Union Académique Internationale Catalogue of Latin and Vernacular Alchemical Manuscripts in Great Britain and Ireland dating from before the XVI Century

Abstract

THE publication of a second part of Mrs. Singer's catalogue of alchemical manu scripts enables us to form some idea of its useful ness as a guide to the Corpus Scriftorum Alchemistarum, a usefulness which will be materially enhanced by a promised third part containing indexes of names, places, and first lines. It would be hard to exaggerate the importance of this work to the historian of scientific thought in western Europe; we are here put in possession of a key to the materials from which the story of the develop ment of alchemical theory can be written. Up to now, no historian of chemistry except Kopp, and in a lesser degree Berthelot, has gone to the manu script sources for his information; all of them, when they have not copied one from another, have aimlessly turned a few pages of the printed texts and extracted some sentences from them to small profit. The literature of alchemy was collected in the seventeenth century by Zetzner in six closely printed volumes and later by Manget in two folios? mainly from printed sources. The earliest treatises have in the main escaped printing down to our own days, while those of the early texts reproduced are incredibly corrupt by the accretion of notes and interlineations and by accidental omissions. But no thorough revision of the classics of Latin alchemy will be possible until the scholars of France and Italy have followed the example here set. In the meantime, any student of philosophy, equipped with some knowledge of the medieval Aristotle, will find here a rich field open to him. The catalogue is arranged in the order of the historic development of alchemical thought; first of treatises of Byzantine or Hellenic origin such as the "Turba Philosophorum", the "Emerald Table", and other treatises ascribed to Greek authors, real or apocryphal; then to Arabic authors, to Latin authors in prose, to anonymous treatises, to the large body of alchemical verse, to chemical crafts, and to receipts of all descriptions. The named treatises were included in the first part; the remainder are here given and their study throws an interesting light on the processes of chemical technology in the Middle Ages. One does not see how this arrangement can be improved upon, but it must not be allowed to mask the fact that alchemical theory in western Europe was entirely Arabist in its origin and growth. Chemical technology is purely Byzantine and Hellenic, but it was altogether divorced from theory, and the "Turba"is never quoted by any writer in the first century and a half of alchemical literature. But though Greek thought had no direct action on Latin writers, it was the ultimate source of Arabic alchemy as regards the theory of metals, the elixir of life being apparently of Chinese origin. No doubt a few Byzantine adepts found their way into the west?Roger Bacon mentions a Greek he had known, and there is the still earlier case of the Jew of Bremen. The story of translation from the Arabic begins with Robert of Chester in 1144, Plato of Tivoli and Hugo Sanctallensis, and goes on to Gerard of Cremona, who before his death in 1187 trans lated three classics of alchemy?two of them only printed in our own time, by Berthelot and the writer. A number of treatises were translated before the middle of the thirteenth century, as shown by the quotations from them in the "Speculum Naturale"of Vincent of Beauvais (1245), the alchemical writings of Roger Bacon ending 1267, and the writings of Albertus Magnus on minerals and the "Speculum Astronomicum". St. Thomas also accepts the scientific possibility of alchemy. The series of philosophic writers on alchemy closes with Arnold of Villanova at the end of the thirteenth century. Two expository works of some value as accounts of current theory were written in the first half of the fourteenth century?the "Margarita Novella"of Petrus Bonus and the "Quintessence"of Johannes de Rupescissa?but no new ideas are to be found in them; the developments of the Aristotelian theory of matter had been exhausted and the pursuit of the transmutation of metals had been abandoned, not as impossible but as impracticable. The fifteenth century brings in a spate of tracts, all with high-sounding claims, reiterating the old formula and clothed in the old mystification of language. It is impossible to rate too highly the unwearying industry of Mrs. Singer and her helpers; they have searched and almost re-catalogued not only the great collections of Sloane and Harley in the British Museum, of Digby and Ashmole at Oxford, but also every corner of every library, great or small, in Great Britain, and have revealed a scarcely suspected wealth of manuscripts. When their provenance is examined and tabulated some in teresting results may appear. It would seem that the earliest centre of alchemical activity was in northern Italy, that from there it spread to the south of France, thence to Paris, becoming common in England in the fourteenth century, as witness the "Canon's Yeoman's Tale"of Chaucer. Its progress is marked by the Act of 1403 making it illegal?alchemy had become a shield for coiners of false money. The Act, however, was powerless to stay the flood of students and treatises?some of them voluminous like those ascribed to Ramon Lull, which first appear in 1443 (translated from a non-existent Catalan original). There are, too, a number of official licences to practise alchemy on record, and more remarkable still, three Royal Commissions to inquire into its possibilities as a means of paying the King's debts?the last a very strong one consisting of four bishops and a number of high officials. It would be interesting if Mrs. Singer, who has ferreted out of the Record Office some alchemical tracts, could come upon the reports of these Commissions. Licences and treatises come to an end in England at the last quarter of the fifteenth century; 1476 for the licences, 1471 and 1477 for the treatises of Ripley and Norton. Commerce was offering a more certain road to wealth than alchemy. In the thousands of extracts of more or less barbarous Latin in badly written, badly spelled and contracted manuscripts here printed, it is not to be expected that there should be no doubtful readings; but speaking with no inconsiderable experience of medieval hands, I can say that the work as a whole would do credit to an expert palaeographer and bibliographer. It is the sort of work that only an enthusiast would undertake, and it betrays the hand of an amateur only in the desire for completeness which has led Mrs. Singer to give us lists of the manuscripts of the "Canterbury Tales"and such-like works which have been made the subject of intensive study elsewhere. Mrs. Singer and her assistants have earned the hearty thanks of all who are interested in the history of scientific thought.

Union Académique Internationale. Catalogue of Latin and Vernacular Alchemical Manuscripts in Great Britain and Ireland dating from before the XVI. Century.

Dorothea Waley

Singer

, assisted by Annie Anderson and Robina Addis. Vol. 2. Pp. viii + 329–755. (Brussels: Maurice Lamertin, 1930.) 10 Belgas.

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