Cecco d’Ascoli and Antonio da Montolmo

Cecco d’Ascoli (†1327) and Antonio da Montolmo (fl. 1360– after 1394) can be put side by side in many ways, despite the chronological gap between them. Apart from the fact that they were acting in the same area, Northern and Central Italy, and in the same academic milieu, and that the same manuscript (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 7337) keeps some of their magical works together, they display a very similar kind of magic, based on an astrological–demonic cosmology. Their diverging destinies – Cecco d’Ascoli was burnt by the Inquisition in 1327, whereas Antonio da Montolmo, as far as we know, carried on teaching at university – are an interesting clue for grasping the main intellectual and cultural change that was going on at the end of fourteenth century and at the beginning of the fifteenth century, at least in the Northern and Central Italy: a kind of “release of the magical discourse” as well as the birth of the “author-magician”. ¹ Previously, magical texts were ascribed to legendary authorities, whether ancient such as Hermes or Solomon or more recent such as Albert the Great or Arnald of Villanova, and thus promoted these figures as magicians after their death.