CHAPTER XV

SOME NOTABLE ALCHEMICAL
MANUSCRIPTS

THE earliest treatises on alchemy in Latin date from about
the eighth century, and two in particular, which are sup¬
posed to have been written in the ninth and tenth centuries, are
of considerable interest.

The work entitled Compositiones ad tingenda contains a number
of recipes which were apparently used in the arts and crafts of
the time, which lends colour to the theory that in early times
alchemy was largely influenced by the workers in metals. In
this manuscript we find formulae for dyeing skins, for gild¬
ing iron, for writing in letters of gold, and for soldering metals.
It also contains recipes for colouring artificial stones used in
making mosaics, directions for staining glass and the staining
of wood, bone, and horn, together with a list of the ores, metals,
earths, and metallic oxides employed by craftsmen in making
jewellery, in enamelling, and in painting. Instructions are
given for gilding glass, wood, metals, and fabrics. Mention is
also made of gums, resins, and other vegetable substances used
in the arts, of products derived from the sea, such as salt, coral,
and molluscs yielding a purple dye. A formula for making
bronze is given, and a recipe for writing in letters of gold is
similar to one recorded in a papyrus at Leyden, which shows
that in all probability many of these recipes date back to a much
earlier period.

In the treatise called the Mappce Clavicula , the earliest-known
copy of which is said to date from the tenth century, several
recipes are given for making ‘gold/ and in a later copy of this
134

NOTABLE ALCHEMICAL MANUSCRIPTS

work, supposed to have been written in the twelfth century, the
preparation of alcohol is thus described:

On mixing a pure and very strong wine with a third of a part of
salt, and heating it in vessels suitable for the purpose, an inflam¬
mable water is obtained which burns away without consuming the
material (on which it is poured).

Lippmann believes that alcohol was first obtained by dis¬
tillation in Southern Italy in the twelfth century.

In a manuscript of the thirteenth century gold is described
as a “metallic body, citrine, ponderous, mute, fulgid, equally
digested in the bowels of the earth and very long washed with
mineral water.”

The majority of alchemical manuscripts of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries are written in cryptic or symbolic language ;
this recipe for making the “Panasea of Gold” is an example:

Take ye winged virgin newly alighted from ye chariott of ye
sunne beams. Draw her lyppes over her teeth y4 her appetite may
be increased. Putt her to bed to a sonne of her own would be
begotten by her. Draw ye curtaines y1 they may sweate.

Sometimes recipes are given in verse, so that the student
should be able to fix them in his memory, as instanced in these
lines :

Take

Mercury and silver fine
Wch in ammalgam combine.

Then wch sublimate and vinegre fine
Y* must wash, penetrate and finily joyne.

Many manuscripts on alchemy are illuminated in gold and

colours, especially those that illustrate various processes. In

some a king, the sun, representing gold, is to be found arrayed

in an elaborate costume of crimson, while a queen, the moon,

symbolizing silver, is clad in blue. Some very fine examples

are still preserved in the Bibliotheque Nationale and the

Library of the Arsenal in Paris, in the principal libraries in

Italy, such as the Vatican, the Ambrosian, and the Laurentian,

and also in the Manuscript Department of the British Museum.

135

LURE & ROMANCE OF ALCHEMY

There is probably no more beautiful specimen of the illumina¬
tor’s art in existence than the manuscript entitled Splendor Solis ,
now in the British Museum, which is said to have been written
about 1582. The twenty-two full-page miniatures which illus¬
trate it, each of which has a mystic meaning, are said to hare
been painted by the famous master Lucas van Leiden, and are
exquisite examples of his art.

Space will not permit detailed description of this script of
seven parts, in which is set forth the hidden mystery of the
philosophers, alchemy and astrology being intermixed. It states
that

all corporal things originate in and are maintained and exist of
the earth according to time and influence of the stars and planets,
as Sun, Moon, and the others. These, together with the four
qualities of the elements which are without intermission, moving
and working therein, thereby creating every growing and pro¬
creating thing in its individual form, sex, and substance, as first
created at the Beginning by God, the Creator, consequently all
metals originate in the earth of a special and peculiar matter pro¬
duced by the four properties of the four elements which generate
in their mixture the metallic force under the influence of their re¬
spective planets.

In this we have the gist of the work, and the illustrations are
chiefly devoted to the sun, the father and the sulphur of the
philosophers, and the moon, the mother of the Philosopher’s
Stone.

The work is supposed to have been written by Solomon
Trimosin, an alchemist who is said to have instructed Para¬
celsus in the art and imparted to him the great secret. A prob¬
ably fictitious account of his life and adventures is related in
Aurum Vellus. We are told that, like others who pursued the
art, Trimosin while quite a young man set forth in 1473 in
quest of knowledge, and in his travels came in contact with one
Flocker, an alchemist and miner, who was believed to possess
the great secret. He is said to have used a process with common
lead, adding to it a peculiar sulphur.

136

AN ALCHEMIST

From a miniature by Lucas van Leiden in Splendor Solis

136

GOLD AND SILVER REPRESENTED BY A KING AND QUEEN
From a miniature by Lucas van Leiden in Splendor Solis

137

NOTABLE ALCHEMICAL MANUSCRIPTS

He fixed the lead until it first became hard, then fluid, and later
on soft like wax. Of this prepared lead he took 20 loth [ten
ounces] and one mark of pure unalloyed silver and, with a flux,
heated the substances for half an hour. Thereupon he parted the
silver, cast it into an ingot, when half of it was gold.

Trimosin says:

I was grieved at heart that I could not have this art, but he refused
to tell his secret process and shortly afterward he tumbled down a
mine and no one could tell the artifice he used.

So Trimosin continued his journey and at length reached Italy,
where he found an Italian tradesman and a Jew who understood
German. “These two,” he says, “made English tin look like
the best silver and sold it largely.” They engaged Trimosin as
a servant to look after the fires in their laboratory, and in this
way he learned their art, “which worked with corrosive and
poisonous materials.” He stayed with them fourteen weeks,
and then went off to Venice with the Jew, who sold to a
Turkish merchant forty pounds of this silver. While the Jew
was bargaining with the merchant Trimosin took six loth of
the silver and brought it to a goldsmith and asked him to test it.
The goldsmith directed him to an assayer of St Mark’s Piazza,
and he found he was a portly and wealthy man with three
German assay assistants. They brought the silver he gave them
to the test with strong acids, but it did not stand the test; then
they spoke harshly to him, and asked him where he had got it.
He told them he had come to have it tested, and to know if it was
real. When Trimosin thus discovered the fraud he left the Jew
and took refuge in an institution for destitute strangers.

The following day he met on St Mark’s Piazza one of the
German assay assistants, who asked him if he had any more of
the silver. He told him that he had no more, but that he knew
the art of making it and would not mind telling him.

Through this man he obtained a post with a nobleman who
kept a laboratory and who wanted a German assistant. Here
the chief chemist, named Tauler, engaged him at a weekly wage

137

LURE & ROMANCE OF ALCHEMY

of two crowns and board. The laboratory, Trimosin states,
was in a large mansion called Ponteleone, about six miles from
Venice, and here he took up his duties. “I never saw such
laboratory work in all kinds of particular processes and medicines
as in that place,” he declares. “Each workman had his own
private room, and there was a special cook for the whole staff
of laboratory assistants.”

The chief chemist gave him an ore to work on which had been
sent to the nobleman four days previously. It proved to be
cinnabar which had been covered with all kinds of earth to test
his knowledge. This kept Trimosin busy, and he states that,
with the particular process he employed, he found on testing the
ingot of the fixed mercury that the whole weighed nine loth, and
the test gave three loth of fine gold. “ This,” he says, “was my
first work and stroke of luck.” The nobleman was delighted
and, tapping him on the shoulder, called him his fortunatum
and gave him twenty-nine crowns. Trimosin was then called
upon to swear that he would not reveal his art to anyone.

The nobleman, he tells us, was a great patron of the alchemi¬
cal art and a collector of manuscripts.

I myself witnessed that he paid 6000 crowns for the manuscript
Sarlamethon , which described a process for a ‘tincture’ in the
Greek. This he translated and gave me to work, and I brought
that process to a finish in fifteen weeks, therewith I ‘tinged’ three
metals into fine gold, and this was kept most secret.

He continues:

Unfortunately, this powerful and gorgeous nobleman went to
the annual ceremony at Venice of throwing a gem ring into the
water at the wedding of the Adriatic, and while on board a great
pleasure-ship a hurricane suddenly arose, and he, with many others
of the Venetian lords and rulers, was drowned. The laboratory
was then closed by the family.

Afterward Trimosin had a number of Cabbalistic and other
books on magic entrusted to him, some of which he translated,
and at length he “captured the Treasure of the Egyptians.”

138

NOTABLE ALCHEMICAL MANUSCRIPTS

He says that he also discovered the great subject they worked
with, and that the ancient heathen kings used such * tinctures ’
and operated with them. After studying these books for a long
period he began to see the fundamental principles of the art and
then began working out the best tincture.

When I came to the end of the work I found such a beautiful
red colour as no scarlet can compare with and such a treasure as
words cannot tell. One part ‘tinged’ 1500 parts silver into gold.

Solomon Trimosin’s alchemical notes as recorded in the
Aurum Vellusy showing the processes by means of which he
made his ‘tinctures,’ are not without interest and have been
summarized by Schmieder. He describes how to make the
“Mercury of the Philosophers,” or the “ Mercurial Water,” and
also the “Lion’s Blood.” The latter was prepared by dissolv¬
ing gold-leaf with the mercurial water in a glass retort and
dividing the residue into two parts. On one half alcohol was to
be poured and the mixture allowed to digest with gentle heat
for fifteen days until it became red. This was called the ‘ ‘ Lion’s
Blood,” and when kept at the heat of the Dog Days in a hermeti¬
cally sealed retort provided the first ‘tincture.’ One part of
the red tincture was then to be wrapped in paper and projected
on 1000 parts of gold in fusion, and after remaining in fusion for
three-quarters of an hour, “tincture B” was produced. One
part of “tincture B” projected on 1000 parts of fine silver, tin,
or lead was said to transmute the base metal into fine gold.

“Tincture B” dissolved in strong alcoholic wine Trimosin
regarded as the Elixir, and “if a spoonful be taken in the
morning,” he states, “it will strengthen and renew the con¬
stitution, rejuvenate the aged and make women prolific.”

There is no evidence to prove that Solomon Trimosin ever
existed or that he wrote Splendor Solis or the other works attri¬
buted to him. Their origin is unknown, but Schmieder, who
made a careful investigation of the matter, believes that the
author of Splendor Solis was called Pfeifer and that he was a
Saxon by birth.

*39