Note 8 — Introductory material

“If an adamant be set by iron, it suffereth not the iron to come to the magnet, but it draweth it by a manner of violence, from the magnet, so that though the magnet draweth iron to itself, the adamant draweth it away from the magnet” (Mediæval Lore, “Gleanings from Barthol. de Glanvilla,” by Robert Steele, London, 1893, Chap. IX. p. 32). The great “Liber de Proprietatibus Rerum,” which has been elsewhere cited in this compilation, was undoubtedly written by Glanvilla (who, according to Salimbene, author of the “Chronicles of Parma,” had been a professor of theology in the Paris University) before the year 1260, for, as Steele remarks, he cites Albertus Magnus, who was in Paris during 1248, but does not quote from either Vincent de Beauvais, Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon or Egidius Colonna, all of whom were in Paris during the second half of the thirteenth century.