apparent rotation of the heavens had been observed; and not only this, but also that this revolving motion was seemingly about an axis, the intersection of which with the celestial vault marked the places of the poles of the universe. The conception of such poles was of still more ancient date. The story of Creation, deciphered from the broken and scattered remains of Assyrian and Babylonian tablets, recounts how "Maiduk embellished the heavens, prepared places for the great gods, made the stars, set the Zodiac ** and fixed the poles." This carries the idea of these points back fully to 3,000 B. C.; but it probably had its rise very much earlier in prehistoric times. The Kushite-Semite race, who were the first imperial rulers of the primeval world, called themselves "sons of the pole," and substituted, for the reckoning of time by the Pleiades, one founded on so purely a physical motion of the heavenly pole, that they conceived the heavens to move about it with friction; a fact which they deemed proved by the apparent movements of the fixed stars. They even believed the pole to be an ever twirling fire-drill, the heat of which influenced the stars. The race of Yakotas, the sons of Jokshan, or Joktan, in Genesis, likewise believed that the pole in its revolutions produced the burning heat of summer.1

This material idea of the poles, of course, has no place in the medieval conception. They were simply the points about which the concentric heavens revolved, and that one which was visible to Europeans was marked by the presence of the Pole star. The progress of electrical knowledge owes much to this mediæval cosmic philosophy. It was because of the belief in the rotary heavens that the great discoveries now to be recounted were made, and, as I shall show hereafter, it was because of a disbelief that the earth stood still, that the even greater work which immediately ushered in the present science was undertaken.

'Davis: Genesis and Semite Tradition, New York, 1894. Hewitt: The Ruling Races of Prehistoric Times, London, 1894.

CHAPTER VII.

THE town of Lucera or Nocera, situated in the province of Apulia in southern Italy, was founded early in the thirteenth century by Frederick II., Emperor of Germany, as a place of free refuge and dwelling for the Saracens. In 1266, Charles of Anjou, who had been crowned king of the two Sicilies by Pope Urban IV., captured the town. Subsequently it rebelled and he besieged it a second time. The defense was obstinate and the town was finally reduced, in 1269, only because of starvation and after a year's siege.

Among the partisans of Charles who were encamped under the walls of Lucera during this long investment was the Magister Petrus de Maharne-Curia (or Master Peter de Maricourt), of whom Roger Bacon speaks in glowing terms. The surname "de Maricourt" is derived from a little village in Picardy, whence he came, and is classed among the territorial designations of the French nobility. The title "Magister" indicates the academic grade of "Doctor," showing that the bearer had studied and attained scholastic honors. The eulogiums of Bacon are so unstinted that there is reason to believe that Peter was already a man of wide celebrity for his learning and skill. Bacon' calls him "a master of experiment" seeing in full brilliancy the things which others grope for in darkness, like bats in the twilight, and says that through experiment he had become "versed in all natural science, whether medicinal, or alchemical, or relating to matters celestial or terrestrial." He is skilled, the monk tells us, in minerals and metal working—in arms, whether military or pertaining to the hunt, in agriculture and geodesy and magic;

1Brewer, V.: Fr. Rogeri Bacon, Opera. Lond., 1859. Op. Tertium, c. xi., p. 46.

and that he pursued learning for its own sake, neglecting all rewards, although his wisdom was sufficient to have enabled him to accumulate immense wealth had he so willed. That his experiments were continued over a considerable period of time is shown by Bacon's statement that he worked for three years upon burning glasses-evidently following in the footsteps of Archimedes. But, of all his achievements, that which most excites the admiration of the Friar, is his invention of a perpetual motion: the first recorded contrivance of the kind which came into the world, and probably the only one which in the end served a good purpose.

Here again the influence of Archimedes is apparent. There had always been a tradition that that philosopher constructed a sphere which reproduced the motions of the heavenly bodies. Cicero' refers to it in a general way, and Kircher devotes a chapter to speculation on its possible construction; but probably it was nothing more than an orrery, showing the supposed relative positions and movements of the planets, but destitute, of course, of any automatic mechanism.

The circumstances which led to Master Peter's presence at the siege of Lucera are not difficult to conjecture. He probably belonged to one of the semi-military religious orders which, like the Templars, took an active part in the Crusades. The name of "Peregrinus" or Pilgrim, which later writers substitute for the surname "de Maricourt," shows that he had made the pilgrimage to the Holy Land-for this was a common honorary title accorded to persons who had taken part in the efforts to rescue the Holy Sepulchre; and, as Charles of Anjou, under whom we now find him serving, had joined the first crusade

1 De Nat. Deorum, ii, 35. Tusc. Disp., i. 25.

2 De Arte Magnetica. Rome, 1654, lib. ii., part iv, p. 245. See also, Claud. Ep. xxi. In Sphaerum Archim., Sext. Empiric. adv. Math. ix. 15. Lactantius: Div. Inst., ii. 5. Ov.: Fast vi. 277. Smith: Dict. of Gr. and Rom. Biog. and Myth. i. 2711.

PETER PEREGRINUS.

167

of his brother Louis IX., of France, Peter or Peregrinusas for the sake of uniformity with the old writers we shall hereafter term him-very probably went to the Orient in Charles' train. Friar Bacon indicates plainly enough what his functions were. He was skilled in arms and magic, and as pretty much all mechanical and physical knowledge, in those days, over and above what Archimedes had taught, was included broadly under the lastnamed term, Peregrinus was, in brief, an engineer. He probably devised engines for throwing stones and fire-balls, or for breaching walls; while his knowledge of geodesy came into play in building fortifications and digging mines.

During this employment, Peregrinus seems to have conceived the idea of converting the sphere of Archimedes into a self-moving magnetic motor, and then to have gone a step further and evolved a magnetic perpetual motion on an entirely different principle. It is a most singular fact that he reached these delusions through a series of brilliant discoveries, in which he not only overthrew most of the old notions concerning magnetism, but established, for the first time, the great fundamental laws of the science. Yet he cannot well be condemned for thus landing in an impossibility. No one knew that such a thing as a self-moving machine was impossible. The force of such a conception, especially when attained through the medium of experimentation which was correct in itself, and upon an intellect educated perhaps to as high a degree as was attainable in those days to the appreciation of the magnitude of it, may well have been overwhelming. A machine moved by the virtue which God had put into the lodestone and requiring no human aid-such was the initial idea which, running on to other conclusions, must have developed itself into speculation concerning the stupendous results which many such machines could accomplish, the possible accumulation of their powers, and the vast aggregated mights-and that was an age when might made right-which should be at the disposal of whoever con

trolled them. And beyond all this, conceive of the tremendous influence upon this soldier-monk, imbued with the superstitions of his creed, of the conviction that he might be the chosen of the Almighty to remove the curse of Eden, and to relieve man from the earning of his bread by the sweat of his brow.

He does not say this in the letter which he wrote on the 12th day of August, 1269, from the trenches in front of Lucera. The stake would, no doubt, have claimed him in short order, had he dared even to breathe a word of such a doctrine. But no one can read that missive without seeing how deeply the writer's soul was stirred within him. The person to whom he sent it was not a philosopher like himself, not even a scholar, but a knight, one Sigerus of Foucaucourt, and his next-door neighbor at home. “Amicorum intime". 'nearest of friends"-is the form of address, and the story is told as if in answer to some question put by Sigerus concerning the occult virtue of the magnet. But it all leads up to the machine which its inventor thought would run forever, and which is described in his last chapter; and what precedes is introduction, evidently intended simply to educate the recipient to a comprehension of the great result which the writer believed he had attained. It was the beginning of the arch-delusion in mechanics which ran for centuries parallel with the archdelusion in chemistry, and with consequences very similar. For, as the search for the philosopher's stone and the elixir of youth brought to light many of the basic truths of the one science, so the equally vain quest for the perpetual motion has resulted in the discovery of many of the underlying principles of the other.

But let us examine the letter itself. It begins with a brief table of contents designed to show the orderly plan on which it is arranged. There are two parts-the first divided into ten chapters and relating to general principles; the second, into three chapters, which set forth the apparatus in which these principles are embodied.