Magic in the Cloister by Sophie Page

Author:Sophie Page [Page]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Penn State University Press
Published: 2013-09-30T00:00:00+00:00

Conclusion

The rituals of the Ars notoria were meant to be practiced alone, and the operator’s visions were not meant to be revealed to anyone. This admonition to secrecy may have proved difficult to follow in a religious community, but the prayers, meditations, and purifications that were intended by the Ars notoria program to produce visions may not have appeared extraordinary or deviant in the context of monastic devotional practice. Therefore it is possible that magical practices could have been hidden in plain view. In the monastic culture of the later Middle Ages, the visionary experience became “a commonplace aspiration” that was eventually inherited by the laity.85 The popularity of the Ars notoria among both clerical and lay readers should be seen in the context of these widespread and accepted visionary expectations, which are also found in other genres, such as devotional paintings and books of hours.

The devotional potential of the Ars notoria is expanded in John of Morigny’s adaptation of this work, which privileges, elaborates, and makes additions to its orthodox aspects.86 A Benedictine contemporary of John of London and Michael Northgate, who like these monks had a period of university study, John of Morigny adapted the Ars notoria following visions of the Virgin Mary he claimed to have received in 1304–7. Although John rejected the Ars notoria after the Virgin Mary warned him against it, he nonetheless says that he despoiled Egypt (i.e., the Ars notoria) of its gold and silver for his own Liber florum.87 His approach to “plundering” and adaptation involved elaborating on the text’s visionary goals, omitting or qualifying the more explicitly magical features, and changing the roles of the petitioner and various intermediaries and intercessors.

John assumed the role that Solomon plays in the Ars notoria, receiving by divine revelation the prayers for acquiring learning and then transmitting them to future practitioners of the art. The invocation of angels who will bestow knowledge on the practitioner remains significant, but the Virgin Mary is given a new and prominent role as John’s advisor, patron, and intercessor. Images of the Virgin replace the notae in visionary experiments in which the practitioner places himself in scenes and conversations with the Virgin, and the verba ignota are omitted altogether.88 The Liber florum is also embellished with and constructed around autobiographical elements relating to John’s visionary experiences, but the basic combination of prayer, piety, and meditation is similar to the Ars notoria.89

John of Morigny places the devotional goals of the Ars notoria—salvation, an aspiration to the sinless perfection of Adam, and the infusion of divine wisdom, with promises to use the acquired knowledge for the glory of God—in the mystical context of visionary interaction with the Virgin and a celestial ascent that passes through the orders of angels to the presence of God.90 This drama is played out within the prayers, which are directed more specifically toward religious goals than those in the Ars notoria and are more systematically ordered according to these goals, though they offer similar petitions for purification from sin and progress in piety as well as knowledge.

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