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  • Title: Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (Quarto)
  • Editors: Christopher Hicklin, Christopher Matusiak

    • Copyright Queen's Men Editions. This text may be freely used for educational, non-profit purposes; for all other uses contact the Editor.
    Author: Robert Greene
    Editors: Christopher Hicklin, Christopher Matusiak
    Peer Reviewed

    Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (Quarto)

    The honourable historie of Frier Bacon.
    or Geomancie, be most predominant in magick.
    Vander. I say of Piromancie.
    1140Bungay. And I of Geomancie.
    Vander. The cabbalists that wright of magicke spels,
    As Hermes, Melchie, and Pithagoras,
    Affirme that mongst the quadruplicitie
    Of elementall essence, Terra is but thought,
    1145To be a punctum squared to the rest:
    And that the compasse of ascending eliments
    Exceed in bignesse as they doe in height.
    Iudging the concaue circle of the sonne,
    To hold the rest in his circomference,
    1150If then as Hermes saies the fire be greatst,
    Purest and onely giueth shapes to spirites:
    Then must these Demones that haunt that place,
    Be euery way superiour to the rest.
    Bungay. I reason not of elementall shapes,
    1155Nor tell I of the concaue lattitudes,
    Noting their essence nor their qualitie,
    But of the spirites that Piromancie calles,
    And of the vigour of the Geomanticke fiends,
    I tell thee Germane magicke haunts the grounds,
    1160And those strange necromantick spels
    That worke such shewes and wondering in the world,
    Are acted by those Geomanticke spirites,
    That Hermes calleth Terrae filii.
    The fierie spirits are but transparant shades,
    1165That lightly passe as Heralts to beare newes,
    But earthly fiends closd in the lowest deepe,
    Disseuer mountaines if they be but chargd,
    Being more grose and massie in their power.
    Vander. Rather these earthly geomantike spirits,
    1170Are dull and like the place where they remaine:
    For when proud Lucipher fell from the heauens,
    The spirites and angels that did sin with him,
    Retaind their locall essence as their faults,
    All
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