The Magic Books: An Interview with Historian Anne Lawrence-Mathers
- 26 March 2026
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Editorial Introduction
In The Magic Books: A History of Enchantment in 20 Medieval Manuscripts, historian Anne Lawrence-Mathers invites us into a world where magic was not hidden at the margins of medieval society, but carefully inscribed at its centre—within manuscripts commissioned by kings, studied by clerics, and preserved by institutions of power.
Drawing on richly illuminated sources, the book challenges long-standing assumptions about the Middle Ages. Rather than a period defined by superstition or intellectual stagnation, Lawrence-Mathers reveals a culture deeply engaged with questions of knowledge, authority, and the unseen forces believed to shape human life.
In this interview, she reflects on the surprising role of elites in sustaining magical traditions, the blurred boundaries between science and divination, and the material splendour of manuscripts that carried these ideas across centuries.
The Interview
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HistoryMedieval: In The Magic Books, you place luxury manuscripts at the centre of medieval political, intellectual, and religious life rather than at its margins. When you began this project, did you expect the evidence to point so strongly toward magic being practised—and valued—by elites, or did that conclusion emerge gradually as you worked through individual manuscripts?
Anne Lawrence-Mathers: The research for this project grew out of my love for two things – medieval magic and medieval manuscripts (especially illuminated ones). I had already noticed that a number of surviving manuscripts contain both texts which are clearly or potentially magical and beautiful (and expensive) images and diagrams. Those sorts of embellishments often involved gold and very rare pigments, such as lapis lazuli, as well as artistic ability and familiarity with complex subjects like astronomy and astrology. So it’s likely that such manuscripts would be made for wealthy patrons. Perhaps surprisingly, a lot of the manuscripts which we have now owe their survival to having been owned by religious institutions like monasteries and cathedrals – and that includes some of the magical manuscripts. It was also often individuals seeking a career in the Church who could afford to gain an education, especially when that involved going to university. That supports the view that magical texts were most likely to be used by clerics who were university-trained and looking for employment in the courts of powerful people. So it was a surprise when I discovered how many manuscripts with magical contents were actually linked to rulers and aristocrats.
It was also very interesting to see that these manuscripts were often treated as beautiful and prestigious works of art, rather than being small and easy to hide. We know that magicians, often friars or monks, were hired by rulers and courtiers, but we also know that practising magic could be very risky for those concerned. Yet the evidence of the manuscripts shows that very powerful people were personally interested in magic – and had less fear of the Church and its officials. But that is not to say that they were all practising magicians! I hope that anyone who looks at my book will enjoy the illustrations, and I think they show that images in magical manuscripts were both beautiful and very intriguing. The illuminations show beautiful creatures, like the personifications of planets and constellations or zodiac symbols or impressive diagrams of the universe, and almost never show terrifying demons or visions of hell!
HistoryMedieval: Throughout the book, astrology occupies a tense space between legitimate knowledge and theological danger. From Carolingian astronomy and computus through the learned magic cultivated at the court of Alfonso X, what factors determined whether astrological practice was treated as acceptable inquiry or condemned as illicit divination—and how stable were those boundaries in practice?
Anne Lawrence-Mathers: That’s a very good question – and a tricky one to answer. The dividing line between acceptable and unacceptable forms of astrology was very blurry, and also depended quite a bit on who was asking the questions or paying the astrologer. It was accepted as scientific fact that all the planets and the stars (not just the Sun and the Moon) affected everyone and everything on Earth. So it was expected that fully trained doctors and physicians would be able to calculate the likely outcomes of disease for any given patient, taking into account the effects of the celestial powers on both the patient and the illness. It was also accepted, though with some reservations, that the powers and effects of the Moon varied depending on its phase, and that this should be taken into account when planning for the future. The most problematic issue was the Christian teaching on human free will. If an astrologer claimed to be able to find out what would happen to, or be done by, an individual on a specific day in the future then that assumed that the individual’s fate was fixed, and either determined by, or known to, the stars. And that was full of problems! Firstly, if an individual’s fate is fixed then, as St Augustine pointed out, they cannot be held responsible for their own actions – which could make them immune from legal responsibility or punishment. Secondly, it seems to suggest that planets and stars have consciousness and/or the ability to force humans to do things. Both ideas went against not only human law but also, and more seriously, against important ideas about the powers unique to God.
By the later middle ages there was also increasing concern that humans who tried to obtain answers to these sorts of illicit questions would also be vulnerable to the powers and tricks of demons; and a human in the power of a demon was a dangerous individual. Another factor was the increase in education and literacy as the middle ages went on, coupled with the drop in the cost of books when printing arrived. It was one thing when powerful people with highly educated physicians and consultants went against the rules, but something very different when increasing numbers of more ordinary people started to try to get answers to the wrong kinds of question. So both the attention given to astrology and the ways in which it could go wrong tended to increase over time – and yet astrology was highly valued in the Renaissance. All that strongly suggests that the blurry nature of the boundary allowed for flexibility in deciding what was acceptable!
HistoryMedieval: One of the striking features of the book is your attention to the material qualities of magical manuscripts—the vellum, pigments, layout, and cycles of illumination. How does approaching these works as physical objects, rather than as texts alone, change our understanding of medieval attitudes toward enchantment and the pursuit of hidden knowledge?
Anne Lawrence-Mathers: Medieval manuscripts are indeed amazing objects with which to be in contact – and some of their fascinating qualities come through in digitised images online as well. The physical characteristics of a manuscript tell you a lot about how much money was spent on it, and therefore how much its creator and owner valued it. There are copies of magical texts which look homemade, and as if they were the work of students or clerics who wanted to own a magical work but were too poor or too afraid to employ professionals to make them. Copies like that fit easily into the idea that magic was an illicit or marginalised practice. But the manuscripts I discuss all have the characteristics of high quality and expensive products. The vellum or parchment is strong, even and pale in colour, and with few obvious blemishes. The margins are generous and the lines are well spaced, making the text easier to read and the book bigger. The ink is dark and also legible; and the pigments are varied, brightly coloured, and probably made from expensive ingredients – including gold and silver. If a manuscript is still in its original binding (which is rare but does happen) then the binding will also be expensive and sometimes very decorative. These were books suited to be consulted by very special people. They could also, of course, be shown to guests or visitors, and would impress by the combination of luxury, artistry and specialist knowledge which they embodied.
I also hope that my descriptions of the physical nature of the manuscripts will be useful if readers look at digitised manuscripts online. The digitisations are a wonderful thing, especially because they make it possible to look at tiny details which would be hard to see clearly in the manuscript itself, but they make it hard to get a sense of what handling the original book is like. I have been privileged enough to handle some illuminated manuscripts, and to see the traces left by the people who created them, and I hope some of that sort of information is helpful in confirming the high status of these books.
HistoryMedieval: Several chapters reveal monastic scholars actively copying, compiling, and even developing magical material despite canon law prohibitions. What do these manuscripts suggest about how medieval clerics reconciled learning, devotion, and practices that modern readers might instinctively categorise as “forbidden”?
Anne Lawrence-Mathers: Yes, another thing that the manuscripts reveal is that monasteries and cathedrals did not just own magical manuscripts – they also produced beautiful copies of important texts, and sometimes their members even wrote works of astrology or divination which were added to the institution’s library. It’s fairly easy to understand why a Carolingian emperor would want his experts to hunt down, edit and interpret classical knowledge of the stars, their movements and their characteristics – it was an extension of their campaign to be the new ‘Roman’ emperors. The manuscripts display this very clearly by having script and images in styles which imitate Roman originals. It’s less easy to see why a monastic leader and abbot in Anglo-Saxon England, at a time when the country had been officially Christian for centuries, would have copies of pagan divinatory texts entered into his book of prayers and religious texts. My theory is that Abbot Aelfwine of the New Minster, Winchester, had a close relationship to the royal court of Cnut (famous as King Canute). Aelfwine needed to provide some of the services which pagan advisers had supplied while Cnut, like his father, was still pagan. The divinations made it possible to offer advice on things like medical issues, planning journeys, getting married, and avoiding danger. It’s very hard to argue that such divination did not break rules as far as official Church teaching was concerned. However, Christian and royal law emphasised that magic (to which divination was related) was a serious crime only if it was clearly pagan or if it caused direct harm or death. It seems to me that this allowed ‘wiggle room’ for Church leaders who were fighting against the revival of paganism caused by the Scandinavian conquest of England.
It’s possible to make a similar argument about Matthew Paris of the abbey of St Albans and his book of divinatory – or ‘fortune telling’ texts and diagrams. We know that Matthew had privileged access to royal and aristocratic patrons, who gave him information which he recorded in his chronicles. Such people might have been drawn into revealing information in exchange for having a special consultation with Matthew and his book of predictions – which offered knowledge attributed to biblical and astrological figures.
The case of the monk, John of Morigny, is slightly different but again shows just how much people appreciated having access to special knowledge. John was an expert in the use of a text called the Ars notoria and in fact created his own, revised version of it, in order to remove the danger of demonic influence. This book mainly offered knowledge usually reserved for university masters and students, though it could also be used for divinations. John and his book were highly popular for a while, though the book was later condemned and burned.
None of these cases shows monks knowingly engaging in the dark arts, but we do in fact know that monks in many major monasteries across Europe had access to overtly magical texts. The evidence for that comes from the surviving catalogues of the monastic libraries, although a lot of the actual manuscripts don’t survive. Historians have puzzled over this, but the evidence provided by the catalogues is helpful. Often the copies of magical works are quite short, and were placed in manuscripts which also contained much more acceptable texts. In such cases it’s likely that the ‘illicit’ parts could be overlooked. The catalogues also show that these manuscripts were often stored along with books on scientific or philosophical subjects, suggesting that magic could be seen as a part of these subject areas. We know that monastic librarians were responsible for giving only carefully-selected books to monks to read, so access to magical volumes was not necessarily available to all. So once again I think this is a case of boundaries which allowed for interpretation, as well as of Church leaders who were prepared to make pragmatic decisions in some circumstances.
HistoryMedieval: You frame medieval magic not as superstition displaced by science but as part of a continuous intellectual tradition shaped by classical authority, Christian theology, and political need. What do you most hope readers—especially non-specialists—will rethink about the Middle Ages after engaging with these manuscripts and their makers?
Anne Lawrence-Mathers: It would be lovely to think that looking closely at the magical books on which I focus leads people to see that the Middle Ages were not just a time of violence, superstition and prejudice. There has been a tendency for the whole period to be looked down on as a ‘dark age’, which is very misleading! I hope the sheer beauty of these manuscripts is attractive in itself and that they appeal as works of art. Going beyond that, I hope readers are intrigued by the illustrations and their complex messages. As you suggest, it’s often clear that classical influences are at work, despite the classical originals having been pagan, and I hope that will challenge traditional ideas that it was only in the Renaissance that classical culture was rediscovered and valued. Readers may be surprised at finding Greek and Roman gods and goddesses in medieval manuscripts – not only the early ones made for Carolingian emperors but also late-medieval ones like the works of Christine de Pisan. As I’ve suggested in my answers to other questions, I hope readers will appreciate and enjoy the artistry and skill of the scribes and illuminators who created the manuscripts.
In relation to the scholarship and intellectual traditions which the manuscripts preserve, I hope readers are pleasurably surprised by both the sophistication and the open-mindedness on display. The desire to know more about the earth, the stars, and the whole universe; about how they worked; and about how those forces could be understood and used comes across very strongly. It’s also striking how complex the mathematical computations involved in astronomy and astrology were and how hard people worked to achieve the desired results. What is perhaps even more surprising is how open medieval scholars were to knowledge which came from, or via, the Islamic world. A lot of the works I discuss were translated from Arabic, and Islamic scholars were respected as experts on astronomy, astrology, and optics. Of course, claims (mostly fictional) were also made that many Arabic texts were themselves based on the work of classical figures like Aristotle, but the names of Abu Ma’shar (Albumasar) and Masha‘allah (Messehalla) were also famous amongst scholars. So I hope that people may perhaps come away with a more positive view of the Middle Ages overall.
About the Author
Professor Anne Lawrence-Mathers is a professor of Medieval History at the University of Reading, where she teaches and supervises on topics including medieval magic, science, and manuscript studies. Her research focuses on the intersections of magic and learned knowledge in medieval Europe, an interest she has pursued through projects supported by an AHRC Research Leaders Fellowship and her leadership roles in the Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Reading. She is the author of Medieval Meteorology (Cambridge University Press, 2019), which charts the evolution of weather forecasting from antiquity through the early modern period; co-author with Carolina Escobar-Vargas of Magic and Medieval Society (Routledge, 2014); and The True History of Merlin the Magician (Yale University Press, 2012), exploring the political and prophetic impact of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s legendary figure. Her latest book, The Magic Books: A History of Enchantment in Twenty Medieval Manuscripts (Yale University Press, late 2024), examines luxury magical manuscripts to reveal how magic underpinned power, devotion, and scholarship across the Middle Ages.
Book Discussed in This Interview
The Magic Books
by Anne Lawrence-Mathers
The Magic Books: A History of Enchantment in 20 Medieval Manuscripts explores how magic was embedded within elite culture, scholarship, and political life from the Carolingian period to the late Middle Ages. Drawing on richly illustrated manuscripts, the book demonstrates that magic was not a marginal superstition but a complex intellectual tradition intertwined with science, theology, and power.
Interview conducted by Luciano Anastasi for HistoryMedieval.
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Luciano Anastasi
Luciano is the founder of the MedievalHistory platform and the LinkedIn History Enthusiasts Group, where he is dedicated to curating and sharing high-quality medieval history content. His goal is to engage scholars, teachers, students, and enthusiasts by fostering insightful discussions and promoting scholarly resources on topics from medieval warfare and religion to societal transformations and daily life in the Middle Ages.
Luciano is also an active book reviewer, focusing on academic publications related to medieval history. He recently collaborated with Yale University Press to review forthcoming medieval history titles, aiming to deepen educators' and researchers' understanding of the period. Alongside his history endeavors, he has over 40 years of experience in IT leadership roles across various industries, including the public sector, banking, insurance, airlines and consulting, and has contributed to United Nations projects.
With a Master of Arts in Business Process Management, Luciano combines his expertise in IT strategy and governance with his passion for medieval history. He leverages technology to bridge the academic community and the wider public, making historical scholarship more accessible through engaging online content.
