Pseudonymity

"Bacon warned that many magical texts had attained their notable ability to survive and cross borders by adopting false papers—the names of apparently famous and reliable authors:  'Whatever they say, that Solomon composed this or that, or other wise men, is to be denied.  For the authority of the church and of the wise does not accept books like this, but seducers, who fool the world.  For they compose new books, and multiply new inventions, as we know from experience.  And then, so that they may attract men even more strongly, they give their books celebrated titles, and impudently ascribe them to great authors.'"

     Roger Bacon, "Epistola de secretis operibus artis et naturae, et de nullitate magiae," in Opera quaedam hactenus inedita, ed. J. S. Brewer (London:  Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1859), 526, as translated at Anthony Grafton, Magus:  the art of magic from Faustus to Agrippa (Cambridge, MA:  The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2023), 26.  (Yet Bacon was himself more enamoured of astrology than, say, Nicholas of Cusa.)