Figures
Bridget (Burgeta)
John of Morigny's sister. The authoritative manuscript reading of her name is Burgeta, not "Gurgeta" or "Georgette" as she appeared in Fanger and Watson's own 2001 edition of the Liber visionum — a correction Fanger's 2015 preface explicitly issues (Rewriting Magic, p.x). She is one of two named witnesses — alongside John of Fontainejean — whose testimony against the ars notoria John records in the Book of Visions (I.iii). Her exact relationship to the practice itself (student, independent practitioner, or witness only) is not resolved in the sources read for this portal.
Claire Fanger
Professor in the Department of Religion at Rice University (Rewriting Magic, p.234). The principal modern scholar of John of Morigny: co-discoverer of a complete New Compilation manuscript in the early 1990s (independently of Sylvie Barnay's parallel find in France), co-editor with Nicholas Watson of the 2015 critical Latin edition of the Liber florum celestis doctrine (PIMS), and author of Rewriting Magic (Penn State UP, 2015), the first monograph-length study of John. Also editor of Invoking Angels (2012) and Conjuring Spirits (1998), both collections central to the modern study of medieval ritual magic, and a co-founder of the Societas Magica, the scholarly society for the study of magic in premodern societies. Her reflexive method — writing her own two decades of engagement with John into the scholarship itself — is the explicit model for this portal's own transparency about what is and isn't yet verified.
John of Fontainejean
Named alongside Bridget/Burgeta in the Book of Visions (section I.iii) as the second of two witnesses whose testimony against the ars notoria John of Morigny records in his own text (per the Liber florum's structural reference table, Rewriting Magic, p.xiv). Nothing further about his identity, relationship to John, or circumstances is established in the sources read for this portal — he is a real, named figure in John's own account, but essentially unresearched territory beyond that fact.
John of Morigny
A Benedictine monk and priest of the Abbey of Morigny, near Étampes, with an advanced degree in canon law from the University of Orléans. As a young monk he practiced the condemned ritual art called the ars notoria and dabbled in necromancy; a sequence of visions convinced him the practice was demonically contaminated, and he responded not by abandoning ritual magic but by rewriting it — composing the Liber florum celestis doctrine ("Flowers of Heavenly Teaching"), a purified prayer-and-vision system he claimed was authorized directly by the Virgin Mary. Condemned twice — by unnamed "Barking Dogs" in 1315, and at Paris in 1323, where the Grandes Chroniques de France records his book burned — his text nonetheless survived in over twenty manuscripts and circulated among monks for two centuries before vanishing from scholarship entirely until its rediscovery in the early 1990s.
Julien Véronèse
The leading modern scholar of the ars notoria text tradition — the ritual system John of Morigny practiced before rewriting it — and, per Fanger's preface, one of her ongoing points of reference (Rewriting Magic, p.xi). His essay "Magic, Theurgy, and Spirituality in the Medieval Ritual of the Ars notoria," translated into English by Fanger herself, opens Fanger's edited volume Invoking Angels (2012), p.37 — making his own scholarship, otherwise published mainly in French and not independently held in this portal's corpus, directly readable here in translation.
Nicholas Watson
Fanger's collaborator on the critical Latin edition of the Liber florum celestis doctrine (PIMS, 2015), and, together with Fanger, an independent co-discoverer (alongside Sylvie Barnay's separate French find) of a complete New Compilation manuscript in the early 1990s (Rewriting Magic, p.21). Fanger's preface calls him "longtime friend, reader, listener, and sparring partner" whose insistence on rigor shaped Rewriting Magic directly (p.xiii). Author of the 1998 essay in Conjuring Spirits that first announced the rediscovery to the field. His specific institutional affiliation is not confirmed in the sources read for this portal and is left unstated here rather than guessed.
Richard Kieckhefer
Author of Magic in the Middle Ages (1989) and Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer's Manual of the Fifteenth Century (1997), foundational studies that established much of the modern field's vocabulary and periodization for medieval ritual magic — including the phrase "clerical underworld" for the milieu of student and clerical necromancy John himself passed through at Orléans. Fanger's preface credits him with recalling the Grandes Chroniques entry on the 1323 burning that helped set the rediscovery process in motion, and thanks him for "sustained interest in my work over the years" and for reading the Rewriting Magic manuscript in draft (Rewriting Magic, p.xii).