With the condemnation in 1277 along with the opinions of Siger of Brabant of a geomancy, books of necromancy, and others containing invocations of spirits, may be mentioned two later attempts of authorities to discourage the study or practice of magic at Paris. One, to which we have already alluded in our chapter on Roger Bacon, is a constitution of the Franciscans on May 25, 1292, forbidding their students at Paris to spend for other purposes the money sent them for books or to have curious books copied.[2333] We are, however, more pained than surprised to learn that such a regulation was necessary in the Order. The other is a letter of April 3, 1318, or 1319, of Pope John XXII to William, bishop of Paris, thanking him for a donation received and urging him to attend to the improvement of the University of Paris and especially to banish from it and from his diocese “nigromancers, diviners, poisoners, and others engaged in reprehensible arts of this sort,” whom the pope further describes as criminals.[2334] There is nothing to suggest that astrologers and their writings are included in either of these two later moves against superstitious arts or black magic.
[2284] Contained in Borgnet’s edition of Albert’s works, X, 629 et seq. This text, however, has been severely criticized by F. Cumont, Cat. cod. astrol. graec., V, i, 85, who says of it, “mendis scateat,” and who gives a partial version from the MSS (Ibid., pp. 86-105.)
An early edition among the incunabula of the British Museum (numbered I A. 8201) bears the different title, Liber Alberti magni de duabus sapientiis et de recapitulatione omnium librorum astronomiae. In the MSS the title also varies considerably.
For a list of some MSS of the Speculum astronomiae see Appendix I at the close of this chapter.
[2285] P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l’averroïsme latin au XIIIe siècle, deuxième édition revue et augmentée, Louvain, 1911, I, 244-8; and more fully in an article, Roger Bacon et le Speculum astronomiae, in Revue Néo-Scolastique, vol. 17 (August, 1910), pp. 313-35.
[2286] Theophilus Witzel, in CE “Roger Bacon”; Paschal Robinson, “The Seventh Centenary of Roger Bacon,” in The Catholic University Bulletin, January, 1914; A. G. Little, Roger Bacon Essays, Oxford, 1914, p. 25.
[2287] G. Naudé, Apologie pour tous les grands personages qui ont esté faussement soupçonnez de Magie, Paris, 1625, p. 526. Naudé’s memory, however, misled him into asserting that Pico della Mirandola had already asserted that Roger Bacon wrote the Speculum astronomiae, whereas Pico had merely questioned whether Albert wrote it.
[2288] Ch. V. Langlois, in reviewing the first edition of the Siger de Brabant (Fribourg, 1899) in Revue de Paris, Sept. 1, 1900, p. 71, made some strictures upon Mandonnet’s general method of arriving at conclusions which in my opinion were very well taken.
[2289] The opinions of a number of late medieval and early modern scholars as to the authorship of the treatise will be found prefaced to the text in Borgnet’s edition.
J. Sighart, Albertus Magnus, sein Leben und seine Wissenschaft, Regensburg, 1857, p. 341 et seq. (Paris, 1862, p. 454 et seq.) accepted Albert’s authorship.