The year 1216 is the probable period of the poet’s death. The story told of his testament has only a foundation in legend, but it is worth repeating as evidence of the general belief in his skill as an alchemist.
He chose by his will, says the story, to be buried in the Church of the Jacobins, and, as an acknowledgment, left them a coffer that appeared, at least by its weight, to be filled with things precious, probably with the best gold which could be manufactured by the skill of the Hermetists. He ordered, however, that this coffer should not be opened till after his funeral, when, touched with the piety of the deceased, the monks assembled in great numbers to be present at its opening, and to offer up thanks to God. They found to their great disappointment that the coffer was filled with large pieces of slates beautifully engraved with figures of geometry and arithmetic. The indignation of the fathers was excited by the posthumous imposture, and they proposed to eject the body of Jean de Meung from their consecrated precincts; but the Parliament being informed of this inhumanity, obliged the Jacobins, by a decree, to leave the deceased undisturbed in the honourable sepulchre of their conventual cloisters.
In “Nature’s Remonstrance to the Alchemist,” who is described as a foolish and sophistical souffleur, making use of nothing but mechanical arts, the complainant bitterly abuses the fanatical student who diffuses over her beautiful domain the rank odours of sulphur, which he tortures in vain over his furnaces, for by such a method he will assuredly attain nothing. The alchemist in his “Reply” figures as a repentant being, convinced of his errors, which he ascribes to the barbarous allegories, parabolic sentences, and delusive precepts contained in the writings of the adepts.
THE MONK FERARIUS.
About the beginning of the fourteenth century, this Italian artist gave to the world two treatises—De Lapide Philosophorum and Thesaurus Philosophiæ, which are printed in the Theatrum Chimicum.
The “admirable spectacle” of the palingenesis of plants is described by this Jesuit. “Immediately consequent on exposing to the rays of the sun the phial, filled with quintessence of the rose, there is discovered within the narrow compass of the vase a perfect world of miracles. The plant which lay buried in its ashes awakes, uprises, and unfolds. In the space of half-an-hour the vegetable phœnix is resuscitated from its own dust. The rose issues from its sepulchre and assumes a new life. It is the floral symbol of that resurrection by which mortals lying in darkness and in the shadow of death will pass into beautiful immortality.”
The treatise on the philosophical stone very pertinently remarks that in alchemy the first thing to be ascertained is what is really signified by the myrionimous argentum vivum sapientum, a point on which the author gracefully declines information. Both works are exceedingly obscure and vexatious. The Thesaurus Philosophiæ testifies that the plain speaking of the philosophers is completely illusory, and that it is only in their incomprehensible profundities that we must seek the light of Hermes.
Alchemy is the science of the four elements, which are to be found in all created substances, but are not of the vulgar kind. The whole practice of the art is simply the conversion of these elements into one another. The seed and matter of every metal is mercury, as it is decocted and otherwise prepared in the bowels of the earth, and each of them can be reduced into this prima materia, by the help of which they are also, one and all, susceptible of augmentation and multiplication, even to infinity.
POPE JOHN XXII.
This pontiff is claimed as an adept by the alchemists, a fact which is denied, but not disproved, by his orthodox biographers. That he believed in the power of magic is shown by the accusation which he directed against Géraud, Bishop of Cahors, whom he accredited with the design of poisoning him, together with the entire college of cardinals, and with having in particular contrived sorceries and diabolical enchantments against all of them. He was the contemporary of Raymond Lully and Arnold de Villanova, and is said to have been the pupil and friend of the latter. Nevertheless, the mischief occasioned at that period by the impostures of pretended alchemists led him to issue a bull condemning the traders in this science as charlatans who promised what they were unable to perform. Hermetic writers assert that this bull was not directed against veritable adepts, and his devotion to his laboratory at Avignon seems a fairly established fact. Franciscus Pagi, in his Breviarum de Gestis Romanorum Pontificum, has the following passage:—Joannes scripsit quoque latino sermone artem metallorum transmutorium; quod opus prodiit Gallici incerto translatore Lugduni, anno 1557 in 8vo. It is allowed that he was a writer on medicine. His Thesaurus Pauperum, a collection of recipes, was printed at Lyons in 1525, and he was the author of a treatise on diseases of the eye, and of another on the formation of the fœtus. He was born at Cahors, according to the general opinion, of poor but reputable parents; he showed at an early period his skill in law and in the sciences. The circumstances of his life are exceedingly obscure until his consecration as Bishop of Fréjus in 1300. Subsequently he was promoted to the see of Avignon, and Clement V. created him cardinal-bishop of Porto. He was raised to the pontificate at Lyons, and reigned at Avignon till his death in 1334. He left behind him in his coffers the sum of eighteen million florins in gold and seven millions in jewels, besides valuable consecrated vessels. Alchemists attribute these vast treasures to his skill in their science, and assert in addition that he manufactured two hundred ingots, apparently on a single occasion. By a calculation of one of his biographers, this quantity of the precious metal was equivalent to £660,000, British sterling. A treatise entitled “The Elixir of the Philosophers, or the Transmutatory Art of Metals,” is attributed to him. It was translated from the Latin into French, and published in duodecimo at Lyons in 1557. It is written ad clerum, and for this reason is probably the more misleading. It represents the constituents of the perfect medicine to be vinegar, salt, urine, and sal ammoniac, with the addition of an undescribed substance called sulphur vive.