Gunpowder in a Latin text: the Book of Fires of Marcus Graecus
The Liber Ignium ad comburendos hostes (Book of Fires for Burning Enemies) is a Latin collection of 35 recipes ascribed to one Marcus Graecus. Fourteen are military: incendiary compositions, a fire arrow, a rocket and a 'Roman candle'. Here too, as number 14, is a way to purify saltpetre: the earth containing it is dissolved in boiling water, filtered and boiled down to crystals.
The collection grew in layers, and its gunpowder recipes are the latest, from the end of the 13th century. Marcus Graecus is most likely not a real person; Needham considers the book Arabic in origin, compiled and translated in Spain.
It is one of the earliest European texts on gunpowder. By Needham's dating the gunpowder layer of the Book of Fires is younger than Bacon's text of 1267, so the old suggestion that Bacon took his recipe from here finds no support in it.
Why this date
disputed. The Liber Ignium is a collection that accumulated over centuries; Needham assigns the gunpowder recipes to its last layer, around 1280, 'perhaps as late as +1300'. Marcus Graecus is probably a conventional name rather than a real author.
What it grew from
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The fire lance: gunpowder in a tube
influenced · Confidence: medium
The same second transmission brought knowledge of fire lances, bombs and rockets to the author of the Latin Book of Fires.
Dispute: Needham considers the Book of Fires Arabic in origin, so Chinese knowledge most likely reached it through Arab intermediaries rather than directly. No one has identified the specific source of the collection's gunpowder recipes.
Link sources
- Needham J., Ho Ping-Yü, Lu Gwei-Djen, Wang Ling. «Science and Civilisation in China», vol. 5, pt. 7: «Military Technology: The Gunpowder Epic», Cambridge University Press, 1986, p. 570 (1986), 570
tackle the problems of how the Chinese discoveries and inventions spread out over the whole world
- Needham J., Ho Ping-Yü, Lu Gwei-Djen, Wang Ling. «Science and Civilisation in China», vol. 5, pt. 7: «Military Technology: The Gunpowder Epic», Cambridge University Press, 1986, p. 570 (1986), 570
(b) how the knowledge of fire-lances, bombs and rockets got into the hands of Hasan al- Rammah and Marcus Graecus by +1280
- Needham J., Ho Ping-Yü, Lu Gwei-Djen, Wang Ling. «Science and Civilisation in China», vol. 5, pt. 7: «Military Technology: The Gunpowder Epic», Cambridge University Press, 1986, p. 570 (1986), 570
Node sources
- Needham J., Ho Ping-Yü, Lu Gwei-Djen, Wang Ling. «Science and Civilisation in China», vol. 5, pt. 7: «Military Technology: The Gunpowder Epic», Cambridge University Press, 1986, p. 39 (1986), 39
The gunpowder formulae also belong to this last stratum, perhaps as late as +1300