Alchemical writings of Arabic origin introduced into the Latin natural philosophy of the twelfth century a cosmological issue that was at variance with Aristotelian cosmology: the idea of a subtle substance that stood at the origin of the four elements and encompassed heaven and earth. In this article, I consider the links of this notion with Hermetic and Stoic thought; its association with the technical process of distillation; its emergence in some philosophical texts of the early thirteenth century; and finally (...) its full development in two fourteenth century alchemical treatises, the Testamentum attributed to Raimond Lull and the Liber de consideratione quintae essentiae written by John of Rupescissa. (shrink)

The Renaissance of scientific thought in twelfth-century Western culture, when alchemy was introduced into the Latin schools, was largely due to the wave of translations, mainly from Arabic into Latin, but also including translations into and from Hebrew, sometimes with vernacular languages as intermediaries. Alchemy, whose tradition had been broken in the West at the end of the Hellenistic age, gained considerable attention—albeit less than astronomy/astrology and medicine—from the twelfth-century translators, who presented Latin culture with a hitherto unknown doctrine that (...) was completely different from any other science. Alchemy, as the Latin Middle Ages received it, is the philosophical search for the agent of material perfection by means of the manipulation of base materials. It thereby united theory and practice in a way unexpected by Latin scholars. In fact, alchemy as a doctrine was inseparable from laboratory practice; and this practice so much resembled well-established craftsmen's labor that for a long period the place of alchemy in the divisio disciplinarum wavered between the mechanical and the liberal arts. (shrink)

Tenth-century Islamic alchemy attributed different roles to the figure of Hermes, all of which were retained in later alchemy. The playful changing of perspectives, in which Harmis al-Harāmisa perpetually changed his connotation, allowed for a complex game played at the border between science and literature. In the process, he turned from representing the venerable author of the early alchemical texts - master over ancient wisdom and scientific 'subject' - into an 'object' of research, into an allegory of the nucleus of (...) the Great Work, and into a mysterious image of the secret that he himself had handed over to men. (shrink)

A partire da una sintetica ricostruzione storiografica degli studi su Raimondo Lullo, si mette in evidenza l'intreccio fra lavoro di documentazione, di edizione e di interpretazione che in questo ambito si è verificato nel corso del Novecento a partire da tre momenti essenziali: la fondazione della Maioricensis Schola Lullistica, che ha costituito il primo contesto istituzionale promotore dell'edizione critica dei testi latini; l' internazionalizzazione del progetto editoriale con l'attività del Raimundus-Lullus-Institut all'università di Freiburg i.Br.; l'ulteriore ampliamento della ricerca a partire (...) dall'uso tempestivo e meditato delle risorse elettroniche e della rete. Negli ultimi decenni questo rinnovamento del lavoro ecdotico ha prodotto, spesso – ma non solo – a opera degli stessi studiosi impegnati nelle edizioni, un'immagine per molti aspetti nuova del pensiero di Lullo e del suo interagire con la cultura del suo tempo, apportando nuovi elementi alla conoscenza del complesso contesto filosofico e teologico di inizio Trecento. A brief historiographical reconstruction of the studies on Ramon Llull highlights the link between the work of documentation, critical editing and interpretation in this area, which occurred during the twentieth century, starting from three essential moments: the foundation of the Maioricensis Schola Lullistica, the first institutional promoter of the critical editions of Lull's Latin works; the internationalization of this editorial project within the activities of the Raimundus-Lullus-Institut at the University of Freiburg i.Br.; the further expansion of research furthered by timely and thoughtful use of electronic resources and of the web. In recent decades this renovation of the ecdotic work has produced, often – yet not only – by the same scholars engaged in the editions, new facets in our understanding of Llull's thinking and of his interaction with the culture of his time, bringing new elements to our knowledge of the complex philosophical and theological context of early fourteenth century. (shrink)