Alchemy as "Practical Exegesis" in Early Modern England

Continental authors and editors often sought to ground alchemical writing within a long-established, coherent and pan-European tradition, appealing to the authority of adepts from different times and places. Greek, Latin and Islamic alchemists met both in person and between the covers of books, in actual, fictional or coincidental encounters: a trope utilised in Michael Maier's Symbola aureae mensae duodecim nationum (1617). This essay examines how works attributed to an English authority, George Ripley (d. c. 1490), were received in central Europe and incorporated into continental compendia. Placed alongside works by the philosophers of other nations, Ripley's writings helped affirm the unity and truth of alchemy in defiance of its critics. His continental editors were therefore concerned not only with the provenance of manuscripts and high-quality exemplars, but by a range of other factors, including the desire to suppress controversial material, intervene in contemporary polemics, and defend their art. In the resulting compilations, the vertical axis of alchemy's long, diachronic tradition may be compared to the horizontal plane of pan-European alchemy.

Alchemy Rudolf II Prague Manuscript circulation a b s t r a c t This paper investigates John Dee's relationship with two kinds of alchemist: the authorities whose works he read, and the contemporary practitioners with whom he exchanged texts and ideas. Both strands coincide in the reception of works attributed to the famous English alchemist, George Ripley (d. c. 1490). Dee's keen interest in Ripley appears from the number of transcriptions he made of 'Ripleian' writings, including the Bosome book, a manuscript discovered in 1574 and believed to have been written in Ripley's own hand. In 1583, Dee and his associate Edward Kelley left England for East Central Europe, taking with them a proportion of Dee's vast library, including alchemical books-the contents of which would soon pique the interest of continental practitioners. Kelley used Ripley's works, including the Bosome book, not only as sources of practical information, but as a means of furthering his own relationships with colleagues and patrons: transactions that in turn influenced Ripley's posthumous continental reception. The resulting circulation of texts allows us to trace, with unusual precision, the spread of English alchemical ideas in the Holy Roman Empire from the late sixteenth century.

Isis, 2011

This essay considers the implications of a shift in focus from ideas to practices in the history of alchemy. On the one hand, it is argued, this new attention to practice highlights the diversity of ways that early modern Europeans engaged alchemy, ranging from the literary to the entrepreneurial and artisanal, as well as the broad range of social and cultural spaces that alchemists inhabited. At the same time, however, recent work has demonstrated what most alchemists shared-namely, a penchant for reading, writing, making, and doing, all at the same time. Any history of early modern alchemy, therefore, must attend to all of these practices, as well as the interplay among them. In this sense, alchemy offers a model for thinking and writing about early modern science more generally, particularly in light of recent work that has explored the intersection of scholarly, artisanal, and entrepreneurial forms of knowledge in the early modem period.

Longevity and Immortality. Europe - Islam - Asia (Micrologus 26)., 2018

Medieval Europe learned about alchemy through the translation of Arabic treatises into Latin. What sparked the curiosity regarding this new knowledge? Was it perhaps the promise of the life-extending effect of the elixir that inspired its initial reception? Historical research has been unable to answer this obvious question so far. This paper merely takes a few cautious steps on the road towards filling the gaps about early alchemy in the Medieval West. It focuses on the problems of the earliest textual witnesses in Latin from the XIIth century ("Liber Morieni", "Septem tractatus Hermetis", "Tabula smaragdina") and adopts a systematic approach by undertaking a stringent comparison of these early alchemica with a large amount of Latin translations from Arabic of this time facilitated by the «Arabic-Latin-Corpus» of digitally-converted texts. This approach disproves two assumptions regularly featured in the research literature. On the one hand, the "Liber dabessi" – a combination of the "Tabula smaragdina" and an alchemical compilation – is not a translation by Plato of Tivoli and probably not a XIIth century translation at all. On the other hand, the "Septem tractatus Hermetis" are not a translation by Robert of Chester, but they show some remarkable accordance with specific words and phrases used in the "Turba philosophorum" as well as by John of Seville. The analysis of the "Liber Morieni" gains less clear results. They neither fully approve nor exclude the commonly attested attribution to Robert of Chester. The second part of the paper collects the statements in these early translations on the possibility of prolonging life. The third part focuses on the question of whether anything can be derived from the historical context of these translations regarding the motivation of the translators in turning towards alchemy. The concluding resumé points to possible further research avenues built on the basis of this paper.

Archaeology International, 2012

Ambix, 2018

By the time it was published in 1705, the "Speculum Sapientiae" claimed to have had a long history going back to 1672. However, the fact that exaggerated stories were commonplace in alchemical literature leads us to question its credibility. This paper explores the secret lives of this alchemical text prior to its print publication to clarify the roles of manuscripts in early-modern alchemy. Specifically, I argue that there were three aspects that could distinguish manuscript from print: provenance, materiality, and exclusivity. These can be seen at work in the fate of Johann Heinrich Vierordt, an itinerant alchemist and cavalry captain whose career is inextricably linked to the scribal dissemination of the "Speculum Sapientiae." In addition to manuscript copies of that text at libraries across Europe, a significant cache of correspondence preserved in Gotha documents Vierordt’s dealings with Duke Friedrich I of Saxe-Gotha. The verisimilitudinous provenance of Vierordt’s alchemical secrets and tincture played a crucial role in allowing him to gain Friedrich’s trust. Yet it was only after Vierordt presented him with a precious parchment manuscript of the "Speculum Sapientiae" that he truly succeeded in gaining the duke’s patronage. Subsequently, reports of multiple conflicting copies surfacing in Amsterdam sealed Vierordt’s fall from favour.

Ambix, 2020

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.

Ambix, 2010