THE ALCHEMICAL STUDIES OF SCOT 91 



born (for accounts vary) either at Bivillo near 

 Assisi, Cellullae or Ursaria near Cortona, or in Pied- 

 mont. In 1211 he joined the Order of St. Francis, 

 then just formed, thus becoming one of its earliest 

 members. His history as a Franciscan was rather 

 an eventful one. On the death of St. Francis 

 in 1226 he succeeded the Founder as General of 

 the Order, but was deposed by the Pope in 1230 

 on some suspicion that he favoured schism among 

 his brethren. The Order re-elected him in 1236, 

 but he was finally removed from office by Gregory 

 three years later, and profited by the occasion 

 to join himself openly to the party of the Emperor. 

 For this he suffered excommunication in 1244, and 

 was not restored to the privileges of the Church till I 

 1253, when he lay on his death-bed at Cortona. 

 There is no doubt that he had the reputation of 

 possessing skill in alchemy, as a treatise is extant 

 called the Liber Fratris Eliae de Alchimia} This 

 renown would not tend to his honour in religion. 

 It seems indeed to invest with a cruel and pointed 

 meaning the words used by the Pope on the 

 occasion of his first deposition.' He is said to have 

 been sent in early days on an embassy to the 

 Emperor of the East. Perhaps this may have been 

 the occasion when he first acquired a taste for those 

 chemical studies which that nation still pursued. 

 Michael Scot addresses him in the De Alchimia as a 

 pupil (' Et ego, Magister Michael Scotus, sum opera- 

 tus super solem, et docui te, Fr. Elia, operari et tu 



.J 



1 In MS. Eicc. L. iii. 13, 119, No. 37. 



'^ See on the whole subject the Annates Minorum of Waddinp, 

 especially voL i. p. 109. In vol. ii. p. 242, we find the reproof addressed 

 by the iPope to Fra Elias. The words referred to above are these : 

 ' mutari color optimus auri ex quo caput {i.e. Franciscus) erat compactum.' 



