magical properties of plants, gems, and numbers to an account of a unified science which is accessible only to a scholar with the proper moral and intellectual background. Copland's English translation is divided into sections on the work's introduction, the Manner of Kings, Health, the Four Seasons of the Year, Natural Heat, Food, Justice, Physiognomy, and Comportment. The enlarged 13th-century edition includes alchemical references and an early version of the Emerald Tablet. Legacy It was one of the most widely read texts of the High Middle Ages or even the most-read. Amid the 12th-century Renaissance's Recovery of Aristotle, medieval readers took the ascription to Aristotle at face value and treated this work among Aristotle's genuine works. It is particularly connected with the 13th-century English scholar Roger Bacon, who cited it more often than his contemporaries and even produced an edited manuscript with his own introduction and notes, an unusual honor. This led mid-20th century scholars like Steele to claim that Bacon's contact with the Secretum Secretorum was the key event pushing him towards experimental science; more recent scholarship is less sweeping in its claims but still accords it an important place in research of his later works. The Latin Secretum Secretorum was eventually translated into Czech, Russian, Croatian, Dutch, German, Icelandic, English, Aragonese, Catalan, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and Welsh. The 1528 English translation by Robert Copland was based on Philip of Tripoli's Latin edition. Scholarly attention to the Secretum Secretorum waned around 1550 but lay interest has continued to this day among students of the occult. Scholars today see it as a window onto medieval intellectual life: it was used in a variety of scholarly contexts and had some part to play in the scholarly controversies of the day. The Book of Secrets There is another book called The Book of Secrets (; ) by Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi, which appeared in Europe around the same time and has been often confused with the Secretum Secretorum. It deals more specifically with alchemy, providing practical recipes, classification of minerals, and descriptions of laboratory equipment and procedures. The Book on Physiognomy There is a third book called The Book on Physiognomy () which was also attributed to Aristotle and claimed to have been translated into Arabic by Hunayn ibn Ishaq in the 9th century. Notes References This article incorporates text derived from NLM Microfilm Reel: FILM 48-123 no. 4; online version.