Annotation VIII

”The Magi, seeing the star,” etc. — Matthew 2:2

Whether the magic art is evil.

Origen, in the fifth treatise on Matthew — expounding the history of the Magi, as Polychronius reports [in his commentary] on Ezekiel — commended the magic art in the highest degree. And Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria, the perpetual enemy of Origen’s name, censuring this more sharply than was fair, in the second Paschal book inveighs against Origen thus: “Let Origen be confounded, who — among the other kinds of outrages that he fabricates, lending patronage to the magic arts as well — spoke in his Treatises in these words: ‘The magic art does not seem to me to be the name of anything that subsists; but, even if it does exist, it is not [a thing] of evil operation, nor such as can be held in contempt.’ By saying this he shows himself, at all events, a partisan of Elymas the magician — who withstood the Apostles — and of Jannes and Mambres, who resisted Moses by the magic arts, etc.” — But since Origen so often, in his writings, detests the sorceries of the magicians — and especially in the 23rd homily on Numbers, where in a long discourse from the divine testimonies he lays low the magi, the sorcerers, and every kind of enchanter — there is no ground why we should suspect such things of Origen.

And, lest anyone be moved by the aforesaid testimonies of Polychronius and Theophilus, it must be known that Magic is twofold: the one — everywhere condemned by Origen — which, entered into by pacts with demons, works either truly or in appearance; the other — praised by Origen — which pertains to the practice of natural philosophy, teaching that admirable things are wrought by the mutual application of natural powers acting and being acted upon one another. This division Jerome embraces in the first book of [his] commentaries on Daniel, on those words of chapter 2, “The king commanded that the soothsayers, and the magi, and the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans be summoned” — where, noting why Daniel distinguished the magi from the sorcerers, soothsayers, and Chaldeans, he writes thus: “Those whom we have rendered ‘soothsayers,’ the rest [have rendered] epaoidous — that is, ‘enchanters’ — seem to me to be those who accomplish the matter by words; the magi, those who philosophize about particular things; the sorcerers [malefici], those who use blood and victims and often touch the bodies of the dead. Moreover, by ‘Chaldeans’ I think the genethliaci are meant, whom common usage calls ‘mathematicians’ [astrologers]. But common custom takes ‘magi’ for ‘sorcerers,’ though they are held otherwise among their own nation, in that they are the philosophers of the Chaldeans; and to the science of this art

kings too, and the princes of that same nation, devote everything. Whence also, at the nativity of the Lord and Savior, they were the first to understand his birth; and coming into holy Bethlehem, they adored the child, the star showing him from above.” The same [Jerome], in the second book against Jovinian, says: “Eubulus, who wrote the history of Mithras in many volumes, relates that among the Persians there are three kinds of magi, of whom the first — who are the most learned and most eloquent — take, besides meal and vegetables, nothing further as food.”

This [says] Jerome: before whom Justin, philosopher and martyr, had approved the same distinction in the book of Questions [put forward by the gentile nations], questions 24 and 26 — in which, discussing what difference there is between the miracles of the Egyptian magicians and [those] of Moses, and between the miracles of Christ and [those] of Apollonius of Tyana, the philosopher or magician, he speaks thus: “Those miracles which were performed by Moses were divine works performed — namely, through a change of the nature of the water, which was carried over into the nature of that which was being effected. But those which the magicians performed were works of demons performed, who brought it about that the eyes of those who beheld [it] seemed to see a serpent, blood, and frogs — which did not [really] exist. And Apollonius indeed, a man endowed with knowledge of natural faculties, and of the harmonies and contrary affections which are in them, out of that art produced his operations — not by divine authority. And so in all [his] accomplishments he needed the taking up of a suitable material; by whose help he completed what was being brought about. But our Savior Christ, performing marvelous and unwonted works by his own divine authority and right, nowhere required matter, but [only] a command.”