Chapter 2 Matter as a Mirror: Marsilio Ficino and Renaissance ...

Matter as a Mirror 103
ever tarnish the images it once contained, neither would old age destroy them
nor onslaught trouble them.” 172
In an inversion that was characteristic of European magical theory
and practice, the mirror of providence found sinister uses. Powerful sorcerers
were believed to have the capacity to trap the souls of the deceased (preferably
the souls of recently executed criminals) in crystal bowls. Sometimes,
these magical tools were even sold to be used by other persons, presumably
less potent manipulators of images. 173 Although imprisoned into a mirror
(like a soul into a body), the evil spirit (packaged in a bowl and turned into
a commodity) nevertheless continued to lead a life of its own. 174 In his Disquisitiones
magicae (1599–1600) the Spanish Jesuit Martin del Rio recounts
the story of a Bordeaux lawyer who believed that he kept a spirit in a bottle,
an indication that even educated people could adhere to these superstitious
beliefs. 175 Other sceptical views about the demonic potentials of mirrors had
been held at least since Roger Bacon’s De multiplicatione specierum, where
the author says: “the opinion of the vulgar [masses], who hold that forms or
species are impressed in the mirror and that vision by reflection is completed
172 Cosmographia, cited after Dronke (1974) 123: “Erat igitur speculum providentiae,
cuius magna admodum circunferentia, intermina latitudo, extensa superficies, prospicus
introspectus, ut quas diu contineret, imagines non rubigo deterret, non deleret antiquitas,
non turbaret incursus.”
173 For folk beliefs that demons actually resided in the magical instruments, see Roper
(1994) 186: “Witches accused of using crystal balls for divination in late sixteenth-century
Augsburg defended themselves by disclaiming any involvement in the production of the
magical instrument, but they presented themselves rather like operators of pre-fabricated
demons […]. As far as possible, crystal ball-gazers sought to distance themselves from the
powerful, hypothetical sorcerers who had set up the balls; but their reluctance to claim
power to conjure and their refusal to speculate on the mechanisms ultimately served to
strengthen the belief that crystal magic did, in the last analysis, rest on the conjuration of
very powerful spirits, by very powerful sorcerers.” See also, 133.
174 On transparent things as “friends of light” and hence objects akin to mirrors see
Ficino, In Theoprastum de somniis chapt. 14, OO 1807: “diaphanum, id est transspiccum,
& radiis undique pervium, & amicum, quasi facilis hospes […].” On the function of the
diaphane as universal medium of communication, even in opaque objects, see Ficino, In
Theoprastum de somniis chapt. 17, OO 1809.
175 Disquisitiones magicae IV, 2 q. 6 sec. 4: reprinted in The Occult in Early Modern
Europe 42.