Medieval 'Ars Notoria' Promised Instant Knowledge—and Risked Demons
Artificial Intelligence: Ars Notoria and the Promise of Instant Knowledge
Long before Neo's instant kung fu in The Matrix, medieval scholars sought a shortcut to learning. The Ars notoria, a magical manuscript from the 13th century, promised to fast-track university knowledge through diagrams, prayers, and mysterious words. Despite condemnation by Thomas Aquinas and other theologians, 56 copies survive. This essay explores its rituals, its appeal, and the terrifying experiences of users like Brother John, who found the practice demonic.
The Ars notoria operates in ways that cannot be simply understood by human reason.
- peri-cl
> "The alien words, names, and characters are explained as coming from ancient languages such as Greek, Hebrew, and “Chaldean”"
Why is "Chaldean" in scare-quotes? Ah, TIL:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_Aramaic#Chaldean_misn... ("Chaldean language (misnomer)")
(I think I might(?) have seen the same confusion in the wild. Voltaire's preface to Zadig (1747), the fantasy satire set in ancient Babylon, purports to translate a found manuscript written in Chaldean).
- titanomachy
I don’t know much about medieval universities, but maybe this thing was popular because the subjects are sort of vague and subjective? Like maybe a powerful placebo could make you feel you’ve improved at “eloquence” or “dialect”, but it certainly wouldn’t make you able to compute wavefunctions for quantum mechanics. It’s pretty hard to imagine people trying something like this to learn the material for a present-day physics or CS degree, for example. You’d pretty much immediately realize it’s not working.
- galaxyLogic
This made me think: Could it be that the purpose of the Voynich Manuscript was similar, not to carry real knowledge but to make people possessing it believe they would be magically infused with some higher order esoteric knowledge?
- aleksiy123
This book must have been a direct inspiration to some Warhammer 40k lore.
It fits there perfectly.
- themgt
It's an interesting piece.
The great attraction of the Ars notoria for John was its promise of quick access to advanced scholarly knowledge. He recounts his continuing wish to study, and how he was lent a copy of a book of necromancy by “a certain cleric”. He copied much of it and wanted more... For John, the Ars notoria was dangerous not in some abstract way, but very directly. He confesses that it struck him at first as beautiful and holy, and seemed to offer miraculous gifts rather than demonic temptations. It became apparent, however, that the book was utterly deceptive, a work of the Devil, a “sick pleasure” that was actually fatally poisonous to the soul, not only to the body.
John records that the Ars notoria was especially attractive because he could not afford all the books needed for his studies, nor the many lectures. He seems to have abandoned his official course, wishing to take advantage of the promise of knowledge of all the sciences, and devoted himself to working with the Ars. ... Further troubling visions ensued, in which arrogant figures demanded worship — something that was clearly against true religion. Gradually it became clear to John that the book hid invocations to demons within what appeared to be beautiful prayers. And yet, like any addict, John found it almost impossible to give up the Ars notoria completely; it was only when the visions became directly life-threatening that the Virgin, with St John the Evangelist as her intermediary, appeared and […]