The Livre des Esperitz survives in a Cambridge miscellany that also contains astrology, medicine, and divination. Its sequence of named spirits is an important comparison for later catalogues, yet the physical book does not present a stand-alone, uniformly dated “ancient grimoire.”
- Period
- Sixteenth-century section in a composite manuscript
- Form
- Middle French catalogue and adjacent conjurations
- Anchor witness
- Trinity College Cambridge MS O.8.29, part VI
A short work inside a mixed book
Trinity College’s James catalogue identifies O.8.29 as a composite manuscript containing material in several languages and centuries. Its sixth part begins with the French Livre des Esperitz, followed by a Livre des conjurations that is mostly in Latin. The catalogue also notes circular diagrams at the end of that section. This adjacency matters: a modern extract of the spirit list alone can hide the fact that the copyist placed descriptions beside a distinct text of conjurations. The shelfmark is the stable point of reference, while dates assigned to individual parts should be kept separate from the catalogue’s broad date range for the whole volume.
Names travel imperfectly
The French text announces chiefs and subordinate spirits with offices, ranks, appearances, and numbers of legions. Some names resemble those in Weyer and the Ars Goetia, but spelling and order change. Jean-Patrice Boudet’s comparison treats the Livre and Weyer as late witnesses to an older textual tradition rather than identical editions of one book. His dating of the relevant hand is more cautious than a blanket “medieval” label sometimes attached online. A useful comparison records a name as written in each witness and then asks whether its office and neighboring entries support an identification. Similar sounding names alone can mislead, especially across French, Latin, and English transmission.
Worked comparison: Poymon, Paymon, and Paimon
The same recognizable name demonstrates how much can move between catalogues. The Livre des Esperitz places Poymon fifth; Weyer prints Paymon as entry twenty-two; the later Ars Goetia makes Paimon its ninth spirit. Spelling alone suggests continuity, but the changed positions show that no witness simply preserves one fixed numerical order. The comparison should therefore follow the whole record: royal rank, attributed knowledge, subordinate spirits, and neighboring entries, as well as the name. The physical layout adds another difference in purpose. In O.8.29 the French catalogue is followed by a separately titled Livre des conjurations, mostly in Latin, and then circular figures. Weyer instead embeds his Latin catalogue in a polemic about demonic deception, while the Goetia supplies a later ceremonial setting and seals. Poymon–Paymon–Paimon is thus a useful chain of reception, not proof that the three books are editions of one complete ritual. The Cambridge manuscript’s boundary between catalogue and conjuration also prevents a common mistake: directions found in the neighboring text cannot automatically be assigned to every spirit entry in the list.