Textual Alchemy: The Transformation of Pseudo-Albertus Magnus's Semita Recta into the Mirror of Lights

Abstract

This article explores the strategies of and the reasons behind the reworking of pseudo-Albertus Magnus's Semita recta into the Mirror of Lights. I argue that the redactor sought to provide a more comprehensive defence of the legitimacy of alchemy than found in the Semita recta. In the process of doing so, he reshaped the original text so as to present three units that addressed different parts of the alchemical opus: first, theory and justification of alchemy; second, basic information on substances and procedures; and, third, practice. The redactor employed sophisticated textual tools identical to those seen in scholastic texts. These strategies, I argue, constitute part of the redactor's attempt to bring authority and credibility to his project and to alchemy in general. Certainly, much more attention needs to be paid to these experiments of textual alchemy in order to understand the practice of alchemy in the late medieval period.     

Stoicism and Alchemy in Late Antiquity: Zosimus and the Concept of Pneuma

At the beginning of the twentieth century, historians associated the alchemy of the third-century alchemist Zosimus of Panopolis with Platonism and Aristotelianism, explicating his theory of alchemical transmutation under the intellectual umbrella of these philosophical traditions. More recently, scholars of alchemy such as Christina Viano and William Newman have suggested a connection between Zosimean alchemy and Stoicism. Through a close reading of texts in Zosimus’s corpus, this paper posits a Stoic interpretation of several aspects of Zosimean alchemy, focusing on the concepts of pneuma and tension. For Zosimus, I argue, pneuma played a vital role in colouring metals, while tension conferred stability and cohesion upon metallic compounds. This interpretation suggests that Zosimus applied Stoic concepts to describe the alchemical process of tincturing metals.     

Alchemy and Mining: Metallogenesis and Prospecting in Early Mining Books

Abstract

Historians have assumed that alchemy had a close association with mining, but exactly how and why miners were interested in alchemy remains unclear. This paper argues that alchemical theory began to be synthesised with classical and Christian theories of the earth in mining books after 1500, and served an important practical function. The theory of metals that mining officials addressed spoke of mineral vapours (Witterungen) that left visible markings on the earth's surface. The prospector searched for mineral ore in part by studying these indications. Mineral vapours also explained the functioning of the dowsing rod, which prospectors applied to the discovery of ore. Historians of early chemistry and mining have claimed that mining had a modernising influence by stripping alchemy of its theoretical component, but this paper shows something quite to the contrary: mining officials may have been sceptical of the possibility of artificial transmutation, but they were interested in a theory of the earth that could translate into prospecting knowledge.     

Between Aquinas and Eymerich: The Roman Inquisition’s Use of Dominican Thought in the Censorship of Alchemy

In the latter half of the sixteenth century the Roman Inquisition developed criteria to prosecute a series of operative arts, including various forms of divination and magic. Its officials had little interest in alchemy. During that period the Roman Inquisition tried few people for practising alchemy, and it was rarely discussed in official documents. Justifications for prosecuting alchemists did exist, however. In his influential handbook, Directorium inquisitorum, the fourteenth-century inquisitor Nicholas Eymerich had developed a clear rationale for the investigation and prosecution of alchemists as heretics. His position was endorsed in the 1570s by Francisco Peña in his commentary on Eymerich’s handbook. In this article I explore the reasons why alchemy held this ambiguous status. I argue that members of the Dominican Order developed two traditions of thinking about alchemy from Aquinas’s thought. The first, and closest to Aquinas’s own belief, held that alchemy was a natural art that posed no danger to the Christian faith. The second, developed by Eymerich from a selective reading of Aquinas’s writings, indicated specific circumstances in which alchemists could be investigated. The Roman Inquisition’s response to alchemy vacillated between the positions advocated by Aquinas and Eymerich.     

Books,Gold, and Elixir: Alchemy and Religious Orders in Early Modern Naples

In the early modern period Naples was a European centre of learning where a number of scholars engaged with alchemy. Variously perceived as a legitimate scientific practice or as a mendacious trick for gullible minds, alchemy engaged Neapolitan scholars in an ongoing dispute that involved members of the clergy. In this article I consider convents as research centres mainly engaged with medical alchemy. Specifically, I reconstruct the activity of the Dominican friar Tommaso d’Eremita. Upon his arrival at the Neapolitan convent of Santa Caterina a Formello in 1609, d’Eremita set up a laboratory where he spent years working on alchemical procedures in order to produce an elixir of life for the benefit of all. Beyond this charitable mission, I argue that members of religious orders in Naples engaged with alchemy for different purposes. In so doing, I discuss the cases of some members of religious orders in Naples who practised chrysopoeia with the aim of producing artificial noble metals.     

Alchemy in Early Modern England

Abstract

The seventeenth-century technologist and colonist William White (ca. 1600–73) has been cited as an alchemical tutor to Gabriel Plattes and George Starkey, and hailed as an early modern "wizard of industrial efficiency." This study — the first that focuses on White individually — pays particular attention to White's extraordinary reputation for furnace design and manufacture. By examining the sources of knowledge and social connections that enabled White to acquire and disseminate his knowledge of metallurgy, the authors develop a genealogy of fornacic design that extends from the continent to the Atlantic world and back again, connecting White to better known figures such as Cornelis Drebbel and Robert Boyle. By foregrounding, through White, the technology of early modern alchemy, the authors also hope to emphasise the importance of practical craft in the development of the chemical arts.     

Alchemy,Prophecy, and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Iberia: Anselmo Castelo Branco's Critique of Benito Feijoo

The Benedictine monk Benito Jerónimo Feijoo (1676–1764) is now considered one of the major figures of the Spanish and Iberian Enlightenment. However his work, both in Spain and in Portugal, was far from being universally acclaimed. His critical approach to the subject of alchemy in his essay “Piedra Filosofal,” published in the third volume of his magisterial Teatro Crítico Universal (1726–1739), sparked an unexpected response from the Portuguese alchemist Anselmo Castelo Branco, who sought to refute Feijoo's claims in his own work, the Ennoea. This paper presents an outline of this exchange and its position within Iberian Enlightenment circles. It further argues that Castelo Branco's defence of alchemy was informed by his political and prophetic views, in particular his adherence to the Portuguese messianic doctrine of Sebastianism.     

Toleration of Alchemists as a Political Question: Transmutation,Disputation, and Early Modern Scholarship on Alchemy

Abstract

In July 1702, Johann Franz Buddeus chaired a disputation with the title, "A Political Question: Whether Alchemists Should Be Tolerated in the Republic," in the wake of the reported transmutational success of Johann Friedrich Böttger just a few months earlier. This paper begins with this context, and then examines Buddeus's thesis, analyses its elemental notions, elaborates the major themes that underlay his thesis, and reviews the contemporary responses to this thesis. It also investigates a vast body of literature that constituted Buddeus's sources, and surveys five kinds of publications that characterised the early modern scholarship on alchemy.     

Cross and Crucible: Alchemy in the Theology of Paracelsus

Paracelsus was not only a reformer of medicine with a preference for medical alchemy, but also emerged as a radical church reformer. However, he only rarely used the imagery of alchemy as a parable for theological salvation. Fire as the driving force for every alchemical process was also suitable as an image for the purification of souls. A central idea of alchemy, to transfer a substance from its still impure original state into the purified final state, was very much in line with Paracelsus’s doctrine of the Last Supper, according to which the mortal human who had descended from Adam is to be brought to a new birth through baptism with the Holy Spirit. As an alchemist, Paracelsus was keenly interested in the transfiguration of Christ, which he first explained alchemically, but later magically, probably according to the model of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.     

Fuit Ille non Empiricus Mercenarius: Apprehensions to Alchemy in Colonial New England

While recent historical studies have uncovered the intercontinental reputations of New England alchemists, much still remains to be known about actual attitudes concerning alchemy in the early colonies. Focusing on a corpus of roughly a dozen untranslated, and all but entirely unexamined Latin orations (ca. 200 pages) composed by Harvard College’s presidents and students in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, I argue that these new sources reveal the ambivalent, occasionally antagonistic attitude that educated New England men held towards the art of alchemy. Appreciating what they regarded as, in some cases, selfless, Christian efforts to cure diseases, these Harvard elite speakers still worried that alongside pious investigators had cropped up some self-serving charlatans, those who cared not for the communal promises of the art, but only the base financial reward.     

Establishing the Canon: George Ripley and his Alchemical Sources

Abstract

George Ripley, Canon of Bridlington (ca. 1415 to ca. 1490) was one of England's most famous alchemists, whose alchemical opera attracted study and commentary throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and were printed and translated both in England and abroad. Yet Ripley's frequently baffling texts have proved resistant to scholarly interpretation. This paper attempts to unravel some of Ripley's alchemical theories and practice, firstly by identifying his major sources, and secondly by gauging his response to these texts. For instance, although Ripley's interest in the corpus of alchemical texts pseudonymously attributed to Ramon Lull is well documented, it transpires that his best known work, the Compound of Alchemy, or Twelve Gates, is actually based not on a Lullian work, but on a Latin treatise that Ripley attributed to the little-known alchemist, Guido de Montanor. Further clues to Ripley's alchemical thought can be obtained by considering his handling of a potential conflict between his two authorities, Lull and Guido. The resulting insights into Ripley's alchemy provide an instrument for assessing which of Ripley's pseudoepigraphic works can be truly called "canonical".     

Aging mechanisms of oil-in-water emulsions based on a bioemulsifier produced by Yarrowia lipolytica

The aging mechanisms of oil-in-water emulsions prepared with Yansan, a bioemulsifier produced by a Brazilian wild strain of Yarrowia lipolytica, IMUFRJ 50682, in glucose-based fermentation medium, were studied and compared with those prepared with Gum Arabic. Oil-in-water emulsions obtained by combining three different organic phases, perfluoro-n-hexane, n-hexadecane and toluene, with two aqueous buffers of different pH, and two bioemulsifiers, were studied through the evolution of the mean droplet size. The emulsions were prepared by sonication and their droplet size distribution was followed for 60 days at 301 K using image analysis. The results indicate that the aging mechanisms of the studied emulsions depend mainly on the bioemulsifier and on the pH of the medium. It is shown that the emulsions containing Gum Arabic age by coalescence while Yansan-based emulsions change their aging mechanisms from coalescence at pH 3 to molecular diffusion at pH 7.     

Release properties of chemical and enzymatic crosslinked gelatin-gum Arabic microparticles containing a fluorescent probe plus vetiver essential oil

Oil-containing gelatin-gum Arabic microparticles were prepared by complex coacervation followed by crosslinking with glutaraldehyde or transglutaminase. A fluorescent mixture, khusimyl dansylate (KD) as the fluorescent compound mixed to the vetiver essential oil, was used as oil model. The effect of the type of crosslinking of the coacervated gelatin-gum Arabic membrane, the physical state of microparticles, wet or freeze-dried and the type of release media, aqueous with surfactants, Sodium Dodecyl Sulphate (sds) or Tween 80 (tw) and anhydrous ethanol as organic media on the release rate of the KD from the microparticles, was experimentally investigated.It was shown that the oil was dispersed uniformly throughout the microparticles and the chemical crosslinked microparticles were more resistant to swelling, presenting smaller sizes after hydration. Also the crosslinking effect, transglutaminase or glutaraldehyde, could be confirmed by the integrity of the crosslinked gelatin-gum Arabic microparticles after incubation in the aqueous sds media, compared to complete dissolution of the uncrosslinked microparticles in this media.The cumulative fluorescent KD release from the gelatin-gum Arabic microparticles decreased in the following order of dissolution media: anhydrous ethanol > tw > sds and the wet microparticles have shown a faster KD release than freeze-dried ones. A mathematical model was used to estimate the diffusion coefficient (D). The chemically crosslinked gelatin-gum Arabic microparticles ensured a pronounced retard effect in the KD diffusion, presenting a D varying from 0.02 to 0.6 × 10⁻¹¹ cm²/s, mainly in an aqueous media, against D varying from 1.05 to 13.9 × 10⁻¹¹ cm²/s from the enzymatic crosslinked microparticles.     

Alchemical Patronage and the Making of an Adept: Letters of Michael Sendivogius to Emperor Rudolf II and His Chamberlain Hans Popp

Based on four extant letters the famous Polish alchemist Michael Sendivogius wrote to Emperor Rudolf II and his first chamberlain Hans Popp between 1597 and 1602, this paper adds to a growing body of revisionist scholarship on alchemy in Rudolfine Prague. Unlike most of his many rivals – including luminaries such as John Dee and Michael Maier – who hoped for the Emperor's patronage in vain, Sendivogius officially became a courtier at the imperial court in 1594. As such he was in the privileged position of having access to the Emperor and his close advisors. The surviving correspondence shows how the Pole successfully balanced his alchemical promises against Rudolf's expectations for a number of years. The fact that even Sendivogius found it difficult to translate imperial patronage into ready money suggests that Emperor Rudolf II was considerably more circumspect and less gullible than the widespread cliché suggests. Fully contextualised by all available sources on Sendivogius' early career, the four letters emerge as important documents regarding the Polish adept and alchemical patronage in Rudolfine Prague. They also shed new light on the circumstances which led to the writing and publication of Sendivogius' famous treatise De lapide philosophorum (Novum lumen chymicum).     

The Survival of the Frater Medicus? English Friars and Alchemy,ca. 1370–ca. 1425

This essay reinserts friars into the story of alchemy and medicine in late medieval England. Much of the evidence for the activity of friars, mostly Franciscans, is to be found in a Latin text compiled in 1416–1425, the Tabula medicine. Here friars appear as sources for remedies, and a significant number of these remedies are alchemical. The quintessence found in the writings of John of Rupescissa is used for a variety of medical complaints. Some of the alchemical remedies are selected for closer examination here. These include distillations of human blood which are recommended by brother Robert Winstanton for use in surgery, either to knit flesh together or to cut through it. Natural balsam was in very short supply in Western Europe, though it served as a panacea for multiple ailments. The friars offer a number of different recipes to make artificial balsam, ranging from comparatively simple distillations through to the use of multiple fractional distillations to produce the finest of all balsams. The friars found that distilled waters made with herbs were more effective than herbal simples without distillation in the treatment of many different complaints.