Bridget (Burgeta)
Bridget — whose name in the manuscript tradition Fanger and Watson now read as Burgeta, correcting their own earlier "Gurgeta" (itself sometimes anglicized "Georgette") from the 2001 edition of the Liber visionum — was John of Morigny's sister. She lived in the same Orléans–Étampes corridor John himself moved through as a student and later as a monk visiting his family; Fanger's 2015 preface notes John's location at Orléans "makes better sense... of the fact that he is evidently rubbing shoulders with friars and Cistercians (as well as visiting his sister)" during his university years and later during the composition of the Book of Prayers (Rewriting Magic, p.xi).
Her documented role in the text is as a named witness: in the Book of Visions (section I.iii), John records testimony from Bridget and a second witness, John of Fontainejean, against the ars notoria — that is, both are cited in the text as having independently attested to the art's dangers or falsity, lending external corroboration to John's own visionary conviction that the practice was demonically contaminated (per the Liber florum's own structural reference table, reproduced in Rewriting Magic, p.xiv). Beyond this, the precise nature of her involvement — whether she practiced alongside John, received instruction from him, or was simply present to witness and later corroborate his account — is not established in the material read for this portal; that gap is flagged here rather than filled by inference, per this portal's own provenance rule.
The correction of her name is itself informative about the state of Morigny scholarship: even a detail as basic as a named family member's name has shifted across two decades of manuscript work by the field's principal editors, a reminder that the Old/New Compilation textual tradition is still an active, moving target for editorial reconstruction rather than a settled corpus.
Literature
- Fanger, Claire. Rewriting Magic. Penn State University Press, 2015, p.x (name correction).
- Fanger, Claire, and Nicholas Watson, eds. John of Morigny, Liber florum celestis doctrine. PIMS, 2015.
Sources
- Fanger, Claire, Rewriting Magic: An Exegesis of the Visionary Autobiography of a Fourteenth-Century French Monk (2015), p.x — Name correction from Gurgeta/Georgette to Burgeta.
Literature
- Fanger, Claire. Rewriting Magic. Penn State University Press, 2015.