Europe's inner demons

1 Valuable indications and materials will be found in A. E. Waite, The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts, privately printed (Edinburgh and London), 1898; L. Thorndike, A History of magic and experimental science, New York and London, vols. I and II, 1923, and vol. III, 1934; and E. M. Butler, Ritual Magic, Cambridge, 1949. D. P. Walker, Spiritual and demonic magic from Ficino to Campanella, London, 1958, and W. Shumaker, The occult sciences in the Renaissance, University of California Press, 1972, are concerned with the magic of a later period.

2 For discussions of conjuration in the third century: Thorndike, op. cit., vol. I, New York and London, 1923, pp. 308-13, 436-52. For the persistence of the idea, if not the practice, in early medieval Europe: Ibid., pp. 629-31.

3 On Michael Scot: Thorndike, op. cit., vol. II, chapter 51; and J. W. Brown, An enquiry into the life and legend of Michael Scot, Edinburgh, 1897.

4 Liber Introductorius, Bodleian MS 266, fols. 172 and 22 verso.

5 Cecco’s commentary: Joannes de Sacro Bosco, Sphera, cum commends, cap. III, Venice, 1518, fol. 21.

6 Cf. Thorndike, op. cit., vol. II, pp. 848-50.

7 Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogus miraculorum, vol. I, lib. v, cap. 1.

8 Cf. C. C. McCown, The Testament of Solomon, Leipzig, 1922.

9 Guilielmus Alvernus, Tractatus de legibus, cap. 27, in Opera Omnia, Orléans, 1674, vol. I, p. 89.

10 Epistola Fratris Rogeri Baconis de secretis operibus Artis et Naturae, et de nullitate Magiae, in J. S. Brewer (ed.), Opera... inedita, vol. I, London, 1859, pp. 52332 (vol. XV of Rerum Britannicarum medii aevi scriptores).

11 Two seventeenth-century English manuscripts of Lemegeton are in the British Museum: Sloane 2731 and Sloane 3648.

12 Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, first edn., 1584, pp. 378-89.

13 Ibid., p. 412.

14 See above, pp. 71–73.

15 Cf. Waite, The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts, pp. 111 seq. On the possible Jewish origin of the Clavicula: H. Gollancz, Clavicula Salomonis. A Hebrew manuscript newly discovered..., London, 1903.

16 S. M. L. Mathers, The Key of Solomon the King, London, 1889.

17 Quoted in Waite, op. cit., p. 200.

18 Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, Book 15, cap. 12, pp. 413-14.

19 Waite, op. cit., pp. 106-7, 230, summarizing from the nineteenth-century Dragon rouge and the seventeenth-century Grimoire of Honorius. The passage from the Dragon Rouge exists also in an Italian version: La Clavicola del Re Salomone (with additions), Florence, 1880, pp. 114-16.

20 Reginald Scot, op. cit., p. 383.

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21 G. L. Burr, “The literature of witchcraft”, in Selected Writings (ed. L. O. Gibbons), Cornell University Press, 1943, pp. 166-89. Originally printed in the Papers of the American Historical Association, vol. IV (1890), pp. 237-66.

22 C. E. Hopkin, The share of Thomas Aquinas..., dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1940.

23 Thomas Aquinas, Contra Gentiles, lib. III, cap. cvi (Opera, vol. XVII, Venice, 1782, pp. 314-15); Quaestiones disputatae de Potentia, quaestio vi, art. x (Ibid., vol. XIV, 1781, pp. 189-92).

24 Thomas Aquinas, Commentum in quatuor libros Sententiarum Magistri Petri Lombardi, lib. II, Distinctio VII, quaestio iii, art. ii (Ibid., vol. IX, 1777, p. 97).

25 Text in Hansen, Quellen, p. 17.

26 Text in Hansen, Quellen, pp. 4–5. For the background of the papal intervention: Anneliese Maier, “Eine Verfügung Johannes XIII. Über die Zuständigkeit der Inquisition fur Zaubereiprozesse”, in Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, vol. XXII (1952), pp. 226-46.

27 Text in Hansen, Quellen, pp. 5–6.