MedCat

Darrera modificació: 2020-08-04
Bases de dades: Sciència.cat, BBAHLM, Oc

Giralt, Sebastià, "Màgia medieval en occità i llatí: el Libre de puritats i els altres escrits del còdex Barberiniano Latino 3589", dins: Alberni, Anna - Badia, Lola - Cifuentes, Lluís - Fidora, Alexander (eds.), El saber i les llengües vernacles a l'època de Llull i Eiximenis: estudis ICREA sobre vernacularització = Knowledge and Vernacular Languages in the Age of Llull and Eiximenis: ICREA Studies on Vernacularization, Barcelona, Publicacions de l'Abadia de Montserrat (Textos i estudis de cultura catalana, 170), 2012, pp. 201-216.

Resum

This paper aims to embark on the systematic analysis of the content of the Codex Barberiniano Latino 3589 in the Vatican —which has to date only been studied very superficially—, focusing on the largest component work, the Libre de puritats.
The manuscript, copied in the fourteenth century, contains a series of anonymous texts on ritual and astral magic, some in Latin but most in Occitan, not in Catalan as had been previously thought. It is divided into three parts. The first (ff. 2r-28v) and second (ff. 29r-51v), according to all the signs, belong to the same treatise on Solomonic magic in Occitan, the Libre de puritats, while the third (ff. 52r-83v) is a collection of extracts, experiments and short treatises in Latin and Occitan, many of which are incomplete or lack a title, and which belong to several different traditions of magic: Solomonic, hermetic, astrological, etc. There are essentially two hands in the manuscript: the first less careful hand copied the first and third parts, and the second copied the remainder with a greater degree of accuracy. Despite the variety in content, it appears that the volume was not put together arbitrarily, but is a collection of writings for personal use, of interest to the first copyist. This scribe comes across as an expert in literature on magic: he knows some Hebrew and he includes texts that he requires and omits a considerable number of passages that he already has. Furthermore he made use of a partial copy of the Libre de puritats copied by the second hand.
From internal references, we can conclude that the Libre de puritats originally had three sections: the first (ff. 3r-28v) deals with how to control angels and other spirits through Semiforas and psalms recited in pertinent astrological conditions, with the support of rites, fumigations and animal sacrifices; the second, which centres on an explanation of Teberiadi's treatise Art de caractas(ff. 29r-51v), is structured around ten tables with values given for characters and letters, which represent all the elements in the universe and are also of use in operations to invoke angels at astrologically significant times; as for the third part, we are told that it is an explanation of the Art of Images attributed to Hermes but it has not survived in the manuscript, and was probably lost along with the missing folios. The study of the remaining parts in this paper is accompanied by a parallel analysis of the main sources, which concludes that the work is based on the Latin version of the Liber Razielis and on several of the annexed treatises also in Latin that were added on the initiative of Alfonso X.
Finally, it is worth highlighting that the Libre de puritats is one of the rare extant examples of the vernacularization of medieval spiritualist magic. It is notable for the breadth of its scope, for the way in which texts from a variety of highly technical sources have been reworked and for its combination of theory and practice.

Matèries

Màgia - Màgia astrològica
Màgia - Nigromància
Traduccions
Occità
Llatí
Català
Manuscrits

URL

http:/​/​pagines.uab.cat/​sebastiagiralt/​sites/​pagines ...