Note 168 — The Tenth Book.

We have now to refute their errour who are persuaded that Brazen Heads made under certain constellations may give answers, and be as it were guides and counsellors, upon all occasions, to those that had them in their possession. Among these is one Yepes who affirms that Henry de Villeine made such a one at Madrid, broken to pieces afterwards by order of John 2. King of Castile. The same thing is affirmed by Bartholomew Sibillus, and the Author of the Image of the World, of Virgil; by William of Malmsbury of Sylvester; by John Gower of Robert of Lincoln; by the common people of England of Roger Bacon; and by Tostatus Bishop of Avilla, George of Venice, Delrio, Sibillus, Raguseus, Delancre and others, too many to mention, of Albertus Magnus; who as the most expert, had made an entire man of the same metal, and had spent thirty years without any interruption in forming him under several aspects and constellations. For example, he formed the eyes, according to the said Tostatus in his commentaries upon Exodus, when the Sun was in a sign of the Zodiac correspondent to that part, casting them out of divers metals mixt together and mark’d with the characters of the same signs and planets, and their several and necessary aspects. The same method he observed in the head, neck, shoulders, thighs, and legs, all which were fashioned at several times, and being put and fastened together in the form of a man, had the faculty to reveal to the said Albertus the solutions of all his principal difficulties. To which they add (that nothing be lost of the story of the statue) that it was battered to pieces by St. Thomas, meerely because he could not endure its excesse of prating.

But to give a more rational account of this Androides of Albertus, as also of all these miraculous heads, I conceive the original of this fable may well be deduced from the Teraph of the Hebrews, by which as Mr. Selden affirms, many are of opinion, that we must understand what is said in Genesis concerning Laban’s Gods, and in the first book of Kings concerning the image which Michol put into the bed in David’s place. For R. Eleazar holds that it was made of the head of a male child, the first born and that dead-born, under whose tongue they applyed a lamen of Gold, whereon were engraved the characters and inscriptions of certain planets, which the Jews superstitiously wandered up and down with, instead of the Urim and Thummim, or the Ephod of the High Priest. And that this original is true and well deduced, there is a manifest indicium, in that Henry D’Assia, and Bartholomæus Sibillus affirm, that the Androides of Albertus, and the Head made by Virgil, were composed of flesh and bone, yet not by nature, but by art. But this being judged impossible by modern Authors, and the vertue of Images, Annulets, and planetary Sigills being in great reputation, men have thought ever since (taking their opinion from Trismegistus affirming in his Asclepion, that of the Gods, some were made by the Sovereign God, and others by men, who, by some art, had the power to unite the invisible Spirits to things visible and corporeal, as is explained at large by St. Augustine) that such figures were made of copper or some other metal, whereon men had wrought under some favourable Aspects of Heaven and the planets.

My design is not absolutely to deny that he might compose some head or statue of man, like that of Memnon, from which proceeded a small sound and pleasant noise, when the rising Sun came by his heat to rarify and force out, by certain small conduits, the air which in the cold of the night was condensed within it. Or haply they might be like those statues of Boetius, whereof Cassiodorus speaking said, Metalla mugiunt, Diomedis in ære grues buccinant, ænus anguis insibilat, aves simulatæ fritinniunt, et quæ propriam vocem nesciunt, ab ære dulcedinem probantur emittere cantilenæ; for such I doubt not but may be made by the help of that part of Natural Magic which depends on the Mathematics.

History of Magic.

The title page to this book is wanting;, but the Epistle Dedicatory is signed J. Davies. By the stile, spelling, and extensive reading of the author, it appears to be a work of the last century.