Did Honorius of Thebes exist, and if so who was he?

Why it is open. The Sworn Book of Honorius names Honorius of Thebes as the magician who compiled it at the direction of an assembly of masters. No document outside the Liber Juratus tradition itself mentions such a person, no Theban connection is corroborated, and the framing assembly of eighty-nine masters reads as a legitimating device rather than a record. The name may belong to a real compiler, to a deliberate pseudonym, or to a confusion with one of the popes named Honorius, to whom a separate grimoire was later ascribed.

What would resolve it. A datable manuscript, charter, university record or inventory naming a magician of that name independently of the Sworn Book, or a codicological study of the surviving manuscript families that placed the attribution earlier or later than the text it introduces.

Field. Medieval Latin palaeography and codicology, with the history of learned magic.