[133] Manuel Comnenus reigned as Emperor of the East from 1143 to 1180, while Frederick I. was Emperor of the West from 1152 to 1190. This would seem to indicate the twelfth century as the time when these works of the Pseudo Archelaus were produced. It is curious to notice that Manuel was the Emperor who suffered defeat by sea at the hands of George of Antioch the Sicilian admiral (Gibbon, chap. lvi.) This brave seaman was the same who founded the library of the Martorana in Palermo (see above, p. 25), and enriched it with the literary spoils of his conquests. It is highly probable that it was in this way the scholars of Sicily became acquainted with the Byzantine alchemy.
[134] MS. Ricc. L. iii. 13. 119. pp. 19vo.-29ro.
[135] Titles resembling this are not uncommon in the literature of alchemy. Thus the Paris MS. 6514 has two treatises, both called Lumen Luminum and both ascribed to Rases. The latter of these, the Liber Lumen Luminum et perfecti Magisterii, is that which has been printed by Zetzner in the Theatrum Chemicum, under the name of Aristotle. It contains, as we have already observed, the Liber XII. aquarum and other material derived from the Liber Emanuelis. The former treatise bearing the name of the Liber Lumen Luminum in the Paris MS. (pp. 113-120) is remarkable on account of the words with which it closes: ‘explicit liber autoris invidiosi,’ which Berthelot notes, but does not attempt to explain. The Mappa of the Pseudo-Archelaus mentions the ‘Liber invidiosus’ (‘quia liber iste invidiosus est ab omnibus hominibus’), but what may be the true reading of the matter is found in the Liber Dyabesi or book of the distillation of the land-tortoise (MS. Ricc. p. 4ro.) where these words occur: ‘Omnia ista pondera fuerunt occulta a philosophis, et dederunt nobis alia pondera … quia fuerunt invidiosi,’ i.e. unwilling to make public the secrets of their art. In later days the title Lumen Luminum is found in use by Raymond Lull and his school.
[136] Liber Luminis Luminum, ii. 1.
[137] Corpus Christi MS. cxxv. pp. 116-119.
[138] In MS. Ricc. L. iii. 13, 119, No. 37.
[139] See on the whole subject the Annales Minorum of Wadding, especially vol. i. p. 109. In vol. ii. p. 242, we find the reproof addressed by the Pope to Fra Elias. The words referred to above are these: ‘mutari color optimus auri ex quo caput (i.e. Franciscus) erat compactum.’
[140] For example, ‘quaedam gumma quae invenitur in alumine de pluma, et ista gumma est rubea, et gumma quae invenitur in alumine rubeo et ista gumma est preciosa et bona valde.’ The word becomes intelligible when read as ‘gemma.’
[141] Such as ‘Yader saracenus,’ ‘Arbaranus,’ ‘Theodosius saracenus,’ ‘Medibibaz,’ and ‘Magister Jacobus Judaeus.’ The name of the place ‘halaph’ which is probably Aleppo, and of the herb ‘carcha’ point in the same direction.