A report shouldĬonsist of (1) a study of some important theme or problem in these readings (e.g., the role of Written reports of roughly 2,000-3,000 words on the assigned readings. Each week, students taking the seminar for credit are asked to submit 6th: The Renaissance harvest of medieval magic-Agrippa. May 30th: Magic and humanism-Johannes Trithemius. May 23rd: The 1480s as watershed-Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. May 16th: Does magic have a history?-The history and historiography of Renaissance magic.ĭ.P. Magic? Claire Fanger, ed., Conjuring Spirits. May 2nd: How does clerical necromancy relate (more specifically) to other forms of ritual 25th: How does clerical necromancy relate to other forms of magic-and to the witch trials? 18th: Does magic have a definition?-The varieties of medieval magic. 11th: Does magic have a history?-The history and historiography of medieval magic.īengt Ankarloo and Stuart Clark, eds., Witchcraft and Magic in Europe.Īpr. Schedule of lectures, discussions, and readingĪpr.

Plus a photocopy book, available from the instructor. Studies in Early Modern Europe (Albany: SUNY Press, 1998). Brann, Trithemius and Magical Theology: A Chapter in the Controversy over Occult

Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic: From Ficino to Campanella (University Park: Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, trans. Ĭlaire Fanger, ed., Conjuring Spirits: Texts and Traditions of Medieval Ritual Magic (University Park: Penn State Press, 1998). Richard Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer's Manual of the Fifteenth Century 3 ( The MiddleĪges) (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002). Out correspondences and discontinuities between medieval and Renaissance magic.īengt Ankarloo and Stuart Clark, eds., Witchcraft and Magic in Europe, vol. The first part of this course willĮxamine the magical texts and practices of medieval Europe. Practice and assumptions about the operations of magic. But shiftingĪttitudes toward mages are not necessarily correlated with shifting perceptions of magical Tendency for them to be intellectual property claimed by their actual authors. Pseudonymous (with exceptions) from the later fifteenth century onward there is a greater Texts written in Western Europe up to the fifteenth century tend to be anonymous or Jakob Burckhardt's celebrated but problematic notions of the Renaissance individual areīorne out no more and no less in the realm of magic than in that of art or politics. Kieckhefer: Medieval Magic & Renaissance MagesĮ-mail: 2:00-5:00 p.m., 4 April to 6 June 2003

Forbidden Rites by Richard Kieckhefer