De la Pirotechnia

THE BOOK OF GOLD

It is true that gold is found in the sands of many rivers, and particularly (according to what I have learned) in the aforementioned rivers. SO, if I have felt wonder at such a thing, I deserve to be entirely excused, for where the understanding of the causes of things through reason is lacking, or where an apparent factual certainty is missing, there are always doubts, and from them arises the novelty of wonder. BUT ALSO, alongside this, a much greater wonder is presented to me by what I have many times heard said as a very true thing by various people: that in some places in Hungary, at certain times, in the likeness of little herbs, the purest gold has sprouted out of the earth, wound like the stems of bindweed Italian: vilucchi. Bindweed is a climbing plant known for wrapping its vines tightly around other stalks. around the brushwood found there, with the thickness of a piece of twine, and the length of four fingers A traditional unit of measure, approximately 3 inches., and some the length of a palm A unit of measure based on the width of the hand or the span of the fingers, roughly 8 to 9 inches..

Regarding this or a similar matter, it seems that Pliny, in the thirty-third book of his Natural History Original: Naturalis Historia. Pliny the Elder (23–79 AD) was a Roman author whose encyclopedic work was a primary source for Renaissance science., when he speaks of mines, mentions in passing with a few words that in his time the same occurred in Dalmatia. Which, if it were true as they say, would mean the farmers of those fields were truly reaping fruits of celestial and not earthly seed. They should be considered blessed, since gold would be produced for them by God, by the heavens, or by nature, without their labor or art—fruits so precious and pleasing. It would be a truly unique grace, since among such a vast quantity of land and the number of properties under the care of living beings, all others besides these are unworthy of such a harvest.

BUT WHAT SHALL I SAY of what Albertus Magnus Albertus Magnus (c. 1200–1280) was a German Dominican friar and philosopher famous for his writings on the natural sciences. writes in his famous work On Minerals Original: De mineralibus., where he says he saw gold that had been generated in the head of a dead man? He says that this skull, having been dug up from under the ground by chance and found to be unusually heavy, was seen to be full of a very fine sand. Because of its weight, those who saw it thought it was metal, and they found at last by experience that it was the finest gold. In truth, his words do not seem to mean anything other than that the great disposition of the material and the powerful influence of the heavens Renaissance science held that the "influence" or "virtue" of planets and stars directed the growth and maturation of metals within the earth. must have generated such precious metal there. In truth, this is a thing not easily believed, and certainly to me it seems an incredible thing; but having heard it thus related, I wanted to tell it to you as well. And yet, considering who says it, and how great are the forces of the superior causes and those of nature, a man may let it pass, relying on the faith and the reputation of the knowledge of those who tell it to us, since we ourselves are too weak to fundamentally understand the causes of things.

AND SINCE I have begun to tell you of such effects, I do not want to fail to relate to you another case that I heard happened in the parts of Hungary—perhaps in that place where the gold sprouts—which offers no hope to those seeking mines of finding any, and even to those who have found them, it provides a certain warning and the convenience of being able...