THE OCCULT SCIENCES. 207 



I 



nothing to fear from the civil authorities, and they defied those of the 

 Church. However, Pope Gregory II., in the eighth century, denounced as 

 (I i '1,-ntnhh the practice of divination whict consisted in seeking auguries in the 

 visions of the night. The sixth Council of Paris, held in 829, condemned the 

 art of oneiromancy, as entailing pernicious consequences, and assimilated it 

 with the darkest superstitions of paganism. These canonical condemnations 

 did not prevent the art of divining by dreams from being generally practised 

 in the Middle Ages, either for forecasting the future or for discovering 

 hidden treasure. The first special treatise on this subject was written by 

 Arnauld de Villeneuve in the thirteenth century, and was not very widely 



Fig. 152. " How Alexander engaged in Combat with Pigs having large teeth a cubit long, and 

 with Men and Women having Six Hands." Miniature of a Manuscript of the Thirteenth 

 Century, No. 11,040. In the Burgundy Library, Brussels. 



circulated, for the adepts in oneiromancy did not care to spread abroad the 

 technical elements of an art which they practised as a means of making 

 money. It was not until the sixteenth century that this process of divination 

 hci ;ime general and popular, when the Venice printing-press had published 

 the " Oneirocriticon," written in Greek, and ascribed to a philosopher of 

 Ephesus called Artemidorus, who is said to have composed it in the reign of 

 the Emperor Antoninus. This book, translated into several languages, and 

 ivpiiuted many times, became the manual and code of the oneiromancers, 

 though his system did not repose upon any scientific or rational basis. For 

 instance, an-cmling to this system, whoever dreamt that his hair was thick 



