University of Orléans
The University of Orléans specialized in civil and canon law, and was, alongside Paris (theology), one of only two university venues open to a professed monk like John of Morigny for advanced study (Fanger, Rewriting Magic, p.x–xi). John's own text confirms he studied there. Fanger's 2015 preface explicitly corrects her own earlier published suggestion that his ars notoria experiments took place at Chartres; the balance of evidence — his documented presence at Orléans as a canon-law student, and the fact that his own text shows him "rubbing shoulders with friars and Cistercians" there while also visiting his sister nearby — now points to Orléans as the far more probable site (Rewriting Magic, p.x–xi).
Orléans, per the wider field's standard characterization (Kieckhefer's phrase, adopted broadly), sat within reach of the "clerical underworld" of student and clerical necromancy — the milieu in which forbidden ritual texts like the ars notoria and outright necromantic manuals circulated among literate clerics with university access. John's own confessed experimentation with both the ars notoria and nigromancia places him squarely within this world during his Orléans years.
Literature
- Fanger, Claire. Rewriting Magic. Penn State University Press, 2015, p.x–xi.
Sources
- Fanger, Claire, Rewriting Magic: An Exegesis of the Visionary Autobiography of a Fourteenth-Century French Monk (2015), p.x-xi — Orléans as site of study; canon law.
Literature
- Fanger, Claire. Rewriting Magic. Penn State University Press, 2015.