We have a direct interest in observing that Spain was the country where these developments of the later Arabian chemistry arose, contended and flourished. Spain, therefore, during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, became, by the attraction she offered to European scholars, the country where these theories first reached the Latin races, and began to find an entrance among them. M. Berthelot indeed, by a happy citation, has enabled us to fix, almost with certainty, the very moment of this important event. Robert Castrensis, the author alluded to, remarks: ‘Your Latin world has not as yet learned the doctrine of Alchemy.’ These words are taken from the preface to this author’s version of the _Liber de Compositione Alchimiae_, and a colophon informs us that the translation was completed on the 11th of February 1182. We may add that the same year, corrected, however, in one copy to 1183, was the date of another of these versions of the Arabian chemistry: that of the treatise called _Interrogationes Regis Kalid, et responsiones Morieni_.[116] Here then we stand on the threshold of a new age, and find ourselves in presence of an intellectual movement which was certainly of the greatest importance, since in it we may trace the origin of our modern chemistry. The knowledge of what had already been gained by Greek and Arabian alchemists was the first step to independent research among the Latins. The closing years of the twelfth century saw that knowledge at last beginning to unfold itself in a form intelligible to the Western schools.