Hosted by: Kislak Center and SIMS
In modern popular imagination, magic in pre- and early modern periods tends to be equated with sensationalized and exaggerated depictions of wizards, witches, and malevolent figures casting spells, ensnaring innocents, and practicing the dark arts. In reality, magical practices were woven throughout premodern science, ritual, and daily life. Elements of the transformative arts of alchemy and the mantic arts of astral science, divination based on animal signs, and the occult properties of natural substances are embedded in the foundations of modern science and scientific practice. Even as magic and the occult were ostensibly at odds with theistic religions, they infused all aspects of daily life, from the realms of rulers to the household.
Co-organized with Professor Elly R. Truitt, the Janice and Julian Bers Professor of the History of Science at the University of Pennsylvania, this year’s topic interrogates the multi-angled intersections of magic, science, religion, and ritual in the pre- and early modern world, especially as manifested in manuscript books, documents, and other inscribed surfaces variously expressed in words, images, diagrams, and annotations. Magical activity leaves many traces of its vibrant existence in innumerable contexts. What do the manuscript sources reveal about the nature of magic in the pre- and early modern period? How do these sources help to define how “magic” was understood in the premodern world? From treatises on the movements of celestial bodies and alchemical practices to manuals for chiromancy and prognostication as well as recipe books, almanacs, and other texts and sources that supported daily life, we will explore the testimony of handwritten evidence to the ways in which the distinctions between science, magic, and religion were made, blurred, and interpreted for their readers and users.
The program will feature a keynote lecture given by Travis Zadeh, Professor of Religious Studies, Yale University, on Thursday, November 12th, at the Free Library of Philadelphia. Other participants include:
Program details will be available September 1, 2026.
This event is organized by the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies in partnership with the Free Library of Philadelphia.
This annual symposium brings together scholars to present research related to the study of manuscript books and documents produced before the age of printing and to discuss the role of digital technologies in advancing manuscript research.
Featured image: Sigullum dei (Seal of God) diagram, from a collection of astrological and astronomical diagrams gathered in 1410 from 3 earlier manuscripts (University of Pennsylvania Libraries, Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection, LJS 226, fol. 4v.)