Kalamazoo Medieval Congress Blog: Saturday 10:00

I should have noted earlier in this process that my notes must be understood as a quick-and-dirty attempt to summarize. All mistakes of interpretation, typos, and mis-transcribed data are my own fault. (With a plea for forgiveness due to the speed and not having time for close proofreading.)

Session 355: Reading Magic West to East

• Sponsor: Societas Magica
• Organizer: Jason Roberts, Univ. of Texas–Austin
• Presider: Claire Fanger, Rice Univ.

Eastern Magic in a Western Home: The Influence of Iberian Translated Ghāyat al-Hakīm on a Fictional Necromancer - Veronica Menaldi, Univ. of Minnesota–Twin Cities

(Got my time mixed up and missed this one.)

East to West to East: Reading the Arabic Alchemical Tradition in Late Medieval Cracow [revised to “The Problem of Alchemical Travel”] - Agnieszka Rec, Chemical Heritage Foundation

The problem of tracing alchemical treatises is that it’s hard to track individual strands as most were compilations of multiple sources and traditions. This will focus on the alchemical text/collection of a particular individual Leonard of Narperg(sp?), which is also a bit of a travelogue. Preserved in a single manuscript copy, ?early 16th c? (trying to keep up and it isn’t on the slide). He’s primarily concerned with the transmutation of metals rather than the medical topics also popular at the time.

The text includes the context of time, place, and people in which Leonard collected his recipes, then followed by the recipe itself. But each narrative is disjoint and not necessarily in chronological order. Often Leonard notes that, not having the money to purchase a recipe, he paid for it in labor for the recipe’s owner, which he details. Although the various source alchemists are typically mentioned by name, the references are typically brief and cryptic. Leonard’s references to people are given a great deal of context and detail. But detail doesn’t not guarantee reliability, as when he traces a recipe to Petrarch who was notoriously skeptical about alchemy.

Particularly interesting is a narrative section where he and Bartholomew of Prague set out on a journey. They hoped to meet Magister Demetrius in Krakow but find he has left. Demetrius (who appears to be Armenian) is not associated with a university circle, which is atypical for alchemists. The narrative indicates they follow him to Livonia (this appears to be an error for a location in Ukraine).

Demetrius gives them a recipe for silver (briefly sketched in the text) and for a recipe for gold directs them to a Greek school in [I missed the reference but the map shows them going to Jerusalem and then Tabriz(sp? on the Caspian Sea?).] The find the school, but the alchemists there decline to give them the recipe but give them enough money to return home. (Note that originally this was meant to be an eight day trip to Krakow.)

In this era, alchemical literature often include narratives of transmutation histories, where the author claims to describe the actual steps of the work. But travel narratives tend to be later and very local (i.e., visting various people in a town to trace down a recipe.)

Leonard’s route is entirely wrong for the path of Latin alchemy which spread from Iberia thorugh western Europe in the 14th century. Krakow was just barely doing Latin alchemy in the 16th century but parts further east were not and a place as distant as Tabriz(sp?) is implausible. (It’s possible that non-university alchemists may have been active in Krakow earlier?)

Why do we have this travel narrative? To lend credence to the recipes? To privide an elaborate genealogy for a recipe to increase confidence in its truth. The specfic route may be borrowed from general medieval travel narratives, but this sort of long-range journey is not at all normal or common in alchemical manuscripts.

“Let Them Desiste from Hellenic Devilries”: The Specter of Greek Paganism in the Anti-Magic Theology of the Russian Orthodox Stoglav - Jason Roberts

(Title modification, remove “the specter of paganism” which gives away one of his conclusions.)

The “Stoglav” (= “100 chapters/canons”) a council convened by Ivan the Terrible and the text they produced, which provides religious opinions beginning to diverge from Greek Orthodoxy. “Volkhvovania” is referenced (“wizardry, magic”, sort of, from an indigenous Slavic tradition). “Volkhv” is also used to refer to the Biblical Magi. This term is used to cover a larger category of religion+magic.

(The slide has a delightful picture of Baba Yaga riding out on a swine in combat against a figure who may be a Volkhv.)

The text somewhat conflates volkhvovania with “Hellenism” which refers to a subset of types of magic, though not all Hellenisms discussed are magical in nature. That is, there is an overlapping Venn diagram where Hellenisms and Volkhvovania overlap.

In academic and thoelogical discourse, “magic” is definedin relation to (efficatious) ritual. But Hellenisms are not defined in this way. For example, the celebration of certain festivals are Hellenisms. So is dancing, yodeling, “splashing”, and other obscure references.

But does this mean that “Hellenisms” were meant to be understood as “paganism”? (See the original paper title.) Some evidence that paganism did linger longer in the east due to encouraged conversion rather than required conversion.

To address Hellenism vs. magic, we must understand religion vs. magic in this context. There is no non-theological distinction that can be extracted that divides religion and magic. The (modern) academic use of the word “magic” as a distinction from religion is indistinguishable from Calvinist theology. For example, an emphasis on “efficacious ritual” would identify many Catholic practices as “magic”. Protestant/scholarly definition: Magic = any ritual. In Catholic discourse: Magic = illicit ritual. But in the Russian discourse here, magic = false religion, and Hellenisms = false religion, but Hellenisms =/= magic. There is no shared Christian definition of “magic” because it is defined in reference to approved religion, which is breaking up (Catholic/Orthodox, and now Greek/Russian Orthodox.)

The Russian definitions of “false religion” use language of impurity, filth, uncleanness. Magic is compared to fornication (not identical). The distinctions aren’t based on ritual or licitness, but on purity versus defilement (which can be magical or other).

Thus to understand the medieval Russion attitudes toward magic, one must avoid working from a Western (and especially Protestant) definition of magic. “Hellenism” is redundant with “false religion.” This difference in definitions may help explain the scarcity of learned magic in Russian culture because there is no structural allowance for a distinction between “licit and illicit” magic to be debated.