Friar Bacon, who lived three centuries after Græcus, was in possession of the recipe. It was concealed, however, from the people, veiled in mystery. In his treatise _De Secretis Operibus Artis et Naturæ, &c._ the secret of the composition is thus expressed: "sed tamen salispetræ, LURU MOPE CAN URBE et sulphuris; et sic facies tonitrum et corruscationem, si scias artificium." _Luru mope can urbe_, is the anagram for _carbonum pulvere_. Bacon supposes, that it was with a similar composition that Gideon defeated the Midianites, with only three hundred men. Besides the use of gunpowder in the 9th century, in the war between the Tunisians and the Moors, in which the former are said to have employed "certain tubes or barrels, wherewith they threw thunderbolts of fire," the Venetians employed it against the Genoese, and it was reprobated as a manifest contravention of fair warfare. Peter Mexia, in his "_Various Readings_," relates, that the Moors, being besieged, in 1349, by Alphonso the eleventh, king of Castille, discharged a kind of iron mortars upon them, which made a noise like thunder. This, with the sea-combat between the Tunisians and the Moors, stated on the authority of don Pedro, bishop of Leon, places the invention much earlier than by some writers. Polydore Virgil ascribes the invention of gunpowder to a chemist, who, having put some of his composition in a mortar, and covered it with a stone, was blown up, in consequence of its accidentally taking fire. The person here alluded to, according to Thevet, was a monk of Friburg, named Constantine Anelzen. Others, as Belleforet, with more probability, hold it to be Bartholodus Schwartz, or the black, who discovered it, as some say, about the year 1320. Du Cange, however, remarks, that there is no mention made of gunpowder in the registers of the chamber of accounts in France, as early as the year 1338. Roger Bacon knew of gunpowder, near one hundred years before Schwartz was born. (See the invention of cannon, in _military fire-works_, fourth part.) It is certain, that Albert de Bollstædt indicated the constituent parts of gunpowder, when he says, in his _Mirabilis Mundi_, "Ignis volans, accipe libram unam, sulphuris, libras duas, carbonas salicis, libras sex, salis petrosi, quæ tria subtilissime terantur in lapide marmorea; postea aliquid posterius ad libitum in tunica de papyro volante, vel tonitrum faciente ponatur. "Tunica ad volandum debet esse longa, gracilis, pulvere illo optime plena, ad faciendum vero tonitrum brevis, grossa et semiplena." Gunpowder was of a much weaker composition than that now in use, or that described by Marcus Græcus. Tartalgia, (_Ques. and Inv._ lib. 3, ques. 5), observes, that, of twenty-three different compositions, used at different times, the first, which was the oldest, contained equal parts of the three ingredients. When guns of modern construction came into use, gunpowder of the present strength was introduced.