This appealing collection, assembled from contributions to a 2014 Lausanne colloquium, explores the place of magic, divination, and astrology at courts across Europe from the thirteenth through the seventeenth century. As the editors note, these centuries were marked by an intense interest in magic and divination as well as by an increase in the repression of occult practices. Courts, both secular and ecclesiastical, were witnesses to these trends.
The book begins with three chapters focused on the thirteenth century, all of which in some way examine the appeal of the model proffered by the Secretum secretorum, of a ruler assisted by the occult arts. Stefano Rapisarda studies divination at the court of Frederick II, where he, surprisingly, finds less magic and divination than at those of contemporaries in England and Spain. Charles Burnett analyzes the Latin translation of the famous Arabic magical compendium Ghāyat al- Ḥakīm (Latin: Picatrix), made at the court of Alfonso X of Castile. And H. Darrel Rutkin investigates the ways in which Roger Bacon pitched himself as an “astrologically informed political counselor” (58).
Three essays survey fourteenth-century cases from Aragon and France. Sebastià Giralt analyzes the sources behind a series of treatises penned by Bartomeu de Tresbens, astrologer to Peter the Ceremonius in Aragon, whose library held many astrological books. Julien Véronèse considers the treatise against astrologers and necromancers penned by the Aragonese inquisitor Nicholas Eymerich, concluding that Eymerich was poorly informed about astrology as he warned King John against its use. Jean-Patrice Boudet and Jacques Chiffoleau examine a series of trials for magic that unfolded between 1390 and 1410 in France in the context of the king's madness, the vagaries of the Great Schism, and the 1417 murder of Louis, Duke of Orleans, indicating the ways in which magic—both used and prosecuted at the French court—became defined as a “heresy of state.”
A number of essays examine fifteenth-century courts, ranging from Burgundy to Italy to Eastern Europe. Andrea Berlin details a 1463 trial regarding the Count of Étampes's plot to use image magic in a failed attempt to gain influence at the French and Burgundian courts. Benedek Láng considers whether courts in Kraków, Prague, and Buda were more receptive to astrology and magic, noting both a high degree of interest in such topics and an absence of condemnations comparable to those seen in Western Europe. Daniel Jaquet introduces readers to linkages between divination and judicial combat in a deluxe illustrated manuscript likely designed to be a prestige item for a court. Enikő Békés examines the ways in which the astrologer Galeotto Marzio sought and obtained patrons, demonstrating the continued importance of medieval astrological traditions. And Stephan Heilen's exploration of astrology at the court of Urbino demonstrates the ways in which the rulers’ genuine interest in mathematical sciences brought together noted astrologers, most importantly Jacob von Speyer and Paul of Middelburg, whose descent from friendship to feud Heilen uncovers here for the first time.
The volume concludes with two essays that reach into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Alberto Alonso Guardo discusses a Vatican manuscript containing a fortune-telling game that formed part of the festivities surrounding the marriage of Philip II's daughter Catalina Micaela in 1585. And, finally, Katrin Bauer portrays Johannes Kepler's astrological work on behalf of Albrecht of Wallenstein as a genuine collaborative effort, in which Kepler both defended astrology and attempted to prune away aspects that he found objectionable.
While the contributions largely retain the freshness one imagines of the original colloquium, the chapters by Véronèse, Boudet and Chiffoleau, and Heilen are almost small monographs in and of themselves, including in the first two instances welcome editions of unpublished texts. Taken together, the essays in this volume demonstrate the persistent appeal of magic and divination as both symbols and tools of power throughout the periods studied. They also point to the necessity of looking at individual cases in their proper historical and geographic contexts. Given the broadly comparative scope of the collection, it is a shame that there are no English or German examples represented here. Still, the volume is a must-read for those interested in magic, astrology, and divination in the late medieval and early modern periods.
