A fifteenth century manuscript held today as Clm 849 in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (Bavarian State Library), Munich, containing around thirty texts of necromantic and image magic in Latin, most describing ritual procedures for conjuring and commanding demons or spirits toward ends such as divination, illusion, or compelling love, framed within clerical exorcistic ritual form. Historian Richard Kieckhefer's 1997 critical edition and study established it as the best documented surviving witness to the clerical underworld of late medieval "necromancy," magic practiced by individuals with clerical training who adapted the church's own liturgical and exorcistic language and format toward illicit ends. It survives as a historical manuscript object studied by historians of medieval magic and religion, not as a living or practiced tradition.
Facts
Origins
Era of Composition Era of CompositionThe manuscript itself dates paleographically to the fifteenth century; its individual texts likely compile older material of uncertain, probably fourteenth century or earlier, origin. 1 Text
Literary FormGrimoire / manual of magical operations 1 Scholarship
How Its Legacy Is ContestedIts texts adapt the Latin church's own exorcistic and liturgical forms toward summoning and commanding rather than expelling spirits, which is why historians read it as evidence of a clerical, not popular or folk, magical underworld operating from within, rather than outside, ecclesiastical training. 1 Transmission
Manuscript TraditionA single manuscript, Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 849, of unknown medieval provenance before its entry into the Bavarian court library; no other complete copy is known. 1 Scholarship and Forensics
Scholarly NoteKieckhefer's critical edition situates the manuscript within a broader corpus of clerical necromantic manuals, arguing its rites were most plausibly practiced by lower clergy with access to liturgical Latin and church ritual objects rather than by lay magicians. 1Tradition: Forbidden Rites (Kieckhefer) Cross-Tradition Connections
Belongs to Tradition
Christianity, Religions Its texts were composed and copied by individuals with clerical training working from within the Latin church's own liturgical forms; the church itself never sanctioned this practice.
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