Pseudo-Lullus

Suffice it to say, that in two bibliographical lists of his writings composed, one in 1311, the other in 1314, which are published by Haureau, no such work is included, that no manuscript copy of any such work attributed to Lullus has been found of date anterior to the fifteenth century, and that many of his most popular and frequently printed works profess to have been written in 1330 or 1332. In all probability, however, even these dates are falsified and the works themselves of later origin. Haureau considers all of these alchemical pseudo-Lullus works as not earlier than the fifteenth century. 

It is also worthy of note that when in 1386 to 1394 certain works of the real Lullus were suspected and condemned upon the basis of heterodox theological expressions, there is no reference to any of these alchemical works, which would themselves at that time have given adequate cause for condemnation. This alone excites a fair presumption that no alchemical works attributed to him were then known. If we therefore ascribe to a pseudo-Lullus these alchemical writings, it is with the probability that more than one writer masqueraded under that name, and none of... 

As to the general character of the best known of these works of the pseudo-Lullus, it is difficult for us to understand the high repute in which they were held. Considering the period in which they were actually written, they contain remarkably few facts which were not known to writers previously discussed. 

He cites authorities profusely, and this is of importance from the fact that Petrus Bonus seems to have been a writer whose personality and date are generally accepted as genuine. The work bears all the character of an earnest and honest treatise. Authors whom he cites, he cites very frequently. Thus the works of (pseudo-) Geber,written probably about 1300, are very often quoted, and apparently this is the latest authority he knows. There is no citation in his lengthy work, which is confined strictly to alchemy, of any treatise on this subject by Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Thomas Aquinas, Arnaldus of Villanova nor Raymond Lullus. It is impossible that he should have cited Lullus in 1330, because, as we have seen, this pseudo-Lullus literature is certainly none of it earlier, and probably all of it considerably later. 

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