THE CHRONICLE OF CLEMENDY
found out by reading a certain book in the monastic Library, that the highest and most magistral secrets of the occult philosophy are not to be discovered in the Realm of England, nor in any other Christian land, but must be sought amongst the followers of the Accursed Prophet Mahommed (whom God confound), broke his monastic vows and fled the cloister, having stolen a jewell from the shrine of St. Cuthbert, worth better than a hundred pounds. By means of which the accused person aforesaid journeyed to the Levant and lived for many years amongst the Infidels, having renounced his Saviour, and becoming in all respects an outcast from our Holy Faith, so that he might attain to the knowledge of Alchemy and Diabolical Magick, and have intercourse with demons and the fiends of hell. And being as he professes a man of a natural and acute wit, he came in course of years to know greater secrets than the Magicians, his tutors; and has confessed to deeds which were not fit to set down on any parchment, being that they would set the parchment crackling and the ink hissing and are altogether abominable and accursed, and moreover not necessary to the process now directed against this man under the Ecclesiastical Law by and with the authority of Roger Lord Bishop of the See of Llandaff. But the accused person, Benedictus de Rotherham aforesaid has also made full confession as regarding the crime for which he has now been arraigned; namely that he did by magic arts seduce the person of one Loyse de la Haye, who has afterwards died without making any
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