Roger Bacon as Magician

Abstract

The practice of magic was much in vogue in the Renaissance and even the word had gained a limited respectability. Thus in 1558 when Giambattista della Porta published his collection of curiosities of art and nature he did so under the title Magia naturalis, and even in the next century the far more sober Bishop John Wilkins was to publish a book entitled Mathematicall Magick. Such works indicate essential similarities between magic and science in that each has as part of its aim the application of not readily apparent knowledge to practice. But we should not think that the widespread acceptance of natural magic in the Renaissance meant that the term had become a synonym for what we should now call science, for we still have to bear in mind such pictures as those of Marsilio Ficino chanting his Orphic hymns, of John Dee conversing with spirits through his medium Edward Kelly, and of Tommaso Campaneüa and Pope Urban VIII closeted together and performing secret rites to ward off the plague.