Ars Notoria (The Notory Art of Solomon)

The Ars notoria is a medieval Latin ritual text that promises rapid and supernatural mastery of learning. It takes its name from the notae, elaborate diagrams for each branch of knowledge that the practitioner contemplates while reciting prayers. The art claims Solomonic origin, presented as wisdom revealed to Solomon by an angel and later glossed by Apollonius. The practitioner follows a schedule of fasting, confession and prayer over weeks keyed to the phases of the moon, reciting orations containing strings of Greek, Hebrew and Chaldaean-sounding names, in order to obtain memory, eloquence and understanding and then knowledge of the trivium, quadrivium, philosophy and theology. The oldest manuscripts date to the early thirteenth century, and the text was widely copied, glossed and revised. Theologians, including Thomas Aquinas, condemned it, and the fourteenth-century monk John of Morigny, who had practised it, wrote a reformed devotional alternative. The late, abridged form printed with Agrippa’s collected works was translated into English by Robert Turner in 1657 without the figures, and this version later became the fifth book of the Lemegeton. Modern research has transformed understanding of the text: Julien Véronèse’s critical edition distinguishes its successive versions, and scholars such as Claire Fanger and Frank Klaassen place it within the wider culture of medieval angelic and contemplative ritual.

What it contains

• Prologue on Solomon’s revelation and the authority of the art
• General rules: fasting, confession and the lunar timetable
• Prayers for memory, eloquence and understanding
• Orations and notae for grammar, logic and rhetoric
• Orations for the quadrivium, philosophy and theology
• Glosses and later expansions