Richard Kieckhefer
Richard Kieckhefer's Magic in the Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press, 1989; Canto Classics ed. 2014) is one of the two or three most cited general studies of medieval magic in the field, and his Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer's Manual of the Fifteenth Century (Penn State UP / Sutton, 1997) an equally standard close study of a single necromantic manuscript. His phrase for the milieu of student and clerical experimentation with forbidden ritual texts — the "clerical underworld" — has become standard shorthand across the field for exactly the world John of Morigny passed through as a young canon-law student at Orléans.
Kieckhefer has a direct, personal role in the story of John's modern rediscovery: per Fanger's own account in Rewriting Magic, "Richard remembered the entry in the Grandes Chroniques describing the 1323 burning of a work by a French monk, like an ars notoria, but with Marian images in it," a recollection that set in motion the identification process eventually connecting a newly found manuscript to the historical John (Rewriting Magic, p.37). Fanger's preface separately thanks him "for reading and responding to the initial manuscript draft of Rewriting Magic, as well as for his sustained interest in my work over the years" (Rewriting Magic, p.xii).
His 1994 American Historical Review article "The Specific Rationality of Medieval Magic" and his general study Magic in the Middle Ages are both part of the corpus this portal draws on for context; neither is a work about John specifically, but both establish the intellectual framework (magic as a coherent, rule-governed practice rather than mere superstition) within which John's own project of purifying and re-authorizing a condemned ritual art becomes historically legible rather than simply anomalous.
This portal's author was not able to independently confirm Kieckhefer's institutional affiliation from the corpus read; he is generally attributed to Northwestern University in the wider field, but that detail is left unconfirmed here per this portal's confidence discipline.
Literature
- Kieckhefer, Richard. Magic in the Middle Ages. Cambridge University Press, 1989 (Canto Classics ed. 2014).
- Kieckhefer, Richard. Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer's Manual of the Fifteenth Century. Penn State University Press, 1997.
- Kieckhefer, Richard. "The Specific Rationality of Medieval Magic." American Historical Review 99, no. 3 (1994).
Literature
- Fanger, Claire. Rewriting Magic. Penn State University Press, 2015.