Abstract
In 1625, a full twenty years after its author’s death, Heinrich Khunrath’s Amphitheatre ofEternal Wisdom (1609) received fierce censure from the Theological Faculty of the Sorbonne, who condemned it as
blasphemous, impious and dangerous to faith […] a most pernicious book […] censored as much for its explanations of scriptural verses as for the inferences made, a damnable book swarming with impieties, errors, and heresies and the continuous sacrilegious profanation of passages from Holy Scripture, and abusing the very sacred mysteries of the Catholic Religion, in order to entice its readers into the secret and pernicious arts.1
Heinrich Khunrath of Leipzig (1560-1605), who graduated with highest honours from Basel Medical Academy with his Paracelsian Theses on the Signatures of Natural Things (1588), is one of the best examples of a sixteenth-century figure who strove to incorporate alchemy and Cabala, along with divine magic, into a devout religio-philosophical world view.2 As a ‘lover of theosophy’, he placed a great deal of importance on his interpretations of the ‘Biblically, Macro- and Micro-cosmically written WORD’,3 whether in the humanist philological desire for a true rendering of scripture by retranslating it from the Hebrew Hagiographa and the Greek Septuagint, in his adoption of the mystical Jewish hermeneutical techniques of Cabala as a method for discovering secret meanings in familiar texts, or in his deciphering of the signs, characters and hieroglyphic marks of nature.4
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Notes
Carolus Duplessis d’Argentré, Collectio Judiciorum de novis erroribus, qui ab initio duodecimi seculi post Incarnationem Verbi, usque ad annum 1632. in Ecclesia proscripti sunt & notati (Paris, 1728), vol. 2, p. 162: ‘blasphemum, impium & in fide periculosum … pemiciosissimus quidam Liber … censuit tam explicationes illas, ut sonant, quam corrollaria prout jacent, tum Librum ipsum esse damnandum, maxime quod impietatibus, erroribus, hæresibus scatens, & continua locorum S. Scripturæ profanatione sacrilega contextus, augustioribus etiam Catholic Religionis mysteriis abutens, demum lectores ad secretas sceleratasque artes sollicitet.’ See Peter Forshaw, ‘Curious knowledge and wonderworking wisdom in the occult works of Heinrich Khunrath’, in R. J. W. Evans and Alexander Marr (eds), Curiosity and Wonder from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 107–29, at 110 n. 16.
For more on the Doctrine of Signatures, see Massimo Luigi Bianchi, Signatura Rerum: Segni, Magia e conoscenza da Paracelso a Leibniz (Roma: Edizioni dell’ Ateneo, 1987).
Peter Harrison, The Bible, Protestantism and the Rise of Natural Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 105–106;
Michael T. Walton, ‘Genesis and Chemistry in the Sixteenth Century’, in Allen G. Debus and Michael T. Walton (eds), Reading the Book of Nature: The Other Side of the Scientific Revolution (Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1998), p. 5.
See also Walter Pagel, Paracelsus: An Introduction to Philosophical Medicine in the Era of the Renaissance (Basel: S. Karger, 1958).
Andrew Weeks, Paracelsus: Speculative Theory and the Crisis of the Early Reformation (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997), p. 148: ‘Lutherus medicom’.
R[obert] B[ostocke], Difference betwene the auncient Phisicke … and the latter Phisicke (London, 1585), chap. 19, [sig. Hviiir]. For Bostocke as a representative of a Paracelsian medical knowledge grounded in Christian tradition, see Peter Harrison, ‘Original Sin and the Problem of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe’, Journal of the History of Ideas 63.2 (2002), 239–59, at p. 251. For a detailed consideration of Paracelsus as exegete,
see Jean-Michel Rietsch, Théorie du langage et exégèse biblique chez Paracelse (1493–1541) (Bern: Peter Lang, 2002).
Peter Harrison, ‘Curiosity, Forbidden Knowledge, and the Reformation of Natural Philosophy in Early Modern England’, Isis 92:2 (June, 2001), 265–90, at p. 278.
See also Sachiko Kusukawa, The Transformation of Natural Philosophy: The case of Philip Melanchthon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 205.
Owen Hannaway, The Chemists and the Word: The Didactic Origins of Chemistry (Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1975), p. 5. For more on the Light of Nature,
see Pierre Deghaye, ‘La lumière de la Nature chez Paracelse’, in Antoine Faivre and Frédérick Tristan (eds), Paracelse, Cahiers de l’Hermétisme (Paris: Éditions Albin Michel, 1980), pp. 53–88.
Paracelsus, Astronomia magna, in Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Paracelsus, Essential Readings (Wellingborough: Aquarian Press, 1990), p. 116.
The Archidoxies of Theophrastus Paracelsus, in Arthur Edward Waite, The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Paracelsus, The Great, 2 vols. (Chicago, IL: de Laurence, Scott & Co., 1910), vol. 2, p. 4.
For more on the hexaemeral tradition and alchemy, see Michael T. Walton, ‘Alchemy, Chemistry and the Six Days of Creation’, in Stanton J. Linden (ed.), “Mystical Metal of Gold”: Essays on Alchemy and Renaissance Culture (New York: AMS Press, 2006). I would like to thank Michael for kindly sending me an advance copy of his chapter. For a detailed discussion of theological ideas on creation,
see Gerhard May, Creatio ex Nihilo: The Doctrine of ‘Creation out of Nothing’ in Early Christian Thought, trans. A. S. Worrall (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994).
Marie-Anne Vannier, “Creatio”, “Conversio”, “Formatio” chez S. Augustin (Friborg: Éditions Universitaires, 1991), p. 90 points out that in De Genesi contra manichaeos 1.1.2., Augustine used allegory to counter the Manichaeans who limited themselves to literal exegesis.
For more on the importance of the Biblical creation story to Paracelsus and his followers, see Allen G. Debus, The Chemical Philosophy: Paracelsian Science and Medicine in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (New York: Science History Publications, 1977) and his works on the English and French Paracelsians.
Weeks, Paracelsus, p. 65; Paracelsus, The Philosophy Addressed to the Athenians, in Waite, Hermetic and Alchemical Writings, vol. 2, p. 249. See also Walter Pagel, ‘The Prime Matter of Paracelsus’, Ambix 9:3 (October, 1961), 117–35.
Paracelsus, Hermetic Astronomy, in Waite, Hermetic and Alchemical Writings, vol. 2, p. 289. For the relevance of rationes seminales and logoi spermatikoi to Paracelsian theory, see Walter Pagel, Das Medizinische Weltbild des Paracelsus: seine Zusammenhänge mit Neuplatonismus und Gnosis (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1962), pp. 121–23.
See also Jole Shackelford, A Philosophical Path for Paracelsian Medicine: The Ideas, Intellectual Context, and Influence of Petrus Severinus: 1540–1602 (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2004), pp. 172–76. On Augustine’s De genesi ad litteram, in J. P. Migne (ed.), Sancti Aurelii Augustini Opera Omnia. Patrologiae Cursus Completus (Paris, 1841), vol. 3, pp. 346–7, 6.10.17–6.11.19; on simultaneous creation, see Augustine, Saint Augustine, The Trinity, trans. Stephen McKenna (Washington, DC. The Catholic University of America Press, 1963; repr. 1970), p. 111f. For the reference to Anaxagoras, see Aquinas, On the Power of God, 2 vols. (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, 1932–33), vol. 2, p. 6. See also Aristotle, Physics, 1.4.187a20; 1.4.187a36; 8.1.250b24; On the Heavens 270b24–25.
Paracelsus, Philosophy Addressed to the Athenians, in Waite, Hermetic and Alchemical Writings, vol. 2, pp. 250–52. Martin Luther, The Creation: A Commentary, or The First Five Chapters of the Book of Genesis, trans. Henry Cole (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1858), p. 24.
Massimo L. Bianchi, ‘The Visible and the Invisible: From Alchemy to Paracelsus’, in Piyo Rattansi and Antonio Clericuzio (eds), Alchemy and Chemistry in the 16th and 17th Centuries (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994), pp. 17–50, at p. 21.
Josephus Quersitanus, The Practise of Chymicall, and Hermeticall Physicke, for the Preservation of Health, trans. Thomas Timme (London, 1605), Epistle Dedicatory sig. A3r. Pagel, in ‘The Prime Matter of Paracelsus’, p. 125 identifies DuChesne, Khunrath, Bodenstein and Dorn as Paracelsians who prefer the view that God created the ‘Prima Materia Confusa’ of the world; on p. 128 he also identifies Bostocke as one sharing similar sentiments. For the notion of ‘Creation’ as ‘Information’, see Walter Pagel and Marianne Winder, ‘The Higher Elements and Prime Matter in Renaissance Naturalism and in Paracelsus’, Ambix 21:2–3 (July and November, 1974), 93–127, at p. 110.
Thomas Tymme, A Light in Darkness, Which Illumineth for all the Monas Hieroglyphica of the famous and profound Dr JOHN DEE, Discovering Natures closet and revealing the true Christian secrets of Alchimy, ed. S. K. Heninger (Oxford: New Bodleian Library, 1963).
A commentarie of John Caluine, upon the first booke of Moses called Genesis: Translated out of Latine into Englishe by Thomas Tymme, Minister (London, 1578), pp. 25–26. On Calvin’s reference to Hebrew here, see K. E. Greene-McCreight, Ad Litteram: How Augustine, Calvin, and Barth Read the “Plain Sense” of Genesis 1–3 (New York: Peter Lang, 1999), p. 110. For an early modern discussion of the terms, see Conradus Aslacus, Physica & Ethica Mosaica, vt Antiquissima, ita vere Christiana, 2 vols. (Hanau, 1613), vol. 1, pp. 13f.
Charles H. Lohr, ‘Metaphysics’, in Charles B. Schmitt and Quentin Skinner (eds), The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988; repr. 1996), p. 580;
Chaim Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola’s Encounter with Jewish Mysticism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), pp. 121, 126.
Cf. Roy Porter, ‘Creation and Credence: The Career of Theories of the Earth in Britain, 1660–1820’, in Barry Barnes and Stephen Shapin (eds), Natural Order: Historical Studies of Scientific Culture (Beverly Hills and London: Sage Publications, 1979), p. 99.
Lawrence M. Principe and William R. Newman, ‘Some Problems with the Historiography of Alchemy’, in William R. Newman and Anthony Grafton (eds), Secrets of Nature: Astrology and Alchemy in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), pp. 388, 398–400.
Chiara Crisciani, ‘Opus and sermo: The relationship betweeen alchemy and prophecy (12th-14th centuries)’, in Early Science and Medicine, forthcoming. My thanks to Chiara for kindly sending me an advance draft of her article. See also Chiara Crisciani and Michela Pereira, L’Arte del Sole e della Luna: Alchimia e filosofla nel medioevo (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1996).
Stanislas Klossowski de Rola, The Golden Game: Alchemical Engravings of the Seventeenth Century (London: Thames & Hudson, 1988), p. 139, plate 120. An analogy also found in Rupescissa, Liber de Confectione veri lapidis philosphorum, in Manget, vol. 2, p. 82; Liber Lucis, in idem, p. 86.
Allen G. Debus, ‘The Paracelsian Compromise in Elizabethan England’, Ambix 8:2 (June, 1960), p. 80.
Augustine, De doctrina christiana, ed. and trans. R. P. H. Green (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), p. 73, 2.11.
On Luther’s eight-fold sense of scripture, see Alister E. McGrath, The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation, 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), p. 159.
Raphael Patai, The Jewish Alchemists: A History and Source Book (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 157.
David C. Lindberg, ‘Science and the Early Church’, in David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers (eds), God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), p. 35 provides the medieval scheme of three heavens (empyrean, aqueous/crystalline and firmament).
Allen G. Debus, The English Paracelsians (London: Oldbourne, 1965), p. 26.
Thomas Williams, ‘Biblical Interpretation’, in Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 62.
See Thomas Prügl, ‘Thomas Aquinas as Interpreter of Scripture’, in Rik van Nieuwenhove and Joseph Wawrykow (eds), The Theology of Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), pp. 386–415, especially pp. 394–96. For a bibliography on this issue,
see Mark F. Johnson, ‘Another Look at the Plurality of the Literal Sense’, Medieval Philosophy and Theology 2 (1992), 117–41.
John Warwick Montgomery, ‘Lessons from Luther on the Inerrancy of Holy Writ’, in John Warwick Montgomery (ed.), God’s Inerrant Word: An International Symposium on the Trustworthiness of Scripture (Canadian Institute for Law, Theology & Public Policy, 1974), pp. 63–94, at p. 67. See also Greene-McCreight, Ad Litteram, p. 116.
John Dillenberger, Protestant Thought and Natural Science: A Historical Interpretation (London: Collins, 1961), p. 34.
A. Gerrish, The Old Protestantism and the New: Essays on the Reformation Heritage (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), p. 260.
John Read, Prelude to Chemistry: An Outline of Alchemy, Its Literature and Relationships (London: G. Bell & Sons, 1936; repr. Cambridge, MA: MIT. Press, 1966), p. 80.
Cornelis de Waard (ed.), Correspondance du P. Marin Mersenne Religieux Minime, 16 vols. (Paris: Gabriel Beauchesne et ses fils, 1932), vol. 1, p. 62. For Fludd’s ideas on creation, see Norma E. Emerton, ‘Creation in the Thought of J. B. van Helmont and Robert Fludd’, in Rattansi and Clericuzio (eds), Alchemy and Chemistry in the 16th and 17th Centuries, pp. 85–101. Fludd is undoubtedly influenced by Khunrath’s work, for he defends him against Lanovius (de la Noue) and Gassendi in Clavis Philosophice et Alchymiœ … ad Epistolicam Petri Gassendi Theologi Exercitationem Responsum (Frankfurt, 1633), pp. 13, 66.
Sylvain Matton, ‘Créations Microcosmique et Macrocosmique: La “Cabala Mineralis”, et l’interprétation alchimique de la Genèse’, in Simeon Ben Cantara, Cabala Mineralis (Paris: Bailly, 1986), pp. 26–27.
Armand Beaulieu, ‘L’attitude nuancée de Mersenne envers la Chymie’, in Jean-Claude Margolin and Sylvain Matton (eds), Alchimie et Philosophie à la Renaissance (Paris: Vrin, 1993), pp. 395–403, at p. 399; p. 396: ‘Ces chymistes exagèrent: on ne peut faire revivre des hommes par la vertu des plantes ou des métaux. Ils essaient de détourner le sens sacré de la Bible’; Ibid: ‘Il faut s’en méfier, car ces méchants dénaturent la vérité, étudient la nature, mais ne la comprennent pas et par des illusions ou des faussetés attaquent la saine doctrine religieuse.’
Francis Bacon, The New Organon, ed. Lisa Jardine and Michael Silverthorne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 53, Book 1, Aphorism 65.
Lindberg and Numbers, God and Nature, p. 150. See also Emerton, ‘Creation in the Thought of J. B. van Helmont and Robert Fludd’, pp. 86, 99. For more on Van Helmont, see Walter Pagel, Jan Baptista Van Helmont: Reformer of Science and Medicine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
Michael T. Walton, ‘Robert Boyle, “The Sceptical Chymist,” and Hebrew’, in Gerhild Scholz Williams and Charles D. Gunnoe, Jr. (eds), Paracelsian Moments: Science, Medicine, & Astrology in Early Modern Europe (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2002), pp. 187–205, p. 202.
Lawrence Principe, The Aspiring Adept: Robert Boyle and his Alchemical Quest (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), pp. 201ff.
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Forshaw, P.J. (2007). Vitriolic Reactions: Orthodox Responses to the Alchemical Exegesis of Genesis. In: Killeen, K., Forshaw, P.J. (eds) The Word and the World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230206472_7
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