The Enchiridion of Pope Leo: prayers, legend and popular print

According to the legend told in its own pages, the Enchiridion was given by Pope Leo III to Charlemagne, crowned emperor in Rome on Christmas Day in the year 800. The little book was supposed to protect the ruler from every danger, in battle and on his travels. The story has no documentary basis, but it was effective: it tied a collection of prayers and protective formulas to the most famous medieval encounter between the papacy and the empire.

A handbook to hold

Enchiridion is a Greek word meaning «handbook», something to be held in the hand. The title recalled a long tradition of devotional booklets, and the format of the editions, small and handy, also suggested personal and daily use. The content mixes psalms, Gospel passages, prayers addressed to the saints and protective formulas against enemies, storms, illness and the dangers of travel.

Many elements belong to Christian popular piety, such as prayers written on sheets to be carried on the body, the so-called letters from heaven, and the names of God used as protection. In a text of this kind the line between devotion and magic is uncertain: the same prayers could be perceived as acts of faith or as instruments with automatic effects, and precisely this ambiguity explains both its success and its condemnations.

Dating and editions

Editions of the Enchiridion often bear fictitious dates and places, such as Rome and years in the early sixteenth century, which find no confirmation. The first secure printings seem to date from the seventeenth century, and the text was reprinted many times in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, above all in France, where it entered the circuit of pedlar literature together with the other popular grimoires.

The versions differ greatly from one another. Some confine themselves to prayers and invocations of a devout tone; others, especially the later ones, add sections of «secrets» and figures resembling the pentacles of the Solomonic tradition, coming close to grimoires proper. For this reason scholars prefer to speak of a family of texts rather than a work with a stable form.

Authority and suspicion

Attribution to a pope was the key to the book's appeal. At a time when church authorities condemned magical books, a text presenting itself as a papal gift could appear lawful or even commendable. The Church never recognised it, and Catholic writers denounced it as a superstitious apocryphon; but the aura of Leo's name continued to secure it readers.

The choice of Leo III is no accident. The pope who had crowned Charlemagne embodied the alliance between spiritual and temporal power, and Charlemagne was in turn the hero of countless chivalric tales spread through the same channels of popular literature, from chansons de geste reworked in prose to booklets sold at fairs.

The Enchiridion tells of an often neglected aspect of the history of grimoires: their closeness to everyday religion. Not all books of magic spoke of demons and treasure; many were collections of prayers used as a shield against the fears of daily life. In these texts the history of devotion and the history of magic touch and blur, making it difficult to draw a clear boundary.