Use of an incantation in tenth century alchemy.
The passages which we have just noted in the Mappe Clavicula cannot be surely traced back earlier than the twelfth century version of it and do not appear in the table of contents which is preserved in the tenth century Schlestadt manuscript and which covers only a portion of the chapters of the twelfth century manuscript, but also some other chapters which are not extant. But that magic was not entirely absent from the earlier version to which this table of contents seems to apply is evidenced by the fact that one of the chapter headings dealing with the fabrication of gold mentions a prayer or incantation to be recited during the process.[3052]
Experimental character of the work of Theophilus.
The great importance of the work of Theophilus in the history of art is too generally recognized to need elaboration here. Our purpose is rather to point out that in it information of great value is found side by side with a considerable amount of misguided natural theory and magical ceremony. The stress laid by Theophilus upon personal observation, experience, and experimental method should not, however, pass unnoticed. He has scrutinized the works of art in the church of St. Sophia one by one “with diligent experience,” has tested everything by eye and hand, has as a “curious explorer” made all sorts of experiments, and appears to represent transparent stained glass as his own discovery or idea.[3053] Nor is he the only experimenter; he also speaks of “modern workmen” who deceive many incautious persons by their imitation of the appearance of most precious Arabian gold which “is frequently found employed in the most ancient vases.”[3054]
How to make Spanish gold.
Theophilus, however, believes that other metals can really be transmuted into gold, and we may repeat his amusing account of how Spanish gold “is made from red copper and powdered basilisk and human blood and vinegar.” “For the Gentiles, whose skill in this art is well known, create basilisks in this wise. They have an underground chamber completely walled in on all sides with stone, and with two windows so small as scarcely to admit any light. In this they put two cocks of twelve or fifteen years and give them plenty of food. These, when they have grown fat, from the heat of their fat have commerce together and lay eggs. As soon as the eggs are laid the cocks are ejected and toads are put in to sit on the eggs and are fed upon bread. When the eggs are hatched chicks come forth who look like young roosters, but after seven days they grow serpents’ tails and would straightway burrow into the ground, were the chamber not paved with stone. Guarding against this, their masters have round brazen vessels of great amplitude, perforated on all sides, with narrow mouths, in which they put the chicks and close the mouths with copper covers and bury them underground, and the chicks are nourished for six months by the subtle earth which enters through the perforations. After this they uncover them and apply a strong fire until the beasts within are totally consumed. When this is over and it has cooled off, they remove and carefully pulverize them, adding a third part of the blood of a ruddy man, which blood is dried and powdered. Having compounded these two they temper them with strong vinegar in a clean vessel; then they take very thin plates of the purest red copper and spread this mixture over them on both sides and place them in the fire. And when they grow white hot, they take them out and quench and wash them in the same mixture, and this process they repeat until the mixture has eaten through the copper, and so obtain the weight and color of gold. This gold is suited for all operations.”[3055]
The question of symbolic terminology again.
Mr. Hendrie held that Theophilus was here describing in symbolic language a process “for procuring pure gold by the means of the mineral acids;” and that “the toads of Theophilus which hatch the eggs are probably fragments of the mineral salt, nitrate of potash; ... the blood of a red man ... probably a nitrate of ammonia; fine earth, a muriate of soda (common salt); the cocks, the sulphates of copper and iron; the eggs, gold ore; the hatched chickens, which require a stone pavement, sulphuric acid produced by burning these in a stone vessel, collecting the fumes.... The elements of nitro-muriatic acid are all here, the solvent for gold.”[3056] Mr. Hendrie leaves, however, a number of details unexplained and he admits that “Unfortunately each chemist appears to have varied the symbols in use.” Certainly one would have to vary them in almost every case to make any sense out of such procedures as this of Theophilus. On the other hand, there is nothing very surprising in his procedure taken literally to one who is acquainted with the beliefs of ancient and medieval science and magic. And certainly Shakespeare’s line concerning the precious jewel in the toad’s head, which Hendrie quotes in this connection, is much more likely to be meant literally than to be the symbolic “jargon of the alchemist.” Later we shall hear again from Alexander Neckam, in a passage which has no connection with alchemy, of the basilisk hatched by a toad from an egg laid by a cock, and we shall hear from Albertus Magnus of an experiment in which a toad’s eye was proved superior in virtue to an emerald.
Alchemy in the eleventh century.
The treatises which we have been considering appear, at least for the most part, to antedate the Latin translations of works of alchemy from the Arabic, although it is possible that, just as the first translations of mathematical and astronomical works from the Arabic go back to the tenth century at least, so the reception of Arabic alchemy may have begun in a small way before the twelfth century. At any rate we find that in the eleventh century not only were Michael Psellus and other Byzantine scholars spreading the doctrines of alchemy,[3057] but a scholium to Adam of Bremen records the presence at the court of Bishop Adalbert of Bremen of an alchemist in the person of a baptized Jew.[3058]