The Quest for the Philosophers’ Stone: Alois von Sonnenfels’ ‘אור נגה—Splendor Lucis’, Vienna 1745

Abstract

Abstract This article examines אור נגה—Splendor Lucis, oder Glantz des Lichts, a bilingual German-Hebrew alchemical work written in 1745 by Alois von Sonnenfels (1705–1768), a scholar and translator at the Austrian imperial court, who converted from Judaism to Catholicism in 1735. Splendor Lucis embodies a quest for ‘vera philosophia’, a true and pure knowledge, which its author seeks via the practical alchemical pursuit of discovering how to transmute base substances into gold using the legendary ‘Philosophers’ Stone’. Ultimately, Sonnenfels locates the secret to divine wisdom in the biblical figure of Job, and concludes that ‘vera philosophia’ is with God alone and cannot be grasped by humankind. This article analyses how Sonnenfels’ unique eighteenth-century text combines Jewish and Christian concepts with alchemical, kabbalistic, and literary symbols. Christian alchemists and Christian Hebraists often tried to prove that Christianity was the anticipated Messianic fulfilment of Judaism. By contrast, Sonnenfels presents a veiled discourse which carefully makes the case for the validity of Jewish texts and thus also for Judaism—under the watchful eye of the Catholic Church.