Grandes Chroniques de France, entry for 1323
The Grandes Chroniques de France contains, under the year 1323, the first extended notice of the condemnation of an unnamed "monk of Morigny." The entry states the monk had wanted to "inspire and renew a condemned heresy and sorcery called in Latin ars notoria," describing the art in terms conventional for the period — a science bestowing different branches of knowledge when its figures were contemplated with fasting and prayer, involving the invocation of "little known names which were firmly believed to be the names of demons." The chronicle further records that the monk, who himself condemned the ars notoria, had nonetheless compiled a book full of images in honor of the Virgin, whose use procured for the operator not only all branches of knowledge but "any riches, honours or pleasures one wanted to have." The book is declared "false and evil, against the Christian faith, and condemned to be burned and put on the fire" (Fanger, Rewriting Magic, p.3, quoting/paraphrasing the chronicle).
Fanger judges aspects of this account "inaccurate, if not unfair" to the actual text — the Liber florum is explicitly not concerned with earthly riches or pleasures — but notes it at least correctly distinguishes John's book from the ars notoria itself, a distinction that subsequent paraphrases across the centuries steadily lost (see The historiography of erasure: how John lost his own book).
This single chronicle entry was, for over six hundred years, the only trace of John of Morigny available to any reader — the Liber florum itself had vanished from view entirely — making this text the true origin point of everything the field now knows, or thought it knew, about him before the 1990s manuscript rediscoveries.
Literature
- Fanger, Claire. Rewriting Magic. Penn State University Press, 2015, p.3.
Sources
- Fanger, Claire, Rewriting Magic: An Exegesis of the Visionary Autobiography of a Fourteenth-Century French Monk (2015), p.3 — Direct quotation/paraphrase of the 1323 notice.
Literature
- Fanger, Claire. Rewriting Magic. Penn State University Press, 2015.