Grimoires and ManuscriptsA website by Studio Esoterico CornelioIncipit
This book gathers the history of the books of magic: the grimoires that circulated in manuscript and print, the ancient texts from which they derive, the codices that still resist reading, the authors and libraries that kept them, and the art with which they were written and decorated. Each chapter opens a door onto a different century.
The history of the books of magic.
Grimoires and manuscripts: a history of magic books
Grimoires and Manuscripts is a website devoted to the history of books of magic: volumes that for centuries were copied in secret, printed with false dates, banned by the Index and finally gathered in the great libraries of Europe. Here grimoires are not presented as manuals to be used but as documents to be understood: who wrote them, who attributed them to Solomon or to Pope Leo, who sold them at village fairs and who saved them from being lost.
The site is arranged in five sections. Classic grimoires trace the history of the Key of Solomon, of the Lemegeton with its Ars Goetia, of the Grand Grimoire, the Arbatel and the Book of Abramelin. Ancient texts go back to the roots of this literature: the Greek Magical Papyri of Roman Egypt, the Corpus Hermeticum, the Sefer Yetzirah, the Egyptian Book of the Dead and the curse tablets inscribed on lead.
The section on mysterious manuscripts gathers the codices that still resist reading, from the Voynich manuscript to the Codex Gigas in Stockholm, from the Rohonc Codex to the Book of Soyga that so intrigued John Dee. Next come authors and libraries, from Trithemius to Pietro d'Abano, from the Mortlake library to the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica in Amsterdam, and finally the art of the magical book: miniatures, seals, diagrams, printing presses and collecting.
Every article, in Italian and English, carefully separates what is documented from what belongs to legend, and no page contains operative instructions. The site is curated by the Studio Esoterico Cornelio, which with this collection aims to offer readers, students and lovers of book history a clear and reliable starting point for finding their way among titles that are often surrounded by more fame than knowledge.
Frequently asked questions
What is a grimoire?
A grimoire is a book of ceremonial magic, widespread in Europe especially between the late Middle Ages and the early modern period, collecting prayers, formulas, seals and catalogues of spirits. The word comes from the French grimoire, probably linked to grammaire, meaning a book in Latin that was hard to understand. Many grimoires were attributed to famous figures such as Solomon, Albertus Magnus or Pope Leo, but these attributions are legendary.
What is the Voynich manuscript?
It is an illustrated codex held at Yale University's Beinecke Library, written in an unknown system of signs that has never been deciphered. Radiocarbon analysis dates its parchment to the early fifteenth century. It is named after Wilfrid Voynich, the antiquarian bookseller who bought it in 1912. It contains drawings of plants, astronomical diagrams and female figures bathing in pools; its nature remains an open question.
What is the Key of Solomon?
The Clavicula Salomonis, or Key of Solomon, is one of the best-known grimoires of the Renaissance. Tradition attributes it to King Solomon, but the manuscripts that preserve it, in Latin, Italian and French, date from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries onwards. It contains prayers, pentacles and rules for preparing the practitioner. In 1889 MacGregor Mathers published an English edition based on manuscripts in the British Museum.
What are the Greek Magical Papyri?
They are a collection of papyri from Roman Egypt, dating mostly from the second century BC to the fifth century AD, containing formulas, hymns and rituals in Greek, Demotic and Coptic. Many reached European museums in the nineteenth century through the collector Giovanni Anastasi and the so-called «Theban library». Today they are a precious source for the history of religion and magic in the late ancient world.
Why is the Codex Gigas called the «Devil's Bible»?
The Codex Gigas, held by the National Library of Sweden in Stockholm, is one of the largest medieval manuscripts to survive and was produced in Bohemia in the early thirteenth century. The nickname comes from a large full-page miniature depicting the devil. A legend tells that a monk wrote it in a single night with the devil's help, but it remains just that, a legend.
What is the Lemegeton?
The Lemegeton, or Lesser Key of Solomon, is a collection of five treatises compiled in England in the seventeenth century: Ars Goetia, Theurgia-Goetia, Ars Paulina, Ars Almadel and Ars Notoria. Its most famous part, the Ars Goetia, contains a catalogue of seventy-two spirits that largely follows the Pseudomonarchia daemonum published by Johann Weyer in 1577, itself derived from earlier manuscript sources.