nubem To come then to what is most essential in this Chapter and to what lies in our power to deliver this eminent person out of the Quagmire of the Magicians as we have already drawn him out of that of the Alchymists This were soon done if we would but appeal to the judgement of Anthony de Sienes and Father Justinian who writ his Life or to take witnesses disengag'd from all interest or passion Trithemius and J. Picus of Mirandula who absolutely clear him from this calumny Adding withal that when it is said that Albertus Magnus was addicted to Magick it must be understood of the Natural for fear lest the false opinion of the contrary might give many occasion to imagine that it were unlawful for us to do what he hath done But since all these Authorities conclude nothing if some answer be not made to the proofs ordinarily produc'd to blast his innocence not to mention that even from his youth he had such a particular devotion to the B. Virgin that she wrought such an alteration in his mind that of an unrefin'd and unpolish'd one she made it capable of comprehending all things we are to consider that these proofs have no other ground than that of two Books falsly publish'd under his name and that Androides which hath given occasion to thousands of Fables and impertinencies frequent in Authors For the two Books Franciscus Picus and Delrio agree in this that it were an extraordinary injury to think this holy person Author of that de Mirabilibus and in these words clear him of it Alberto Magno tributus Liber de Mirabilibus vanitate et superstitione repertus est sed magno Doctori partus supposititius To which F. Picus addes that it is falsly attributed to him as many others were as among the rest that de secretis Mulierum since Albertus is not so much as nam'd at the beginning of it as he who hath writ a Comment upon it would perswade us besides that it is easily perceav'd that the Author of it who ever he was liv'd some time after him because he often cites his Authority So that all the quarrel now lies against that intituled the Mirrour of Astrology where is treated of the approved and forbidden Authors that have written of that Art This is condemn'd by Gerson and Agrippa as extreamly superstitious and by F. Picus and divers others because the Author of it maintains a very erroneous opinion in favour of Magical Books which with submission to better advice he holds should be carefully preserv'd because the time then drew near that for certain reasons not specify'd men would have occasion to read and make use of them To clear Albertus from all suspicion of Magick upon the account of this Book I can produce no better testimony than that of J. Picus a person more fit to judge of this difficulty than any other who in his first Book against Astrologers maintains that the Treatise De Libris licitis et illicitis was infallibly writ by R. Bacon whose custome it was to cite and produce such Authors in all his Books which cannot be observ'd in Albertus Magnus Besides the said R. Bacon was so strangely addicted to judicial Astrology that Henry d'Assia William of Paris and Nicholas Oresmus all very eminent Doctors thought themselves oblig'd to inveigh against his works and all the vanities of Astrologers But be it imagin'd this Book was writ by Albertus I see not why his affirming that Magical Books should be preserv'd by Inquisitors and persons of like Authority should make so much noise since that about 100 years since it was the advice of Revelin not to burn those of the Jewes Trithemins is of the same opinion Vasquez saies peremptorily that Magical Books are necessary and Magicians permitted by God for the greater conviction of Libertines and Athiests who by this means might be drawn to acknowledge there are other substances than what we judge of by the finger and the eye Quo admisso saies he facilius in eam sententiam adducantur ut numen aliquod fateantur et magis ab Atheismo deterreantur quo avidiùs Magicis artibus student quod nisi inter Haereticos Deus permisisset poenè omnes in Atheismo versarentur To which concurs also Lactantius when he saies that Democritus Epicurus ct Dicaearchus would not have so confidently deny'd the immortality of the Soul Mago aliquo praesente qui sciret certis carminibus cieri ab inferis animas et adesse et praebere se humanis oculis videndas et loqui et futurâ— prâ—dicere If after all this Albertus be charg'd with any thing of Magick it must be on some other pretence then that of these two books sâ—nce it is clear from what hath been said that he never had any hand in them All therefore we have now to do is to refute their errour who are perswaded that brasen heads made under certain Constellations may give answers and be as it were guides and Counsellors upon all occasions to those that had them in their possession Among these is one Yeâ—es who affirms that Henry de Villeine made such a one at Madrid broken to pieces afterward by the order of John 2. King of Castile The same thing is affirm'd by Bartholomew Sibillus and the Author of the Image of the world of Virgil by William of Malmsbury of Sylvester by John Gower of Robert of Lincoln by the common people of England of Roger Bacon and by Tostatus Bishop of Avilla George of Venice Delrio Sibillus Raguâ—eus Delancre and others too many to mention of Albertus Magnus who as the most expert had made an entire man of the same metal and had spent 30 years without any interruption in forming him under several Aspects and Constellations For example he made the eyes according to the said Tostatus in his Commentaries upon Exodus when the Sun was in a Sign of the Zodiack correspondent to that part casting them out of diverse Metals mixt together and mark'd with the Characters of the same Signs and Planets and their several and necessary Aspects The same method he observ'd in the Head Neck Shoulders Thighs and Leggs all which were fashioned at several times and being put and fastened together in the form of a Man had the faculty to reveale to the said Albertus the solutions of all his principal difficulties To which they add that nothing be lost of the story of the Statue that it was batter'd to pieces by St. Thomas meerely because he could not endure its excesse of prating But to give a more rational account of this Androides of Albertus as also of all these miraculous heads I conceive the original of this Fable may well be deduc'd from the Teraph of the Hebrews by which as Mr. Selden affirms many are of opinion that we must understand what is said in Genesis concerning Labaâ—'s Gods and
make this Apologie if there be no other charge against them than that of the Books they have written on this Subject since it is possible they made them without any contract expressed or understood simple or publike as we have shewn before Nay to take away all controversie it is a pure calumny maliciously advanced an opinion ab olutely erroneous and rash to think to maintain or prove that any one of them ever made or troubled himself with the composure of any Book treating of Geotick or unlawfull Magick or of any Species or difference thereof And this in the first place may be confirm'd by the Testimony of him who is accounted the Prince and Ring-leader of the Magicians who very well understood the chears and suprises of all these Books vamp'd and never set up with false Titles and father'd upon Zoroastes Enoch Trismegistus Abraham Solomon Apuleius Aquinas Albertus magnus and severall other great persons To this adde the Suffrage of Vuierus and all those who have written with most judgment upon this subject grounded probably upon the same reason that made Picus Mirandula give the like Judgment of some such Books of Judiciary Astrology which as he saies are falsify'd by certain impostors who quoniam quae produntur ab iis rationibus confirmari non possunt sive ipsi illa vera credunt sive credi volunt ab aliis libros hujusmodi fabularum viris clarissimis et antiquissimis inscribunt et fidem errori suo de fictis Authoribus aucupantur The same remarke we may make on all the other kinds of Quacksalving especially that of Alchymists who think they have not done their duty and cheated as they should if after they have made a shift to find the explication of all their Chimera's in Genesis the Apocalypse the Hieroglyphicks the Odyssey the Metamorphôses nay even in Epitaphs Sepulchres and Tombes they should not send their Books into the world under the names of Mary Mose's Sister Trismegistus Democritus Aristotle Synesius Avicenna Albertus magnus and Aquinas As if all these Learned men and great Authors had had no other employment all their lives then blowing stirring of fires or making of Circles Characters and Invocations and that the barbarisme the extravagances the childishnesse want of order the lownesse errour and Ignorance of all these Books were not sufficient arguments to rescue from so black a calumny such transcendent Soules and Intelligences of Litterature Omnes coelicolas omnes supera alta tenentes And not only that but with the same labour discover unto us the muddy and pestilent source the Styx and Tartarus whence proceed all these little Monsters these Apparitions these Bastards these abortive fruits which indeed is no other then the temerity of some poor reptile Spirits qui sui quaestûs causa fictas suscitant sententias fathering them upon the first comes into their mind never minding any reason choise consideration or respect Hence it comes that Chicus affirmes he had seen a Book written by Cham concerning Magick and another made by Solomon de umbris Idaearum that John of Salisbury makes mention of an Art of Dreams vented under thename of Daniel that the two Picus's aknowledge not for legitimate the treatises of Necromancy attributed to Saint Hierome Aquinas and Plato and that the Abbot Trithemius not without reason laughs at all that is father'd upon Albertus Magnus and divers others For what reason or ground is there to believe that Hippocrates was Author of the Book of Lunar Astrologie Plato of that of the herbes and the Cow Aristotle of those of the Apple of Vegetables of the properties of Elements and the Secrets of Alexander Galen of that of Enchantments Ovid of that of the Old Woman and the Loves of Pamphilus Seneca of the little Book of Vertues and the Epistles of St. Paul and that all the beâ—t Authors spent their time so trivially upon trifling Books of no Value or consequence whereof we have so little assurance of the true Authors that we are not certain to whom we ought to attribute a many we afford places to in our Libâ—aryes For to passe by the works of Orpheus Trismegistus Berosus and Manethon all which are abâ—olutely feigned some Apocryphall peeces of holy writ doubtful Treatises of Hippocrates Galen those question'd by Erasmus at the impression of the Fathers the Pamplets of Geâ—sâ—n Fenestella Pythagoras and Cato and all that lye under suspicion among Humanists is it not strange that Francis Picus successor to the Learning as well as Principality of his Uncle the great Picus the Phaenix of his Age should take so much paines to prove that it is altogether uncertain whether Aristotle be Author of any one Book of all those that are found in the Catalogue of his Works And yet he is therein seconded by Nizolius and the businesse so strictly discuss'd by Patricius that after he had discovered a miraculous industry in the scrutiny of the truth of that proposition he concludes at last that of all the Books of that great Genius of nature there are but four of little bulk and lesse consequence come to us as his without the least doubt or controversy that is That of he Mechanicks and three others he writ against Zeno Goroâ—as and Xenophanes On the other side Ammonius in his Commentaries upon the Praedicaments affirms that there were in the Library of Alexandria forty Books of Analyticks all under the name of Aristotle though he had made but four whereof the two first are answerable to the nine cited by Diogenes Laertius But this if we credit Galen is to be attributed to the emulation that was between the Kings of Pergamus and Aegypt in rewarding those who brought them the Books of any good Author especially Aristotle for the greater ornament of their Libraries it having never happened before that the Titles of Ancient Books had been falsifyed But in this point we shold have been more large had not Patricius taken the paines before us or that it had been necessary to demonstrate how unjust it is and beside all appearance of reason that some under their names whose prodigious Learning rais'd them to greatest reputation have pester'd the world with an infinite number of impertinent fragments disorder'd collections fabulous Treatises fruitlesse writings and Books shuffell'd together without reason method or judgment Quos ipse Non siani esse hominis non sanus juret Orestes CHAP. VII Of all the other Causes which may give any occasion of suspicion thereof THough the number of those who have endeavoured to discover explain to us the nature condition of Magick within these two hundred years is almost infinite yet me thinks the first that undertook it have done it with no small distraction as not seeing well and the greatest part of the more Modern have endeavoured to faciliate the disquisition by the use of those Glasses which make Ants seeme as great as a
genitiva venust as But as to the rest of his actions what is not buried in the ruines of Time is come to us darkened with such clouds of fables and lies that Gulielmus Neubrigensis and Polydor d' Urbin do with reason laugh at this Godfrey of Monmouth who hath transplanted some of those of Merlin's Romance into his History and hath made a collection of certain Prophecies as falsly attributed to him as to that other Merlin sirnam'd the Savage or Caledonian whom Ranulphus and Trevisa in Vigner and Balaeus would distinguish from the former Nor are their conjectures without some ground who would maintain that there was but one Merlin under these two names but in severall times and successively Ambrose and then the Caledonian since they were both Contemporaries that they liv'd under the same Kings and excell'd in the same Science and that according to the vulgar errour they both writ certain short Prophecies and predictions Upon which when I find the Commentaries of a large Volume of Alanus a man not ignorant in his age I am forced to acknowledge with Cicero that Nihil tam absurdè dici potest quod non dicatur ab aliquo Philosophorum For I cannot think any thing at a greater distance with possibility than the accident on which Merlin took occasion to publish his excellent Prophecies which was this King Vortigern was advised by the Magicians to build a strong Tower in some part of his Realm where he might live securely not fearing the Saxons whom he had brought out of Germany Coming to build they had hardly laid the foundations but the earth in one night swallows up all and leaves not so much as the tracks of any Edifice Upon that the Magicians perswaded him that to fasten the stones well they should be sprinckled with the blood of a child born without a father such as Merlin after a long search happened to be Being accordingly brought to the King he first disputed with his Magicians and told them that under the foundation of that Tower there was a great Lake and under that Lake two great and terrible Dragons one red signifying the people of England or Britain the other white representing the Saxons These Dragons were no sooner disburthen'd of the earth that lay upon them but they begin a furious combat whence Merlin takes occasion to bewail the condition of England in his Prophecies But for my part I cannot imagine there is any thing equally fabulous with this story unlesse a man will squander away so much leisure as to look into this Godfrey of Monmouth's book to observe the subtle invention like that of Amphitruo in Plautus whereby Merlin made Utherpendragon assume the person of Gorlois and by that means enjoy the fair Ingerna as also that of the Dance of the Gyants that is great stones and rocks which he transported out of Ireland into England to erect a Trophy neer the City of Ambrosiopolis But that one Gervase Chancellour to the Emperour Otho the Fourth as Theodoric a Niem relates hath so glossed upon it as not to be ashamed to affirm that these great rocks and mountains turn'd perpetually in the air and that not held up by any thing I cannot sufficiently admire Whereas Lelandus who hath made a more curious search into the Antiquities of England laughs at the indiscretion of these Authours affirming this Dance of the Gyants to be nothing but diverse heaps of great stones which Merlin caused to be rais'd like Pyramids or Trophies neer the said City in imitation haply of those which Sylvester Girard sayes were in Ireland upon the mountain Cyllarus in the time of Henry the Second of England Bythese patterns you may judge of the whole piece of these ridiculous fictions and so whether Badius Ascensius had not some ground speaking of the nine books of this Godefrey printed by him to say In quibus si diligenter legeris agnosces aut meram antiquitatis integritatem aut admirandam illius saeculi cùm in nominibus tum verò in temporibns suâ—putandis calliditatem From this Merlin so highly favour'd by the Kings of England we passe to Brother Hierom Savanorola born in the City of Ferrara a Friar of the Order of St. Dominick This man knew so well how to husband his eloquence and so discover the candor and integrity of his life that having gain'd extraordinary reputation among the people of Florence by his preaching which did not only charm the most delicate ears of his Audience with Rhetoricall expressions and figures but also raised the hearts and affections of all sorts of persons by his zeal and great devotion he began by degrees to discover some symptoms of his secret ambition This happen'd when in the year 1484 as he acknowledges himself in the book he hath made upon his Prophecies he intruded into matters of Policie and caused himself to be called to the Councell then held at Florence for the setling of a popular Government wherein he stirr'd up all the Citizens unanimously to embrace it proposing to them four or five points of great consequence much conducing thereunto which he said had been reveal'd to him by Almighty God which accordingly they must punctually observe to make their State the most flourishing of those of all Italy Whereupon though affairs were not carried on as he had imagin'd to himself yet did he make it his businesse to adde daily to the reputation he had gain'd among the people teaching in his Sermons of the year 1489 upon explication of the Apocalyps that the Church was threatened with an approaching reformation to succeed that of the little Kings and Tyrants of Italy who were soon after to feel the revenging scourge for all their iniquities This he could do so strangely by passages out of the Scripture and the security he gave them of his own revelations that after the roming of Charles the Eighth into Italy foretold by him two years before it was generally expected he should return again upon no other ground than his affirmation of it Nor indeed could they be convinc'd of the contrary till the year 1498 wherein both Charles and he who had favour'd him so much in his predictions exchanged this life for a better the former by a sicknesse that took him at Amboise and Savanorola by the punishment of fire which in the commotion that happened in the City of Florence upon the refusall to manifest the truth of his Prophecies he suffered publikely with two of his Brethren entering into the fire with a Franciscan who had offered to maintain the falsity of them by such a demonstration and triall But to this contributed not a little the indignation not onely of Pope Alexander the Sixth and most of the Clergie against whom he ordinarily rail'd in the Pulpit but also of the principall Citizens of Florence by reason of the execution which by his advice was done upon seven or eight
THE HISTORY OF MAGICK By way of APOLOGY For all the Wise Men who have unjustly been reputed Magicians from the Creation to the present Age. Written in French by G. NAUDAEUS Late Library-Keeper to Cardinal Mazarin Multos absolvemus si caeperimus antè judicare quà m irasci Senec. de ira lib. 3. c. 29. Englished by J. DAVIES Printed for John Streater and are to be sold by the Book-sellers of London 1657. TO THE Most worthily Honour'd S R. RICHARD COMBESK T. SIR IT is certainly but reason that Innocence since it so easily meets with Persecutors should at length light on some Patrons and Assertors that as those are the Agents Emissaries of Ignorance and Barbarism making it their business to ruine it so these might as the Guardian-Angells of restored Civility and Letters endeavour to vindicate it You have here the greatest miracles of Mankind in their severall times impeach'd of a crime the greatest can be committed against either divine or humane Lawes viz. a Geotick or superstitious Diabolical Magick violently prosecuted by a sort of people whose design it is by noise and number to stifle Truth and consequently to make the most innocent the most guilty In so much that all the liberty they now seeme to have is that of saying something for themselves which is hop'd may prove so considerable as not only to divert the Sentence but knock off the fetters they have so long groan'd under and gain them an absolute Liberate To which end Sir you are in this Countrey the Person they make their appeale to with a certain confidence that as the prejudice of former Judges hath not a litle contributed to their misfortune so your integrity may restore them to a reputation among men great as when they were the light and ornaments of the Ages they livd in This is a a trouble you might easily be induc'd to take upon you did you imagine to your self no other consequences of i◠than that being look'd on as an effect of your Goodness you will oblige all those who cannot but compassionate the undeserved sufferings of such excellent men may expect that acclamation and applause which ever attends the impartial execution of Justice But when you reflect on the particular advantages accrewing to your self by this Apology you will haply be satisfyed there is something extraordinary in the address of it to you For what higher motives can Posterity have to believe that the great perfections you are master of the general affection you command the publick favour shines upon you which when uncourted ever speaks a certain excess of merit are not the effects of any thing more than natural than to find you rescuing the oppressed innocency of men whom onely a transcendency of abilities made the objects of envy and detraction What can more satisfy the world that when you have done things exceeding common apprehensions it proceeds from your vast knowledge and acquaintance with those Sciences whose lustre dazles ordinary capacities than to find you relieving such as only popular ignorance and mistake have made unfortunate And of this what other effect can there be than that you live in the fame which they by your Patronage are restored unto and consequently in the esteem and veneration of all the Sons and Lovers of Learning but particularly as the meanest of that number that of Your most humble and most obliged Servant J. DAVIES The AUTHOR'S motive and designe in the present Work ABout four or five years since there came abroad a little Book in French intituled Nouueau Jugement c. New Reflections on what hath been said and written as well for as against the Book of the curious Doctrine of the Great Witts of these times At the end of this Book the Authour inserted two Invectives very short indeed against Homer and Virgil to what end or upon what ground it is not much material here to dispute but in that of Virgil he represents him as a most eminent Conjurer and one that had done abundance of strange and incredible things by the assistance of Magick This he presently remembred was taken verbatim out of the last Book publish'd by de Lancre against Witchcraft whereupon reflecting on what he had read and calling to mind that not only Virgil but in a manner all great persons were in like manner charg'd with Magick he imagin'd the charge might be unjust and groundlesse This put him upon search of the truth thinking it an act of piety to right the memory of those great men and an obligation put upon the world to endeavour their satisfaction who want either time or couveniences to informe themselves and so he resolv'd to communicate what he had found in this APOLOGIE whereof take this short account In the first place he assignes certain conditions or qualifications necessarily requisite in him that would judge of Authors especially Historians and Daemonographers who are the chief Architects of this Labyrinth of erroneous opinions which who is once gotten into cannot well get out without this Clue Then he divides Magick into severall species so to confront the charge and the Answer which consists in the distinction of Magick into Diabolicall and Naturall That done he comes to certain generall causes whence the suspicion hath been deriv'd viz. Politicks extraordinary Learning Mathematicks Supposititious Books superstitious Observations Heresy Malice Emulation Ignorance Credulity in Readers and want of circumspection and Judgment in Writers This is fully dispatch'd in five Chapters which are as it were a preludinm to XIV more spent in the particular vindication of Zoroastes Orpheus Pythagoras Democritus and others not proceeding so much according to the times wherein they flourish'd as their severall qualities and employments So that having run through the severall vindications of Philosophers Physicians Religious men Bishops Popes all to be done was to close up the treatise with a Chapter discovering the means whereby these Errours are maintained and what will be the consequences of them if not suppressed So much as to the Authors designe in this work That dispatch'd he thought fit to say something to those who might haply quarrell with him for his checquering it so much with sentences and Authorities out of Latine Authors There are indeed a many and those the most refin'd Writers who cannot without a certain scorn and indignation look on the writings of such as like them will not employ themselves so trivially as to compose Love Stories and Romances for the entertainment of women and Children For those his answer is that as he quarrels not with them for using a Style proportionable to their capacities to whom they direct their Labours so does he expect they should be as favourable to him for not translating those Latine passages as such as are not particularly calculated for the meridian of the Populace but some of a higher elevation who measure not truth by the credit of Historians and Demonographers that have almost besotted the multitude with
their extravagances These indeed are a sort of people so much oblig'd one to another that should we imitate them in the Labours we intend for posterity we must do as the Rhodians did who only chang'd the heads of ancients Statues to make them serve for new representations such a strange art have they of disguising and dismeâ—bring one anothers workes that strictly examined there 's nothing new but the Titles For Citaions he thought they only avoided them who never expected to be cited themselves and that it were too great a presumption in any one to think himself so well furnisht with conceptions as tosatisfie so great a diversity of Readers without borrowing any But if ever there were any such they were certainly Plutarch Seneca and Montagne who yet have not blush'd to derive from others whatever they thought contributed to the embellishment of their discourses To prove this we need only mention the Greek and Latine verses cited almost in every line of their workes and particularly that of Consolation consisting but of seven or eight Leaves sent by the former to Apollonius wherein there are above 150. verses out of Homer and near as many out of Hesiod Pindar Sophocles and Euripides Nor is he ignorant what these regulators of writing might oppose against this viz. the authority of Epicurus who in 300 Volumes left behind him had not so much as one Citation but this would make against them by reason of the contrary consequences of these two different procedures for the workes of Plutarch Seneca and Montagne are daily read sold and reprinted whereas of those of Epicurus Laertius can hardly furnish us with a Catalogue Yet would he not have this so understood as to approve their course who conceale the treasures of their own abilities to beg and borrow of others never appearing but as people at false Musters and without any hazard to themselves carrying other mens Arms. Tedious and fruitlesse discourses are like Forrests of Cypresse trees fair and flourishing to the eye but bearing no fruit suitable thereto The surest way therefore were to keep the mean between these extremities which is for a man to make a certaine allyance between his own conceptions and those of the ancient when the subject will bear it For as it belongs only to such elevated and transcendent Souls as have something above the ordinary rate of men to transmit their conceptions to us pure and naked without any other convoy than that of Truth and that it is the indicium of a low reptile mind to undertake nothing of it self so is it the proper character of a person unacquainted with vain glory and arriv'd to a considerable knowledge and experience of things to follow the track which the most learned best esteemed Authors have gone before him and not so much endeavour to tickle the ears of his Readers as to neglect what might satisfie their understanding And this method hath our Author observ'd in this APOLOGIE which whoever shall examine without prejudice or passion must certainly conclude it no small performance especially if he consider the difficulty of the undertaking the many Authors consulted the particularities he hath been forc'd to quote and the novelty of the Subject which were there nothing else were enough to oblige the more ingenious to countenance and encourage In nova surgentem majoraqque viribus ausum Nec per inaccessos metuentem vadere saltus NAUD AEVS Viris doctis et fautoribus suis INtactae virtutis opus juvenisque laborem Excipite illustres animae doctique parentes Nominis et Genii ne postera saecula credant Et vos in Magicis pariter peccâsse susurris The Contents of this Book Chap. I. OF the conditions requisite to judge of Authors especially Historian Fol. 1. Chap. II. Of Magick and it Species Fol. 11. Chap. III. That many eminent persons have been accounted Magicians who were only Politicians Fol. 23. Chap. IV. That the great Learning of many excellent men hath many times been taken for Magick Fol. 28. Chap. V. That great Mathematicians have been suspected for Magicians Fol. 36 Chap. VI. That the Books attributed to divers great men are not a sufficient testimony to make them guilty of Magick Fol. 42. Chap. VII Of all the other causes which may give any occasion of suspicion thereof Fol. 51. Chap. VIII That Zoroastes was neither Author nor Abettor of Georick Theurgick or Artificial Magick 63. Chap. IX That Orpheus was no Magician Fol. 80 Chap X. A Vindication of Pythagoras Fol. 96 Chap. XI Of Numa Pompilius Fol. 115. Chap. XII Of Democritus Empedocles and Apollonius Fol. 126. Chap. XIII Of the Genii or Daemons attributed to Socrates Aristotle Plotinus Porphyrius Jamblicus Chicus Scaliger and Cardan Fol. 143. Chap. XIV Of Alchindus Geber Artephius Thebit Anselme of Parma Raimundus Lullius Arnoldus de Villa nova Peter d' Apono and Paracelsus Fol. 165. Chap. XV. Of Henry Cornelius Agrippa Fol. 188. Chap. XVI Of Merlin Savanorola Nostradamus F. 202 Chap. XVII Of St. Thomas Roger Bacon Fryer Bungey Michael the Scot Picus Mirandula and Trithemius Fol. 224. Chap. XVIII Of Robert of Lincoln Albertus Magnus Fol. 241. Chap. XIX Of the Popes Sylvester II. and Gregory VII Fol. 255. Chap. XX. Of Joseph Salomon and the Wise men F. 273. Chap. XXI Of the Poet Virgil. Fol. 285. Chap. XXII Of the means whereby all these erroneous opinions are maintained and what may be expected from them if not suppress'd Fol. 298. THE HISTORY OF MAGICK By way of APOLOGIE For all those eminent-Persons who have unjustly been reputed Magicians CHAP. I. Of the Conditions requisite to judge of Authours especially Historians THe learned and judicious Ludovicus Vives who for his excellent worth was thought the fittest of all the great Wits of the last age as another Plutarch to cultivate that of the famous Emperour Charles the Fifth gives us a good Dichotomy of Prudence One part regulates our enjoyments preserves our health directs our conversation acquires charges and employments and is so much taken up with the procurement of the gods of Fortune and the Body that it hath gotten among the Fathers the title of Prudentia carnis and is called by Latine Anthours Vafricies astutiâ— The other labouring onely the cultivation and ornament of the nobler part of man the Mind and the enriching of it with Sciences and Disciplines that so it might discover and practise what is most advantageous and reall therein is particularly employed in the censure and judgement of Authours This is so truly necessary and of such importance that being once well ordered it so guides us into the interiour of the persons we deal with that it discovers the calms or tempests of their passions the Euripus of their severall agitations and the admirable diversity of their inclinations The advantage we are to make of it is like that of a touchstone to distinguish truth from falshood of a Torch to light us in the palpable
and Poesie are two sworn sisters exercising an Empire over our Belief equivalent to that of the most impartiall Histories For though it be presumed they may haply take their rise from a true Relation yet taking the liberty to disguise it as they please with their Chimericall imaginations they have long since incurred the same sentence Namque unum sectantur iter inania rerum Somnia concipiunt Homerus acer Apelles That person might very deservedly be laugh'd at who should be perswaded that Turnus little Tydaeus and Rodomont flung quarters of mountains at their enemies meerly upon the reputation of Poets or that Jesus Christ ascended into Heaven upon an Eagle because he is so represented in the Metropolitane Church of St. Andrew in the City of Bourdeax and that the Apostles play'd on cymbals at the funerall of the blessed Virgin because a capricious Painter thought fit to paint them so which considered we may well excuse the Satyricall retort of Beza to the pictured argument which Dr. De Sainctes thought so prevalent at the conference of Poissy Nor shall I be too forward to give any more credit to so many other fabulous narrations as have crept into the world if it may be permitted to observe some even in the Ecclesiasticall History under the banners of such insinuating and specious titles as those of De infantia Salvatoris The Conformity of St. Francis The Golden Legend The Proto-Evangelium The nine or ten Gospels and a many such like which having been at first printed in the Micropresbyticon have been since prudently left out of the Orthodoxographia and the Library of the Fathers Those who would have Pliny Albertus Magnus Vincent de Beauvais Cardan and some others not inferiour to them accounted fabulous Secretaries of Nature are in my judgement extreamly insensible of the obligation we owe these great persons for their excellent observations It were much more rationall to blast with this breath the impostures of Mountebanks the resveries of Alchymists the fooleries of Magicians the riddles of Cabalists the combinations of the Lullists and other like extravagances of certain Engrossers and Collectours of Secrets since they do not contribute any thing more solid to naturall History than all those old and rotten monuments of Olaus Saxo-Grammaticus Turpin Neubrigensis Merlin Nauclerus Phreculphus Sigebert Paulus Venetus and a multitude of others do to Policie and civill Society For these bestowing their time rather in gleaning what was scattered up and down than in weighing the authority of the Authours from whom they borrowed their notes have not onely advanced an Iliad of chimericall and ridiculous stories but with the same labour brought upon the stage some more improbable than the other reporting them as most true certain Of this one reason or motive is obstinacie in that having once exposed them they could not imitate Sr. Augustine in his Retractations Quamvis enim saith Seneca vana nos concitaverint perseveramus ne videamur caepisse sine causa Another haply more likely is that being content to follow the common track of those who when they write make it their onely businesse to prove and make good what they have undertaken by what means they care not they bring in reasons and arguments by head and shoulders and take hear-sayes for certain truth and old wives tales for demonstrations Et sic observatio crescit Ex atavis quondam malè caepta deinde sequutis Tradi ta temporibus serisque nepotibus aucta This certainly must needs be an impertinent kind of writing and proper to sheepy mindes such as willfully quit the bark of Truth to cast themselves one after another into the Sea of Errour But to avoid all these absurdities we are only to consider the method designe of such as entertain us with these fine conceptions and make an ascent from one to another till we come to discover the first advancer of them and haply the only man from whom all the rest derived them For instance It is out of all controversie that all our old Romances took their rise from the Chronicles of Bishop Turpin all the Stories of Pope Ioan from one Marianus Scotus the Salvation of Trajan from one John Levit the opinion of Virgill's being a Magician from Helimnndus the Monk This man once found out we must diligently consider his quality the party he inclin'd to and the time wherein he first writ and thence bethink our selves whether we ought not to give greater credit to those who have had the mannagment of Affairs than to Monks and private men to persons of honour and worth than to the dreggs of ignorance and the populace In the second place we are to look on Historians those only who are perfectly Heroick excepted as a fort of people seldome or never representing things truly and naturally but shadowing and masking them according as they would have them appear and such as to gain their judgment a reputation and to insnare others therein spare not either abilities or eloquence Stretching Amplifying byassing and disguising all things as they think most proper to their design Hence it is that we find Heathens and Idolaters have spoken many things against the first Christians out of the aversion they had to the Religion that the adherents of some Emperours broach'd many indignities against the Popes that the English represented the Mayd of Orleans as a witch and Sorceresse and that modern Heretiques have vented so many fables against the dignity of the Church and the main Pillars of it In the Third place we are to make that judgment of Books which Paterculus made of Learned men experience teaching us that in a manner all Histories within seven or eight hundred years past are so hydropically swoln with lying legends that a man would think the Authors of them had made it their main strife who should advance the greatest number From these severall conditions requisite to the censure of Historians it may be inferr'd that theywill signifie little as to the direction of those dull earthly souls which are represented to us in the Aegyptian Hieroglyphicks by the Onocephalus a Creature that stirres not from the same place that is to say such as are not acquainted with any thing beyond the limits of their own Country who read no Histories who trouble not themselves with any thing done elsewhere and who are unletterr'd and ignorant to that degree that when they hear some great person nam'd they think the discourse is about some African monster or something of the new world For these having nothing either to contradict or oppose make no difficulty to admit or reject what suits or suits not with their humour quite contrary to the procedure of a prudent man cui si plura nôsse datum est majora â—um sequuntur dubia and of the old men represented to us by Aristotle qui rerum vitiis longo usu detectis et cognitis nihil impudenter asseverant and of whom
never happens that any Lawyers and Divines unlesse Hereticks have been charged therewith Whereas on the contrary those who are the most intimately acquainted with Philophy have not been able to ward off this reproach or divert men from attributing the fruits of their industry to their proficiencie in the Academy of Devils where they yet profited more than in any of the other Sciences if we may trust those who would furnish us with more Magicians quà m olim muscarum est tum cùm caletur maxime But to facilitate the discovery in this point all our businesse is to observe the first appearances of Learning the first risings of great Wits the time they flourished the ages which have brought forth most and take notice by the way how that ignorance hath alwayes persecuted them with this calumny It will tell us if we will hearken to it that Zoroastes and Zamolxis never did any thing but fool away their time in Sacrifices that Pythagoras Democritus Empedocles Socrates and Aristotle had never known any thing had they not applyed themselves to the Daemons that Apuleius was but a Wizard that Geber Alchindus Avicenna and all the most excellently learned among the Arabians were Professours of Magick that Roger Bacon Ripley Bongey Scotus were so many cunning men among the English excellently well vers'd in Necromancie and very able Conjurers that Chicus the Conciliator Anselm of Parma and divers other Italians were very well acquainted with the businesse of Invocations that Arnoldus de Villa nova and William of Paris were also very fortunat therein in France In a word all Countreys that had any men famous for learning were sure to have also Magicians whereof for want of the former Germany had alwayes been barren enough Albertus Magnus excepted till that furbish'd refin'd by letters it brought forth Trithemius Agrippa as the Ring-leaders of all the fore-mentioned To these if we beleeve Bodin we must add Hermolaus Cardan if de Lancre Scaliger Picus if some others yet more superstitious all the most eminent persons as if there had been no other schools than the Caâ—es of Toledo no other books than the Claviculae no other Doctors than Devils no other wayes for a man to become learned but by the practice of all those Magicall Superstitions or lastly that the reward of a great industry and the fruits of excellent endowments were only to enable a man to cast himself into the claws of that enemy of mankind whose acquaintance is but too too easily procur'd it being his businesse to go about like a roaring Lion seeking whom he may devour Having therefore well considered whence it comes to passe that many have made such disadvantagious glosses on the learning of these great persons I am in the first place perswaded it might proceed from a reason common to all the erroneous perswasions which insensibly thrust in among us as the learned Verulam hath observed Is humano intellectui error est proprius perpetuus ut magis moveatur excitetur affirmativis quà m negativis In the second that haply it might come from this that these Philosophers soaring up into contemplations too high and remote from ordinary apprehensions those who in comparison of them onely crept upon the ground were oblig'd to admire them and in time to reproach as over-confident and supernaturall whether this change proceeded from the weaknesse of their judgement or a designe to calumniate them as Seneca observes quà m magnus mirantium tam magnus invidentium est populus Or lastly from this that whatever the most subtle and ingenious among men can perform by the imitation or assistance of Nature is ordinarily comprehended under the name of Magick untill such time as it be discovered by what wayes and means they effect those extraordinary operations Of this we have an example in the invention of Guns and Printing and the discovery of the new world the people wherof thought at first sight that our ships were made by Magick our vaults arches by enchantment and that the Spanyards were the Devils that should destroy them with the thunder and lightening of their Arquebuzzes and Guns From what hath been said may be inferr'd that all these great persons have incurr'd the censure of Magicians for having performed many strange things by the assistance of Physick and other Sciences they were Masters of and in the practice whereof all good Authours are wont to comprehend Magick The reason of this is that they are not so easie to be prostituted to the knowledge of the Vulgar as the Mechanicks are which cannot so much command admiration because being exercis'd about manifest and palpable Bodies it is a manner impossible that the Authors thereof should keep up the secret of their severall canses and operations And this leads us to a necessity of acknowledging that the practice of the Mathematicks and above all of these Mechanicks and judiciary Astrology hath contributed much to the confirmation of all these erroneous opinions as we shall shew more at large elsewhere CHAP. V. That Mathematicians have many times been accounted Magicians AMong all the Precepts which contribute any thing to the regulation and conduct of our Actions me thinks there is not any more serious or of greater consequence then that which minds us that Venena non dantur nisi melle circumlita vitia non decipiunt nisi sub specie Virtutum Of this we have daily experience in that as Coyners of false mony employ all their industry so to dispose some little Gold or Silver upon bad pieces that they may passe for good and current so the greatest part of those who by reason of the lightness and vanity of their Doctrine fall into the generall contempt are forc'd to change Scenes to disguise and if they are Hereticks for example to take the title of Divines if Impostors of Chymists if Mounte-banks of Doctors if Sophisters of Philosophers if Conjurers of Well-wishers to the Mathematicks This makes sad and strange confusion in all things especially the Sciences that if it be not absolutely impossible it is certainly very difficult to be able to discern the Legitimate professors from the Ignorant and presumptuous profaners of them who having scattered into them abundance of cheats superstitions have made them so suspectfull that even those who have courted them with greatest religion could never do it with the generall approbation and allowance of all This certainly is one principal reason whereby the most criticall and accomplish'd Wits have given their Enemies occasion to defame them as Magicians because they had made greater discoveries into those four parts of the Mathematicks which are called by Cassiodorus Quadrifariae Mathesis Januae by Sarisberiensis Quadrivii rotae and by Calcagnin Quadriga disciplinarum that is Arithmetick Geometry Musick and Astrology These indeed are such that by reason of â—he subtle operations are wrought by them the Jesuit Pererius took occasion to divide Naturall
Magick into two kinds One hath an absolute dependance on Physick and its parts working by the meanes both of the occult and known qualities of all things many times very strange and miraculous effects such as might be the Golden henne of Sennertus the Magneticall unguent of Goclinus the Lamp and invulnerable Knight of Burgravius the Idaeall pouder of Quercetanus the Fulminant Gold of Beguinus the Vegetall Tree of the Chymists and many such naturall miracles which these Authours affirme they have seen and experienc'd The other giuded by Mathematicall precepts makes certain artificiall Engines by meanes whereof we come afterwards to admire that Sphere of Archimedes parvam machinam gravidam mundo Caelum gestabile compendium rerum Speculum naturae To that adde those Automata of Daedalus those Tripods of Vulcan the Hydraulicks of Boëtius the Pidgeon of Architas that industrious Iron-fly presented to the Emperour Charles the V. by John de Mont royal which from under 's hand flew out And having flown a perfect Round about With weary wings return'd unto her Master And as judicious on his Arm she plac'd her Besides which there are many other productions of man's wit working it as it were in â—pight of nature which have so dazzled weaker minds that it is indeed no wonder if not able to discover the reasons which were purposely kept from them they have attributed all those instruments and engines rather to Diabolicall operations then humane industry and have through ignorance bespatter'd the greatest Mathematicians with the infamy of Magick An instance of this we have in that Archimedes of Gascony Francis Flussad of Candale who was not able to ward off the blowes of that Calumny To him adde John Denys an excellent Mathematician of our time who printed an Apology for himself in the year 1570. and pleaded his own cause at London And to him Pope Silvester Bacon Michael Scotus Albertus Magnus and all the rest who now put in their Bills of Complaint Ovid. de Nace Fructus obest peperisse nocet nocet esse feracem Wherein there is certainly much justice their only crime being that their Sciences their instruments their brazen heads their Clocks and all their other subtle Inventions have so astonish'd the populace that instead of referring these singular effects to their true cause and the experience of the Mechanicks the Operator whereof is if I may so expresse it penè socius naturae occulta reserans manifesta convertens miraculis ludens it hath attributed all to Diabolicall Magick This they think was very much more in reputation five or six hundred years since than itis nowâ— and that was publickly taught in certain Schools in Spain whereof the ruines are yet to be seen in the Cellars near Toledo and Salamanca But this rather begs our belief then requires it in as much as the Authors from whom we have these things being no more Authentick Testimony then what we might produce to affirm as much of the Castle of Vicestre But indeed it is a certain piety not to think that Citty ever was the Seminary of so many Magicians which God honour'd with a prerogative above all other that the doctrine and policy of his Church was confirm'd and maintain'd therein by the assemblies of 17. Councells besides that those who make Sylvester a Magician acknowledge that he learn'd what he knew that way at Toledo But when it shall be hereafter evinc'd that Sylvester was no such man but the greatest aud most excellent Mathematican of his Age it will be but rationall to grant that by the Magick taught at Toledo is only meant the Mathematicks which had gain'd such reputation there and were so perfectly taught that a certain English man called Daniel Morlerus who flourish'd in the year 1190. and writt excellently well therein after a long aboad in Barbarie to learn them was at last advised to transport himself to Toledo as the most famous place for their profession in the World Such it seems it was then and continu'd so long after even to Alphonsus King of Castile in the year 1262. who became such a Mecaenas and Patron of these disciplines that he gave by way of recompence to certain Arabians whose assistance and industry he had made use of in composing his Astronomicall Tables above 400000 Crownes so infinitely desirous was he of being accounted the common Benefactor of all the Mathematicians of his time that there needs no further security for it then that infinite number of Treatises and Translations upon this subject which had never been done but by the influence of his name and the example of his Liberality That indeed brought these Disciplines much into request especially judiciary Astrology as Mirandula observes that it is not to be wondered at that the place where it was so diligently practised should be taken for the Schoole of Magick If so those certainly who glory'd in the imitation of the Astrologer Diophanes who boasted in Apuleius that he certainly knew qui dies copulam nuptialem affirmet qui fundamenta moenium perpetuet qui negotiatori commodus qui viatori celebris qui navigiis opportunus must needs expect to be branded for Magicians not much differing from the opinion of Tertullian who sometimes said Scimus Magiae Astrologiae inter se societatem It is also the opinion of the Civilians who under the same head treat De Maleficis et Mathematicis upon occasion of Divinations and this Astrologie which hath been condemn'd under the name of Mathematicks because Justinian desirous to make his Constitutions clear and intelligible made use of the most usuall and Vulgar words Vulgus autem saies Gellius quos gentilitio vocabulo Chaldaeos dicere oportet Mathematiâ—os dicit We have it confirmed also by a passage in Juvenal Sat. 14. Nota Mathematicis genesis tua which as that of Gellius is not to be understood of Arithemetick Geometry Musick and Astronomy which are particularly signifi'd by the name of Mathematicks and generally approved by all but only of Judiciary Astrology which is with much reason condemn'd by the Church not as suspected guilty of any thing of Magick but as a Profession quae stellis ea quae geruntur in terra consecrat makes us slaves to the destinies and is absolutely in consistent with all kinds of Religion CHAP. VI. That the Books attributed to divers great persons are not a sufficient testimony to make them guilty of Magick VVE find in History that that potent King of Aegypt Ptolemaeus Philadelphus having spar'd no industry to adde to and adorn the proud Library he had erected in Alexandria appointed for its further splendour a certain solemn day on which all the Poets assembled together recited verses in honour of the Muses that the most able and fortunate might be gratified with the presents he had designed for them These guerdons were already voted to divers of the Candidates when Aristophanes who was the seventh of the Judges
opposed the sentence of the rest and opening the treasury of his memory amaz'd all with the greatnesse of his reading and his miraculous learning and discover'd that the pieces they thought so excellent and accomplished were not theirs who had recited them but had been taken out of the best Authours whom he particulariz'd one after another making such an Inventory of Felonies that the King People and Judges revok'd the former sentence for to favour some others who had not brought any thing but what was of their own invention For my part I am clearly of opinion that there was not more occasion for that Aristophanes in the time of Ptolemy than there is in this and that he should find much more occasion to discover his prodigious reading not onely in the censure and condemnation of Plagiaries but also in the vindications of these great persons For in stead of receiving those elogies and honorary titles sometimes given them by Richard de Bury Chancellor of England the greatest Lover of Books that hath been since the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus who to insinuate the advantage of good books tels us Hi sunt Magistri qui nos instruunt sine virgis ferula sine verbis cholera sine pannis pecunia si accedis non dormiunt si inquiris non se abscondunt non remurmurant si oberres cachinnos nesciunt si ignores in stead of these Elogies I say they have father'd upon them a number of pernicious and pestilent books for which in stead of these commendations they meet with onely the contempt and imprecations of those who cannot distinguish these supposititious brats from their true and legitimate children This hath given some occasion to imagine that many great men have not been charg'd with Magick but meerly upon this fourth cause and the books unjustly father'd upon them such as are those of Trithemius's Catalogue and many other Manuscripts qui e◠periculosius errant quò in soliditate naturae vigore rationis suum fundare videntur errorem For an Antidote against the venom of this fourth kind according to our method in the precedent we are to shew that there is no probability that all these books improbatae lectionis as the Civilians call them were ever written or composed by those under whose names and authority they are publish'd which yet if we should grant yet can there not any certain proof be deduced out of them to conclude the Authours Magicians For in the first place we have no other knowledge or account of these books than what we find in certain Catalogues who furnish us with their titles in such a manner that we cannot judge unlesse by some other circumstances what the Authours drift and designe was in the composition of them whether to illustrate or confute plead for or against mantain or condemn the subject they treat of and busie themselves about Whence it came to passe that many finding by these Catalogues that Alexander Aphrodisaeus had written of Magicall Arts Aquinas of judiciary Astrologie and Roger Bacon of Necromancie have presently entered into imaginations contrary to what they should beleeving that they contain'd nothing else but the precepts and direction we are to follow to be perfect in the practice of all those Divinations and consequently that there was much reason why the Authors should be accounted Magicians But this consequence is vain light and groundlesse for besides the first errour we may observe a second which because not so obvious hath deluded a many even to this day who held that there needed no more to qualifie any one an Enchanter or Magician than to write of Magick which once granted we must also infer that all those who undertake to write against and to convince them should be bemir'd with the same vice and accordingly incur the same punishment For it must be supposed that they cannot discover the absurdity of their precepts and maximes unlesse they understand and declare them to us which if they do they become equally guilty because the good or bad intention of the one and the other doth not make any alteration in the case relating onely to the nature of Precepts which should have no more force taken out of Picatrix than Delrio if he hath once explan'd them nor of the prohibited Authours than those who refute them Nay we must presse further and affirm that all those who are able to discourse pertinently of Magick ought to be condemn'd as Magicians were there no other reason than that it is in their power as much as theirs who did it before to furnish us with books and precepts which if they do not it is either because they think it not convenient or out of some other motive without any prejudice to their learning We find Socrates Carneades and divers others accounted good Philosophers though they would never take the pains to commit any thing to writing Hortensius thought in Cicero's time the best Oratour in all Rome who probably out of an imitation of a many others highly celebrated by Seneca and Cicero would never publish any of his Declamations Adde to this that it were a strange simplicity to think that only such as have been in the Circle are practised in Invocations and have exercised Magick can write or make books of it whereas every one is at liberty to discourse according to his humour of a thing wherein there is neither precepts order nor method and where all a man hath to do is to mingle the characters of the twelve Signes and the seven Planets the names of certain Angels mentioned in Scripture the Tohu and the Boh◠the Urim and Thummim the Beresith and Merchava the Ensoph and the Agla of the Cabalists with the Hippomanes Virgin parchment Pentacle the dead mans muffler the Deaths head the blood of Owls and Bats and certain prayers and conjurations out of the Flagellum Daemonum to make a world of mysterious Books and Treatises These must afterwards be sold very secretly and for good round prices by such as can make no other shift to stave off their clamorous necessities than by making a trade of these cheats and impostures to the cost and sorrow of many weak superstitious and melancholy inclinations who think they are within sight of Felicity and can do miracles when they meet with these Cheats and Mountebanks Tam magna penuria mentis ubique In nug as tam prona via est Lastly there is no likelihood that these books which are onely for the most part the fruits of a long Theory and Speculation should be sufficient proofs to convince the Authours of Magick which consists rather in certain practices and operations than in the laying down of precepts he onely according to Biermannus deserving the name of a Magician who contracts with the Devil to make use of him in what he shall think fit to employ him in This definition indeed cannot possibly agree to all those for whom we
man's thumbe so to represent to us in their Books atomes like Mountaines and flyes like Elephants that is magnifie the smallest faults into the greatest crimes by a childish metamorphosis of the least jealousy into truth of a hearsay into a demonstration and accidents of no consequence into prodigious and memorable Histories Whence it is not to be wonder'd at that as the higher greater things are the more subject they are to Lightning so the greatest part of those Noble Souls of past ages those tutelary Gods of Parnassus and favourites of the Muses have not been free from that of Tongues For being the principall Actors upon the Stage of this world and as much above the ordinary rate of men as they are above other Creatures their leasts faults and most in considerable misapprehensions have been more narrowly pry'd into whether it be that the least mark or mole is more obvious in an extraordinary Beauty than on some poor Baucis or Cybale or that according to the saying of the sententious Poet Omne animi vitium tanto conspectius in se Crimen habet quanto major qui pecat habetur However it be we may adde this cause to the precedent as one of the principall that hath caused learned men to be thought Magicians and upon account whereof the curiosity of Albertus magnus the naturall Magick of Bacon the judiciary Astrology of Chicus the Mathematicks of Sylvester and he resy of Alchindus and certaine superstitious obervations have been reputed Geotick and diabolicall Magick But it must be confess'd it is for the most part the malevolent interpretation of those who judge not of things but with misprision of Authors but by their outside and superscriptions of Books but by their titles nor of men but by their vices divâ—â—ging what they ought in prudence to conceale and priding it not only to lay open to the world the miscarriages of all these great persons but magnifying and aggravating them purposely to prepossesse and consequently make us passe sentence against their innocence which certainly ought to have all the faire play that may be it being just to suppose it not so weak and wounded as it is represented to us Besides should we a little more narrowly search into the truth of this opinion quae mala attollit et exaggerat cothurnis quibusdam auget we shall find all these proofs resolv'd into conjectures and all these enormous crimes into certain vaine and triviall snperstitions Nor is it in the mean time any miracle at all that these glorious men in their times should somewhat degenerate that way nay endeavour to practise them when it is of ordinary experience that what is most accomplished is also most delicate and perishable Thus we find that the sharpest points are the soonest blunted the perfect'st white the most easily soyl'd the best complexion the most subject to several altrations we have it from holy Writt that the noblest of the Angels was the first that fell Having therefore thus deduc'd all the causes we could find of this suspicion as to what concernes the accused we shall in the rest of this Chapter observe five others which we may say have contributed more to the propagation of this erroneous opinion then the former These are Heresy Malice Ignorance Credulity and the Dis-circumspection and want of judgment in Authors and writers For the first it amounts to something more then a conjecture that Alchindus Peter d' Apono Arnoldus de Villa nova Riply and some others who with some reason have been suspected guilty of Heresy may without any be charg'd with Magick though Tertullian sometimes said Notata sunt etiam commercia Haereticorum cum Magis plurimis cum Circulatoribus cum Astrologis cum Philosophis Which censure be confirmes elsewhere calling Magick haereticarum opinionum auctricem Hence haply some Catholick Doctors especially Delrio and Maldonat took occasion to lay it down as a Maxime strengthened by constant experience that either the Authors and first promoters of Heresies have been themselves Magicians as Simon Magus Menander Valentinianus Carpocrates Priscillianus Berengarius and Hermogenes or that prohibited and Magical Arts have alwayes come in the neck of some heresy This they exemplify out of some Historians of Spaine who relate that after the Arrians had long continu'd therein the Devils were for a good space of time seen tormenting men there So was the heresy of Hus seconded by a great tempest of Sorcerers and Demons through Bohemia and Germany and that of the Lollards through the Apennine Hills Of this the Jesuit Maldonat gives five principall reasons which we shall not presse in this place In the second cause of suspicion we may observe that Malice sometime made Apuleius be accus'd of Magick by his wife's friends the Popes Sylvester and Gregory by the Emperours they had excommunicated and some Heretiques their implacable enemyes To which may haply be added the procedure of the English against the Mayd of Orleance who accordingly condemn'd her for a Witch whereas de Langey and du Haillan make her act another quite contrary part But if the common opinion of those who were best acquainted with her may prevaile there is little probability she should have been a Witch which is the conclusion Valerandus Varanius puts to the History he made of her Tandem collatis patres ultroque citroque Articulis flammas sub iniquo judice passam Darcida concordi decernuntore modumque Angligenas violasse fori jurisque tenorem But Learning formerly alledg'd by us as one of the principall causes of this false accusation obliges us now to say something of Ignorance its adverse party and shew how prodeminant it was as well among the Greeks before Socrates who may be called the Patriarch of Philosophy as the Latines from the times of Boetius Symmachus and Cassiodorus till the last taking of Constantinople Then indeed the world began to put on another face the Heavens to move upon new Hypotheses the Aire to be better known as to Meteors the Sea to be more open and easie the Earth to acknowledge a Sister Hemisphere men to enter into greater correspondences by Navigation Arts to be delivered of those miraculous inventions of Guns and Printing Then were the Sciences restor'd to their former lustre in Gormany by Reuchlin and Agricola in Switzerland by Erasmus in England by Linacer and Ascham in Spain by Vives and Nebrissensis in France by Faber and Budaeus in Italy by Hermolaus Politianus Picus and the Greeks who fled thither for refuge from Constantinople and lastly in all other parts of the earth by the meanes of new Characters and Printing We formerly observ'd out of Plutarch that before the revolution happening in Socrates's time it was not lawfull in Greece to advance any thing of Astrology to study the Mathematicks or professe Philosophy Thence we are now to consider what capacity may be allow'd those who suffering the best Authors to moulder away in
Libraries made use of no other Grammarians then Graecismuâ— Barbarismus and Alexander de Villa dei no other Rhetoricians then Aquilegius no other Philosophers then Gingolfus Rapoleus Ferrabrit and Petrus Hispanus no other Historians than the Fasciculus Temporum and the Mother of Histories nor other Books in Mathematicks than the Compot Manuel and the shepheard 's Kalender What could the Grammarians expect from these but Barbarisms like that of the Priest whom the Master of Sentences mentions baptizing of infants In nomine Patria Filia Spiritua Sancta What could Philosophers find there but suppositions ampliations restrictions sophisms obligations and a Labyrinth of fruitlesse niceties comprehended under the title of Parva Logicalia So also for those that read Histories what entertainment had they but that of ridiculous tales upon Merlin's prophecy Sâ— Patrickâ— Purgatory Pilate's Tower Ammon's Castle Pope Joan and abundance of such fabulous trash and trumpery as now Vix pueri credunt nisi qui nondum are lavantur Not indeed is it any thing extraordinary when they are commonly accounted Magicians that can produce Roses and Summer-Flowers in the depth of Winter That those gallant men who have been seen like so many Stars shining in that dark and Melancholy night and have darted the influences of their miraculous Learning in the coldest and frostiest season of Letters have pass'd to us under the same Title through the over easy belief of those who first mistook then represented them for such But alasse what shall we say of a sort of empty unballasted soules but that they may be easily weigh'd down any way by an erroneous perswasion which is as constant an attendant of ignorance as a shadow is of the body or envie of vertue And now we have but a step to the fourth cause of suspicion which fastens on these great persons that is from Ignorance to that of Credulity which easily admits abundance of such things as though improbable and superstitious ordinarily fall and follow one in the neck of another To make this more evident and apprehensible we must begin with what we find related in a little Treatise which St. Agobart Bishop of Lyons made in the year of Christ 833 against the extravagance of the people then who beleev'd that those could trouble the air and raise tempests who for that reason in the first chapter of the Capitularies of Charlemaigne and Lewis the Debonaire are called Tempestarii sive immissores Tempestatum It was it seems the common and by a many stiffely maintain'd opinion that there were in his time certain Conjurers that had the power to make it hail and thunder or to raise tempests as often and when they pleas'd so to spoil and destroy the fruits of the earth which so destroy'd they afterwards sold to certain Inhabitants of the Countrey of Magodia who every year brought ships thorow the air to carry away those provisions This was grown into such a vulgar article of faith that the good Bishop had much ado one day to deliver three men and a woman out of the clutches of the distracted multitude who were dragging them to execution as having fallen out of those ships The same Authour relates further in the same book that there being a generall mortality among Cattle especially Oxen whereof there died such a number over all Europe that Belleforest thought fit to take notice of it in his Additions upon Nicholas Gilles the more superstitious sort of people presently imagin'd that one Grimoald Duke of Benevent and a great enemy of Charlemaigne had sent a many men with venomous powders which they should scatter up and down the sens fields and into springs Insomuch that this holy and judicious person seeing abundance of innocent people daily hanged drown'd and extreamly persecuted for this simple fable ends his book full of indignation with this excellent sentence Tanta jam stultitia oppressit miserum mundum ut nunc sic absurdè res credantur à Christianis quales nunquam antea ad credendum poterat quisquam suadere Paganis These and the like Fables were but the Prologue to Romances which came upon the stage immediately after in the reigne of Lewis the Debonaire in whose time the Bishop was still alive and multiply'd so strangely by the ignorance of that age easily it seems lay'd asleep by an y absurdities though ever so extravagant that all thoâ— who meddled with the history of that time would needs to render it more pleasant interweave it with abundance of such relations This is very pertinently observ'd by a certain Divine who ingenuously confesses that Hoc â—rat antiquorum plurium vitium vel potius quaedam sine judicio simplicitas ut in clâ—rorum virorum gestis scribendis se minus existimarent elegantes nisi ad ornatum ut putabant sermonis poetic as fictiones vel aliqâ—id earum simile admiscerent consequenter vera fâ—lsis committerent Nay such reputation did these books gain that in the year 1290 James de Voragine Bishop of Gennes Homo as Vives and Melchior Canus call him ferrei oris plumbei cordis animi certe parum severi prudentis yet whose intention was certainly good thought fit to introduce that style into the Ecclesiasticall History and so writ a Golden Legend whereby many devout and pious souls were edified till the late Hereticks began to metamorphose it in a soveraigne Pantagruelisme purposely to affront the Catholicks and undermine the foundations of the reverence they pay those holy but pernicious Relicks To the vanity of these Romances we are further obliged for all the false relations which were soon after scattered among the people of the miraculous stratagems of Sylvester Gregory Michael Scotus Roger Bacon Peter d' Apono Thebit and in a manner all the most learned of that time These proved excellent entertainments till the year 1425 when an infinity of other superstitions began to swarm giving as it were a cessation to the precedent And these we have thought fit to particularize to shew it is no miracle if the great knowledge of a many of that time occasioned millions of ridiculous stories and fictions when the zeal and good life of the greatest Saints the conduct courage of the greatest Captains and Commanders have met with the same fate Nor does it amount to much that some of their books have been condemn'd as conjuring books when a many others whereof the very reading sufficiently clears their innocence have met with as little favour We may instance in the three propositions made by the famous Chancellour of the University of Paris Gerson upon the Romance of the Rose and the judgement of John Raulin a famous Doctor of the same University upon that of Oger the Dane wherein they affirm the Authours as certainly damn'd as ever Judas was if they died without repentance for the making and venting of such pieces Lastly though it be alwayes more rationall and commendable so to interpret as to give the
of Magicians For indeed there is much more reason to think him that of Philosophers and Professours of Learning as when we have refuted the errour of this pernicious opinion we shall make appear It does indeed sufficiently undermine it self by the discord of those that maintain it and the attendant contradictions as it ordinarily happens in all other lies yet to blow it up and to apply a remedy as soveraigne as the disease is inveâ—eterate we must reduce all these opinions to four principall heads and in the particular explication of them shew that there is no reason in the world why this Zoroastes should be represented to us as the first and most eminent of all Conjurers and Magicians The first shall be that of Goropius Becanus as being the easiest and needing no other solution than to be understood and proposed For that Zoroastes was no Magician he endeavours to make good by alledging it was a meer fable and that really there never was any such man which right he does not onely do him but Mercurius Trismegistus Orpheus deriving the Etymologie of these words from a certain Cimmerian language in use as he sayes from the Creation to the Deluge But while he chimerises on that in liberty of conscience there fals from him a manifest contradiction observ'd since by Patricius in that having maintain'd the negative as an undeniable axiom he afterwards indifferently confounds this Zoroastes with Japhet one of the sons of Noah But this opinion if true would in some sort agree with the second which we are now to deduce the promotets whereof endeavour to prove That Cham and Zoroastes were but one person according to Berosus Didymus of Alexandria and the Author of the Scholastick History that Cham was the first that exercised Magick after the Deluge as is affirm'd by the same Berosus in his History and that this granted it is to be inferr'd that Zoroastes after the restauration of the world first began to soil mens minds with the soot of his invocations sorceries Nay they stick not to affirm that the first he practised them on was his own Father affirming that the only motive that Noah had to thunder such a curse against him was that the other had by his Magick so bound and made him impotent that having at it were lost the prerogative of his nature Corn. Gall. Eleg. 3. Diriguit quantusque fuit calor ossa reliquit Insomuch that afterwards he could not get any children either on his wife or any other as is so clearly and methodically set down by Berosus that we need not seek that contradiction in his History which is falsly imposed upon him by du Verdier in his Censure Whence it comes to passe that many keep a coil to have this opinion of the first Author of Magick maintain'd not only upon the account of Berosus who indeed is the most ancient and venerable Historian we have left but also those of Gregory of Tours and St. Clement the two other principall opinions who to strengthen his authority say that Chus or Misraeim the two elder sons of Cham were sirnam'd Zoroastes which signifies onely Living Stars in acknowledgement of the miraculous operations which they effected by this Disclipline But if we seriously consider the strength of these proofs we shall at last find that the two latter are no more probable than the former and that the whole web of the Argument hath no more truth than likelihood as is not hard to shew For first as to the three Authours who make Cham and Zoroastes but one and the same person Pâ—triâ—ius who produces the authority of the second immediately addes that it deserves no credit as having no ground of reason or probability The same account doth Pererius make of the authority of the third who sayes that Ninus subdued Cham who was yet alive and called Zoroastes making him according to the opinion of some King of Thrace whereas Justin affirms in the beginning of his History that the Zoroastes that was overcome by Ninus was King of the Bactrians According then to the calculation of this Writer Cham must have lived at least twelve hundred yeers since Ninus was contemporary with Abraham and Melchisedec whom St. Epiphanius relying on the translation of the seventy Interpreters places 1100 years after the Flood to which adde the hundred years that C ham liv'd before it will be evident that he could not be overcome by Ninus unlesse he be allow'd to live twelve hundred years a thing not affirm'd by any Authour Nor can it be probably said that notwithstanding his fathers curse he outliv'd him by two hundred and fifty years and his brother Sem by six hundred For as to Berosus I think it much more pardonable not to credit him than those that preceded him since all the books published under his name are nothing but the extravagant imaginations of Annius a Monk of Viterbo as hath been well observ'd by Faber Stapulensis Vives Goropius Vergara Giraldus Gaspar Varenus Melchior Canus and divers others whose authority is of greater consequence against him than all that Postel quem insania saith Scaliger à communi invidia liberare debet could say to keep up his credit as making use of him as a Base on which to ground the learned Resveries he daily fansied to himself upon the happy conquests of the universall Empire promised the French Monarchy The same answer may be made to the second proposition of the contrary Argument which stilted up by the onely authority of Berosus would prove Cham to have been a Magician There needs no more than to deny it unlesse it be meant of naturall Magick or rather those Sciences wherein Delrio sayes he was instructed by his father Noach which name he thinks corrupted by Pliny into that of Azonach who he affirms to have been the Master of Zoroastes as Bodin observes that he changed that of Gabbala into Jotappe or Jochabelia Authour of a certain kind of Magick And yet there is not much to be built on that light conjecture of Delrio since what he sayes absolutely that Cham silii ejus magiam bonam edocti sunt à Noacho cannot be any wayes understood of this Zoroastes who is represented to us as a most eminent practiser of Magick and Necromancie Nor needs there any other answer to the story of the Magick which Cham exercised upon his father brought upon the stage to confirm the second proposition For since we have no other Authour for it than Berosus falsified by the Monk of Viterbo there is no reason to admit it for true and make it outlive the credit and authority of him whose it was seeing that if we look narrowly into the originall of this relation and take off its mask we shall find that it is grounded upon the curse pronounced by the Patriarch Noah in the ninth of Genesis Maledictus
acquainted with since Macrobius Boetius Ficinus Gafurius and Calcagnin to omit all the rest who are of the same opinion particularly describe his industry in finding out the tones of Musick by the proportion he observ'd in Smiths when five or six beat upon their Anviles together The same Macrobius Athenaeus and Maximus Tyrius affirme that he first found out the inferiour and celestiall Harmony whether it be interpreted of the admirable order and Symphony of Nature or of the Musick which Pontus de Tyard and Kepler do maintaine there ought to be in the proportionall revolution of those Globes and great Machins of Heaven Whence we may draw an evident argument of his knowledge in Astronomy to learn which Justin sayes he went to Aegypt to Babylon and Pliny and Laertius affirme that he first demonstrated the obliquity of the Zodiack and discover'd the nature and quality of the Planet Venus Lastly for what concernes the other Sciences it may be presum'd he was as well provided as for the former if we may credit Ovid andespecially Apuleius who sayes that Pythagoras learnt of the Brachmanes quae mentium documenta quae corporum exercitamenta quot partes animi quot vices vitae quae diis manibus pro merito suo cuique tormenta vel praemia Adde to this the Lawes he gave the Inhabitants of Crotona and the three Books which Plutarch and Laertius say he writ one of Iustitution another of Civility and the third of Nature the fame whereof was so great that Plato hearing that Philolaus intended to publish them gave order they should be bought up for him at the rate of a hundred minae of Silver This Universall acquaitance with the Sciences gain'd him such respect in his life time that Plutarch affirmes he taught at Crotona and Metapont above thirty years without any interuption being alwayes follow'd by above 600. Auditors who for the integrity of his life and eloquence of his discourses took his words for Oracles so far that as the Roman Orator affirmes his authority was thought reason and divers Princes and Potentates of Italy were glad as Plutarch affirmes to take his advice in all affaires For these great deserts did the people of Metapont immediately after his death consecrate his house calling it the Oratory of Ceres and the Street the Sacred Street of the Muses Upon the same account the Romans having had an Oracle in the time of the Warrs with the Samnites that they should erect Statues to two men whereof one had been the greatest Warriour the other the wisest among the Grecians without any debate cast that honour on Alcibiades and Pythagoras the first having been the greatest Captain of his time the other gain'd such reputation through all Italy that qui sapiens haberetur is continuò Pythagoreus putaretur But it were an endlesse work to run over all the eulogies honorary titles that are scatter'd of this person in all the Books of the Ancients These had an extraordinary esteem and reverence for him as being indeed one of the greatest Wits of all Antiquity who had the greatest earnestnesse for that which is good and honest and who endeavour'd more then any other among the Pagans to reduce mankind to a respect and knowledge of a first cause and to draw it out of irregularity and dissolution to raise it to the contemplation of things naturall and Civill From the little we have it is easy to judge what might be said in his praise we shall therefore now come to an examination of all those falsities or rather extravagances which some either out of envy to his Vertue or enmity to his fame have insensibly foisted into the relation of his life grounded probably at least upon his vast knowledge of the Mathematicks and great Learning Which once done we shall need no more then the improbability impertinences of those little stories to satisfie us what distance they are at with Reason who not weighing the proofs they meet with presently believe that all the ancient Philosophers and first Authors of Sciences and Disciplines such as Seneca calls Praeceptores generis humani have been absolute Necromancers and Magicians For as to Pythagoras in particular they are so confident that they think it not to be question'd after the instances of it which may be taken out of Iamblicus in his life Pliny Tertullian Origen St. Augustine Ammianus Marcellinus and the most accurate Writer on this Subject Delrio not to put into the scale the authority of some late Daemonographers quibus satisfactum non est saith Sarisberiensis nisi libello doceant quicquid alicubi scriptum invenitur and who accordingly stifle their judgement with a confused collection of all the stories they can patch up together upon this Subject Such are those that are brought upon the stage in the history of this person whereof some may be found in Boissardus who seems to have taken more pains than any to rank him among the Magicians whom he describes in his book of Divinations From which and all the precedent may be inferr'd that Pythagoras was accounted a Sorcerer and Magician because first he had liv'd long in Aegypt and had read the books of Zoroastes out of which he might probably have learnt the properties of certain herbs which he called Coracesia Callicia Menais Corinthas and Aproxis whereof the two first put into water caused it to freeze the two next were excellent against the biting of Serpents and the last took fire at a distance He also in one of his Symbols expressely forbade the use of Beans which according to the same superstition he boyl'd and for certain nights expos'd to the Moon till such time as by a strange effect of Magick they were converted into Blood This haply he did in order to another delusion mention'd by Coelius Rhodiginus after Suidas and the Scholiast of Aristophanes in his Comedy of the Clouds who affirm that this Philosopher writ with blood upon a hollow glasse what he thought fit and holding the letters opposite to the face of the Moon when she was in the full he saw in the star what he had written in his glasse Adde to this his appearance with a golden thigh at the Olympick games as also that he caused himself to be saluted by the river Nessus that he stay'd the flight of an Eagle tam'd a Bear kill'd a Serpent drove away an Oxe that spoil'd a field of Beans by the meer vertue of certain words He was seen on the same day at the same hour in the City of Crotona and that of Metapont and foretold things to come with so much certainty that many think him call'd Pythagoras because he gave as certain as insallible answers as the Pythian Oracle This he perform'd by Onomancie wherein he excell'd as we may ghesse by the fragments we have of his superstitious Arithmetick and the wheel attributed to him
by Flood and Catinus The troth on 't is I am asham'd to swell up this Chapter with the relation of so many fables and fooleries so flat and inconsistent with truth as might make us say with much more reason what the Satyrist anciently did Juven Sat. 8. Quid diceret ergo Vel quó nunc fugeret si nunc haec monstra videret Pythagoras For my part I think he would be distracted by two severall passions that is that of amdiration at their want of judgement who say of him what they would be loth to affirm of the most notorious Cheat and Mountebank that ever was or that of compassion for their shallownesse in the choice and triall of all these proofs which may not by any means be receiv'd for legitimate For it may be generally said of them that it were absolutely irrationall to imagine that a man so serious all his life and so learned as we have represented him could spend his time in such vain fooleries and legerdemain such as can be no other than the imaginary productions of popular ignorance and the malice of his Enemies and Emulatours That is a handsom observation of Rheuclin Non enim caruit aemulorum livore praestantissima ejus viri virtus innocentissima vita egregia doctrina celebris fama utque fit nihil non pollutum reliquerunt invidi carptores Timon Xenophanes Cratinus Aristophon Hermippus alii qui de Pythagora suis in libris mendacia plurima scripsere This is particularly levell'd at the stories that were crept into his Metempsychosis and his prohibition of eating Beans For as to the Histories which concern his Magick he conceives them so feign'd and absurd that he would not so much as mention them in a Book wherein he should have brought in the greatest part had he thought there had been any thing of truth in them since the drift of it is to prove a resemblance between the Doctrine of Pythagoras and the Cabala of the Hebrews so far that he affirms in his Book De Verbo mirifico that many strange and extraordinary things may be done by the vertue of numbers and words But if the Metempsychosis or transanimation which was one of the principall points of Pythagoras's Doctrine if the greatest part of his Symbols his prohibition of eating things animate the main actions of his life and the history of his death be so much controverted among Authours what certainty can we have of these old wives tales and Hocus Pocus tricks when Laertius and Iamblicus have prudently passed them by instancing onely in two or three of so great a number and that upon the credit of other Writers If further their authority be pressed for their satisfaction and that of all those who have accounted Pythagoras a Magician we may rationally presume that they did not put into their Books their own opinions of that person but the false reports which from time to time had been scattered of him among the people by the malice of Timon the Phlyrsian others his enemies qui viro aliàs Coryphaeo propemodum magicae vanitatis crimen inustum voluerunt Thus came the fables before-mentioned into reputation which though they sufficiently refute themselves we may yet to discover the impertinencie of every one in particular affirm that what hath been said before of the Aegyptian Magick and the books of Zoroastes make it clear that the voyage of Pythagoras into that Countrey and his reading as Clemens Alexandrinus delivers of the books of that person are rather arguments of his knowledge in Physick medicine and naturall Magick than any thing he could do in the Geotick and superstitious His acquaintance with the former may be further argued from his knowledge as Pliny relates of certain herbs from which our Adversaries would derive a certain proof to convince him of Magick Which they might have done with some colour if Pythagoras had described them with so much superstition as sometimes did their Authours Andreas and Pamphilus in the book which Galen sayes they made Of Charms and the conversion of the sacred herbs into Daemons or had gather'd them under some certain Star or Planet as those that were anciently called Herbae Decanorum for the reason given by Monsieur Moreau in his learned Comment upon The School of Salerna But Pliny saying nothing of them that had any relation to these vain ceremonies and observations I see not what reason they had to make such an extravagant conjecture nay he doubting withall whether the book wherein they are described should be attributed to Pythagoras or to one Cleemporus And if we must follow their opinion who will have it to be his their vertue was not so prodigious and extraordinary but we daily find as much in Mallows Basil Bawme Vervin Horehound Henbane Cypresse Benjamin and Germander all which are very good against the biting of Serpents or in the leaves of Willows Vines Lettice Violets and Water-lily which can much more easily cool water than they do the air in sick folks chambers It may be also supposed he might put in Salt-peter which is used in stead of ice to cool wine in the height of Summer Nay Pliny seems to give a reason of what might be thought most hard in the vertue and properties of these herbs when he sayes that the root of Aproxis took fire at a distance as Naphte did because it might be of a bituminous nature which exhaling many fat unctuous spirits takes fire as a candle newly put out which is not to be at all doubted of after the many experiences of it as they may be found in the books of Libavius and Agricola The proofs deduced from this Philosophers forbidding the eating of Beans and the course he took to convert them into blood may refuted with as much ease as the precedent since Rheuclin justly laught at all those impertinencies which some hollow and dislocated brains have forg'd upon this prohibition such as might be that of Hermippus in Laertius who thought Pythagoras would rather have suffered death at the entrance into a field of Beans than passe thorow it to avoid his enemies But the reason of the prohibition was certainly no other than the first giuen by M. Moreau in the place before mentioned upon the School of Salerna namely that Pythagoras who commanded his Disciples to lie down to rest with the sound of the harp and pleasant songs as it were to charm the soul and by harmony to bring it into it self absolutely forbade the use of that fruit the juyce whereof being flatulent grosse and of ill nourishment sends such vapours to the brain as make it heavie and divert the spirits from minding the contemplations of Philosophy which were the main businesse and entertainment of his followers It may be also affirm'd that there was nothing extraordinary in the conversion he made of Beans into blood for M. Moreau in the said Commentary shews clearly that
in the same Chamber in a manner with his own and that which Sindrigal Prince of the Lithuaniaus had us'd to come from its denne and Knock at his Chamber door and receive a certain almes for its nourishment wherewith it return'd to the Woods till the next day that it came again at the same hour these are enough I say to make us admire the Docility of these Creatures which are not so savage but the industry of men is able to reduce them and that by the force t is true of certain words not Magicall and superstitious but those pronounc'd by the Creator of all things when he said to our first parents Have dominion over the fish of the Sea and over the fowle of the Aire and over all the Creatures that move upon the Earth Nor is it worth much consideration that Pythagoras by the uttering of certain words kill'd a Serpent which did abundance of mischief in Italy For Boissardus who cites Aristotle's Authority for the story quotes not the Book whence he took it and if we search a little more narrowly into it we shall find it prove absolutely false as being grounded only on their Ignorance who change Socrates into Pythagoras and who take for sterling a fable related of the former in a Book of the causes and properties of Elements which Patricius demonstrates falsely attributed to Aristotle But this negllgence of Boissardus might have been well excus'd had he not committed another great and more observable when he cites Plutarch to patronise the story of the Ox which Pythagoras sent packing out of a Bean-field after he had whispered something in his eare He had better confest he had translated it out of Caelius Rhodiginus who indeed cites Plutarch in the beginning of his Chapter but upon another occasion than that of this fable whereof it will be found he never made any mention To give it then a finall shock we may say that it is absur'd and irrationall that this Philosopher so grave vertuous in all his other actions should trouble himself to drive away that Creature especially when it was executing his will spoyling trampling the beans the use whereof he thought the greatest abhomination in the World But supposing he should take paines to do it yet is it not likely it was by the vertue of certain words or by the wayes known and practis'd by certain Mountebanks as may be seen in Emanuel de Moura Pierius and Cardan since the least Child coming near the one might as easily have done it as this Philosopher Lastly for what concernes his conjectures and praedictions we may say they can be but of three sorts that is morall as those of Socrates or naturall as those of Pherecydes Thales and Anaxagoras or Diabolicall and superstitious as those of all Magitians Since then it is easie to conjecture by what hath been said concerning his doctrine that he might well practise the two former it were no lesse barbarisme and simplicity to think he should be engag'd in the last than to receive the proofes are brought for it as good and Authentick when they are only grounded upon the superstitious Arithmetick and the Wheele of Onomancy falsely attributed to him by Flood and Catanus For this Arithmetick and all the impertinent fooleries insensibly crept into it is nothing but the pure imagination of those who would needs glosse upon the passage of Plutarch where he sayes that the Pythagoreans honoured Numbers and Geometricall figures with the names of the Gods calling a Triangle with equal sides Pallas and Tritogonia because it is equally divided by three lines perpendicularly drawn from each angle They call'd Unity by the name of Apollo the binary by that of Contention and Boldnesse the trinary by that of Justice for as much as to offend or be offended to do or suffer an injury is done by excesse and defect Justice remaining equally in the middle Nor is it a lesse injury to this great person to think that he ever troubled himself with the practice of this Wheele which Trithemius and Raguseus acknowledge as falsely publish'd under his name as that of Plato and Apuleius or that he ever exercised Onomancy by the help of Common numbers represented by the Letters of the Alphabet the seven Planets the dayes of the week the 12. Signes as Flood would perswade us in his Microcosme For in the first place this kind of Divination is counterfeit and without any ground at all this application of Numbers without any relation or correspondence with the signs and Planets this Arithmetick absolutely fabulous And lastly it was ever the custome of those who made it their businesse to bring into reputation such impertinences as these or any other Mathematicall Niceties to divulge them under the name of this Philosopher by reason of the great knowledge he had therein Whereof we have a manifest example in de Boissiere who within these 60. years making some additions to the Rythmomachia hath in like manner put it out under the title of Pythagoricall Recreation though there be nothing to manifest as that Pythagoras minded this sleight now attributed to him as litle as all the other stories which deserve rather Juven Sat. 8. Purgantes corpora succos Quicquid in tota nascitur Anticirâ than what we have been obliged to say in this Chapter to discover their vanity and the little ground there is to admit them for true CHAP. XI Of Numa Pompilius THeodorus Gaza the learnedst Greek that ever came from Constantinople being ask'd by a friend of his what Authour he would preserve in case a generall wrack were to destroy all the rest would not seem so fond of his own Traductions as to prefer Aristotle or Cicero before Plutarch Him he thought worthy to survive all the rest not so much as I conceive for his admirable learning variety as to perserve in him the most judicious Authour that ever was what could not have been found in any other to wit the judgement he gave of all the things he treated of which we might make use of as a certain mark to distinguish truth from falshood or as a guide to conduct us thorow those noble ruines of Antiquity which we find in his Works This puts me into a more than ordinary admiration at the malice or negligence of most of our Daemonographers who will not apprehend the true account which this Authour gives us of Numa Pompilius as they have done long since in the Metamorphosis of Apuleius which they quote upon all occasions as a manifest history to prove Lycanthropie Out of some such jealousie it was that the Authour thought himself oblig'd to give us all the precautions possible to shew that his transmutation was a meer Fable and Romance when he sayes in the first page of his Book At ego tibi sermone isto Milesio varias fabellas conseram and a little after Fabulam Graecam
incipimus lector intende laetaberis Which laid down if those are deservedly laugh'd at who would establish and confirm a proposition of such consequence by a relation acknowledged to be fabulous even by the Authour of it we may with as much reason affirm those guilty of a greater malice and temerity who so apparently falsifie the authorities of Plutarch Dionysius Halicarnassaeus and Livie to convert into Magick the admirable wisdom and excellent policie of Numa That I undertake his vindication next that of Pythagoras is not grounded on the opinion of divers especially Ovid who have made him later and a Disciple of that Philosopher since Livie sayes in his Decads Authorem doctrinae ejus quia non extat alius falsò Samium Pythagoram edunt The same is also confirm'd by the said Dionysius Halicarnassaeus Plutarch Rhodiginus and Pererius the former whereof shews that the City of Crotona was but founded in the fourth year of Numa's reign and the three others insist much upon all the chronologicall reasons which may prove these two persons not to have been Contemporaries but by a figure of Anachronism ordinary and indeed tolerable in Poets but by no means allow'd an Historian But in regard Iamblicus observes in the life of Pythagoras that he had borrow'd all his learning from the Theologie of Orpheus I have put their Chapters one after the other without being too Criticall as to the time wherein they flourished since it contributes nothing to their vindication and that I am oblig'd to neglect it in divers other parts of this Apologie We are then to note that the accusation against Numa is grounded upon four principall points the least whereof were it true were enough to condemn him for an Enchanter and a Magician For first it is urg'd that the Genius attributed to him by Ammianus Marcellinus and which Dionysius Halicarnassaeus Plutarch and Livie affirm to have been one of the nine Muses or rather a Nymph called Aegeria was no other than a Succuba with whom he was very familiar as being one of the cunning'st and best vers d that ever was in the invocations of the tutelary Gods and the Genii of Men and Cities Hence Postellus takes occasion to maintain that thâ—s Familiar was the same that had attended Vesta the wife of Janus or Noah and then was Guardian of Rome Quo duce sayes he Numa tantae molis urbem stabilivit It is also taken for certain that by the assistance and industry of this Divinity he did many strange and miraculous things to gain reputation among the people of Rome that so he might govern at his pleasure To this purpose is haply what is related by Dionysius Halicarnassaeus and Plutarch That having once invited many Citizens to supper he entertain'd them with mean and ordinary things and with plate that spoke neither wealth nor magnificence But they had not sate down long ere he took occasion to tell them that the Goddesse whom he convers'd with at that very instant was come to give him a visit and that immediately thereupon the room was excellently well furnish'd and the tables covered with all manner of meats the most exquisite and delicate in the world The same may also be confirm'd by the discourses he had with Jupiter such as may be seen in Arnobius who sayes that Numa by the advice of his Nymph Aegeria found out a way to bind two Devils or internall Gods Faunus and Picus who taught him how to invocate Jupiter and force him to come to him by strong and imperious conjurations in case he should not willingly and of his own accord This it seems he was so fortunate in that he fetch'd out of his throne the greatest and most powerfull of all the Gods and forc'd him to declare how by sacrifice he should expiate the thunder and lightening To which may be added the Hydromancie which Varro cited by St. Augustine sayes he was very well versed in as also his magicall books discover'd four hundred years after his death and condemn'd to the fire as most pernicious in the Consulship of Publius Cornelius and Marcus Bebius All this admitted we may well conclude with all our Daemonographers especially le Loyer and Delrio the most learned among them That Numa Pompilius was the greatest Magician of any that ever wore Crown and that he had a greater power over Devils than over men since he made use of the assistance of the former to reduce the Romane people to subjection and obedience to his Laws and Institutions But if we would shew how all these Authours are too prodigall of our leisure and their own when they take so much pains to hatch a sort of strange and hideous imaginations and thereby captivate our belief we need do no more than take a view of the first draught of this person done not onely by Livie and D. Halicarnassaeus who drew the first lines of him but particularly by Plutarch who hath clad him in his proper colours and all the circumstances and particularities of his life that we might thereby judge of the least vices and vertues as also the disposition custom and proceedings of this great Politician and second Founder of Rome Whence it will not be hard to resolve what credit we should give all these after-draughts and copies of the modern who have rather follow'd the Originall in their own fantastick imaginations than that of Plutarch and the best Historians who seem not to mention Numa but out of a designe to celebrate his vertues and admire the excellent conduct whereby he fastened and established the Romane Monarchy For that being loose and but newly set together might easily have been ruin'd by the least hostile violence if Numa had not by a peace of three and fourty years given it time to take root and growth looking on the Romane people as a Champion that were to fight having exercis'd it self at leisure for the time he should reign over it would by that means prove strong enough to oppose any that should question the limits of their Empire The first thing he did after he had possessed himself of the government was to soften and civilize the City converting their rough warlike humour into a gentle and tractable remitting that height of courage and earnestnesse of fighting by Sacrifices Festivals Dances and Processions nay sometimes as Plutarch sayes representing unto them the fear of the Gods To this end did he make them beleeve that he had strange visions or had heard of great calamities purposely to keep down their hearts in a dread of the Gods To this may also be apply'd that passage of Tertullian cited in the third Chapter of this Apologie but much more pertinently that of Lactantius who sayes that Numa Sic novi populi feroces animos mitigavit ad studia pacis à rebus bellicis avocavit Whence may be drawn a certain argument that whatsoever hath been said of
treated only of the offices and duties of the Priests and the Philosophy of the Greeks such as it had been in Numa's time to that of Cassius Hemina they treated only of the Philosophy of Pythagoras and to that of Lactantius Varro and Tuditanus they contain'd only the order and causes of the sacrifices and ceremonies he had instituted amongst the Romans Which last opinion I think the more probable beause it discovers the reason why the Senate thought it not convenient they should be divulg'd for since we find in Plutarch that Numa forbad the Romans to believe that God had the forme either of Man or Beast and to make any image or Statue of him which was observ'd for the space of 70. years and permitted not they should do sacrifice but with the powring out of wine milk and a litle flower it is probable he had given reasons at large in his Books of that new kind of worship These coming to light and acknowledg'd for his four thousand years after as Plutarch affirmes or according to Cassius Hemina 535. when the City of Rome was so full of Idols ut facilius esset Deum quà m hominem invenire and that all the temples continually sweltered in the blood of the Victims it is I say easily conjectur'd that the Books of this Roman Trismegistus who in Juvenal passes for the example of a great Priest were burnt by order of the Senate for fear lest some great change might happen in Religion if by the perusall of those Books it had been known what reasons Numa insisted on both to establish the purity of his Sacrifices and to cleanse men's mind from Idolatry which had taken such root there at the time of this discovery that the best expedient was to destroy those Books which were otherwise likely to put the whole Roman Monarchy into disturbance it being a maxime among Politicians that the troubles dissentions in the State are ever consequential to those that happen in Religion This in my judgment was the true cause of the condemnation of these books and not that which le Loyer and other modernes have endeavoured to find out in Magick or yet what Cassius Hemina who might haply live in Augustus's time seems to relate of their treating of the Philosophy of Pythagoras For as to the former his opinion being without any ground or Authority eâdem facilitate contemnitur quâ affertur For that of the latter it is sufficiently refuted not only in what we have shew'd before that Pythagoras was latter then Numa and that this last came not into Italy according to Gellius till the raign of Tarquin the proud but also by the testimony and contrary opinion of Livy who saies that one Antius Valerius gave the same judgment of these Books Vulgatae opinioni as he adds quâ creditur Pythagorae auditorem fuisse Numam mendacio probabili accommodatâ fide After all which answers and solutions all I have to wish is that our Daemonographers would own either more modesty or more judgment that they may not hereafter so indiscreetly forge such Monsters and Chimeras as afrerwards frighten them and make them run away and cry like little Children who are many times startled at the dirt they cast in the faces of their companions quasi quicquam infelicius sit homine cui sua figmenta dominantur CHAP. XII Of Democritus Empedocles and Apollonius I Should never have presum'd to remove the precious and venerable bounds of Antiquity which the God Terminus in the fabulous Theologie of the Romans signify'd to us immoveable did I not somewhat rely on its being called by Arnobius errorum plenissima mater so far at least as to be satisfi'd it was no sacriledge to bring that to the test which hath been held for true And this I do after so many ages as by their long and various revolutions are wont as well in Civill History as naturall to dragge after them along traine of fables and from time to time to give them new force and vigour by the multitude of those who out of meer respect to Antiquity are ensnar'd by them And indeed it were too great a severity to be oblig'd to follow the superstitious track of those who will not do the least violence to Antiquity which as if our eyes were not able to endure a full light puts a cobweb before them and burdens all things especially the memory and lives of great persons with fables and fictions as it does the Statues erected to them with dust and filth This our designe leades us to maintain by the examples of these three great Philosophers or rather Daemons of knowledge vers'd in all Sciences and the chiefest and of greatest Authority among their people that is Democritus Empedocles and Apollonius These have undergone such a change and Metamorphosis by those who make it their businesse to write without minding that precept of Horace Quid de quoque viro cui dicas saepe caveto that besides that they are delivered over to us all three for Sorcerers and enchanters it is further believ'd that Democritus was such a foole as to put out his own eyes after he had blown away his estate in a fruitlesse search of the Philosophers stone and that Empedocles as an ambitious Desperado cast himself into the burning furnaces of Mount Gibel Deus immortalis haberi Dum cupit Empedocles ardentem frigidus Aetnam Insiluit But these calumnies are so far from being true or well grounded that on the contrary there 's nothing easier then to shew how they are absolutely false if we may bestow but a few lines on them before we come to joyn issue with the most materiall part of the Charge put in against the reputation and Learning of these excellent Persons For first as to the Book of the Sacred Art and the knowledge and practice of Alchymy attributed to Democritus it is a symptome that signifies the deprav'd imaginations of our Furnace-Imps who know no other project to gaine any credit to the Books of their Art than to father them on Moses Salomon Trismegistus Aristotle nay such is their stupidity and want of judgment Adam ut authoritatem videlicet sumat ab homine quae non habet ex veritate But to make an absolute discovery of this imposture sufficiently laugh'd at by Riolanus Guibert and Semertus we may affirme that this Book was never made by Democritus since the learned Mercurial assures us that Chymistry was not known at all in Aristotle's time and that Delrio shewes there is no track of it in any good Author till from Caligula's time when it first broke the shell till that of Dioclesian under whom lived one Zozimus who as Delrio thinks is the most ancient Greek that hath written of it To which may be added that Casaubon saies he saw in the K. of France his Library a manuscript treating of the making of Gold entituled 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
creatus The latter whom we may justly call the Oracle of truth assures us in his Epistles what account we should make of the admirable wisdome of Democritus which gave Celsus occasion to call him magni nominis Philosophum and Gellius nobilissimum Philosophorum virum praeter alios venerandum authoritateque antiquâ praeditum But as the same turf brings forth many times both wholsome and hurtfull herbs and Bees suck honey whence Caterpillers do poison so the travels which they say these Philosophers underwent to learn Magick must now serve us as a pregnant proof that they were the occasions of their great Learning and Polymathy And this must be the more probable if we reflect on what hath been already said of the Magick of the Aegyptians and the travels of Orpheus Zoroastes and Pythagoras as also on the authority of Philostratus who though of a contrary opinion to us as to the Sages of Persia and the Aegyptians yet sayes that Pythagoras Democritus and Empedocles notwithstanding their conversation with them would not learn any thing of their Science To strengthen this yet further we may adde the negative authority of Laertius who makes not the least mention of the Magick of Democritus and but one word by the way of that of Empedocles not specifying contrary to his custom any thing he had done by the means of it without bringing on the stage the common solution of this kind of argument And yet it were but just to urge it when he from whom iâ— is taken had made it his businesse to say all he could and to particularize whatever belongs to the Subject he treats on For instance if any should undertake to give an exact account of all the Sciences and should say nothing of Medicine it might be justly inferr'd he did not rank it among them So it may be concluded that Laertius and two hundred and eleven Authours whom he quotes had not heard ought of the Magick of these two Philosophers since he sayes not any thing of it in his Book where yet he intended a full collection even to the jugling tricks of Pythagoras and the most inconsiderable particulars though fabulous he had read of others But as to Democritus in particular we may balance Pliny's authority with what he sayes himself of the doubt which many made to beleeve things so leight and triviall of a man so wise and discreet in all his other actions And to that adde the contrary authority of Gellius who hath made an expresse Chapter De portentis fabularum quae Plinius secundus indignissimè in Democritum Philosophum confert where he discovers at large the vanity of all the forementioned fables and at last concludes with these words Multa autem videntur ab hominibus male solertibus hujusmodi commenta in Democriti nomen data nobilitatis autoritatisque ejus perfugio utentibus Nor indeed do I find any more than two things in these objections of Pliny which we may at all stick at that is the magicall books written by Democritus and those of Dardanus publish'd by him To which may be answer'd that such proofs conclude not directly as we have shewn in the sixth Chapter of this Apologie that these books are not specified by Laertius or any other and that it is extreamly uncertain who that Dardanus should be For though Pliny Tertullian and Apuleius make him a great Magician yet all they say of him is upon the credit of Columella who sayes Lib. 10. At si nulla valet medicina repellere pestem Dardaniae veniant artes If we will refer the businesse to the Civilians this Dardanus may well be some other than a Magician since they say that Dardanarii are properly Seplasiarii Propolae Proxenetae that is Engrossers and Regraters who fill their barns and store-houses with all sorts of provision to be sold again at extraordinary rates when a dearth should happen as it is learnedly interpreted by Cujacius and Turnebus To this I adde to leave this erroneous perswasion as naked as may be what Solinus speaking of the stone Cathochites which stuck to the hands of those that handled it as if it had been of a viscous and glewy nature saith Democritum Abderitem ostentatione scrupuli hujus frequenter usum ad probandam occultam natur â— potentiam in certaminibus quae contra magos habuit And to that the opinion of the Spaniard Torreblanca who sayes expressely that Magiam Daemoniacam pleno ore negarunt Democritus Averroes Simplicius alii Epicurei qui unà cum Sadduâ—aeis Daemones esse negarunt For indeed he well discover'd what account he made of Spirits and Magick when he pleasantly laugh'd at those young men of Abdera who had disguis'd themselves like Devils purposely to frighten him in his solitude and that being sent for by King Darius and entreated by him to raise up his wife he answer'd him with a good morall instruction that he would do it with all his heart provided he would bring him but three men who had never bewail'd the death of their neerest friends for there needed no more than to write their names and put them upon his wife's tomb to make her rise again immediately This was much different from the proceeding of Simon Magus or rather the counterfeit Monk Santabarenus who entreated by the Emperour Basilius that he might see his Son though dead was much more kind than Democritus for he gave him a meeting with him as he went a hunting and suffer'd them to embrace one another for some time which it was as easie for him to do by his Enchantment as it was impossible for Democritus who had attain'd the knowledge of all things save that of Magick Nor is my admiration lesse that Delrio should also refer thereto what was done by Empedocles to hinder the over-violence of the winds that blew in his Countrey For Laertius explaâ—ing it sayes He commanded a many Asses to be flay'd their skins to be made into bags and put upon the tops of mountains to represse the immoderate gusts of the Etesian winds Wherein it is easily perceived there was no more Magick than in the industry he used to deliver the Salinuntiâ—ns from the plague caused by the noisomnesse of a river by cutting into it two little rivulets which dissolv'd the viscousnesse and carried away all the filth or in the simple cure he did of the suffocation of the Matrix which yet hath given some occasion to say that he rais'd a woman to life and to Satyrus in Laertius that he was a Magician though most part of the verses he produces to prove it and among others these Pharmaca queis pellas morbos relevesque senectam Percipies quae cuncta tibi communico soli Extinctumque hominem nigro revocabis ab Orco should be interpreted as Talentonius sayes of a secret he had to keep a body for some time from corruption though depriv'd of nourishment respiration and
for him aâ—d outvy one another in his commendations as Gellius observes that one of them did when he writ his Institutions of Cyrus out of aemulation to the other who had published ten Books of Common-Wealth But these are desperate Sallyes of a dangerous sort of spirits who purposely to expose him to generall contempt so freely discredit the Authority of these two great Philosophers as also those of Apuleius Maximus Tyrius Cicero Plutarch and the best Authours out of no other motive then that of meer vanity and a groundless hope of being thought more criticall and quick-sighted then others for breaking and battering this ancient image I should for my part rather be of their number who reverence it out of a belief that so many Authors would not bestow such Elogies on Socrates or call him as Martial did magnum Senem as Persius barbatum Magistrum as Val. Maximus palliatum animum virilitatis robore or lastly as Apuleius Divinae prudentiae senem if he had not been so famous for his wisdome that they are rather to be excus'd then condemn'd who with some reason thought he had acquired it by the favour and assistance of his Daemon With this misfortune neverthelesse that there is as much uncertainty in the explication of the nature of it according to this opinion as there was malice and calumny in the precedent For Apuleius will have it to be a God Lactantius and Tertullian a Devil Plato invisible Apuleius affirmes that it might be visible Plutarch that it was a certain sneezing on the left or right side according to which Socrates presag'd good or bad successe in the thing undertaken Maximus Tyrius sayes it was only a remorse of conscience against the violence of his naturall inclination which was neither heard nor seen whereby Socrates was restrain'd from doing what was ill Pompanatius that it was the ascendent of his Nativity lastly Montaigne that it was a certain impulsion of the will that presented it self to him beyond the direction of his discourse But for my part I think it may be truely and rationally said that this familiar Daemon of Socrates which was to him in rebus incertis prospectator dubiis prâ—monitor periculosis viator was only the good regulation of his life the wise conduct of his Actions his experience of things and the result of all his Vertues which wrought in him that prudence which may justly be termed the salt and seasoning of all actions the rule and line of all affaires the eye which sees directs and disposes all and in a word the Art of life as Medicine is the Art of health So that there is much more reason to believe that the soul of this Philosopher not only refin'd from its violent passions but inrich'd with all sorts of Vertues was the true Daemon of his carriage than toimagine him entangled in the delusions and conversing with Hobgoblins crediting them or following their directions an imagination so absurd that Plutarch thought himself concern'd to endeavour to weed it out of our belief For in his Book upon Socrates's Daemon he saies that Socrates slighted not celestiall things as the Athenians would have it believ'd at his condemnation but that abundance of imaginary apparitions fables and superstitions having crept into the Philosophy of Pythagoras and his disciples whereby it was become absolutely ridiculous and contemptible he endeavour'd to regulate it by prudence to cleanse it from all those Stories and not to believe any more then what he thought rationall To this we may adde a generall Goodnesse shining through all his actions and that he had no other designe then to lead his neighbour in the paths of vertue and thence perceive the little ground we have to conclude this Genius to have been a bad Daemon Which yet we should rather believe than that it was a good Angel since that he must either have it voluntarily and by divine permission a secret hath not been yet reveal'd or by the force of his conjurations But these must needs be vain at that time wherein Angels rather commanded men and were not courted with so much facility as since the passion of Jesus Christ who hath deliver'd us from the slavery of sin to make us equalls and companions to Angels who would not be ador'd by St. John as they had sometimes been by Abraham This foundation layd there remaines only to resolve three difficulties which may happen concerning this Daemon The first is why he never perswaded him to do any thing but only not to undertake something and to take heed and avoid it To this it may be answered that Socrates needed it not in as much as being naturally enclin'd to whatever were vertuous his particular endeavour was by a long habit to arrive to that reservednesse which the greatest persons even in their most violent passions and notwithstanding their courage either have or ought to have This is true prudence which regulates their conduct and makes them do all things wisely quae ratio saith Cicero Poetas maximeque Homerum impulit ut principibus Heroum Ulyssi Agamemnoni Diomedi Achilli certos deos discriminum periculorum comites adjungerent The second is a proof taken from the Ecstasies which were ordinary to this person whence some conclude they could not happen to him but by the means of a Daemon more powerfull then that of the perfection of his Soul As if it were not more rationall with Aristotle and Marsilius Ficinus who represent Socrates as a man extreamly melancholy to imagine these ecstasies as naturall in him as those of Charles de Bouille mentioned by Gesner and Trithemius For Melancholy may for a long time entertaine the Soul in a deep meditation and when the Spirits attend the soule to that place where it retreats as it were into its centre to do it some service there the other parts are depriv'd of their influent heat and seem not to have any spark of life and this is properly what is called Ecstasie The last depends upon the great number and certainty of the praedictions of this Philosopher whence is drawn the same inference as from the precedent as that Socrates was certainly the instrument of that Daemon which not content to have declar'd him the wisest of all men would needs add a further respect to him by the meanes of his Oracles and answers To this may be said that besides that it were an open breach of Horace's commandment Nec Deus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus Inciderit to attribute these predictions of Socrates and the advice he gave his Friends to some Divinity it were more rationall to conceive that as he was absolutely enclin'd to morall actions so had he so particularly consider'd all the accidents that happen to men that any thing almost gave him some light to judge of and foresee what was to come Hence it also came that he
they were themselves deceiv'd in acknowledging those Genii because they could not after much examination find any cause of such extraordinary perfection Or that they have done it out of modesty as unwilling to discover by their learning how much all others were below them Or lastly they endeavoured by those particular assistances to elude the envie and jealousie which might have been consequent to the great Fame they have acquir'd by their unwearied industry But since Truth is the sooner found by the associated disquisitions of a many those may well deserve our attention who say first That Scaliger practis'd that sleight by the example of all great persons and secondly that he might not be thought to give ground to the ambition of his Antagonist The Genius he attributed to himself was as we find in his Poeticall Art a simple sally and emotion of Spirit whereby the Soul was as it were enflam'd in it self and so elevated into the knowledge of things during which a man may sometimes speak or write something he understands not when the heat of that Enthusiasm is over For Cardan 't is true he speaks so variously of his Genius that after he had absolutely affirm'd in a Dialogue entituled Tetim that he had one and that Venereall yet participating of the nature of Saturn and Mercury and in his Book De libris propriis that it communicated it self to him by Dreams he in the same place is at a losse whether he truly had any or no or that it was the excellencie of his own nature Sentiebam sayes he seu ex Genio mihi praefecto seu quod natura mea in extremitate humanae substantiae conditionisque in consinio immortalium posita esset c. and so concludes in his Book De rerum varietate that he had not any confessing ingenuously Ego certè nullum Daemonem aut Genium mihi adesse cognosco Whence it may safely be judged that he and Scaliger had no other Genius than that of the vast learning they had acquir'd by their indefatigable labours and the experience they had of things upon which raising up their judgement as on two Pyramids they judged pertinently of all things and suffered nothing to escape them till they had known and master'd it CHAP. XIV Of Alchindus Geber Artephius Thebit Anselme of Parma Raymundus Lullius Arnoldus de villanova Peter d' Apono and Paracelsus SHould we credit the fabulous Philosophy of the Poets who represent all things under the Mythology of their inventions there were some ground to receive the Authority of Pliny for good where he sayes that Magick is a Branch of Medicine The motive to believe this is only that the so much celebrated Sorceresse Circe is by the Poets thought to be the Sister of Aesculapius the first inventor of Medicine and one of the Sons of Phoebus or the Sun whose Daughter this Sorceresse also was according to the Poet who speaking of her sayes very freely Dives inaccessis ubi solis filia lucis Urit adoratam nocturna in lumina cedrum But since we have a more authentick Authority that of the Scriptures which makes God the first Author of so necessary an Art we need no more to discover the errour of Pliny and with the same labour to rescue Medecine 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Isidorus Peliusiota calls it from the calumny of this inveterat perswasion And if so it must also deliver the professors thereof from the censure wch to the prejudice of their Innocence seem'd to be fastn'd on them upon the account of the pernicious Diabolical Magick which le Loyer Boissardus Delrio Vuierus and the rest of the Daemonographers with divers Historians affirme to have been the practice of Alchindus Geber Lullius and the rest whose cause we plead in this Chapter For though it be endeavour'd to represent them especially the Arabians as the Bacchantes did Orpheus and that Empericks Astrologers Chymistâ— and Magicians would gladly cut them in pieces that they might challenge the greatest and best part in every one of them yet is it easy to judge by the fragments remaining of their workes and compositions that they were Physicians But with this misfortune that it is as impossible punctually to know the particulars of their Lives and the time of their birth which certainly is as indiscoverable as that of the people called Aborigines without beginning or of those whom the Poets make to come down out of the Clouds to avoid the blasting of their Noble and generous actions by the meannesse of their Originall This neverthelesse is not so much to be attributed to any negligence of the Arabians to leave us some account thereof as to the Barbarisme raigning among the Latines in their time who have troubled themselves to translate the Books which might have given us some knowledge and discoveries thereof so little that they have not so much as made a collection of the lives of the most learned men that were in esteem even among themselves In so much that it may be truly said that what we now know of R. Lullius Arnoldus de villa novo Peter d' Apono and the rest is rather grounded on the doubtfull conjectures and several passions of moderne Authors then the proofs and testimonies derived from the Ancient Whence it comes to passe that I can only guesse of this famous person Alchindus with whom we begin the vindication of Physitians that he might flourish five or 600. years since because Averroâ—s who liv'd abont the year 1160. and of whom Gilles of Rome saies he had seen his two Sons at the Court of the Emperour Frederick Red-beard gives him great Elogies and makes a large commemoration of his Books as Cardan relates To which he adds much in praise of him giving him the Tittle not only of a great Astrologer with Albohazen Haly and Haly Rodoan or that of a most learned and experienc'd Physician with Rasis and Mesue or lastly that of a subtile Philosopher with Averroes and Wimpinal but proceeding further and grounding in all probability his opinion as well upon what they said as his own judgment he allowes him an honourable place among the greatest Wits that ever were that is Archimedes Aristotle Euclid Scotus Suisset Apollonius Pergaeus Archit as Mahomet the inventer of Algebra Geber Galen and Vitruvius It were not then hard to judge what an excellently learned person this was not only by the two Books that are printed of his De Temporum mutationibus De gradibus medicinarum compositarum investigandis but also by divers others frequently cited by Authours under the titles of De ratione sex Quantitatum de quinque Essentiis de motu diurno de Vegetabilibus de Theorica magicarum artium Whereof all the difficulty is concerning this last since Francis Picus and Wimpinall have made whole Treatises out of it wherein they discourse at large of the Heresies blasphemies and absurdities
which may be observ'd therein as also of the Magick which Alchindus endeavour'd to introduce Hence is it that all the Daemonographers have taken occasion to speake of him as an eminent and pernicious Magician And yet Johannes Picus the miracle and astonishment of his age sayes expressely in his Apologie that he knew but three men that had made the best advantages of naturall and lawfull Magick Alchindus Roger Bacon and William Bishop of Paris But to extract truth out of these so manifest contradictions me thinks when a man hath well considered in Aimery Wimpinal and Francis Picus the maine grounds of that Book there may two things be rationally said of it One that it is extreamely superstitious and full of hereticall propositions and directly opposite to the principles of Faith as having bin writt by one that liv'd under the Law of Mahomet and took a freedome to write without any respect to Christian Religion which he accounted false and ill-grounded Whence it is no miracle if he Avicenna Algazel Averroes and all the Arabians have fallen into these abysses and precipies since they were not guided by that pole-Starre which conducts us now through these manifest errours and falsities The other that there is no ground to make this Author a Magician when Delrio is content to rank him only among the superstitious that he was so far from having ought to do with Theurgick or Geotick Magick that on the contrary he seems to have no other designe in his Books than to referre to Nature whatever was attributed to Angels and Devils In which opinion he hath been since seconded by Peter d' Apono and Pompanatius who in order thereto imagin'd an absolute dependance of things sublunary upon the celestiall and that the former deriv'd all their vertues and properties from the Latter and every particular from the whole by the meanes of certain corporeall rayes which passed from the least even to the greatest And these he assign'd for cause of whatever was done in nature as Plato did Idaea's Avicenna Intelligences Hermes and Marsilius Ficinus the Starrs and Planets Camillus and Albertus magnus the specificiall forme and Galen Temperament Whence we may passe a finall judgment with R. Bacon quod multi libri reputantur inter Magicos qui non sunt tales sed continent sapientiae dignitatem If so Alchindus cannot be condemn'd of Magick if we do not in the same sentence include all those Authors who as he have endeavour'd to take away the admiration that follows a many extraordinary effects by the discovery of some more probable causes which they have found out I should passe by Geber without mentioning him among those that have been charg'd with Magick upon the security of Cassiodorus who sayes Calumnia non praesumitur ubi nulla probatio habetur were I not oblig'd to answer the only argument which our Daemonographers draw by head and shoulders out of a book which Trithemius sayes was made by Geber King of the Indians upon the relation between the seven Planets and the seven names of God and some others quoted for Magicians in the second Book of Picatrix To which it may briefly be reply'd that this Geber King of the Indians was nothing to this we speake of and that that Book ought no more to be condemn'd as treating of Magick than the Commentary of R. Abraham Aben-Ezra upon the sixth treatise of the first part of the Thalmud where he makes a Symbolization between the ten Hebrew Sephirots and ten celestiall Spheres and the ten Commandements of the Law But to take away all suspition there may be of truth in this proof it must be said it is absolutely false and absurd since that notwithstanding the Autohrity of Vigenere it is unquestionable that this Geber who they say was King of the Indians is a meer fable and Chimaera of these wretched Charcole-marchants who by that pitifull fiction would gain more reputation to the Chymicall writings of a Philosopher of the same name This Geber as Leon of Africa affirmes was a Greek by Nation first a Christian then a Mathumetan and lived as he sayes 100 yeares after Mahomet or according to the calculation of Vigner about the year 723. though if the 100. yeares be taken precisely it should be affirm'd he liv'd rather in the year 732. whereto yet Blancanus does not agree but makes him flourish in the year 801. unlesse the mistake be that he went upon the time of his death and Vigner upon that of his Navity However it be this takes away nothing from his Learning upon occasion whereof Cardan hath not forgot to put him to the test among the most eminent advancers of Literature Nor indeed was the honour above his deserts since he was so great an Astrologer that as Blancanus affirmes he reform'd many things in the Almagestum of Ptolemy and for Chymistry Fallopus and Erastus seem to approve the judgment of the Chymists who call him the Master of Masters in that Art Adde to this that the Catalogue of his works faithfully got together by Gesner is an evident proof that he knew all but Magick of which or of the Books he writ thereof neither he nor any good Author hath deliver'd any thing as knowing what Lactantius sayes Turpe est hominem ingeniosum dicere id quod si neges probare non possit And indeed if all those who make it their businesse to write had been as carefull to observe this precept as they have been ambitious to make ostentation of their knowledge and reading by heaping together all those fabulous Stories wch make ever so little to their purpose we should not be now to shew that that of Artephius and his living 1025. years by the force of his Magick is if not absolutely false extreamely suspicious as having been gloss'd upon by the Alchymists and Roger Bacon For he sayes in his Book of the abbridgment of Theology that this Philosopher or Chymist travell'd all over the East and was to see Tantalus who sate in a throne of Gold and discoursed very pertinently of the most abstruse secrets of all the Sciences In another of his works he sayes that he was a live in Germany even in his time To which adde what others say in Francisus Picus that it is he who is represented to us by Philostratus under the name of Apollonius All this put together and well considered sufficiently discovers how far they are mistaken who notwithstanding the impossibility of this length of life evinc'd by M. Moreau and divers others do yet maintaine and fagot together so many fables upon this person and to make it the more plausible will needs father on him two Books or fragments One call'd Clavis majoris saepientiae treats so perfectly well of the order and procedure to be observ'd in getting the Philosophers stone that Johannes Pontanus one of the greatest Dreamers among the Chymists confesses ingenuously
Metamorphosis of the Impost put by King Edward upon the wools which were transported out of England into Brabant to the Sum of six millions of gold which was bestow'd on him by this Chymist to make war against the Turk and the Infidels And if we would shew how far the vapours of the Mercury had disturb'd his brains we need onely quote the voyages he made as Bovillius relates as well to the Pope as King Philip the Fair to have the three Propositions granted which may be seen at the end of his Book De natali pueri Which were these that all the Military Orders that were up in his time should be formed together into one body That the works of the Philosopher Averroes should be absolutely suppress'd and that Monasteries should be built in all parts of the world to instruct in strange languages such as should enter into vows for the conversion of Infidels But I could never yet discover upon what reasons the greatest part of the Daemonographers and some Historians as Vigner have presum'd to represent him as a Magician To give them time to produce them we shall in the mean while speak of Arnoldus de Villa nova who was not an ignorant Friar or Beguin as R. Lullius or some wretched and wandering Chymist as he is represented to us For on the contrary it is certain he was the learnedst Physician of his time equally acquainted with the Latine Greek and Arabian Tongues and one whose writings sufficiently witnesse his abilities in the Mathematicks Medicine and Philosophy the practice whereof gain'd him favour and employment about Pope Clement and Frederick King of Sicily who certainly would never have made use of him if they had thought him a Conjurer or Magician such as a many are perswaded he was Among these is Francis Pegna who refers to Satanicall delusion the metallick transmutation which John Andreas a famous Canonist sayes he saw him do at Rome Adde to this the proof they draw from two little books publish'd under his name one treating De physicis ligaturis the other De Sigillis 12 Signorum But to shew that he is as unjustly charg'd with Magick by these Authors as he is with the writing of the Book Detribus Impostoribus by Postellus or to have been the first that tried the generation of a man in an Alembick by some in Mariana we are first to consider that Delrio absolutely clears him of this accusation affirming against the said Pegna that it was injurious to the Clergie of Rome at that time to imagin they should employ Arnoldus de Villa-nova or permit him to practise so freely in their City if they could have discover'd in him the least indicia of Magick Nor is it a lesse manifest abuse to attribute to him the Book De physicis ligaturis since it is evident he did only translate it out of an Arabian one Lucas Ben Costa And for that De Sigillis 12 Signorum besides the question it is whether it be his as being not comprised in the collection of his works we may roundly answer that it is like those of Thebit Chicus and the rest and that all the prejudice it can do him is to confirm the opinion of the vain and supers itious speculations he was guilty of in Astrologie But even of this no man will doubt that shall observe in Picus how he laugh'd at the very Science when he would assigne the birth of Antichrist in the year 1345 and confirm and maintain all his other heresies which Vigner in his Ecclesiasticall History takes the more pains to particularize by how much the more sympathy and resemblance there is between them and those of the Hereticks and new Religionaries of these timeâ— But if the particular and over-curious study of Astrologie hath ever prov'd prejudiciall to those who have practis'd it we may truly say that the famous Physician Peter d' Apono hath felt the stings of Calumny more than any of the precedent upon that account For the common opinion of almost all Authours is that he was the greatest Magician in his time that he had mastered the seven Liberall Sciences by the assistance of seven familiar Spirits which he had constantly lodg'd in a Crystall That he had the way like another Pasetes to force back the money he had spent into his purse again and to conclude with a proof as manifest as undeniable That it is certain he was accus'd of Magick in the eightieth year of his age that dying in the year 1305 before sentence was pass'd upon him he was neverthelesse as Castellanus affirms condemn'd to the fire and it was ordered that a bundle of Straw or Osier representing him should be burn'd in the publike place at Padua purposely by an example so rigorous and the fear of incurring the like punishment to prohibit the reading of three superstitious and abominable books of his Of these the first was called Heptameron now printed at the end of the first Tome of Agrippa's Works the second that which Trithemius cals Elucidarium Necromanticum Petri de Albano and the last one by the same Authour call'd Liber experimentorum mirabilium de annulis secundum 28 mansiones Lunae All which proofs as well of his practice and his books as the Sentence thundered against him by the Inquisition might indeed perswade us that he was the most deeply guilty of all that medled with those magicall and superstitious observations But we are as well to consider the face as the reverse of his Medall and take it out of the false light wherein his adversaries have placed it to view it in its proper situation and observe therein the draught of a man that appear'd as a miracle amidst the ignorance of his age One he was that besides the knowledge of the Tongues and Medicine had so search'd into that of the lesse common Sciences that having left by his writings of Physiognomy Geomancie and Chiromancie enough to prove his abilities therein he shook hands with them all and his own youthfull curiosity to apply himself wholly to Philosophy Physick and Astrologie In these he proved so fortunate that not to say any thing of the two former whereby he insinuated himself into the Caresses of the Popes and Princes of his time and gain'd that reputation wherein he now shines among all the learned it is evident he was excellently well skill'd in the last as well by the Astronomicall figures he caused to be painted in the great Hall of the Palace at Padua as his translations of the books of Rabbi Abraham Ben Ezra To which we may adde those he made himself of the Criticall dayes and the illustration of Astronomy as also the suffrage of the famous Mathematician Regiomontanus who made an excellent Panegyrick to him in the quality of an Astrologer in an Oration he pronounc'd publikely at Padua when he was upon the explanation of the book of Alfraganus From his so great
celebration of this Science through all his works especially in the hundredth fifty sixth Difference of his Conciliator have some Authours taken occasion to maintain an opinion directly contrary to that of the precedent to wit that that Sentence passed upon him not for his Magick but because he would give an account of the miraculous effects that happen many times in Nature by vertue of the Celestiall Bodies without referring them either to Angels or Daemons This is clear by the collection which Symphorianus hath made of the passages of his Differences as such as are not to be read without the precaution and peremptory authority of Franciscus Picusâ— who speaking of him sayes expressely Ab omnibus fermè creditus est Magus verâ—m constat quà m oppositum dogma ei aliquando tributum sit quem ettam Haeresium inquisitores vexaverunt quasi nullos esse Daemones crediderit To which may be added that Baptista of Mantua upon this score cals him Virum magnae sed nimium audacis temerariaeque doctrinae that Casmannus numbers him among those who referr'd all miracles to nature and that le Loyer affirms that he laugh'd at Sorcerers and their Sabats Whence it might be wonder'd at that yet the same Authors in divers other places rank him among Conjurers and Magicians were it not ordinary with those who write upon this Subject so to swell up their books by copying out whatever they find in others that they seldom observe the Poets advice Primo ne medium medio ne discrepet imum Nor can it but happen so when having gotten to the middle or end they forget what they said at the beginning and become like that Didymus who having deni'd a thing in one of his books another was produc'd wherein he affirm'd it But I should not have insisted on all these proofs of the impiety of Peter d' Apono so to rescue him from the crime of Magick by charging him with that of Atheism if I had not something to clear him of both For this I have not onely the testimony of the most illustrious and religious Frederick Duke of Urbin who for his great deserts erected a Statue to him among those of the most eminent men that are to be seen in his Cittadel but also the publick attestation of the City of Padua causing his Effigies to be set up over the gate of their Palace between those of Tituâ— Livius Albertus Magnus and Julius Paulus with this inscription upon the Base PETRUS APONUS PATAVINUS PHILOSOPHIAE MEDICINAEQUE SCIENTISSIMUS OB IDQUE CONCILIATORIS NOMEN ADEPTUS ASTROLOGIAE VERO ADEO PERITUS UT IN MAGIAE SUSPICIONEM INCIDERIT FALSOQUE DE HAERESI POSTULATUS ABSOLUTUS FUERIT This me thinks were enough to shew that all the Objections formerly made to convince him of Magick are rather imaginary then reall But to make an absolute discovery of their falshood we may answer what Ludwigius hath said of the seven spirits who taught him the seven Liberal Sciences that this fabulous relation proceeded from the said Peter's affirming after Albumazar that the prayers made to God when the Moon is in conjunction with Jupiter in the Dragon's head are infallibly heard and that for his own particular he had no sooner made his addresses but according to his own expression Sapientiam à primo visus est sibi in illa amplius proficere Nor indeed could it but give diverse Authours occasion to smile at his indiscretion in disacknowledging his great Industry and Labours to become oblig'd for his Learning to the superstition of a certain prayer which must needs be vain ineffectual taken inwhat sense soever For if it be directed to the Stars it were absolute bestiality to think they could heare it if to God I would gladly know whether he were deaf before that conjunction whether he would not receive our prayers without it or whether that force did necessitate him to condescend to our desires Hence was it that Johannes Picus speaking of this new Salomon had reason to say Consulerem Petro isti ut totum quod profecit suae potius industriae ingenioque acceptum referret quà m Joviae illi suae supplicationi In like manner for the three Books divulg'd under his name it may be sayd they are no lesse unjustly attributed to him than diverse others to most of the great Wits besides that Trithemius will not acknowledge them to be legitimate because of the great number of fables therein father'd upon this Author and what he had said before in his Catalogue of Eccelesiasticall Writers that he thought nothing true of what was said of the Magick of Peter d' Apono because he could never understand he had writ any Book upon that subject To which if we adde the generall silence of all Libraries and the confirmation Symphorianus gives the Authority of Trithemius affirming he had never seen any of his Magicall Books save a certain Difference where he treats of it by the way I conceive there is nothing can hinder us from declaring him innocent and concluding with the more rationall party that the suspicion men have had of his being a Magician proceeds as its true originall from the power he attributes to it in the Hundred fifty six difference of his Conciliator and his faculty of predictions by the assistance of Astrology upon which in processe of time all these fables and Chimera's crept in according to the true saying of Propertius Omnia post obitum pingit major a Vetust as Lastly for this Arch-heretick in Philosophy Medicine and Religion Theophrastus Paracelsus who is now the Zenith and rising Sun of all the Alchymists me thinks those who would rescue him from the crime of Magick yet without abatement as to any other he stands charg'd with may with reason say much in his vindication Among other things that the novelty of his conceptions the difficulty of his style and the obscurity of a many words frequent in his workes such as for instance Ens Pagoicum Cagastricum Cherionium Leffas Jesadach Trarames Stannar Perenda Relloleum and abundance of the like make the reader so doubtfull of his meaning that he must needs go feeling in the darknesse of such Maeanders and knows not whether he speakes of a Sheeps trackle or a pill a stone or bread the Devil or Nature Which if so there is much more ground to doubt whether he makes use of Magick as of riddles after the example of Trithemius to disguise his precepts and to conceale the vanity of his Art which he thought should be the more admir'd the lesse it is understood Lucret. l. 1. Omnia enim stolidi magis admirantur amantque Inversis quae sub verbis latitantia cernunt But for my part since I have not studied the Dictionary Rulandus hath compil'd of the Phrases of this Author so far as to be able to judge of his workes and to understand them I shall in this question of his Magick
occasion to make any remarkes upon the two first Books of his occult Philosophy printed long before any of these pieces at Paris Antwerp and other places and every where with the Priviledge and approbation of those who had the management of such affaires But it may haply be conjectur'd that the Adversaries will answer this last reason by saying that there is indeed no danger in those Books it being Agrippa's designe to make that advantage of the curious Philosophy and Learning therein contained as a gilt pill to make the poison of the other to slide down more easily imitating therein the subtlety of the Crocodile which counterfeits the voice of a man to devour him or rather the stratageme of Satan transforming himself into an Angell of Light or of some beautifull Creature the more easily to deceive us We shall therefore take this occasion to discover how much the avarice of Booksellers and the vanity of certain men who have no other employment then to make counterfeit keâ—â— to all Books and treatises that are ever so litle difficult and obscure have injur'd the memory of this Author fathering on him a fourth Book full of vain Magical superstitious and abhominable Ceremonies and publishing it with the three of his Occult Philosophy together with some other shreds and fragments of Peter d' Apono Arbatel Pictorius Trithemins and commentaries upon the whole History of Pliny by Stephanus Aqueus the reading whereof we must acknowledge much more dangerous to a mind carry'd through weaknesse away with such vanities then that of Ovid to a debauch'd person of Martiall to a Flatterer and detractor of Lucian to a Scoffer of Cicero to a proud man and of Lucretius to an irreligious man and an Atheist But note by the way that these Books are as falsely father'd on them as that fourth upon Agrippa as Vuierus in defence of the last affirmes that that Book was not publish'd till twenty seven years after his death and that certainly he was not the Author of it And for Agrippa we may obiect that he sayes in his Epistles that he had reserv'd to himself the key of the three Books he had publish'd For besides that we may probably answer that he mention'd such a Key meerly to be courted by the curious upon which account James Gohory and Vigenere affirme he boasted that he knew the secret of Pythagoras's glasse as also that of extracting the spirit of Gold to turn Silver or Copper into perfect Gold yet not for a greater quantity then the waight of the Body whence it was extracted amounted to Besides this reason I say he clearly expresses what he meanes by such a key when he saies in the 19. Epist of the 5. Book Haec est illa vera mirabilium operum occultissima Philosophia Clavis ejus Intellectus est quanto enim altiora intelligimus tantó sublimiores induimus vir tutes tantoque majora facilius efficacius operamur This I suppose takes away all difficulty concerning this occult Philosophy unlesse we would raise any out of the third Book printed with the other two in in the year 1533. he being then a Domestick of the Archbishop's of Cullen who thought himself much honour'd with the dedication of them and permitted him to publish them according to the Priviledge of the Emperour Charles V. From which circumstances may be inferr'd that as the two first were publish'd long before without any prejudice to the Author's reputation so is there not any thing in the third that may give any suspicion of Magick unlesse it be particularly to such as like fearfull travellers take roots for folded Serpents huts and bushes for Highway-men waiting for them Et motae ad Lunam trepidant arundinis umbram For he treats not of any thing under the title of Divine and Ceremonious Magick but of Religion of God and of his names and attributes as also of Daemons and Angels of Intelligences and Genius's of sacrifices of Man and his severall operations And all this according to the opinions of Divines Philosophers and Cabalists not advancing any thing but what as he acknowledges himself he had taken out of the printed much read and much approved Books of Hâ—â—o Porphyrius Proclus Calcidus Synesius Ammonius Psellus Albertus magnus Roger Bacon William of Paris Gatalinus Johannes Picus Reucliâ—â—s Riccius and such like who are only suspected of Magick by those that are frightned at any thing they are unacquainted with and as Lncretius sayes fear Nihilo quae sunt metuenda magis quà m Quae pueri in tenebris pavitant finguntque futura To this we may adde that he hath in his preface cautiously retracted what ever might have crept into his works contrary to the doctrine of the Church does both there and all thorow his workes excuse himself saying that Minor quà m adolescens hoc composuit It is then out of all controversy that there will not hereafter be any so barbarous inhumane as to glosse more disadvantageously upon the heats sallyes of his youth then on those of Picus Albertus magnus Aeneas Sylvius and divers others who may as well as Agrippa imitate the penitent King where he sayes Remember not O Lord the sins and ignorances of my youth Having thus defeated the strongest and most unsuspected proof of the Adversaries and rendered it vain and of no consequence the rest are easily rooted as such as are fitter to fill up the Magicall Romances of Merlin Maugis and Dr. Faustus than that they should be found in the serious and considerate writings of Historians and Daemonographers at least such as ought to be such Among these Delrio Thevet and Paulus Jovius are the most considerable witnesses that come in against the life manners and doctrine of Agrippa The former was a man of such a vast and prodigious reading that he hath omitted nothing that any way made for his 〈◊〉 the other two seem to speak of him with more candour and integrity in as much as they prudently rank him amongst the most illustrious men and liken him to that altar of Midas which seem'd sometimes to be of Gold but for the most part of stone To begin then with the deposition of Thevet who having first drawn him according to the Originall of Bohemians and Cingarists Quos aliena juvant propriis habitare mole stum very confidently gives you a reason for all his Travells which was that he could not stay long in any place before he had shewn some trick of his Art which being discover'd and he thereby known to be an Enchanter and Necromanner all he could do was to fly from one Country to another like those apes that leap from one tree to another and from one bough to another till at last they are taken by the Hunters To make this testimony the more authentick Delrio makes oath that the Emperour Charles V. would never admit him to his sight after he had
should be among the Romans a Law so barbarous as should impower the Dictator to put to death any Citizen he pleased without allowing him to make any defence for himself and that without the least fear of being call'd to any account for so doing But there is more reason to wonder now when a man reflects on the temerity of those Writers who though they have not the power of the ancient Dictators of Rome do yet so confidently condemn the most eminent Authours not as deserving death but as guilty of a crime as Johannes Sarisberiensis affirms of it morte digni sunt qui à morte conantur scientiam mutuare which deserves nothing lesse Nay such is their impudence that they have no more respect for Religious men Bishops and Popes than they had before for Philosophers Physicians and others of greatest authority among the Learned For if we look for any reason of this rigorous proceeding there will be no other sound than that they strike at all without any exception of persons Tros Rutulusve fuat out of an excesse of zeal to the truth as they imagine so under the shadow and conceit of their pretended integrity to the prejudice of the accused innocent to gain the greater credit to certain collections and gleanings of I know not what ridiculous and ill digested relations which would never find Readers were there not more fools who are delighted to see extravagant pictures than wise men that have the patience to contemplate a simple and naturall Beauty Since therefore it were indiscretion in me to break off this Apologie when I am come to that point for which principally I undertook it I think it now time to speak of Religious men and to shew what ingratitude it were in us to make so sleight acknowledgement of the obligation we owe them for the preservation of Letters from the times of Boetius Symmachus and Cassiodorus to the last taking of Constantinople At which time Learning began to creep out of Monasteries which for all the time before had been as it were publike Christian Schools where not only youth but also such men as would apply themselves that way were instructed in all manner of Disciplines Sciences Morality and that to such a height that not content with that so famous Quadrivium of the Mathematieks which besides all that is now shewn in Colledges was then taught Medicine both as to Theory and Practice was so well cultivated that we need no more to convince us how expert they were therein than the writings of Aegidius Constantine and Damascene Joannitius Peter of Spain and Turisanus So that it were easie for me to answer those who charge them with illiterature and ignorance did I not think it more requisite to apply the remedy where there is most need and by culling out five or six among them Qui ob facta ingentia possunt Verè homines Semidei Heroesque vocari to rescue them from the crime of this Magicall Idolatry which were so much the more horrid and abominable practis'd by them by how much they are principally those who should oppose it and cleanse mens minds thereof as well by the example of their good lives as by the zeal and fervencie of their learned instructions We are then to consider that the Authour of the Book entituled Ars notoria publish'd by Giles Bourdin layes this foundation for the reputation thereof that the holy Ghost had dictated it to St. Hierom which we must allow upon another assurance of his that he translated the history of Judith in one night To which adde that Johannes Picus affirms he had seen a book of Enchantments which diverse weak judgements hold was interpreted by the same St. Hierom though with as little reason as Trithemius affirms as some attribute certain conjurations of the four principall Devils to St. Cyprian Bishop of Carthage This consideration premis'd I doubt not but the evident falshood of these calumnies will prove a certain light to the judgement we should passe on those books of Necromanticall Images the Metallick Art the Secrets of Alchymy and that De essentiis essentiarum divulg'd and vented daily under the name of St. Thomas Aquinas justly sirnam'd by Picus Splendor Theologiae by Erasmus Vir non sui saeculi by Vives Scriptor de schola omnium sanissimus and by the consent of all Authours with that of the Church The faithfull Interpreter of Aristotle and the holy Scripture The base and foundation of Scholasticall Divinity and in a word the Angelicall Doctor For I would know what ground there were to imagine that this great Intelligence canoniz'd in the year 1322 and whose doctrine was approv'd by a Decree of the University of Paris in the year 133◠and by three Popes Innocent V Urban VI and John XXII should trouble himself with either Magick or the extravagancies of the Alchymists who might indeed have brought him over to their party had they not forgot one thing which is to dash out and corrupt as some Hereticks do that passage of his Commentaries upon the second Book of the Master of Sentences where he formally impugnes the possibility of their transmutations of Metals Whence me thinks they should take warning not to expose themselves so freely to the scorn of those who distrust whatever comes from them who read these supposititious books out of no other designe than to observe their great indiscretion therein and the little judgement they have to carry on their subtle plots We may instance not to engage into an infinity of proofs in their making this great Doctor speak so childishly in the Book De essentiis essentiarum that he might very well be said to have no more acquaintance with his works than the barbarous Inhabitants of Margajats and Topinamboux in Africk who should beleeve that such low and reptile conceptions could fall from a mind so high and sublime or that he ever dreamt of what they make him say in the same Treatise of an Astrologicall Book which Abel son of Adam lodg'd within a stone found after the Deluge by Hermes who took the book out of it wherein was taught the Art of making Images under certain Planets and Constellations Besides the story concerning himself that being disturb'd in his studies by the great noise of Horses passing by his door every day at watering time he made the image of a Horse according to the rules of the said Book which being put in the street two or three foot under ground the Grooms were thenceforward forc'd to find out another way as being not able to make a Horse passe that way Spectatum admissi risum teneatis amici For I think a man must be more Agelastus than ever Crassus was if he can refrain laughing at this pretty relation since that not to say any thing of the absurdity of its circumstances there could not possibly be found out another more contrary to the Doctrine of St.
Thomas who in all his works and particularly in his Sum in his Quodlibet Questions and in his Treatise of Secret Vertues and Properties denies that these images can receive any vertue from the Stars and Constellations under which they were made This certainly were enough to shew the impertinence and absurdity it is to charge this great person with contributing ought to the composition of these books though we should not presse that Trithemius in his Catalogue of Ecclesiasticall Authours mentions not any one of them printed with the body of his works collected into seventeen Tomes nor take any notice that Johannes Picus laughs at that book of Necromanticall Images and Franciscus his nephew though much a servant and favourer of the Alchimists makes it a great question whether those Books of the Metallick Art are not to be attributed rather to the Alchymists then St. Thomas To which I may adde that as Delrio affirmes the Commentaries upon the Nativity of one Thomas an English man have been publish'd under his name because of the nearnesse there is between these two Latine words Anglicus and Angelicus so it may safely be inferr'd that since according to all the Daemonographers there have been diverse other persons of the same name that have writ severall Books in Magick it were more rationall to imagine that that of the Necromanticall images should be rather father'd on them then on St. Thomas of Aquin of whom it shall be said in spight of all Ignorance and to the despaire of the Authours of these calumnities Et molliter ossa quiescent Semper in summo mens aurea vivet Olympo Had we the Book which John Dee Cittizen of London a very great Philosopher and Mathematitian saies he had written in defence of Roger Bacon where he shews that whatever was said of his miraculous operations is rather to be attributed to the knowledg of nature the Mathematicks than to any commerce or conversation he ever had with Daemons I should have as litle to say of him as of Apuleius who clear'd himself from the like accusation in two Apologies But since that Book at least that I know of never yet came abroad I must imitate the grassehopper in Aelian and supply the want of this broken string with what is to be had so to rescue the reputation of this English Franciscan who was a doctor of Divinity and the greatest Chymist Astrologer and Mathematician of his time from being condemn'd and buried among the multitude of Conjurers and Magicians For so far was he from making one of their number that a man can no way better justify and defend him then by producing his own declamations against Magick unlawfull Books Characters and spells as you have them in the three first Chapters of an Epistle he writ of the Powor of Art and Nature Adde to this that Delrio is content to observe only that there were some superstitious propositions in his Workes such as haply was that which Franciscus Picus saies he had read in his Book Of the six Sciences where he affirmes that a man may become a Prophet and â—oretel things to come by the meanes of the Classe Almuchefi compos'd according to the rules of Perspective provided he made use of it under a good constellation and had before hand made his body very even and put it into a good temper by Chymistry Nor indeed am I at all satisfy'd why Wierus and divers others Daemonographers should so readily charge this Philosopher with the exercise of Geotick or prohibited Magick when he whom they all so much acknowledge Johannes Picus of Mirandula maintaines that he studied only the Naturall Whereto may be added the testimonies of three famous English Authors Lelandus Selden and Bayly as also that of Dr. Pits who laughs at their foolish credulity who give any credit to this popular Errour especially since as Selden affirmes there 's no English Historian ever made mention of his Magicall operations or any brasen Head which the populace believe he made Upon occasion whereof Majerus observes that he is brought in as a great Magician in all Comedies and that the common report is that he and his Fellow-Frier Thomas Bungey were seven years about that Head meerly to know of it whether there were not some meanes to compasse England with a wall or Rampart whereto it gave an answer which yet they could not understand for not expecting to receive it so soon they were taken up with something else than hearkening to that Oracle A very fine relation certainly and suitable to the false witnesse from whom we have it if ever there were any false that is the multitude as having alwayes been accounted such by all good Authors especially Seneca and Lactantius The former affirmes you must never appeall to it in any thing of Consequence Quaerendum non quod vulgo placet pessimo veritatitis interpreti and the other had reason to admonish us that Vulgus indoctum pompis inanibus gaudet animisque puerilibus spectat omnia oblectatur frivolis nec ponderare secum unamquamque rem potest This were enough to stifle that vulgar story should I say nothing of all the impertinences that accompany it since they so evidently discover themselves I take it therefore to be enough for my purpose to note that the structure and composition of this head was a thing absolutely impossible for the reasons I shall give for it in the next Chapter and withall that Roger Bacon never minded the making of it the whole fable having no other ground then common and popular reports For it being ordinary old wives talk that Pope Sylvester William of Paris Robert of Lincolne and Albertus Magnus had made such discoursing Statues it might very well be added that Rober Bacon had in like manner made one since that being a great Mathematician as may be seen both by the Treatises and instruments of his invention he sent to Pope Clement the fourth and his two Books printed within these fifteen years of Perspective and Glasses it is not unlikely he did many extraordinary things by the help of that Science whereof the cause being not known to the vulgar which was much more rough-hewn and barbarous than it is now it could do no lesse then attribute them to Magick But for that he hath for compurgators all learned men and particularly the Jesuits who put into their Mathematicall Theses defended at Pont â— Mousson in the year 1622. on the day of the Cannonization of Ignatius and Xavier That it was possible for a man well vers'd in Opticks and Catoptricks such as undoubtedly Bacon was dato quolibet objecto quodlibet representare per specula montem ex atomo suillum aut asininum caput ex humano Elephantem à capillo What hath been said of Bacon may be also apply'd to Thomas Bungey who meerly because he was his Colleague in studies lying under the same misprision must
Is not this it in which my Lord drinketh and what he says himself when they were brought before him Wot ye not that such a man as I am can certainly divine Some have imagin'd that he profess'd Divination which he perform'd by a certain kind of Hydromancy doing it either simply by the cup as is ordinarily done by some Chrystal vessel looking-glasse or any thing that is clear and smooth or by the means of the water that was in it as Julian the Apostate did and those who at this day though it be ill and superstitiously done by them discover the thief things lost in a Viol or Bottle Or lastly he did it by the inspection of certain precious stones which were fastned within it But certainly it were no hard matter to deliver this great Favorite of God from so dangerous a suspicion if we will but follow the common opinion of all the Doctors of the Church who in Pererius would only finde out a way whereby he might be excus'd from having addicted himself to the practise of that Divination whereto he indeed had not so much as contributed a thought Nor need we search for any other explication than that of Petrus Burgensis if it be true as he affirms that instead of what we have in the vulgar translation An ignoratis quod non sit similis meî in augurandi scientia The Hebrew Text will bear this Know you not that it is easy for great Lords and Princes such as I am to consult Southsayers and Diviners wherewith Aegypt was at that time well furnish'd But since this explication hath not been yet acknowledg'd and that the vulgar version authorized by the Councel of Trent admits the words before recited we may in the first place with Theodoret St. Augustine St. Thomas Tostatus and Torreblanca affirm That Joseph spoke this ironically alluding to the common opinion then current over all Aegypt nay even in strange Countries that he had been advanc'd to that dignity by the happy events of his Predictions or to daunt his Brethren and make them the more guilty as having taken away that bowle or cup whereon depended the continuance as well as the original of his great fortune and that he foretold things that should certainly come to passe by the means thereof This explication may be thought the more probable in that when he commanded his Steward to put that vessel into the sack of the youngest he only said to him Put my cup the silver cup in the sack's mouth of the youngest and his Corn-money not mentioning it to be that whereby he was wont to presage and divine Whereas when he commands him to pursue them and to bring them back he gave him strict instructions what he should do and say Up follow after the men and having overtaken them say unto them Wherefore have ye rewarded evil for good Is not this the Cup in which my Lord drinketh and whereby indeed he divineth ye have done evil in so doing Whence it is clear that the addition of theâ—e words and whereby indeed he divineth et in quo augurari solet was only put in the more to frighten them as that one of them should take that vessel whereby Joseph had attain'd so high a fortune beyond the ordinary sort of people But if notwithstanding this reason the words of Joseph and his servant are to be understood without any ambages or fiction we must consider what Rupertus saies of it who observes that the word augurari is not in that place taken precisely to signifie or guesse at something whether by the observation of birds or some other superstitious way but in its general acception to foresee or foretell things to come by any way whatsoever Thus did Pliny the younger use it writing to Tacitus Auguror nec fallit augurium Historias tuas immortales futuras in which sense Rupertus and Pererius affirm that the speech of Joseph may be taken without quitting the litteral in that by reason of the gift he had of Prophecy he might make use of the word augurari and know future events Which that he did there needs no further proof than that of the interpretation of the dreams of Pharaoh and his Officers To which may be added his detention of his Brethren for three daies in Aegypt and then causing them to be pursued by his â—ervants at their departure which might be to intimate that the Israelites should sojourn there for the space of three Generations and that when they were to leave it they should be pursu'd by all that multitude which was afterwards overwhelmed in the Red Sea Whence I leave men to judge of the probability there may be that he should have written the Book entituled Speculum Joseph mentioned by Trithemius or that we may believe Justine who speaking of the Jewes saies that Joseph envy'd by his Brethren was sold by them to certain Marchants who carry'd him into Aegypt where in a short time he learnt the magical Arts and grew the best of any for the interpretation of dreams and prodigies being not ignorant of any thing that could be known in so much that he foretold the great dearth which happened in that Countrey and for that reason was much favour'd by Pharaoh From which story all that may be drawn is that he Tacitus and others either speak at random or give a passionate account of that people and that God who is pleas'd to give us a true history of them by his faithful Secretary Moses would not have us to stand in need of the Authority of those prophane Authors as to any thing they might say consonant to what he hath left in his admirable Books of the Pentateuch Iâ— from what is said of Joseph in the 44. chap. of Genesis he hath been reproach'd with Magick I think there is much more ground to imagine the same thing of King Solomon because of his great and prodigious Idolatry considering the Wisdom he was master of before For as there is nothing so certain as that he never practis'd any thing that were superstitious while he continued in the grace of God and a right administration of the favours he had received of him So we must needs acknowledge to avoid Lactantius's censure who saies that eadem caecitas est et de vero falsitatis et mendacio nomen veritatis impoâ—ere that possibly forsaken of God for his luxury and Idolatry he might fell himself over to all manner of vices and abhominations and particularly as Delrio George of Venice and Pineda affirm to that of Magick there being thousands of examples whence may be drawn this conclusion to his prejudice that Luxury Idolatry and the vanity of Divinations Et bene conveniunt in una sede morantur For which we have the testimony of St. Paul and what is said of King Manasses in the Old Testament that he reared up Altars for Baal
and a little after he observed times and used inchantments and dealt with familiar spirits and Wizzards And since women are more adicted to Magick then men as is learnedly shewn by the Civilian Tiraqueau in his Conjugall Lawes by the authorities of Cicero Livy Quintilian Diodorus and diverse other good Authors I make no question with Pineda but the 700. wives and the 300. Concubines which Salomon had might easily ensnare him in a Labyrinth of Charmes divinations drinks and other superstitious practises which if we credit Lucan disprov'd indeed by Ovid have a greater influence on that passion then any other since that he sayes Quas non concordia mixti Allig at ulla thori blandaeque potentia formâ— Traxerunt torti Magicâ vertigine fili But though we should allow this might happen to Salomon that we have said yet are we to beware how we exceed much further and too easily be perswaded that he should steal so much time from his pleasures and enjoyments as it would require to write so great a number of Magicall Books as there are at this day publish'd under his name This indeed is so great that to prove they are false attributed to him we need no more then ma â—e a Catalogue of such only as have been seen and cited by divers Authors For though Genebrard make mention but of three and Pineda but of 4. or 5. yet is it easily shewn that there are a many more for Albertus Magnus in his Book of the Mirrour of Astrology quotes five the first dated Liber Almadal the second Liber 4 Annulorum the third Liber de novem candariis the fourth de tribus figuris Spirituum and the fifth de Sigillis ad Daemoniacos To these we may adde four mentioned by Trithemius intituled the first Clavicula Salomonis ad filium Roboam the second Liber Lamene the third Liber Pentaculorum and the fourth de Officiis spirituum Whereto if we adde these three viz. that of Raziel cited by Reuclin de umbris Idaearum mentioned by Chicus upon the Sphere of Sacrobosco de Hydromantia ad filium Roboam which Gretserus saith he saw in Greek in the Duke of Bavaria's Library And lastly that Testamentum Salomonis out of which M. Gaumin cites many passages written in the same Language we finde that without comprising that called by Nicetas Liber Salomonius here are thirteen different ones and yet withall Authentick Which number might well engage us to make the same judgment of them as did sometime Roger Bacon whose reflection thereupon I shall the rather quote because it makes something for all those for whom I make this Apology Quicunque saith he asserunt quód Salomon composuit hoc vel illud aut alii sapientes negandum est quia non recipiuntur ejusmodi libri auctoritate Ecclesiae nec à sapientibus sed à seductoribus qui mundum decipiunt etiam ipsi novos libros componunt novas adinventiones multiplicant sicut scimus per experientiam ut vehementius homines alliciant titulos praeponunt famosos suis operibus ea magnis authoribus impudenter ascribunt This granted takes away all the difficulty may arise about the Books of Salomon unlesse it be about that of Exorcisms which Pineda affirmes either not to have been written by Salomon or that he did it in the time of his Idolatry And yet me thinks it were more rationall with Jansenius Salmeron Genebrard and Delrio to grant that during the time that by his wisdome he knew all things and was fill'd with good affection by reason of his sanctity he might prescribe certain forms to chase away Devills and to exercise people posses'd by them such as were those practised by the Jews in St. Luke St. Mathew and the Acts. Such were also those as Josephus affirmes practis'd since by Eleazar who cast a Devill out of the body of a possess'd person in the presence of the Emperour Vespasian not by the vertue of a root which could naturally have no power over Daemons and Creatures purely spirituall but by the force of his exorcisms which only had that power as Delrio Casmannus and divers others explaine it From these two passages of the Old Testament we come now to that of the new which is in the second of Math. where mention is made of the wise men who came from the East to adore Jesus Christ. I have no designe to repeat in this place a number of Fables such as Vipertus a Dr. of Divinity and the Canon-Law hath taken such paines to gather together in the History he hath written of them it being enough to my purpose to take out of the writings of Baronius Casaubon Maldonat Bullenger many other who have written at large on this subject what is fit not to be omitted in this Chapter and in few words to discover what these wise men or Magi were and by what means they had notice to come and adore Jesus Christ in Bethleem For the first the difficulty lyes in the signification of the word Magi being either ambiguous and equivocall that is such as many be understood of enchanters socerers such as signify'd a certain people among the Medes who are so called in Herodotus Strabo and Epiphanius and lastly might be said of the Sages of Persia These three severall interpretations have all had their patrons and favourers Tertullian understanding that passage of the first Epiphanus and Panigarolus of the second and Maldonat with Casaubon of the last that is for Mages that is the most vertuous and most venerable persons among the Persians such as were in the same reputation in their Country as the Brachamans were among the Indians and the Druids among the Gaules Which last opinion seems to be the more rationall in that the word Magi is Persian that it is the custome of the Persians not to accost Kings without Presents that the Evangelist speaks of them as persons of great quality and reputation in a word the Scripture it self lights as it were to the truth when it sayes that these wise men came from the East there being no Author that ever held there were any other Magi that way than those of Persia Yet is there no necessity to have any recourse to the sottish imagination of Paracelsus who would have them ride post upon enchanted Horses so to bring them in lesse then thirteen dayes out of so remote a Country since there 's nothing to convince us they might not spend more time in their journey as St. Chrysostome would have it or were not of the nearest parts of that Country besides that History affords us many instances of greater expedition and diligence and that these wise men rid on Camells which go with ease after the rate of at least 100. miles a day This difficulty taken away we are now only to find out the
his Book de nugis curialium that the publick benefit is to be preferr'd before any private man's advantage and satisfaction Besides we are not more oblig'd to believe what he sayes by the way and under the caution of a hearsay concerning this fly than what divers Authors have said of so many other places whence these litle insects were banish'd that their number might well make us doubt whether they ever were from any For if we credit the Rabbins there was not one to be seen in the Slaughter-house where the Beasts were kill'd and prepar'd for sacrifice though the place was perpetually full of blood and raw hides If Caelius Rhodiginus there was not one in the place where the Olympick games were celebrated nor yet in the City of Leucade in Acarnania If Pliny the Oxe-market at Rome if Hercules's Temple if Cardan a certain house at Venice if Dr. Gervais the Refectory of the Abbey of Maillerais in Poictou were never troubled with any And lastly if we credit Fusil there is but one to be seen all the year long in the Shambles of Toledo in Spaine And for my part I think Scaliger did very well to laugh at one of these Fly-drivers who having made a little plate grav'd with diverse figures and Characters and that under a certain constellation had no sooner plac'd it on a window to try the experience but one fly more confident than the rest came and hansell'd it with her ordure The third whose authority is somewhat considerable is Tostatus Bishop of Avila who rankes Virgil among those that practis'd Necromancy and that because as he sayes himself he had read in the 16. Book of Helinandus's Chronologie concerning the Fly and Shambles he had made at Naples To which not to discourse of the severall wayes there are to preserve diverse things for a long time and somewhat to excuse this great person who should have examin'd these two stories before he had believ'd them I should rather affirme that all the blame is to be laid on this Helinandus who hath so faithfully transcrib'd and stollen all these falsities lyes and Impostures out of Dr. Gervase into his Chronicle that he hath made it very much like Euolio's house in Plautus quae inaniis oppleta est atque araneis Nay I can without passion affirme that I never found him cited by any Author but upon the account of some ridiculous fables of which citations I could easily produce such a number as would more then justifie the truth of what I say were it as easy to lay them down in few words as it were requisite it should be done But since the Authors who have made mention of the Magick of Virgil are so many that they cannot be examin'd one after another without losse of much time and abundance of repetitions we must imitate the Civilians who take Authorities per saturam and so digesting all that remaine into one Article shew That Le Loyer mades mention of his Eccho Paracelsus of his Magicall images and figures Helmoldus of his representation of the City of Naples shut up in a glasse bottle Sibyllus and the Authour of the Book entituled the Image of the World of the head he made to know things to come by Petrarch and Theodoric à Niem of the Vault he made at Naples at the request of Augustus Vigenere of his Alphabet Trithemius of his Book of Tables and Calculations whereby to find out the Genius's of all persons and lastly of those who have seen the Cabinet of the Duke of Florence of an extraordinary great Looking-glasse which they affirme to be that in which this Poet exercis'd Catoptromancy To all which there needs no other answer than that all these Authorities are too young absur'd and ill grounded and consequently too light to outweigh the Generall silence of all Authors that flourish'd during the space of ten Ages and who certainly were extreamly to blame not to have left us the least observation of all these miracles if there had been any such thing since they have given us a faithfull account of a many other particularities of lesse consequence For what ground is there to imagine that the Emperour Caligula who did all that lay in his power to suppresse the works of this Latine Homer and so many other Zoilus's who have found something to quarrel at even in the most inconsiderable actions of his life would not have laid hold on a businesse which might have afforded so much fuell to their detraction Or that the Emperour Augustus who caus'd all Magicall Books to be burnt should so far forget and contradict himself as to receive him being a Magician and Necromancer into the number of his most intimate friends and favorites There were certainly as much reason to believe that all Sodomitts tha◠were in the world dy'd the night of our Saviours birth and that as the famous Civilian Salicetus affirms Virgil was one of that number And yet for what concerns the precedent Authorities it is not to be imagin'd that Petrarch Theodoric à Niem Vigenere and Trithemius have been so indiscreet as thus basely to prostitute their reputation to the censures and satyrs of those who are not so easily laid asleep with these Fables For it is certain that whatever they say thereof hath been only to refute them and to let us know that they were not so credulous as those others who have furnish'd us with the rest of those Authorities as such as can no way expiate the fault they have committed in being so miserably ensnar'd in the cobwebs of Hear-saies vagrant reports and the common opinion of the inhabitants of Naples and places adjacent who have alwaies attributed to the conjurations of Virgil whatever seem'd to them ever so little extraordinary miraculous and whereof they could find out no other beginning This may be exemplify'd in that admirable cave or grott made in the mountain of Pausilippo near the City of Naples whereof though Strabo who liv'd in the time of Scipio and the taking of Carthage according to Athenaeus or of Augustus and Tiberius according to Patricius make mention as of a thing very ancient yet the Countrey people thereabouts will not be perswaded but that it was made by Virgil at the importunity of the Emperour Augustus because the top of the mountrin under which it is cut was so pestred with Serpents and Dragons that there was not any man so confident as would presume to travel over it So that the main stress of the business consists now in knowing what gave the first occasion of this suspicion which certainly can be nothing else but the knowledge of the Mathematicks wherein Virgil was so excellent according to the relation of Macrobius Donatus Lacerda and the common consent of all Authors that besides his being an eminent Philosopher and well experienc'd in Medicine it may neverthelesse be affirm'd that the chiefest of his perfections next