[1]. H. C. Lea, History of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages (1887), vol. iii, p. 437. Mr. Lea’s chapter on “Sorcery and the Occult Arts” is very interesting and contains much material which it is difficult to find elsewhere.
[2]. We speak of persons as jovial or saturnine or mercurial in temperament; as ill-starred, and so on.
[3]. The classic on the theme of magic reputations incurred by the learned in ancient and mediæval times is Gabriel Naudé’s “Apologie pour tous les grands personages qui ont esté faussement soupçonnez de Magie.” Paris, 1625. That such reputations were often unjustly incurred was recognized long before Naudé, however. To say nothing now of Apuleius’ Apologia, to which we shall refer later, attention may be called to the fact that even William of Malmesbury, while relating with apparent credulity the legends in regard to Gerbert, had the grace to admit that “the common people often attack the reputation of the learned, and accuse any one of dealing with the devil who excels in his art.” Gesta Regum Anglorum, book ii, secs. 167, 168.
[4]. République, book iv, ch. 2, cited by W. E. H. Lecky, History of Rationalism (1900), vol. i, p. 28. The chapter upon “Magic and Witchcraft” contains considerable material bearing upon our theme. A similar attitude to that of Bodin is found in a political treatise of about the year 1300, probably written by Pierre du Bois, where an argument for the universal rule of a French monarch is based on astrology. N. de Wailly, Mémoire sur un opuscule anonyme (Mémoires de l’Institut Impérial de France), vol. xviii, pt. ii, p. 442.
[5]. Summa Theologica, pars prima, quæst. 115, arts. 3 and 4.
[6]. For some data on this point see Hastings Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages (1895), vol. i, pp. 240–250; vol. ii, pp. 290, 452, 458, 459.
[7]. Etymologiae, bk. viii, ch. 9. In Migne’s Patrologia Latina, vol. lxxxii.
[8]. Ibid., bk. xvi, passim.
[9]. Ibid., bk. iii, ch. 71. He condemned astrology, however. See ibid., and bk. iii, ch. 27.