The Intellectual Interests Reflected in Libraries of the Fourteenth and ...

FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURY LIBRARES 295
Alchemical tracts in the collection of Francesco Gonzaga at
Mantua in 1407 comprised works of Hermes; the Lumen luminum
or "Light of lights," variously attributed to Rasis, Geber, and
Aristotle; also a collection of experiments or observations in
alchemy; some works on the art ascribed to Raynaldus (Arnaldus ?)
of Villanova, and Albertus Magnus.'63 George Valla had in his
library the work on the fifth essence, also the book of secrets attributed
to Raymond Lull, and the Ars alchimie margarita novella
of master Petrus Bonus of Ferrara.'64 In the library of Nicholas
of Cusa, such works attributed to Raymond Lull, Arnald of Villanova,
Avicenna, and Geber, as well as chemical recipes in German,
and other anonymous works on the subject, were all classified under
the headings, medicine and philosophy.'65 At Erfurt, as noted
earlier, the Amplonian collection had the four books on alchemy
placed after the books on natural philosophy.166 There were
also treatises on alchemy in the Spanish library of Martin V of
Aragon.'67
The occult arts of magic and divination, geomancy, nigromancy,
chiromancy, and the like, were represented in several treatises in
the libraries of the Visconti-Sforza, of Francesco Gonzaga, and
other Italian libraries of the fifteenth century, also in French ducal
and royal collections and in the Spanish libraries of Martin V and
Alfonso X, as well as in English ecclesiastical libraries. The Visconti
library had several works on dreams, an anonymous physiognomy,
probably the one ascribed to Aristotle, also the pseudo-
Aristotelian Secret of Secrets, which was so widely current,168 and
the collection entitled Picatrix.'69 Alkindi, On stellar rays, and
Aggiunte alle Indagini del Marchese d'Adda," II Bibliofilo, anno VII, no. 9-10
(1886), 129-34. See especially 133.
163 Pia Girolla, "La biblioteca di Francesco Gonzaga, secondo l'inventario del
1407," Accad. Virgiliana, Atti e memorie, XIV-XVI (1921-23), 64 ff.
164 J. L. Heiberg, "Beitriige zur Gesch. Georg Vallas u. seiner Bibliothek,"
Beiheft zum Centralblatt fiir Bibliothekswessen, XVI (1896), 113, 117. For Petrus
Bonus, see Thorndike, op cit. (1934), III, chapter IX.
165 Kraus in Serapeum, XXVI (1865), 69-70, 73, 83.
166 De alchimia que subalternatur philosophie natuali," nos. 61-(64).
167 J. Masso Torrents, "Inventari dels bens mobles del rey Marti d'Axago," Revue
hispanique, XII (1905), 430 ff.; especially nos. 117, 250.
168 Cf. Steele, "What fifteenth century books are about," The Library, IV
(1903), 351-52; Delisle, Cabinet des manuscrits, I, 117. For 15th-cent. editions of
the Secret of secrets, see Klebs, Incunabula scientifica et medica, nos. 96.1-9.
169 G. Mazzatinti, "Inventario della biblioteca Visconteo-Sforzesca," Giornale
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