Des prestidigitateurs contre les saints: la bataille magique entre Saint-Pierre et Simon le Mage.

This article analyzes the figure of Simon Magus as a magician, trying to define what is meant in this case by “magician”: a person endowed with real powers or a simple charlatan? The legitimacy itself of this distinction is discussed: the figure of the wizard and that of the magicianare shared apart, and never completely, only starting from the entrance of prestige in theaters, in the 19th century. The ancients relied much more on the suspension of disbelief. The mixture between “wizard” and “magician” already exists in the Bible. In the magical duel between Peter and Simon a problem of theodicy arises: from whom do the possible powers of the magician come? Tradition has given various answers: from no one (thesis of the magician) or from a force of evil (thesis of the black wizard), up to the identification of Simon with the antichrist and his association with the emperor Nero.