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In the Absence of Science
Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clark once wrote, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” The converse appears true. In the absence of sufficiently advanced technology, magic substitutes.
The Magic Books: A History of Enchantment in 20 Medieval Manuscripts, by Anne Lawrence-Mathers, illustrates this. A history of medieval books about magic, it uses illuminated manuscripts printed from the ninth century through the sixteenth century, demonstrating European fascination with magic over that period.
Lawrence-Mathers shows why medieval society was deeply ambivalent about magic. The church opposed magic for theological reasons. Chief among them was free will. If individual fortunes could be predicted by magic, free will could not exist. Christians believed all good things came from God. Magic was powered by devils and demons. Any benefit gained through magic was demonic and a false fruit. Any harm caused by magic was evil.
Despite this, she shows the church and princes were sponsors of and participants in magic’s use, underwriting the books presented in her study. Practitioners hedged their actions by staying within boundaries. Individual horoscopes were avoided, and predictions limited to general events such as weather forecasting. (Which proved no worse or better than today’s climate change predictions.)
The books presented testify to state and church patronage. The books are hand-written. They are also lavishly illustrated, elaborately illuminated, and meticulously bound. They are works of art as much as they are literary accomplishments. They were objects of serious study, kept in university, royal, and monastic libraries.
The Magic Books contains nearly 60 full-color illustrations taken from surviving works. They are elaborate, incorporating complex artworks, multicolor inks (including gold illumination) and complex fonts.
Most of these books study the stars; astrology mixed with astronomy. These books are less interested in the actual positions of the stars and planets than their nature – how their appearance influences human behavior. Yet there was practical application buried in them, including planetary ephemerides and calculations for predicting the Christian liturgical calendar.
Other subjects studied include chiromancy (palm reading) geomancy (earth divination, including casting lots) and sign reading. All claim to channel knowledge from the ancients: Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians, and Indians were felt to have hidden knowledge.
The Magic Books is a fascinating look at the human desire to bring order out of chaos. Lawrence-Mathers reveals the extent to which people throughout history will go for a better understanding of the world in which they live.
“The Magic Books: A History of Enchantment in 20 Medieval Manuscripts,” by Anne Lawrence-Mathers, Yale University Press, March 2025, 368 pages, $38.00 (Hardcover), $38.00 (E-book)
This review was written by Mark Lardas, who writes at Ricochet as Seawriter. Mark Lardas, an engineer, freelance writer, historian, and model-maker, lives in League City, TX. His website is marklardas.com.
Published in Book Reviews
Sounds fascinating, Mark. I wonder if the Ebook includes the colored illustations; I’m guessing, not.
It does. I have included a screenshot of one:
Note that on a B&W e-reader they will appear B&W. You can see it in full color on your computer or if you have a full-color e-reader.
I’m not clear on your suggestion. My Kindle only displays B&W, but is there a way to upload it on my computer, too, just to look at the illustrations? Sorry to be so dense…
You can download a Kindle (or e-reader) app to your computer. Alternatively. if you go to the Amazon website for the e-book, it allows you to view the book on your computer. Try it with a book you already own. I’ll post full instructions later this afternoon if you haven’t figured it out by the time I am done at church.
I can’t get my phone to screen the code, but I was able to go to my list of Kindle books and can see colored images by just loading them on my computer screen. So I guess I’m good.
Wonderful. I’m definitely buying this one. This post fits well with a story I read this morning about a 700 year old manuscript containing part of the story of Arthur’s Merlin, which was sewn into a book as part of its cover about 400 years ago. Researchers used special imaging techniques to photograph and x-ray (that’s a vast oversimplification) the page in situ, where parts of it, too fragile to flatten out, remain folded against themselves and still sewn into the book’s binding. Then they virtually reassembled the pieces in the right order on a computer.
Really cool stuff.
The story of how they recovered the text is super cool, but I want the take. Those three paragraphs have whetted my appetite.
Yes. Am I the only person wondering who–exactly–was underwearless?
I figured it was Merlin. I’m wondering how the subject came up when Merlin appeared.
“Sire, a balding child sans skivvies requests an audience.”
“Wha…?”
“He says his name is Merlin.”
“Ah. Send him in, then.”
I looked into the author of the book reviewed in the OP, and she seems pretty solid (in the academic sense). Almost certainly not a loon. Was interested to see that she’s published previously on “The True History of Merlin the Magician.” I just picked up the Audible book with one of my credits. Will report back.
Sooner or later, what goes around always seems to come around. I can’t think of a better exemplar than the OP’s opening reference to the Arthur C. Clarke quote that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Boy, howdy. Haven’t we just spent almost the past five years there?
Did you find any connection to S.L. MacGregor Mathers?
What’s interesting about the ambivalence of medieval society to magic is the progress it represents. Reading omens, fortune telling, casting spells, witch doctors, etc. were common practices historically the world over and there was no ambivalence about them. In the pre-Christian Roman Empire they were simply accepted as uncontroversial facts of life. The Christian West’s relationship to magic was like it’s relationship to slavery: Slavery was an uncontroversial practice throughout history and the world; what distinguishes the West was it actually came to question it when no one else did.
I looked up what St. Thomas Aquinas, the premier Doctor (Teacher) of the Church in the Middle Ages, had to say about magic. Question 96 of his Summa Theologica is “Whether it be unlawful to practice the observances of the magic art?” He had this to say in response:
In other words, magic doesn’t itself make anything happen because muttering words isn’t a cause of anything. To the extent that anything does happen, it’s only because some supernatural being made it happen in response to our words. Aquinas will later argue that God doesn’t work this way, so it would only be a demon responding to the words. Since demons only work for their benefit and not ours – they only deal with us to the extent that they can trap us – magical incantations should always be shunned. We should learn and work in the world the way God intended: By slow and patient learning of the causes of things.
I think the causation doesn’t go “medievals didn’t have science so they indulged in magic”, but rather “science developed in the West because medievals began to doubt magic.”
Of course, magic didn’t immediately disappear from the West, anymore than slavery did. It takes a long time for things deeply rooted in history and culture, once questioned by saints and philosophers, to finally fade from the general society. The temptation to magic seems an enduring part human nature in any case, as there is still plenty of magical thinking around. Who wouldn’t want to “manifest” wealth by just wishing it hard enough rather than working a real job?
I think that attitude describes every Progressive – and explains USAID.
@jclimacus
As far as — “What’s interesting about the ambivalence of medieval society to magic is the progress it represents. Reading omens, fortune telling, casting spells, witch doctors, etc. were common practices historically the world over and there was no ambivalence about them.”
Astrologers to the royal courts in Europe had a great predictive ability to foretell activities, both good and bad. I doubt this had much to do with the alignment of the stars or the phases of the moon. After all, as far as “fortune telling”, a court astrologer was privy to all the personal tales of woe that his many clients expressed. He also had a good amount of knowledge based on gossip and rumor.
So if Her Highness wanted to know if her dalliances were to be found out by the king, then when the astrologer went in and did a reading for that king, he had knowledge that was most un-astrologically connected as to whether or not the king should worry about his royal wife’s affections.
Superstition is not actually magic, but acts in a similar manner. In reading histories of the pre-Elizabethan kings of England, I noticed that superstition was quite powerful.
If a king sent his army and navy out to vanquish the nation’s foes, and if those forces succeeded, then it was thought that the king was righteously aligned with God.
If failure came about, then the public questioned whether or not the king’s life style was viewed favorably by the Lord.
An Astrologer’s Song