¹ John of Salisbury, Policraticus ii.28, ed. Keats-Rohan, Katharine, CCCM cxviii, Turnhout 1993, 167–8Google Scholar; Frivolities of courtiers and footprints of philosophers, trans. Joseph B. Pike, New York 1972, 147. I have substituted the Latin ‘specularia magica’ for Pike's ‘crystal gazing’. The technical term for this form of divination is ‘catoptromancy’. See Boudet, Jean-Patrice, Entre Science et nigromance: astrologie, divination et magie dans l'occident medieval, XIIe–XVe siècle, Paris 2006, 104Google Scholar.

² John of Salisbury, Policraticus ii.28, p. 168.

³ Gervase of Tilbury, Otia imperialia: recreation for an emperor i.17, trans. S. E. Banks and J. W. Binns, Oxford 2002, 96, 97.

⁴ Parsons, Ben, Punishment and medieval education, Cambridge 2018Google Scholar. For a focused study see Sadler, Gregory B., ‘Non modo verbis sed et verberibus: Saint Anselm on punishment, coercion, and violence’, Cistercian Studies Quarterly xlv/1 (2010), 35–61Google Scholar. For the death of John Neushom (drowned while cutting switches to beat his students) and for education in general see Orme, Nicholas, Medieval schools: from Roman Britain to renaissance England, London 2006, 145Google Scholar.

⁵ The emotional experience of medieval education and the kinds of messages regarding violence and power young boys internalised through education is an area of great interest. See Woods, Marjorie Curry, ‘Rape and the pedagogical rhetoric of sexual violence’, in Copeland, Rita (ed.), Criticism and dissent in the Middle Ages, Cambridge 1996, 56–86Google Scholar, and ‘Weeping for Dido: epilogue on a premodern rhetorical exercise in the postmodern classroom’, in Carol Dana Lanham (ed.), Latin grammar and rhetoric: from classical theory to medieval practice, London 2002, 284–94. On trauma as an historical category see Cassidy-Welch, Megan, ‘Before trauma: the crusades, medieval memory and violence’, Continuum xxxi/5 (2017), 619–27Google Scholar.

⁶ See the infamous confession of the Franciscan Arnold of Verniolle, who was abused as a grammar student and went on to abuse a number of youths, including a young boy learning his Psalms: Le Registre d'inquisition de Jacques Fournier, évêque de Pamiers (1318–1325), ed. Jean Duvernoy, Toulouse 1965, iii. 32. See also the rapes of twelve-year-old and eight-year-old students recorded in sixteenth-century Siena: Brizio, Elena, ‘Sexual violence in the Sienese state before the fall of the republic’, in Murray, Jacqueline and Terpstra, Nicholas (eds), Sex, gender and sexuality in renaissance Italy, London 2019, 46–9Google Scholar. For an example of the comparative rarity of records regarding the sexual assault of children see Petr Kreuz, ‘On a case of sexual abuse and rape of a child before a city court’, in James R. Palmitessa (ed.), Between Lipany and White Mountain: essays in late medieval and early modern Bohemian history in modern Czech scholarship, Leiden 2014, 197–9. See also the collected references to the sexual abuse of children in Rocke, Michael, Forbidden friendships: homosexuality and male culture in renaissance Florence, Oxford 1996, 351CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷ Delatte, Armand, La Catoptromancie grecque et ses dérivés, Liège 1932Google Scholar; Kieckhefer, Richard, Magic in the Middle Ages, Cambridge 2000, 151–3Google Scholar, 158–9. For Kieckhefer's fullest treatment of child mediums see n. 8 below.

⁸ Richard Kieckhefer, Forbidden rites: a necromancer's manual of the fifteenth century, University Park, Pa 1997, 96–103; Marie-Thérèse d'Alverny, ‘Récréations monastiques: les couteaux a manche d'ivoire’, in Charles Burnett (ed.), Pensée médiévale en Occident: théologie, magie et autres textes des XIIe–XIIIe siècles, Aldershot 1995, 10–32.

⁹ Fanger, Clare, ‘Virgin territory: purity and divine knowledge in late medieval catoptromantic texts’, Aries v/2 (2005), 200–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ Kieckhefer, Forbidden rites, 98.

¹¹ Richard Kieckhefer has influentially termed such practitioners inhabitants of a ‘clerical underworld’: Magic in the Middle Ages, 153–6. On the diverse types of men active in this underworld see Klaasen, Frank, ‘Necromancy’, in Page, Sophie and Rider, Catherine (eds), The Routledge history of medieval magic, London 2019, 202–4Google Scholar.

¹² Elliott, Dyan, The corrupter of boys: sodomy, scandal, and the medieval clergy, Philadelphia, Pa 2020Google Scholar.

¹³ For the classic study see Norman Cohn, Europe's inner demons: the demonization of Christians in medieval Christendom, rev. edn, London 1993. See also Laycock, Joseph, ‘Carnal knowledge: the epistemology of sexual trauma in witches’ sabbaths, satanic ritual abuse, and alien abduction narratives’, Preternature i/1 (2012), 100–29Google Scholar, and Frankfurter, David, Evil incarnate: rumors of demonic conspiracy and satanic abuse in history, Princeton 2006Google Scholar.

¹⁴ On modern conspiracies see Victor, Jeffrey S., Satanic panic: the creation of a contemporary legend, Chicago 1993Google Scholar; Merlan, Anna, Republic of lies: American conspiracy theorists and their surprising rise to power, New York 2019Google Scholar; and Rothschild, Mike, The storm is upon us: how QAnon became a movement, cult, and conspiracy theory of everything, Brooklyn, NY 2021Google Scholar.

¹⁵ For one parallel see Matthew Paris's description of the murder of Little Hugh of Lincoln: Chronica majora, ed. Henry Richards Luard, London 1880, v. 516–19. On the accusation's context see David Carpenter, ‘Crucifixion and conversion: King Henry iii and the Jews in 1255’, in Paul A. Brand, Suzanne Jenks, Jonathan Rose and Christopher Whittick (eds), Laws, lawyers, and texts: studies in medieval legal history on honour of Paul Brand, Leiden 2012, 129–48.

¹⁶ A dynamic explored by Bailey, Michael D. in ‘From sorcery to witchcraft: clerical conceptions of magic in the later Middle Ages’, Speculum lxxvi/4 (2001), 965–7Google Scholar. See also his Battling demons: witchcraft, heresy, and reform in the late Middle Ages, University Park, Pa 2003, 32–46.

¹⁷ For examples see MacLehose, William F., ‘A tender age’: cultural anxieties over the child in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, New York 2008Google Scholar, and Katariina Mustakallio and Christian Laes (eds), The dark side of childhood: in late antiquity and the Middle Ages, Oxford 2011. Regarding magic, note the role of demons MacLehose finds (pp. 191–2, 200) in sources for the Children's Crusade.

¹⁸ Ogden, Daniel, Greek and Roman necromancy, Princeton 2001, 191Google Scholar. For examples of the use of boy mediums in sources from antiquity see The Greek magical papyri in translation: including the demotic spells, ed. Hans Dieter Betz, Chicago 1986, esp. PGM i. 42–195; ii. 1–64; v. 1–53; iii. 633–731; vii. 348–58; vii. 540–78; xiii. 734–1077; PDM xiv. 1–92; xiv. 489–515; xiv. 528–53; PGM lxii. 24–46.

¹⁹ Ogden, Greek and Roman necromancy, 196–201. See also rituals involving a young boy's heart: A. Henrichs, Die Phoinikika des Lollianos: Fragmente eines neuen griechischen Romans, papyrologische Texte und Abhandlungen 14, Bonn 1972, 32–7, 69–72; PGM iv. 2645–50.

²⁰ Cicero, Against Vatinius xiv; Pliny, Natural history xxx.16; Philostratus, Life of Apollonius vii.11; viii.5–7; Dio Cassius, Historia romana lxix.11; Chrysostom, De Babyla contra Iulianum et gentiles lxxix.4 (see also Homily 28, PL lvii.453); Gregory of Nazianz, Contra Iulianum imperatorem, PG xxxv. 624B. Ogden collects many other similar references.

²¹ Canidia's presentation in Epode 5 intersects with other genres, especially regarding monstrous threats to children. See Teitel Maxwell Paule, ‘Hag and snatcher: Canidia as child-killing demon in Epode 5’, in Canidia, Rome's first witch, London 2017, 56–94.

²² Ogden, Greek and Roman necromancy, 197.

²³ For Simon in the transition between antiquity and the Middle Ages see Valerie Flint, ‘The demonisation of magic and sorcery in late antiquity: Christian redefinitions of pagan religions’, in Bengt Ankarloo and Stuart Clark (eds), Witchcraft and magic in Europe: ancient Greece and Rome, London 1999, 300–3, and The rise of magic in early medieval Europe, Princeton 1991, 338–44. For this depiction of Simon in the context of medieval legends regarding Simon Magus see Ferreiro, Alberto, ‘Simon Magus: the patristic-medieval traditions and historiography’, Apocrypha vii (1996), 147–65Google Scholar.

²⁴ ‘Pueri, inquit, incorrupti et violenter necati animam adiuramentis ineffabilibus evocatam adsistere mihi feci, et per ipsam fit omne quod iubeo … Hoc vos scire volo, quia secundum locum post deum obtinet anima hominis, cum exuta fuerit a corporis sui tenebris. statim denique et praescientiam habet, propter quod et evocatur ad necromantiam’: Simon Magus, Recognitions ii.13, in Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte 51, ed. B. Rehm and F. Paschke, Leipzig 1965, 58; trans. Thomas Smith, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. Alexander Roberts and others, New York 1886, viii. 100.

²⁵ The image of the child plays a more complex role in the text than my summary conveys. Simon elaborates (Recognitions ii.15, 60; 101), claiming that he created a boy from air only to unmake him, keeping only an image in his bedroom as a memento. His disciples recognise this child as the ‘boy whose soul, after he had been slain by violence, he made use of for those services which he required’. For the detail of the boy's clothes see Recognitions iii.44, p. 126. For a consideration of Simon's claims in a different context see Sarah L. Higley, ‘The legend of the learned man's android’, in Thomas Hahn and Alan Lupack (eds), Retelling tales: essays in honor of Russell Peck, Woodbridge 1997, 136–7.

²⁶ In the Homilies, Simon knows the child is really a demon (ii.30). In the Recognitions, this truth is recognised by Peter (ii.16).

²⁷ On the boy's role in the Recognitions as a parhedros or a biaiothanatos see Jan N. Bremmer, ‘Magic in the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles’, in Jan N. Bremmer and Jan R. Veenstra (eds), The metamorphosis of magic from late antiquity to the early modern period, Leuven 2002, 54. On the parhedros and its shifty connection to the dead in extant magical texts from antiquity see Anna Scibilia, ‘Supernatural assistance in the Greek magical papyri: the figure of the parhedros’, in Bremner and Veenstra, The metamorphosis of magic, 78–9.

²⁸ On the role of purity in enabling conversations with spirits through magic see Sophie Page, ‘Speaking with spirits in medieval magic texts’, in Joad Raymond (ed.), Conversations with angels: essays towards a history of spiritual communication, 1100–1700, New York 2011, 128.

²⁹ Wasyliw, Patricia Healy, Martyrdom, murder, and magic: child saints and their cults in medieval Europe, Oxford 2008, 58Google Scholar. Note also the role of virginal purity in legends regarding the hunting of unicorns: Freeman, Margaret B., The unicorn tapestries, New York 1976, 13–30Google Scholar.

³⁰ ‘Non enim est virtus, non posse peccare, sed nolle. Sicut puer non perseverat in ira, lesus non meminit, non concupiscit mulierem, non cogitat vel loquitur malum, sic vos nisi talem innocentiam et animi puritatem habueritis, non itrabitis in regnum celorum’: Biblia vulgata, ed. Adolf Rusch (1481). I have accessed the text through the Glossae Scripturae Sacrae-Electronicae (Gloss-E) at <https://gloss-e.irht.cnrs.fr/php/editions_chapitre.php?livre=../sources/editions/GLOSS-liber57.xml&chapitre=57_18>. The gloss used by Bonaventure contained the same basic passage: Commentarius in Euangelium sancti Lucae 18.17.33, in Opera omnia, Collegii S. Bonaventura 1895, vii. 460a.

³¹ For this differentiation, its contexts and effects see Caciola, Nancy, Discerning spirits: divine and demonic possession in the Middle Ages, Ithaca, NY 2003, esp. pp. 129–75Google Scholar. See also Elliott, Dyan, Proving women: female spirituality and inquisitional culture in the later Middle Ages, Princeton 2004, 204–11Google Scholar.

³² ‘sed quia corpus quod corrumpitur aggrauat animam, et infirmitas instrumentorum hebetat sensum, et imagines rerum corporalium obscurant et deprimunt intellectum, uix alio commonente a quibusdam quasi abditissimis caueis ipsius memoriae, in quibus uidebantur retrusae, ad intellectum reuocentur’: Ailred of Rievaulx, Dialogus de anima, ii, ed. C. H. Talbot, CCCM i.12, Turnhout 1971, 710. See also Ailred's extraordinary investigation of Jesus’ own childhood and its significations in De Iesu puero duodenni, ed. A. Hoste, CCCM 1, Turnhout 1971, 249–78.

³³ Hugh of St Victor, ‘De unione corporis et spiritus’, PL clxxvii.285–9.

³⁴ See, for example, idem, De sacramentis christiane fidei ii.16.2–3, PL clxxvi. 580C–586A. Many of Hugh's points (along with similar ideas) are included in the influential pseudo-Augustinian Liber de spiritu et anima, PL xl.780–831.

³⁵ For a study of this point see Barbezat, Michael David, ‘“He doubted that these things actually happened”: knowing the otherworld in the Tractatus de Purgatorio sancti Patricii’, History of Religions lvii/4 (2018), 321–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁶ Petrarch, Secretum i.15.4–5, ed. Nicholas Mann, London 2016, 58. See also the Platonic linkage of this distraction to lust in ii.11.13, 110.

³⁷ ‘In hoc, inquit, manifestus est philosophus, si absolvit animam a corporis communione differentius aliis hominibus’: Richard de Bury, Philobiblon 15, ed. Ernest C. Thomas, New York 1889, 114–15. See also Plato, Phaedo 64e–65a.

³⁸ On Augustine's ‘conversion away from sex and ambition’ see Robin Lane Fox, Augustine: conversions to Confessions, New York 2015, 289. On Augustine and sex see Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: a biography, a new edition with an epilogue, Berkeley, Ca 2000, 390–2. On Brown's later caveats see pp. 500–1.

³⁹ The Book of St. Gilbert, ed. Raymonde Foreville and Gillian Keir, Oxford 1987, 14, cited by Fiona Harris Stoertz, ‘Sex and the medieval adolescent’, in Konrad Eisenbichler (ed.), The premodern teenager: youth in society, 1150–1650, Toronto 2002, 225. In fact, rather than counting years, medieval churchmen appear to have often reckoned age and adulthood through secondary sexual traits and changes in behaviour, thought and desire: Isabelle Cochelin, ‘Adolescence uncloistered (Cluny, early twelfth century)’, in Isabelle Cochelin and Karen Smyth (eds), Medieval life cycles, Turnhout 2013, 153; Schultz, James A., ‘Medieval adolescence: the claims of history and the silence of German narrative’, Speculum lxvi/3 (1991), 527Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ For a summary of William's life and works see Roland J. Teske, ‘William of Auvergne: an overview’, in Studies in the philosophy of William of Auvergne, Milwaukee, Wi 2006, 17–28.

⁴¹ This text is part of his massive Magisterium divinale et sapientiale. All citations below are drawn from the text in Guilielmi Alverni opera omnia, ed. F. Hotot, i, Orleans–Paris 1674. All citations will list the internal divisions, followed by the page number, the column and the place in the column. There is no modern edition or translation of this work. The importance of William's exposition to the history of child divination is noted by Fanger, ‘Virgin territory’ and Delatte, La Catoptromancie grecque (see nn. 9, 7 above). For a general consideration of magic in William's work see Steven Marrone, ‘William of Auvergne on magic in natural philosophy and theology’, in Jan A. Aertsen and Andreas Speer (eds), Was ist Philosophie im Mittelalter? Berlin 1998, 741–8.

⁴² de Mayo, Thomas B., The demonology of William of Auvergne: by fire and sword, Lewiston, NY 2007, 175Google Scholar; Fanger, ‘Virgin territory’, 205.

⁴³ William of Auvergne, De universo 2.3.18, 1049bB–C. See also 2.2.35, where the instruments are egg, ivory, sword, bowl and mirror (878bF). For the centrality of the imagination see 2.2.35, 878aH.

⁴⁴ ‘videlicet furtum, aut latronem, aut aliquod de occultis’: ibid. 2.3.18, 1049bC. For the centrality of theft see also 2.2.35, 878aG.

⁴⁵ For a study of conceptions of childhood in actual neo-Platonic sources see Eyjólfur Kjalar Emilsson, ‘Children and childhood in Neoplatonism’, in Reidar Aasgaard, Cornelia Horn and Oana Maria Cojocaru (eds), Childhood in history: perceptions of children in the ancient and medieval worlds, London 2018, 142–56.

⁴⁶ ‘Unde et quod apud nos vocatur lectio, apud Graecos vocatur repetita cognitio. Non igitur fiunt in animabus nostris novae scientiae per doctriam, aut disciplinam, aut experimentiam, sed veteres, ac innatae nobis, quae quasi sepultae fuerunt, et obtectae, deteguntur per exercitationes doctrinales, aut experientias; et apparet etiam nobis ipsis, quod prius apud nos esse non videbamus’: William of Auvergne, De universo 2.3.18, 1050aE–F.

⁴⁷ Ibid. 2.3.19, 1051aA.

⁴⁸ ‘Sciendum insuper est tibi, quia magorum antiquorum apud Latinos nominatissimus illo errore dementatus est, ut crederet animam pueri immaculati violenter necati scientiam habere omnium praesentium, praeteritorum, et futorum … ubi quis dubitat de suggestione maligni spiritus alicujus errorem tam impium processisse, ut in tam detestabile facinus nefarius ille magus rueret, et postmodum simulatione daemonica sub specie, et praetextu animae pueri illius ab aliquo maligno spiritu responsa hujusmodi audiret?’: ibid. 2.3.18, 1050bF–G.

⁴⁹ Ibid. 2.3.18, 1050bG.

⁵⁰ Plato, Phaedo 81b–81d, trans. Henry Aristippus, in Plato Latinus, ed. Raymund Klibansky, London 1950, ii. 38–9. William seems enamoured with this idea, interpreted through an intertext with Timaeus 42: see De universo 2.3.24, 1067aC. The Timaeus reference is noted by de Mayo, The demonology of William of Auvergne, 199.

⁵¹ William of Auvergne, De universo 2.3.18, 1050bH.

⁵² ‘quemadmodum e contrario se habent animae humanae occupatae cognitionibus inferiorum sensibilium, et quasi sopitae, et sepultae sunt vires nobiles, ac sublimes earum’: ibid. 2.3.21 (marked as 20), 1057bB–C.

⁵³ On the imagination as the faculty through which the child perceives see ibid. 2.2.35, 878aG–H. For the imagination as mediator as a common cultural assumption see Liber de spiritu et anima, 14, PL xl.789–90 and its sources, such as Isaac of Stella, Epistola de anima, PL cxciv.1881. See also Timaeus 31b–c.

⁵⁴ ‘Licet autem possibile sit fieri revelationes, et irradiationes, per modos quos audisti, videlicet per inspectiones corporum lucidorum: tamen, ut praedixi tibi, interdum immiscent operationes suae operibus istis maligni spiritus, vel hac de causa, ut noceant hominibus laesione visus eorum inspectione luminosorum corporum, quae revera noxia est oculis humanis, vel ut assufactione in revelationibus hujusmodi, sue divinationibus, protrahant eos ad aliqua, quae sine periculo, et offensa creatoris exerceri non possunt’: William of Auvergne, De universo 2.3.21 (marked as 20), 1057bC.

⁵⁵ Ibid. 2.3.20, 1055aA.

⁵⁶ Ibid. 2.3.20, 1056bE.

⁵⁷ Fanger, ‘Virgin territory’, 216–17.

⁵⁸ William of Auvergne, De universo 2.3.18, 1049bC.

⁵⁹ ‘Quod igitur senserunt Philosophi, quos praedixi, de divinationibus sive revelationibus, quae fiunt per inspectionem corporum lucidorum, possibile indubitanter est, et particulare, et valde rarum propter impedimenta, quae praedixi’: ibid. 2.3.20, 1054aH (printed as 1044).

⁶⁰ ‘doctrina namque, et religio Christianorum venereas voluptates potissimum detestatur. Causa autem in hoc est, quoniam maxime captivant animas, et iligant, immerguntque corporibus, insuper eas inebriant, et dementant, avertuntque a gaudiis spiritualibus; necnon a scientiis, atque contemplationibus rerum divinalium’: ibid. 2.3.20, 1054bH (printed as 1044).

⁶¹ ‘Verum pueri ab avaritia, et a similibus, mundi, et liberi esse consueverunt: propter hoc ergo solam virginitatem propter hujusmodi opera in pueris quaerere consueverunt scientes eos a vitis, quae adultorum sunt, nondum esse arreptos, vel pollutos’: ibid. 2.3.18, 1050bF.

⁶² Nicholas Orme, Medieval children, New Haven, Ct 2001, 214–15.

⁶³ ‘sicut evidenter apparet de curiositate, quae est libido sciendi non necessaria’: William of Auvergne, De legibus 24. 70aE.

⁶⁴ Idem, De universo 2.3.18, 1050bF.

⁶⁵ ‘qui in hujusmodi operibus exercitati sunt, statim consummato opere hujusmodi claudunt et clausos fortiter tenant oculos puerorum, quibus factae sunt apparitiones hujusmodi; tenent inquam, donec anima reversa sit ad statum pristinum a collectione hujusmodi et effusa juxta consuetudinem, atque sparsa in corpus suum et ejus organa; et hoc est dicere, donec resumpserit vires, et organa, quae deseruisse, saltem ad modicum, videbatur, alioquin immineret puero perniculum corporis, aut forte insania, quia etiam cum ista observatione, quam dixi, notabiliter perpetuo horrificus remaneret aspectus hujusmodi puerorum post expletionem talis operis. Quod si ab arreptione daemonica fiat visio, vel apparitio, remanebit longe major horribilitas in aspectu illius propter praesentiam daemoniacam, quae naturam illius non modicum turbaverat, nec unquam intrat corpus humanum, quin vestigia horribilitatis suae relinquat in eo. Quapropter nec debet tibi mirum videri, si minor horror appareat in oculis hujusmodi inspectoris, cum sola natura operata fuerit, quam cum horrifica, et inimica naturae diabolica substantia operas suas immiserit, vel admiscuerit hujusmodi visioni’: ibid. 2.3.18, 1050aF–H. William references his earlier treatment at 2.2.35, 878bF–G.

⁶⁶ Ibid. 2.3.21, 1057bC–D.

⁶⁷ For some key examples see Peter d'Ailly, ‘De falsis prophetis tractatus II’, in Joannis Gersonii Opera omnia, Antwerp 1706, i. 535A–536C.

⁶⁸ See citation of Garcia in Kieckhefer, Forbidden rites, 98, and Thorndike, L., History of magic and experimental science, New York 1934, iv. 497–507Google Scholar.

⁶⁹ For the quotation see Bernard Guenée, Between Church and State: the lives of four French prelates in the late Middle Ages, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, Chicago 1991, 109. For the general tendency in commentary to use Oresme as an ‘anachronistic forerunner’ see Nicole Oresme and the medieval geometry of qualities and motions: a treatise on the uniformity and difformity of intensities known as Tractatus de configurationibus qualitatum et motuum, ed. and trans. Marshall Clagett, Madison, Wi 1968, 3. According to Clagett (pp. 123–5) the treatise dates from the 1350s.

⁷⁰ ‘sicomme j'ay declaire ou Livre de la Figuracion des Qualitez, mais tells visions ont personnes de sobre vie et paisible desquelles l'ame est aussi comme un vray mirouer cler et resplendissant, asprete de cogitacions mondainnes’: Nicole Oresme, Livre de divinacions, 11, in Nicole Oresme and the astrologers: a study of his Livre de divinacions, ed. and trans. G. W. Coopland, Liverpool 1952, 92, 93.

⁷¹ Nicole Oresme, De configurationibus 2.26, p. 339.

⁷² Ibid. 2.30, p. 350. In the use of William of Auvergne by both Oresme and D'Ailly for this topic, one might be witnessing the influence of a copy of the De universo in the library of the College of Navarre, where both men's treatises were written (Oresme: 1350s; D'Ailly: 1380s). Oresme was also familiar with John of Salisbury's account of magic in the Policraticus. See Livre, 8, 9 (Coopland edn), pp. 75, 81; and Tractatus contra astronomos 6 (Coopland edn), p. 137.

⁷³ Nicole Oresme, De configurationibus 2.28, pp. 342, 343.

⁷⁴ Ibid. 2.29, pp. 346, 347.

⁷⁵ Ibid. 2.29, p. 348.

⁷⁶ Ibid. 2.28, pp. 342, 343.

⁷⁷ Ibid. 2.30, p. 352.

⁷⁸ Ibid. 2.30, p. 350.

⁷⁹ Ibid. 2.29, p. 344.

⁸⁰ Ibid. 2.30, p. 352.

⁸¹ Trachtenberg, Joshua, Jewish magic and superstition: a study in folk religion, Philadelphia, Pa 1939, 2004, 219–22Google Scholar. Marie-Thérèse D'Alverny highlights the need for more attention to the abundant Hebrew sources for this practice: ‘Récréations monastiques’, 21–2.

⁸² Robert de Brunne, Handlyng synne, ed. Frederick J. Furnivall, London 1901, 13, lines 351–4. The child is not referenced in William of Waddington's Le Manuel des pechés, which was Robert's source text: see Delatte, La Catoptromancie grecque, 40.

⁸³ Nicholas Eymeric, Directorium inquisitorum 2.43.4, ed. F. Peña, Rome 1587, 236aD–E. On Eymeric see Pau Castell Granados, ‘The inquisitor's demons: Nicolau Eymeric's Directorium inquisitorum’, in Johannes Machielsen (ed.), The science of demons: early modern authors facing witchcraft and the devil, New York 2020, 19–34.

⁸⁴ The connection between magic and apostacy is significant for the development of the late medieval concept of witchcraft. See Boureau, Alain, Le Pape et les sorciers: une consultation de Jean XXII sur la magie en 1320 (Manuscrit B.A.V. Borghese 348), Rome 2004, L–LIIGoogle Scholar, and Bailey, ‘From sorcery to witchcraft’, 973–4.

⁸⁵ James, M. R., ‘Twelve medieval ghost-stories’, EHR xxxvii/147 (1922), § 2Google Scholar (p. 417) and § 10 (pp. 420–1). James, a prolific collector of ghost stories, adapted the magical sacrifice of children in his own fictional story, ‘Lost Hearts’, in Ghost stories of an antiquary, new edn, London 1920, 29–52.

⁸⁶ Thorndike, History of magic, iv. 685.

⁸⁷ Johann Hartlieb, Das Buch der verbotenen Künste: Aberglaube und Zauberei des Mittelalters, ed. Falk Eisermann and Eckhard Graf, chs lxxxiii–lxxxvi, lxxxviii–xc, Munich 1998, trans. in Delatte, La Catoptromancie grecque, 50–4.

⁸⁸ The autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, lxiv, trans. John Addington Symonds at < https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4028/pg4028.html>. This reference possesses a significant undertone as both Cellini and Symonds, his translator, are linked to the erotisation of young men and boys.

⁸⁹ ‘Sunt etenim pueri virgines mundi et innocentes. Demonibus autem non placent innocentes, ymmo sunt nocentes et perversi et ad inmundiciam et inpudiciciam homines pertrahentes, quinymo erorum multi sunt incubi et subcubi et eorum aliqui prius subcubi [et post incubi]’: Nicholas Eymeric, ‘Le Contra astrologos imperitos atque nigromanticos (1395–1396) de Nicolas Eymerich: contexte de redaction, classification des arts magiques et divinatoires; édition critique partielle’ 2.7, in Martine Ostorero, Georg Modestin, and Kathrin Utz Tremp (eds), Chasses aux sorcières et démonologie: entre discours et pratiques (XIVe–XVIIe siècles), Florence 2010, 308. It is possible that Eymeric refers to a cycle of illicit sexual activity in which children begin as passive sexual partners and mature into active partners as adults.

⁹⁰ C. Douais (ed.), Les Hérétiques du Midi au XIIIe siècle, Toulouse 1891, 13–15, cited by d'Alverny, ‘Récréations monastiques’, 25 n.2.

⁹¹ Delatte, La Catoptromancie grecque, 43.

⁹² Bibliothèque national de France, nouvelles acquisitions, Lat. 834, fos 5r, 11r–16v, cited in Granados, ‘The inquisitor's demons’, 28.

⁹³ Kieckhefer, Forbidden rites, 98.

⁹⁴ Veenstra, Jan R., Magic and divination at the courts of Burgundy and France, Leiden 1998, 352Google Scholar. For background see pp. 67–9.

⁹⁵ For John xxii see Hansen, Joseph, Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Hexenwahns und der Hexenverfolgung im Mittelalter, Bonn 1901, 2–5Google Scholar nn. 3–4. For a sixteenth-century example see Martin Luther, ‘The Gospel for the Festival of the Epiphany, Matthew 2 [:1–12]’, trans. S. P. Hebart, in Hans J. Hillerbrand (ed.), Luther's works, Philadelphia, Pa 1974, lii.182. Oblique references that do not specify the use of children, but likely assumed it, are equally frequent in literature. See, for example, Chaucer's Pardoner's tale 603–4 in The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd edn, ed. Larry Dean Benson, Boston 1987, 307.

⁹⁶ d'Alverny, ‘Récréations monastiques’, 13–16.

⁹⁷ The procedure is in the Liber introductorius, cited by Delatte in La Catoptromancie grecque, 25. It invokes a spirit called Floriget. In its specifics, it is very close to the operations found in CLM 849 and Bodleian Library, Oxford, ms Rawlinson D. 252 discussed below.

⁹⁸ For example, see the operation involving a child and a magic ring in the late fifteenth-century compilation Wellcome Institute, London, ms 517, fo. 81r–v, published by Page, ‘Speaking with spirits’, 142.

⁹⁹ Cameron Wilson Louis, ‘The commonplace book of Robert Reynes of Acle: an edition of Tanner ms 407’, § 29, unpubl. PhD diss. Toronto 1977, 178–9.

¹⁰⁰ For more information on ms Rawlinson D. 252 see Klaassen, Frank, The transformations of magic: illicit learned magic in the later Middle Ages and Renaissance, University Park, Pa 2013, 124–5, 134Google Scholar.

¹⁰¹ Kieckhefer, Forbidden rites, 30, 253–4.

¹⁰² Hartlieb, Das Buch, ch. lxxxiv.

¹⁰³ Kieckhefer, Forbidden rites, 28, 251; ms Rawlinson D. 252, fo.109r.

¹⁰⁴ Especially in the Munich Handbook, many of whose operations begin with the command, ‘Accipe puerum virginem’.

¹⁰⁵ For examples of these traits see items in the Munich Handbook (given by ritual number followed by the page number in parentheses): Kieckhefer, Forbidden rites, 27-A (pp. 246–7), 27-B (p. 255), 27-C (pp. 248–9), 28 (pp. 250–2).

¹⁰⁶ As studied by Fanger, ‘Virgin territory’, 211.

¹⁰⁷ Kieckhefer, Forbidden rites, 28 (p. 251). Also suggested in ms Rawlinson, D. 252, fo. 93v.

¹⁰⁸ Fanger, ‘Virgin territory’, 212.

¹⁰⁹ Kieckhefer, Forbidden rites, 27-A (p. 246), 38 (p. 329), 39 (p. 334); ms Rawlinson, D. 252 fos 109r–v, 159r.

¹¹⁰ See d'Alverny, ‘Récréations monastiques’, 26.

¹¹¹ One accessible example, with these elements and a child medium, is the conjuration of the prophetic spirit, Sibilla, in the Rawlinson manuscript, published by J. P. Boudet, ‘Deviner dans la lumière: note sur les conjurations pyromantiques dans un manuscrit anglais du xve siècle’, in Sophie Cassagnes-Brouquet, Amaury Chauou, Daniel Pichot and others (eds), Religion et mentalités au moyen age, Rennes 2003, 523–30. On Sibilla see Klaassen, ‘English manuscripts of magic, 1300–1500: a preliminary survey’, in Claire Fanger (ed.), Conjuring spirits: texts and traditions of medieval ritual magic, Stroud 1998, 29 n. 35.

¹¹² ‘ut in ungwe istius pueri appareatis, nec ipsi puero timorem uel terrorem aut lesionem faciatis’: Kieckhefer, Forbidden rites, 27-B (p. 255).

¹¹³ ‘Deus qui a iudeis inimicis tuis capere voluisiti presta mihi et puero isti bene facere et bene expedire sine lesione tam corporis mei quam pueri et anime mee quam pueri’: ms Rawlinson, D. 252, fo.15v. On the four kings see Klaassen, The transformations of magic, 163 n. 2. Also related to the four demon kings of the cardinal directions in William of Auvergne, De universo 2.3.12, i, 1037aB–C.

¹¹⁴ ‘et verum responsum nobis tribuas pro posse de quodcunque a vobis interrogavero loquendo puero isto et mihi sine lesione nostrorum et sine inpedimento pueri sensus vel mei Aut aliqua alia fallacia et sine lesione nostrorum vel alicuius creature’: ms Rawlinson, D. 252, fo.22r.

¹¹⁵ For an example see Kieckhefer, Forbidden rites, 40 (p. 339).

¹¹⁶ Ibid. 38 (p. 333), 39 (p. 338). The closing of the eyes is not as dramatic as that suggested by William of Auvergne, simply recommending ‘fac puerum claudere oculos’ (p. 338).

¹¹⁷ ‘Et non sit puer vicousus [vitiosus] nec sit multipliciter verbosus nec puer minimus gar[r]ulus et legitimus natus’: ms Rawlinson, D. 252, fo. 162r.

¹¹⁸ Kieckhefer, Forbidden rites, 27-C (p. 249); ms Rawlinson, D. 252, fo. 94r–v.

¹¹⁹ ‘queras si videt demonem saltantem et gaudentem. Tunc dic ad puerum, et facias ad socios tuos simul loqui quod puer non habeat timorem’: Kieckhefer, Forbidden rites, 38 (p. 331).

¹²⁰ For representative examples of repetitions see ibid. 27-A (p. 247), 27-C (p. 249). Also, the child is asked (and suggested to see) if the object increases in size and brightness, just as Oresme recorded: De configurationibus 2.29, p. 348.

¹²¹ An example is the conjuration of Sibilla, that commands her to appear as a beautiful, crowned queen seated on a golden throne: ms Rawlinson, D. 252, fo. 93v.

¹²² Klaassen, Transformations, 140.

¹²³ See comments by Kieckhefer, Forbidden rites, 111.

¹²⁴ ‘et tu tene puerum inter genua’: ibid. 40 (339); ‘Et puer virgo debet effe infra dece annos de legittimo matrimonio. Sit puer inter tibeas’: ms Rawlinson, D. 252 fo. 109r–v; ‘accipe puerum … inter genua tua stantem’: d'Alverny, ‘Récréations’, 13.

¹²⁵ For whispering in the ear see Kieckhefer, Forbidden rites, 22, 27-A (p. 29). For examples of tying see 27, and ms Rawlinson, D. 252 fo. 109v.

¹²⁶ ‘pedes suos in sartagine nova tenentem’: D'Alverny, ‘Récréations’, 13. For discussion of detail as sacrifice, see pp. 27–30. See also the use of sartago in the Vulgate for the guilt offering: Leviticus vii.9.

¹²⁷ D'Alverny, ‘Récréations’, 13 n.5.

¹²⁸ Manitius, Karl, ‘Magie und Rhetorik bei Anselm von Besate’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters xii (1956), 54–6Google Scholar, and see pp. 57–8 for Horace as an adapted model.

¹²⁹ On the essential ambiguity of ‘magic’ see Claire Fanger, ‘For magic: against method’, in Page and Rider, Routledge history of medieval magic, 32–4.

¹³⁰ On Dee's use of mediums see Stephen Clucas, ‘False illuding spirits & cownterfeiting deuills: John Dee's angelic conversations and religious anxiety’, in Raymond, Conversations with angels, 150–74. For an overview of major scholarly treatments of Dee's divinations in the context of mediumship see Fanger, ‘Virgin territory’, 202.

¹³¹ Delatte, La Catoptromancie grecque, 127–32. Merav Carmeli, working on a recent survey of manuscript collections in Australia, has uncovered evidence for divination using child mediums in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, based on models from Europe and the Middle East.