OH MY! It may be March, but turns out it's Christmas! (and I'm even quoted in the article ☺️) #BuryStEdmunds #historyofmagic
https://twitter.com/BLMedieval/status/1508943333984505860
Hitherto the only magical manuscript known from Bury St Edmunds was a version of the Ars Notoria designed to help monks gain the ability to magically learn shorthand medieval.utoronto.ca/research-publi…
Bury has thus been overshadowed by other monasteries such as St Augustine's, Canterbury and St Mary's, York as a centre of magical learning. But clearly this new analysis of Harley MS 2874 changes all that!
The text this manuscript is based on, the Coniuration malignorum spirituum, was not (in spite of its name) written as a ritual magical text but as a book of exorcism
BUT the Coniuratio was often used as by ritual magicians (because exorcism can easily be repurposed for ritual magic), and the simple letter substitution in this MS is pretty much definite evidence that it was being used magically
I wrote about monks using magic (including some monks at Bury St Edmunds) in this article a few years ago mdpi.com/2077-1444/10/4…
*Coniuratio, thank you autocorrect 🙄
Somewhere, James is kicking himself that he never found this one...
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