The Changing Visions of Chymistry at Seventeenth-Century Jena: The Two Brendels, Rolfinck, Wedel, and Others

Abstract

The University of Jena was an important locus for chymistry teaching in Germany throughout the seventeenth century. Zacharias Brendel the Elder and the Younger, Werner Rolfinck, and Georg Wolfgang Wedel were four of the Jena professors who offered courses of chymistry during this time. These four held notably divergent views on the purpose, character, and legitimate content of chymistry, as well as of its proper place within the university. The distinctions among them prove especially clear in their widely differing assessments of metallic transmutation and of other longstanding chymical traditions and pursuits. Significantly, their sequential views do not form any linear progression over time. Instead, they illustrate the continuing disagreements and negotiations about chymistry, its role, and its identity as a discipline. The situation at Jena enriches our understanding of chymistry’s seventeenth-century “didactic tradition” and documents the internal diversity of the subject and of its professors and practitioners.