Portada e Índice [Leer Más]

José Rodríguez-Guerrero

Presentación [Leer Más]

pp. I-IV.

José Rodríguez-Guerrero

Exempla Alquímicos en algunos Textos Religiosos de Alberto Magno y sus Discípulos [Leer Más]

pp. 11-40.

Abstract: We locate and analyze the alchemical exempla in the religious work of Albertus Magnus and some of his disciples, such as the English Dominican Thomas Jorz (ca.1250-1310).

Domingo Iglesias

Elixires árabolatinos en la Alquimia Europea de los siglos XII-XIII: Ad Hasen y Alfidii clavis [Leer Más]

pp. 41-103.

Abstract: This work presents an edition, complete with explanatory notes and a Spanish translation, of the Epistola ad Hasen, attributed to Avicenna and, as such, of great influence on the alchemy practised by scholars of the mendicant orders, particularly Rogerus Bachon.

Two elixirs are considered here: one mineral, mercury-based; the other organic, specifically derived from eggs, one of the identifications of the ‘stone that is not a stone’ or the ‘philosophers’ stone’. The author argued in detail for the choice of the components of the mineral elixir. The organic elixir, however, was presented without argumentation, and its main contribution consisted of equating it with the mineral-mercurial elixir.

Domingo Iglesias

La Alquimia Europea del siglo XIII (parte 1): recetarios y textos prácticos. [Leer Más]

pp. 104-176.

Abstract: This paper is the first part of a project whose aim is to present some relevant aspects of the first century of European alchemy. The three topics studied here correspond chronologically to three literary interests of the century, as alchemy became increasingly popular: recipes, operations and manuals. This alchemy was primarily a process of assimilating Arab-Latin sources, but certain elements can be discerned that later served as the basis for genuine European alchemy forged during the 14th century.

Domingo Iglesias

La Alquimia Europea del siglo XIII (parte 2): recepción escolástica e impacto en Roger Bacon, con fragmentos inéditos de su Opus minus. [Leer Más]

pp. 177-277.

Abstract: Although other scholastics drew upon data of alchemical origin in their expositions of mineral natural philosophy—particularly Albertus Magnus and Vincent de Beauvais—Roger Bacon saw in alchemy a science of maximum utility, the greatest of which was the prolongation of life, a secret so great that not even the alchemist could attain it, only the experimentator. In this article we bring together, mostly in translation, what he wrote on alchemy in his renowned works, chiefly the Opus secundum/minus, which we have transcribed from the manuscript containing the largest fragment, with sections unpublished in the 1589 edition.

José Rodríguez Guerrero; Domingo Iglesias

El Liber super textum hermetis (ca.1290) de Hortulanus: el primer tratado alquímico en asociar el alcohol destilado del vino con el spiritus quinte essentie. [Leer Más]

pp. 278-349.

Abstract: Jean de Rupescissa is usually recognized as the first author to conceptually link alcohol with the quintessence of the alchemists (ca.1350). However, the first European to make such an association is an alchemist of whom we have very little information, known by the name of Hortulano (ca.1290).

His ideas are found in a Liber or Expositio super textus hermetis, which represents an important effort of theorization to establish a harmony between the cosmological concepts handled by European alchemists and the new substances that were being discovered in the laboratories. For Hortulano, alcohol was the fire glossed in the Tabula smaragdina, where it is recommended to separate it from the earth, that is, the subtle part dissociated from the thick. Likewise, our author equates the ascents and descents of the hermetic text with the successive distillations that are necessary to achieve a product with a high alcohol content.

These ideas were to have a great impact on later alchemists, especially in a Parisian setting. The Textus alkimie (inc. Studio namque florenti) was the first to widely disseminate these theories around the year 1325. Immediately afterwards they were enlarged by Occitan pens close to the surroundings of Montpellier, especially by the magister Testamenti (fl.1330-1340) in his first versions of the De secretis naturae (ca.1332).

In this article I have been able to confidently attribute to Hortulano the Expositio super textum hermetis, which we analyse in detail, but also the treatise De tinctura metallorum [inc. Argentum vivum est frigidum et humidum], which was printed with the attribution to Avicenna. I will point out three other very probable attributions: the Super lapide que dicitur philosophorum. [inc. Morenius de lapide testudinis], the Liber XII aquarum [inc. Ovorum vitella equaliter teres ut in medulla...] and the De herba secreta [inc. Audiat secrete que loquor]. A final text with a certain possibility of being his is the Expositio super Turbam philosophorum [inc. Veritatem meditabitur guttur meum], although it presents a more complex plot development and would need a much more detailed analysis.

José Rodríguez-Guerrero

Nuevos datos Biográficos de John Dastin (ca.1293-ca.1386). [Leer Más]

pp. 350-363.

Abstract: In this paper we explain the origin of the variants of John Dastin's surname in the manuscripts: Dacia, Damascenus, Tholetanus, Dumbleton, Anglicus. Below, we draw a biographical profile from his birth in Greet (Gloucestershire), his studies at Oxford between 1307 and 1311, his residence in continental Europe between 1317 and 1341, and his subsequent return to Great Britain.

Once on his land, he was appointed personal secretary to the king to oversee any new mines and precious metals (s.e. thesaurum) found, or produced, in the kingdom of England and the lands of Wales. All the operations of extraction, refining, manufacturing (among which we could include alchemical experiments), as well as their subsequent delivery to the treasury in London, would be done "…according to his discernment and testimony".

Later records identify him with a treasury chaplain at London's Westminster Church. This indicates his constant link with the royal family, since that place belonged to the jurisdiction of the king and not of a bishop.

José Rodríguez-Guerrero

Las Fuentes de la Visio alchimica de John Dastin. [Leer Más]

pp. 364-374.

Abstract: Dastin presents his Visio alchimica as the result of a fulminant dream vision, from which he awakens with great joy from the great number of things he has learned.

However, the study of the content shows an absolutely conscious and very elaborate attitude in the writing. The entire work is structured following a complex frame armed with sentences taken from alchemical, philosophical, religious, legal and moral texts. His most common guideline is to take scholastic theses, reinterpreted or adapted to his interest in justifying metallic transmutation.

The narrative is manifestly inspired by Arabic allegories translated into Latin. Its plot structure consists of linking Platonic and Aristotelian sentences with alchemical quotations. Everything is Christianized in abundance with biblical propositions and pastoral writings. Most of them are not explicit quotations, but they are recognizable to a reader with an average cultural level in religious literature.

José Rodríguez-Guerrero

New Contributions to the study of pseudolulian Liber de secretis naturae. [Leer Más]

pp. 375-463.

Abstract: I am going to analyse a treatise from the Pseudo-Lullian corpus entitled Liber de secretis naturae seu de quinta essentia (DSN). According to the results of the research carried out so far by specialists, the text was written in the second half of the 14th century. It is the first text in the corpus to display a clear intention of being a pseudepigraphy: in several places, the author introduces himself as Ramon Llull; the text is set in locations that are significant in Llull's biography, such as the Abbey of Vauvert near Paris; and several of Llull's works are referenced as his own.

The widely accepted current hypothesis is that the forger used two main sources. One is the post-1348 treatise De consideratione quintae essentiae rerum omnium (DCQ) by Johannes de Rupescissa, which the forger partially plagiarised. The other source is the magister Testamenti, an alchemical text influenced by Llull and originally written around 1330–1340. The forger would have been linked to this text through quotations. The final result is a work comprising five major sections (A, B, C, D, E).

Here, I will present an extended thesis. The Magister Testamenti would have authored several versions, or primitive strata, of the DSN dating from 1330–1332. We will reconstruct two of these. The first has the structure B1 + CI_a–b + CII + CIII and the second has the structure B1 + CI_a–b + CII + CIII + CIV_a–b + CV. A copy of the latter is preserved in manuscript BnF, Lat. 7177, which contains no pseudo-Lullian elements and is fully integrated into the Magister Testamenti's textual corpus. Rupescissa would have used this second version to compose his DCQ. Magister Testamenti later composed a third layer consisting of several recensions under the general structure B + C + D1/D2. His implementation of Lullian logic is more sophisticated and complex.

In the second half of the 14th century, a group of Catalan pseudepigraphers manipulated this extended version in order to attribute it to Lull, adding the prologue (section A) and the epilogue (section E), in which Ramón Llull is depicted in conversation with a monk; and inserting passages of Lullian content.

José Rodríguez-Guerrero

Episodios Olvidados sobre los Alquimistas de Fez y la pérdida del Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera en 1516. [Leer más]

pp. 464-480.

Abstract: In this study we are going to know the details of the loss of the Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera, located off the coast of the African Rif. The king of Fez, Muḥammad al-Burtughali (r.1505-1524), prepared a plan with several people posing as alchemists. They entered the place under the pretext of making gold for the lieutenant-warden of the rock, Francisco de Villalobos. Once inside, they locked up the garrison and opened the doors to their fellow Arabs.

It was a huge major setback in the political and economic aspect, since that place was a very important strategic point. After three attempts at reconquest, Philip II had to finance a formidable and very expensive mission in 1564. It was made up of 93 galleys and 60 ships, in which nine thousand soldiers set sail. Never has the alchemical scam been so expensive for the rulers of Spain.

Francesca Lotti

El Médico Angelo Forte da Corfù y su Tratado Verità de la alchimia (1525). [Leer más]

pp. 481-523.

Abstract: Here I make a study of Angelo Forte (ca.1490-ca.1556), a doctor who left his native island of Corfu to settle in Italy. He belonged to a family of officials, doctors and distillers, some of whose members dispersed throughout Naples and Venice. He had an office in the latter city, "in Campo di S. Bartholomeo", where he consulted and dispatched remedies of his own making. He was a cultured man and bibliophile, a friend of artists such as Pietro Aretino or Titian. Translators from Greek were staying in his house, such as Jacobo Diasorino, a sponsor of Cardinal Granvela, who worked for the Escurialense library looking for Greek manuscripts and translating others into Latin.

I will comment on and edit one of his treatises, entitled Verità de la alchimia (1525), which is a reflection on one of Angelo Forte's youthful interests, namely, alchemical work and the writings related to it, which circulated in large numbers in Venice at the beginning of the sixteenth century.

SECCIÓN ESPECIAL SOBRE ALQUIMIA EN TIEMPOS DE FELIPE II.

José Rodríguez-Guerrero

Felipe II, Francisco de Borja y una esperiençia alquímica en 1543. [Leer más]

pp. 524-529.

Abstract: Here we analyse the first alchemical experience linked to the figure of Philip II of which we have any information, dated 1543. Its protagonist is Francisco de Borja, who had just occupied the post of Viceroy of Catalonia and had just inherited the title of Duke of Gandía. When he settled in his new house, he was told of the existence of possible gold and silver mines that would be about to be prospected. The material to be extracted would be a "black stone", which a "Morisco" would mix with other elements to obtain gold, defining the whole operation as "more alchemy than mine".

His wife, the Portuguese Leonor de Castro Mello y Meneses, was elated at the prospect of obtaining precious metals. He knew Maria Manuela of Portugal (1527-1545) well, recently married to a very young Prince Philip who was barely 16 years old, and involved the royal couple to speed up the extraction procedures and the "alchemical tests".

José Rodríguez-Guerrero

Felipe II, Isabel I, Guerras de Religión, Espionaje y Alquimia en 1562-1567. [Leer más]

pp. 530-577.

Abstract: It is a study on a very interesting event that took place during the reign of Philip II, between 1562 and 1566. It concerns a series of documents handwritten by ambassadors, spies and royal secretaries, which reveal a political operation hatched by Elizabeth I of England to destabilise the Habsburg hegemony at that time.

Queen Elizabeth knew how to act skilfully at a delicate moment for her kingdom, which she inherited with many economic and military limitations. She devised a network of spies together with her favourite, Robert Dudley, with whom she conversed personally and in private. They justified their secret meetings by claiming that they were alchemists or ‘mathematicians’. They also covered up their continuous travels with the excuse of buying books for the Elizabethan court in the Netherlands, France, Northern Italy and Germany. Their centre of operations was in Antwerp and from there they were linked to London.

Analysing the names that appear in the messages, we can confirm the participation of William Cecil, Henry Percy, Henry Killigrew, Thomas Chaloner, Thomas Smith and Richard Eden in organising and maintaining the network on a day-to-day basis. The main couriers are a certain Diacceto, Kranich and John Dee, although future research could extend the list. Their most regular contacts were to be Jacques Spifame, Jean de Ferrières and Gaspard de Coligny in France; Heinrich Olisleger in Antwerp and the Duchy of Cleves; and Johannes Sturm in Alsace and Lorraine. In Germany their most important partners were Philip of Hesse, Christoph of Württemberg and Frederick of the Palatinate. Another very important figure was Théodore de Bèze. Practically all of them were interested in alchemy and exchanged information about the discipline. It was certainly the bond that united them, but they sought another application for it and, as a Spanish ambassador says, “in reality this was how they justified their clandestine meetings on political and religious matters without raising much suspicion”.

I am going to analyse particularly the case of the Duke of Vendôme, helped by his personal secretary at the time, François Hotman. He was contacted by one of these spies, who posed as a ‘German’, promising him a great alchemical secret and supporting the French Protestants.

Philip II's counsellors in Madrid were not aware of anything, despite the abundant reports that reached them. The whole investigation was a very slow process, highlighting an endemic problem of the Philippine reign. For example, the ‘secret experiment’ that was being proposed to some aristocrats reluctant to join the Protestant alliance, such as the Duke of Vendôme, had been reported since 1562 by several Spanish informants, but it would not be tested in Madrid until years later. Furnaces were set up in Madrid to test whether these alchemical experiments, inspired by Pantheus's Voarchydumia, could work.

José Rodríguez-Guerrero

El Uso y Experiençia de las Mediçinas (1593), un desconocido vademécum de Richard Stanihurst para la administración de sus fármacos en la Corte de Madrid. [Leer más]

pp. 578-617.

Abstract: Edition and study of a previously unknown handbook written by Richard Stanihurst (1547–1618) for King Philip II. It explains how to administer the chemical medicines he had prepared for the king in the laboratory of the Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial. It is a very important work, as it provides us with first-hand information on the chemical remedies that were prepared in the large ‘distillation house’ set up in the Monastery Palace of El Escorial..

José Rodríguez-Guerrero

Nuevos datos y documentos sobre Vincenzo Forte, destilador de Felipe II y protegido del Cardenal Granvela. [Leer más]

pp. 618-649.

Abstract: Giovanni Vincenzo Forte (fl. 1578–1611) was a distiller of Neapolitan origin who settled at the Philippine court in 1579, starting a family dynasty that served the Spanish crown for over a century. His wife was also known as ‘professor of secrets.’ His patron and promoter was Cardinal Granvela, who was a great lover of gardening and therapeutic laboratory practices and had been organising the staff assigned to the gardens and distilleries of the King of Spain in his new capital, Madrid, since the 1560s.

Forte worked in Naples and Rome for Granvela, in Augsburg for the Fugger family, and in Madrid for Philip II. There he was responsible for setting up the distillation laboratory at El Escorial. In his early years in Madrid, he had many problems with some doctors, who had a lot of influence in the healthcare system. For this reason, he moved to the court of Rudolf II for a few months, where he met John Dee.

Vincenzo Forte seems to have been an important distiller in the service of Cardinal Granvela, who worked in different places and ended up in the then powerful Spanish court, where he practised for more than twenty years. In March 1601, he asked Philip III for permission to retire to his native Naples and for his position to be inherited by his son Valerio. His authority as a ‘Spacirico’ is recognised by the friar Donato d'Eremita di Roccad'Evandro, who places him as an expert, alongside Giovanni Battista Della Porta and Nicola Antonio Stigliola, for a prodigious medicine dispensed by him under the name of Elixir Vitae.

The Forte saga would continue in Spain for several generations as distillers to the king.

José Rodríguez-Guerrero

Las Aficiones Alquímicas del Padre Alfonso Chacón (1530-1599). [Leer más]

pp. 650-701.

Abstract: Alfonso Chacón (1530–1599) was a learned Dominican friar. Contemporary historiography identifies him as a theologian, bibliophile, historian, and archaeologist. Here we will show that he was also a great fan of alchemy, especially in its medical aspect, and the study of the properties of minerals and metals.

He had an alchemical laboratory in Rome financed by several cardinals, in particular Antoine Perrenot de Granvela. He wrote texts on alchemical medicine that are now lost. Distillers, therapists and ‘chymicos’ who surrounded the papal court and the Farnese, Este and Medici families, as well as figures from Spanish-influenced territories in Bavaria, Austria, the Netherlands, Milan and Naples, frequented his home.

Chacón was a central figure in Rome, and Cardinal Granvela served as a link between various regions. Some of the people mentioned in the preserved documentation are Nicolás Guibert, Pere Llopico de Xixon, Adolf Occo, Vincenzo Forte, Sebastiano Manzone, Domenico Pizzimenti, Leonhard Thurneysser and Michele Mercati.
Chacón also assembled a large library on many subjects, including alchemy, and compiled a list of Auctores artis sive scientiae Alchimiae.

José Rodríguez-Guerrero

Algunos datos sobre Cyliani (1769-1839). [Leer más]

pp. 702-713.

Abstract: Collection of biographical data on the alchemist Cyliani, author of the work Hermès Dévoilé. This treatise on romantic alchemy exalts passion, individualism and the search for freedom, with a pessimistic and realistic setting. The work was first published in 1832 by Germain-Félix Locquin. It is believed that the author had a scientific background and was linked to scientific circles of the time. He tried to create a prodigious medicine with his "philosopher's stone” but died at the age of 70.

José Rodríguez-Guerrero

Josep Gifreda i Morròs, un Mago en la Barcelona del siglo XX. [Leer más]

pp. 714-754.

Abstract: An introductory study of Josep Gifreda i Morros (1891-1980), a Catalan chemical engineer, medical doctor, esotericist, astrologer and alchemist, who assembled one of the most important esoteric libraries of his time with the help of his brother, Marius Gifreda, who was also a great enthusiast of alchemy and esotericism.

José Rodríguez-Guerrero

La Doble Edición de 1914 del Mutus Liber. [Leer más]

pp. 755-771.

Abstract: Here I describe the two editions of Mutus Liber published in Paris in 1914 by publishers A. Depras and E. Nourry. I will see that they are the same print run, which came out in two different bindings.