of the Protestant Reformation, especially in Germany, England, and
Scotland.[116] The people during this time found that the existence of magic was
something that could answer the questions that they could not explain through
science. To them it was suggesting that while science may explain reason, magic
could explain unreason.[117]
Renaissance humanism saw a resurgence in hermeticism and Neo-Platonic varieties of
ceremonial magic. The Renaissance, on the other hand, saw the rise of science, in
such forms as the dethronement of the Ptolemaic theory of the universe, the
distinction of astronomy from astrology, and of chemistry from alchemy.[116][page
needed]
In Hasidism, the displacement of practical Kabbalah using directly magical means,
by conceptual and meditative trends gained much further emphasis, while
simultaneously instituting meditative theurgy for material blessings at the heart
of its social mysticism.[118] Hasidism internalised Kabbalah through the psychology
of deveikut (cleaving to God), and cleaving to the Tzadik (Hasidic Rebbe). In
Hasidic doctrine, the tzaddik channels Divine spiritual and physical bounty to his
followers by altering the Will of God (uncovering a deeper concealed Will) through
his own deveikut and self-nullification. Dov Ber of Mezeritch is concerned to
distinguish this theory of the Tzadik's will altering and deciding the Divine Will,
from directly magical process.[119]
In the nineteenth century, the Haitian government began to legislate against Vodou,
describing it as a form of witchcraft; this conflicted with Vodou practitioners'
own understanding of their religion.[120]
In the sixteenth century, European societies began to conquer and colonise other
continents around the world, and as they did so they applied European concepts of
magic and witchcraft to practices found among the peoples whom they encountered.
[121] Usually, these European colonialists regarded the natives as primitives and
savages whose belief systems were diabolical and needed to be eradicated and
replaced by Christianity.[122] Because Europeans typically viewed these non-
European peoples as being morally and intellectually inferior to themselves, it was
expected that such societies would be more prone to practicing magic.[123] Women
who practiced traditional rites were labelled as witches by the Europeans.[123]
In various cases, these imported European concepts and terms underwent new
transformations as they merged with indigenous concepts.[124] In West Africa, for
instance, Portuguese travellers introduced their term and concept of the feitiçaria
(often translated as sorcery) and the feitiço (spell) to the native population,
where it was transformed into the concept of the fetish. When later Europeans
encountered these West African societies, they wrongly believed that the fetiche
was an indigenous African term rather than the result of earlier inter-continental
encounters.[124] Sometimes, colonised populations themselves adopted these European
concepts for their own purposes. In the early nineteenth century, the newly
independent Haitian government of Jean-Jacques Dessalines began to suppress the
practice of Vodou, and in 1835 Haitian law-codes categorised all Vodou practices as
sortilège (sorcerywitchcraft), suggesting that it was all conducted with harmful
intent, whereas among Vodou practitioners the performance of harmful rites was
already given a separate and distinct category, known as maji.[120]
Late Middle Ages to early Renaissance
Georgius Gemistus Pletho
Georgius Gemistus Pletho (c. 13551360 – 14521454) was a Greek scholar[125] and one
of the most renowned philosophers of the late Byzantine era.[126] He was a chief
pioneer of the revival of Greek scholarship in Western Europe.[127] As revealed in
his last literary work, the Nomoi or Book of Laws, which he only circulated among
close friends, he rejected Christianity in favour of a return to the worship of the
classical Hellenic Gods, mixed with ancient wisdom based on Zoroaster and the Magi.
[128] Plethon may also have been the source for Ficino's Orphic system of natural
magic.[129]
Marsilio Ficino from a fresco painted by Domenico Ghirlandaio in the Tornabuoni
Chapel, Santa Maria Novella, Florence
Marsilio Ficino
Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) was an Italian scholar and Catholic priest who was one
of the most influential humanist philosophers of the early Italian Renaissance. He
was an astrologer, a reviver of Neoplatonism in touch with the major academics of
his day, and the first translator of Plato's complete extant works into Latin.[130]
His Florentine Academy, an attempt to revive Plato's Academy, influenced the
direction and tenor of the Italian Renaissance and the development of European
philosophy.
Ficino's letters, extending over the years 1474–1494, survive and have been
published. He wrote De amore (Of Love) in 1484. De vita libri tres (Three books on
life), or De triplici vita[131] (The Book of Life), published in 1489, provides a
great deal of medical and astrological advice for maintaining health and vigor, as
well as espousing the Neoplatonist view of the world's ensoulment and its
integration with the human soul
There will be some men or other, superstitious and blind, who see life plain in
even the lowest animals and the meanest plants, but do not see life in the heavens
or the world ... Now if those little men grant life to the smallest particles of
the world, what folly! what envy! neither to know that the Whole, in which 'we live
and move and have our being,' is itself alive, nor to wish this to be so.[132]
One metaphor for this integrated aliveness is Ficino's astrology. In the Book of
Life, he details the interlinks between behavior and consequence. It talks about a
list of things that hold sway over a man's destiny.
His medical works exerted considerable influence on Renaissance physicians such as
Paracelsus, with whom he shared the perception on the unity of the micro- and
macrocosmos, and their interactions, through somatic and psychological
manifestations, with the aim to investigate their signatures to cure diseases.
Those works, which were very popular at the time, dealt with astrological and
alchemical concepts. Thus Ficino came under the suspicion of heresy; especially
after the publication of the third book in 1489, which contained specific
instructions on healthful living in a world of demons and other spirits.[citation
needed]
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
Portrait from the Uffizi Gallery, in Florence
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494) was an Italian Renaissance nobleman and
philosopher.[133] He is famed for the events of 1486, when, at the age of 23, he
proposed to defend 900 theses on religion, philosophy, natural philosophy, and
magic against all comers, for which he wrote the Oration on the Dignity of Man,
which has been called the Manifesto of the Renaissance,[134] and a key text of
Renaissance humanism and of what has been called the Hermetic Reformation.[135] He
was the founder of the tradition of Christian Kabbalah, a key element of early
modern Western esotericism. The 900 Theses was the first printed book to be
universally banned by the Church.[136]
In November 1484, he settled for a time in Florence and met Lorenzo de' Medici and
Marsilio Ficino. It was an astrologically auspicious day that Ficino had chosen to
publish his translations of the works of Plato from Greek into Latin, under
Lorenzo's enthusiastic patronage. Pico appears to have charmed both men, and
despite Ficino's philosophical differences, he was convinced of their Saturnine
affinity and the divine providence of his arrival. Lorenzo would support and
protect Pico until his death in 1492.
Pico spent several months in Perugia and nearby Fratta. It was there, as he wrote
to Ficino, that divine Providence ... caused certain books to fall into my hands.
They are Chaldean books ... of Esdras, of Zoroaster and of Melchior, oracles of the
magi, which contain a brief and dry interpretation of Chaldean philosophy, but full
of mystery.[137] It was also in Perugia that Pico was introduced to the mystical
Hebrew Kabbalah, which fascinated him, as did the late classical Hermetic writers,
such as Hermes Trismegistus. The Kabbalah and Hermetica were thought in Pico's time
to be as ancient as the Old Testament.
