220 THE OCCULT SCIENCES. 



famous Arab alchemist Gebcr, to whom the hermetic philosophers assigned 

 the title of King, was believed to have obtained by magic the power of 

 creating gold ; and his numerous works upon occult philosophy, translated 

 into Latin, are said to have been studied by the monk Gerbert, who became 

 pope, with the title of Sylvester II., in 999. Gerbert was a man of vast 

 general learning and a genius, yet he was looked upon as no better than a 

 magician, and even a sorcerer. It was said in the twelfth century that he 

 had possessed a book of black magic, which gave him full power over the 

 hierarchy of demons, and a brass idol which littered oracles for him ; and 

 that, this was how he was able to discover treasures even if they were buried 

 in the centre of the earth. Upon the day of his death (April 12th, 1003), 

 however, Satan (Fig. 161) is supposed to have come to claim the debt which 

 the. Pontiff had contracted, and the tradition ran that ever after, when a 

 pope was at the point of death, the bones of Sylvester II. were heard to 

 rattle in his- tomb. 



The accusation of magic, from which even the illustrious Gerbert did 

 not escape, was also levelled during the thirteenth century at the two 

 greatest men upon whom science has set the seal of genius, Albert of 

 Bollstadt, called Albertus Magnus, and Roger Bacon. Both were suspected 

 of holding communication with the demons, and the former, who had 

 endeavoured to expound the Revelation of St. John (Fig. 163), was obliged 

 to resign the bishopric of Cologne, and to shut himself up in a monastery, 

 in order to impose silence upon his accusers ; while the second expiated in 

 the dungeons of the Franciscans at Paris the daring of his experiments in 

 chemistry, which were set down to the score of black magic. One of their 

 contemporaries, the celebrated doctor, Peter of Albano, was burnt in effigy 

 by the Inquisition, and died in prison at the age of eighty. Gabriel Naude 

 says of him, " He had acquired the knowledge of the seven liberal arts, by 

 means of the seven familiar spirits which he kept confined in a piece of 

 crystal ; " and what was looked upon as an infallible sign of a pact with the 

 devil, he had the faculty of summoning back to his purse the money he had 

 paid out of it. 



Spain, Scotland, and England also possessed about the same period 

 several men of science who were denounced as magicians. In Spain there 

 was Picatrix, whose wonderful feats are attested by the evidence of Alfonso, 

 King of Castile ; while Scotland possessed Thomas of Hersildonne, Lord 



