“The priest one evening made his preparations, and bade me find a comrade, or not more than two. I invited Vincenzio Romoli, a very dear friend of mine, and the priest took with him a native of Pistoja, who also cultivated the black art. We went together to the Colosseum; and there the priest, having arrayed himself in necromancers’ robes, began to describe circles on the earth with the finest ceremonies that can be imagined. I must say that he had made us bring precious perfumes and fire, and also drugs of fetid odor. When the preliminaries were completed, he made the entrance into the circle; and taking us by the hand, introduced us one by one inside of it. Then he assigned our several functions; to the necromancer, his comrade, he gave the pentacle to hold; the other two of us had to look after the fire and the perfumes; and then he began his incantations. This {14} lasted more than an hour and a half, when several legions appeared and the Colosseum was all full of devils. I was occupied with the precious perfumes, and when the priest perceived in what numbers they were present, he turned to me and said: ‘Benvenuto, ask them something.’ I called on them to reunite me with my Sicilian Angelica.”
It seems the spirits did not respond. The magic spells were found inoperative, whereupon the priest dismissed the demons, observing that the presence of a pure boy was requisite to the successful accomplishment of the séance.
Another night Cellini and the sorcerer repaired to the ruins of the Colosseum. The artist was accompanied by a boy of twelve years of age, who was in his employ, and by two friends, Agnolino Gaddi and the before-mentioned Romoli. The necromancer, after describing the usual magic circle and building a fire, “began to utter those awful invocations, calling by name on multitudes of demons who are captains of their legions . . . ; insomuch that in a short space of time the whole Colosseum was full of a hundredfold as many as had appeared upon the first occasion.” At the advice of the wizard, Cellini again asked to be reunited with his mistress. The sorcerer turned to him and said: “Hear you what they have replied; that in the space of one month you will be where she is.” The company within the magic circle were now confronted by a great company of demons. The boy declared that he saw four armed giants of immense stature who were endeavoring to get within the circle. They trembled with fear. The necromancer, to calm the fright of the boy, assured him that what they beheld was but smoke and shadows, and that the spirits were under his power. As the smoke died out, the demons faded away, and Cellini and his friends left the place fully satisfied of the reality of the conjurations. As they left the Colosseum, the boy declared that he saw two of the demons leaping and skipping before them, and often upon the roofs of the houses. The priest paid no attention to them, but endeavored to persuade the goldsmith to renew the attempt on some future occasion, in order to discover the secret treasures of the earth. But Cellini did not care to meddle more in the black art. {15}
What are we to believe about this magic invocation? Was Cellini romancing? Though a vainglorious, egotistical man, he was truthful, and his memoirs may be relied on.
John Addington Symonds, one of the translators of Cellini’s autobiography, remarks: “Imagination and the awe-inspiring influences of the place, even if we eliminate a possible magic lantern among the conjurer’s appurtenances, are enough to account for what Cellini saw. He was credulous; he was superstitious.”
Sir David Brewster, who quotes Cellini’s narrative in his Natural Magic, explains that the demons seen in the Colosseum “were not produced by any influence upon the imaginations of the spectators, but were actual optical phantasms, or the images of pictures or objects produced by one or more concave mirrors or lenses. A fire is lighted and perfumes and incense are burnt, in order to create a ground for the images, and the beholders are rigidly confined within the pale of the magic circle. The concave mirror and the objects presented to it having been so placed that the persons within the circle could not see the aerial image of the objects by the rays directly reflected from the mirror, the work of deception was ready to begin. The attendance of the magician upon his mirror was by no means necessary. He took his place along with the spectators within the magic circle. The images of the devils were all distinctly formed in the air immediately above the fire, but none of them could be seen by those within the circle.
“The moment, however, the perfumes were thrown into the fire to produce smoke, the first wreath of smoke that rose through the place of one or more of the images would reflect them to the eyes of the spectators, and they would again disappear if the wreath was not followed by another. More and more images would be rendered visible as new wreaths of smoke arose, and the whole group would appear at once when the smoke was uniformly diffused over the place occupied by the images.”
Again, the magician may have been aided by a confederate amid the ruins, who manipulated a magic lantern, or some device of the kind. The magician himself may have been provided with a box fitted up with a concave mirror, the lights and figures of {16} the demons. The assertion of the boy that he saw demons skipping in front of him, etc., would be accounted for by the magic box being carried with them.
Says the Encyclopaedia Britannica, in speaking of Cellini’s adventure: “The existence of a camera at this latter date (middle of sixteenth century) is a fact, for the instrument is described by Baptista Porta, the Neapolitan philosopher, in the Magia Naturalis (1558). And the doubt how magic lantern effects could have been produced in the fourteenth century, when the lantern itself is alleged to have been invented by Athanasius Kircher in the middle of the seventeenth century, is set at rest by the fact that glass lenses were constructed at the earlier of these dates,—Roger Bacon, in his Discovery of the Miracles of Art, Nature and Magic (about 1260), writing of glass lenses and perspectives so well made as to give good telescopic and microscopic effects, and to be useful to old men and those who have weak eyes.”
Chaucer, in the House of Fame, Book III, speaks of “appearances such as the subtil tregetours perform at feasts”—images of hunting, falconry and knights jousting, with the persons and objects instantaneously disappearing.