"THE UNCERTAINTY, ETC., OF THE SCIENCES." 353 



there was an obstinate strife between the Augustine Friars and the 

 vulgar Canons, before the pope, concerning the habit or apparel of 

 S. Augustine, that is to say, whether he did wear a black weed upon 

 a white Coat, or a white weed upon a black Coat ; and finding nothing 

 in the Scriptures which made to the ending of this strife, the Roman 

 judges thought good to prefer the whole matter to Painters and Image- 

 makers, and that which they could avouch out of ancient Pictures and 

 Images should be holden for a Definitive sentence. I being grounded 

 upon this example, when some time I with exceeding great diligence 

 searched for the Original of the Friars' cowl, and could find nothing 

 for that matter in the Scriptures, at length I went me to the Painters, 

 and for this thing I sought in the Cloisters, and in the cells of the 

 Friars, where for the most part the histories of both Testaments are 

 painted ; and when I could not find in all the Old Testament none of 

 the Patriarchs, none of the Priests, none of the Prophets, none of the 

 Levites, nor yet Helias himself, whom the Carmelitans would have to 

 be their Patron, with a cowl: taking the New Testament in hand, I 

 found there Zacharie, Symeon, John Baptist, Joseph, Christe, the 

 Apostles, the Disciples, the Scribes, the Pharisees, the High Priest 

 Annas, Caiphes, Herode, Pilate, and many other, I saw in no place a 

 Friar's cowl : and again diligently examining everything from the 

 beginning, immediately in the fore part of the History the Devil was 

 painted with a Cowl, to wit, he which went to tempt Christ in the 

 Desert. I rejoiced exceedingly that I had found that in the pictures 

 which until that time I could not see in writing, that is to say, that 

 the Devil was the first author of a cowl : of whom afterwards, I sup- 

 pose, that other Monks and Friars took up the fashion under divers 

 colors ; or, perhaps, have retained it as a thing left to them by inheri- 

 tance." 



Such passages as the last, which abound in the book, were not cal- 

 culated to win for the writer the affection of the clergy. Through 

 their influence, Agrippa was imprisoned for some time, and his pen- 

 sion from the Emperor of Austria was withdrawn. 



"Seeing glasses" he classifies as follows: "The hollow, the em- 

 bossed, the plain, the Columnarie, the JPiromidal, the Turbinal, the 

 bunched, the round, the cornered, the inversed, the eversed, the regu- 

 lar, the unregular, the massy, and the clear." He describes their 

 properties, and says: "And I know how to make Glasses, in which, 

 when the sun shineth, all things that are lightened of his beams may 

 very plainly be seen a great space off, as three or four miles." "Were 

 these " glasses " on the principle of the telescope ? The invention of 

 that instrument is generally assigned to Galileo, about 1590; whereas 

 Agrippa's book was published at Antwerp in 1530. 



Astronomy he pronounces "altogether false, and fuller of /trifling 

 toys than the fables of the Poets" declaring that the laws of the 

 science, as then asserted, were only a mass of idle conjectures. 

 vol. ix. 23 



