Two More Alchemical Manuscripts

Abstract

THE two alchemical manuscripts to be considered in this article add two further treatises, both apparently hitherto unknown, to the Lullian alchemical collection, of which one certainly and the other probably dates before 1500. The manuscripts also contain other matter of importance for the history of alchemy during the later middle ages and around the year 1500. One manuscript is now found in the Stadtbibliothek of Bern: the other is preserved in the Riccardian library at Florence.' Bern B 44 is an octavo paper volume of the fifteenth century. The division of the contents into treatises in Hagen's catalogue of the Bern manuscripts is largely erroneous, and nearly half of the codex, like so many alchemical manuscripts, is a mass of confused extracts, citations, and recipes which we cannot undertake to unravel. But it also includes several well-known works of the Lullian alchemical corpus which Hagen failed to identify, such as the Accurtatio at fols 63r-68v, Liber mercuriorum at fols 69r-73v, and Ars Magica at fols 74r_ 79v.2 These are preceded at fols 5r-62r3 by a long but unfamiliar alchemical work also attributed to Lull and described in Hagen's catalogue as Arbor philosophie sive Alchymia. It is quite in the style of the alchemical writings ascribed to Raymond Lull and in particular has marked resemblance to the Tertia Distinctio or De secretis naturae and to De cura individuorum. It makes much use of the Lullian alphabet, tree, and method of questions. It cites other treatises of the Lullian alchemical corpus, such as the Tertia Distinctio, Lapidarius, Testament and Codicil, and twice alludes to Practica sermocinalis, although perhaps not as the title of a work. This hitherto unfamiliar Lullian alchemical composition opens, 'Protinus ut ars et scientia tractans transmutatoria quam in precedenti volumine diximus . . . ' It is, professedly at least, divided into six parts: (1) concerning the construction of the figure S; (2) of the condition of the principles of the figure S and the solution of questions by those principles; (3) of the method of solving questions by the principles of the tree; (4) of alchemical disputation by the new fallacy; (5) of the way to solve alchemical questions syllogistically; (6) of the solution of questions in the lapidary's art. Among the questions asked are whether a body can be dissolved without calcination, whether alchemical conversion can be accomplished in the absence of the vegetable menstruum, whether alchemy is a figment, whether B (Matter?) generates D (the Menstruum?), whether the philosophers' stone can transmute mineral bodies, whether