_The Philosophic Summary_, a poem, reprinted in 1735, as an appendix to
the third volume of the _Roman de la Rose_. He also wrote three treatises
upon natural philosophy, and an alchymic allegory, entitled _Le Désir
désiré_. Specimens of his writing, and a fac-simile of the drawings in his
book of Abraham, may be seen in Salmon's _Bibliothèque des Philosophes
Chimiques_. The writer of the article _Flamel_ in the _Biographie
Universelle_ says, that for a hundred years after the death of Flamel,
many of the adepts believed that he was still alive, and that he would
live for upwards of six hundred years. The house he formerly occupied, at
the corner of the Rue de Marivaux, has been often taken by credulous
speculators, and ransacked from top to bottom, in the hopes that gold
might be found. A report was current in Paris, not long previous to the
year 1816, that some lodgers had found in the cellars several jars filled
with a dark-coloured ponderous matter. Upon the strength of the rumour, a
believer in all the wondrous tales told of Nicholas Flamel bought the
house, and nearly pulled it to pieces in ransacking the walls and
wainscoting for hidden gold. He got nothing for his pains, however, and
had a heavy bill to pay to restore his dilapidations.
GEORGE RIPLEY.
While alchymy was thus cultivated on the continent of Europe, it was not
neglected in the isles of Britain. Since the time of Roger Bacon, it had
fascinated the imagination of many ardent men in England. In the year 1404
an act of parliament was passed declaring the making of gold and silver to
be felony. Great alarm was felt at that time lest any alchymist should
succeed in his projects, and perhaps bring ruin upon the state by
furnishing boundless wealth to some designing tyrant, who would make use
of it to enslave his country. This alarm appears to have soon subsided;
for, in the year 1455, King Henry VI., by advice of his council and
parliament, granted four successive patents and commissions to several
knights, citizens of London, chemists, monks, mass-priests, and others, to
find out the philosopher's stone and elixir, "to the great benefit," said
the patent, "of the realm, and the enabling of the king to pay all the
debts of the crown in real gold and silver." Prinn, in his _Aurum Reginæ_,
observes, as a note to this passage, that the king's reason for granting
this patent to ecclesiastics was, that "they were such good artists in
transubstantiating bread and wine in the eucharist, and therefore the more
likely to be able to effect the transmutation of baser metals into
better." No gold, of course, was ever made; and next year the king,
doubting very much of the practicability of the thing, took further
advice, and appointed a commission of ten learned men and persons of
eminence to judge and certify to him whether the transmutation of metals
were a thing practicable or no. It does not appear whether the commission
ever made any report upon the subject.
In the succeeding reign an alchymist appeared who pretended to have
discovered the secret. This was George Ripley, the canon of Bridlington,
in Yorkshire. He studied for twenty years in the universities of Italy,
and was a great favourite with Pope Innocent VIII., who made him one of
his domestic chaplains, and master of the ceremonies in his household.
Returning to England in 1477, he dedicated to King Edward IV. his famous
work, _The Compound of Alchymy_; or, _the Twelve Gates leading to the
Discovery of the Philosopher's Stone_. These gates he described to be
calcination, solution, separation, conjunction, putrefaction, congelation,
cibation, sublimation, fermentation, exaltation, multiplication, and
projection; to which he might have added botheration, the most important
process of all. He was very rich, and allowed it to be believed that he
could make gold out of iron. Fuller, in his _Worthies of England_, says
that an English gentleman of good credit reported, that in his travels
abroad he saw a record in the island of Malta which declared that Ripley
gave yearly to the knights of that island, and of Rhodes, the enormous sum
of one hundred thousand pounds sterling to enable them to carry on the war
against the Turks. In his old age he became an anchorite near Boston, and
wrote twenty-five volumes upon the subject of alchymy, the most important
of which is the _Duodecim Portarum_ already mentioned. Before he died, he
seems to have acknowledged that he had mis-spent his life in this vain
study, and requested that all men, when they met with any of his books,
would burn them, or afford them no credit, as they had been written merely
from his opinion, and not from proof; and that subsequent trial had made
manifest to him that they were false and vain.[37]
[37] Fuller's _Worthies of England_.
BASIL VALENTINE.
Germany also produced many famous alchymists in the fifteenth century, the
chief of whom are Basil Valentine, Bernard of Trèves, and the Abbot
Trithemius. Basil Valentine was born at Mayence, and was made prior of St.
Peter's, at Erfurt, about the year 1414. It was known, during his life,
that he diligently sought the philosopher's stone, and that he had written
some works upon the process of transmutation. They were thought for many
years to be lost, but were, after his death, discovered enclosed in the
stone-work of one of the pillars in the Abbey. They were twenty-one in
number, and are fully set forth in the third volume of Lenglet's _History
of the Hermetic Philosophy_. The alchymists asserted that heaven itself
conspired to bring to light these extraordinary works; and that the pillar
in which they were enclosed was miraculously shattered by a thunderbolt;
and that as soon as the manuscripts were liberated, the pillar closed up
again of its own accord!
BERNARD OF TREVES.
The life of this philosopher is a remarkable instance of talent and
perseverance misapplied. In the search of his chimera nothing could daunt
him. Repeated disappointment never diminished his hopes; and from the age
of fourteen to that of eighty-five he was incessantly employed among the
drugs and furnaces of his laboratory, wasting his life with the view of
prolonging it, and reducing himself to beggary in the hopes of growing
rich.
He was born at either Trèves or Padua in the year 1406. His father is said
by some to have been a physician in the latter city, and by others to have
been Count of the Marches of Trèves, and one of the most wealthy nobles of
his country. At all events, whether noble or physician, he was a rich man,
and left his son a magnificent estate. At the age of fourteen he first
became enamoured of the science of alchymy, and read the Arabian authors
in their own language. He himself has left a most interesting record of
his labours and wanderings, from which the following particulars are
chiefly extracted. The first book which fell into his hands was that of
the Arabian philosopher Rhazes, from the reading of which he imagined that
he had discovered the means of augmenting gold a hundredfold. For four
years he worked in his laboratory, with the book of Rhazes continually
before him. At the end of that time, he found that he had spent no less
than eight hundred crowns upon his experiment, and had got nothing but
fire and smoke for his pains. He now began to lose confidence in Rhazes,
and turned to the works of Geber. He studied him assiduously for two
years; and being young, rich, and credulous, was beset by all the
alchymists of the town, who kindly assisted him in spending his money. He
did not lose his faith in Geber, or patience with his hungry assistants,
until he had lost two thousand crowns--a very considerable sum in those
days.
Among all the crowd of pretended men of science who surrounded him, there
was but one as enthusiastic and as disinterested as himself. With this
man, who was a monk of the order of St. Francis, he contracted an intimate
friendship, and spent nearly all his time. Some obscure treatises of
Rupecissa and Sacrobosco having fallen into their hands, they were
persuaded, from reading them, that highly rectified spirits of wine was
the universal alkahest, or dissolvent, which would aid them greatly in the
process of transmutation. They rectified the alcohol thirty times, till
they made it so strong as to burst the vessels which contained it. After
they had worked three years, and spent three hundred crowns in the liquor,
they discovered that they were on the wrong track. They next tried alum
and copperas; but the great secret still escaped them. They afterwards
imagined that there was a marvellous virtue in all excrement, especially
the human, and actually employed more than two years in experimentalising
upon it with mercury, salt, and molten lead! Again the adepts flocked
around him from far and near to aid him with their counsels. He received
them all hospitably, and divided his wealth among them so generously and
unhesitatingly, that they gave him the name of the "Good Trevisan," by
which he is still often mentioned in works that treat on alchymy. For
twelve years he led this life, making experiments every day upon some new
substance, and praying to God night and morning that he might discover the
secret of transmutation.
In this interval he lost his friend the monk, and was joined by a
magistrate of the city of Trèves, as ardent as himself in the search. His
new acquaintance imagined that the ocean was the mother of gold, and that
sea-salt would change lead or iron into the precious metals. Bernard
resolved to try; and, transporting his laboratory to a house on the shores
of the Baltic, he worked upon salt for more than a year, melting it,
sublimating it, crystallising it, and occasionally drinking it, for the
sake of other experiments. Still the strange enthusiast was not wholly
discouraged, and his failure in one trial only made him the more anxious
to attempt another.
He was now approaching the age of fifty, and had as yet seen nothing of
the world. He therefore determined to travel through Germany, Italy,
France, and Spain. Wherever he stopped he made inquiries whether there
were any alchymists in the neighbourhood. He invariably sought them out;
and if they were poor, relieved, and if affluent, encouraged them. At
Citeaux he became acquainted with one Geoffrey Leuvier, a monk of that
place, who persuaded him that the essence of egg-shells was a valuable
ingredient. He tried, therefore, what could be done; and was only
prevented from wasting a year or two on the experiment by the opinions of
an attorney, at Berghem, in Flanders, who said that the great secret
resided in vinegar and copperas. He was not convinced of the absurdity of
this idea until he had nearly poisoned himself. He resided in France for
about five years, when, hearing accidentally that one Master Henry,
confessor to the Emperor Frederic III., had discovered the philosopher's
stone, he set out for Germany to pay him a visit. He had, as usual,
surrounded himself with a set of hungry dependants, several of whom
determined to accompany him. He had not heart to refuse them, and he
arrived at Vienna with five of them. Bernard sent a polite invitation to
the confessor, and gave him a sumptuous entertainment, at which were
present nearly all the alchymists of Vienna. Master Henry frankly
confessed that he had not discovered the philosopher's stone, but that he
had all his life been employed in searching for it, and would so continue
till he found it, or died. This was a man after Bernard's own heart, and
they vowed with each other an eternal friendship. It was resolved, at
supper, that each alchymist present should contribute a certain sum
towards raising forty-two marks of gold, which, in five days, it was
confidently asserted by Master Henry, would increase, in his furnace,
fivefold. Bernard, being the richest man, contributed the lion's share,
ten marks of gold, Master Henry five, and the others one or two a-piece,
except the dependants of Bernard, who were obliged to borrow their quota
from their patron. The grand experiment was duly made; the golden marks
were put into a crucible, with a quantity of salt, copperas, aquafortis,
egg-shells, mercury, lead, and dung. The alchymists watched this precious
mess with intense interest, expecting that it would agglomerate into one
lump of pure gold. At the end of three weeks they gave up the trial, upon
some excuse that the crucible was not strong enough, or that some
necessary ingredient was wanting. Whether any thief had put his hands into
the crucible is not known, but it is alleged that the gold found therein
at the close of the experiment was worth only sixteen marks, instead of
the forty-two, which were put there at the beginning.
Bernard, though he made no gold at Vienna, made away with a very
considerable quantity. He felt the loss so acutely, that he vowed to think
no more of the philosopher's stone. This wise resolution he kept for two
months; but he was miserable. He was in the condition of the gambler, who
cannot resist the fascination of the game while he has a coin remaining,
but plays on with the hope of retrieving former losses, till hope forsakes
him, and he can live no longer. He returned once more to his beloved
crucibles, and resolved to prosecute his journey in search of a
philosopher who had discovered the secret, and would communicate it to so
zealous and persevering an adept as himself. From Vienna he travelled to
Rome, and from Rome to Madrid. Taking ship at Gibraltar, he proceeded to
Messina; from Messina to Cyprus; from Cyprus to Greece; from Greece to
Constantinople; and thence into Egypt, Palestine, and Persia. These
wanderings occupied him about eight years. From Persia he made his way
back to Messina, and from thence into France. He afterwards passed over
into England, still in search of his great chimera; and this occupied four
years more of his life. He was now growing both old and poor; for he was
sixty-two years of age, and had been obliged to sell a great portion of
his patrimony to provide for his expenses. His journey to Persia had cost
upwards of thirteen thousand crowns, about one-half of which had been
fairly melted in his all-devouring furnaces; the other half was lavished
upon the sycophants that he made it his business to search out in every
town he stopped at.
On his return to Trèves he found, to his sorrow, that, if not an actual
beggar, he was not much better. His relatives looked upon him as a madman,
and refused even to see him. Too proud to ask for favours from any one,
and still confident that, some day or other, he would be the possessor of
unbounded wealth, he made up his mind to retire to the island of Rhodes,
where he might, in the mean time, hide his poverty from the eyes of the
world. Here he might have lived unknown and happy; but, as ill luck would
have it, he fell in with a monk as mad as himself upon the subject of
transmutation. They were, however, both so poor that they could not afford
to buy the proper materials to work with. They kept up each other's
spirits by learned discourses on the hermetic philosophy, and in the
reading of all the great authors who had written upon the subject. Thus
did they nurse their folly, as the good wife of Tam O'Shanter did her
wrath, "to keep it warm." After Bernard had resided about a year in
Rhodes, a merchant, who knew his family, advanced him the sum of eight
thousand florins, upon the security of the last-remaining acres of his
formerly large estate. Once more provided with funds, he recommenced his
labours with all the zeal and enthusiasm of a young man. For three years
he hardly stepped out of his laboratory: he ate there, and slept there,
and did not even give himself time to wash his hands and clean his beard,
so intense was his application. It is melancholy to think that such
wonderful perseverance should have been wasted in so vain a pursuit, and
that energies so unconquerable should have had no worthier field to strive
in. Even when he had fumed away his last coin, and had nothing left in
prospective to keep his old age from starvation, hope never forsook him.
He still dreamed of ultimate success, and sat down a grey-headed man of
eighty, to read over all the authors on the hermetic mysteries, from Geber
to his own day, lest he should have misunderstood some process, which it
was not yet too late to recommence. The alchymists say, that he succeeded
at last, and discovered the secret of transmutation in his eighty-second
year. They add that he lived three years afterwards to enjoy his wealth.
He lived, it is true, to this great age, and made a valuable
discovery--more valuable than gold or gems. He learned, as he himself
informs us, just before he had attained his eighty-third year, that the
great secret of philosophy was contentment with our lot. Happy would it
have been for him if he had discovered it sooner, and before he became
decrepit, a beggar, and an exile!
He died at Rhodes, in the year 1490, and all the alchymists of Europe sang
elegies over him, and sounded his praise as the "good Trevisan." He wrote
several treatises upon his chimera, the chief of which are, the _Book of
Chemistry_, the _Verbum dimissum_, and an essay _De Natura Ovi_.
TRITHEMIUS.
The name of this eminent man has become famous in the annals of alchymy,
although he did but little to gain so questionable an honour. He was born
in the year 1462, at the village of Trittheim, in the electorate of
Trèves. His father was John Heidenberg, a vine-grower, in easy
circumstances, who, dying when his son was but seven years old, left him
to the care of his mother. The latter married again very shortly
afterwards, and neglected the poor boy, the offspring of her first
marriage. At the age of fifteen he did not even know his letters, and was,
besides, half starved, and otherwise ill-treated by his step-father; but
the love of knowledge germinated in the breast of the unfortunate youth,
and he learned to read at the house of a neighbour. His father-in-law set
him to work in the vineyards, and thus occupied all his days; but the
nights were his own. He often stole out unheeded, when all the household
were fast asleep, poring over his studies in the fields, by the light of
the moon; and thus taught himself Latin and the rudiments of Greek. He was
subjected to so much ill-usage at home, in consequence of this love of
study, that he determined to leave it. Demanding the patrimony which his
father had left him, he proceeded to Trèves; and assuming the name of
Trithemius, from that of his native village of Trittheim, lived there for
some months under the tuition of eminent masters, by whom he was prepared
for the university. At the age of twenty, he took it into his head that he
should like to see his mother once more; and he set out on foot from the
distant university for that purpose. On his arrival near Spannheim, late
in the evening of a gloomy winter's day, it came on to snow so thickly,
that he could not proceed onwards to the town. He therefore took refuge
for the night in a neighbouring monastery; but the storm continued several
days, the roads became impassable, and the hospitable monks would not hear
of his departure. He was so pleased with them and their manner of life,
that he suddenly resolved to fix his abode among them, and renounce the
world. They were no less pleased with him, and gladly received him as a
brother. In the course of two years, although still so young, he was
unanimously elected their abbot. The financial affairs of the
establishment had been greatly neglected, the walls of the building were
falling into ruin, and every thing was in disorder. Trithemius, by his
good management and regularity, introduced a reform in every branch of
expenditure. The monastery was repaired, and a yearly surplus, instead of
a deficiency, rewarded him for his pains. He did not like to see the monks
idle, or occupied solely between prayers for their business, and chess for
their relaxation. He, therefore, set them to work to copy the writings of
eminent authors. They laboured so assiduously, that, in the course of a
few years, their library, which had contained only about forty volumes,
was enriched with several hundred valuable manuscripts, comprising many of
the classical Latin authors, besides the works of the early fathers, and
the principal historians, and philosophers of more modern date. He
retained the dignity of Abbot of Spannheim for twenty-one years, when the
monks, tired of the severe discipline he maintained, revolted against him,
and chose another abbot in his place. He was afterwards made Abbot of St.
James, in Wurzburg, where he died in 1516.
During his learned leisure at Spannheim, he wrote several works upon the
occult sciences, the chief of which are an essay on geomancy, or
divination by means of lines and circles on the ground; another upon
sorcery; a third upon alchymy; and a fourth upon the government of the
world by its presiding angels, which was translated into English, and
published by the famous William Lilly in 1647.
It has been alleged by the believers in the possibility of transmutation,
that the prosperity of the abbey of Spannheim, while under his
superintendence, was owing more to the philosopher's stone than to wise
economy. Trithemius, in common with many other learned men, has been
accused of magic; and a marvellous story is told of his having raised from
the grave the form of Mary of Burgundy, at the intercession of her widowed
husband, the Emperor Maximilian. His work on steganographia, or cabalistic
writing, was denounced to the Count Palatine, Frederic II., as magical and
devilish; and it was by him taken from the shelves of his library and
thrown into the fire. Trithemius is said to be the first writer who makes
mention of the wonderful story of the devil and Dr. Faustus, the truth of
which he firmly believed. He also recounts the freaks of a spirit named
_Hudekin_, by whom he was at times tormented.[38]
[38] _Biographie Universelle._
THE MARECHAL DE RAYS.
One of the greatest encouragers of alchymy in the fifteenth century was
Gilles de Laval, Lord of Rays and a Marshal of France. His name and deeds
are little known; but in the annals of crime and folly, they might claim
the highest and worst pre-eminence. Fiction has never invented any thing
wilder or more horrible than his career; and were not the details but too
well authenticated by legal and other documents which admit no doubt, the
lover of romance might easily imagine they were drawn to please him from
the stores of the prolific brain, and not from the page of history.
He was born about the year 1420, of one of the noblest families of
Brittany. His father dying when Gilles had attained his twentieth year, he
came into uncontrolled possession, at that early age, of a fortune which
the monarchs of France might have envied him. He was a near kinsman of the
Montmorencys, the Roncys, and the Craons; possessed fifteen princely
domains, and had an annual revenue of about three hundred thousand livres.
Besides this, he was handsome, learned, and brave. He distinguished
himself greatly in the wars of Charles VII., and was rewarded by that
monarch with the dignity of a marshal of France. But he was extravagant
and magnificent in his style of living, and accustomed from his earliest
years to the gratification of every wish and passion; and this, at last,
led him from vice to vice and from crime to crime, till a blacker name
than his is not to be found in any record of human iniquity.
In his castle of Champtocé he lived with all the splendour of an eastern
caliph. He kept up a troop of two hundred horsemen to accompany him
wherever he went; and his excursions for the purposes of hawking and
hunting were the wonder of all the country around, so magnificent were the
caparisons of his steeds and the dresses of his retainers. Day and night
his castle was open all the year round to comers of every degree. He made
it a rule to regale even the poorest beggar with wine and hippocrass.
Every day an ox was roasted whole in his spacious kitchens, besides sheep,
pigs, and poultry sufficient to feed five hundred persons. He was equally
magnificent in his devotions. His private chapel at Champtocé was the most
beautiful in France, and far surpassed any of those in the richly-endowed
cathedrals of Notre Dame in Paris, of Amiens, of Beauvais, or of Rouen. It
was hung with cloth of gold and rich velvet. All the chandeliers were of
pure gold curiously inlaid with silver. The great crucifix over the altar
was of solid silver, and the chalices and incense-burners were of pure
gold. He had besides a fine organ, which he caused to be carried from one
castle to another on the shoulders of six men, whenever he changed his
residence. He kept up a choir of twenty-five young children of both sexes,
who were instructed in singing by the first musicians of the day. The
master of his chapel he called a bishop, who had under him his deans,
arch-deacons, and vicars, each receiving great salaries; the bishop four
hundred crowns a year, and the rest in proportion.