Unlocked Books

During the Middle Ages, the Western world translated the incredible Arabic scientific corpus and imported it into Western culture: Arabic philosophy, optics, and physics, as well as alchemy, astrology, and talismanic magic. The line between the scientific and the magical was blurred. According to popular lore, magicians of the Middle Ages were trained in the art of magic in 'magician schools' located in various metropolitan areas, such as Naples, Athens, and Toledo. It was common knowledge that magic was learned and that cities had schools designed to teach the dark arts.The Spanish city of Toledo, for example, was so renowned for its magic training schools that "the art of Toledo" was synonymous with 'the art of magic.' Until Benedek Lang's work on "Unlocked Books", little had been known about the place of magic outside these major cities. Lang explores textual evidence from the sixteenth century suggesting that Krakow, Poland, was also a key city for instruction in magic. For instance, Lang directs our attention to a marginal comment on the book Locorum communium collectanea, by Johannes Manlius, which identifies the 'first authentic notice of the Magician Dr Faustus' as having studied at Krakow. A principal aim of "Unlocked Books" is to situate the role of central Europe in general, and Krakow in particular, as a center for the study of magic.Lang helps chart for us how the thinkers of that day - clerics, courtiers, and university masters - included in their libraries not only scientific and religious treatises but also texts related to the field of learned magic. These texts were all enlisted to solve life's questions, whether they related to the outcome of an illness or the meaning of lines on one's palm. Texts summoned angels or transmitted the recipe for a magic potion. Lang gathers magical texts that could have been used by practitioners in late fifteenth-century central Europe and offers convincing evidence that Krakow was a center for the study of magic in the Middle Ages.

ISBN 0271033770   Pages 312 ISBN13 9780271033778 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher Pennsylvania State University Press   Weight (grammes) 658 Imprint Pennsylvania State University Press   Published in Pennsylvania Format Hardback   Series title Magic in History Magic in History Publication date 15 Jan 2009   Height (mm) 235 Library of Congress 2008013593   Width (mm) 156 DEWEY 133.4309430902   Spine width (mm) 28 DEWEY edition DC22   Academic level Postgraduate, Professional / Scholarly

		List of Illustrations
		List of Abbreviations
Introduction		In Search of Magician Schools		1
Pt. 1		Magic
1		Definitions and Classifications		17
Pt. 2		Texts and Handbooks
Introduction		The Sociology of Manuscripts		47
2		Natural Magic		51
3		Image Magic		79
4		Divination with Diagrams		123
5		Alchemy		144
6		Ritual Magic and Crystallomancy		162
Pt. 3		Readers and Collectors
Introduction		The Motives and Intentions of Scribes		191
7		Magic in the Clerical Context		194
8		Magic in the Courtly Context		209
9		Magic in the University Context		241
		Conclusion: Seven Questions		265
		Epilogue: When Central Em-ope Was Finally Close to Becoming a Center for Magical Studies		276
		Appendixes		281
		Selected Bibliography		295
		Description of Selected Manuscripts		319
		General Index		329
		Index of Manuscripts		333

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