Rewriting is devotion, not retraction
The argument, precisely
Across two condemnations — 1315 and 1323 — John of Morigny's documented response was consistently to rewrite rather than to abandon his project of ritual composition. Fanger's monograph, titled Rewriting Magic, treats this pattern of revision itself as the central fact about John's authorship, arguing it should be read as continuous devotional and visionary labor rather than as a series of purely defensive retreats forced by institutional pressure.
Against what
An alternative, more deflationary reading would treat each rewrite as simply damage control: a chastened author stripping out whatever specifically drew censure, producing a safer but diminished text each time. Fanger's framing resists this.
Evidence
Internal textual strata show John was already revising the Old Compilation before any external condemnation forced his hand (Rewriting Magic, p.118) — revision was his working method independent of censure. The New Compilation, written urgently after 1315, does not retreat from visionary claims but leans on them more heavily. And both compilations frame the whole project through the "plundering the Egyptian treasure" trope (see "Plundering the Egyptian Treasure"), a constructive, not merely apologetic, self-understanding of what rewriting accomplishes (Rewriting Magic, p.2).
Reception
This is this portal's own synthesis of the framing implicit in Fanger's monograph title and opening chapter, rather than a claim independently attributed to a named debate in the wider field; treated here as MEDIUM-confidence interpretive synthesis, not a directly quoted historiographical position.
Literature
- Fanger, Claire. Rewriting Magic. Penn State University Press, 2015, p.1–3, p.118.
Sources
- Fanger, Claire, Rewriting Magic: An Exegesis of the Visionary Autobiography of a Fourteenth-Century French Monk (2015), p.1-3, p.118 — Revision-as-devotion synthesis.
Literature
- Fanger, Claire. Rewriting Magic. Penn State University Press, 2015.