protection.87In later centuries, socially elite amulet users continued to use ele-gant housings to bind textual amulets to the body for protection and healing.
The Renaissance goldsmith and sculptor Benvenuto Cellini (1500–1571), hardly a stranger to magic, to judge from his autobiographical account of incantations in the Roman Colosseum in 1532, mentions Wligree-worked jewelry designed to be worn around the neck as an elegant carrying case for textual amulets (brevi).88 While most enclosures were worn around the neck, there were other methods of binding and carrying textual amulets. One could carry textual amulets exter-nally, together with other personal belongings, in purses and protective leather pouches or purses. At the top of an English medical roll of ca. 1400, containing vernacular charms (London, Wellcome Historical Medical Library, MS 410), are four small holes, by means of which it could have been attached to a carrying pouch. Textual amulets could have been transported in rigid leather containers like late medieval portable reliquaries.89Once folded or rolled, individual amulets could be carried in linen, velvet, or silk sacks, slung over the person’s shoulder or suspended from the belt like girdle books and vade mecum folding books.90
87. John Walker Ord, The History and Antiquities of Cleveland, comprising the Wapentake of East and West Langbargh (Stockton-on-Tees: Patrick & Shotton, 1972), pp. 136–40; Christopher Wordsworth, “Two Yorkshire Charms or Amulets: Exorcisms and Adjurations,” Yorkshire Archae-ological Journal 17 (1903): 401–4. John Sayer discovered the cruciWx near Northallerton in York-shire. After John Walter Ord transcribed the amulets and illustrated the cruciWx in 1847 (see p. 136, Wg. 3), the cruciWx was lost; the two textual amulets survived and were reproduced by Wadsworth (plate between pp. 402 and 403), when they were the property of W. Richardson of Guisborough.
Ord describes the enamel of the cruciWx as being “brilliant, white, green, red, and blue colors, inlaid like porcelain-work in the various compartments of the metal.” Though only illustrated as a line drawing, the Ingleby Arncliffe CruciWx is similar in appearance to contemporary Limoges enamel-work cruciWxes; for example, London, Albert and Victoria Museum (158.1919); Paris, Musée de Cluny (12909, 14672); and New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art (17.190.409). Enamels of Limoges, 1100–1350 (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1996), pp. 49–51, 184–87, 313–16.
88. Benvenuto Cellini, Due trattati, uno in torno alle otto principali arti dell’oreWceria, l’altro dell’arte della scultura (Milan: TipograWa di Giovanna Silvestri, 1852), p. 20: “Servivansi già alcuni dell’arte del lavorar di Wlo in ornar puntali e Wbbie per cinture, a far crocette . . . coperte da brevi per portare al collo, e simili.” In a glossary appended to C. R. Ashbee’s English translation, the word breve is deWned as “a trinket in the nature of a locket.” See The Treatises of Benvenuto Cellini on Goldsmithing and Sculpture, trans. C. R. Ashbee (London: Edward Arnold, 1888), p. 149.
89. Relatively few Western examples survive. Dorothy Miner, The History of Bookbinding, 525–1950 A.D.: An Exhibition Held at the Baltimore Museum of Art (Baltimore, Md.: The Walter Art Gallery, 1957), p. 55. The ancient roll could be protected in a papyrus or parchment cover for storage, safe handling, and travel, according to Edward Maunde Thompson, An Introduction to Greek and Latin Palaeography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912), pp. 47–48. There is a brief note on late medieval English pouches and cylindrical boxes of the sort that might have transported and stored such rolls, in G. D. Hobson, English Binding before 1500: The Sandars Lectures, 1927 (Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1929), p. 50.
90. Michelle P. Brown, Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts: A Guide to Technical Terms (Mal-ibu: The J. Paul Getty Museum in association with the British Library, 1994), p. 124; M. C. Garand,
“Livres de poche medievaux à Dijon et à Rome,” Scriptorium 25 (1971): 18–24 and plates 7–8.
People of higher social status might thus conveniently carry objects useful for amuletic and devotional purposes. In the Wfteenth century, the Throckmorton roll, measuring 29.0 × 9.5 cm, was probably carried in a purse suspended from the belt, with a “pair of beads,” like those illustrated in contemporary monu-mental brasses of laymen. This roll contained instructions for its users, probably members of a London mercantile family, to carry it on their bodies in a purse at all times (“deferatur in bursa semper”), in part as an aide-mémoire to prompt their daily complement of common prayers, signs of the cross, and other reli-gious observances.91One could conceal textual amulets in one’s clothing, which is how the Florentine monastic reformer Giovanni Gualberto (d. 1073) is said to have discovered textual amulets (based on magical incantations) on the bodies of monks in the monastery of S. Maria di Vallombrosa (“quod intra vestes situm breve latet”).92 One could sew amulets into clothing, as in the Near East, a method noted disapprovingly in the Malleus maleWcarum; or wrap them in pieces of cloth, which were then tucked into sleeves or other garment openings.93 The invention of pockets provided a new means of carrying textual amulets at the end of the Middle Ages.94Positioned almost over the heart, breast pock-ets would have been particularly well positioned for amulpock-ets of any sort. Evi-dence from seventeenth-century England gives us an idea how this may have worked. During the English Civil War, the Newcastle-upon-Tyne merchant Ambrose Barnes observed that soldiers in the New Model Army of Parliament carried small Bibles in their pockets for protection. “Many had their lives saved, by bullets hitting upon little pocket-bibles they carried about. The Cavaliers, who had but few bibles among them, laught at this, but serious Christians were affected with it.”95 Though a pocket Bible placed amuletically over the heart could also stop a bullet, King Charles II’s royalist supporters were content to
91. S.A.J. Moorat, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts on Medicine and Science in the Wellcome Historical Medical Library, 2 vols. (London: The Wellcome Historical Medical Library, 1962–73), vol. 1, p. 278. W. A. Pantin, “Instructions for a Devout and Literate Layman,” in Medieval Learn-ing and Literature: Essays Presented to Richard William Hunt, ed. J.J.G Alexander and M. T. Gib-son (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), pp. 398–422.
92. See Miracula S. Joannis Gualberti, in Patrologia latina, vol. 146, col. 870. Concerning prayer and reform at Vallombrosa, as well as early lives of Giovanni Gualberti, see Henriet, La parole et la prière, pp. 235–43.
93. Institoris and Sprenger, Malleus maleWcarum, pt. 2, qu. 2, chap. 6; Maurice Leloir, Diction-naire du costume et de ses accessoires des armes et des étoffes des origines à nos jours (Paris: Librairie Gründ, 1951), p. 322.
94. Concerning the addition of pockets to medieval clothing, see Doreen Yarwood, The Ency-clopedia of World Costume (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1978), pp. 325–26.
95. W.H.D. Longstaffe, ed., Memoirs of the Life of Mr. Ambrose Barnes, Late Merchant and Sometime Alderman of Newcastle upon Tyne, Publications of the Surtees Society, vol. 50 (Durham:
Surtees Society, 1867), p. 107. This example of amulet use is discussed in Cressy, “Books as Totems,” pp. 99, and Heszer, Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine, p. 210.
attribute the protective strategy of their opponents to superstition and zealous-ness. Another English account of a soldier carrying an amulet in his pocket elicited much the same reaction. In 1690, Protestant soldiers found a textual amulet titled A Spell. Jesus, Maria, Joseph in the pocket of a dead Irish soldier near Clonmel in County Tipperary. This textual amulet contained a vernacular version of the Heavenly Letter together with brief Latin formulas. Two Protes-tant militia ofWcers named Bally and Spencer sent the “copia vera verbatim found in ye pocket of our Creagh” to a Mr. North (London, British Library, Sloane MS 3323).96Other seventeenth-century evidence shows soldiers arming themselves with written or printed amulets based on the Heavenly Letter, and soldiers would do so as well in later centuries.97
Amulets in Groups
Enclosures permitting textual amulets to be worn on the body also facilitated keeping or carrying amulets in groups. Late medieval physical evidence, though scattered, supports the conclusion that people acquired textual amulets from different sources, transported them over considerable distances, and stored them together in collections, not unlike those of holy relics kept in cathedral trea-suries. Some general- and special-purpose textual amulets discussed in Chapters 4 and 5 were once housed together in groups of a dozen or more, though perhaps used individually. Two Wfteenth-century French conspiracy cases documented in archival records show how textual amulets circulated and were kept in groups.
The Wrst case concerns an alleged plot hatched by Master John of Athens, who was perhaps learned in forbidden magic from the East. The accused was sus-pected of using necromancy in 1406 against the antipope Benedict XIII (Pedro Martínez de Luna), a member of an Aragonese noble family. The Avignon pontiff
96. A transcription of the copia was tipped into a bound volume of Sloane manuscripts (London, British Library, Sloane MS 3323, fol. 288r–v). This version of the Heavenly Letter reads in part: “In nomine Patris, Filii et Spiritus Sancta Amen. This revelation was made by yemouth of our Lord Jesus Christ to St. Bridget, who desired to know somewhat in particuler, of our Lords Passion. . . . All people who will say devoutly 7 Paters and 7 Aves, & a creed every day for the space of 15 years in honor of our Saviors passion, shall receive these blessings whoever will carry this revelation about them alwaies performing yesame devotions, they should be free from all their enemies, neither shall they dye of a suddain death.”
97. Deonna, “À l’Escalade de 1602,” pp. 74–106, studies soldiers using such amulets (billets) in Geneva at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Given the immediacy of sudden death in armed conXict, it is hardly surprising that soldiers continued using broadside amulets well into the nine-teenth century. Carly Seyfarth discusses such amulets based on the Heavenly Letter in Aberglaube und Zauberei in der Volksmedizin Sachsen: Ein Beitrag zur Volkskunde des Königreichs Sachsen (Leipzig: Verlag von Wilhelm Heims, 1913), p. 143: “Da die Himmelsbriefe dem Träger vor allem Schutz gegen Verwundung durch Hieb, Stich und Schutz usichern, befanden sie sich in dem Jahren 1866 und 1870/71 im Tornister und auf der Brust gar mancher unserer sächsischen Soldaten.”
survived the plot and continued to claim the papacy until his death in 1423.
According to legal records, Guillerme Brionne de Saumur, a French cleric and secretary to the jurist Louis Guirani at Avignon, was found to be in possession of a small storage chest (coffretus), covered in green fabric and kept closed by a cord under seal. Saumur had recently transported the chest from Avignon to Nice, over 150 kilometres to the southeast. The chest and its contents were seized at Nice and carefully inventoried to provide legal evidence of the alleged plot. The inventory shows that the chest contained eight paper sheets (cedulae papireal) of prayers; four other paper sheets containing magic texts, characteres, and unintelligible words directed against Benedict XIII; Wve paper or parchment booklets of seven to fourteen folios (perhaps small folding amulets with the text divided into cells) containing magic texts and prayers; a small parchment roll said to contain the Gospel of John (probably the apotropaic opening verses), accompanied by unintelligible characteres; and other scripta with magic names and symbols.98
The second conspiracy case involves Jean Gillemer, an itinerant book illumi-nator who plied his trade from Poitiers to Paris and Brussels. On his journeys he painted and decorated books of hours, psalters, and other devotional books for noble patrons. One of these was Charles d’Anjou, who was the count of Maine, duke of Guyenne, and leader of the League of the Public Weal against King Louis XI of France (1461–83). In 1471 Charles Tristan l’Hermite, a trusted royal adviser and investigator, had Jean Gillemer arrested and imprisoned in Tours on suspicion of assisting Charles of France (1446–72), the king’s younger brother, by delivering conWdential letters and oral messages from him to other noble opponents of the king. The book illuminator was suspected because he was found in possession a bundle of letter-like folded paper and parchment sheets. But most of these turned out to be textual amulets in Latin and French (brevets or billets), acquired from clerics and laymen in his years of work-related traveling. According to legal testimony given in early 1472, Gillemer had a parch-ment amulet against fevers; a toothache amulet dedicated to St. Apollania, pur-chased at a tavern in the town of Croutelle, near Poitiers, and worn around the neck; a love amulet written on a small piece of virgin parchment with cabalistic signs, given to him by a man from Navarre living in Bordeaux; and a paper sheet with the painted image of the Measure of Christ, accompanied by amuletic text in Latin and French.
In addition, Gillemer had acquired a long prayer roll on paper in Lyon from a man named Jean Potier. The text and crosses offered protection against demons,
98. Pierre Luc, “Un complot contre le pape Benoît XIII (1406–1407),” Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire de l’École Française de Rome 55 (1938): 374–402.
sudden death, and childbirth difWculties. Attached to the end of this prayer roll were Wve small parchment amulets copied in Poitiers from a book belonging to a Franciscan named Jean Boussin, who also had access to an astrological work.
In Paris, Gillemer had received from a man named Guillonet a sheet of prayers, including psalms, for daily recitation in front of a cruciWx. Also, a certain Jean Adveu had translated other prayers into French for Gillemer, who had only a degree of vernacular literacy, from a Latin prayer book in the library of Saint-Hilaire de Poitiers. Gillemer’s interrogation ended suddenly and inconclusively, perhaps when Charles of France’s unexpected death eased royal fears about the immediate threat of conspiracy. Most of these textual amulets were in the com-mon tradition, though a few must have made Charles Tristan l’Hermite suspect that Gillemer had been conjuring demonic spirits or had otherwise engaged in unacceptable forms of ritual magic.99As with Guillerme Brionne de Saumur, the conspiracy case of Jean Gillemer shows that groups of textual amulets could be gathered from geographically far-Xung clerical and lay sources at little if any cost, and then kept bundled together for any eventuality.
While most textual amulets could be housed with like items in storage sacks, chests, and other containers, just as books and documents were stored together in religious houses and private residences, out-of-sight storage made practical sense for textual amulets that were based on demonic magic and thus forbidden fare. For example, Fernando de Rojas (ca. 1470–1541), in his celebrated Span-ish play La Celestina (1499), describes a paper amulet (escripta) containing powerful names and signs written in bat’s blood. Before removal, the amulet had been stored in an attic chest in the home of Celestina, a bawdy and cunning old woman whom some people considered a witch. Celestina needed the textual amulet for an elaborate conjuration ceremony addressed to “Pluto, Prince of Fallen Angels,” in order to control the actions of a chaste young noblewoman named Melibea, and to arouse in her heart a savage and passionate love for a man named Calisto. When not being used, the textual amulet was stored out of sight with Celestina’s other magic paraphernalia, probably to avoid detection and to preserve its potency.100
99. A. Lecoy de la Marche, “Interrogatoire d’un enlumineur par Tristan l’Ermite,” Revue de l’art chrétien, 4th series, 35 (1892): 396–408; Bozóky, Charmes et prières apotropaïques, pp. 77–78.
100. Fernando de Rojas, Tragicomedia de Calixto y Melibea: Libro también llamado La Celes-tina, ed. M. Criado de Val and G. D. Trotter, 2nd edition (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investiga-ciones CientíWcas, 1965), p. 78 (act 3): “Yo, Celestina, tu mas conoscida clientula, te conjuro por la virtud y fuerça destas hermejas letras; por la sangre de aquella noturna aue con que estan escrip-tas; por la grauedad de aquestos nombres y signos que en este papel se contienen.” See Antonio Garrosa Resina, Magia y superstición en la literatura castellana medieval, Biblioteca de Castilla y León, Serie Literatura, no. 1 (Valladolid: Secretario de Publicaciones, Universidad de Valladolid, 1987), pp. 550–74.
Posting to Protect Home and Property
Some textual amulets were posted to protect household and property rather than being worn on the body or stored in kits, groups, or collections. We know that early Christians wrote nomina sacra, crosses, and other apotropaic inscrip-tions on doors and lintels of private residences as house blessings.101But extant medieval evidence of apotropaic inscriptions written or inscribed on the interior and exterior walls of public structures and private dwellings is relatively uncom-mon until the fourteenth and Wfteenth centuries.102One may wonder to what extent textual amulets were openly posted in order to protect and heal, in the way that Ethiopians hang magic rolls on the walls of their rooms even today to guard against evil spirits.103Brief handwritten prayers could be displayed devo-tionally on the walls of private residences, perhaps legitimized by the display of ex voto tablets in churches. Displaying Christian text was probably not unrelated to displaying religious images.104The domestic display of small handwritten or
101. Vakaloudi, “Apotropaic Amulets of the First Byzantine Period,” p. 222.
102. For example, carved stone inscriptions with the magic word ananizapta were added to the Felkirchnertor (1368) and Hardertor (1373) in the Bavarian city of Ingolstadt as protection against the plague. Karl Werner, “Ananizapta: Eine geheimnisvolle Inschrift des Mittelalters,” Sammelblatt des Historischen Vereins Ingolstadt 105 (1996): 59–90; Karl Scheuerer, “Ananizapta: Eine abwehrende Inschrift an ehemaligen Ingolstädter Stadttoren,” at www.ingolstadt.de/stadtmuseum/scheuerer/ing/
ananiz01.htm. Less permanent than the stone inscriptions on the city towers of Ingolstadt were inscrip-tions hurriedly written after the plague struck. Samuel Pepys’s diary reports an interesting example of apotropaic symbols and words being displayed on the exterior of buildings. On 7 June 1665, along Drury Lane in London, Pepys saw “two or three houses marked with a red cross and the inscription
‘Lord have mercy upon us’ writ there.” In accordance with city regulations against the plague, the foot-high cross and accompanying inscription identiWed the blighted residences. The marks were perhaps intended to serve some therapeutic function for the plague victims forced to remain inside.
By quarantining the houses, the marks provided a measure of protection (as well as a warning) to neighbors. Samuel Pepys, The Diary of Samuel Pepys, transcribed and edited by Robert Latham and William Matthews (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983), vol. 6, p. 120.
103. “In the province of Tigray,” according to Jacques Mercier, “invalids unroll their scrolls and hang them opposite their beds, where they can clearly see the images and text.” Jacques Mercier, Art that Heals: The Image as Medicine in Ethiopia (New York: Prestel, The Museum for African Art, 1997), p. 47. Figure 38 illustrates how a woman in Aksum prays before a magic scroll hung on an interior wall.
104. Some churchmen disapproved of displaying devotional images. For example, St. Anthony of Padua had recalled St. Jerome’s gloss on Ezekiel 8:12–15 concerning the seventy Jewish elders and condemned contemporary devotion to “pictures on the wall” as an abominable exercise in pride and hypocrisy. St. Anthony of Padua, S. Antonii Patavini: Sermones dominicales et festivi, ed. Beniamino Costa, Leonardo Frasson, and Giovanni M. Luisetto (Padua: Edizioni Messaggero, 1979), vol. 2, pp. 361–62 (Dominica XX post Pentecosten, sec. 7): “Picturae in pariete sunt phantasmata super-biae, gulae et luxuriae in mente, vel simulatio hypocrisis in religione, vel amor carnalis parentum, et forte Wliorum et Wliarum, in religioso. Unde in reptilibus, quae clamant: Vae! vae! Wlii et nepotuli designantur: in abominatione animalium, immunditia fornicationum; in idolis depictis, parentes et amici. Ecce quales picturas quidam nostri temporis religiosi adorant.”
printed items became more common in the Wfteenth century, and such prayers conceivably had an apotropaic function.105It was common in German folk tra-dition to afWx a printed Zauberzettel of one sort or another on homes and
printed items became more common in the Wfteenth century, and such prayers conceivably had an apotropaic function.105It was common in German folk tra-dition to afWx a printed Zauberzettel of one sort or another on homes and