"Barking Dogs"
"Barking Dogs" is John of Morigny's own phrase — never further explained in the surviving text — for the unnamed figures who, in 1315, condemned his original Book of Figures on the grounds that its figures too closely resembled necromantic diagrams. This is a real, textually distinct condemnation, separate from and eight years before the famous 1323 Paris burning recorded in the Grandes Chroniques de France (see 1315: The "Barking Dogs" condemn the Book of Figures and 1323: The Liber florum burned at Paris). Fanger judges that the condemners "must have had professional knowledge of canon law," given the nature of the objection, though the text never names them (Rewriting Magic, p.2).
A notable historiographical correction: Fanger's own earlier published work had placed the Barking Dogs' activity at Sens, the archiepiscopal see with jurisdiction over the region. Her 2015 preface to Rewriting Magic explicitly retracts this: "the provenance of the 'Barking Dogs' who condemned John's work in 1315 is no longer securely located at Sens, where I placed it in publications after 2001. Our original manuscript reading for this place name turned out to be in error. While other noteworthy condemnations originated in Sens in this time period, this is only one possible point of origin, and cannot now be nailed to textual evidence" (Rewriting Magic, p.x). This is a live example of exactly the kind of correction ongoing manuscript work on the Liber florum keeps producing — a fact this portal's own "Findings already in hand" methodology treats as a feature of the field's current state, not an embarrassment to smooth over.
The 1315 condemnation is what directly produced the New Compilation: unable to recall an already-circulating condemned text, John instead composed a rewritten Book of Figures offering an alternative ritual process (see Old Compilation / New Compilation).
Literature
- Fanger, Claire. Rewriting Magic. Penn State University Press, 2015, p.x, p.2–3.
Sources
- Fanger, Claire, Rewriting Magic: An Exegesis of the Visionary Autobiography of a Fourteenth-Century French Monk (2015), p.x, p.2-3 — Sens retraction; canon law objection.
Literature
- Fanger, Claire. Rewriting Magic. Penn State University Press, 2015.