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 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.     

Translating Ancient Alchemy: Fragments of Graeco-Egyptian Alchemy in Arabic Compendia

Translation played a vital role in the development and transfer of alchemy in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Since its origins in Graeco-Roman Egypt, alchemy was encapsulated in Greek texts which allegedly relied on Persian or Egyptian sources. Later, a variety of Greek and Byzantine writings were translated into Syriac and Arabic, and these translations were in turn fragmented and disseminated in later Arabic compendia. This paper will first review the main phases of this historical process of transmission of alchemy from one language and culture to another. Second, this process will be examined using two significant case studies: a close analysis of various quotations from Graeco-Egyptian authors (Pseudo-Democritus, Zosimus of Panopolis, and Synesius) as presented in two Arabic dialogues on alchemy, The Tome of Images and The Dialogue between āras and the King Caesar. These sources demonstrate some of the concrete textual realities that underlie general patterns of translation and reception.     

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.     

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".     

An Alchemist in Greenland: Hans Egede (1686–1758) and Alchemical Practice in the Colony of Hope

The article explores the practical and social circumstances of the alchemical experiments performed by the Norwegian priest and missionary Hans Egede (1686–1758) in the Colony of Hope in Greenland. Sources not previously used in connection with Egede’s alchemy are used to investigate in which ways his situation in the colony affected alchemical practice. A lack of fuel is found to have been a main obstacle which may have limited the number of experiments that Egede was able to perform in Greenland. At the same time, the area had natural resources that were useful to the alchemist, and Egede’s position as head of the colony gave access to resources that facilitated alchemical practice.     

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).     

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.     

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.     

Acceleration of catalyst discovery with easy,fast, and reproducible computational alchemy

The expense of quantum chemistry calculations significantly hinders the search for novel catalysts. Here, we provide a tutorial for using an easy and highly cost‐efficient calculation scheme, called alchemical perturbation density functional theory (APDFT), for rapid predictions of binding energies of reaction intermediates and reaction barrier heights based on the Kohn‐Sham density functional theory (DFT) reference data. We outline standard procedures used in computational catalysis applications, explain how computational alchemy calculations can be carried out for those applications, and then present benchmarking studies of binding energy and barrier height predictions. Using a single OH binding energy on the Pt(111) surface as a reference case, we use computational alchemy to predict binding energies of 32 variations of this system with a mean unsigned error of less than 0.05 eV relative to single‐point DFT calculations. Using a single nudged elastic band calculation for CH₄ dehydrogenation on Pt(111) as a reference case, we generate 32 new pathways with barrier heights having mean unsigned errors of less than 0.3 eV relative to single‐point DFT calculations. Notably, this easy APDFT scheme brings no appreciable computational cost once reference calculations are performed, and this shows that simple applications of computational alchemy can significantly impact DFT‐driven explorations for catalysts. To accelerate computational catalysis discovery and ensure computational reproducibility, we also include Python modules that allow users to perform their own computational alchemy calculations.     

Transmutation Theory in the Greek Alchemical Corpus

This paper studies transmutation theory as found in the texts attributed to Zosimus of Panopolis, “the philosopher Synesius,” and “the philosopher Olympiodorus of Alexandria.” It shows that transmutation theory (i.e. a theory explaining the complete transformation of substances) is mostly absent from the work attributed to these three authors. The text attributed to Synesius describes a gilding process, which is similar to those described by Pliny and Vitruvius. The commentary attributed to Olympiodorus is the only text studied here that describes something similar to a transmutation theory. It is unclear, however, if this was a theory of transmutation or if the writer meant something more like the literal meaning of the word “ekstrophē,” a term used to describe the transformation of metals, as the “turning inside-out” of what is hidden in a substance. A similar conception of ekstrophē can be found in the works of Zosimus, who discussed transmutation to make an analogy with self-purification processes, which, from the perspective of his own anthropogony, consisted in the “turning inside-out” of the “inner human” (esō anthrōpos).