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- [00:01]
Matt Lewis
Hello, I'm Matt Lewis.
- [00:03]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
And I'm Dr. Eleanor Jaenega and we're.
- [00:05]
Matt Lewis
Just popping up here to tell you some insider info.
- [00:08]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
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Matt Lewis
History Hit with the History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries such as my new.
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Holly Fry
Series on everyone's favorite conquerors, the Normans.
- [00:25]
Matt Lewis
Or my recent exploration of the castles that made Britain.
- [00:29]
Holly Fry
There's a new release to enjoy every week.
- [00:32]
Matt Lewis
Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe or find the link in the show notes for this episode.
- [00:49]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Did you know 39% of teen drivers admit to texting while driving. Even scarier, those who text are more likely to speed and run red lights. Shockingly, 94% know it's dangerous, but do it anyway. As a parent, you can't always be in the car, but you can stay connected to their safety with Greenlight Infinity's driving reports. Monitor their driving habits, see if they're using their phone, speeding, and more. These reports provide real data for meaningful conversations about safety. Plus, with weekly updates, you can track their progress over time. Help keep your teens safe. Sign up for Greenlight Infinity@Greenlight.com Podcast this.
- [01:21]
Anne Lawrence Mathers
Podcast is brought to you by Aura. By the time you hear about a data breach, your information has already been exposed for months. On average, companies take 277 days to report a breach. That's nine months where hackers have access to your personal data. That's why we're thrilled to partner with Aura. Aura is an all in one digital safety solution that monitors the dark web for your phone number, email and Social Security number, sending real time alerts if your info is found. It also includes a vpn, password manager and data broker removal to help keep you safe for a limited time. Aura is offering a 14 day free trial plus a dark web scan to check if your personal information has been leaked. All for free@aura.com safety that's aura.com safety to sign up and protect your loved ones. That's a u r a.com safety terms apply. Check the site for details.
- [02:13]
Holly Fry
Our Skin Tells a Story Join me, Holly Fry and a slate of incredible guests as we are all inspired by their journeys with psoriasis. Along with these uplifting and candid personal histories, we take a step back into the bizarre and occasionally poisonous history of our skin and how we take care of it. Whether you're looking for inspiration on your own skincare journey or are curious about the sometimes strange history of how we treat our skin. You'll find genuine, empathetic, transformative conversations here on our skin. Listen to our skin on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [02:54]
Matt Lewis
Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval From History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and latest groundbreaking research. From the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to popes to the Crusades, we cross centuries and continents to delve into rebellions, plots, and murders and to find the stories, big and small, that tell us how we got here, find out who we really were with. Gone Medieval. A medieval scholar hunches over a lavishly illuminated manuscript, the flickering candlelight dancing off pages inscribed with celestial diagrams, cryptic symbols, and whispered secrets of the universe. A king sits in his chamber consulting his astrologer before making a decision that could change the fate of his kingdom. A monk torn between faith and forbidden knowledge traces sacred sigils in the margins of a prayer book, hoping to glimpse divine wisdom or perhaps something darker. Magic in the Middle Ages was not the realm of fairy tales and witches, witches in the woods. It was a powerful and sophisticated practice woven through politics and religion into the highest levels of society. But who were the people using these magical texts? And why did rulers, scholars, and even the clergy seek their guidance? Today on Gone Medieval, we unravel the true history of medieval magic with renowned historian Anne Lawrence Mathers, whose book the Magic A History of Enchantment in 20 Medieval Manuscripts explores her research to uncover the extraordinary role of enchantment in medieval courts, monasteries, and political strategy. From the mystical Ars Notoria, a book promising instant knowledge to the magical manuscripts commissioned by kings, we'll explore why magic wasn't just superstition. It was science, politics, and power. What did medieval people truly believe about demons and celestial forces? How did magic influence the rise and fall of rulers? And could these forgotten texts still hold wisdom or danger for us today? Welcome to Gone Medieval. Anne, it's good of you to join us. Can't wait to get stuck into some medieval magic. What's not to love? One of the things that you return to several times in your work is how the practice of magic isn't about poor people all of the time. So we think, you know, the Disney crone in the woods kind of image of this old woman remote from society, practicing magic. But for medieval people, magic was about power. Real political power, too. So I wonder if you could give us for a Start off, how involved were medieval kings, for example, in the practice of magic?
- [06:15]
Anne Lawrence Mathers
The actual practice probably was pretty rare by kings themselves, because the evidence of all of the texts and the manuscripts and so on is if you're going to do it properly, it was pretty much a full time job and also quite a dangerous one, because it's clear that you needed not only to be an expert in several languages and all this kind of arcane technology and be able to recite great long texts and stuff, but you need that because you're dealing with powerful and very dangerous spirits or intelligences. They use various words to skirt around it. Theologians would have said demons, something that's much more powerful and scary than you. So you needed to feel that you were an expert and properly equipped and prepared for this before you would take it on, I think. So kings tended to employ professionals. And it's interesting, the famous ones are from the 16th and 17th centuries. In Elizabethan England, it's John Dee, but there are other examples of the Magus of the early modern period, but they were there at least back in the 14th and 15th centuries as well. And one person who fascinates me is Alfonso X of Castile, who seems to have employed a whole school of philosophers, translators, professional magicians, artists, sculptors, you name it, to produce all of the texts and the equipment and perform the rituals.
- [07:54]
Matt Lewis
And all of that culminates in this manuscript called the Book of Astral Magic of Alfonso X. Which sounds incredible. Can you tell us a little bit about that manuscript? What is it and what's in it?
- [08:05]
Anne Lawrence Mathers
No, it's only a sort of fragment because it had a long and chequered history. And sadly, the fact that it's lost its beginning and its end means that there's no dedication to the king or no inscription that it belonged to him. But it looks so like other manuscripts that were made for him. And it corresponds with entries in the catalogues of Royal libraries in 15th century France and so on. So it's a kind of compilation of instructions and pieces of information that you get in the other manuscripts made for the king. And it basically tells you if you are a professional magician or you want to be a professional magician, what rituals you can perform and in what way on given days, depending where the chosen planet that you want to call upon for your magic is in relation to the zodiac. And you need robes in the right colors, you need the right kind of animal to sacrifice, you need the right kind of location. And it's all there, spelt out in 13th century Castilian, I guess. It would be. And beautifully illustrated to show you the gestures that the magician will be performing and so on. And of all unlikely places, it's the Vatican now.
- [09:26]
Matt Lewis
Oh, wow. I mean, that connection of the Church to magic is something we'll come onto a little bit later, which is a fascinating aspect of it too. I'm just interested in who Alfonso is bringing together to create this. Cause it sounds like we've got this whole group of people coming together. Have we found the missing Spanish Hogwarts?
- [09:42]
Anne Lawrence Mathers
It's for adults, not children. There's no school kids here, I don't think. And some of the most important people, the ones who actually get named, are the translators, because this is a multicultural society. And he's drawing upon both traditional Jewish and Islamicate Arabic language magic and having it translated into his own first language of Castilian or Spanish. And mostly the texts then get translated from that into Latin. So in the case of the manual known as Picatrix, we only have Latin versions. His Spanish version has been lost, but we do know that it was translated from Latin. So we know that his school, if you like, had pupils who took the message even further. But once the works had been translated, they seemed to have been edited and a whole raft of manuscripts cross referring the text to one another and linking them to information about the zodiac. A whole set of what were called lapidaries, encyclopedias of precious and semi precious stones with information about what they look like and where they could be sourced from and what you could do with them is put together. And that also is key to this information about the zodiac and the planets and what stars or bits of stars are powerful at given times, on given days and so on. So it really was a full time job.
- [11:19]
Matt Lewis
And is Alfonso X unusual in this? Do we have other examples of famous magic compendiums and do we know who those books might have belonged to?
- [11:27]
Anne Lawrence Mathers
Later in the 14th century, we get magic compendiums and we actually have names of the individual professionals who put them together, like Berengarius Gonellus. And we know that he worked for the ruler of Majorca, at least for a while. Others are more anonymous. Magic is reaching the academy. Authorities in universities like Paris are starting to get very worried about it by the end of the 13th century. And yet at the same time, you have universities investing in astrology and astronomy right alongside secular rulers, because they do believe that it's not only acceptable, but practical to consult the stars and the influences of the stars and what their pattern is going to be at some chosen time in the future, so that you can understand what planetary influences you will be dealing with. The key thing about the magic, of course, is that it claims to provide you with the tools to intervene in that and via summoning spirits, call down the powers of the planets. We think that we can link one of the manuscripts or the texts that I talk about, first of all, to maybe the emperor Frederick II in 13th century Italy and the early poly Roman Empire. By the late 14th, early 15th century, we know that kings of France were employing astrologers who were also physicians. And one of them was the father of the famous French writer, Christine de Pisan. It's less well recorded for England. In England, the best recorded patron of professional or semi professional magicians is Eleanor, the Duchess of Gloucester, who is tried for treasonous necromancy or treasonously employing necromancers, supposedly in the hope of getting rid of Henry vi.
- [13:31]
Matt Lewis
Yeah. Her husband, Humphrey Duffy, Gloucester, is one of the people that fascinates me during that period.
- [13:35]
Anne Lawrence Mathers
Yes. If Henry VI had been bumped off, her husband was next in line to be king.
- [13:39]
Matt Lewis
Yeah. And were these books, I mean, it doesn't sound like they were a kind of abstract academic exercise. They were like practical, usable textbooks for how to affect the course of the future.
- [13:54]
Anne Lawrence Mathers
Mostly, yes. They're long because the rituals are long. But by a certain point, certainly by the late 13th, 14th century, they stop worrying too much about theory and theological correctness and so on, and they just set out. Here is a ritual for doing this. And if you want to do it, this is when you do it, what you do, what you need. Here are the words that you should say, and this is what your outcome ought to be.
- [14:23]
Matt Lewis
Wow. So without risking casting any magical spells, can you give us an idea of some of the unusual guides and instructions that are in the book for how to perform magic ceremonies?
- [14:35]
Anne Lawrence Mathers
Let me think. The one that comes to mind is from the collection that was translated known as Picatrix. And for instance, this ritual, which again, I think it's to call upon Mercury and of course, Mercury's Day. If you're going at this the fairly simple way is Wednesday. You see it in the French and Italian and Spanish names for that day of the week. So very possibly you would choose Mercury's Day. If you're going with the theory of planetary hours, you would also use an hour of mercury on Mercury's Day. But for this you need to be outside and you need a set of ostrich eggs and a set of metal censers and a set of candle holders, and you draw Yourself a circle, of course, with yourself in the centre. You also need a cockerel, possibly black, but from memory, I can't remember. And you need to have written magical symbols onto the shells of your ostrich eggs. And you pace out your circle and space out your inscribed ostrich eggs with censers and candle holders in between. And you start burning your incense. Then in the center of the circle, you sacrifice your cock, having first cut off its comb and. And then you enunciate your ritual words and call upon the planetary spirit that you want to summon.
- [16:11]
Matt Lewis
It sounds quite bizarre to us, but did people just genuinely believe that this would really work, that it could work?
- [16:18]
Anne Lawrence Mathers
Yes. And evidence of that in my mind is the kind of practical hints and tips that you get in some versions of these things, because they added in elements from traditional Jewish magic as well, which required the performer to wear not only special robes in special colours, but to have the names of God or ceremonial names of spirits being summoned sewn into the garments. And one text says, if you can't afford a set of special robes for every ritual and every spirit and so on, just write the words and the names very carefully on pieces of vellum or paper and fasten them inside your robe so that they are touching the appropriate part of your body, depending on which bit of the human body this spirit is linked to. So that gives the impression that the text expects to be used and that relatively hard up people are studying it and training themselves to do this stuff.
- [17:23]
Matt Lewis
Yeah. I like the idea that it's giving you budget options for how to perform these ceremonies if you're not the kind of person that can afford the top equipment.
- [17:30]
Anne Lawrence Mathers
Yeah. Another practical hint is if you look at some of the rituals that look relatively straightforward, they're actually, in astrological terms, they need quite rarely occurring conditions because I talked about how you want a planet on a particular day and everything is going to depend on what zodiac sign that planet is in. But also you don't want your key planet to be in a difficult relationship to a powerful negative planet like Saturn, because that might well hinder your ritual or bring about unintended consequences. Often the position of the moon is important because the moon receives the influences of all the other planets and inflects them before they come down to Earth and to the practitioner. So again, you want your moon in the right phase and you don't want it in a negative position to your key planet. And if you Actually, I'm enough of a geek that I have written this all down and tried to figure out how often combinations of planets like this would occur. And you need to remember that Jupiter, for instance, which is the most powerful positive planet, takes about a year to go through each zodiac sign. So if it's just come out of the zodiac sign that you wanted, you're going to wait 12 years before you can do your ritual. So it's not surprising that in this case, I think it's Picatrix that says if you can't get all of this sorted out, just look for these pared down conditions. And if your client's in a real hurry and it just comes to the worst, just wait for the right day with the moon waxing and give it a shot.
- [19:14]
Matt Lewis
Just have a crack.
- [19:15]
Anne Lawrence Mathers
Anyway, I guess that answers the question of what happened when it didn't work.
- [19:19]
Matt Lewis
Yeah. You could blame maybe not having the perfect conditions for not getting the outcome that you wanted.
- [19:23]
Anne Lawrence Mathers
Yeah.
- [19:24]
Matt Lewis
And given that we tend to think of magic as being considered a bad thing and a feared thing, which I think is much more of an early modern view of magic and the practitioners of magic and lots of royalty and nobility are keeping these books and involved in these practices. Are there dangers in being caught with these books? Is there such a thing as bad magic? Could you be in trouble for practicing magic?
- [19:46]
Anne Lawrence Mathers
You certainly could be. And it would all depend on what people thought you'd been doing with it. We've already mentioned poor old Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester, who in a way got off relatively lightly, considering that she was accused of trying to have the King bumped off by magical means. She claimed sanctuary in Westminster Abbey and kept on claiming that the last thing she intended was to kill Henry VI or even to know when he would die, effectively, that what she wanted was to know how to become pregnant with her husband. But the witch that she employed, Marjorie Giudemain, she was burned. And the very learned university principal astrologer, astronomer, priest Bolingbroke, who was one of the main people accused of actually doing the image magic to get Eleanor what she wanted. He was hung, drawn and quartered as a traitor. So it's not so much owning the magic books is what they think you're doing with them. The famous example of all of this is Pope John XXII in Avignon in the first half of the 14th century, who seriously believed not only that political rivals in Italy, but also cardinals and bishops in his own papal court were trying to use similar kinds of magic to assassinate him. And he has them arrested and questioned and tortured and in at least one case, executed.
- [21:25]
Matt Lewis
One of the other books that you Mention in your book is the Ars Notoria, the magic book that promised instant knowledge, like a cheat code to learning everything in the universe. What was that book and why did scholars kind of risk using it? Because it could be dangerous, right?
- [21:42]
Anne Lawrence Mathers
Yes. Again, it seems to be a balance between being able to achieve things that otherwise you couldn't achieve, and the dangers, particularly of contact, in this case with demons that you were opening yourself up to. We first get mentions of it in 13th century. It maybe can be traced back earlier than that. It circulates, first of all, mainly in Latin. We know a lot about it because of a French monk called Jean de Morigny, who produced his own version from which demons he hoped had been expelled, because he recorded why he felt called upon to produce a new version of this thing. And it was that he was introduced to it because he was poor and he couldn't afford year after year in a university. He was supported to go to a cathedral school, but that didn't satisfy his ambitions. And so an older scholar said to him, what you need is this Ars Notoria, and as you said, it's an introduction to all the sort of formal subjects, effectively, that you might study at university, going right up to the top level. And so with this, in theory, you didn't need to pay your way through university, you just sat with this book and performed your rituals. Now, if you read it, it seems to me you actually still do need support and resources, because as the user, you've got to shut yourself away in a room for several days and nights at a time. And again, you've got to have equipment. It's simpler than the stuff we've been talking about, but you still need freshly picked and dried examples of certain types of leaf from certain bushes, you need certain types of water, you need ink with which to write words and then wash them off into your water and things like that. And you need to guarantee that you won't be disturbed while you are going through all of this, ritually preparing yourself, reciting your prayers, then gazing fixedly at the strange images that occupy whole pages of copies of the Hours Notoria, and reciting these almost unpronounceable strings of words and names, all of which has to be done with the moon in the right position and the right day of its lunar month. So you've actually got to start your planning in advance so as to get through the preparatory stage and if possible, have copies of the right university textbooks around you, because as well as performing the ritual and gazing at the images for your chosen subject, it Helps if you can have open copies of key textbooks in front of you to look at or leave through at the same time. So again, you need to plan at least a lunar month ahead, and sometimes you need the moon in the right phase on the right day of the week. So it might be more than one lunar phase ahead. But anyway, John says that he was really enthusiastic about this. It really worked for him to the extent that he actually started teaching it to his sister because she seems to have wanted to be a nun and was encountering even more of the same problems that he had. So, as a good and actually quite unusual brother, he starts to teach her as well as teaching her Latin. And they both have these terrifying experiences of nocturnal visits from what are described as pretty clearly effectively demons, which convince John that this is a very dangerous text. He flees for sanctuary into the church and experiences visions of the Virgin Mary, who encourages him to produce his tidied up version. With the demons or the danger of demons removed and much more of the images and text given over to recognisable prayers and copies of it actually have quite recognizable angels drawn on the pages, and yet his version still ends up being burnt as heretical.
- [26:04]
Matt Lewis
I'm trying to think of students revising for GCSEs and A levels and exams and things, and maybe this is a bit of an extreme form of revision. Shutting yourself away for a month is a load of textbooks and not sleeping so badly that you have visions and all that kind of thing. But he claims it worked for him.
- [26:18]
Anne Lawrence Mathers
Clearly it did something to him because he has these terrifying visionary experiences of this kind of monstrous being that appears and threatens him. And then also at the opposite extreme, he has these inspiring visions of the.
- [26:33]
Matt Lewis
Virgin, which I guess is a weird balancing point for the magic, because you've got people who are taught to be afraid of demons and yet they're trying to practice magic which will teach them they can control these demons. So you're quite often invoking demons but trying to control them, which seems really frighteningly dangerous if you've been taught all of your life that demons are Satan's allies kind of thing. You're toying with some really dark stuff here. If you can't control the demons you summon.
- [26:58]
Anne Lawrence Mathers
Yes, one way round that was to say, no, no demons here. I'm dealing with non corporeal intelligences which fitted easier into a sort of Islamicate worldview than they did into a Christian one. Increasingly, Christian theologians are pretty dubious about this concept, but of course it was part of orthodox Christian teaching that Angels do not have material bodies. They are effectively disembodied or non bodied, super intelligent, super occupying a different level of reality. So the idea that there might be less powerful versions of that who could be invoked by Christian prayer and who could be controlled by human beings through using the word of God, the hidden and special names of God that some of these texts claimed to teach you. And by having the names of God embroidered or pinned all over you and so on, you could dodge the demon issue.
- [28:06]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, but it still seems to have that element of going into battle. You need to be wearing the right armour to protect you and to be able to control. Otherwise you are going to be at serious risk.
- [28:15]
Anne Lawrence Mathers
And in some texts you actually make yourself almost a kind of physical fortress. There are instructions for going out and having not just a magic circle, but a kind of magic circular building almost constructed for you. And you want specially cleansed sand, beautiful flat paving stones, special stones for making the circular low level walls of your thing. You construct what's virtually an altar in this. And if you are not a priest yourself, you need the services of a priest to say mass over you in a church and then to come and also chant psalms and perform a mass for you in your sort of magical stone built circle.
- [28:57]
Matt Lewis
Yeah.
- [29:09]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Did you know that parents rank financial literacy as the number one most difficult life skill to teach? Meet Greenlight, the debit card and money app for families. With Greenlight, you can set up chores, automate allowance and keep an eye on your kids spending. With real time notifications, kids learn to earn, save and spend wisely. And parents can rest easy knowing their kids are learning about money with guardrails in place. Sign up for Greenlight today@Greenlight.com podcast.
- [29:37]
Anne Lawrence Mathers
This podcast is brought to you by Aura. By the time you hear about a data breach, your information has already been exposed for months. On average, companies take 277 days to report a breach. That's nine months where hackers have access to your personal data. That's why we're thrilled to partner with Aura. Aura is an all in one digital safety solution that monitors the dark web for your phone number, email and Social Security number. Sending real time alerts if your info is found. It also includes a vpn, password manager and data broker removal. To help keep you safe for a limited time, Aura is offering a 14 day free trial plus a dark web scan to check if your personal information has been leaked. All for free at aura.comsafety. that's aura.comsafety to sign up and protect your loved ones. That's a U R a.comsafety terms apply. Check the site for details.
- [30:30]
Holly Fry
Our Skin Tells a Story Join me, Holly Fry, and a slate of incredible guests as we are all inspired by their journeys with psoriasis. Along with these uplifting and candid personal histories, we take a step back into the bizarre and occasionally poisonous history of our skin and how we take care of it. Whether you're looking for inspiration on your own skincare journey or are curious about the sometimes strange history of how we treat our skin, you'll find genuine, empathetic, transformative conversations here on our skin. Listen to our skin on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [31:14]
Matt Lewis
And if we could just move on a little bit to kind of astrology so medieval astrology, we've mentioned a couple of times, sort of factors into magic and the operation of magic. How different was medieval astrology from what we would recognize as astrology today?
- [31:27]
Anne Lawrence Mathers
Not so very different, really. At the basic level of calculating the positions of the planets, entering them into a diagram or chart, and calculating their direction of movement, their speed of movement, and their interrelationships with one another and with the zodiac, I think that's all pretty recognizable. They were dealing in the Middle Ages with an increasing problem of the growing gap between the established calendar and astronomical reality, because there were very small but real errors in the lunar calendar and the solar calendar built into the Julian calendar, the traditional one. The error in the solar calendar by the 15th century actually was not that small at all. It's about 10 days. So your traditional calendar, if you relied on that, would be telling you that the sun would move from one zodiac sign to another, still around the traditional day of about 20th of each month. But astronomy would be telling you that the sun had actually moved into that sign a week or so earlier. And so you needed proper planetary tables even for the sun, let alone for all the planets whose movements are too complicated to go into an ordinary calendar. Because if you're an astrologer, you had to deal then, as you do now, with retrogrades points when the planet in question seems to stop moving in its usual direction around the Earth, stand still, known as station or stationary, then apparently go backwards and then start going forwards again. So it will be in a zodiac sign for much longer than normal. And those are regular. They can be predicted, but only an expert astronomer could do the calculations. And so you needed not only a basic set of planetary tables, but all the rules and regulations about when this particular planet will go retrograde. How far it will go when it will turn back in the right direction. And then you had to recalculate all of that based on where exactly you were located, because all these basic calculations were made for where the astronomer was located. If you were doing a proper job and being paid enough money to put in the time, you would recalculate for your particular location or, of course, your patron's location.
- [34:11]
Matt Lewis
And how influential is astrology, again, in the big political decisions that are being taken at royal courts and things like that? How much are people relying on astrology? Do we see examples of them making decisions because the stars said it was the right thing to do or a good time to do something?
- [34:28]
Anne Lawrence Mathers
Yes. Some people were more open about this than others. And it's particularly Italian astrologers who write into their books almost self advertising claims that they have been employed by the rulers of city states on things like which dynasty to choose a wife from, or when to get married or when to start trying for a child, if they want the firstborn to be a boy, and all of that sort of thing. One of them even claimed that, well, the army of his ducal employer was riding out to battle. He was located on top of a tower with a large bell to ring and rang the bell to say when the planets were in the right alignment for the troops to go into battle. Now, how practical that is and how much it could really have been done, I don't know. But certainly the view is that rulers of late medieval, early Renaissance city states were quite openly consulting astrologers.
- [35:33]
Matt Lewis
You pull out a couple of examples as well in the book of the influence that it had on things like the Battle of Poitiers.
- [35:38]
Anne Lawrence Mathers
Yes. And not Christine de Pisan's father himself. He was Tommaso de Pisano. But a man who said he'd been taught by Tommaso claimed that Tommaso had used image magic, literally making wax or plaster images of the human individuals you want to influence and I think harming them in some way and burying them in order to make sure that the English army would lose the battle and the French army would win.
- [36:10]
Matt Lewis
But it didn't work on that occasion?
- [36:12]
Anne Lawrence Mathers
No, no.
- [36:13]
Matt Lewis
They must have used one of the cheats or the wrong time of the year or something. It didn't quite work that time.
- [36:19]
Anne Lawrence Mathers
Yeah. That type of magic, the making of wax images of chosen individuals, really only seems to be associated with negative magic. So I don't know that it came up in the book, but in medieval England, as well as the Duchess of Gloucester, who supposedly had an image, a wax image of the young Henry VI made in England. There's the amazing example of the sort of mare and burghers of Coventry in the 14th century who hire a professional magician and his assistant because they're so fed up with King Edward II and also with the prior of Coventry, who they think is running the town very badly. And they hire these magicians, they hire a house outside of town for them, they pay for their board and lodging, they provide them with materials to make a lot of large images of all of their political targets. And then they decide to hold an experiment to see if it's going to work. So they choose an unlucky citizen of Coventry, baptize one of the images after their chosen citizen and stab it as you do. And the poor man starts to scream in pain and I think, dies. And it's at this point, I think it's the assistant trainee magician panics and runs off to the court and turns what we would call king's evidence. And that's how we know about it, because the case then gets written up in official English records.
- [37:59]
Matt Lewis
And it's striking how often people genuinely seem to have believed that magic had killed that man, that it was a real part of the world in which they lived. I wonder if you could give us a little bit of an idea as well about what geomancy is. Cause that sounds fascinating too.
- [38:13]
Anne Lawrence Mathers
Yeah, that brings so many levels of things together. It's another form of magical ritual that traced its origins supposedly back to the ancient world. In fact, can't be traced back earlier than the Arab empire when it started. Geomancy, of course, is mansi, or divination by Earth. And Christian readers knew from reading quite early Christian sources that was a known form of magic in the ancient world. This, by the time it gets written into books, has got nothing to do with the Earth at all. What you need is a supply of pen and paper or pen and vellum, and you make rows of dots in order to generate either one odd dot or a pair of dots at the end of each of your rows. Then you organize those into sets of four. Four. And each vertical set of four single or double dots is a character, a geomantic character. In the European version, these are given sort of astrological qualities and characterizations and linked up with zodiac signs. That wasn't the case in the earliest versions, as far as we can tell. So what you're doing is doing a version of divination by Earth, although, as I say, you've come a very long way from Earth and doing a kind of DIY astrological consultation without needing to be an astrologer or pay an astrologer. And it continued to be taken seriously in practice well into the 17th century. Simon Forman in early modern London, who's mostly famous as an astrologer, actually also practiced geomancy. And the person coming to consult would do 16 rows of dots out of which four sets of four would be produced. And then there are rules which I try to set out in the book, though most people who read it went duh. But I was as clear as I could be with this to generate another set of four and another set of four and and so on, until you've got 15 or 16 geomantic figures which have to be arranged in a sort of descending triangle or it's sometimes referred to as a shield. And that's important because in this version, each position also corresponds to a point in a horoscope. I don't know if I'm still making anything, like, sense.
- [40:49]
Matt Lewis
No, no, it's fascinating. It sounds like it's almost like a medieval kind of Magic 8 Ball. You're sort of asking a question of it and trying to get it to give you an answer, a way to behave, a path to take.
- [41:01]
Anne Lawrence Mathers
Yes. And if you do the full version with all these sets of geomantic figures, having tried it, I can tell you it takes quite a long time. And then consulting not only the basic meaning for each of your figures, but what it means on its own in the position that you've given it in your geomantic tableau or shield, and then what all the interrelationships are. That is a lot of interpretation.
- [41:39]
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- [42:45]
Matt Lewis
And is there any science behind what is going on there? Is this like an early form of data analysis or is it simply random? Almost.
- [42:54]
Anne Lawrence Mathers
It's almost random. I would say that one of the advantages, if you like, of geomancy is that if you have the education, the time and the will, you can do it yourself. There's a manuscript now in the Bodleian Library which I talk about, which was made for and given to Richard ii, King of England. And the idea, which is spelt out quite explicitly in the prologue to this thing, is that he could do a geomantic reading for himself. And the back part of the book, in effect, gives you elaborate versions of each of the geomantic figures that you might cast. And if he wants to, the king doesn't even have to put himself to the trouble of doing all that dots that I was talking about, because all he needed to do was close his eyes and put his finger on one of the tabs that run down the outer edge of the book and he will have picked a geomantic figure and then if he opens the book at the tab, he will get the meaning of his geomantic figures. You can do yourself a kind of instant reading very quickly. The idea seems to be, if you're taking it seriously, that you, the question asker, are the link between the Earth and the planets, because it's important that you should really focus and concentrate. And then somehow the planetary powers that you are receiving, because we're all receiving planetary influences all the time, the planetary powers that you are receiving will make themselves felt and be revealed in the figures that you cast.
- [44:40]
Matt Lewis
And throughout the medieval period, do we see a change in the attitude to magic? Because by the time we get to the early modern period, it becomes something that is increasingly feared and practitioners of it are people to be wary of, whereas it seems like a few centuries earlier it was something that the elite were getting involved in too. Does it undergo a change from being this intellectual pursuit to being more like a criminal offence? Or has there always been that divide between good magic and the bad magic that could get you into trouble and maybe even get you executed?
- [45:11]
Anne Lawrence Mathers
I think there was in some ways a lot of magic, unless it was pretty clearly summoning demons. But most magic didn't, as we've been talking about. So it's not so much a case of the magic itself being evil as what the human beings want to do with it.
- [45:28]
Matt Lewis
Yeah.
- [45:29]
Anne Lawrence Mathers
So if it's almost a form of advanced technology for understanding the universe and God's creation and how it all works. There's nothing wrong with that. Universities in the late Middle ages had university chairs for professors not only of astronomy but also of astrology. And it was part of the professional job of those professors of astrology to do wide ranging forecasts for the whole year ahead. In the case of city universities in big European cities, they would then announce these publicly to public meetings of the great and the good. And this is not demonic or magic in a negative sense at all. It's almost what we would call applied science. So my own view, and it's in English history, it's Tabitha Stanwell from Exeter who's done more on sort of popular versions of magic for the middle and lower classes. But it seems to me that it's the democratization of magic that the authorities are reacting against. The fear is that you don't have to be rich and powerful to have access to magic, but anybody with a bit of cash can go and consult a magician. Plus, the lower level practitioners of magic didn't claim that they had learned their magic by high level study. They seem to have used very simple techniques that are nothing to do with all the learned stuff that we've been talking about, involving kitchen equipment like sieves and scissors and shears and stuff like that. And you do strange rituals of spinning a knife or a pair of scissors or balancing things on a sieve or whatever. The idea being that these people just somehow have inborn magical powers. So we're almost coming closer to the world of Harry Potter where you're just born special. And it seems to be that idea which is feared as heretical because it goes against so much serious doctrinal teaching. Plus there is a fear that if this magic might work, well, it's dangerous.
- [47:50]
Matt Lewis
And I guess there's an element of the elite wanting to protect what the elite had access to. You know, they want the power and the information and the knowledge that goes with all of that. And they don't want just anybody to be able to have the kind of knowledge that will tell you, you know, when to make good investments or good marriages or when to win battles and things like that. They want to kind of preserve that. So when that, as you said, becomes democratized, that's something to fear and therefore maybe to criminalize.
- [48:15]
Anne Lawrence Mathers
Yes, and there is almost a complete disconnect between all of this and the witch craze, because the witch craze really only kicks off at the very end of the 15th century and builds in the 16th century, goes on into the 17th century. And yet our famous Renaissance maguses and powerful people and even medium level people like Simon Foreman in London, carry on regardless. So it really isn't the case that all magic is hunted down and exterminated. It's people who have the bad luck really. You have to be denounced as a witch, I would say, but I am not an expert on the witchcrase. Medieval magic is my thing. Gender does, I think have a lot to do with it.
- [49:05]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, we've mentioned particularly Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester as a kind of high profile, but we tend to have this image of it being women who are persecuted for magic more often than men are. In men it can almost be passed off as this intellectual pursuit, this high minded thing that you're doing. Whereas in women it's always seen as something more dangerous with a less noble motive behind it.
- [49:29]
Anne Lawrence Mathers
Yes and no, because Margery Georgiomain, the professional witch apparently of Aix near London, who was employed by the Duchess of Gloucester, she was known as a witch. She'd been consulted by ladies of the court for years and she'd actually got into trouble and been carted off to Windsor Castle a few years earlier. But as far as I remember she was simply fined and her husband had to come and pay and promise never to let her do magic again, which she obviously broke because it was obviously a good little earner so you know, you could be prosecuted and it was just almost apparently a sort of business expense. So as I say, I think there's a difference between magic and witchcraft because in full blown witchcraft, which as I said really only starts to take off from the end of the 15th century, what makes that so awful in the eyes of various authorities is that human beings are knowingly and deliberately and willingly consorting with the devil.
- [50:37]
Matt Lewis
It's been fascinating to learn about the kind of interplay between magic and politics because presumably you could get yourself an awful lot of political power by being considered good at magic. But then magic also becomes a weapon that can be deployed against very often noble women like Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester. It becomes a weapon, a charge that you can lay against them, that they're using magic and witchcraft for nefarious means. So it's kind of this double edged political sword almost.
- [51:06]
Anne Lawrence Mathers
Yes, but I think as we've discussed a lot on the whole, the powerful and the would be powerful are not practitioners themselves. So if you look at the big scandals, particularly in the French royal court in the 14th century, being caught supposedly employing professional magicians to do harm to your political rivals could get you into political disgrace and you might have to leave court for a period of time and go and languish in your country estate. But it will be the professional magicians who get tortured and executed. But on the other hand, if you seriously can cause harm to your political rival, or simply know what's likely to happen politically in the future, whose star is on the rise, who's likely to be killed in battle, whatever it might be, you can see the attraction of that kind of future knowledge.
- [52:00]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, knowledge is power. Just to wrap up with then I wonder if I could ask you a couple of quick fire questions. If there was one medieval magical ritual that you could witness, what would it be?
- [52:12]
Anne Lawrence Mathers
I would love to see the full blown ritual for calling down the spirit of the planet Mercury in a specially built little room and with all of the equipment that's described in the manuscript and having the spirit appear riding on an elephant.
- [52:30]
Matt Lewis
Wow. Is there a spell that you've come across that you would most like to find worked?
- [52:35]
Anne Lawrence Mathers
Not really, because I'm just happy in the belief that none of this works. Except maybe on a psychological level. I couldn't pick one out for that.
- [52:44]
Matt Lewis
What would you say is the biggest misconception that you most often come across about medieval magic?
- [52:49]
Anne Lawrence Mathers
Probably still that it was all so stupid that only the poor and uneducated could possibly be interested in it.
- [52:58]
Matt Lewis
And are there any figures that you've ever come across that you think might have influenced our pop culture perception of wizards? You think of people like Merlin and Gandalf and the way that they look and the way that they behave. Do you come across figures who resemble them?
- [53:11]
Anne Lawrence Mathers
I suppose the claims made by some individuals, those Italian astrologers who claimed, as I say, to be able to direct the political decisions and even the military actions of the rulers they were advising. That would be one. And also I've talked a lot about the sheer quantity of stuff and equipment you would need. So I think descriptions of fictional wizards like Merlin and the range of strange creatures and supplies and equipment and books and things that they need, that would be another thing. I think that's been influential.
- [53:50]
Matt Lewis
Well, it's been incredible to get between the pages of these manuscripts of medieval magic. And I encourage people to go and read your book if they want to find out even more about the magic that was contained within medieval books and the medieval mind. It's been absolutely fascinating to talk to you about this. Thank you so much for joining us, Anne.
- [54:06]
Anne Lawrence Mathers
Thank you very much for the invitation and for all those questions. Thank you.
- [54:11]
Matt Lewis
I hope you've enjoyed that chat as much as I did. Anne's book the Magic A History of Enchantment in 20 Medieval Manuscripts is available now if you'd like to find out how to access all of the knowledge of the universe from your bedroom. Although what more could you need to do? Just that and more. History Hit Podcasts There are new installments of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please come back and join Eleanor and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. You can sign up to History Hit to access hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every every week. And all of History Hits podcasts ad free. Head to historyhit.com subscribe let me just see if there's a spell here to encourage you to sign up. Anyway, I better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just Gone medieval with.
- [55:34]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
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