forbidden rites a necromancer's manual of the fifteenth century

He was President of the American Society of Church History in 1997 and of the Societas Magica from 1995 to 2004. His Magic in the Middle Ages, first published in 1989, has been translated into Spanish, German, Polish, Czech, Italian, and Greek, and is forthcoming in Turkish, Portuguese, and Korean. He has taught at Northwestern University since 1975.

Kieckhefer has written on sainthood, medieval ritual magic, witchcraft, medieval and contemporary church architecture, hoopoes, and mystical literature he has also edited and translated important texts from medieval Latin.

Education Īfter an undergraduate education at Saint Louis University, Kieckhefer earned a PhD in history from the University of Texas in 1972, spending a year in Munich at the Monumenta Germaniae Historica Institute with the support of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). He is Professor of History and John Evans Professor of Religious Studies at Northwestern University. With more detail on particular experiments than the famous thirteenth-century Picatrix and more variety than the Thesaurus Necromantiae ascribed to Roger Bacon, the manual is one of the most interesting and important manuscripts of medieval magic that has yet come to light.Richard Kieckhefer (born 1946 ) is an American medievalist, religious historian, scholar of church architecture, and author. It is exceptional, however, in the scope and variety of its contents―prayers and conjurations, rituals of sympathetic magic, procedures involving astral magic, a catalogue of spirits, lengthy ceremonies for consecrating a book of magic, and other materials. Like many medieval texts for the use of magicians, this handbook is a miscellany rather than a systematic treatise. The result is the most vivid and readable introduction to medieval magic now available.

Preserved in the Bavarian State Library in Munich is a manuscript that few scholars have noticed and that no one in modern times has treated with the seriousness it deserves. Forbidden Rites consists of an edition of this medieval Latin text with a full commentary, including detailed analysis of the text and its contents, discussion of the historical context, translation of representative sections of the text, and comparison with other necromantic texts of the late Middle Ages.

Forbidden rites a necromancer's manual of the fifteenth century