Alchemy and Authority in the Holy Roman Empire

Cloth $40.00 ISBN: 9780226608563 Published December 2007

E-book $7.00 to $32.00 About E-books ISBN: 9780226608570 Published September 2008

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, 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.

Review Quotes
Contents

“Nummedal provides a detailed and provocative account of the often-caricatured ‘entrepreneurial’ alchemists and their important role in Central Europe during the early modern period. Rich in archival findings and insightful in interpretation, Alchemy and Authority in the Holy Roman Empire is a major contribution to the now-burgeoning literature on alchemy; it should find interested readership among historians of various stripes.”—Lawrence M. Principe, Johns Hopkins University

“Alchemy was a point of intersection for many different strands of culture in early modern Europe—religious, natural, economic, moral and even political—and Tara Nummedal’s exploration of the world of the ‘ordinary’ alchemical practitioner gives unprecedented insight into the actual practice of alchemy in the Holy Roman Empire in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. No other author has written a history of alchemy ‘from the bottom up.’ But, more than this, Alchemy and Authority in the Holy Roman Empire advances a sophisticated argument about the cultural meaning of alchemy. By the sixteenth century, alchemy had come to be regarded as an ancient and esoteric art, an entrepreneurial practice, a practical technology, and a symbol of deceit and fraud. It is Nummedal’s achievement to lucidly explicate how these various meanings of alchemy came into being and to show the ways in which alchemy helped to give shape to emerging ideas about fraud and authority in early modern society. Nummedal’s social history of alchemy is an original and important work that should be read by social and cultural historians, as well as historians of science.”—Pamela H. Smith, Columbia University

“Nummedal uses as her point of departure a series of spectacular condemnations of alchemists for fraud to elucidate the dynamics of what was an increasingly high-stakes activity in the Holy Roman Empire ca. 1600. She offers a fascinating social and cultural history of the run-of-the-mill, or ‘entrepreneurial’ alchemists, and the patrons who supported their activities. This book sheds bold new light on the representations, material conditions, and social position of alchemists and in the process explores both princely and natural philosophical authority in action in early modern Europe.”—Ann Blair, Harvard University

"Alchemy and Authority does for the history of alchemy what the literature on quacks has done for the history of medicine: it approaches the blurry boundaries that define an individual’s success or downfall in a profession and in society. By asking, reconsidering, and answering the questions posed here, Nummedal speaks to historians of alchemy and science as well as to anyone intrigued by history and the mechanisms of economic systems, power, and authority. . . . . Her style is refreshingly concise and engaging. She is one of only a few academic authors who manage to confine and cionsistently pursue their argument . . . and yet manage to write beautiful, effortless prose."—Anke Timmerman, Chemical Heritage

"This is a terrific study, accessible, based in concrete archival research, and well connected to contemporary discussions. It gives new direction to thinking about the role of alchemy in the social and cultural life of early modern Europe. By diffracting the light usually focused on prominent alchemical figures in the history of science and medicine, Nummedal adds a much needed cultural dimension to the understanding of how alchemical identities were shaped in early modern Europe and to how they in turn influenced the social and intellectual world around them."—Bruce T. Moran, Bulletin of the History of Medicine

"Nummedal’s Alchemy and Authority should be read not just by historians of science but also by historians interested in court culture. Her work offers a new look at the dynamic relationship between the construction of natural knowledge and political authority that many historians will benefit from reading."—Darin Hayton, Renaissance Quarterly

"Alchemy and Authority makes a significant contribution to the history of early modern science, and also provides some valuable material for the study of early modern state-building and court culture. . . . This extremely readable and enjoyable book has much to offer historians and literary scholars of a variety of backgrounds."

"The time for a social history of alchemy is now, and Nummedal's innovative work will number among the earliest contributors."—Susan R. Boettcher, H-Net

"An insightful and fascinating study of the cultural meaning of fraud and the alchemical arts as perceived by its honest practitioners, gullible victims, and the broader social world."

Contents

List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Note on Early Modern Weights and Measures
Abbreviations

Introduction 1
1. Assembling Expertise
2. The Alchemist’s Personae
3. Entrepreneurial Alchemy
4. Contracting the Philosophers’ Stone
5. Laboratories, Space, and Secrecy
6. Betrüger on Trial
Conclusion: The Problem of Authority

Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index

For more information, or to order this book, please visit http://www.press.uchicago.edu

Economics and Business: Economics--History

History: European History | General History

History of Science

Physical Sciences: History and Philosophy of Physical Sciences

Sociology: Social History

You may purchase this title at these fine bookstores. Outside the USA, see our international sales information.