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Liber XXVIII · Solomonic Magic

Liber XXVIII · Solomonic Magic · Chapter VII: Other Grimoires

The Sworn Book of Honorius: Liber Iuratus and the Vision of God

The Sworn Book of Honorius (Liber iuratus Honorii): its legend of a council of magicians, the Seal of God, the beatific vision, its dating and its influence.

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The Liber iuratus Honorii, or Sworn Book of Honorius, is a Latin handbook of ritual magic attributed to a legendary master, Honorius son of Euclid of Thebes, and usually dated to the thirteenth or early fourteenth century. Its highest aim is not wealth or power but the beatific vision, the sight of God in this life, sought through confession, fasting, long prayers and the drawing of an elaborate Seal of God; further sections deal with angels and spirits of the air and earth. It is one of the most important and best-studied texts of medieval learned magic.

The Legend of Honorius and the Council of Magicians§

The Sworn Book opens with a frame story that explains both its title and its secrecy. The pope and the cardinals, it says, misled by envy and by the devil, resolved to root out the art of magic, to burn its books and to put its practitioners to death. The magicians answered that their art was holy and that the prelates were themselves deceived. A general council of masters, drawn from Naples, Athens, Toledo and Thebes, met and chose Honorius, son of Euclid, a master of Thebes, to gather the essentials of their teaching into a single volume of ninety-three chapters, so that the art could survive even if every other book were burned.

The council bound the book with an oath, which gives the work its name. It was to be entrusted only to a man of proven faith who had been tested for a long period, generally given as a year; no more than three copies were to be made; and if its owner found no worthy successor, the book was to be buried with him or otherwise kept from unworthy hands. These conditions are a literary device rather than a historical record, but they reveal how the authors saw themselves: as a persecuted elite of devout initiates, not as heretics or demon-worshippers.

No historical Honorius of Thebes is known. The name is a pseudepigraphic authority of the kind that gave medieval magic its claimed antiquity, much as the Key of Solomon borrowed the name of the biblical king. The Sworn Book should also not be confused with the much later French Grimoire of Pope Honorius, a printed work of the eighteenth century that attaches the name of a pope to a quite different collection of conjurations (Grimoire of Pope Honorius).

Structure and Contents of the Liber Iuratus§

The book is a ritual compendium rather than a treatise. In its Latin form it opens with the prologue, then describes how to make the Sigillum Dei, the Seal of God, before setting out the long programme of purification and prayer that prepares the operator for the vision of God. Later parts deal with knowledge of the angels of the heavens and the planets, the spirits of the air and the spirits of the earth, with their names, offices, seasons and suffumigations, and with a series of practical operations. The full outline is summarised in the catalogue entry for The Sworn Book of Honorius.

Much of the text consists of prayers. Many are long Latin orations strung with divine names in Hebrew, Greek and pseudo-Hebrew forms, among them the name of God in seventy-two letters known as the Shem ha-Mephorash. A substantial number of these prayers are taken from the Ars notoria, the "notory art" attributed to Solomon that promised knowledge of the liberal arts through prayer and the contemplation of figures. The Sworn Book adapts that material to a new and more ambitious end, and its dependence on the Ars notoria is one of the strongest clues to its date.

The book also reflects contemporary thinking about religious difference. It states that only a Christian can attain the vision of God, while allowing that Jews and pagans can perform some of its other operations. Katelyn Mesler and other scholars have studied how the text handles Jewish divine names and traditions, which it presents as part of a shared sacred inheritance while subordinating them to Christian salvation.

The Sigillum Dei: The Seal of God§

The seal at the heart of the Sworn Book is a complex circular diagram. Within an outer ring of letters and crosses that spell a divine name, it contains a heptagon and interlaced heptagrams inscribed with the names of angels associated with the seven planets, enclosing a pentagram and a central cross, all accompanied by further names of God. The text specifies the names to be written and the materials and times of its consecration, some of them animal-derived in the manner of medieval ritual magic, evidence of how its authors thought sacred power could be concentrated in an object.

The seal had a long afterlife. Versions of it appear in late medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, and John Dee owned a copy of the Liber iuratus, now British Library Sloane MS 313. When Dee and Edward Kelley began their angelic conversations in the 1580s, the angels instructed Dee to make a new seal, which he called the Sigillum Dei Aemeth; it is clearly a revision of the Honorian design. Dee's wax seals survive in the British Museum. The story of that later development belongs to Enochian magic and John Dee, and the seal itself has its own catalogue entry (Sigillum Dei Aemeth).

The Operation for the Beatific Vision§

The most striking feature of the Sworn Book is its goal. Medieval theology held that the blessed would see God face to face after death; the Sworn Book proposes that a purified Christian may receive that vision, or a foretaste of it, in this life, together with a view of the heavenly hierarchies, the pains of hell and purgatory, and the place prepared for his own soul.

To reach it, the operator undertakes a long regime that the text describes in considerable detail: sacramental confession, attendance at Mass, fasting and abstinence, chastity, alms and the daily recitation of extensive prayers over a period of weeks, culminating in a final night of vigil in which the vision is expected to come in sleep or ecstasy. The process is presented as a devotional discipline, closer to the language of the liturgy and of contemplative mysticism than to the conjurations of the necromancers of the Middle Ages.

Robert Mathiesen, who published the first detailed study of this operation in English, emphasised its closeness to monastic devotion. Claire Fanger and others have placed it beside works that sought angelic illumination through prayer, such as the visionary book of the Benedictine monk John of Morigny, itself a reworking of the Ars notoria. Such texts show that the boundary between magic and devotion was contested rather than fixed. The wider tradition of seeking contact with angels is surveyed in angel magic: a complete guide.

Angels, Spirits and Practical Operations§

The later parts of the book descend from the vision of God to the governance of the created world. They describe the angels who rule the heavens and the seven planets, the spirits of the air arranged by the four directions and the days of the week, and spirits of the earth. Each class is given names, offices and the appropriate times and suffumigations for addressing it. The practical operations attributed to these spirits include acquiring knowledge, discovering hidden things and other aims familiar from medieval ritual magic.

These sections connect the Sworn Book to the broader body of late medieval Solomonic magic, in which angels and aerial spirits are compelled by divine names within a sacred framework. Much of the planetary material resembles that later printed in the Heptameron attributed to Peter of Abano (planetary angels in Agrippa and the Heptameron). The book insists that its power comes from God, not from the spirits; its clerical critics saw the matter very differently.

Dating, Manuscripts and Modern Scholarship§

The date of the Sworn Book is disputed. Its earliest surviving Latin manuscripts, among them British Library Sloane MS 3854 and Sloane MS 313, date from the fourteenth century, and the Catalan magician Berengar Ganell quoted it extensively in his Summa sacre magice, completed in 1346. That gives a firm latest date. Mathiesen argued for an origin in the thirteenth century. Jean-Patrice Boudet, Jan Veenstra and others have preferred the early fourteenth century, reading the prologue's story of a pope determined to destroy magic as a response to the campaign of Pope John XXII, who in the 1320s ordered investigations of sorcery and issued a bull against those who made pacts with demons. Both positions remain current.

The text also circulated in other forms. A sixteenth-century English version survives in British Library Royal MS 17 A XLII, and the book was known to Johannes Trithemius, who listed it in his catalogue of magic books in 1508 (see Antipalus maleficiorum). Gösta Hedegård produced a critical edition of the Latin text in 2002, and Joseph H. Peterson a full edition and translation in 2016, making the Liber iuratus a key source for how educated medieval Christians could regard ritual magic as a path to God.

Frequently asked questions§

What is the Sworn Book of Honorius?§

It is a Latin grimoire, the Liber iuratus Honorii, attributed to a legendary Honorius of Thebes and usually dated to the thirteenth or early fourteenth century. It teaches a long devotional and ritual process aimed at seeing God, along with methods for dealing with angels and spirits.

Why is it called the Sworn Book?§

According to its prologue, the council of magicians that commissioned the book bound it with an oath. It could be copied only a limited number of times and handed on only to tested and trustworthy disciples, which gave it the name "sworn" book.

Is the Sworn Book the same as the Grimoire of Pope Honorius?§

No. The Grimoire of Pope Honorius is a separate French work printed in the eighteenth century and falsely attributed to a pope. The medieval Sworn Book names a legendary magician, Honorius son of Euclid, and has very different contents and aims.

How did the Sworn Book influence John Dee?§

Dee owned a manuscript of the work, now Sloane MS 313 in the British Library. The Seal of God described in it served as the model for the Sigillum Dei Aemeth that Dee made in the 1580s according to the instructions of his angelic conversations.

Sources and further reading§