Which Honorius? Thebes, Autun, the Pope, and Modern Editions

A shared personal name does not prove common authorship. Three “Honorius” labels belong to different books and different evidentiary problems.

Sworn Book attribution: Honorius of Thebes
Different author: Honorius of Autun / Augustodunensis
Different grimoire: Gremoire du pape Honorius

Honorius of Thebes is a role inside the book

The prologue calls its chosen editor Honorius, son of Euclid and master of Thebes. Those details do more than supply a byline. “Son of Euclid” places him in an imagined lineage of learned geometry, “master of Thebes” gives him a prestigious ancient school, and his election by assembled magicians makes him the authorized survivor of a threatened discipline. No independent biography confirms such a teacher. The name operates as part of the book’s argument for its own antiquity and authority.

The first-person voice then says that “I, Honorius” arranged the works of Solomon. This does not identify a scribe in any surviving manuscript. It creates a chain in which Solomon stands behind seven magical volumes, the angel Hocroel advises Honorius, and Honorius distills the material for a sworn fellowship. The historical compiler can therefore remain hidden while the text speaks through three stronger guarantors: a biblical king, an angel, and a master from a classical city.

The angel Hocroel turns compilation into revelation

According to the prologue, Honorius works with the counsel of the lunar angel Hocroel and takes the “flower” of seven volumes while leaving their husks behind. The metaphor explains why the book claims to be both inherited and newly made. Honorius does not present himself as inventing an art; he selects its concentrated essence. That claim also excuses missing detail. A compressed book can promise ninety-two or ninety-three chapters while fully developing only a much smaller group of operations.

Hocroel’s name varies between witnesses, a small sign that the authoritative persona and its angel were transmitted as written strings rather than remembered historical figures. The 1347 proceedings against Olivier Pépin retell the same episode but call the angel Attohel and assign the prologue to a master Pradellus. The recognizable plot survives while its names change. That combination is evidence for circulation of a story and a work, not a stable author biography.

Four titles describe four claims about one tradition

The closing paragraph calls the work the Book of the Life of the Rational Soul, the Sacred Book, the Book of Angels, and the Sworn Book. These are not four independent grimoires. Each title isolates a different claim made by the same textual tradition. “Sworn” points to the prologue’s oath limiting copies and controlling succession. “Sacred” is explained through the hundred divine names said to form the book’s matter. “Angels” describes the celestial and planetary hierarchies that fill its middle. “Life of the Rational Soul” frames the promised vision of God as the soul’s highest end.

The titles also expose the work’s uneven construction. A reader entering through “Book of Angels” might expect an angel catalogue; a reader entering through “Life of the Rational Soul” might expect devotional ascent. Both are present, followed by aerial and terrestrial spirit operations that fit neither label comfortably. The title cluster attempts to hold these parts together by presenting knowledge, vision, and command as consequences of one divinely authorized art.

The seams may preserve more than one layer

Boudet proposes, cautiously, that the difficult whole may join two bodies of material: a manual of spirit magic that could preserve something of an older Liber sacratus tradition, and a theurgical treatise centered on the beatific vision, perhaps shaped in the climate of the early fourteenth century. The suggestion explains why the devotional regimen and the later catalogues differ so sharply in scale, tone, and ritual equipment. It also explains why an older title mentioned by William of Auvergne cannot automatically be identified with the exact surviving work.

The manuscript does not mark a clean join, so the layered model remains a historical hypothesis rather than a recoverable table of authors. Still, internal contrasts support it. The vision operation borrows extensively from the Ars Notoria and insists on confession, fasting, prayer, and purification. The aerial and terrestrial sections introduce swords, rods, whistles, directional kings, and coercive circles. The fifth treatise tries to reconcile those modes by explaining which tools belong to which class of spirit. Its explanations look like editorial stitching because the problem they solve was created by the book’s own mixed contents.

Honorius of Autun belongs to another corpus

Honorius Augustodunensis, commonly called Honorius of Autun, was the name attached to a theological and encyclopedic corpus that includes the Elucidarium. The British Library’s Harley MS 3041 record preserves that work under his name. Its teaching dialogue, Christian subject matter, and Latin manuscript setting may resemble the Sworn Book at the broadest level, but there is no shared prologue, seal operation, angel hierarchy, or manuscript descent connecting the two.

Confusion grows because “Honorius” was common enough to sound plausible and because both works explain invisible realities through Christian language. Content separates them. The Elucidarium organizes instruction about doctrine and the created order; the Liber iuratus moves from a persecuted magical fellowship to a consecrated seal, a vision regimen, and conjurations. A name match cannot overcome that structural difference.

The papal grimoire is a later print tradition

The Grimoire of Pope Honorius is later again. Boudet traces its first edition to 1629, and the Bibliothèque nationale de France records the printed Pope Honorius tradition represented by a 1670 title. Its pseudo-papal frame assigns spirit-commanding authority to a pope, commonly Honorius III. That premise differs from the medieval book’s Honorius of Thebes, who is elected by magicians and advised by Hocroel. Neither persona supplies historical authorship for the other.

The later grimoire borrows the prestige of the name while reducing the long medieval architecture. The Sworn Book builds its authority through a manuscript oath, a seventy-two-day discipline, the Sigillum Dei, almost ninety prayers, and a descent through celestial, aerial, and terrestrial orders. The printed papal tradition packages conjuration under an imagined ecclesiastical license. Shared branding masks different ritual programs, media, dates, and readerships.

Modern editions answer different textual questions

Gösta Hedegård’s 2002 edition reconstructs a critical Latin text from the manuscript witnesses. The English in Royal MS 17 A XLII is something else: a partial sixteenth-century translation of the first treatise and beginning of the second, surrounded by additions in a larger ritual compilation. Joseph H. Peterson’s comparative presentation makes that English witness accessible alongside Latin variants, but the readable English should not be mistaken for a complete medieval translation or for the wording of every Latin branch.

A worked example appears in the prologue’s numbers. The main Latin reading says eighty-nine masters and ninety-three chapters, while Sloane 313 can reduce the first figure to eight and gives ninety-two for the second. The surviving plan itself accounts for either ninety-two or ninety-three depending on how headings are counted, and the executed book never develops most of them separately. An edition must decide which reading to print and then expose the variants; the inconsistency belongs to the transmission rather than to a modern translator’s arithmetic.

Royal presents a different editorial problem. Its compilation includes Renaissance material connected with Agrippa’s discussion of the seventy-twofold divine name, which helps date the later dossier but cannot date the fourteenth-century Latin core. The early witnesses treat the seal’s great name as a sequence of seventy-two letters; later organization encourages readers to understand a system of seventy-two names. Reading those layers together is useful only when their dates remain visible. Otherwise a Renaissance explanation quietly becomes a false medieval original.

Source records

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