A Quest for Longevity? A New Approach to the Earliest Testimonies of Medieval Alchemy (2018)
Heiduk, Matthias (Author)
Micrologus: Nature, Sciences and Medieval Societies
Volume: 26
Pages: 227-254
Medieval Europe learned about alchemy through the translation of Arabic treatises into Latin. What sparked the curiosity regarding this new knowledge? Was it perhaps the promise of the life-extending effect of the elixir that inspired its initial reception? Historical research has been unable to answer this obvious question so far. This paper merely takes a few cautious steps on the road towards filling the gaps about early alchemy in the Medieval West. It focuses on the problems of the earliest textual witnesses in Latin from the XIIth century ("Liber Morieni," "Septem tractatus Hermetis," "Tabula smaragdina") and adopts a systematic approach by undertaking a stringent comparison of these early alchemica with a large amount of Latin translations from Arabic of this time facilitated by the «Arabic-Latin-Corpus» of digitally-converted texts. This approach disproves two assumptions regularly featured in the research literature. On the one hand, the "Liber dabessi" – a combination of the "Tabula smaragdina" and an alchemical compilation – is not a translation by Plato of Tivoli and probably not a XIIth century translation at all. On the other hand, the "Septem tractatus Hermetis" are not a translation by Robert of Chester, but they show some remarkable accordance with specific words and phrases used in the "Turba philosophorum" as well as by John of Seville.The analysis of the "Liber Morieni" gains less clear results. They neither fully approve nor exclude the commonly attested attribution to Robert of Chester. The second part of the paper collects the statements in these early translations on the possibility of prolonging life. The third part focuses on the question of whether anything can be derived from the historical context of these translations regarding the motivation of the translators in turning towards alchemy. The concluding resumé points to possible further research avenues built on the basis of this paper.
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