Some medieval #magic. (Bonus: Look closely and you can see parchmenter’s tool marks in the upper left and lower right quadrants). #Manuscripts #parchment

Related trivia time!

Kieckhefer (1998) gives a few accounts of medieval #manuscripts believed to be “infected with #demons” …

For instance, the canonization proceedings for Archbishop Antoninus¹ (‘’) of Florence (d.1459) told how he once sought a haircut from a barber-surgeon (‘’) who had a reputation for healing the sick …

[¹ source of much of the #misogyny in Malleus maleficarum, btw

Learning that this gift was attrib. to a book which owned, asked to see the tome, discerned that it was demonic, & so seized & burned it. As the book burned it sent up a terrifying cloud of black smoke due to the demons trapped within it …

Similarly, Michael Scot (d.1232) wrote of a grimoire inhabited by spirits which, when the book was opened, called out solicitously to the would-be reader, asking what they sought.

[Ngl, I’m envious of that book’s owners. Research librarians take note
(¬､¬)

I hope that one escaped unscathed, and now whispers contentedly to itself in some repository, at last enjoying cosy retirement. (Everyone deserves a decent retirement).

And shame on for burning a book at all, but especially for doing so when its demons were at home, *inside it*. How rude.

For Kieckhefer, these tales are interesting for several reasons including that they seem to “express obsessive anxiety about the book itself as an object invested with a kind of negative sacrality”—an intriguing idea.

(Maybe. Or maybe they really were infested. In the image at the top of this thread, are those ‘tool marks’ really tool marks, or are the demons just marking their territory? )
#MakeYourDemonsHappy_BuyAScratchingPost #YouHeardItHereFirst