In France it was the
custom to pronounce the name in general as Ruggieri. Ruggiero the
elder was so highly valued by the Medici that the two dukes, Cosmo and
Lorenzo, stood godfathers to his two sons. He cast, in concert with
the famous mathematician, Basilio, the horoscope of Catherine's
nativity, in his official capacity as mathematicion, astrologer, and
physician to the house of Medici; three offices which are often
confounded.
At the period of which we write the occult sciences were studied with
an ardor that may surprise the incredulous minds of our own age, which
is supremely analytical. Perhaps such minds may find in this
historical sketch the dawn, or rather the germ, of the positive
sciences which have flowered in the nineteenth century, though without
the poetic grandeur given to them by the audacious Seekers of the
sixteenth, who, instead of using them solely for mechanical
industries, magnified Art and fertilized Thought by their means. The
protection universally given to occult science by the sovereigns of
those days was justified by the noble creations of many inventors,
who, starting in quest of the Great Work (the so-called philosophers'
stone), attained to astonishing results.
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