CHAPTER XXXIII

TREATISES ON THE ARTS BEFORE THE INTRODUCTION OF ARABIC ALCHEMY Latin treatises on the arts and colors—Progress of the arts even during the early middle ages—Scantiness of the sources—Character of Arabic alchemy—Different character of our Latin treatises—_Compositiones ad tingenda_—_Mappe Clavicula_—Some of its recipes—Question of symbolic nomenclature—Magical procedure with goats: in _Mappe Clavicula_—Similar passages in Heraclius—And Theophilus—A magic figure—Use of an incantation in tenth century alchemy—Experimental character of the work of Theophilus—How to make Spanish gold—The question of symbolic terminology again—Alchemy in the eleventh century—St. Dunstan and alchemy and magic—Introduction of Arabic alchemy in the twelfth century. “ ... _campum latissimum diversarum artium perscrutari_....” —_Theophilus, Schedula, I, Praefatio._ [Sidenote: Latin treatises on the arts and colors.] We come to the consideration of several treatises dealing with colors and the arts and dating from about the eighth to the twelfth centuries and probably in part of earlier origin. These are the _Compositiones ad tingenda_ in a manuscript of the eighth or ninth century, the _Mappe clavicula_ found in part in a tenth century manuscript and more fully in one of the twelfth century, the poem of Heraclius on _The colors and arts of the Romans_, and the remarkable treatise of Theophilus _On diverse arts_ in three books.[3022] The oldest known manuscripts of Theophilus are of the twelfth century and he has been dated at the beginning of that century or end of the eleventh, and Heraclius, from whom he takes a number of his chapters, still earlier. But it scarcely seems that some of Theophilus’ descriptions of ecclesiastical art would have been written before the twelfth century. Mrs. Merrifield regarded only the first two metrical books of _The colors and arts of the Romans_ as the work of Heraclius, and the third book in prose as a later addition of the twelfth or thirteenth century and probably written by a Frenchman, whereas she believed that Heraclius wrote in southern Italy under Byzantine influence.[3023] His poem sounds to me like an attempt to imitate Lucretius, while one also is inclined to associate it with the perhaps nearly contemporary poems in which the so-called Macer and Marbod recounted in verse form some of the properties of herbs and stones which they had learned from ancient writers. [Sidenote: Progress of the arts even during the early middle ages.] Berthelot regarded these treatises on the arts as proof that the knowledge of industrial and alchemical processes continued unbroken even in western Europe from Egypt to the middle ages, although he held that the theories of transmutation and the like reached the west only in the twelfth century through the Arabs.[3024] Moreover, there is progress in the technical processes just as there was progress in Romanesque and Gothic art. New items and recipes appear in the lists. Even in the declining Roman Empire and earliest middle age we have evidence of new discoveries. The artificial fabrication of cinnabar becomes known at some time after Dioscorides and Pliny and before the eighth century.[3025] The hydrostatic balance is described not only in the _Mappe clavicula_ but in the _Carmen de ponderibus_ of Priscian or of Q. Remnius Fannius Palaemo of the fourth or fifth century A. D.[3026] Heraclius speaks more than once in his poem with admiration of the works of art of the Roman “kings” and people, and asks, “Who now is capable of investigating these arts, is able to reveal to us what those potent artificers of immense intellect discovered for themselves?”[3027] However, his aim is to resurrect these arts; he assures the reader that he writes nothing which he has not first proved himself;[3028] and he tells in particular how he discovered by close scrutiny of a piece of Roman glass that there was gold-leaf placed between two layers of glass, a work which he successfully imitated.[3029] On the other hand, lead glazing, according to Alexandre Brongniart, director of the Sèvres manufactory, is not found in European pottery before the twelfth century, when it was applied in Pesaro about 1100 and is found on pottery in a tomb at Jumièges of about 1120.[3030] [Sidenote: Scantiness of the sources.] During the early medieval centuries the Byzantine Empire, Syria and Egypt after they were conquered by the Arabs, the busy streets of Bagdad and Cordova, and Persia undoubtedly produced a far more flourishing activity in the fine arts and the industrial arts than was the case in backward western Christian Europe. Yet the surviving evidence for such activity is disappointing, and seems limited to some notices and allusions in Arabian and Jewish travelers and historians, and to the dust-heaps of ruined cities like Fostat, Rai, and Rakka. As the finest early specimens of Byzantine mosaics are preserved in Italy at Ravenna, so our Latin treatises concerning the arts are perhaps the best extant for the early medieval period up to the twelfth century. [Sidenote: Character of Arabic alchemy.] A number of treatises on alchemy in Arabic have reached us but they, like the Byzantine, chiefly continue the fantastic mysticism and obscurity, the astrology and magic, of the ancient Greek alchemists. Thus in the _Book of Crates_ we have a virgin priestess of the temple of Serapis at Alexandria, and the snake Ouroburos, also a vision of the seven heavens of the planets. The _Book of Alhabib_ invokes Hermes Trismegistus and says that the sages have not revealed the secret of transmutation for fear of the anger of the demons. The _Book of Ostanes_, in which Andalusia is mentioned, has eighty-four different names for the philosopher’s stone, and a fantastic dream concerning seven doors and three inscriptions in Egyptian, concerning the Persian Magi, and a citation from an Indian sage concerning the healing virtues of the urine of a white elephant. The _Book of Like Weights_ of Geber states that the sage can discern the mixture of the four elements in animals, plants, and stones by astrology and many other signs involving varied superstition. His _Book of Sympathy_ again emphasizes the seven planets as the key to alchemy and has much about the spirit in matter. His _Book on Quicksilver_, although it promises clarity, is the most mystic and incomprehensible of all. In it we read of raising the dead and of use of such liquids as “a divine water” and the milk of an uncorrupted virgin.[3031] [Sidenote: Different character of our Latin treatises.] Our Latin treatises are as free from mysticism and obscurity, from dreams and visions, as they are from theoretical discussion. They are collections of recipes and directions which are supposed at least to be practical and which are written in a simple and straightforward style. They are not, however, taken together, by any means entirely free from astrological directions or belief in occult virtue or yet other superstition, and they include recipes for making gold. Of this there is least in the first treatise we have to consider. [Sidenote: _Compositiones ad tingenda._] The _Compositiones ad tingenda_,[3032] a treatise or collection of notes and recipes preserved in a manuscript dating from the time of Charlemagne, throws some light on the technical processes preserved in the Latin west in the early middle ages and on the amount of knowledge of natural phenomena preserved in connection with the arts,—applied science in other words. It tells how to color glass and make mosaics, and describes a glass furnace; how to dye skins and make parchment; how to make gold-leaf, gold-thread, silver-leaf and tin-leaf; how to give copper the color of gold; it gives various directions and preparations for painting and gilding; and a description of various minerals and herbs employed in the above processes. Much is repeated that is found already in Pliny and Dioscorides, or in Aristotle and the Greek alchemists. But several things are mentioned, at least so far as we know, for the first time, although Berthelot believed that the compiler of the _Compositiones ad tingenda_ had copied them from earlier works, very probably Byzantine or late Roman, and not invented them himself. We find here the first mention of vitriol and of “bronze,”—a word apparently derived from Brundisium. _Amor aquae_ is used for the first time for the scum formed on waters containing iron salts and other metals, and we also meet the first instance of the preparation of cinnabar by means of sulphur and mercury. The work contains very little superstition with the exception of one passage which Berthelot has already noted.[3033] Once a stone is spoken of as having solar virtue; lead is distinguished as masculine and feminine; the gall of a tortoise is used in a composition for writing golden letters, and pig’s blood is employed in another connection. But these are trifling signs of occult science. [Sidenote: _Mappe Clavicula._] More alchemistic in character is the _Mappe Clavicula_,[3034] which, in its fuller twelfth century form, embodies the _Compositiones ad tingenda_ in a different order,[3035] and adds about twice as many more recipes for making gold, making colors, writing with gold, glues and various other matters, including building directions. Berthelot regarded two items instructing how to make images of the gods as signs of an ancient pagan origin for the work.[3036] One of these items occurs in the twelfth century text, the other in the tenth century table of contents. On the other hand Berthelot believed that the twelfth century version contained the oldest directions for the distillation of alcohol.[3037] The _Mappe Clavicula_ adds a good deal that is of a superstitious character to the _Compositiones ad tingenda_ which it includes, and at the same time lays considerable stress upon experimental method. [Sidenote: Some of its recipes.] It opens with a recipe “for making the best gold,” the first of a long series. One of the ingredients in this case is “a bit of moon-earth, which the Greeks call _Affroselinum_.” The third recipe advises one to experiment at first with only a little of the compound in question, until one learns the process more thoroughly.[3038] The ingredients for gold-making in the sixth recipe include the gall of a goat and of a bull, and saffron from Lycia or Arabia, which is to be pounded in a Theban mortar in the sun in dog-days. At the close of the fourteenth recipe, into which the gall of a bull again enters we have one of the injunctions to secrecy so dear to the alchemist: “Hide the sacred secret which should be transmitted to no one, nor give to anyone the prophetic.”[3039] It is also implied that alchemy is a religious or divine art in the twentieth recipe where it is said that operators should concede all things to divine works. But such mystic allusions are infrequent as well as brief. In the same twentieth item gold is supposed to be made from a mixture of iron rust, magnet, foreign alum, myrrh, gold, and wine. It is also stated that those who will not credit the great utility that there is in humors are those who do not make demonstration for themselves, another instance of the experimental character of the work. The forty-first recipe states that gold may be dissolved in order to write with it by dipping it in the blood of an Indian dragon, placing it in a glass vessel, and surrounding it with coals. In the sixty-ninth item the blood of a dragon or of a cock is mixed with urine and the stone _celidonius_. The gall of a bull and the blood of a pig are used again in recipes sixty-eight and one hundred and twenty-eight. [Sidenote: Question of symbolic nomenclature.] It has sometimes been contended, chiefly by persons who did not realize how universal was the ascription of great virtue to the parts of animals in ancient and medieval science and their use as remedies in the medicine of the same periods, that they are not to be taken literally in alchemical recipes but are to be understood symbolically and are cryptic designations for common mineral substances. Thus Berthelot cites a passage from the Latin _De anima_, ascribed to Avicenna, which says, “I am going to tell you a secret: the eye of a man or bull or cow or deer signifies mercury,” and so on.[3040] But despite what Berthelot goes on to say about the “old prophetic nomenclature” of the Egyptians, I am inclined to think that such symbolism is mainly a refinement of later alchemists, and that originally most such expressions were intended literally. Certainly it would be impossible to explain all the medicinal use of parts of animals in Pliny’s _Natural History_ as either symbolic or derived from the Egyptian priests. Like the suggestion that Roger Bacon wrote in cipher, the symbolic nomenclature theory is based on the assumption that the men of old concealed great secrets under an appearance of error. And where such cryptograms and symbols were employed, it was almost invariably done, we may be sure, with the object of impressing the reader with an exaggerated notion of the importance of what was written rather than because the writer really had any great discovery that he wished to conceal. That symbolic language was employed by alchemists, especially in the latest middle age and early modern centuries, is not to be questioned. The use of the names of the planets for the corresponding metals is a familiar example. But most such symbolic nomenclature is equally obvious, while there is no reason for not taking the use of parts of animals literally. Indeed, in many passages it must be so taken, as in a later item of the _Mappe Clavicula_[3041] which has no concern with alchemy and where in order to poison an arrow for use in battle, we are instructed to dip it in the sweat from the right side of a horse between the hip-bones. The following experiments with goats also illustrate the great value set upon animal fluids and substances. [Sidenote: Magical procedure with goats in the _Mappe Clavicula_.] We are reminded of the directions given by Marcellus Empiricus for the preparation of goat’s blood by a recipe for making figures of crystal which occurs near the close of the _Mappe Clavicida_.[3042] A he-goat which has never indulged in sexual intercourse is to be shut up in a cask for three days until he has completely digested everything that he had in his belly. He is then to be fed on ivy for four days, at the end of which time he is to be slain and his blood mixed with his urine which is now collected from the cask. By soaking the crystal overnight in this mixture it can be moulded or carved at will. This experiment is immediately preceded by a somewhat similar procedure for cutting glass with steel.[3043] The glass is to be softened and the steel is to be tempered by placing them either in the milk of a Saracen she-goat, who has been fed upon ivy and milked by scratching her udders with nettles, or in the lotion of a small girl of ruddy complexion, which must be taken before sunrise. [Sidenote: Similar passages in Heraclius.] Very similar passages are found in the works of Heraclius and Theophilus, the former of whom gives the following directions for glass engraving: “Oh! all you artists who wish to engrave glass correctly, now I will show you just as I myself have proven. I sought the fat worms which the plow turns up from the earth, and the useful art in such matters bade me at the same time seek vinegar and the hot blood of a huge he-goat, which I had taken pains to tie up under cover and to feed on strong ivy for a while. Next I mixed the worms and vinegar with the warm blood and anointed all the bright shining phial. This done, I tried to engrave the glass with the hard stone called pyrites.”[3044] In another passage Heraclius recommends the use of the urine and blood of a goat in engraving gems,[3045] and he also states that the blood of a goat makes crystal easier to carve.[3046] [Sidenote: And Theophilus.] Theophilus states that poets and artificers have greatly cherished the ivy, “because they recognized the occult powers which it contains within itself.”[3047] He also affirms that the blood of a goat makes crystal easier to carve, but he recommends the blood of a living goat two or three years old and repeated insertion of the crystal in an incision between the animal’s breast and abdomen.[3048] He also recommends a somewhat similar procedure to that of the _Mappe Clavicula_ with a goat and a cask.[3049] In this case the goat should be three years old, and after being bound for three days without food should be fed for two days on nothing but fern. The following night he should be shut up in a cask with holes in the bottom through which his urine can be collected in another vessel for two or three nights, when the goat may be released and the urine employed to temper iron tools. Or the urine of a small red-headed boy may be employed, as it is better for tempering than plain water. Indeed, both Theophilus and Heraclius make much use of parts of animals in the arts: various animals’ teeth to shine and polish things with, horse dung mixed with clay, skins and bladders, saliva and ear-wax to polish niello, and so forth. [Sidenote: A magic figure.] Returning to the _Mappe Clavicula_ we note the employment of a magic figure called _arragab_, which Berthelot thinks is a small lead image.[3050] By means of it the flow of a spring may be stopped; a cup may be made either to retain or to empty its contents; if the cows drink first from the trough, there will be enough water for both the cows and the horses, but if the horses drink first, there will not be enough for either. The same figure enables one to fill a pitcher from a cask without diminishing the amount of liquid in the cask, or to construct a lamp which will produce phantoms. It also makes soldiers leave their camp without their spears and yet return with them. After this flight into the realm of magic we come back to a more plausibly physical basis for marvels in a description of four revolving hoops or circles within which a vessel may be revolved in any direction without spilling its contents.[3051] [Sidenote: Use of an incantation in tenth century alchemy.] The passages which we have just noted in the _Mappe Clavicula_ cannot be surely traced back earlier than the twelfth century version of it and do not appear in the table of contents which is preserved in the tenth century Schlestadt manuscript and which covers only a portion of the chapters of the twelfth century manuscript, but also some other chapters which are not extant. But that magic was not entirely absent from the earlier version to which this table of contents seems to apply is evidenced by the fact that one of the chapter headings dealing with the fabrication of gold mentions a prayer or incantation to be recited during the process.[3052] [Sidenote: Experimental character of the work of Theophilus.] The great importance of the work of Theophilus in the history of art is too generally recognized to need elaboration here. Our purpose is rather to point out that in it information of great value is found side by side with a considerable amount of misguided natural theory and magical ceremony. The stress laid by Theophilus upon personal observation, experience, and experimental method should not, however, pass unnoticed. He has scrutinized the works of art in the church of St. Sophia one by one “with diligent experience,” has tested everything by eye and hand, has as a “curious explorer” made all sorts of experiments, and appears to represent transparent stained glass as his own discovery or idea.[3053] Nor is he the only experimenter; he also speaks of “modern workmen” who deceive many incautious persons by their imitation of the appearance of most precious Arabian gold which “is frequently found employed in the most ancient vases.”[3054] [Sidenote: How to make Spanish gold.] Theophilus, however, believes that other metals can really be transmuted into gold, and we may repeat his amusing account of how Spanish gold “is made from red copper and powdered basilisk and human blood and vinegar.” “For the Gentiles, whose skill in this art is well known, create basilisks in this wise. They have an underground chamber completely walled in on all sides with stone, and with two windows so small as scarcely to admit any light. In this they put two cocks of twelve or fifteen years and give them plenty of food. These, when they have grown fat, from the heat of their fat have commerce together and lay eggs. As soon as the eggs are laid the cocks are ejected and toads are put in to sit on the eggs and are fed upon bread. When the eggs are hatched chicks come forth who look like young roosters, but after seven days they grow serpents’ tails and would straightway burrow into the ground, were the chamber not paved with stone. Guarding against this, their masters have round brazen vessels of great amplitude, perforated on all sides, with narrow mouths, in which they put the chicks and close the mouths with copper covers and bury them underground, and the chicks are nourished for six months by the subtle earth which enters through the perforations. After this they uncover them and apply a strong fire until the beasts within are totally consumed. When this is over and it has cooled off, they remove and carefully pulverize them, adding a third part of the blood of a ruddy man, which blood is dried and powdered. Having compounded these two they temper them with strong vinegar in a clean vessel; then they take very thin plates of the purest red copper and spread this mixture over them on both sides and place them in the fire. And when they grow white hot, they take them out and quench and wash them in the same mixture, and this process they repeat until the mixture has eaten through the copper, and so obtain the weight and color of gold. This gold is suited for all operations.”[3055] [Sidenote: The question of symbolic terminology again.] Mr. Hendrie held that Theophilus was here describing in symbolic language a process “for procuring pure gold by the means of the mineral acids;” and that “the toads of Theophilus which hatch the eggs are probably fragments of the mineral salt, nitrate of potash; ... the blood of a red man ... probably a nitrate of ammonia; fine earth, a muriate of soda (common salt); the cocks, the sulphates of copper and iron; the eggs, gold ore; the hatched chickens, which require a stone pavement, sulphuric acid produced by burning these in a stone vessel, collecting the fumes.... The elements of nitro-muriatic acid are all here, the solvent for gold.”[3056] Mr. Hendrie leaves, however, a number of details unexplained and he admits that “Unfortunately each chemist appears to have varied the symbols in use.” Certainly one would have to vary them in almost every case to make any sense out of such procedures as this of Theophilus. On the other hand, there is nothing very surprising in his procedure taken literally to one who is acquainted with the beliefs of ancient and medieval science and magic. And certainly Shakespeare’s line concerning the precious jewel in the toad’s head, which Hendrie quotes in this connection, is much more likely to be meant literally than to be the symbolic “jargon of the alchemist.” Later we shall hear again from Alexander Neckam, in a passage which has no connection with alchemy, of the basilisk hatched by a toad from an egg laid by a cock, and we shall hear from Albertus Magnus of an experiment in which a toad’s eye was proved superior in virtue to an emerald. [Sidenote: Alchemy in the eleventh century.] The treatises which we have been considering appear, at least for the most part, to antedate the Latin translations of works of alchemy from the Arabic, although it is possible that, just as the first translations of mathematical and astronomical works from the Arabic go back to the tenth century at least, so the reception of Arabic alchemy may have begun in a small way before the twelfth century. At any rate we find that in the eleventh century not only were Michael Psellus and other Byzantine scholars spreading the doctrines of alchemy,[3057] but a scholium to Adam of Bremen records the presence at the court of Bishop Adalbert of Bremen of an alchemist in the person of a baptized Jew.[3058] [Sidenote: St. Dunstan and alchemy and magic.] To St. Dunstan, the famous abbot of Glastonbury, archbishop of Canterbury, and statesman of the tenth century (924 or 925 to 988), is attributed a treatise on the philosopher’s stone contained in a Corpus Christi manuscript of the fifteenth century at Oxford and printed at Cassel in 1649. No genuine works by him seem to be extant, however, but it is interesting to note that along with his reputation for learning and mechanical skill went the association of his name with magic. In his studious youth he was accused of magic, driven from court, and thrown into a muddy pond. His contemporary biographer also narrates how the devil appeared to him in various animal and other terrifying forms. His favorite studies were mathematics and music, and he was said to own a magic harp which played while hanging by itself on the wall.[3059] [Sidenote: Introduction of Arabic alchemy in the twelfth century.] Berthelot has associated the introduction of Arabic alchemy into Christian western Europe with the Latin translation by Robert of Chester of _The Book of Morienus_, but incorrectly dated it in 1182 A. D.,[3060] whereas the mention of that date in the manuscripts has reference to the Spanish era and denotes the year 1144 A. D.[3061] The main reason for regarding Robert’s translation as one of the earliest is that he remarks in his preface, “What alchemy is and what is its composition, your Latin world does not yet know truly.” Of the work translated by Robert we shall treat more fully in a later chapter on _Hermetic Books in the Middle Ages_. Here we may further note the existence of a work of alchemy in another twelfth century manuscript.[3062] It is a brief work in four chapters and its superstitious character may be inferred from its opening instruction to “take four hundred hen’s eggs laid in the month of March,” and its citation of Artesius concerning divination by the reflection or refraction of the sun’s rays or moon-beams in liquids or a mirror. Since the treatise bears the title _Alchamia_, it is probably safe to assume that it represents Arabic influence.