In this original, provocative, well-reasoned, and thoroughly
documented book, Frank Klaassen proposes that two principal genres
of illicit learned magic occur in late medieval manuscripts: image
magic, which could be interpreted and justified in scholastic
terms, and ritual magic (in its extreme form, overt necromancy),
which could not. Image magic tended to be recopied faithfully;
ritual magic tended to be adapted and reworked. These two forms of
magic did not usually become intermingled in the manuscripts, but
were presented separately. While image magic was often copied in
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, The Transformations of
Magic demonstrates that interest in it as an independent genre
declined precipitously around 1500. Instead, what persisted was the
other, more problematic form of magic: ritual magic. Klaassen shows
that texts of medieval ritual magic were cherished in the sixteenth
century, and writers of new magical treatises, such as Agrippa von
Nettesheim and John Dee, were far more deeply indebted to medieval
tradition--and specifically to the medieval tradition of ritual
magic--than previous scholars have thought them to be.
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