Document Type

Book Review

Publication Version

Published Version

Publication Date

Winter 2009

Journal or Book Title

Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft

Volume

4

Issue

2

First Page

226

Last Page

228

DOI

10.1353/mrw.0.0140

Abstract

William of Auvergne, bishop of Paris from 1228 until 1249, is one of the major figures in the medieval history of learned magic and demonology. In many later writings on these topics from the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, one finds his name cited as often as, if not more often than, that of his great slightly later contemporary Thomas Aquinas. Yet while scholarship on Thomas and this thought fills bookshelves, the bibliography on William is dramatically thinner. As de Mayo notes, the standard biography of William remains Noël Valois's Guillaume d'Auvergne, Évêque de Paris (1228–1249): Sa vie et ses ouvrages, published in 1880. He receives thirty-five pages in Lynn Thorndike's encyclopedic History of Magic and Experimental Science (volume two, 1923), but de Mayo's book is the first to provide a monographic study of his magical and demonological thought.

Comments

This is a book review from Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 4 (2009): 226, doi:10.1353/mrw.0.0140. Posted with permission.

Rights

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of scholarly citation, none of this work may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. For information address the University of Pennsylvania Press, 3905 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112

Copyright Owner

University of Pennsylvania Press

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

Download

Share

COinS