Note 189 — Chapter V · Belief in Magic in the Empire

See article on “Hermes” in La Grande Encyclopédie by Berthelot who has made an extended study of the history of alchemy; and who, in his La Chimie au Moyen Age holds that Greek alchemistic treatises were continuously extant in Italy during the Dark Ages—a circumstance which diminishes the importance of Arabian influence on the study of the hermetic art in the later Middle Ages.