The Heptameron attributed to Pietro d'Abano: history of an attribution

Few medieval physicians have had as ambiguous a posthumous reputation as Pietro d'Abano. Born near Padua around 1250, he studied and taught in Paris and then at the University of Padua, where he became famous as a physician, philosopher and astrologer. His name became attached to a small treatise of ritual magic, the Heptameron or Magical Elements, which circulated for centuries under his authority, although modern scholarship does not consider it his work.

The physician and the Conciliator

Pietro's principal work is the Conciliator differentiarum philosophorum et praecipue medicorum, in which he sought to reconcile the opinions of philosophers and physicians, drawing extensively on Arabic and Greek sources. He was also a translator from Greek and the author of a commentary on the Problemata attributed to Aristotle. His interest in astrology, considered an integral part of medicine, was fully consistent with the university learning of his time.

Pietro was put on trial by the Inquisition on charges connected with his doctrines. He died around 1316, before the proceedings were concluded; according to a widespread tradition, the posthumous condemnation led to his effigy being burned. In later imagination he thus became the prototype of the learned magician, and magical works of various kinds were attributed to him.

The treatise: angels, days and hours

The Heptameron, whose title means «the seven days», is devoted to the angels who govern the days of the week, the hours, the seasons and the regions of the sky. For each day, associated with a planet according to the ancient correspondence still visible in the names of the weekdays, the text lists the presiding angels and the winds and spirits of the air that serve them. It also contains descriptions of the magic circle and of prayers of consecration.

It is a compact synthesis of medieval ritual magic, probably composed in the late Middle Ages or at the beginning of the early modern period. Many angelic names and structures coincide with those of other Solomonic texts, and the Heptameron was in turn an important source for later compilations, including some parts of seventeenth-century grimoires.

Its printed fortune

The success of the Heptameron is due above all to print. It was published with the works of Cornelius Agrippa in Latin editions of the second half of the sixteenth century, alongside the Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy, itself apocryphal, and other treatises. This placement made it a kind of practical appendix to Agrippa's great theoretical synthesis, encouraging its reading throughout Europe.

In 1655 Robert Turner translated it into English in the volume devoted to Agrippa's Fourth Book. From then on the Heptameron was read, copied and cited by generations of occultists, and its structure, with the angels of the days and hours, became one of the most imitated models of modern ceremonial magic, from English compilations to nineteenth-century manuals.

The history of the Heptameron shows the weight of names in the transmission of magical texts. A Paduan physician, tried for his ideas, became the posthumous guarantor of an angelic manual he probably never knew. Separating the historical figure of Pietro d'Abano from his legend is one of the most interesting tasks for historians of science and magic.