Les « caractères » magiques au Moyen Âge (XIIe-XIVe siècle)

Abstract

A great number of mysterious signs are to be found in books of magic from the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries. Occasionally described as “ characters ” they were supposed to possess a power with multiple effects. Their peculiarity has caused them to be excluded from most recent studies of mediaeval magic; but a systematic survey reveals the multifarious forms they could assume and the changing names they were given in manuscripts. “ Magic characters ” also occur in 13th-century treatises on theology (William of Auvergne, Thomas Aquinas) and language (al-Kindî, Roger Bacon) concerned with the conventional value of writing signs and the conditions for their legitimate use. The latter problem was all the more acute since the word “ character ” was invested with widely varying meanings in the Latin world, some of which touched on dogma. A tentative graphic analysis shows that the formof magic characters might relate to writing signs from various linguistic backgrounds (such as Eastern alphabets, runes, stenography and cryptography). Possibly derived from such sources, they tend to prove that the mysterious graphic knowledge expressed in magic texts was not unconnected with the linguistic culture of Western clerics.