GUISEPPE FRANCESCO BORRI.
“The Rape of the Lock” and the graceful romance of “Undine” have familiarised every one with the doctrine of elementary spirits; but the chief philosophical, or pseudo-philosophical, account of these unseen but not extra-mundane intelligences has been the little book of the Comte de Gabalis, a series of conversations on the secret sciences. It is generally unknown that this work is little more than an unacknowledged translation of “The Key to the Cabinet of the Chevalier Borri, wherein may be found various epistles—curious, scientific, and chemical—with politic instructions, matters which deserve well of the curious, and a variety of magnificent secrets.”[AI] Borri, who appears to have been a microcosmic precursor of Cagliostro, was born at Milan in 1627. Some proceedings of an equivocal nature caused him, in his earlier years, to seek sanctuary in a church, but subsequently, like Joseph Balsamo, he underwent a complete transformation, announced that he was inspired of Heaven, that he was elected by the omnipotent God to accomplish the reformation of mankind, and to establish the Regnum Dei. There should be henceforth but a single religion, with the Pope as its head, and a vast army, with Borri as general, for the extermination of all anti-catholics. He exhibited a miraculous sword which St Michael had deigned to present him, declared that he had beheld in the empyrean a luminous palm-branch reserved for his own celestial triumph, announced that the Holy Virgin was divine by nature, that she conceived by inspiration, that she was equal with her Son, and was present in the Eucharist with him, that the Holy Spirit had taken flesh in her person, that the second and third persons of the Trinity are inferior to the Divine Father, that the fall of Lucifer involved that of a vast number of angels, who now inhabit the regions of the air, that it was by the intervention of these rebellious spirits that God created the world and gave life to all beasts, but that men were in possession of a Divine soul which God made in spite of himself. Finally, with a contradiction more French than Italian, he gave out that he was himself the Holy Spirit incarnate.
Needless to say, this novel gospel, according to mystical imposture, brought him into conflict with hierarchic authority. He was arrested, and, on the 3d of January 1661, he was condemned as a heretic, and as guilty of various misdeeds. He managed to escape, took flight northward, and by the expectation of the stone philosophical contrived to cheat Christina, Queen of Sweden, out of a large sum of money. He perambulated various parts of Germany, making many supposed projections, visited the Low Countries, and in 1665 entered as a professional alchemist into the service of the King of Denmark. He announced that he was the master of a demon, who responded to his magical evocations, and dictated the operations required for the successful transmutation of metals. The name of this spook was Homunculus, which, according to Paracelsus, signifies a minute human being generated unnaturally without the assistance of the female organism, from the sperm of a man or a boy.
The monarch, determined to monopolise the talents of his adept, decided that the laboratory of Borri should be transferred to his own palace. The alchemist, with an eye to his freedom, objected that the power of his imp would be destroyed on the first attempt to divide him from a certain vast iron furnace, which was the sulphureous abode of Homunculus; but his royal patron was a man of resources, and the furnace was also transported. Five years passed away, and Frederick III. having died, his successor determined on a closer investigation of the transmutatory secrets of Borri, who took flight at the rumour, but was arrested on the frontiers of Hungary, and imprisoned at Vienna, where he was claimed by the Papal Nuncio as a fugitive condemned for his heresies. He was sent to Rome, and entombed in the Castle of St Angelo. There he was permitted to continue his alchemical processes, which were pursued unsuccessfully till his death in the year 1695.
“The Key to the Cabinet of the Chevalier Borri” has never been actually translated; the adaptation by the Abbé de Villars is, of course, of European celebrity. As to the chemical secrets contained in the original letters, it may be safely concluded that they are few and unimportant.
FOOTNOTES:
[AI] La Chiave del Gabinetto del Cavagliere G. F. Borri, col favor della quella si vedono varie lettere scientifiche, chimice, e curiosissime, con varie istruzioni politiche, ed altre cose degne da curiosita e molti segreti bellissimi. Cologne (Genève), 1681, 12mo.