2. The Role of the Church

At the turn of the 16th century Agrippa of Nettesheim was a young man of fourteen about to immerse himself into a life weathered by more storms than many of us could imagine today. For decades already these storms had been gathering forces over the continent. Now they were about to unfold on what we have come to know as Europe today, overthrowing and changing the very foundations of society as people had known it and never questioned it for centuries.

To highlight some of the epicentres of these storms from the middle of 15th to the early 16th century, let’s take a look at a few historical dates:

1231: Gregory IX begins Medieval Inquisition

1434: Cosimo de'Medici (d.1464) becomes ruler of Florence

1438: Under the patron-ship of Cosimo de Medici Gemistus Pletho establishes the Platonic Academy in Florence

1442: Johann Gutenberg’s invention of the letter press begins to revolutionise the distribution of knowledge

1451: Pico della Mirandola publishes his major work De animae immortalitate

1452: Birth of Leonardo da Vinci (d.1519)

1453: Fall of Constantinople to the Turks

1478: Sixtus IV authorises the Spanish Inquisition

1484: Marsilio Ficino’s collected translations of Platon’s work are published

1486: Marsilio Ficino finishes his translation of Plotin’s Enneads

1486: Pico della Mirandola publishes his 900 theses Conclusiones philosophicae, cabalasticae et theologicae and offeres to pay the expenses of any scholars who came to Rome to debate them publicly

1487: Pope Innocent VIII proclaims thirteen of the 900 theses as heretical

1492: Columbus discovers the New World

1492: Jews and Moslems are expelled from Spain

1498: Girolamo Savonarola is publicly burned on the pyre in Florence

1500 Birth of Charles V of Hapsburg, who became Lord of the Netherlands in 1515, King of Spain in 1516, and was elected Holy Roman Emperor (German-speaking region) in 1519. He ruled most of Europe until his abdication in 1556.

1509: Henry VIII ascends the throne of England. He rules until 1547.

1515: Leo X institutes pre-press censorship

1517: Martin Luther nails his 95 theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg. Beginning of the Protestant Reformation.

Now, what do these dates really tell us? Well, what I am taking away from much smarter people than me who explored the intellectual climate at the turn to the 16th century is this: For centuries the power base in Europe’s mainland had been firmly established around the sacrosanct authority of the Catholic Church. In a world that knew no national states, but only rising and faltering lineages of rulers, it was the blessing of the Catholic Church that justified or prevented the claim to power. Yes, that authority had been under threat many times. During the 15th century Europe had gone through a phase of revolt with up to four competing popes at once. However, even this political game of chess had not questioned the general power-base of the Church - but only who held the key to it and how it was gained. Whoever would be able to establish ‘his pope’ would still emerge as God’s blessed king. Because the sceptre of the highest ruler needed blessing by the highest institution on God’s earth. These were the rules of the checkerboard that was perceived to be the eternal centre and surface of a flat world, Europe.

What these dates show us are flashlights of how for the first time the Catholic Church ran risk of loosing its institutional power-base - as well as the countermeasures it willingly took to defend it at all costs. The foundation of the Spanish Inquisition as well as the expulsion of Jews and Muslims from Spain were not measures the Catholic Church took from a position of strength - but to re-establish such strength where it had almost been lost. Most concerning, at its heart this threat did not stem from a famous king, ruler or even a competing religion - but from the free-spirited community of scholars and emerging scientists that had begun to blend and exchange vast amounts of uncontrollable knowledge across cultural boundaries which used to demarcate communities for centuries. This battle wasn’t won by defending or extending physical boundaries, but by defending the way people thought about the world and their position in it. The threat was not an enemy in robe or uniform, but an intangible chaotic swarm of free-thoughts, of wildly flowering imagination of what might be possible after all as well as the first groping attempts to test these limits through literature, science and art…

While this mental war began to rage and pyres across Europe lit up, completely unexpected another, very physical one broke out: a New World, wide open and unexplored was discovered far out in the West. From one day to the next the checkerboard expanded - and quickly boundaries of power and the rules of the game needed to be equally extended. An entire army of missionaries needed to be built from ground up. They had a world to conquer - to baptise whole tribes and kingdoms of indigenous souls or to burn them to the ground.

And then, just when you think it cannot get worse you are betrayed by your own kind! A crazy, Jew-hating professor of theology in Germany nails his ninety-five heretic theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg - preaching that one of the most critical sources of Church revenue, the selling of indulgences is actually against the spirit of Christ? No longer should it be subordination to the church’s authority and the ongoing payment of indulgences that buys your path out of hell, but the genuineness of your faith in Christ alone? Worse still: that crazy professor dares to hold the mass in German, even translates the Bible into German, and allows the plebs to understand the word of God that had been held in secrecy for centuries. Confining the hearts of uneducated farmers through self-righteous morals, suffering statues and colourful pictures is a pretty different basis of power than needing to explain your authority based upon a one-thousand-five-hundred years old collection of cryptic stories.

To make a long story short: by the beginning of the 16th century, when a New World dawned and Renaissance was catching the hearts of scholars across Europe, the Catholic Church was facing its worst crisis ever. In order to defend it they were more than happy to demonise, torture and burn more than 60,000 people across Europe in less than two-hundred years to follow. What they needed more than anything was a bold, fresh enemy that re-united their scared and defenceless flocks under the only available protection - their own.

It’s against this colourful, raging and cruel background that we shall take a look at magic at the turn of the 16th century. Two major forces were gearing up to reclaim ownership of this ancient and highly ambiguous term. On the one hand it was the Catholic Church - for all the motives described above. There simply was no better projection screen than the collective fears and uniting menace of an army of witches and magicians killing kings and children, ruining crops and weather, poisoning health and morals of entire peoples. If the war the Church fought was not about physical territory but mental realms, than no weapon was sharper than the indistinct fear of a constant thread to your health, safety and wellbeing by your actual neighbour. Whatever ‘magic’ ever really had been, it was clear what it needed to become in order to do the job for the Church. And so the biggest, most bloody PR campaign the world had ever seen was about to unfold.

Trying to oppose the Church’s interpretation ex cathedra of what magic was and how it threatened everyone’s lives, was amongst the most foolish things one could have done. And yet, it was during precisely the same time that a select group of courageous scholars did exactly that. All of them held positions visible to the public eye - or at least the inquisition - and all of them over the course of their short lives needed to manoeuvre smartly between the protection of worldly potentates, the persecution of a raging Church and their genuine desire to renew the intellectual climate of their time.