PETER BONO.
This adept, born in Lombardy, was an inhabitant of Pola, a seaport of Istria, where he affirms that he made the much desired transmuting metal of the sages, in the year 1330. He wrote and published a complete treatise on the art under the title Margarita Pretiosa. Lacinius, a monk of Calabria, has printed a faithful abridgment of it, which appeared at Venice in 1546. An Introductio in Artem Divinam Alchimiæ, 1602, and De Secreto Omnium Secretorum, Venet. 1546, are ascribed to this adept.
The first of these works is an exceedingly comprehensive, conscientious treatise on the history, the theory, and the practice of alchemy, written after the manner of the scholastics, and naturally containing much irrelevant matter, but for all this very useful and even interesting. The difficulties of the art are manfully faced, the sophistications, deceptions, and contradictions of its professors are reproved, and the author attempts to show that alchemy is in reality a short art and a slight practice, though full of truth and nobility. His other opinions are also of a revolutionary character.