Textual Alchemy: The Transformation of Pseudo-Albertus Magnus’s Semita Recta into the Mirror of Lights
Issue Date
2009-11-01Author
Grund, Peter
Publisher
Maney Publishing
Type
Article
Article Version
Scholarly/refereed, author accepted manuscript
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
This article explores the strategies of and the reasons behind the reworking of pseudo-Albertus Magnus's Semita recta into the Mirror of Lights. I argue that the redactor sought to provide a more comprehensive defence of the legitimacy of alchemy than found in the Semita recta. In the process of doing so, he reshaped the original text so as to present three units that addressed different parts of the alchemical opus: first, theory and justification of alchemy; second, basic information on substances and procedures; and, third, practice. The redactor employed sophisticated textual tools identical to those seen in scholastic texts. These strategies, I argue, constitute part of the redactor's attempt to bring authority and credibility to his project and to alchemy in general. Certainly, much more attention needs to be paid to these experiments of textual alchemy in order to understand the practice of alchemy in the late medieval period.
Description
This is the author's accepted manuscript. The published version can be found here http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/000269809X12529013496257
Collections
- English Scholarly Works [308]
Citation
Grund, Peter. 2009. “Textual Alchemy: The Transformation of Pseudo-Albertus Magnus’s Semita Recta into the Mirror of Lights.” Ambix: The Journal for the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry 56(3): 202–225. http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/000269809X12529013496257
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