Where are Scotland's Medieval Magical Manuscripts?

Understanding the difficulties in tracing Scotland's esoteric past.

Book Burnings in the Scottish Reformation (image unknown).

One of the best ways we can engage with the ideas of history is through an assessment of manuscripts, books and the marginalia contained within them. However, tracing works with provenance to Medieval Scotland is not without its problems. For a country with a rich intellectual and religious history, the relative scarcity of surviving Medieval libraries can seem surprising. Where are the manuscripts that monks once copied by candlelight? What happened to the collections that must have filled the scriptoria of abbeys and the early universities? Where are Scotland's Manuscripts that discuss esoteric subjects such as ritual magic?

The answer is not a simple story. Scotland's Medieval manuscripts and books were not preserved in neat institutional libraries that endured unchanged through the centuries. Instead, they were caught up in waves of religious upheaval, war, neglect, climate issues, and dispersal. Yet these manuscripts have not disappeared entirely. Fragments survive in archives and collections, both in Scotland and beyond, offering glimpses into a vibrant intellectual culture that once flourished. However, what is missing from many of these surviving fragments are works that were circulating in England and Europe that are magical or esoteric in nature.

Folio 5r of the Book of Deer dated to the10th century. (Cambridge University Library, MS. li.6.32).

Did Scotland have Medieval Magical Manuscripts?

While Scotland is not as famously associated with Medieval magic as some parts of continental Europe, it was nonetheless part of a wider intellectual world in which astrology, ritual practices, and the boundaries between science, religion, and magic were often blurred. To date, no explicitly magical works can be traced in Scotland prior to the start of the 16th century.

However, surviving Scottish literature from the period such as John Barber's The Brus (c.1375) and Scottish chronicles such as the Scotichronicon (1441-1445) do provide us with evidence that at the very least Scotland had access to works which contain esoteric themes.

Opening folio of Scotichronicon (Cambridge Corpus Christi College, MS 171A fol. 1r).

The Problematic Nature of Scotland's Primary Sources

A survey of Medieval libraries in Scotland is challenging for a number of reasons. Manuscripts and books were lost in Scotland due to the following reasons:

Climate and Weather

Scotland is often cold, wet, and damp which is not conductive to the preservation of manuscripts and books which were made via organic materials such as parchment, vellum and later paper. These environments also attracted pests, including rodents, book lice, and silverfish which would feed on the components of the manuscripts and books.

Accidental Fires and Arson

Medieval homes and buildings often had open fires with no chimneys which posed an obvious fire risk. Given the winters in Scotland are dark and long, candles and oil lamps would be relied on for lighting. These hazards were exacerbated by dense, unplanned layouts which allowed fires to spread quickly and often between buildings.

Destruction and looting through War

Scotland's wars with England played an important role. From the late 13th century to the mid-16th century, repeated campaigns created a pattern of destruction, displacement, and neglect that help explain why so few Medieval Scottish libraries survive intact.

• During the Wars of Scottish Independence (1296-1357), English strategy often focused on religious houses and administrative centres which were the places where charters, chronicles, and manuscripts were stored. There was particular danger for border monasteries which continued beyond 1357. Examples include:

  • The destruction of Dunfermline Abbey 1303.

  • Burning of documents at Kelso, 1305.

  • Destructive fires at Melrose, c.1300-1307.

  • Sacking and looting of Holyrood abbey, 1322.

  • Attacks on Jedburgh Abbey in 1410, 1416, 1465, and 1523.

    
    

Furthermore, the 1385 campaign of Richard II (r.1377-1399) against Scotland saw the monasteries of Melrose, Newbattle, and Dryburgh endure sustained destructive attacks.

These acts of destruction and looting were further exacerbated in the period often referred to as the "Rough Wooing". As Elizabeth A. Bonner explains ‘the Rough Wooing is the term commonly used to describe the Anglo-Scottish Wars from 1543 to 1550,’ which was intended by King Henry VIII (1491-1547) and Edward Seymour, Protector Somerset (d.1552) ‘to force the Scots to agree to the marriage of Mary, their infant Queen, to Prince Edward, Henry’s only legitimate son and heir and Somerset’s nephew’ (1997, 36). England’s advances into Scotland in this period once again had a detrimental impact on the survival of Scotland’s manuscripts and books, especially in the borders and the central belt.

• Holyrood Abbey and Palace were burned in 1544 destroying archival materials within the abbey.

• Newbattle abbey was burned.

• Dundee was ruined with the tolbooth, St Mary's Church and the steeple burned along with the texts and records of the town.

• The Franciscan and Dominican Friaries in Edinburgh were targeted in 1544.

• St Andrews also faced the destruction of the town and some ecclesiastic records.

The tactic of burning libraries is a well-known feature of war dating back to ancient times. The destruction of books and records is a method of "cultural cleansing" which is intended to destroy the collective memory and intellectual foundation of a society.

The Scottish Reformation

The second wave of destruction in the 16th century to Scotland's libraries came at the hands of the Protestant Reformers. While the official date for the introduction of the Protestant Reformation in Scotland is 1560, acts of destruction that occurred as early as 1547 had an impact on Scotland's records and book holdings.

John Spottiswood (1565-1639) lamented the wholesale loss of academic material at the hands of the Reformers noting 'what monuments of Mathematics all massacred together, seeing every book with a cross was condemned for Popery, with circles, for conjuring' (Gordon, 1868, 5). Scottish Reformation concerns around witchcraft, sorcery, and necromancy can be seen in the passing of the Scottish Witchcraft Act in 1563. Furthermore, the burning of books associated with magic or ‘curious arts’ is symbolic of the book burning at Ephesus by Christians converted by Paul and somewhat rooted in scripture (Acts 19:18-19). Spottiswood's comment supports the contention that works perceived to be in some way magical were a target for Scottish reformers and shows that in their haste, other important academic works were lost in the process. This could explain why there are currently no surviving manuscripts of Medieval magic in Scotland.

Integration of the Royal Library.

The surviving royal library lists collated by John Higgit mainly related to Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1587). The surviving lists give details of Mary's libraries at Holyrood House, dated 1569, and at Edinburgh Castle, dated 1578, both lists were compiled after her abdication in 1567. Though some lists like Mary’s survive, our understanding of the manuscripts and books collected in the royal households by the Stewart monarchy is extremely limited, in part because the Scottish royal libraries were likely amalgamated with English royal libraries after 1603. This is frustrating especially as we know from letters that James IV (1473-1513) owned a number of alchemical works. The Old Royal Library of Great Britain was acquired by the newly founded British Museum in 1757. T.A. Birrell notes that it ‘included printed books from the reign of Henry VII [1457-1509] to George II [1683-1760] (and of course manuscripts dating back to a much earlier period)’ (1994, 404).

The earliest Scottish king identified by the work of Birrell on rare Scottish books included in the library is James VI of Scotland, I of England (1566-1625). It is possible that older Scottish manuscripts and books were included in the library acquired by the new British Museum. However, the Old Royal Library suffered some losses due to the civil war between 1642 and 1652. In addition, the library suffered further losses at the hands of the early librarians in charge of the collection. In order to raise funds, The British Museum embarked on a sale of duplicate manuscripts and books, a practice which occurred throughout the early years of the museum any time a new acquisition was made.

In 1753, the British Museum acquired the library of the physician Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753) who amassed a collection comprising of more than 71,000 items. The British Library now holds 4,100 manuscripts and books that formed part of Sloane's collection and many of these works are related to topics such as natural philosophy, medicine, alchemy, astrology, astronomy, and magic. Because of the policy of avoiding duplications, it is likely that any copies of these works found in the Old Royal Library would have been sold at auction.

Future Research

While the loss of Scotland's Medieval libraries has been extensive, all hope is not lost. However, it will take a long time, as well as a team of researchers, to try and recover the fragments of what remains.

The removal of works from Scotland for protection during the Reformation to the surviving Catholic Scots Colleges abroad may uncover esoteric works with provenance to Scotland. Furthermore, the places in which Scots travelled and established communities abroad may yield future finds related to the field of Scottish esotericism. Another line of future research is the auction lists from the late eighteenth to the nineteenth century, which saw renewed interest in esoteric texts dues to the Occult revival. They may also provide further information regarding the fate of such works and begin a treasure hunt for finding their current locations.

While there are and remain problems with identifying Scottish primary source material, further research could yield discoveries that would assist in developing a deeper understanding of Scotland's interactions with esoteric practices or magical works in general.

Sources

• Birrell, T.A. “Some Rare Scottish Books in the Old Royal Library”, in A.A. MacDonald, Michael Lynch, and Ian B. Cowan (eds.), The Renaissance in Scotland: Studies in Literature, Religion, History and Culture Offered to John Durkan (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 404-416.

• Bonner, Elizabeth A. ‘The Genesis of Henry VIII’s “Rough Wooing” of the Scots’, NH 33 (1997), 36-53.

• Delbourgo, James. Collecting the World: Hans Sloane and the Origins of the British Museum (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2017).

• Gordon, James F. K.  Monasticon:An account (based on Spottiswoode’s) of all the abbeys, priories, collegiate churches and hospitals in Scotland at the Reformation, vol.1 (Glasgow: John Tweed, 1868).

• Hartlen, Chelsea. “Catching Fire: Arson, Rough Justice and Gender in Scotland, 1493-1542)” in Sara Bulter and K.J. Kesselring (eds.), Crossing Borders: Boundaries and Margins in Medieval and Early Modern Britain (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 153-173.

• Higgit, John. Scottish Libraries (London: The British Library, 2006).

• Kestemont, Mike and Karsdorp, Folgert. “Estimating the Loss of Medieval Literature with an Unseen Species Model from Eco-diversity”, CHR 2020: Workshop of Computational Humanities Research (2020), 44-55.

• Macdonald, Alastair J. “The Kingdom of Scotland at War, 1332-1488”, in Edward M. Spiers, Jeremy A. Crang and Matthew J. Strickland (eds.), A Military History of Scotland (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 158-181.

• McInally, Tom. The Sixth Scottish University: The Scots Colleges abroad, 1575 to 1799 (Leiden: Brill, 2012).

• McRoberts, David. "Material Destruction caused by the Scottish Reformation", Innes Review 10 (1959), 126-172.

• Paterson, Raymond Campbell. For the Lion: A History of the Scottish Wars of Independence (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, 1996).