Klaassen, Frank F. <i>Transformations of Magic: Illicit Learned Magic
in the Later Middle Ages and Renaissance</i>. Series: Magic in History.
  University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013. Pp. x,
280. $69.95. ISBN-13: 9780271056265.

   Reviewed by David J. Collins, S.J.
        Georgetown University
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<i>Transformations of Magic</i> is a meticulous and insightful work of
scholarship. It is not only about magic but also about books, science,
religion, ideas and their transmission, and the transition from the
medieval to the early modern in England. It begins with the observation
that the literatures of two kinds of magic--image and ritual--
underwent sharply different transformations between 1300 and 1600: over
the course of three centuries the literature of image magic first
increased and then declined, with what remained subsumed into
<i>naturalia</i> or inserted in passing into texts of ritual magic. The
literature of ritual magic, by contrast, enjoyed a history even more
vigorous in the sixteenth century than in the thirteenth.  An
explanation for these distinct histories is, by the author's reckoning,
to be found by discerning the larger intellectual
contexts--philosophical, scientific, and theological--in which authors,
scribes, and readers understood the two kinds of magic and by
considering the relationship of each magic's efficaciousness to the
written texts themselves. Given a conventional association of a
transformed image magic with the Renaissance, and a corresponding
derogation of ritual magic as medieval, Prof. Klaassen's findings lead
him to a judicious reevaluation of the links and tensions between the
medieval and the early modern, at least in terms of magic.

Much of what makes Prof. Klaassen's analysis convincing has to do with
the painstaking care he takes in presenting and analyzing the volumes
he brings under scrutiny. The eighty pages of back matter attest to his
skill as a researcher and his nimbleness with the questions that have
heretofore shaped the scholarly conversation on the matters at hand. He
describes his work as an analysis of the <i>mise-en-page</i>. He means
by this term much more than simply the layout of a text on a page, but
also the placement of texts in a volume and volumes in a library.  The
analysis of such <i>mise-en-page</i> provides the foundation for the
inferences first about the owners, scribes, and authors, and then about
the transformations these literatures of magic were undergoing. In this
regard </i>Transforming Magic</i> continues a productive trend among
some historians of magic to attend closely to actual volumes of magical
texts and is a model in the method.

His attentiveness to the volumes ultimately sheds light on the
intellectual frames of reference that result in the transformations he
documents. Regarding image magic the framing question was whether an
image worked because of occult natural powers or demonic intervention.
In the former case, use of the image would be lawful; in the latter,
unlawful. The urge to make image magic lawful then situated it
alongside or even in the field of natural philosophy. The alignment
shaped the debate and can be seen in the placement of the texts of
image magic, which in collected volumes and on library shelves were
found among the <i>naturalia</i>. Prof. Klaassen determines that this
trend was shaped by certain authoritative works, most famously the
</i>Speculum astronomiae</i>, that became increasingly used as a guide
for scribes in their immediate discernment of the philosophical and
moral lawfulness of particular magical texts. Their use had a
constraining effect, and the number of texts of image magic
correspondingly decreased.

Ritual magic, by contrast, did not fall within the pale of scholastic
rationality, and thus faced a different kind of scrutiny. The question
of this literature's effectiveness was less about the truth the texts
contained than the extent to which they could serve as "vehicles for
[the] discovery [of truth]." This was a moral standard to be sure, but
shifted attention onto the practioner rather than any scholastic norm.
By dint of the category shift, the literature had no self-evident home
either in the scholastic mind or on the library shelves. And that seems
to be exactly what saved it: the texts of ritual magic remained less
stable than the texts of image magic, and consequently became more
resilient and long-lived. Ritual magic not only sustained itself but
flourished through this period due in part to a freer relationship
between the quality of the texts, the effectiveness of the practices,
and the engagement of the practitioners. By Prof. Klaassen's reckoning,
this difference in conceptual framework and transmission style worked
hand-in-hand, and explains much of the how and why of image magic's
disappearance in the course of the early modern period (appropriated
into <i>naturalia</i>, marginalized in collections of ritual magic, or
simply discarded), and of ritual magic's perdurance to the present day.

These findings impel Prof. Klaassen to new conclusions about
"Renaissance magic" and its links to--rather than disjunctions
from--medieval ritual magic "highly ritualized and with powerfully
religious, interior, experiential, and personal dimensions." He is
attentive throughout the monograph to the complex and sometimes
contentious historiography that views magic sometimes and in some
regards as part of a religious discourse, other times, as part of a
scientific one. Regarding that distinction and any easy distinction
between medieval and early modern magic, he takes the revisionist
approaches yet further away from the older positions rooted in the
scholarship of Lynn Thorndike and Frances Yates. Although this reviewer
wishes that the author had reflected yet more skeptically on the
usefulness of the term "Renaissance" and what distinguishes some magic
as <i>learned</i> (as suggested in the title).

Along these lines, one difference between this monograph and the
dissertation on which it is based is found in the titles. In the
dissertation's title he uses none of three words featured in the
monograph's subtitle: illicit, learned, and Renaissance. Early sections
of both monograph and dissertation offer a thoughtful analysis of image
magic's licitness, with a reflection on Vincent of Beauvais'
<i>Speculum maius</i> serving as a springboard, that ultimately directs
the reader's attention to the efforts of authors, scribes, and owners
to find in image magic echoes of scholastic natural philosophy. The
result is to highlight in a helpful way the ultimate <i>ambiguity</i>
of image magic's licitness to canonists and moralists, an ambiguity
that drives the transformations at the heart of Prof. Klaasen's
research. The term "renaissance," consistently uncapitalized in the
dissertation, appears usually as a qualifier for "occultism" and in
reference to Ficino historically and Yates historiographically.  In the
final analysis, however, Klaassen's work undermines the notion of
"Renaissance" magic both by shifting attention away from the image
magic which has otherwise attracted more attention and by highlighting
the tradition of ritual magic that such Renaissance figures as Agrippa
<i>et alii</i> were not supposed to be interested in. Thanks to Prof.
Klaassen's work the reader is challenged to consider ritual magic
through their neo-Platonizing lens. What one discovers, especially in
ritual magic's emphasis on the experience of the practitioner, is a
better fit, upon reflection, than image magic and the Renaissance mage
ever were! Finally, the "learnedness" of magic warrants only oblique
consideration in either work: by virtue of the milieus in which they
were largely practiced and the literacy required for the books
instructing their use, image and ritual magic qualify as "learned." But
that, like "Renaissance," is our category rather than theirs.

Regarding his sources, Prof. Klaasen unnecessarily apologizes for his
focus on manuscripts rather than authorities, an approach that leads
him once unnecessarily to apologize for attending too carefully to the
mediocre and mundane instead of the luminary. In point of fact, his
work draws the reader very effectively into the murky world of semi-
and fully anonymous characters out of which the luminary figures
emerged and which encouraged the luminary characters to arise. We are
introduced to a range of manuscripts the simple listing and indexing of
which deserves mention as a great service. At the same time, his early
apology may lead to the false impression that much is not learned about
"the most eloquent proponents [and] elucidators of magic." Vincent of
Beauvais, Agrippa, Finico, and Dee have already been mentioned in
passing in this review and are the tip of the iceberg. He likewise
gives careful coverage, by necessity, to the most important late
medieval and early modern circulating texts of ritual and image magic:
the <i>Picatrix</i>, the <i>Speculum astronomiae</i>, and the <i>Ars
notoria</i> all receive careful treatment as do such other central
writings as Ficino's <i>De vita coelitus comparanda</i> and Agrippa's
<i>De occulta philosophia</i>.

In short, this is a very good book based on a use of sources that is
both careful and creative. The author's central conclusions are clearly
expressed, meticulously researched, and convincingly argued. It is
exemplary in its subtle attentiveness to the relationship of ideas to
the modes and details of their transmission, and it is compelling in
its challenge to reconsider how certain kinds of magic's place in
Western society developed from the High Middle Ages to the early modern
period. <i>Transforming Magic</i> is a richer piece of scholarship than
its modest length might suggest.








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