THE PSEUDO-ARISTOTLE

In a previous chapter we have seen what a wide currency the legend of Alexander had both in east and west in the later Roman Empire and early middle ages, and how with Alexander was associated the magician and astrologer Nectanebus. We also saw that by about 800 A. D. at least a separate Letter of Alexander to Aristotle on the Marvels of India was current in the Latin west, and in the present chapter it is especially to the Pseudo-Aristotle and his connection with Alexander and India, rather than to the Pseudo-Callisthenes, that we turn. The tremendous historical importance of the career of Alexander the Great and of the writings of Aristotle impressed itself perhaps even unduly upon both the Arabian and the medieval mind. The personal connection between the two men—Aristotle was for a time Alexander’s tutor—was seized upon and magnified. Pliny in his Natural History had stated that Alexander had empowered Aristotle to send two thousand men to different parts of the world to test by experience all things on the face of the earth.[755] This account of their scientific co-operation was enlarged upon by spurious writings associated with their names like the letter on the marvels of India.[756] With the introduction into western Europe in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries of many genuine works of Aristotle unknown to the early middle ages, which had possessed only certain of his logical treatises, there also came into circulation a number of spurious writings ascribed to him.

It is not surprising that many spurious works were attributed to Aristotle in the middle ages, when we remember that his writings came to them for the most part indirectly through corrupt translations, and that some writing from so great a master was eagerly looked for upon every subject in which they were interested. It seemed to them that so encyclopedic a genius must have touched on all fields of knowledge and they often failed to realize that in Aristotle’s time the departments of learning had been somewhat different from their own and that new interests and doctrine had developed since then. There was also a tendency to ascribe to Aristotle any work of unknown or uncertain authorship. At the close of the twelfth century Alexander Neckam[757] lists among historic instances of envy Aristotle’s holding back from posterity certain of his most subtle writings, which he ordered should be buried with him. At the same time he so guarded the place of his sepulcher, whether by some force of nature or power of art or prodigy of magic is uncertain, that no one has yet been able to approach it, although some think that Antichrist will be able to inspect these books when he comes. Roger Bacon in the thirteenth century believed that Aristotle had written over a thousand works and complained bitterly because certain treatises, which were probably really apocryphal, had not been translated into Latin.[758] Indeed, some of the works ascribed to Aristotle in the Oriental and Mohammedan worlds were never translated into Latin, such as the astrological De impressionibus coelestibus which Bacon mentions, or the Syriac text which K. Ahrens edited in 1892 with a German translation as “Das Buch der Naturgegenstände”; or first appeared in Latin guise after the invention of printing, as was the case with the so-called Theology of Aristotle,[759] a work which was little more than a series of extracts from the Enneads of Plotinus.[760] Some treatises attributed to Aristotle in medieval Latin do not bear especially upon our investigation, such as Grammar which Grosseteste is said to have translated from Greek.[761]

For our purposes the Pseudo-Aristotelian writings may be sub-divided under seven heads: experiment, alchemy, astrology, spirits, occult virtues of stones and herbs, chiromancy and physiognomy, and last the famous Secret of Secrets. Under the first of these heads may be put a treatise on the conduct of waters, which consists of a series of experiments in siphoning and the like illustrated in the manuscript by lettered and colored figures and diagrams.[762] In a Vatican manuscript it is perhaps more correctly ascribed to Philo of Byzantium.

From experiment to alchemy is an easy step, for the alchemists experimented a good deal in the period which we are now considering. The fourth book of the Meteorology of Aristotle, which, if not a genuine portion of that work, at least goes back to the third century before Christ,[763] has been called a manual of chemistry,[764] and apparently is the oldest such extant. Its doctrines are also believed to have been influential in the development of alchemy; and there were passages in this fourth book which led men later to regard Aristotle as favorable to the doctrine of the transmutation of metals. Gerard of Cremona had translated only the first three books of the Meteorology; the fourth was supplied from a translation from the Greek made by Henricus Aristippus who died in 1162; to this fourth book were added three chapters translated by Alfred of England or of Sareshel from the Arabic,[765] apparently of Avicenna. [766] These additions of Alfred from Avicenna discussed the formation of metals but attacked the alchemists.[767] Vincent of Beauvais[768] and Albertus Magnus[769] were both aware, however, that this attack upon the alchemists was probably not by Aristotle. The short treatise On colors,[770] which is included in so many medieval manuscript collections of the works of Aristotle in Latin,[771] by its very title would suggest to medieval readers that he had been interested in the art of alchemy, although its actual contents deal only in small part with dyes and tinctures. Its form and contents are not regarded as Aristotle’s, but it was perhaps by someone of the Peripatetic school. Thus works which, if not by Aristotle himself, at least had been written in Greek long before the medieval period, gave medieval readers the impression that Aristotle was favorable to alchemy.

It is therefore not surprising that works of alchemy appeared in medieval Latin under Aristotle’s name. The names of Plato and Aristotle had headed the lists of alchemists in Greek manuscripts although no works ascribed to Aristotle have been preserved in the same.[772] Berthelot, however, speaks of a pseudo-Aristotle in Arabic,[773] and in an Oxford manuscript of the thirteenth century under the name of Aristotle appears a treatise On the twelve waters of the secret river said to be “translated from Arabic into Latin.”[774] In the preface the author promises that whoever becomes skilled, adept, and expert in these twelve waters will never lose hope nor be depressed by want. He regards this treatise as the chief among his works, since he has learned these waters by experiment. They are all chemical rather than medical; a brief “chapter” or paragraph is devoted to each. In another manuscript at the Bodleian two brief tracts are ascribed to Aristotle; one describes the seven metals, the other deals with transmutation.[775] In a single manuscript at Munich both a theoretical treatise in medicine and alchemy and a Practica are attributed to Aristotle, and in two other manuscripts he is credited with the Book of Seventy Precepts which sometimes is ascribed to Geber.[776] Thomas of Cantimpré cites Aristotle in the Lumen luminum as saying that the best gold is made from yellow copper ore and the urine of a boy, but Thomas hastens to add that such gold is best in color rather than in substance.[777] The translation of the Lumen luminum is ascribed both to Michael Scot and brother Elias.[778] Aristotle is quoted several times in De alchimia, ascribed to Albertus Magnus, but only in the later “Additions” to it, where Roger Bacon also is cited, is the specific title Liber de perfecto magisterio given as Aristotle’s.[779] Sometimes works of alchemy were very carelessly ascribed to Aristotle, when it is perfectly evident from the works themselves that they could not have been written by him.[780]

The alchemical discoveries and writings ascribed to Aristotle are often associated in some way with Alexander the Great as well. In one manuscript John of Spain’s translation of the Secret of Secrets is followed by a description of the virtues and compositions of four stones “which Aristotle sent to Alexander the Great.”[781] It seems obvious that these are philosopher’s stones and not natural gems. The Liber ignium of Marcus Grecus, composed in the thirteenth or early fourteenth century, ascribes to Aristotle the discovery of two marvelous kinds of fires. One, which he discovered while traveling with Alexander the king, will burn for a year without cessation. The other, in the composition of which observance of the dog-days is requisite, “Aristotle asserts will last for nine years.”[782] A collection of chemical experiments by a Nicholas, of whom we shall have more to say in a later chapter, gives “a fire which Aristotle discovered with Alexander for obscure places.”[783] A letter of Aristotle to Alexander in a collection of alchemical tracts is hardly worth noting, as it is only seven lines long, but it is interesting to observe that it cites Aristotle’s Meteorology.[784] Perhaps by a mistake one or two alchemical treatises are ascribed to Alexander rather than Aristotle.[785]

Aristotle’s genuine works give even more encouragement to the pretensions of astrology than to those of alchemy. His opinion that the four elements were insufficient to explain natural phenomena and his theory of a fifth essence were favorable to the belief in occult virtue and the influence of the stars upon inferior objects. In his work on generation[786] he held that the elements alone were mere tools without a workman; the missing agent is supplied by the revolution of the heavens. In the twelfth book of the Metaphysics he described the stars and planets as eternal and acting as intermediaries between the prime Mover and inferior beings. Thus they are the direct causes of all life and action in our world. Charles Jourdain regarded the introduction of the Metaphysics into western Europe at the opening of the thirteenth century as a principal cause for the great prevalence of astrology from that time on, the other main cause being the translation of Arabian astrological treatises.[787] Jourdain did not duly appreciate the great hold which astrology already had in the twelfth century, but it is nevertheless true that in the new Aristotle astrology found further support.

Astrology crops out here and there in most of the spurious works extant under Aristotle’s name, just as it does in medieval learning everywhere. One section of a dozen pages in the Theology discusses the influence of the stars upon nature and the working of magic by making use of these celestial forces and the natural attraction which things have for one another. It regards artificial magic as a fraud but natural and astrological magic as a reality. However, as in the original text of Plotinus which the Theology follows, it is only the animal soul which is affected by magic and the man of impulse who is moved thereby; the thinking man can free himself from its influence by use of the rational soul. In the treatise, De pomo,[788] which seems not to have been translated into Latin until the thirteenth century under Manfred,[789] Aristotle on his death bed, holding in his hand an apple from which the treatise takes its title, is represented as telling his disciples why a philosopher need not fear death and repudiating the doctrines of the mortality of the soul and eternity of the universe. He also tells how the Creator made the spheres and placed lucid stars in each and gave them the virtue of ruling over this inferior world and causing good and evil and life or death. They do not, however, do this of themselves, but men at first thought so and erroneously worshiped the stars until the time of Noah who was the first to recognize the Creator of the spheres.[790]

There are also attributed to Aristotle treatises primarily astrological. A “Book on the Properties of the Elements and of the Planets” is cited under his name by Peter of Abano at the end of the thirteenth century in his work on poisons,[791] by Peter d’Ailly in his Vigintiloquium[792] written in 1414, and by Pico della Mirandola, who declares it spurious, in his work against astrology written at the close of the fifteenth century. D’Ailly and Pico cite it in regard to the theory of great conjunctions; Abano, for a tale of Socrates and two dragons which we shall repeat later. It is probable that all these citations were from the paraphrase of and commentary on the work by Albertus Magnus[793] who accepted it as a genuine writing of Aristotle. We shall consider its contents in our chapter upon Albertus Magnus.

In a manuscript of the Cotton collection in the British Museum is a work of some length upon astrology ascribed to Aristotle.[794] After a discussion of general principles in which the planets, signs, and houses are treated, there are separate books upon the subjects of nativities,[795] and of elections and interrogations.[796] In a Paris manuscript a treatise on interrogations is ascribed in a marginal heading to “Aristoteles Milesius, a Peripatetic physician.”[797] In the Cotton Manuscript in commentaries which then follow, and which are labelled as commentaries “upon the preceding treatise” Ptolemy is mentioned rather than Aristotle.[798] In an astrological manuscript of the fifteenth century at Grenoble written in French, works of Messahala and Zaël translated for Charles V of France are preceded by “a book of judicial astrology according to Aristotle,” which opens with “the preface of the last translator,” and is in four parts.[799] Perhaps both the above-mentioned manuscripts contain, like a third manuscript at Munich, “The book of judgments which is said by Albert in his Speculum to be Aristotle’s.”[800] This work also occurs in a manuscript at Erfurt.[801] Roger Bacon was much impressed by an astrological treatise ascribed to Aristotle entitled De impressionibus coelestibus, and told Pope Clement IV that it was “superior to the entire philosophy of the Latins and can be translated by your order.”[802]

A treatise found in two manuscripts of the Bodleian Library bears the titles, Commentary of Aristotle on Astrology, and The book of Aristotle from two hundred and fifty-five volumes of the Indians, containing a digest of all problems, whether pertaining to the sphere or to genethlialogy. [803] From the text itself and the preface of Hugo Sanctelliensis, the twelfth century translator from Arabic into Latin, addressed to his lord, Michael, bishop of Tarazona, we see that the work is neither entirely by Aristotle nor from the books of the Indians but is a compilation by someone who draws or pretends to draw from some 250 or 255 books[804] of the philosophers, including in addition to treatises by both Aristotle and the Indians, 13 books by Hermes, 13 by Doronius (Dorotheus?), 4 by Ptolemy, one by Democritus, two by Plato, 44 by the Babylonians, 7 by Antiochus, and others by authors whose names are unfamiliar to me and probably misspelled in the manuscripts. In one of the works of Aristotle of which the present work is supposed to make use, there are said to have been described the nativities of twelve thousand men, collected in an effort to establish an experimental basis for astrology.[805] It is not so surprising that the present work bears Aristotle’s name, since Hugh had promised his patron Michael, in the prologue to his translation of the Geometry of Hanus ben Hanne,[806] that if life endured and opportunity was given he would next set to work as ordered by his patron, not only upon Haly’s commentaries on the Quadripartite and Almagest of Ptolemy, but also upon a certain general commentary by Aristotle on the entire art of astrology.

The Secret of Secrets of the Pseudo-Aristotle is immediately followed in one manuscript by chapters or treatises addressed to Alexander and entitled, Of ideas and forms, Of the impression of forms, and Of images and rings.[807] The theory, very like that of Alkindi, is maintained that “all forms are ruled by supercelestial forms through the spirits of the spheres” and that incantations and images receive their force from the spheres. The seven planets pass on these supercelestial ideas and forms to our inferior world. By selecting proper times for operating one can work good or ill by means of the rays and impressions of the planets. The scientific investigator who properly concentrates and fixes intent, desire, and appetite upon the desired goal can penetrate hidden secrets of secrets and occult science both universal and particular. The writer goes on to emphasize the importance of understanding all the different positions and relationships of the heavenly bodies and also the distribution of terrestrial objects under the planets. He then describes an astrological image which will cause men to reverence and obey you, will repel your enemies in terror, afflict the envious, send visions, and perform other marvelous and stupefying feats too numerous to mention.

As the Speculum astronomiae of Albertus Magnus listed a Book of Judgments by Aristotle among deserving works of astronomy and astrology, so in its list of evil books dealing with necromantic images appear a treatise by Hermes addressed to Aristotle and opening, “Aristotle said, ‘You have seen me, O Hermes,’” and a treatise ascribed to Aristotle with the sinister title, Death of the Soul, opening, “Said Aristotle to King Alexander, ‘If you want to perceive.’” This treatise the Speculum calls “the worst of all” the evil books on images. Roger Bacon, too, alludes to it by title as filled with figments of the magicians, but does not name Aristotle as author.[808] Peter of Abano in his Lucidator follows the Speculum astronomiae in listing it among depraved, obscene, and detestable works.[809]

Alexander himself, as well as Aristotle, had some medieval reputation as an astrologer. We have already seen[810] in the tenth and eleventh century manuscripts of the Mathematica of Alhandreus, supreme astrologer, that “Alexander of Macedon” was more than once cited as an authority, and that there were also given “Excerpts from the books of Alexander, astrologer, king,” and a “Letter of Argafalan to Alexander.” Different from this, moreover, was the Mathematica of Alexander, supreme astrologer, found in a thirteenth century manuscript, in which from the movements of the planets through the signs one is instructed how to foretell prosperous and adverse journeys, abundance and poverty, misfortune or death of a friend, or to discover stolen articles, sorceries, buried treasure and so forth.[811] A treatise on seven herbs related to the seven planets is sometimes ascribed to Alexander,[812] but perhaps more often to Flaccus Africanus, as we saw in Chapter 46, and at least once to Aristotle.[813]

The association of astrological images with spirits of the spheres in one of the above-mentioned works ascribed to Aristotle has already brought us to the border-line of our next topic, Aristotle and spirits. Under this caption may be placed a work found in a fifteenth century manuscript. [814] It also is in part astrological and is associated with the name of Hermes as well as of Aristotle. Its title runs, The book of the spiritual works of Aristotle, or the book Antimaquis, which is the book of the secrets of Hermes: wonderful things can be accomplished by means of this book and ’tis the ancient book of the seven planets. The treatise opens, “To every people and clime pertains a group of spirits.” It then maps out these regions of different spirits in accordance with the planets and signs of the zodiac. Apparently this is the same work as that which Hunain ibn Ishak translated into Arabic and of which he says, “Among the works of Aristotle which we have found and translated from Greek into Arabic was The book of the Causes of Spirituals which has Hermes for author.... It is the book in which Aristotle treats of the causes of spirituals, talismans, the art of their operation, and how to hinder it, ordered after the seven climates.”[815] It was probably some such spurious work that William of Auvergne had in mind when he spoke of Aristotle’s boast that a spirit had descended unto him from the sphere of Venus.[816]

No genuine work of Aristotle on vegetables or minerals has come down to us to accompany his celebrated History of Animals, but supposititious writings were soon found by the Arabs to fill this gap. On plants a brief treatise by Nicolaus Damascenus passed for Aristotle’s. Alfred of Sarchel translated it from Arabic into Latin,[817] presumably before the close of the twelfth century, since he dedicated it to Roger of Hereford, and Albertus Magnus expanded its two short books into seven long ones in his De vegetabilibus et plantis. There also existed in Arabic a Lapidary ascribed to Aristotle,[818] which we have heard cited in the ninth century by Costa ben Luca. Ruska believes the work to be of Syrian and Persian origin,[819] although one Latin text professes to have been originally translated from Greek into Syriac.[820] Valentin Rose regarded it as the basis of all subsequent Arabic mineralogy, but found only two Latin manuscripts of it.[821] Albertus Magnus in his Minerals confesses that, although he had sought diligently in divers regions of the world, he had seen only excerpts from Aristotle’s work. But another writer of the thirteenth century, Arnold of Saxony, cites translations of Aristotle on stones both by Dioscorides, which would seem sheer nonsense, and by Gerard, presumably of Cremona. Gerard’s translation occurs in one of Rose’s manuscripts; the other seems to give a version translated from the Hebrew.

In Gerard’s translation, a work marked by puerile Latin style, the Lapidary of Aristotle is about equally devoted to marvelous properties of stones and tales of Alexander the Great. After some general discussion of stones and their wonderful properties, particular gems are taken up. The gesha brings misfortune. Its wearer sleeps poorly, has many worries, many altercations and law-suits. If it is hung about a boy’s neck, it makes him drivel. “There is great occult force” in the magnet, and instructions are given how to set water on fire with it. Several stones possess the property of neutralizing spells and counteracting the work of demons. With another stone the Indians make many incantations. Vultures were the first to discover the virtue of the stone filcrum coarton in hastening delivery. When a female vulture was near death from the eggs hardening in her body, the male flew off to India and brought back this stone which afforded instant relief. Another stone is so soporific that suspended about the neck it induces a sleep lasting three days and nights, and the effects of which are thrown off with difficulty even on the fourth day, when the sleeper will awake but will act as if he were intoxicated and will still seem sleepier than anyone else. Another stone prevents a horse from whinnying, if suspended from his neck.

Other gems suggest stories of Alexander. Near the frontier of India in a valley guarded by deadly serpents whose mere glance was fatal were many precious gems. Alexander disposed of the serpents by erecting mirrors in which they might stare themselves to death, and he then secured the gems by employing the carcasses of sheep in the manner which we have already heard described by Epiphanius.[822] A somewhat similar tale is told of Socrates by Albertus Magnus in his commentary on the pseudo-Aristotelian work on the properties of the elements and planets.[823] In the reign of Philip of Macedon, who is himself described as a philosopher and astronomer, the road between two mountains in Armenia became so poisoned that no one could pass. Philip vainly inquired the cause from his sages until Socrates came to the rescue and, by erecting a tower as high as the mountains with a steel mirror on top of it, saw two dragons polluting the air. The mere glance of these dragons was apparently not deadly, for men in air-tight armor went in and killed them. The same story is told by William of St. Cloud, who composed astronomical tables based upon his own observations from about 1285 to 1321, in which he detected errors in the earlier tables of Thebit, Toulouse, and Toledo.[824] In Peter of Abano’s treatise on poisons,[825] however, although he too cites the Pseudo-Aristotle On the causes of the elements, the mirror has become a glass cave in which Socrates ensconces himself to observe the serpents. A Lapidary dedicated to King Wenzel II of Bohemia tells of Socrates’ killing a dragon by use of quicksilver.[826] That Socrates also shared the medieval reputation of Aristotle and Plato for astrology and divination we have already seen from the Prenostica Socratis Basilei.

Similar to Abano’s tale of Socrates in the glass cave is the story told a century earlier by Alexander Neckam of Alexander himself. So sedulous an investigator of nature was the Macedonian, says Neckam, that he went down in a glass vessel to observe the natures and customs of the fishes. He would seem to have remained submerged for some time, since Neckam informs us that he took a cock with him in order to tell when it was dawn by the bird’s crowing. This primitive submarine had at least a suggestion of war about it, since Neckam goes on to say that Alexander learned how to lay ambushes against the foe by observing one army of fishes attack another. Unfortunately, however, Alexander failed to commit to writing his observations, whether military or scientific, of deep-sea life; and Neckam grieves that very few data on the natures of fishes have come to his attention.[827] We shall hear Roger Bacon tell of Alexander’s descending to see the secrets of the deep on the authority of Ethicus.[828]

Neckam’s account differs a good deal from the story as told by the Arabian historian, Masʿudi, in the tenth century. There we read that, when Alexander was building the city of Alexandria, monsters came from the sea every night and overthrew the walls that had been built during the day. Night watchmen proved of no avail, so Alexander had a box made ten cubits long and five wide, with glass sides fastened into the frame work by means of pitch and resin. He then entered the box with two draughtsmen, who, after it had been let down to the bottom of the sea, made exact drawings of the monsters, who had human bodies but the heads of beasts. From these sketches Alexander had images constructed and placed on pillars, and these magic figures served to keep off the monsters until the city was completed. But the effect apparently began to wear off and talismans had to be added on the pillars to prevent the monsters from coming and devouring the inhabitants, as they had begun to do again.[829] Another Arab, Abu-Shâker, of the thirteenth century, repeats a current tradition that Aristotle gave Alexander a box of wax soldiers which were nailed, with inverted spears and swords and severed bow-strings, face-downwards in the box, which in its turn was fastened by a chain. As long as the box remained in Alexander’s possession and he repeated the formulae which Aristotle taught him whenever he took the box up or put it down, he would triumph over his foes in war.[830] This reminds one of the methods of warfare employed by Alexander’s fabled natural father, Nectanebus.

While we are speaking of military matters, it may be noted that in a manuscript of the thirteenth century which once belonged to an Albertus Bohemus or Beham, dean of the church at Padua, and seems to have been his note-book, we find between the Secret of Secrets of the Pseudo-Aristotle and a treatise on the significations of the moon in the signs “a delineation of a brazen horn made with marvelous art by which Alexander in time of war summoned his army from a distance of sixty miles.”[831] Such a horn “of Temistius” is mentioned in some versions of the Secret of Secrets.[832]

But to return to other tales of Alexander in the Lapidary. Once he saw afar enchanters and enchantresses who slew and wounded the men of his army by their diabolical power until Alexander prayed to God, who revealed two stones which counteracted the sorcery. On another occasion when by Alexander’s order his barons had carried off certain gems, during the night following they suffered much insult from demons and were sore afraid, since sticks and stones were thrown about the camp by unseen hands and men were beaten without knowing whence the blows came. It thus became apparent that the demons cherished those gems as their especial property and were accustomed to perform occult operations with them of which they did not wish men to learn the secret. Alexander found that these gems would protect him from any beast, serpent, or demon, although the nocturnal experience of his barons would scarcely seem to support this last point. On a third occasion his troops were held motionless and gazed open-mouthed at certain stones, until a bird fluttered down and covered the gems with its outstretched wings. Then Alexander had his followers close their eyes and carry the stones away under cover and place them on top of the wall of one of his cities so that no one might scale the wall to spy upon the town.

Yet another curious story of Alexander and a stone is repeated by Peter of Abano in his work on poisons[833] from a treatise “On the Nature of Serpents” which he ascribes to Aristotle. Alexander always wore a certain stone in his belt to give him good luck in his battles, but on his return from India, while bathing in the Euphrates, he removed the belt, whereupon a serpent suddenly appeared, bit the stone out of the belt, and vomited it into the river. Deprived of his talisman, Alexander presently met his death.[834]

Another Lapidary, printed as Aristotle’s at Merseburg in 1473, is really a compilation of previous medieval works on the subject with the addition of some items derived from the personal knowledge or experience of the author. It was composed “to the honor of almighty God and the glory and perpetual memory of that virtuous and most glorious prince, Wenzel II, King of Bohemia” (1278-1305). As the treatise itself states, “the Lapidary of Aristotle in the recent translation from the Greek” is only one of its sources along with Avicenna, Constantinus Africanus, Albertus Magnus, and others.

Another work which claims Aristotelian authorship only in its title is the Chiromancy of Aristotle, printed at Ulm in 1490, which quotes freely from Albertus Magnus and Avicenna. There are also brief tracts on chiromancy ascribed to Aristotle in manuscripts of the thirteenth or fourteenth century.[835] Förster has identified Polemon as the author of the Greek treatise on physiognomy ascribed to Aristotle.[836] The art of physiognomy of course professed to read character from the face or other parts of the body, and chiromancy which we have just mentioned is really a branch of it. In Latin translation the treatise was accepted as Aristotle’s by such medieval schoolmen as Albertus Magnus and Duns Scotus. There are many manuscripts of it in the British Museum, including one which perhaps dates back to the twelfth century.[837] Its popularity continued long after the invention of printing, as is shown by separate editions of it brought out at Paris in 1535 and at Wittenberg in 1538, and by commentaries upon it[838] published at Paris in 1611, at Bologna in 1621, and at Toulouse in 1636. Besides such separate manuscripts and editions of it, it was also regularly embodied in the numerous copies of the pseudo-Aristotelian work to which we next turn.