Michela Pereira

PROJECTING PERFECTION.
REMARKS ON THE ORIGIN OF THE
«ALCHEMY OF THE ELIXIR»

1. First traces of alchemy in Medieval Europe

Alchemy was an exciting novelty introduced into Western Latin

culture by the movement of scientific translations, developed
between the 12th and the early 13th century. Although contacts with
Byzantium and with Islamic countries (especially al-Andalus) may
have led to an early transfer of craftsmen’s practices, and especially
of metallurgical recipes, the current state of research does not allow
us to safely state further unwritten connections. Indeed, we can
trace the origin of Western alchemy only on the ground of written
documents, i.e. alchemical texts. The first two treatises translated
from Arabic into Latin were the Testamentum attributed to Morienus
(1144), and the Septem tractatus – or Tractatus aureus – attributed to
Hermes Trismegistos 1. In manuscripts, both were sometimes accom-
panied by one and the same prologue, written by the well-known
translator Robert of Chester, who considered the doctrine concern-
ing the mysterious «stone that is not a stone» – the kernel of both

1. There is general agreement about 1144 as the date of translation of the

Morienus text: R. Lemay, «L’autenticité de la Préface de Robert de Chester à
sa traduction du Morienus», Chrysopoeia, 4 (1990-91), 3-32. The Testamentum
Morieni was critically edited and translated into English by L. Stavenhagen, A
Testament of Alchemy, Hanover (New Hampshire) 1974. Its Arabic original was
studied by A. Y. Al-Hassan, «The Arabic Original of the Liber de compositione
alchimiae. The Epistle of Maryanus, the Hermit and Philosopher, to Prince
Khalid ibn Yazid», Arabic Science and Philosophy, 14 (2004), 213-31. The Septem
Tractatus Hermetis can still be read only in J. J. Manget éd., Bibliotheca Chemica
Curiosa, Genève 1702 (or in earlier editions). Cf. M. Pereira, «I Septem Tractatus
Hermetis. Note per una ricerca», in P. Lucentini, V. Perrone Compagni, I. Parri
eds., Hermetism from Late Antiquity to Humanism, Turnhout 2003, 651-79.

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«Micrologus» XXIV (2016)

 MICHELA PEREIRA

writings – as wholly unknown to Latin readers, and referred it back

to Hermetic wisdom. Both treatises show traces of a Greek origin,
although a Greek source has not yet been identified for any of them.
The opening sentence of the Testamentum Morieni, indeed, suggests
a kind of translatio alchemiae, a transfer of the Hellenistic transmuta-
tory doctrines through Byzantium to Islam 2. This process started
with the teachings of Adfar (the Greek alchemist Stephanos) to the
hermit Morienus Romanus (Arabic Rūmı̄, meaning “inhabitant of
Byzantium”), who in turn taught the Arab king Calid the secrets of
alchemy after testing his moral attitude 3. All the passages of the story
match historical data about the beginnings of alchemy in Arab-
Islamic culture 4.
Notwithstanding the importance of literary trasmission, the core
of alchemy was laboratory practice 5: no alchemical doctrine would
have been conceivable, had its originary nucleous not existed, which
was formed by recipes going back to the Hellenistic epoch. Yet we
cannot affirm that alchemy is recipes, since we find the same recipes
in several treatises on colours, illumination, composition of inks,
mosaic, which don’t display any alchemical doctrine properly said, if

2. An unbroken line of Greek alchemy is witnessed by the presence of texts

from Zosimus (3rd century A.D.) to Michael Psellus (11th century A.D.) in the
collection of alchemical writings preserved in mss Venezia, Biblioteca
Nazionale Marciana, Gr. 299 and Paris, BnF, Gr. 2325 and 2327. These were
known to European alchemists and scholars since early Renaissance, and were
studied and edited by Marcelin Berthelot and Emanuel Ruelle in their Collec-
tion des anciens alchimistes grecs, 3 vols., Paris 1888-1889 (CAAG). On early
alchemy in Islam see G. Anawati, «Arabic Alchemy», in R. Rashed ed., Encyclo-
pedia of the History of Arabic Science, London 1996, III, 853-85; and R. Halleux,
«The Reception of Arabic Alchemy in the West», ibid., 886-902.
3. A Testament of Alchemy, 2: «In nomine Domini pii et misericordis. Res que
accidit ad Calid filium Iezid filii Macoia cum Morieno Romano. Ista est res
quam habuit Morienus senex heremita in hereditate ab Adfar Alexandrinus de
bonis spiritualibus que sunt scripta in libro Galib captivi Iezid filii Macoia […]
Fuit causa Calid filio Iezid filii Macoia cum Morieno Romano, qui erat
heremita in montibus Ierosolimitanis» (ibid., 3: «In the name of the Lord, holy
and compassionate: this is the story of how Khālid ibn Yazı̄d ibn Mu’hāwiyya
came into possession of the spiritual riches handed down by Stephanos of
Alezandria to Morienus, the aged recluse, as is written in the book of Ghālib,
bondsman of Yazı̄d ibn Mu’hāwiyya … how Yazı̄d ibn Mu’hāwiyya sought out
Morienus the Greek, who lived as a recluse in the mountains of Jerusalem»).
4. G. Anawati, «Arabic Alchemy», quoted above (n. 2).
5. R. Halleux, Les textes alchimiques, Turnhout 1979, 74-79: «La recette cœur
de l’Opus».

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 PROJECTING PERFECTION

and when they have a doctrinal content at all. Indeed, the tight link
between practical and doctrinal contents represented the most
uncanny feature of transmutatory wisdom 6.
Alchemy cannot be reduced to metallurgy or proto-chemistry,
although metals were the basic subject of alchemical transforma-
tions. Yet alchemy can neither be regarded as a part of natural phi-
losophy developed in Medieval schools and universities – the
domain of knowledge covered by Aristotle’s books on physics and
on the material world in all its breadth. Finally, ancient and medieval
alchemy can hardly be considered as a merely spiritual or imaginary
activity, because alchemists had a truly material aim, and they
worked hard on concrete substances (metals, minerals, vegetable
juices). However, their work was imbued with spiritual meaning: the
idea of transforming base, corruptible metals (or, more generally
speaking, corruptible matter) into perfect and incorruptible ones,
had been characterized by undeniable religious overtones since its
origin. The logic of alchemy, in fact, is grounded on the dynamic
tension and mutual action between matter and spirit, the two
extremes of the one quintessential substance of the world, as well as
on the epistemological assumption that only the interrelation
between natural knowledge and human work can re-actualize the
world’s originary perfection 7.
The basic content of alchemy since its very origin is the ultimate
identity of base matter – that is treated by means of fire – and per-
fect matter, characterized by the same incorruptibility and subtlety
as heavenly matter. Their identity is both produced and revealed by
the alchemist’s laboratory work (opus). This basic content was artic-
ulated differently in different cultural environments, in relation to
dominant philosophical and religious ideas, according to its histori-
cal development 8.

6. M. Pereira, «Alchemy», in Encyclopedia of Philosophy, I, London 1998.

7. A. Faivre, «Pour un approche figurative de l’alchimie», Annales E.S.C., 26
(1971), 841-53; M. Pereira, «Mater alchimia. Trasformazione e cura del mondo»,
in Ead. ed., Alchimia. I testi della tradizione occidentale, Milano 2006, XI-LXX (see
esp. XXVIII-XXXI).
8. Alchemy developed also in China and India: for a first approach and a
comparative outlook of these traditions, see M. Eliade (Overview), N. Sivin
(Chinese Alchemy), D. White (Indian A.), H. and R. Kahane (Hellenistic and
Medieval A.), H. Rahim (Islamic A.), A. Coudert (Renaissance A.), all compos-
ing the entry «Alchemy» in Encyclopedia of Religion, New York-London 1987, I,

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 MICHELA PEREIRA

The Latin philosophers, who first read the Septem tractatus Her-
metis and the Testamentum Morieni, found within these texts some
sentences which seemed to allude to a higher mystery than the pro-
duction of perfect metals. It had religious overtones, and was the
peculiar heritage of a development started in later Byzantine
alchemy with the Lessons of Stephanos, dedicated to the Emperor
Heraklios (610-641) 9. This mystery was the core content of the text
written by Stephanos’ disciple, Morienus. «But he who is eager for
this knowledge and pursues it does well, for by means of it he will
gain access to strange things he had never known before», Morienus
says to king Calid 10. And Hermes celebrates the accomplishment of
the process with the following words: «Come here, children of the
wise men, now we must rejoice and exult since death has been
destroyed and our son reigns» 11. The allusions to the mystery
detected in the Septem tractatus and in the Testamentum Morieni, as
well as the early appearance of a sexual symbolism in the Arab trea-
tise Risālat al-shams ilā al-h.ilāl (Epistola solis ad lunam crescentem),
point to some treatises of the Byzantine alchemical tradition, where
the originary Hermetic idea, that the whole material world (metals
and minerals too) was endowed with life, had been applied to
alchemical processes 12.

183-203. A definition of alchemy capable of embracing all its historical mani-

festations was proposed by H. J. Sheppard at the XVIth International Congress
of the History of Science, Bucarest 1981, and was later printed in Id., «Euro-
pean Alchemy in the Context of a Universal Definition», in C. Meinel hrsg.,
Die Alchemie in der europäische Kultur- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Wiesbaden
1986, 13-17. Some qualifications to Sheppard’s definition are proposed in my
paper cited in the previous note, XIII-XIV.
9. Stephanos’ alchemical Lessons were edited by I. L. Ideler, Physici et Medici
Graeci Minores, Berlin 1843; only the first three lessons were re-edited with
English translation by F. S. Taylor, «The Alchemical Works of Stephanos of
Alexandria», Ambix, 1 (1937-1938), 116-39; Ambix, 2 (1938-1946), 39-49.
10. A Testament, 39 (ibid., 38: «Et omnis qui hanc scientiam multum que-
siverit et amaverit bene agit, quia per istam intravit ad aliam quam nondum
cognoverat»).
11. Septem Tractatus Hermetis, ms. Berlin, SPK, lat. 4° 584, fol. 26r: «Venite,
sapientum fili, ex nunc gaudeamus et delectemur simul quia mors consumpta
est, et filius noster iam regnat» (cf. Pereira, «I Septem tractatus», 670).
12. The anonymous author of a text linked to Stephanos’ Lessons, the Teach-
ing of Comarios to Cleopatra, interpreted the metalline amalgams in terms of the
human sexual union, the central issue of later alchemical symbolism, and
claimed that alchemy leads from darkness to light, from pain to joy, from death
to life. This treatise was edited in Berthelot-Ruelle, CAAG, II (4.20), 289-99

76
 PROJECTING PERFECTION

Although symbolic themes increased since the transfer of alchemy

from Byzantine to Islamic culture, metallurgical practices were by
no means dismissed by Arab-Islamic alchemists. Their contribution
to the knowledge of metals, and their practice on them, was of such
importance, that the Western development of a refined classification
of metals and minerals, as well as the progress of laboratory practice,
depended mainly on Rhazi’s Kitāb al-asrār (Liber secretorum de voce
Bubacaris) and on the Jabirian corpus 13.
Like metallurgical and proto-chemical developments, also the
grounds for an epistemological discussion of alchemy were built on
Arab-Islamic sources. The possibility of alchemy and the relationship
between transmutatory practice (ars) and natural processes, was
debated in Avicenna’s Al Af’āl wa al-infi’ālat (Actions and passions), a
writing translated into Latin as De congelatione et conglutinatione
lapidum, which was generally read as a complement to the fourth
book of Aristotle’s Meteorologica. Avicenna had also written a kind of
laboratory protocol on the main product of alchemy, the Risālat al
ik-sı̄r (Letter on the elixir) – a sober account of processes used to pro-
duce the substance (or substances) which tinges (tingit) metals,
giving them the physical characters of gold or of silver – basically:
colour, resistance to fire and acids, weight. Tinging, however, did not
entail a deep, «essential», transmutation of the metalline species: this
was the core of Avicenna’s argument in the final passage of De con-
gelatione, generally quoted from its incipit Sciant artifices, where he
clearly stated the limits of alchemy within a neatly Aristotelian con-
ceptual framework 14.

(French translation, III, 278-87), see esp. paragraphs 10, 11, 14-15. Cf. J. Letrouit,
«Chronologie des alchimistes grecs», in D. Kahn, S. Matton éds., Alchimie: art,
histoire et mythe. Actes du Ier Colloque international de la Société d’étude de
l’histoire de l’alchimie. Paris, Collège de France, 14-15-16 mars 1991, Paris,
Milano 1995, 83-85; Pereira, «I Septem tractatus», 670-71.
13. W. R. Newman, «Introduction», ch. 3, in Id., The «Summa perfectionis» of
Pseudo-Geber. A Critical Edition, Translation and Study, Leiden 1991.
14. E. J. Holmyard, D.C. Mandeville éds., Avicennae de congelatione et congluti-
natione lapidum, Paris 1927 (with English translation); G. Anawati, «Avicenne et
l’alchimie», in Oriente e Occidente nel Medioevo: filosofia e scienze. Atti del con-
vegno internazionale Roma 9-15 aprile 1969, Roma 1971 (Accademia
nazionale dei Lincei. Fondazione Alessandro Volta, 13), 285-346; A. Hasnawi,
«Avicenne et le livre IV des “Météorologiques” d’Aristote», in a c. di C. Viano,
Aristoteles Chemicus. Il IV libro dei Meteorologica nella tradizione antica e
medievale, Sankt Augustin 2002, 133-43.

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 MICHELA PEREIRA

These contributions of Arab-Islamic alchemy – the research on

the physical and chemical properties of metals and minerals accord-
ing to Rhazean and Jabirian developments, on one side, and the
epistemological discussion grounded on Avicenna and Aristotle, on
the other – converged on early attempts made by some Western
philosophers and alchemists, like Albert the Great and Vincent of
Beauvais, the «Latin Geber» and Petrus Bonus, to find a place for
alchemy within Scholastic natural philosophy 15. Alchemy was con-
ceived as a special science, depending on Aristotelian metereology,
and supplementing it by means of metallurgical and mineralogical
knowledge, as especially Albert the Great asserted in his De minerali-
bus. Yet, it was difficult to encompass a basically practical science
within Aristotelian epistemology. Therefore the claim of the
alchemists to artificially produce perfect metals was finally rejected
as a fraud, on the ground of Avicenna’s distinction between «tinging»
and transmuting species, and the philosophical debate had a juridical
echo in the decretal issued by pope John XXII, Spondent quas non
exhibent (1317 or 1319) 16. This notwithstanding, laboratory practice
was not abandoned; instead it slowly evolved into pre-modern chym-
istry until the definitive assessment of modern chemistry in the age of
Enlightenment 17.

2. A higher mystery

The way in which alchemy had been presented in several Arab-

Islamic texts, however, opened up a different possibility: that of con-
sidering it a wisdom, whose features overstep the limits of Aris-
totelian epistemology, and which was consequently untouched by
criticism based on this. Alchemical writings referring to the Her-
metic wisdom alluded to a mystery, as we have seen, whose cosmo-

15. For an overview of the relationship between alchemy and natural phi-
losophy in the Middle Ages, see C. Crisciani, M. Pereira, L’arte del sole e della
luna. Alchimia e filosofia nel Medioevo, Spoleto 1996.
16. C. Crisciani, «La quaestio de alchimia fra Duecento e Trecento», Medioevo,
2 (1976), 119-68; W. R. Newman, «Technology and Alchemical Debate in the
Late Middle Ages», Isis, 80 (1989), 423-45.
17. W. R. Newman, L. M. Principe, «Alchemy vs. Chemistry: The Etymo-
logical Origins of a Historiographic Mistake», Early Science and Medicine, 3
(1998), 32-65.

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 PROJECTING PERFECTION

logical (and possibly magical) root was celebrated in the aphorisms

of the Tabula smaragdina. This was a text of the utmost importance,
translated into Latin by different translators, and already read and
commented upon by Roger Bacon in the thirteenth century six-
ties 18. This oracular text established a parallel, and even suggested
identity, between the artificial activity of the alchemist in his vessels
and the creation of the world with its elementary forces: «So was ye
world created» 19. The idea of a deep and mysterious involvement of
alchemical transformations with the secret of cosmos and life was
especially developed within the Jabirian corpus, which was formed
by many texts spanning from the eighth to the tenth century and
clearly written by different authors 20. A puzzling book which was
not translated into Latin, the Kitāb al-Tajmı̄ʿ or Book of Concentration,
states the possibility of creating life within the alchemist’s vessels 21;
and the Kitāb al-Rah.ma or Liber Misericordie, translated and widely
read in the West since the early thirteenth century, introduced the

18. M. Plessner, «Neue Materialien zur Geschichte der Tabula smaragdina»,

Der Islam. Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kultur des islamischen Orients, 16 (1927),
77-113; D. Kahn, La Table d’Émeraude et sa tradition alchimique, Paris 1995; I.
Caiazzo, J. M. Mandosio, «La Tabula smaragdina nel Medioevo latino», in a. c. di
P. Lucentini, V. Perrone-Compagni, I. Parri, Hermetism from late antiquity to
humanism. La tradizione ermetica dal mondo tardo-antico all’umanesimo. Atti del
convegno internazionale di studi, Napoli 20-24 novembre 2001, Turnhout 2003,
681-711. The Tabula smaragdina is the final section of Balı̄nūs’ cosmological
encyclopedia, the Kitāb sirr al-haliqā: U. Weisser hrsg., Das Buch über das Geheim-
˘
nis der Schöpfung von Pseudo-Apollonios von Tyana, Berlin, New York 1980. The
Latin translation was edited by F. Hudry, «Le De secretis nature du ps.-Apollo-
nius de Tyane, trad. lat. par Hugues de Santalla du Kitāb sirr al-haliqā»,
Chrysopoeia, 6 (1997-1999), 1-154. ˘
19. The quotation is drawn from Isaac Newton’s translation of the Tabula
smaragdina, recorded on folio 2r of Keynes MS 28. Newton’s alchemical her-
itage was studied by Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, who edited the Tabula with
Newton’s commentary in her last book, The Janus faces of genius. The role of
alchemy in Newton’s thought, Cambridge 1991, 274-77 (the text can also be read
in the website The Chymistry of Isaac Newton, W. R. Newman ed.,
http://purl.dilib.indiana.edu/iud/newton/ALCH00017).
20. P. Kraus, Jābir ibn H. ayyān. Contribution à l’histoire des idées scientifiques dans
l’Islam. Jābir et la science greque, II, (1942), Paris 1986; S. N. Haq, Names, natures
and things: The alchemist Jābir ibn H. ayyān and his Kitāb al-ahjār (Book of stones),
Dordrecht 1994 (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 158).
21. Kraus, Jābir, I, 95-97; Haq, Names, 78 n. 171. The second part of the Book
of Concentration, in the Italian translation by P. Travaglia, is printed in Pereira,
Alchimia, 148-64 («Trasmutazione e creazioni»).

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 MICHELA PEREIRA

idea of the product of the alchemical opus as a substance capable of

improving human life and of reducing mankind’s suffering 22.
This substance was called elixir, after the Greek name of the
«powder of transmutation» (iksir) simply preceded by the Arabic arti-
cle al; this term appears in Septem tractatus, Testamentum Morieni, and
Liber misericordiae, and was therefore known by Latin scholars since
their very first acquaintance with alchemy. Moreover, the composi-
tion and virtues of the elixir were thoroughly presented in a twelfth
century treatise which circulated in Latin Scholastic environments
under the name of Avicenna, with the suggestive title De anima in arte
alchemiae; this was translated from an Arab original, although we pos-
sess only its Latin version 23. The importance of the pseudo-Avicenna
De anima in arte alchemiae can hardly be over-estimated, since practi-
cal and doctrinal developments of the elixir in Latin alchemy were
based mainly on this text, as I have argued elsewhere and Sébastien
Moureau has recently confirmed, especially in relation to Roger
Bacon’s use of it 24. This very notion of elixir would give impulse to
the impressive growth of interest in alchemy and to its wide diffusion
since the beginning of the fourteenth century.
Indeed the elixir, produced by means of artificial processes, and
mysteriously related to the secret of life, seemed to be the thing
alluded to, under the veil of secrecy, by the metaphors developed in
several texts belonging to the Arab-Islamic tradition and translated

22. The Latin translation of the Liber misericordiae was edited by Ernst
Darmstädter, «Liber Misericordiae Geber. Eine lateinische Übersetzung des
grösseren Kitāb al-Rah.ma», Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin, 17 (1915; reprint
1965), 181-97. Cf. Haq, Names, 31 and 46-47; Italian translation of the Arabic
text by P. Travaglia in Pereira, Alchimia, 181-212 («La via dell’elixir»).
23. This is the opinion of Sébastien Moureau, who is currently preparing
the critical edition of the De anima: S. Moureau, «Some considerations con-
cerning the Alchemy of the De anima in arte alchemiae of Pseudo-Avicenna»,
Ambix, 56 (2009), 49-56; Id., «Questions of Methodology about Pseudo-Avi-
cenna De anima in arte alchemiae: Identification of a Latin Translation and
Method of Edition», in M. Lopez-Pérez, D. Kahn, M. Rey Bueno eds., Chymia:
Science and Nature in Early Modern Science (1450-1750), Newcastle upon Tyne
2010, 1-19.
24. M. Pereira, «Teorie dell’elixir nell’alchimia latina medievale», Le crisi del-
l’alchimia. The Crisis of Alchemy = Micrologus, 3 (1995), 103-48; S. Moureau,
«Elixir atque fermentum. New Investigations About the Link Between Pseudo-
Avicenna’s De anima in arte alchemiae and Roger Bacon: Alchemical and Med-
ical Doctrines», Traditio, 68 (2013), 277-323.

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 PROJECTING PERFECTION

into Latin before the middle of the thirteenth century. The most dif-
fused of these, and most used by Western authors, were the already
mentioned poem Epistola solis ad lunam crescentem, enshrined within
a prose treatise attributed to Senior Zadith, Tabula chemica (Al-mā’ al-
waraqî ) 25, and the Tractatus trium verborum, whose author was named
Khālid, like the caliph on whose request Morienus had written his
Testamentum 26. While the Epistola celebrates the marriage of the
opposites under the metaphors of male and female, sun and moon,
cock and hen, the Tractatus trium verborum presents the growth of the
alchemical «stone that is not a stone» (the paradox uttered by
Morienus) in terms of the development of the embryo in the
mother’s womb 27. These and similar texts were at the origin of the
alchemical symbolism which flourished in late Medieval, Renais-
sance and Baroque writings 28.

25. Mohammād ibn-Umail al-Tamı̄mi, called al-Sadı̄k (fl. first half of the
10th century), wrote three alchemical treatises: the Al-mā’ al-waraqî, the Risālat
al-shams ilā al-h.ilāl and the Kitāb al-mā’ al-waraqî wa’l-ard. an-najmiyyah (The book
of the silvery water and of the starry earth). This was a commentary to the Epistola:
see Muhammad ibn-Umail, «Three Arabic Treatises on Alchemy» M.Turab Ali
ed., H. E. Stapleton, M. Hidayat Husain transl, Memoirs of the Asiatic Society of
Bengal, 12 (1933), 147-97. The entire text was translated into Latin, with the
name of the author rendered as Senior Zadith: see I. Ronca, «Senior De Chemia.
A reassessment of the Medieval Latin translation of Ibn Umail’s Al-mā’ al-waraqî
wa’l-ard. an-najmiyyah», Bulletin S.I.E.P.M., 37 (1995), 9-31.
26. This was the caliph Khālid ibn Yazı̄d, 7th c., who fostered the introduc-
tion of alchemy into early Islamic society. The name of Khālid is also associated
to that of Ibn Umail in some Latin manuscripts.
27. Remarkable symbolic contents characterize also the Turba philosophorum,
the treatises attributed to Rosinus (deemed to be the Arab for Zosimus), the
Visio Arislei, Artefius’ Clavis sapientiae. For a first approach and bibliographical
references, see Pereira, Alchimia, 10 «La lingua dei simboli», 244-71, and 12
«L’autorità dei filosofi», 325-81.
28. Alchemical symbolism is such a wide topic, that it is almost impossible
to give bibliographical references of a general character. Good introductory
readings are the old, yet still useful, H. J. Read, The Alchemists in Life, Literature
and Art, London 1947; then, J. van Lennep, Alchimie: Contribution à l’histoire de
l’art alchimique, Brussels 1985; G. Roberts, The Mirror of Alchemy: Alchemical Ideas
and Images in Manuscripts and Books from Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century,
Toronto-London 1994; M. Gabriele, Alchimia e Iconologia, Udine 1997; L. Abra-
ham, A Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery, Cambridge 1998.

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3.The agent of life and its promoters

Between the alchemically made gold and the elixir there is a key
conceptual difference, although recipes, substances, laboratory processes
and tools used for producing both are generally the same, or very sim-
ilar. Indeed, two different lines in the alchemical tradition (aurifaction
and «elixir» alchemy) cannot be distinguished earlier than the fif-
teenth century – and, even then, they often overlap, at least partially.
Alchemical gold was conceived as a laboratory product that equals the
perfection of natural gold, i.e. incorruptibility, acquired by the base
metal onto which the alchemical agent, an intermediate active sub-
stance, was projected. Yet the claim that a naturally perfect thing can
be artificially reproduced could be, and in fact was, criticized and
eventually rejected, because it did not match the requirements of Aris-
totelian epistemology: basically, the argument was that alchemists did
not know the inner causes of things and could not act from within
bodies, therefore they could only imitate the products of nature, but
not produce something «natural». This was explicitely affirmed, first,
by Avicenna in his Sciant artifices, and later by the author of the Summa
perfectionis magisterii, who wrote that «art cannot imitate nature in all
her works, but imitates her just as it properly can» 29. In contrast with
this difficulty, the perfection of artificial gold was considered even
superior to that of its natural exemplar not only by alchemists, but also
by a philosopher of high esteem like Roger Bacon 30. For Bacon «art

29. Newman, The Summa, 251: «ars in omnibus imitari non valet naturam
operibus sed imitatur eam sicut debite potest» (English transl. ivi, 634). See
Newman, «Technology»; Id., Promethean Ambitions. Alchemy and the Quest to Per-
fect Nature, Chicago, London 2004, ch. 2 («Alchemy and the Art-Nature
Debate»); B. Obrist, «Art et nature dans l’alchimie médiévale», in Théorie et pra-
tique dans la constitution des savoirs alchimiques = Revue d’histoire des sciences, 49
(1996), 215-86.
30. In his Opus maius, Roger Bacon distinguished between «alchemy» and his
own «experimental science», subtly arguing that artificial gold better than natu-
ral could be made per experimentum, although he agreed that alchemy as such
could not equal nature (R. Bacon, Opus maius, Oxford 1897-1900, 214). Yet, in
his later Liber sex scientiarum Bacon explicitly wrote that the experimentator com-
mands the alchemist to prepare gold which can «transform itself into human
nature». (Rogeri Baconis Opera hactenus inedita, Fasc. IX, Oxford 1928, 183). See
A. Paravicini Bagliani, «Ruggero Bacone e l’alchimia di lunga vita. Riflessioni
sui testi», in a c. di C. Crisciani, A. Paravicini Bagliani, Alchimia e medicina nel

82
 PROJECTING PERFECTION

imitates nature and perfects it» 31.

In traditional recipes for making gold, «elixir» was the name given
to an intermediate key-substance acting on base metals, as is clearly
stated in the seminal De anima in arte alchemiae: «alexir is a thing that
we project onto a noble metal (corpus maius), so that it transforms
one thing’s nature into another’s» 32. Yet, at one moment in the his-
torical development of Western alchemy, the elixir itself came to be
considered the ultimate goal of the whole alchemical opus. This
change of status first appeared in a series of Latin texts written at the
beginning of the fourteenth century, whose authors proclaimed
their own affiliation to the Hermetic tradition. However, their
works depended not only on the Hermetic-symbolic texts of the
Arab-Islamic tradition, but also on the most recent technical devel-
opments represented by the Summa perfectionis magisterii, as well as on
the connection between alchemy and medicine established by
Roger Bacon 33.
In these writings, the elixir is the mysterious substance searched
for by all alchemists and finally discovered: a substance that does not
exist in nature, perfected matter which, in turn, is capable of per-

Medioevo, Firenze 2003 (Micrologus’ Library, 9), 33-54; Id., «Riflessioni intorno
alla paternità baconiana del Liber sex scientiarum», in a c. di C. Crisciani, L.
Repici, P. B. Rossi, «Vita longa». Vecchiaia e durata della vita nella tradizione medica
e aristotelica antica e medievale. Atti del Convegno internazionale, Torino, 13-14
giugno 2008, Firenze 2009 (Micrologus’ Library 33), 169-80.
31. Roger Bacon, Opus Minus, in Fratris Rogeri Bacon opera quaedam hactenus
inedita, London 1858, 315: «ars imitatur naturam et eam perficit».
32. Avicenna, «De anima in arte alchemiae», in Artis Chemicae Principes,
Basileae 1572 (reprint Manucius-BIUM, Paris 2003), Dist. IV, 108: «Alexir est res
quam iactamus super corpus maius, ut mittat rem de sua natura in aliam». See
Pereira, «Teorie dell’elixir», 108-16. According to Moureau, in the De anima in
arte alchemiae and in the whole Jabirian alchemy, «elixir» is the name of the sub-
stance which «changes the body’s proportion into another proportion» («Elixir
atque fermentum», 319 n. 163; cf. scheme at p. 315), and has a different meaning
from «fermentum», the perfectly balanced substance which operates by pro-
jecting its own perfection onto diminished bodies. Latin alchemists seemingly
conflated these two notions under the single name of «elixir» (some of them
even use «fermentum» as a component of «elixir» itself).
33. In these few lines I have sketchily summarized a complex historical and
historiographical change, resulting from the last three decades of research on
the history of Medieval alchemy. For a more substantial approach, supported by
selected sources and full bibliographical information, see the section «La fio-
ritura dell’alchimia nel Medioevo latino» in Pereira, Alchimia, 387-763; cf. also
my paper quoted above and n. 24.

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 MICHELA PEREIRA

fecting any bodily substance onto which it is projected, multiplying

perfection almost ad infinitum. The following passage is taken from
the pseudo-Lullian Testamentum, the most widely renowned among
the texts concerning the elixir, and the one which developed both
theory and practice into a real «alchemical philosophy» 34: «This is the
greatest stone kept hidden from the unlearned people by all ancient
philosophers, yet revealed to you. It transmutes every base and imper-
fect metal into an agent that can produce an infinite quantity of gold
and silver. Moreover, we say that it has more efficacious virtue than
all other remedies, and that it is capable of healing all illnesses that
affect the human body – illnesses of hot as well as of cold nature. And
this is the reason: it is of the subtlest and noblest nature, and it
reduces everything to the utmost balance […] It treats in one day an
illness dating from one month, in twelve days a one-year one; should
the illness be more ancient, it would be treated in one month. There-
fore do not wonder if this remedy was sought for more eagerly than
any other, because in it all other remedies are encompassed. My son,
if you can get it, you will own an everlasting treasure» 35.
In the light of recent research, it seems quite likely that this
change in the notion of elixir derived from the conviction that a
higher secret of alchemy existed, surpassing mere metallurgy and
revealing the basic involvement of alchemy with the artificial pro-
duction of life and the preservation of health. Attention to the cen-
tral role of the elixir in Arab-Islamic alchemy and to its comparative

34. M. Pereira, L’oro dei filosofi. Saggio sulle idee di un alchimista del Trecento, Spo-
leto 1992; text edited in M. Pereira, B. Spaggiari, Il Testamentum alchemico
attribuito a Raimondo Lullo. Edizione del testo latino e catalano dal manoscritto Oxford,
Corpus Christi College 244, Firenze 1999 (Millennio medievale, 14. Testi, 6).
35. Testamentum II.30, 376-78: «Iste est lapis summus omnium philosopho-
rum occultatus ignorantibus et tibi revelatus, quod transformat quodlibet
corpus diminutum in infinitum solificum et lunificum verum, secundum quod
elixir fuerit preparatum et subtiliatum. Et consimiliter tibi dicimus quod habet
virtutem et efficaciam super numerum omnium aliarum medicinarum, sanandi
realiter omnem infirmitatem corporis humani, sive sit frigide, sive calide
nature. Quamobrem, quia est subtilissime et nobilissime nature, omnia reducens
ad summam equalitatem […] Et si infirmitas sit unius mensis, ista medicina
sanat in uno die; et si sit unius anni, sanat pure in duodecim diebus; et si sit a
longo tempore, realiter sanat in uno mense. Quare non est mirum, si ista medi-
cina super omnes medicinas alias ab homine sit merito perquirenda, cum
omnes alie universaliter reducantur ad istam. Si igitur, fili, tu habes istam, the-
sarum habes perdurabilem».

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 PROJECTING PERFECTION

meaning was first called by Joseph Needham who, several years ago,
stressed its relevance both cross-disciplinary (between alchemy and
medicine) and cross-cultural (between East and West) in a seminal
paper on the «concept of elixir» written in the early Seventies 36. In
his pages, Needham outlined the features common to Chinese,
Indian and Western elixirs, as follows: firstly, it improves the balance
of any kind of bodies; and, secondly, it is the outcome of a labora-
tory composition. Thus, the central idea shared by Western and East-
ern alchemies was the possibility of artificially producing one or dif-
ferent substances capable of perfecting living bodies by conferring
on them the state of incorruptibility – differently conceived of, as
Needham himself stressed, according to the different philosophical
and theological backgrounds: material immortality for Chinese
Taoists and Indian Siddhis, aequalitas (i.e. the perfect omeostatic
condition of resurrected bodies) for the Western philosopher and
friar Roger Bacon.
According to the Hermetic thought – which underpinned the
philosophical development of the doctrine of the elixir in both
Arab-Islamic and Latin Medieval alchemy – all bodies, metals and
minerals included, were considered living bodies, bodies vitalized by
a soul: an idea found in Chinese and Indian alchemy too 37. This soul
was neither the form spontaneously emerging from the potentiality
of matter, nor the separate spiritual substance given by God to
human beings, but life artificially made by means of processes ration-
ally organized and even ritualized, through which human activity
was deemed to reproduce the creative processes within the alchem-
ical vessels. The alchemist becomes a co-creator, who restores cosmic
matter to its original perfection38.

36. J. Needham, «Il concetto di elixir e la medicina su base chimica in Ori-

ente e in Occidente», Acta medicae historiae Patavinae, 19 (1973-1974), 9-41; Id.,
Science and Civilization in China, V.i and V.iv, Cambridge 1974.
37. Cf. F. Pregadio, Great Clarity. Daoism and Alchemy in Early Medieval China,
Stanford 2006, 75: the elixir «incorporates and represents the authentic essence
that is hidden in and animates matter»; S. Mahdihassan, Indian Alchemy or
Rasayana in the Light of Asceticism and Geriatrics, Delhi 1977, p. xvii: «the entire
play of alchemy depends upon the idea of soul […] soul is a sort of code-word
for what essentially differentiates the living and the dead […] Cosmic Soul and
Prime Matter are two phases of the same entity».
38. No wonder that this appellation «co-creator» has been used for one of
the earliest «alchemists of the elixir»: see W. Theisen, «John Dastin: the alchemist
as co-creator», Ambix, 38 (1991), 73-78. On the cosmological background of the

85
 MICHELA PEREIRA

On such philosophical ground, and following early attempts to

use alchemically made substances as remedies 39, the idea of applying
the product of alchemy to the healing of human bodies was devel-
oped, and the term «elixir» began to be used as its label in some
alchemical texts attributed to Arnald of Villanova, Ramon Lull and
John Dastin, all written in the first decades of the fourteenth cen-
tury (while its synonym, lapis philosophorum, the philosophers’ stone,
was mostly used in metallurgical alchemy). The praise of the elixir
quoted above (note 35), occurs – with remarkably similar wording –
in other relevant alchemical writings, like the Rosarius philosophorum
attributed to Arnald of Villanova, and the Desiderabile desiderium
considered to be the main work written by John Dastin 40. That pas-
sage – which in the Rosarius philosophorum and in the Desiderabile
desiderium occurs at the very end of the text, and in the pseudo-Lul-
lian Testamentum closes the practical part of the work – seems almost
a trade-mark, appended by the three alchemists to their writings as
a reminder of their companionship, whose legendary record is pre-

elixir alchemy, see M. Pereira, «Cosmologie alchemiche», in a c. di C. Martello,

M. C. Militello, A. Vella, Cosmogonie e cosmologie nel Medioevo Atti del Convegno
della Società Italiana per lo Studio del Pensiero Medievale (S.I.S.P.M.). Cata-
nia, 22-24 settembre 2006, Louvain-la-Neuve 2008 (Fédération internationale
des Instituts d’études médiévales (FIDEM). Textes et études du moyen âge, 46),
363-410.
39. The use of distilled waters and oils as medicinal remedies had already
been suggested in the Liber compostellae by the Franciscan friar Bonaventura da
Iseo, who wrote it in the sixties of the XIIIth century. In that same time, physi-
cians and especially surgeons showed a remarkable interest into distilled «water
of life» («aqua vitae»). Cf. M. R. McVaugh, «Alchemy in the Chirurgia of
Teodorico Borgognoni», in a c. di Crisciani, Paravicini Bagliani, Alchimia e medi-
cina, 55-75; P. Capitanucci, «Agli albori della cultura alchemica e farmaceutica
francescana: il Liber Compostelle di Bonaventura da Iseo», in I francescani e le
scienze. Atti del XXXIX Convegno internazionale (Assisi, 6-8 ottobre, 2011),
Spoleto (Perugia) 2012, (Atti dei convegni della Società internazionale di studi
francescani e del Centro interuniversitario di studi francescani. N.S., 22), 203-37.
40. On the Rosarius and other alchemical texts attributed to the physician
and prophet Arnald of Villanova, see A. Calvet, Les œuvres alchimiques attribuées
à Arnaud de Villeneuve, Paris 2011 (Textes et travaux de Chrysopoeia, 11), 125-
66, 263-357 (Latin text and French transl., the praise of the elixir is at 354-55).
On Dastin and his Desiderabile desiderium, besides some pages within Calvet’s
book (147-52), the main reference is still L. Thorndike, A History of Magic and
Experimental Science, New York-London 1923-34, III, ch. 5, 85-102; the Deside-
rabile desiderium has no recent edition, see Bibliotheca chemica curiosa, Genevae
1702, II, 309-24 (the praise of the elixir is at the very end, 324).

86
 PROJECTING PERFECTION

served in the fifteenth century De lapide philosophorum by William

Fabri de Dya, physician to the anti-Pope Felix V 41.
These «alchemists of the elixir» developed the link between
alchemy and medicine that Roger Bacon had mainly derived from
his reading of the De anima in arte alchemiae, and had expressed by
claiming that alchemy, medicine, and natural philosophy are but dif-
ferent languages to teach one and the same doctrine 42. In turn, the
alchemists who concocted the notion of «mother of all medicines»
(mater medicinarum), as the elixir was later defined 43, gave concrete
evidence of the «priceless glory» (gloria inestimabilis) that Roger had
foreseen 44.

41. C. Crisciani, Il papa e l’alchimia. Felice V, Guglielmo Fabri e l’elixir, Roma

2002 (La corte dei papi, 10), 168: «[…] Ultramontani habuerunt eodem tempore
concurrentes Arnaldum de Villanova, Raimundum Lulii et Johannes de Testym,
qui cum rege Odoardo Anglie, domino insulanorum inhabitantium mare
oceanum peregerunt et libros scripserunt […]» («Those who live North of the
Alps had Arnald of Villanova, Ramon Lull and John Dastin, who lived at the
same time and travelled on the Ocean sea together with the king of the insu-
lar people, Edward of England, and wrote books»). As Crisciani remarks, this
passage, and two similar sentences occurring in previous pages, recall some lines
of the pseudo-Lullian Testamentum, where the author refers to «socii» who
shared the vicissitudes of the alchemical enterprise with him. Fabri is one of
the first witnesses of the legend of Lull as alchemist, and although his mention
of the alchemical trio cannot be taken at face value, it deserves being taken into
account. Cf. M. Pereira, «Il santo alchimista. Intrecci biografici e leggendari
attorno a Raimondo Lullo», The Medieval Legends of Philosophers and Scholars =
Micrologus, 21 (2013), 471-516 (esp. 505-7).
42. Moureau, «Elixir atque fermentum», Conclusion, 322-23; Pereira, L’oro dei
filosofi, 55 (quoting from Bacon’s Opus tertium, cf. P. Duhem, Un fragment inédit
de l’Opus tertium, Quaracchi 1909, 180, 183).
43. M. Pereira, «Mater Medicinarum: English Physicians and the Alchemical
Elixir in the Fifteenth Century», in R. French, J. Arrizabalaga, A. Cunningham,
L. García Ballester eds., Medicine from the Black Death to the French Disease,
Aldershot 1998 (The History of Medicine in Context), 26-52.
44. Roger Bacon, Secretum secretorum cum glossis et notulis = Opera hactenus
inedita Fasc. V, Oxford 1920, 23: «De Gloria Inestimabili est sciendum quod
excellit omnes medicinas in libris medicorum scriptas in conservacione sani-
tatis et virium custodia» («Regarding priceless glory, it must be known that it
surpasses all remedies described in physicians’ books concerning the preserva-
tion of health and safeguard of one’s energies»). This remedy, explicitly related
to prolongevity, is a «corpus equalis complexionis» («a body of balanced tem-
perament»), in whose preparation four things are required: the quality of things
which fix it («ex proprietate rerum sigillancium se»), the right proportion
(«bona proportione»), a proper compound («debita commixtione») and irradi-
ation by heavenly virtue («celestis virtutis irradiacione»).

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 MICHELA PEREIRA

But the question arises, as to how Baconian ideas reached the

alchemists of the elixir. Until today, we could only limit ourselves to
the detection of a doctrinal link between the English philosopher
and the traditional trio Lull-Arnald-Dastin, of whom Raimond Lull
and Arnald of Villanova used to be the most renowned and studied.
Yet, both are only fictional authors of the writings which circulated
under their names since about the half of the fourteenth century,
and the impossibility to identify the real authors of the earliest texts
of both collections has prevented scholars from venturing beyond
the statement of textual and doctrinal convergences of these authors
with Bacon 45.
Some remarks about the third personage of the legendary trio,
John Dastin, may perhaps foster a new approach. Until recently, in
historical studies on Medieval alchemy, Dastin has been generally
relegated to the minor role of a follower of the other two alchemists
of the elixir, and especially of pseudo-Arnald, although only Dastin’s
name has been aknowledged as that of a real historical personage,
neither a fake nor a pseudonymous. Lynn Thorndike, in his founda-
tional study, agreed with this opinion, as well as with the tradition-
ally undisputed belief that Dastin was of English origin; yet his
research focused on the manuscript tradition of Dastin’s writings,
without archival evidence of the historical data retrieved 46.
A careful reconsideration of Thorndike’s chapter, in a dissertation
focusing on some of Dastin’s recently edited «minor» works – four
of the letters bearing his authorship in manuscript tradition –, con-

45. Concerning the alchemical writings attributed to Arnald, see the col-
lected essays of Antoine Calvet cited above, n. 40. For the pseudo-Lullian corpus,
M. Pereira, The alchemical corpus attributed to Raymond Lull, London 1989 (War-
burg Institute. Surveys and Texts, 18). The problems of the pseudo-Arnald are
even more complex than those of the pseudo-Lull, because of the links with
Arnald’s authentic medical works and with the milieu of his disciples. More-
over, some features of the pseudo-Lullian Testamentum reveal a knowledge of
some of Arnald’s medical works (cf. M. Pereira, «Maestro di segreti o caposcuola
contestato? Presenza di Arnaldo da Villanova e di temi della medicina arnal-
diana in alcuni testi alchemici pseudo-lulliani», in Actes de la II Trobada Interna-
cional d’Estudis sobre Arnau de Vilanova = Arxiu de textos catalans antics, 23-24
(2004-2005), 381-412).
46. Thorndike, A History, cited above, n. 39. His pages are especially remark-
able for a detailed account of the Desiderabile desiderium, whose contents are
compared with other works ascribed to Dastin in manuscripts, and with some
Arnaldian alchemical writings, especially the Rosarius philosophorum.

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 PROJECTING PERFECTION

firms that Dastin was a clerk acquainted with ecclesiastical poten-

tates and well versed in alchemical literature. These letters cannot
have been written earlier than 1290ca., if we take into account the
dates of the dedicatee of most of them, Cardinal Napoleone Orsini,
who succeeded to Ottobono Fieschi in the see of St. Adriano al
Foro in 1287, and died in 1341. For internal reasons, the last of the
letters considered is dated not later than 1320ca. Therefore it seems
possible «to set him [Dastin] free from the outdone chronological
set-up, according to which he was always considered an epigone of
late Medieval Latin alchemy» 47. This conclusion fits, albeit whith
some differences that will be considered in detail below, into the
careful biographical outlook most recently given by the Spanish
scholar José Rodríguez Guerrero who, delving into archival records
and local and ecclesiastical histories, confirms the real existence and
the English origin of John Dastin 48. The family name, also spelt in
manuscripts and archival records as Daston, Aston, Astin, Dastinus,
Astinus, Dauston, de Aston, d’Aston, is that of a powerful family of
the Gloucester region, and John himself is sometimes called «de
Greite» from the village of Greet, where he was probably born at
the beginning of the Nineties (as can be inferred, since he took
minor ecclesiastical orders in 1309 and 1311). A clerk named John
Daston is recorded at Oxford (where he might have studied) in
1314, 1316, and 1317 – this last being the year of his first acquain-
tance with cardinal Napoleone Orsini. In that same year he fol-
lowed cardinal Orsini to Avignon, and six years later renounced the
ecclesiastical benefits as Vicar of Bringhurst, in Leicestershire. Later
evidence rarefies, yet he is likely to be the John Daston who, in 1341
(a few months before Orsini’s death), was appointed Vicar at Aber-

47. G. Balsamo, «Hoc magisterium pertinet ad reges et huius mundi altiores»: un

itinerario di riflessioni su alcune epistole di John Dastin, unpublished MA Diss. (Uni-
versità di Siena, Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia, a.a. 2010-11, tutor M. Pereira). This
dissertation was conceived of as a preparatory study in view of a research on the
whole corpus, in which Giovanni Balsamo could not, in fact, engage. Hence his
final statement is expressed as the result of the pars destruens of his discussion:
«è stato possible sganciarlo dall’ormai stantia collocazione cronologica che da
sempre lo vede vestire i panni di un epigono dell’alchimia latina tardo-me-
dievale» (p. 122).
48. J. Rodríguez Guerrero, «Un repaso a la alquimia del Midi Francés en el
Siglo XIV (parte I)», Azogue, 7 (2010-2013), 75-141 esp. III El alquimista inglés
John Dastin (ca. 1293-ca 1383), 92-101 (www.revistaazogue.com).

89
 MICHELA PEREIRA

ford, Yorkshire; another document, dated 1386, shows that he had

died sometime before that year.
Although both most recent studies agree about the presence of
Dastin at the papal court around the period in which the decretal
Spondent quas non exhibent was issued 49, the dates highlighted by
Rodríguez postpone the beginning of Dastin’s literary activity ded-
icated to Cardinal Orsini, and 1311 is suggested as the date of com-
position of the very first alchemical work of the English alchemist.
A three-stage development is sketched by the same scholar, who
promises a forthcoming study of Dastin’s writings 50: ante 1317, with
short, elementary works written in allegorical style; 1317-1341, still
short but more theoretically committed texts, like the Epistola de
alchemia ad Papam Iohannem XXII, and treatises (among which the
Desiderabile desiderium), leading to the climax of Dastin’s production,
the Speculum philosophiae ad Neapoleonem Ursinum (1336-41) 51; 1341
on, reworking(s) of the Speculum.
It is possible to link these steps (or better, the first two) to the the-
matic comparison of Dastin’s published epistles, in which a develop-
ment from metalline transmutation (in the style of the Latin Geber)
to the suggestion of the medical use of the elixir has been detected.
This, of course, needs revising the terminus post quem proposed for
the epistles, but does not invalidate the statement that the com-
monly shared notion of Dastin as a simple epigone of pseudo-
Arnald and pseudo-Lull should be revised, to aknowledge him as an
early (maybe the earliest) witness of the transition from aurifaction
to elixir alchemy 52. An especially relevant feature in Dastin’s letters

49. This is the well known, although uncertainly dated (1317 or 1319), con-
demnation of alchemy as fraud issued by pope John XXII. As has been often
remarked, while this condemnation foreclosed further attemps to accept
alchemy as a Scholastic science, it did not stop its diffusion, but rather fostered
the two main changes that alchemy underwent at that epoch: the increasing
occultation, especially by means of symbolic language, and the turn towards
medical alchemy. See above, n. 20 and 21. About Dastin, cf. Rodríguez Guer-
rero, «Un repaso», 98; Balsamo, «Hoc magisterium», 114.
50. Rodríguez Guerrero, «Un repaso», 100.
51. This work follows the Verbum abbreviatum in ms. London, British Library,
Sloane 2476, fol. 48v-67r. Other manuscripts, with revised and augmented ver-
sion(s) of it, are listed by Rodríguez Guerrero, «Un repaso», 101 n. 68. Cf. Bal-
samo, «Hoc magisterium», 60, 112.
52. Balsamo, «Hoc magisterium», 115, 117.

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 PROJECTING PERFECTION

is that, while «Lull» and «Arnald» don’t reveal in any way the sources
of their alchemical doctrines, John clearly refers to, and even liter-
ally quotes his sources, which vary in part among the different texts,
but are always clearly recorded 53. These include some of the Arab-
Islamic alchemical treatises which focused on the «higher mystery»
of alchemy, and circulated in Latin translation during the thirteenth
century: Secretum secretorum, Hermes, Morienus, Alphidius, Visio
Arislei, Rosinus ad Sarratantam.
Summing up the main features of the epistles, we can note that
the Super arte alcumistica 54 is closely linked to the doctrinal and tech-
nical contents of the Summa perfectionis magisterii, yet Dastin also
used sources of Arab-Islamic origin in his brief account of transmu-
tation. The Epistola boni viri 55 is still dependent on the Summa for its
technical operations, yet the author confronts more complex prob-
lems, concerning the relationship between art and nature, and devel-
ops a partially new alchemical language, using religious overtones
and developing metaphors like that of the alchemical opus as the
growth of the embryo in the female womb. A different source, the
Rosinus ad Sarratantam, is exploited in the letter O venerande pater 56,
where the transmutatory practice is arranged according to a simpli-
fied fourfold scheme, different from the more complex opus referred
to in the previously mentioned letters, and the language is even
more rich in metaphors. Eventually, in the Epistola ad Johannem

53. Some two-columns specimens are given in Balsamo, «Hoc magisterium»,

68-72 (Epistola O venerande pater / Rosinus ad Sarratantam), 80 (Epistola ad Johan-
nem XXII / pseudo-Aristotle Secretum secretorum).
54. Edited from ms Sloane 2476 by W. Theisen, «John Dastin: the alchemist
as co-creator», Ambix, 38 (1991), 73-78. Balsamo («Hoc magisterium», 21-33)
highlights quotations from Hermes, Alphidius, Maria the Jewess, pseudo-Dem-
ocritos, pseudo-Aristotle.
55. Ed. in W. Theisen, «John Dastin’s letter on the philosophers’ stone»,
Ambix, 33 (1986), 78-87. This brief work has three versions, only one of which
is edited and translated into English by Wilfrid Theisen. Cf. Balsamo, «Hoc mag-
isterium», 34-56. Among quoted sources we find the Summa perfectionis magisterii
I.6, 79, about the «materia una» of the opus, and Rhazes as a witness to the
metaphorical names by which this one matter is appelled. The alchemical poem
attributed to Merlin, and the Visio Arislei and Aristotle’s De generatione animalium
are juxtaposed at 80-82, to illustrate the metaphor of the opus as sexual union.
56. Ed. of the first version, from ms. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ashmole
1384, in W. Theisen, «The Letters of John Dastin», Ambix, 55 (2008), 153-68. Cf.
Balsamo, «Hoc magisterium», 57-76.

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XXII 57, remarkable parallels to the Desiderabile desiderium can be

detected, and the suggestion of the medical use of the elixir surfaces.
This last motif is precisely the reason why Dastin was already
grouped with «Lull» and «Arnald» in the fifteenth century, and
remains the main stimulus to further studies on his alchemical
works. What is more, his English origin might be a clue to the
Baconian connection, although his biography does not allow us to
think of him as a direct disciple of Roger. And, if future research
confirms that John Dastin was not just an epigone, but rather a pio-
neer of the «alchemy of the elixir», he would be also a witness to the
debt that this development of alchemy had to a wider range of Arab-
Islamic sources than the De anima in arte alchemiae. This would be a
remarkable step towards a fuller understanding of the transition from
alchemy as mere aurifaction to the medical use of the alchemical
elixir, with its later developments until Paracelsus.

ABSTRACT
Projecting Perfection. Remarks on the origin of the «alchemy of the elixir»
Since its introduction in the Latin West, alchemy vehiculated an idea of
Arab-Islamic origin, i.e. that transmutation encompassed a higher secret
than the mere contents of laboratory practice, metallurgical knowledge,
and even theoretical reflection over doctrines rooted in manual operation
– quite a challenge to Aristotelian epistemology. Such higher secret,
announced in the aphorisms of the Tabula smaragdina, was called elixir in
several Arab-Islamic texts, that developed the idea of a deep and mysteri-
ous involvement of the alchemical transformations with the secrets of
cosmos and life. Precisely this notion of elixir was the focus of the pseudo-
Avicennan De anima in arte alchemiae in which, as also in the jabirian Liber
misericordiae, medicinal properties began to be associated to the elixir itself.
Both texts were widely read by Western scholars, and they were sources for
Roger Bacon’s claim that alchemy, medicine and natural philosophy con-
cern one and the same field of nature’s dynamics. Thus the elixir became

57. Ed. from mss. Cambridge, Trinity College, 1122 and Cambridge, Corpus
Christi College, 99, in C. Josten, «The text of John Dastin’s “Letter to the pope
John XXII”», Ambix, 4 (1949), 34-51. Cf. Balsamo, «Hoc magisterium», 77-97; see
esp. 89-90 for a fourfold comparison of the praise of the elixir in Dastin’s Epi-
stola to Johannem XXII, Desiderabile desiderium, pseudo-Arnald de Villanova Rosa-
rius philosophorum, pseudo-Lull Testamentum.

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 PROJECTING PERFECTION

the very goal of alchemical research in a development of it (the so-called

«alchemy of the elixir»), which reached its climax in the early Fourteenth
century: the Testamentum attributed to Raimond Lull and the Rosarius
philosophorum attributed to Arnald of Villanova were its main vehicles in
later alchemy until Paracelsus. A third author, associated to pseudo-Lull and
pseudo-Arnald by alchemical tradition, was the English alchemist John
Dastin, on whom recent research calls attention, showing that his works –
where his debt to Arabic sources is outspoken – might be the very first tes-
timony to the transition towards the «alchemy of the elixir» (or «medical
alchemy»).
Michela Pereira
SISMEL
[email protected]

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