Abstract
Having considered the Arabic theories of astral influences and their appropriation in twelfth-century cosmology, we can say that astral dynamics obtained three interpretive levels: aetiological, considering them as causes of generation, corruption, and terrestrial events; semiological, the celestial bodies constituting signs to be interpreted by the astrologer;1 and operational, astral influences harnessed by the magician to control and divert nature. The first two levels occupied a considerable space in the cosmological works of the twelfth century as we saw in the previous chapter. Magic was only subtly present. In many cases, translators of medical, astrological and philosophical texts also translated magic works: Constantine the African translated Qusta ibn Luqa’s book on Physical Ligatures which is concerned with the occult properties of natural things. It formed part of the Pantegni and was diffused as such in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, leading to its attribution during these centuries to Constantine himself.2 Adelard of Bath and John of Seville produced independent translations of Thabit ibn Qurra’s Treatise on Talismans.3 In Adelard’s Natural Questions we read about the time when he and his nephew approached an old sorcereress to learn natural magic.4 He wore a green cloak and a ring set with an engraved emerald.5
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Nicolas Weill-Parot, ‘Astrology, Astral Influences, and Occult Properties in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Century’, Traditio, 65 (2010), pp. 201–30 (204).
David Pingree, ‘The Diffusion of Arabic Magical Texts in Western Europe’, in La Diffusione delle scienze islamiche nel medio evo europeo (Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1987), pp. 57–102 (63, 68–9).
Charles Burnett, Magic and Divination in the Middle Ages: Texts and Techniques in the Islamic and Christian Worlds (Aldershot: Ashgate Variorum, 1996), p. 6.
Adelard of Bath, Adelard of Bath Conversations with His Nephew: On the Same and the Different, Questions on Natural Science and On Birds, trans. Charles Burnett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 191–3.
Bernard Silvestris, The Cosmographia of Bernardus Silvestris, trans. Winthrop Wetherbee (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973), p. 112.
Dominicus Gundissalinus, De divisione philosophiae, ed. Ludwig Baur (Münster: Aschendorff, 1903), p. 20.
Bernard Silvestris, The Commentary on Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis philolo-giae et mercurii, ed. Haijo Jan Westra (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1986), pp. 135–6. Bernard’s division of the arts of magic was influenced by the etymologies of Isidore of Seville; see Isidore of
Seville, The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans. Stephen A. Barney et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 181–2.
Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science: During the First Thirteenth Centuries of Our Era, 8 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press), II, p. 305; Sophie Page, Magic in the Cloister: Pious Motives, Illicit Interests, and Occult Approaches to the Medieval Universe (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013), pp. 1–2, 31–2.
Marie-Thérèse D’Alevrny and Françoise Hudry, ‘Al-Kindi: De radiis’, Archives d’historie doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge, 41 (1974), pp. 139–260 (174–5); Pingree, ‘The Diffusion’, pp. 73, 89; Benedek Láng, Unlocked Books: Manuscripts of Learned Magic in the Medieval Libraries of Central Europe (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008), p. 23.
Stephen J. Williams, The Secret of Secrets: The Scholarly Career of a Pseudo-Aristotelian Text in the Latin Middle Ages (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), pp. 32–4.
Williams, The Secret of Secrets, p. 195; Steven J. Williams, ‘Roger Bacon and The Secret of Secrets’, in Roger Bacon and the Sciences: Commemorative Essays, ed. Jeremiah Hackett (Leiden: Brill, 1997), pp. 356–93 (365, 370–2, 381).
David Pingree, ‘Between the Ghaya and Picatrix, I: The Spanish Version’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 44 (1981), pp. 27–56 (27).
Frank Klaassen, The Transformations of Magic: Illicit Learned Magic in the Later Middle Ages and Renaissance (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania University Press, 2013), p. 47.
Weill-Parot, ‘Astrology, Astral Influences’, p. 203; Nicolas Weill-Parot, ‘Astral Magic and Intellectual Changes (Twelfth–Fifteenth Centuries): “Astrological Images” and the Concept of “Addressative” Magic’, in The Metamorphosis of Magic from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period, ed. Jan N. Bremmer and Jan R. Veenstra (Leuven: Peeters, 2002), pp. 167–87 (167).
Jean Jolivet, ‘The Arabic Inheritance’, in A History of Twelfth-Century Western Philosophy, ed. Peter Dronke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 113–50 (125).
Avicenna, The Metaphysics of The Healing, trans. Michael E. Marmura (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2005), p. 2.
Abu Ma’shar al-Balkhi, Kitab al-madkhal al-kabir ila ‘ilm ahkam al-nujum (The Great Introduction), ed. Richard Lemay, 9 vols. (Naples: Instituto Universitario Orientale, 1995–6), II, p. 4.
Albertus Magnus, Book of Minerals, trans. Dorothy Wyckoff (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), p. 11.
Albertus Magnus, On the Causes of the Properties of the Elements, trans. Irven M. Resnick (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2010), p. 20.
Roger Bacon, The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon, trans. Robert Burke, 2 vols. (New York: Russell and Russell, 1962), I, p. 70.
Roger Bacon, Letter Concerning the Marvellous Power of Art and of Nature and Concerning the Nullity of Magic, trans. Tenney L. Davis (Easton: The Chemical Publishing Co., 1923), pp. 25–6.
Roger Bacon, Roger Bacon’s Philosophy of Nature: A Critical Edition, with English Translation, Introduction, and Notes, of De multiplicatione specierum and De speculis comburentibus, trans. David C. Lindberg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983); David C. Lindberg, ‘Roger Bacon on Light, Vision, and the Universal Emanation of Force’, in Hackett, Roger Bacon and the Sciences, pp. 243–75 (243–45).
David C. Linberg, ‘The Genesis of Kepler’s Theory of Light: Light Metaphysics from Plotinus to Kepler’, Osiris, 2 (1986), pp. 4–42.
H. Darrel Rutkin, ‘Astrology and Magic’, in A Companion to Albert the Great: Theology, Philosophy, and the Sciences, ed. Irven M. Resnick (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 451–505 (451–3);
Betsey Barker Price, ‘The Physical Astronomy and Astrology of Albertus Magnus’, in Albertus Magnus and the Sciences: Commemorative Essays 1980, ed. James A. Weisheipl (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1980), pp. 156–85.
Albertus Magnus, The Speculum astronomiae and its Enigma: Astrology, Theology, and Science in Albertus Magnus and his Contemporaries, introd. Paola Zambelli, trans. C. Burnett, K. Lippincott, D. Pingree and P. Zambelli (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992), p. 221.
Albertus Magnus, Book of Minerals, p. 30; Adam Takahashi, ‘Nature, Formative Power and Intellect in the Natural Philosophy of Albert the Great’, Early Science and Medicine, 13 (2008), pp. 451–81 (458).
Dag Nikolaus Hasse, ‘Avicenna’s “Giver of Forms” in Latin Philosophy especially the Works of Albertus Magnus’, in The Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin Reception of Avicenna’s Metaphysics, ed. Dag Nikolaus Hasse and Amos Bertolacci (Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2012), pp. 225–49 (238).
Masha’allah, ‘On the Knowledge of the Motion of the Orb’, in Works of Sahl and Masha’allah, ed. and trans. Benjamin N. Dykes (Minneapolis, MN: Cazimi Press, 2008), pp. 243–99 (244).
Peter Adamson and Peter E. Pormann, ‘On Rays’, in The Philosophical Works of al-Kindi (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 217–41 (222).
Thomas Aquinas, The Summa contra gentiles of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. The English Dominican Fathers, 4 vols. (London: Burns, Oats, and Washbourne, 1923–9), III. Q. 103.3.
Thomas Aquinas, ‘De Operationibus occultis naturae’, in Sancti Thomae de Aquino opera omnia: tomus 43 (Rome: St. Thomas Aquinas Foundation, 1976), pp. 183–6 (184).
Roger Bacon, ‘Secretum secretorum’, in Opera hactenus inedita Rogeri Baconi, ed. Robert Steele, 5 vols. (Oxonii: Typographeo Clarendoniano, 1909), V, pp. 3, 6.
Thomas Aquinas, The ‘Summa theologica’ of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 22 vols. (London: Burns, Oats and Washbourne, 1922), XI, Q. 95, Art. 3, pp. 196–9.
David J. Collins, ‘Albertus Magnus or Magus? Magic, Natural Philosophy, and Religious Reform in the Late Middle Ages’, Renaissance Quarterly, 63/1 (Spring, 2010), pp. 1–44 (3, 8–9).
A. G. Molland, ‘Roger Bacon as a Magician’, Traditio, 30 (1974), pp. 445–60.
Albertus Magnus, The Speculum astronomiae, p. 223; Thabit ibn Qurra, ‘De imaginibus’, in The Astronomical Works of Thabit b. Qurra, ed. Francis J. Carmody (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960), pt. VII, pp. 167–99 (p. 180).
Williams, ‘Roger Bacon and The Secret of Secrets’, p. 365; Steven J. Williams, ‘Roger Bacon and his Edition of the Pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum Secretorum’, Speculum, 69/1 (January, 1994), pp. 57–73 (64).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2015 Liana Saif
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Saif, L. (2015). Magic in the Thirteenth Century: Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas and Roger Bacon. In: The Arabic Influences on Early Modern Occult Philosophy. Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137399472_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137399472_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-57399-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-39947-2
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)