Tara Nummedal . Alchemy and Authority in the Holy Roman Empire . Chicago : University of Chicago Press . 2007 . Pp. xvii, 260. $37.50.

Abstract

Alchemy has become an important area of investigation for historians of medieval and early modern science, who have recognized its centrality to topics as diverse as matter theory, the development of laboratories, and attitudes toward art and nature. The alchemical thought of well-known figures such as Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton has been researched extensively. This fine study builds on that work, but also takes it in a new direction. Tara Nummedal investigates mostly obscure figures who called themselves alchemists in the Holy Roman Empire. She asks how they defined themselves, what exactly their practices were, how they negotiated with their patrons, what their patrons believed they were getting from them, how they succeeded, and how they failed. The result is a carefully researched social history of alchemists and their patrons that illuminates the cultural meanings and practices of alchemy in latesixteenth and early seventeenth-century Europe. These “entrepreneurial alchemists” practiced not only for their own edification, but also for social and economic benefits. A significant presence in early modern courts and cities, they heretofore have been little studied. Nummedal argues that these practitioners, most of whom were not Latin-educated scholars, transformed traditional alchemy, creating practical technologies that addressed the economic needs of early modern states, especially relevant in German areas where the related activities of mining and assaying occupied a central place in state economies.