Article ID: CBB400050343

Between Aquinas and Eymerich: The Roman Inquisition’s Use of Dominican Thought in the Censorship of Alchemy (2018)

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In the latter half of the sixteenth century the Roman Inquisition developed criteria to prosecute a series of operative arts, including various forms of divination and magic. Its officials had little interest in alchemy. During that period the Roman Inquisition tried few people for practising alchemy, and it was rarely discussed in official documents. Justifications for prosecuting alchemists did exist, however. In his influential handbook, Directorium inquisitorum, the fourteenth-century inquisitor Nicholas Eymerich had developed a clear rationale for the investigation and prosecution of alchemists as heretics. His position was endorsed in the 1570s by Francisco Peña in his commentary on Eymerich’s handbook. In this article I explore the reasons why alchemy held this ambiguous status. I argue that members of the Dominican Order developed two traditions of thinking about alchemy from Aquinas’s thought. The first, and closest to Aquinas’s own belief, held that alchemy was a natural art that posed no danger to the Christian faith. The second, developed by Eymerich from a selective reading of Aquinas’s writings, indicated specific circumstances in which alchemists could be investigated. The Roman Inquisition’s response to alchemy vacillated between the positions advocated by Aquinas and Eymerich.

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Article Andrew Campbell; Lorenza Gianfrancesco; Neil Tarrant (2018) Alchemy and the Mendicant Orders of Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Ambix: Journal of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry (pp. 201-209). unapi

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https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB400050343/

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Authors & Contributors
Tarrant, Neil
Matteo Soranzo
Mollmann, Bradley J.
Baudry, Hervé
Ribeiro, Luís Campos
Andersen, Peter
Concepts
Inquisitions
Censorship
Science and religion
Roman Catholic Church
Alchemy
Natural philosophy
Time Periods
16th century
17th century
15th century
Early modern
Renaissance
Medieval
Places
Italy
Spain
Portugal
Europe
Peru
Germany
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