THE MONASTERY LINK
Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood. (NewT:Acts 20:28)
Perfecting the world and the soul was the true alchemist's mission. Even
as early as 300 AD, we find this to be a driving force. Here is an excerpt
from a letter Zosimos the Wise wrote his former sweetheart, Theosobeia of
Constantinople:
"He who will devote himself to the great work must
be free from selfishness and greed and filled with piety and goodwill. He
must know the true times of the planets, the magic formulae and processes,
and the magic substances. Fruitless are all efforts of the unlearned and
the deceitful, who strive not after knowledge but after gold--after the curing
of the incurable malady of poverty, a curing which they might have attained
by other means, as by marrying a rich wife with a great dowry." (The
Goldmakers, page 29.)
External Link: Allegories of Zosimos of Panoplis.
Is it any wonder then that many alchemists were monks? A true alchemist was working towards the salvation of the natural world. Many worked from scrolls captured during the Crusades. What better laboratory than a monastery, safe from the greedy intentions of profane? Though there were alchemists in almost every Holy Order, I (Amanda Doerr) will just deal with the two most influential, the Dominicans and Franciscans.
External Link: The Twelve Keys of Basil Valentine, a Benedictine monk.
The Dominicans
It is said that amoung Europeans, Saint Dominic was the first to learn the
secret of the philosopher's stone. And when he died in 1221 he is said to
have left this knowledge to a young monk in his order, the
twenty-eight-year-old Albertus.
This young Dominican was the Swabian Count von Bollstadt, who had studied at
Padua, and had then entered the Dominican Order. Thus, if Saint Dominic had
passed on the secret, he had not transmitted it into unworthy hands. The
monk Albertus had command of physics, mechanics, and chemistry. His Order
sent him into many countries to instruct the monks. He taught at the
monasteries of Cologne, Hildesheim and Freiburg, and at Ratisbon, Strasbourg
and Paris. The young man who had became a monk in his twenty-ninth year was
called at forty, Doctor Universalis.
But his reputation continued still to grow. In 1260 he was made Bishop of
Ratisbon. In three years he restored the impoverished and debased bishopric
and liberated it from a burden of debt. That, it was whispered, was nothing
wonderful for a man who possessed the secret of the philosopher's stone, and
could make gold.
In his seventieth year he resigned his see, entered the Dominican monastery
at Colonge, and once more devoted himself entirely to the sciences. After
his death in 1280 he was called Albertus Magnus, Albert the Great. (Side
note: In 1932 AD, Albertus Magnus was canonized as a Catholic saint.)
Albertus Magnus has often been represented as an opponent of alchemy, on the
strength of short extracts torn from a passage in the second treatise of the
third book of his History of Metals. Here, however is the full
passage:
"Alchemy so proceeds that it breaks up a certain body, takes it out of its
species, and clothes with the most essential of its components a body of
another species. Consquently that alchemical process is the best, which
proceeds from the selfsame means as nature herself. Namely from the
purification of Sulfur by boiling and sublimation, the purification of
Mercurius, and the good admixture of both with a metal basis.
For those two cover every sort of metal."
"Those, however, who propose to whiten with white and to magenta with magenta,
while the species of the coloured metal remains the same, are undoubtedly
decievers and do not make either true Gold or true Silver. And yet almost
all take this course entirely or in part. I have subjected to test specimens
of alchemical gold and silver that has been brought to me. They endure six
or seven firings. But when the heat is applied to them still more often,
their body is destoryed or burnt up."
It is particularly the added sentences against deceivers that are quoted as
the whole judgment of Albertus Magnus on alchemy. But a single sentence
from the next treatise in his book shows us how necessary it was that we
should give the whole passage quoted. In the next treatise he says:
"Gold proceeds from Silver more easily than from any other metal. For it is
only necessary to change its colour and weight, and this is done without
trouble."
[From The Goldmakers, by K. K. Doberer; pages 42 to 43. Side note added.]
The Franciscans
If there is any of the contempories of Albertus Magnus who can be mentioned
in the same breath with him, it is Roger Bacon, the learned English
Franciscan monk. Of a prosperous family like Albert von Bollstadt, Roger
Bacon was born in Somersetshire, 1214. He studied at Oxford and Paris, and,
like Count Albert, became a monk and then a famous teacher of the sciences.
His students in Paris called him Doctor Admirabilis.
But there soon came a deep divergence between the destinies of Brother Roger
and Brother Albertus. Albertus was accorded honour and distinction by the
superiors of his Order. Roger belonged to another Order, the Franciscan.
His superiors regarded the scientific studies of the monk Roger with the
deepest suspicion. Was he not an enthusiastic supporter of another suspect
Franciscan monk, teaching in Paris--Peter Peregrine? Did not this Peregrinus,
also known as de Maricourt, speak against "blind faith"? Did he not teach
that experiment alone can bring us knowledge of all natural things in medicine
and chemistry, yea, of all things in heaven and earth?
We need not wonder at finding Brother Roger Bacon soon back in Paris, from
Oxford, summoned to appear before the judges of the Order, and then condemned
to bread and water and solitary confinement. For ten years he was held thus
in Paris by the General of the Franciscan Order, Giovanni di Fidanza, called
Bonaventura.
Then, in 1265, Guy de Foulques, Papal Legate at the English Court, was
elected Pope. He ascended the papal throne as Clement IV. Guy de Foulques
had known in England of the scientific work of Roger Bacon. Now, as Pope
Clement, he could overrule the superiors of the Order and demand fresh
scientific work from Roger Bacon.
For ten years Roger Bacon had been denied pen and ink. Now radiant with joy,
he set to work again. In rapid sucession he wrote his Opus Majus,
his Opus Minus and his Opus Tertium.
In his Opus Majus in addition to expounding the great basic ideas of
the sciences, Roger Bacon carries on a courageous campaign for freedom
of research. "More secrets of knowledge," he writes, "have always been
discovered by plain and neglected men than by men of popular fame, because
the latter are busy on popular matter." And he adds that he has learnt more
useful and excellent things from people without fame than from well-known
professors.
It is his Opus Minus that contains a detailed description of the
philosophy and practice of alchemy. In practical work Roger Bacon had
evidently continued the experiments of Peregrinus, the attainment of high
temperatures by means of burning glasses, which were so useful to later
alchemists and chemists . . . The chronicler, Peter von Trau, tells in 1385
of two such reflectors which Roger Bacon was said to have made at Oxford
University. With one of these glasses . . . a candle could be lit at any
hour of the day or night. In the other reflector men could see what was
being done in any part of the world. The narrator adds to this naive remark
that Oxford student had begun to waste far too much time on such
experiments. They spent more time lighting candles, he says, than reading
books.
Roger Bacon himself was not left too long to experiment by the superiors of
his Order. In 1278 there came a new purge of troublesome philosophers in
the Order of St. Francis, and Brother Roger was once more placed on bread
and water in a solitary cell. This time he was in his cell for fourteen
years. He spent only the last few years of his life in freedom at Oxford,
in the little room in the squat tower of the gateway at Folly Bridge. And
here is a simile concerning the uses of alchemy which Roger Bacon gives in
his work De Augmentia Scientiarium:
"Alchemy may be compared to the man who told his sons that he had left
them gold buried somewhere in his vineyard; where they, by digging found no
gold, but by turning up the mould about the roots of the vines, procured a
plentiful vintage. So the search and endeavours to make gold have brought
many useful inventions and instructive experiments to light."
[From The Goldmakers, by K. K. Doberer; pages 43 to 46. Boldface added.]
Another Fransican monk, by the name of Bertholdus, tried to solidify quicksilver. Because of his penchant for dangerous experiments, he was soon given the nickname "Black Berthold". Unknown to Berthold, the substances he used in his quest to tame quicksilver produced what was later to be called gunpowder. Hermetically sealing his crucible to keep the hot and cold spirits in, it is no wonder his crucible exploded when he heated it. This didn't deter Black Berthold. He tried it again and used a bronze mortar with a brass plate wedged on top. When Berthold recovered from the blow, all he found was the empty mortar and a hole in the ceiling of his cell.