Notae
Notae — geometric figures inscribed with prayers and lists of angelic names, meant to be gazed upon as part of a ritual operation rather than simply read — are structurally central to both the ars notoria John of Morigny practiced as a young man and the Liber florum celestis doctrine he later composed to replace it. In Julien Véronèse's analysis of the ars notoria tradition (BnF Latin 9336 as reference manuscript), the textual material inscribed directly into the notae — as distinct from the treatise's main prayers and its glossed commentary — makes up roughly 27% of the whole manuscript's content, a substantial share of the work in its own right (Véronèse, in Fanger, ed., Invoking Angels, p.43).
John's own Book of Figures (Part III of the Liber florum) is the direct heir to this tradition. Per the Liber florum's own structural table, its New Compilation version narrates "visions of revelation of the seven figures" before describing them so operators can execute a Second Procedure ritual with them, and separately narrates the "revelation of the ring" — instructions for a ring to be worn by the operator on special occasions, associated with what the text occasionally calls a Third Procedure (Rewriting Magic, p.xv–xvi).
The stakes of getting a nota's geometry exactly right were understood, in this tradition, as more than aesthetic: fidelity of the figure to its correct form was bound up with the efficacy of the whole operation it supported — an inaccurately copied figure risked invalidating the ritual it was meant to enable. This is the historical basis for treating figure-copying as a distinct, high-stakes skill within manuscript production of these texts, separate from ordinary textual copying.
Literature
- Véronèse, Julien, in Fanger, ed., Invoking Angels. Penn State University Press, 2012.
- Fanger, Claire. Rewriting Magic. Penn State University Press, 2015, p.xiv–xvi (Liber florum structural table).
Sources
- Fanger, Claire, Rewriting Magic: An Exegesis of the Visionary Autobiography of a Fourteenth-Century French Monk (2015), p.xiv-xvi — Liber florum structural table, Book of Figures.
- Fanger, Claire (ed.), Invoking Angels: Theurgic Ideas and Practices, Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries (2012), p.43 — 27% content share in BnF Latin 9336.
Literature
- Véronèse, Julien, in Fanger, ed., Invoking Angels. Penn State University Press, 2012.