there was an obstinate strife between the Augustine Friars and the vulgar Canons, before the pope, concerning the habit or apparel of S. Augustine, that is to say, whether he did wear a black weed upon a white Coat, or a white weed upon a black Coat; and finding nothing in the Scriptures which made to the ending of this strife, the Roman judges thought good to prefer the whole matter to Painters and Image-makers, and that which they could avouch out of ancient Pictures and Images should be holden for a Definitive sentence. I being grounded upon this example, when some time I with exceeding great diligence searched for the Original of the Friars' cowl, and could find nothing for that matter in the Scriptures, at length I went me to the Painters, and for this thing I sought in the Cloisters, and in the cells of the Friars, where for the most part the histories of both Testaments are painted; and when I could not find in all the Old Testament none of the Patriarchs, none of the Priests, none of the Prophets, none of the Levites, nor yet Helias himself, whom the Carmelitans would have to be their Patron, with a cowl: taking the New Testament in hand, I found there Zacharie, Symeon, John Baptist, Joseph, Christe, the Apostles, the Disciples, the Scribes, the Pharisees, the High Priest Annas, Caiphes, Herode, Pilate, and many other, I saw in no place a Friar's cowl: and again diligently examining everything from the beginning, immediately in the fore part of the History the Devil was painted with a Cowl, to wit, he which went to tempt Christ in the Desert. I rejoiced exceedingly that I had found that in the pictures which until that time I could not see in writing, that is to say, that the Devil was the first author of a cowl: of whom afterwards, I suppose, that other Monks and Friars took up the fashion under divers colors; or, perhaps, have retained it as a thing left to them by inheritance."
Such passages as the last, which abound in the book, were not calculated to win for the writer the affection of the clergy. Through their influence, Agrippa was imprisoned for some time, and his pension from the Emperor of Austria was withdrawn.
"Seeing glasses" he classifies as follows: "The hollow, the embossed, the plain, the Columnarie, the Piromidal, the Turbinal, the bunched, the round, the cornered, the inversed, the eversed, the regular, the unregular, the massy, and the clear." He describes their properties, and says: "And I know how to make Glasses, in which, when the sun shineth, all things that are lightened of his beams may very plainly be seen a great space off, as three or four miles." Were these "glasses" on the principle of the telescope? The invention of that instrument is generally assigned to Galileo, about 1590; whereas Agrippa's book was published at Antwerp in 1530.
Astronomy he pronounces "altogether false, and fuller of trifling toys than the fables of the Poets"—declaring that the laws of the science, as then asserted, were only a mass of idle conjectures.
