[2244] Brewer, 107, 526-27; Bridges, I, 300 ff.
[2245] Bridges, I, 396.
[2246] Bridges, I, 394.
[2247] Bridges, I, 392-94. He cites Josephus’s Antiquities as his authority for the employment of such images by Moses.
[2248] Ibid., 395; Opus Tertium, Brewer, 96-99.
[2249] Bridges, I, 399-403. See Marco Polo, I, 61 and II, 33, concerning the “crafty enchanters and astrologers” in the train of the Great Khan and the five thousand astrologers and soothsayers in Peking.
[2250] A good contemporary illustration is had in the charges brought against Hubert de Burgh by Henry III: “... he had stolen from Henry and given to the prince of Wales” (even Stubbs nods!) “a talisman which rendered its wearer invulnerable; ... he had poisoned the earl of Salisbury, the young earl Marshall, Falkes de Breauté, and Archbishop Richard; he had kept the king under his influence by witchcraft”: Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, 1906, II, 45-46, citing Matthew Paris, III, 221-3. Thus Hubert was accused of theft, poisoning, and sorcery. But there was nothing wrong in possessing such a magic talisman.
[2251] Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, II, 56-7, “... et caveant ne elemosinas sibi missas pro libris in alios usus commutent, nec libros fieri faciant curiosos.”
[2252] P. 49.
[2253] In his Apologetica Defensio Astronomice Veritatis he cites “Bacon magnus doctor anglicus in epistola ad Clementem papam”; in his Alia Secunda Apologetica Defensio eiusdem, arguing that the superstitution of certain astrologers does not invalidate the art, he says, “Et hoc pulcre et diffuse probat Bacon in epistola ad papam Clementem”; and in his Elucidarius he definitely says that it was Bacon whose theory of conjunctions and sects he discussed in the De Legibus et Sectis.