Astrology and Alchemy in Early Modern Europe

452 Pages·2007·4.03 MB·English

Secrets of Nature
Transformations: Studies in the History of Science andTechnology
Jed Buchwald, general editor
Sungook Hong, Wireless: From Marconi’s Black-Box to the Audion
Myles Jackson, Spectrum of Belief: Joseph von Fraunhofer and the Craft
of Precision Optics
William R. Newman and Anthony Grafton, editors, Secrets of Nature:
Astrology and Alchemy in Early Modern Europe
Alan J. Rocke, Nationalizing Science: Adolphe Wurtz and the Battle for
French Chemistry
Secrets of Nature
Astrology and Alchemy in Early Modern Europe
edited by William R. Newman and Anthony Grafton
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 2001 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any
electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or
information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the
publisher.
This book was set in Sabon by Graphic Composition, Inc. and was printed and
bound in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Secrets of nature: astrology and alchemy in early modern Europe / edited by
William R. Newman and Anthony Grafton.
p. cm.— (Transformations)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-262-14075-6 (alk. paper)
1. Astrology—Europe—History. 2. Alchemy—Europe—History.
I. Newman, William R. II. Grafton, Anthony. III. Transformations
(M.I.T.Press)
BF1676 .S43 2001
133′.094—dc21
2001030602
Contents
1 Introduction: The Problematic Status of Astrology and Alchemy in
Premodern Europe 1
William R. Newman and Anthony Grafton
2 “Veritatis amor dulcissimus”: Aspects of Cardano’s Astrology 39
Germana Ernst
3 Between the Election and My Hopes: Girolamo Cardano and Medical
Astrology 69
Anthony Grafton and Nancy Siraisi
4 Celestial Offerings: Astrological Motifs in the Dedicatory Letters of
Kepler’s Astronomia Novaand Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius 133
H. Darrel Rutkin
5 Astronomia inferior:Legacies of Johannes Trithemius
and John Dee 173
N.H. Clulee
6 The Rosicrucian Hoax in France (1623–24) 235
Didier Kahn
7 “The Food of Angels”: Simon Forman’s Alchemical Medicine 345
Lauren Kassell
8 Some Problems with the Historiography of Alchemy 385
Lawrence M. Principe and William R. Newman
Contributors 433
Index 435
Frontispiece: Chart of alchemical elections from Thomas Norton, Ordinal of
Alchemy,found in British Library MS. Add. 10302, late fifteenth century.
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1
Introduction: The Problematic Status of
Astrology and Alchemy in Premodern Europe
William R. Newman and Anthony Grafton
The Position of Astrology
One night in 1631, a young Jesuit lay sleeping in his order’s college at
Würzburg. He slept the sleep of the just, not only because he had found a
scholarly vocation, but even more because the Holy Roman Empire had
reached an uneasy state of truce. The emperor had conquered his Prot-
estant enemies; no one, the Jesuit later recalled, could even imagine that
heresy would revive. Suddenly a bright light filled the room. Waking, he
leapt out of bed and ran to the window. He saw the open square before the
college full of armed men and horses. Hurrying from room to room, he
found that everyone else was still deeply asleep and decided that he must
have been dreaming. So he ran to the window, where he saw the same ter-
rifying vision. But when he woke someone to serve as a witness, it had van-
ished. In the next few days, he became a prey to fear and depression and
ran about, as he later recalled, “like a fanatic,” predicting disaster. The oth-
ers made fun of him—until, with satisfying rapidity, invaders materialized
and the city fell. Suddenly, the prophet was treated with respect in his own
country. Since he taught, among other subjects, mathematics, his friends
inferred that he must have used one of his technical skills to forecast the
invasion. Surely, they argued, he had used the art of astrology to make his
prediction. Nothing else could explain his ability to foresee so unexpected
a turn of events.1
The young Jesuit, Athanasius Kircher, had actually foreseen the future
through direct divine inspiration, a fact he carefully concealed. What mat-
ters, from our point of view, is the reaction of his friends. As late as the
1630s, the most highly educated young men in south Germany still found