Magical Manuscripts in Early Modern Europe

Uses an eighteenth century German case-study to examine the clandestine, and sometimes illegal, practices of the early modern European book trade Addresses questions of censorship regimes and efficiency, of the textual-ritual tradition and eventual canon formations of 'Western learned magic', and of the status and use of handwritten books in an alleged 'age of print' Provides a methodological pathway towards an interdisciplinary, integrative, and thus more comprehensive analysis of books of 'learned magic' in and beyond early modern times

Daniel Bellingradt is Professor of Book Studies at Erlangen-Nuremberg University, Germany, co-editor of the German Yearbook for the History of Communications, and co-editor of Books in Motion in Early Modern Europe. Beyond Production, Circulation and Consumption (2017). Bernd-Christian Otto is postdoctoral researcher at the Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies at the University of Erfurt, Germany. His book publications include Magie. Rezeptions- und diskursgeschichtliche Analysen von der Antike bis zur Neuzeit (2011), and, as co-editor, Defining Magic: A Reader (2013), and History and Religion: Narrating a Religious Past (2015).

1. Introduction.- 2. Exceptionality.- 3.Scarcity.-  4.Illegality.- 5.Conclusions.-  6.Appendix A: The CATALOGUS RARIORUM MANUSCRIPTORUM.- 7. Appendix B: Images of the original catalogue (1710).-