Honorius of Thebes is the figure to whom the Sworn Book of Honorius, a Latin ritual magic text known from manuscripts of the fourteenth century onward, attributes itself. The book presents him as the son of Euclid and as the compiler chosen by an assembly of magicians to preserve their art against condemnation by the church, and later works including the Grimoire of Pope Honorius traded on the name as well. No evidence places him outside the texts that name him, no independent record of such a person survives, and the attribution is best read as a device that gave an anonymous compilation an author and a lineage. The atlas records him because the attribution itself is a historical fact with a traceable history, not because the person behind it can be established.
Facts
Publications
Notable PublicationSourced to the subject's own accountCredited author of the Sworn Book of Honorius (Liber Juratus Honorii), a Latin ritual magic grimoire; the earliest certain record of the text is a 1347 trial record from Mende in France, and its oldest surviving manuscript, Sloane MS 3854, dates to the fourteenth century, with a second early copy, Sloane MS 313, once owned by John Dee 1 Notable PublicationThe Grimoire of Pope Honorius (Le Grimoire du Pape Honorius), a separate later printed grimoire trading on the same attributed name, first printed in the eighteenth century. 2 Attestation
HistoricityLegendary: known from narrative tradition, not the historical record 1 Sourced to the subject's own accountNo source substantiates the Sworn Book's own claim that Honorius was the son of Euclid, master of the Thebans, chosen by an assembly of magicians to condense their combined knowledge into one book. Honorius exists only as the text's claimed author. Origins
Place of OriginSourced to the subject's own accountThebes, Greece, according to the medieval grimoire tradition that credits the Sworn Book to a magician of that name; no historical author by this name is otherwise attested, and the ascription is generally treated as legendary or pseudonymous rather than a documented birthplace. 3 Learn More
The Book That Supplied Its Own Author
The Sworn Book opens with a story about itself. The church and its rulers, moved by demons, have resolved to destroy the magical art and everyone who practises it; the masters of the art therefore assemble and choose one of their number to compile the whole of it into a single volume so that it will survive them. That compiler is Honorius, son of Euclid, master of Thebes. The oath in the title binds whoever receives the book: it may be copied only a limited number of times, given only to a person of proven character, and buried with its owner if no fit successor is found.
What the book actually contains is not quite what its frame suggests. The central operation aims at the vision of God, and it is approached through a long preparation of fasting, confession, mass and psalmody before any conjuration is attempted at all; the spirits it treats afterwards are handled inside that same devotional apparatus. It is a work of Christian ritual practice which expects the church to condemn it and says so on its first page. The manuscripts that carry it date from the fourteenth century onward. The tension between the piety of the contents and the defiance of the prologue is the most interesting thing in it, and it is the reason the book is read as evidence about medieval religion rather than only about medieval magic.
A Name Worth Reusing
Nothing places Honorius of Thebes anywhere outside the texts that name him. There is no notice in any chronicle, no document, no independent mention of such a person. The atlas keeps the entry because the attribution is a historical object with a traceable career, not because the man behind it can be established.
Two claims were being made by the name. Thebes tied the work to Egypt, which medieval Europe took to be the source of the oldest and deepest learning, and making the author a son of Euclid tied it to geometry, the discipline that in the same period stood for knowledge which compels assent. An anonymous compilation carrying that pedigree is no longer anonymous and no longer new. The device was standard in this literature, which claims Solomon, Moses, Adam and Hermes with the same confidence and on the same evidence.
The name then had a second life. From the seventeenth century a quite different book circulated as the Grimoire of Pope Honorius, framed as though issued by a pope and trading on confusion with Honorius III, and it became one of the most widely printed magical texts of the following two centuries. The two works are not the same and are not by the same hand. Their shared name is a clean illustration of how authority was manufactured here, by attaching a text to a figure in no position to object.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
The Sworn Book that carries his name is a text of ritual magic in the Solomonic line.
Thebes, Cities This source names Thebes directly: "Honorius of Thebes is the figure to whom the Sworn Book of Honorius, a Latin ritual magic text known from manuscripts of the fourteenth century onward, attributes itself."
Related To
The Sworn Book of Honorius presents its author as the son of Euclid, which is a claim of pedigree rather than of parentage.
Both are attribution figures rather than established persons: a text acquires an ancient author and, with him, a lineage.
Sources
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The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.