379 
ON AN UNPUBLISHED ITALIAN MS. OF 
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 
OT long ago I acquired an MS., entitled E'stratto del 
Libro, segniato A; di Prete Antonio Neri, which 
I think is of sufficient interest to merit a short notice in 
these pages. In the first place, let us make ourselves 
familiar with the life and writings of the priest Antonio 
Neri. The greater number of biographical dictionaries 
do not even mention him, but the “ Biographie Univer- 
selle,” and Hoéfer’s “Nouvelle Biographie Générale” 
are exceptions, both giving a short account of him. As 
to the time of his birth, I can nowhere find a more definite 
date than vers le milieu du seizidéme siecle, while Poggen- 
dorff alone mentions the year of his death, which occurred 
in 1614. Antonio Neri was born in Florence, and was 
educated for a priest ; but he appears never to have under- 
taken priestly duties, preferring to devote his time to 
chemical and physical studies. For the purpose of extend- 
ing his knowledge in this direction, he travelled all over 
Europe, collecting scientific secvefs, as they were then 
called, and he succeeded in amassing a large number of 
these. He visited the principal laboratories of Europe, 
and resided for some length of time in Antwerp, where he 
wrote his treatise on the art of colouring glass. He did not 
hesitate to work as a common assistant, performing the 
most menial operations of the laboratory, when he found 
it impossible to gain access to the secrets he sought by 
other means. 
The period in which Antonio Neri lived coincides most 
nearly with that of his countryman Baptista Porta (born 
1537, died 1615). Paracelsus died about the time of the 
birth of Neri; Jerome Cardan died when he was a boy ; 
Van Helmont was thirty-five years old when Neri wrote 
his “ L’Arte Vetraria ;” Galileo and Francis Bacon had 
not reached the summit of their fame ; Robert Fludd was 
busy with his “ Historia Macrocosmi;” Glauber was a boy, 
Kunckel an infant, Becher was unborn. The Paracelsian 
jatro-chemistry was making way, Crollius was supporting 
it, while Libavius was the leader of the opposition ; the 
famous “ Tyrocinium Chymicum,” of Beguinus, was about 
to appear; the “ Academia Secretorum Natur,” founded 
by Baptista Porta, had just been dissolved by Pope Paul V., 
on the ground that magical and unlawful arts were prac- 
tised by its members ; but the proceedings of this first of 
the scientific societies remained in the treatise “ Magia 
Naturalis,” which was the most popular scientific book of 
the period. Such was the state ot the scientific world 
when Neri laboured and wrote. 
The only work ever published by Neri was the treatise 
on glass-making, to which I have referred. This is a 
small quarto of 114 pages, and is entitled: “L?Arte 
Vetraria distinta, in libri sette del R. P. Antonio Neri 
Fiorentino. In Firenze, 1612. Con licenza di Superiori.’ 
The order of the ecclesiastical authorities for printing 
this work is conveyed in no less than seven forms, 
which are signed, countersigned, attested, and endorsed, 
and bear dates ranging between March 30 and April 
7, 1612, This excessive scrutiny may appear strange at 
first sight, but let us glance for a moment at collateral 
facts. The “Index Expurgatorius” had been estab- 
lished by Paul IV. in 1559, and in the very first issue no 
less than sixty-one printers had been condemned, and the 
reading of works which issued from their presses for- 
NATURE 
| 
bidden. 
[ Sep. 8, 1870 
Now, there was still greater need for caution on 
the part of the Church; for had not a certain fellow- 
countryman of Neri, named Gordano Bruno, recently 
propagated all sorts of heresies in his “ Cena de li Ceneri,” 
and had he not suffered death for his temerity? And was 
there not a contemporary and countryman of Neri, whilom 
professor of mathematics in the university of Padua, who 
had shown particular relish for the doctrines of Coper- 
nicus, and a particular disrelish for those of Ptolemy and 
Aristotle, and altogether an insufficiency of respect for the 
Church? Thus it was that the utterly inoffensive “ L’Arte 
Vetraria” came to undergo so much scrutiny, and after 
having been certified to contain nothing contra fidem aut 
bonos mores, to be printed with Con licenza di Superiori 
on the title-page. 
At the same time, I do not at all mean to assert that 
scrutiny was unnecessary in regard to the scientific works 
of this period ; for although they did not often contain 
anything contra fidem, they very frequently did contain 
a good deal contra bonos mores, in the form of invoca~ 
tions wherewith to raise a familiar demon, recipes for love 
philtres, and for ingenious draughts for ridding wives of 
jealous husbands, while the more philosophical “ Elixir 
Vite ” sometimes required the blood of a new-born babe. 
I recently met with an alchemical MS., evidently of some 
rarity, for it was written on vellum, and the binding 
showed that it had once been in the library of a Doge of 
Venice: Recife Sanguinis Humani were the first words 
that presented themselves to the eye. Again, Beguinus 
says: “Recife guantitatem satis magnam sanguinis 
virorum sanorum, in flore @tatis constitutorum, pone in 
vase circulatorio, juste capacitatis, in B. M. continue 
bulliens, donec draco propriam caudam devoraverit.” So 
that, after all, Alexandre Dumas has not given us such a 
very exaggerated character in the person of the Alchemist 
Althotas in his “ Mémoires d’un Médecin.” As to the 
matter of remedies, I find the following in an MS. in the 
Sloane Collection (probably so late as the first half of 
the 17th century): ‘ Rock-crystal, mixed with sublimed 
arsenic, is an excellent medecine ; in fact, you need not 
any other medecine . ... it being taught a witch by a 
demon, named Rachiel, who was of ye order of Cherubins.” 
The quaintness and zatvefé of this assertion are quite 
refreshing ; now, whether “‘ you need not any other mede- 
cine” because the remedy had the sanction of both a witch 
and a demon, or because powdered rock-crystal and 
sublimed arsenic had been found by the asserter to be 
peculiarly adapted for internal administration, we will not 
pretend to decide; but, surely, so-called scientific books 
sometimes required examination in the age of the priest 
Antonio Neri. 
Let us, now that we know something of its author, turn 
our attention to the MS., Estratto del Libro, segniato A; 
adi Prete Antonio Neri. There is good reason to believe 
that the matter of this MS. was extracted by some seven- 
teenth-century chemist from a larger MS. of Neri, of 
which he speaks in the preface to “ L’Arte Vetraria,” and 
which he had intended to publish had his life only been 
spared. 
The text is Italian, but the work cannot be said to be 
“writ in choice Italian;” it is rugged, and, of necessity, 
full of technical terms, and it sometimes passes into a 
curious kind of Latinized Italian, As to the contents, 
