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Darrera modificació: 2024-09-23
Bases de dades: Sciència.cat, Arnau
Giralt, Sebastià, "Magic and Science in the Middle Ages; The Building of the Boundaries between Natural Magic and Necromancy, ca. 1230–ca. 1310", dins: Lawrence-Mathers, Anne - Escobar-Vargas, Carolina (eds.), Medieval Perceptions of Magic, Science, and the Natural World, Leeds, Arc Humanities Press, 2024, pp. 107-124.
- Resum
- Learned magic arrived in Western Europe along with the other bodies of knowledge from the Greco-Arabic tradition thanks to the Latin translations that were completed primarily on the Iberian Peninsula during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In contrast to sorcery and other practices hitherto disdained by the intellectual elites as rural superstitions, learned magic enjoyed considerable power of attraction and prestige due not only to its world view and complex techniques but also to the authority conferred by its ancient, often mythical origins. When the new natural sciences and occult arts spread throughout Western Europe, university scholars were faced with the need to filter them to integrate them into high culture if they were considered licit, or if not, strongly refute them by means of faith and reason.
Thus, it was primarily during the thirteenth century that theologians and natural philosophers began to distinguish between two types of learned magic. One, which we can call natural magic, is compatible with religion and included in the sciences, insofar as it seeks to know and exploit those mechanisms of nature that are hidden, because they elude rational knowledge. The other type, usually called necromancy, and currently referred to as ritual, ceremonial, or addressative magic, is seen as incompatible with religion, as it is aimed at the domination of spirits, which the scholastics always consider to be demons, with the objective of using their power. Therefore, the natural or supernatural causality attributed to one or the other is the basis for differentiating between natural magic and necromancy. Causality is the factor that distinguishes both types of magic from rational knowledge, since the causes attributed to them, whether natural or supernatural, are occult.
This chapter seeks to review the opinions of scholastic thinkers during the key period from the thirteenth century to the beginning of the fourteenth century, in order to define exactly what can be considered natural magic, as opposed to necromancy, and to discern which bodies of knowledge and practices concerning the occult were perceived by the intellectual elites as licit and which were considered dangerous or forbidden.
- Matèries
- Filosofia - Filosofia natural
Màgia
Astronomia i astrologia
Medicina
Història de la ciència
Màgia - Nigromància
- URL
- https://ddd.uab.cat/record/301108
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