212 



ON THE WEAPONS USED 



though for a time released by Pope Clement IV, he was 

 again imprisoned under Pope Nicholas III. Bacon suggests 

 that gunpowder should be used in war, as it would supply 

 a powerful means for the destruction of hostile armies. He 

 notices particularly the thunderlike noise and lightninglike 

 flash at the time of its explosion ; its application to crackers 

 and fireworks is a subject, he was well acquainted with. He 

 states in his book on the secret works of art and nature 

 two of the principal ingredients which compose gunpowder — 

 saltpetre and sulphur — but not wishing, according to the 

 mysterious inclination of those days, to make the secret 

 known, he uses in his prescription the obscure expression 

 lura nope cum ubre, which has been later ingeniously found 

 out to stand for carbonum pulvere. 83 



It is now generally supposed that Hoger Bacon learnt the 

 secret of the manufacture of gunpowder while he was travel- 

 ling in Spain, where it was pretty well known 'among the 

 Moors, who were not only the most learned nation at that 

 period, but who, through religious and national tradition were 

 intimately connected with their more eastern co-religionists 

 and compatriots. An Arabic treatise on gunpowder written 

 in 1249 is up to this day preserved in the Library of the 

 Eoyal Escurial. 



In the National Library at Paris is preserved a work 

 ascribed to one Marcus Graecus. It was published at Paris 

 in 1806 as Liber ignium ad comburendos hostes, auctore 

 Marco Graeco. About the nationality and the life of this 

 Marcus Grraecus nothing is known for certain. According to 

 some he lived in the 9th, according to others in the 13th 



83 " Sed tamen salis petrae, lura nope cum ubre et sulphuris, et sic facies 

 tonitrum et coruscationem, si scias artincium,'* in Roger Bacon's work " De 

 secretis operibus Artis et Naturae et de nullitate inagiae." At another place 

 he alludes to fireworks : " Ex hoc ludicro puerili quod fit in multis mundi 

 partibus scilicet ut instrumento facto ad quantitatem pollicis humani ex hoc 

 violentia salis qui salpetrae vocatur tarn horribiiis sonus nascitur in ruptura 

 tarn modicae pergamenae quod fortis tonitru rugitum et coruscationem 

 maximam sui luminis iuhar excedit." 



