Alchemy And Authority In The Holy Roman Empire
by Tara Nummedal /
2007 / English / PDF
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What distinguished the true alchemist from the fraud? This
question animated the lives and labors of the common men—and
occasionally women—who made a living as alchemists in the
sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Holy Roman Empire. As
purveyors of practical techniques, inventions, and cures, these
entrepreneurs were prized by princely patrons, who relied upon
alchemists to bolster their political fortunes. At the same
time, satirists, artists, and other commentators used the
figure of the alchemist as a symbol for Europe’s social and
economic ills.
What distinguished the true alchemist from the fraud? This
question animated the lives and labors of the common men—and
occasionally women—who made a living as alchemists in the
sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Holy Roman Empire. As
purveyors of practical techniques, inventions, and cures, these
entrepreneurs were prized by princely patrons, who relied upon
alchemists to bolster their political fortunes. At the same
time, satirists, artists, and other commentators used the
figure of the alchemist as a symbol for Europe’s social and
economic ills.
Drawing on criminal trial records, contracts, laboratory
inventories, satires, and vernacular alchemical treatises,
Drawing on criminal trial records, contracts, laboratory
inventories, satires, and vernacular alchemical treatises,Alchemy and Authority in the Holy Roman Empire
Alchemy and Authority in the Holy Roman Empire situates
the everyday alchemists, largely invisible to modern scholars
until now, at the center of the development of early modern
science and commerce. Reconstructing the workaday world of
entrepreneurial alchemists, Tara Nummedal shows how allegations
of fraud shaped their practices and prospects. These debates
not only reveal enormously diverse understandings of what the
“real” alchemy was and who could practice it; they also connect
a set of little-known practitioners to the largest questions
about commerce, trust, and intellectual authority in early
modern Europe.
situates
the everyday alchemists, largely invisible to modern scholars
until now, at the center of the development of early modern
science and commerce. Reconstructing the workaday world of
entrepreneurial alchemists, Tara Nummedal shows how allegations
of fraud shaped their practices and prospects. These debates
not only reveal enormously diverse understandings of what the
“real” alchemy was and who could practice it; they also connect
a set of little-known practitioners to the largest questions
about commerce, trust, and intellectual authority in early
modern Europe.