46/82 It was "patronized" by Pope Urban VIII in such manner as to paralyze it, and it was afterward vexed by Pope Gregory XVI. Even in our own time sessions of scientific associations were discouraged and thwarted by as kindly a pontiff as Pius IX.( 276) (276) For Porta, see the English translation of his main summary, Natural Magick, London, 1658. The first chapters are especially interesting, as showing what the word "magic" had come to mean in the mind of a man in whom mediaeval and modern ideas were curiously mixed; see also Hoefer, Histoire de la Chimie, vol.ii, pp. 102-106; also Kopp; also Sprengel, Histoire de la Medecine, vol.iii, p. |