Abstract:

Across Christian traditions one encounters a diverse array of texts, artifacts, and practices that cross into the
realm of “magic” or the “magico-religious.” Studies have repeatedly shown that, despite initial assumptions,
these have never been limited to practitioners working outside of an ecclesiastic or monastic context but, on the
contrary, have in many cases not only been active in them but even required a church education to perform.
Richard Kieckhefer, describing the situation in the Medieval West, coined the term “clerical underground”
precisely to describe networks of clerics, whether monks, deacons, or priests, who also practiced magic and
copied or exchanged manuscripts containing magical texts (Kieckhefer 2014).

With respect to Ethiopia, the situation was no di􀀃erent. The infamous 15th century King Zarʾa Yāʿqob decried in
his polemics against magic that one may observe such practices among all the levels of the clergy. While there
may be an element of rhetorical exaggeration in this claim, preliminary studies of the manuscript tradition have
shown without a doubt that magical texts circulated in monastic libraries and church schools in Ethiopia. These
represent a range of material from simple prayers relying on nomina sacra to pharmacological recipes to
divinatory works using arithmetical calculations. More than any other, texts of the latter type, which assume not
only a knowledge of arithmetic but also often the paschal computus and other more sophisticated calendrical
computations, suggest that the practitioner had reached the highest levels of education according to the
traditional, church-centred education system of Ethiopia. Through selected case studies, this paper will examine
the phenomenon of “learned magic” in Ethiopic sources and investigate the extent to which the intellectual
tradition had a role in the practice of magic in Ethiopia.

Note:

Richard Kiekhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages. Canto Classics (Cambridge University Press, rev. ed., 2014)

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