Paracelsus: The Man and His Reputation, His Ideas and Their Transformation & Trithemius and Magical Theology: A Chapter in the Controversy over Occult Studies in Early Modern Europe & Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer's Manual of the Fifteenth Century.

Ole Peter Grell, ed., Paracelsus: The Man and His Reputation, His Ideas and Their Transformation

(Studies in the History of Christian Thought, 85.) Leiden and Boston: Brill, 1998. x + 360 pp. $114.75. ISBN: 90-06-11177-8.

Noel L. Brann, Trithemius and Magical Theology: A Chapter in the Controversy over Occult Studies in Early Modern Europe 

(SUNY Series in Western Esoteric Traditions.) Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998. x + 354 pp. $23.95. ISBN: 0-7914-3962-3.

Richard Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer's Manual of the Fifteenth Century

(Magic in History) University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998. viii + 384 pp. 28 pls. $60 (cl), $19.95 (pbk). ISBN: 0-271-01750-3 (cl), 0-271-01751-1(pbk).

The didactic plaque on the wall at the Steinberg Gallery in Prague notes that it has been suggested that Rembrandt's Scholar in His Study is a representation of Paracelsus. I searched for clues in the painting but found nothing to suggest medicine or alchemy. Why Paracelsus? What is particularly strange about this attribution is that Paracelsus rejected books in favor of practice. Yet somebody -- and I doubt that it is Rembrandt -- sees Paracelsus as the prototype of the early modern scholar. It is because of considerations like this one that Ole Peter Grell thought a volume reassessing Paracelsus and his legacy necessary at this time.

The first part of the book addresses the relationship of modern scholars to Paracelsus and Paracelsianism. Stephen Pumfrey asks who may legitimately be called a Paracelsian given that the concept is in fact a historiographical construct. He notes that limiting it to those who called themselves Paracelsians is too restrictive and oversimplifies Paracelsus's influence, but including all who used chemical medicines too broad, for Galenists incorporated the use of chemicals into their philosophy. Pumfrey suggests we turn to the opponents to define who was a Paracelsian. Andrew Cunningham cleverly looks at two sixteenth-century pictures of Paracelsus, one showing him far and the other showing him thin, to fashion a metaphor for what has happened to our view of Paracelsus. During the previous centuries, it has been fattened up with mythologies, most of which fit the viewer, not the historical Paracelsus. Emphasis has been particularly placed on his occult writings because those who brought out the earliest edition s and translations, such as A. E. Waite, were occultists who used Paracelsus to give historical legitimacy to their ideology. Cunningham calls for a "thin Paracelsus," stripped of these accretions. Dietlinde Goltz points out how the modern admirers of Paracelsus have portrayed him according to their ideals. He rightly notes, for example, that Paracelsus has been credited with supporting a "holistic" approach against the conventional medicine of his day when in fact that conventional medicine with its pathology of humors was holistic and Paracelsus's chemical approach often involved toxic substances. Unfortunately, Goltz then finds the need to psychoanalyze the readers by suggesting that such idealization of Paracelsus comes from a need to project onto him our own desires for perfection and greatness that we cannot achieve. Herbert Breger also turns to psychoanalysis, but in this case he is searching for a group psychological portrait to characterize the typical Paracelsian. He sees similar personality traits in Paracelsians, such as rebelliousness and narcissism, as opposed to mechanists, such as caution and self-effacement. The approach suffers from the same problems as all such attempts to categorize a group. Self-effacement, for example, is not a characteristic I would associate with the mechanist Isaac Newton.

Parts two and three concentrate on the ideas of Paracelsus and their diffusion. Hugh Trevor-Roper shows how Paracelsian ideas were adopted by Protestants because Catholics opposed them and by the French because Habsburgs opposed them. Trevor-Roper's style is always a pleasure to encounter, but a more substantial look at the diffusion of Paracelsus's ideas is Allen Debus's article. This is a very good summary of the work Debus has done on the spread of Paracelsian ideas in England, France, and Spain, and would be a useful way to introduce the topic to students. Grell expands on Debus by looking at the situation in Denmark. He shows how Paracelsians like Peter Severinus adapted Paracelsian ideas to make them more acceptable to established authorities.

Bruce Moran explores Andreas Libavius's polemics against Paracelsian ideas. He shows how the polemics are also exercises in grammar, dialectic, and moral discourse. He further suggests that they were partly a response to Paracelsians' success in establishing connections to the courts. Carlos Gilly looks at Paracelsus's political writings and shows how he rejected all sides in the religious controversy, seeking instead a church of the spirit that would be subject only to God and nature. Although his ideas were potentially explosive, Paracelsus never disseminated them and consequently avoided persecution. Harmut Rudolph shows that Paracelsus did not adopt the Reformed view of the eucharist; rather he saw it as the ingesting of the "spiritual semen" from Christ, the spiritual analogy to his view of the parents engendering a child through the semen. Ute Gause shows that Paracelsus consistently expressed his belief in the possibility of knowing the Creator God through nature with the assistance of magic and of kn owing Christ through the Gospel, which allows one to imitate him. J. R. R. Christie looks at the importance of the senses, particularly as it relates to color, in Paracelsus's thought and practice. He notes that the Paracelsian body is an arena of signs both in diagnostics and in preparing chemical remedies. Francis McKee studies cookbooks for the effects of Paracelsian digestive theory. Finally Heinz Schott sees in Paracelsus's occult and mystical writings a precursor to modern psychosomatic theories.

Although Paracelsus and Trithemius were near contemporaries, lived in German-speaking lands, and had similar interests -- particularly alchemy, mysticism, and the occult -- Noel Brann in his fine study of the abbot does not push the evidence in the direction of direct contact or influence. Brann also insists that he does not intend his study as an argument for or against the Yates thesis about the origins of modern science. He notes that "[w]hat Trithemius envisaged had far more in common with the received illuminations of the Christian mystics than with the mathematically quantifiable intellectual constructions of the scientific age to follow" (116). Indeed, Brann is truer to the place of the abbot's thought by concentrating on the role of magic in his theology. As Brann notes, Trithemius's foremost concern was with religion. He thought that magic could reinforce his Christian beliefs, but he was also aware of the relationship of magic to the worship of demons and wrote extensively on demonology to both war n against their use in magic and to differentiate good from demonic magic. Unfortunately, his demonological writings had a misogynist bend that aided the early modern witch hunters.

Trithemius is best known for his cryptography, which was an outgrowth of his kabbalistic studies. Ironically, it is this work that led to the accusation that Trithemius himself practiced demonic magic. A letter to a supporter claiming, among other things, that Trimethius's magical arts allowed him to teach all the world's languages even without study arrived at the friend's monastery after his demise, and the abbot read and circulated the letter as proof that Trimethius's magic had crossed the line into the demonic. Then Bovillus came to study with him, was shocked at what he learned, and reinforced the belief that Trimerhius's magic was demonic.

Trithemius is no longer a well-known author, but among early modern scholars he was widely debated, and Brann documents the arguments. Reactions to Trithemius's ideas was often a litmus test for early modern attitudes to occult philosophy among both Protestant and Catholic writers. On the positive side, irenicists and Rosicrucians praised him. We may not know if he met Paracelsus himself, but Paracelsians promoted his ideas. Most interestingly, in the final analysis, his cryptography stripped of its occult underpinnings won praise among mechanical philosophers.

It may be difficult to ascertain if Trithemius's magic was demonic or not, but there is no doubt about the final work of the three under discussion. Kieckhefer has edited a manuscript of magical rituals, Clm 849 from the Bavarian State Library. We do not know the compiler, although Kieckhefer surmises that he was a cleric since the book is in Latin and the formulations presupposed familiarity with Church rituals. Kieckhefer does not assume the compiler was its author; it is simply a miscellany, a collection of magical experiments without any guiding philosophy, and all the experiments may have been simply copied. But Kieckhefer rightly justifies this enterprise because there were many such manuscripts, and this one, which is relatively complete, can teach us about certain elements of clerical culture in the late Middle Ages. Indeed, Kieckhefer used this manuscript to good effect describing the necromantic clerical underworld in his masterful survey, Magic in the Middle Ages, and the current book well complem ents the earlier one. Kieckhefer also notes that this manuscript can provide a standard by which to understand what constituted demonic magic at the time and allow us to judge whether or not someone like Trithemius was promoting demonic magic as his enemies claimed.

Kieckhefer's format is interesting. He does not provide a literal translation of the manuscript. After an extended introduction about both medieval necromancy and the manuscript itself he presents various experiments, with extended translations, according to themes he has discerned within the manuscript: illusionist (making things appear differently from what they are), psychological (the exercise of power over another individual), and divinatory (seeing the past, the future, and hidden objects). At the end he provides an edition of the complete Latin manuscript. The result is a book useful to both scholars and dilettantes, even to undergraduates in the increasingly popular medieval science courses who would chafe if they had to read a literal translation of a repetitive, meandering book.

All three of these books make important contributions to our understanding of the late medieval and early modern occult tradition. That tradition included such important people as Paracelsus, a well-known person about whom so many legends have accrued that the historian must try to establish accuracy, and Trithemius, an author who has been too-long neglected, and unknown practitioners who may have made up the majority of students of the occult and therefore must be studied to reflect the historical situation.