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Spiritual
and Demonic Magic From Ficino to Campanella
D. P. Walker
2000 | 5.75 x 8.75 inches
History - European
Paperback: $26.00 SH
ISBN: 978-0-271-02045-7 Magic in History
First
published by the Warburg Institute in 1958, this book is considered
a landmark in Renaissance studies. Whereas most scholars had tended
to view magic as a marginal subject, Walker showed that magic was
one of the most typical creations of the late fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries.
Walker takes readers through the magical concerns of some of the
greatest thinkers of the Renaissance, from Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni
Pico della Mirandola, and Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples to Jean Bodin,
Francis Bacon, and Tommaso Campanella. Ultimately he demonstrates
that magic was interconnected with religion, music, and medicine,
all of which were central to the Renaissance notion of spiritus.
Remarkable for its clarity of writing, this book is still considered
essential reading for students seeking to understand the assumptions,
beliefs, and convictions that informed the thinking of the Renaissance.
This edition features a new introduction by Brian Copenhaver, one
of our leading experts on the place of magic in intellectual history.
D.
P. Walker (1914-1985) was trained at Oxford and spent most of
his career at the Warburg Institute of the University of London. His
other books are The Decline of Hell (Warburg, 1964), The
Ancient Theology (Duckworth, 1972), and Unclean Spirits: Possession
and Exorcism in France and England in the Late Sixteenth and Early
Seventeenth Centuries (Scolar, 1981).
