Peter of Apono, so called from a village of that name in the vicinity
of Padua, where he was born in the year 1250, was an eminent
philosopher, mathematician and astrologer, but especially excelled in
physic. Finding that science at a low ebb in his native country, he
resorted to Paris, where it especially flourished; and after a time
returning home, exercised his art with extraordinary success, and by
this means accumulated great wealth.
But all his fame and attainments were poisoned to him by the accusation
of magic. Among other things he was said to possess seven spirits,
each of them inclosed in a crystal vessel, from whom he received every
information he desired in the seven liberal arts. He was further
reported to have had the extraordinary faculty of causing the money he
expended in his disbursements, immediately to come back into his own
purse. He was besides of a hasty and revengeful temper. In consequence
of this it happened to him, that, having a neighbour, who had an
admirable spring of water in his garden, and who was accustomed to
suffer the physician to send for a daily supply, but who for some
displeasure or inconvenience withdrew his permission, Peter d'Apono,
by the aid of the devil, removed the spring from the garden in which
it had flowed, and turned it to waste in the public street. For some
of these accusations he was called to account by the tribunal of the
inquisition. While he was upon his trial however, the unfortunate man
died. But so unfavourable was the judgment of the inquisitors
respecting him, that they decreed that his bones should be dug up, and
publicly burned. Some of his friends got intimation of this, and saved
him from the impending disgrace by removing his remains. Disappointed
in this, the inquisitors proceeded to burn him in effigy.