ABSTRACT
My first three chapters will deal chiefly with the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and with western European countries (England, Ireland, Scandinavia, Germanic states, the Netherlands, France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal). Naturally enough, however, classical precedents are important for much of this period. Those medieval cases founded on alchemical practices are particularly relevant to the seventeenth-century habits of Paracelsians which we will meet in chapters two and seven, and may also give us a better understanding of the alleged treatment of Pope Innocent VIII, in 1492.
