Talismans: Magic as Science? Necromancy among the Seven Liberal Arts1

A study of Chartres Cathedral's Portail Royal reveals that the medieval concept of philosophy, particularly its division into the Seven Liberal Arts, was more fluid and contested than previously assumed. While Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectic, Arithmetic, Music, Geometry, and Astronomy were traditionally considered the core disciplines, figures like Petrus Alfonsi and Dominicus Gundissalinus introduced necromancy or 'nigromancy' as a legitimate field within philosophy or natural science. This challenges the notion that medieval philosophy was uniformly structured before Aristotelian influences took hold in the 13th century. The research draws on historical texts, including Thierry of Chartres’ Heptateuchon and Gundissalinus’s De divisione philosophiae, to illustrate how necromancy and talismans were integrated into scholarly discourse, blurring the lines between magic and science in medieval academia.

Burnett, C. (2024). Talismans: Magic as Science? Necromancy among the Seven Liberal Arts1. Magic and Divination in the Middle Ages, I–1. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003557296-1