89 lines
9.9 KiB
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89 lines
9.9 KiB
TeX
\section{Alchemy}
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If changing common sand and burnt plants into a wondrous object of glass isn't an alchemical transformation\EmDash{}then what is! If you can do that, changing lead into gold doesn't seem so far fetched. Writing about glassmaking, Howell writes in June 1, 1621:
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\begin{quotation}
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When I pry'd into the materials, and observed the furnaces and calcinations, the transubstantiations, the liquefactions that are incident to this art, my thoughts were raised to a higher Speculation\ldots\footnote{Howell, 68}
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\end{quotation}
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Alchemy in the ancient world was far more than 'changing lead into gold', it was really proto-chemistry and proto-pharmacology.\footnote{For an excellent survey, see Moran}. Alchemy certainly had its charlatans, but it also worked out\EmDash{}through long hard, and sometimes dangerous trial and error\EmDash{}processes for making now commonly used chemicals\EmDash{}like 'aqua fortis' (nitric acid) and 'oil of vitriol' (sulfuric acid)\footnote{Moran, 15}. This practical knowledge was indispensable in the Alchemical Transformation of ancient alchemy into modern chemistry.\footnote{And one of the goals of ancient alchemy has been achieved. In 1980, Glenn Seaborg (1912\EnDash{}1999) transmuted several thousand atoms of lead into gold at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, though the amount of energy used and the microscopic quantities created negated any possible financial benefit. For his work on transuranium elements (elements heavier than uranium, the vast majority of which are artificially created) he was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1951.} And much of the modern chemist's apparatus comes straight out of the alchemist's laboratory.
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Neri, The Art of Glass (1612) (the first book on glassmaking) says:
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\begin{quotation}
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``some will, and perhaps with some reason, say that the invention of Glass was found out by the Alchymists; for they desiring to imitate jewels, found out glass; a thing perhaps not far from truth.''\footnote{Neri, 47}
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\end{quotation}
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In the ancient world, the centers of alchemy followed the centers of 'learning' in general. Alchemy appears in ancient Egypt\EmDash{}at the same time as Egyptian glass. When the center of glass-making moved to Alexandria\EmDash{}so did alchemy. And alchemy and glass migrated together to Rome.
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Not surprisingly, the lines distinguishing Metallurgy from alchemy and glassmaking were rather unclear until the founding of modern chemistry.[See The Forge and the Crucible, Eliade, M., U of Chicago Press, 1978]. In fact, in the glass literature as late as the early 20th century, glass was still being referred to as another 'metal'. \footnote{See, for example, ???} After all, it was produced by similar means: take a certain type of 'earth' (sand, or ore) and heat it in a furnace which was as hot as the technology available then could make it, and a remarkably different substance emerges.
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And there is a tradition of an attempt to find an 'alloy' of glass that was 'malleable' (flexible) in the same way that other 'metals' like copper are.\footnote{Neri, 48}
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With the fall of Rome, the craft of glass working survived in the West (no literacy required to work glass), but the more learned and literate alchemy did not. Along with mathematics, the works of Plato and Aristotle, and so much of Western learning, alchemy was preserved in the Middle East by the Arabs.
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With the fall of Damascus, and Constantinople in 1453, all sorts of scholars and artisans fled to the West. They brought with them mathematics, and new glass-making techniques, and Aristotle, and alchemy. This influx of new knowledge is generally regarded as one of the major impetuses of the Renaissance. The first true alchemist in Medieval Europe was Roger Bacon (1214\EnDash{}1294), a Franciscan friar, considered one of the earliest advocates of the modern scientific method, but who also emphasized his reliance on the occult and the alchemical traditions. And he was intimately acquainted with the philosophical and scientific insights of the Arab world, one of the most advanced civilizations at that time.
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Influx of Greek scholars into the West began much earlier, especially in the Northern Italian city-states that had started welcoming scholars in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. \TODO{???} The chancellor of Florence Coluccio Salutati Bethis cultural exchange in 1396 by inviting a Byzantine Scholar to lecture at the U. of Florence. It was the Italians' hunger for Latin Classics and a command of the Greek Language which fueled the Renaiisance.\footnote{wikipedia: fall of Constantinople ???}
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Glass is uniquely suited to alchemical (and chemical) research, because it is extremely chemically inert (doesn't react with the chemicals inside), and you can also see what's going on.
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[??? glass-makers also alchemists:
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Neri [Neri, 52]
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Agricola
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]
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So it's not too surprising that the line between men who were working out new ways of coloring and working glass, inventing new kinds of glass and ways of coloring glass in their laboratories with furnaces, strange apparatus and chemicals, vs. doing alchemy in their laboratories with furnaces, strange apparatus and chemicals\EmDash{}well, what's the difference?\footnote{Type 'alchemy' and 'glass' into your favorite search engine and see how many modern glass artisans still associate their art with alchemy.}
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Also, apparently a common belief of medieval and early renaissance glassblowers was that a Salamander lived in the furnace:
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\begin{quote}
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It was believed, too, that at certain times this wonderful being issued from his abode, and as opportunity offered, carried back some victim to his fiery bed. The absence of workmen, who sometimes departed secretly for foreign lands, was always accounted for by the hypothesis that in some unguarded moment they had fallen prey to the Salamander. Visitors, too, whose courage could sustain them, were directed to look through the bye-hole to the interior of the furnace, and no one failed to discover the monster coiled in his glowing bed, and glaring with fiery eyes upon the intruder, much to his discomfiture, and effectually as to his retreat.\footnote{Reminiscences, 47}
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\end{quote}
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(The Salamander occurs frequently in the alchemical literature\EmDash{}a creature that lives in fire.)
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Furthermore, it was the custom for the workmen, in setting the pots of glass in the furnace, to protect themselves from the heat by dressing in the skins of animals from head to foot; to this 'outer' garb were added glass goggles, thus creating the most hideous-looking monsters. ``Show was then made of themselves in the neighborhood, to the infinite alarm of children, old women, and others.'' [Reminiscences, 48] These furnaces were operated day and night.
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Not surprisingly, glass itself was regarded as having magical properties. Venetian glass in particular, when made under certain astronomical influences, would 'fly into pieces' if any poisonous liquid was placed in them; and sales of vessels of this kind were made at enormous prices.[Reminiscences, 49] In the 15th century, Philip Massinger would write of crystal glass:
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\begin{quote}
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Than hold one drop that's venomous, of itself \newline
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It flies in pieces and deludes the traitor.\footnote{English Glass, Charleston, 50\EnDash{}51}
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\end{quote}
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Howell in a letter of June 1, 1621 repeats the same notion:
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\begin{quote}
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\ldots a Crystal Glass \ldots hath this property above Gold or Silver, or any other mineral, to admit no poison.[Howell, 67 In the same letter he goes on to quote a popular saying: ``The first handsome woman that ever was made was made of Venice Glass.'']
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\end{quote}
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This would certainly be a highly valued feature in Italy in the 14th through 16th centuries under the Borgias (notorious for poisoning and intrigue), as well as the houses of the nobility in general throughout Europe. (It turns out there might actually be some basis in science for the claim: glass of the time may have had low stability to anything slightly corrosive\EmDash{}including poison. \footnote{See Neri, 14})
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The shattering of a Venetian glass by poisoned wine is described in the novel \Title{The Mysteries of Udolpho} (1794)
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% http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext02/udolf10.txt
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\begin{quote}
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When the repast was over, they rose,
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and, each filling his goblet with wine from the gilded ewer, that
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stood beside him, drank 'Success to our exploits!' Montoni was
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lifting his goblet to his lips to drink this toast, when suddenly the
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wine hissed, rose to the brim, and, as he held the glass from him, it
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burst into a thousand pieces.
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To him, who constantly used that sort of Venice glass, which had the
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quality of breaking, upon receiving poisoned liquor, a suspicion,
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that some of his guests had endeavoured to betray him, instantly
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occurred, and he ordered all the gates to be closed, drew his sword,
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and, looking round on them, who stood in silent amazement, exclaimed,
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'Here is a traitor among us; let those, that are innocent, assist in
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discovering the guilty.'
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\footnote{\BrRadcliffMysteries{} \TODO{??? page}}
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\end{quote}
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Fulcanelli goes so far as to assert, in his \textit{Le Myst\`{e}re des Cath\'{e}drales}\footnote{translated in Fulcanelli: Master Alchemist, Sworder, M., Brotherhood of Life, Las Vegas,1990}, that alchemical 'secrets' are displayed in plain view in the stain glass windows and statuary of various Gothic cathedrals.
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We can easily see how the modern clear distinction between 'alchemist' and 'chemist' was not so clear at all in Elizabethan days from the following quote:
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\begin{quote}
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It [making iron] breedeth in like manner great expense and waste of wood, as doth the making of our pots and table vessels of glass, wherein is much loss, sith [since] it is so quickly broken; and yet (as I think) easy to be made tougher, if our alchemists could once find the true birth or production of the red man, whose mixture would induce a metallic toughness unto it, whereby it should abide the hammer. \footnote{Froissart, 323}
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\end{quote}
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