Franciscans and the Elixir of Life: Religion and Science in the Later Middle Ages (The Middle Ages Series) PDF
Preview Franciscans and the Elixir of Life: Religion and Science in the Later Middle Ages (The Middle Ages Series)
Franciscans and the Elixir of Life THEMIDDLEAGESSERIES RuthMazoKarras,SeriesEditor EdwardPeters,FoundingEditor Acompletelistofbooksintheseries isavailablefromthepublisher. FRANCISCANS and the ELIXIR OF LIFE Religion and Science in the Later Middle Ages ZACHARY A. MATUS university of pennsylvania press philadelphia Copyright(cid:2)2017UniversityofPennsylvaniaPress Allrightsreserved.Exceptforbriefquotationsusedfor purposesofrevieworscholarlycitation,noneofthisbook maybereproducedinanyformbyanymeanswithoutwritten permissionfromthepublisher. Publishedby UniversityofPennsylvaniaPress Philadelphia,Pennsylvania19104-4112 www.upenn.edu/pennpress PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmericaonacid-freepaper 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData Matus,ZacharyA.,author. Franciscansandtheelixiroflife:religionandscienceinthe laterMiddleAges/ZacharyA.Matus—1sted. Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex Philadelphia:UniversityofPennsylvaniaPress,[2017] pages cm.(TheMiddleAgesseries) ISBN9780812249217(hardcover:alk.paper) 1. Franciscans—History—To1500.2.Alchemy—Religious aspects—Christianity—History—To1500.3.Religionand science—Europe—History—To1500.4.Elixiroflife.I. Title.IISeries:TheMiddleAgesseries BR115.A57 M38 2017 2016053771 ForSuzanne This page intentionally left blank contents Introduction 1 Chapter1.FranciscansandtheSacralCosmos (TheContextofFranciscanAlchemy) 15 Chapter2.ThreeElixirs 40 Chapter3.TheApocalypticImperative 70 Chapter4.ASubjunctiveScience 99 Conclusion 139 Notes 143 WorksCited 185 Index 199 Acknowledgments 203 This page intentionally left blank Introduction Producingtheelixiroflifewasoneoftwomajoraimsofmedievalalchemists. Metallurgicalalchemy,thetransmutationofbasemetals,usuallyintogoldor silver, was the other. Often discussed as a pseudoscience, alchemy in fact playedasignificantpartinthegenealogyofmodernchemistry.Itdealt,above all, with matter—its manipulation, improvement, and general properties. Sometimeslimitedtotechniquesthatwouldbeknowntodyers,metalwork- ers,andotherartisans,initsmostelaboratedformalchemywasascientiathat explained the composition of the physical universe. Alchemy was tied quite closely to other disciplines of natural philosophy, including physics, astrol- ogy,andmedicine.Yetinspiteofitsputativeabilitytoexplainthecomposi- tion of material things, alchemy, unlike its sister disciplines, never gained a lastingfootholdintheschools. Perhaps because of this development, alchemy was not standardized. There was no single definition, nor a general curriculum. There were influ- ential works, but as a practice outside or at the fringe of the university, medievalalchemywasidiosyncratic.Unlike,for instance,thestudyoftheol- ogyoracademicmedicine,wherestudentswereexpectedtoannotatespecific textswiththeirmaster’scommentary,thedecisiontowriteaboutorpractice alchemy was very much an expression of individual preference and circum- stance. Therefore, it was not just detractors who argued with adherents over definitions of alchemy and its place within the fields of medieval scientiae and,morebroadly,itsproperroleinChristendom.Adherentsaswellseldom agreed with one another on these questions. This is not without advantage tothehistorian,however.Alchemy’smarginalityrefracts,ratherthanreflects, normative intellectual life. It provides us a better perspective through which tounderstandtheintellectualcultureoftheera,preciselybecausealchemical literatureresistsessentializationandgeneralization.Thisdisunityofthelitera- ture was apparent enough that by the later Middle Ages, alchemical schools such as the Pseudo-Lullian recognized the messy reality of prior generations 2 Introduction and sought to solve the problem through interpolations and elisions in the manuscripttradition. Discord,however,requiredsomecommongroundonwhichalchemical ideascouldbedebated.Overthecourseofthetwelfthandthirteenthcentu- ries,thepractitioners andtheoreticiansofalchemy organizedtheirdiscipline onthencontemporaryandwidelyacceptedprinciplesofnaturalphilosophy.1 Unlike philosophy, however, the theorization of alchemy often included a typeofempirical practice.Medievaladherentsofalchemy reliedonobserva- tionsandtestscalledexperimenta(orsometimesdocumenta).2RobertBartlett suggests that we might best translate terms like experimenta and experientia to mean observations, rather than experiments, in order to avoid confusion withthemodernterminology.Still,whatisimportantisthatalchemiststook intoconsiderationtheresultsoftheirpractice,orthepracticeofothers,rather than relying exclusively on argumentum (reasoning).3 This is not the same assayingthatthesortofphilosophicalreasoningcommontomedievalphilos- ophy was a subsidiary concern to physical trials. It is better to say that alchemicaldiscourse,likenaturalphilosophy,wasfoundedonbothreasoned argument and established opinion, but could—and did—account for al- chemical praxis to inform its philosophical conclusions. Therefore, like chi- rurgeryandempiricalmedicine,alchemyoccupiedspacebetweenthe“liberal and manual arts” and consequently was held in less esteem than many of its sisterdisciplines.4 Latin commentators of the era—be they translators, practitioners, or skeptics—oftenreferredtoalchemyasanovitas(anovelty),atermthatcould connotedisdain,butalsosignaledtotheintellectualcommunitytheopening of a new scholarly question and endeavor.5 While it is true that some of the techniques and processes that made up the alchemical craft were known in the West well before the twelfth century, alchemy as a distinct branch of knowledge was no longer differentiated as such in the Latin West after the upheavals of late antiquity. It reemerged as a specific discipline over the course of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. What had remained in the early Middle Ages and into the beginning of the High Middle Ages was a collection of lore, recipes, techniques, and strands of classical medical theory—none of which operated under the formal rubric of alchemy. The Arab inheritors of antique alchemy fused the ancient Neoplatonic and Her- metic alchemical practices to Aristotelian natural philosophy, allowing alchemytoemergeasacoherentdiscourse,evenifitsadherentsanddetract- ors did not agree as to its precise potential or the justification for it.6 In
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