REVIEWS
"The Experimental Fire reads like an insider's history of English alchemy, exposing its inner workings and demystifying its encrypted canon with adeptness and hard-earned authority. Jennifer M. Rampling meets the frustrating material of alchemical history with all the scholarly agility and suspicion requisite to the task. This book steers straight into the hazards of alchemical literature, with its bricolage texts full of borrowed works uncited or cited badly, recorded in manuscripts annotated by many anonymous hands. Rampling is the first to handle these hazardous materials so comprehensively and confidently. She reports on her many archival discoveries and assembles them into a coherent narrative of influence and innovation in English alchemy over four centuries. Her forerunner in this strange country was Dorothea Waley Singer, whose preliminary census of alchemical manuscripts in British libraries laid the groundwork for English alchemical history and has awaited a proper follow-up since 1931. With Experimental Fire, Rampling delivers one."
— Los Angeles Review of Books
"This is a densely argued academic work which builds its case for a particular view of English alchemy example by example, with a crop of detailed footnotes sprouting from the base of every page. . . . [As] an introduction to the evolution of English alchemy, it is impeccable."
— Fortean Times
"An engaging piece of scholarly work that should satisfy the expert and the layman alike. It makes a subject like alchemy, that appears highly abstruse, palatable to readers who may balk at the complexity and remoteness of alchemical language. More than anything, perhaps, it humanises the alchemist, showing him or her to be a historical personage caught up in the circumstances of the era and seeking to survive the upheavals and challenges of historical reality. As such, Rampling's book is not just an essential read for the new historiography of alchemy, but it is bound to make an important contribution to the history of science, social history, history of scholarship, and the history of the book."
— Early Science and Medicine
"Jennifer M. Rampling’s first book takes on the incredible feat of identifying and tracing a specific strand of sericonian alchemical knowledge across a 400-year period. . . . In this book, Rampling expertly unpacks the function of English alchemical authority and patronage within a pan-European network of practitioners. She has pieced together a compelling narrative of national identity and alchemical change over time. . . . this will be a necessary addition to the bookshelves of any scholar of alchemy, patronage, the book, and English intellectual history."
— Isis
"Rich and vast. . . . The Experimental Fire challenges us to grapple with a more expansive idea of history, one that includes the lineage, development, and comprehension of false knowledge. Just because something isn’t true doesn’t mean it’s not real, that it can’t be studied, argued over, or taught. Indeed, alchemy, Rampling argues, is nothing but the invention and reinvention of one type of knowledge. And what is literature, or history, or science, if not a variation of the same?"
— Chicago Review of Books
"A new and fascinating angle on how alchemy began to transform science into a modern enterprise. . . . Beautifully and clearly written."
— Forbidden Histories
“In The Experimental Fire: Inventing English Alchemy, 1300-1700, Jennifer M. Rampling presents the largely uncharted history of English alchemy from its medieval roots until the end of the seventeenth century with an astounding eye for detail.”
— Annals of Science
"Rampling's extensive survey of English alchemy is a masterclass in history of science research and serves as a model for anyone who wishes to undertake such a project. Although it meets the highest standards of academic research, she writes with a light touch and an accomplished literary style making a complex and technical topic accessible to the not necessarily specialist reader. . . . Anybody with some basic knowledge of the history of alchemy, and an interest in developing that knowledge, could and should read her book. For those with a serious interest in the topic The Experimental Fire is an obligatory read and must already be considered a standard work in the genre."
— Renaissance Mathematicus
"Captivating. . . . Whether your interest is in early modern European history, the history of science, or old occult practices, this is a book well worth giving consideration as your next reading selection."
— Well-read Naturalist
"Rampling's book is a rich source for a reader interested in English alchemy in the late medieval and early modern period. Rampling deserves praise for bringing to light a large amount of as yet unpublished manuscripts, which are analysed in detail as well as placed in their historical, social, and religious contexts. The picture that emerges from this book is one of a complex network, in which practitioners, patrons, physicians, collectors, and forgers interacted and influenced each other and the art of alchemy."
— Journal of Early Modern Studies
"As Rampling analyzes how the English alchemical practitioners filled gaps in information found in their books and resolved discrepancies between texts and experience, she identifies networks of readers and traces a subtle evolution in how works on alchemy were read. She notes parallels in these reading practices with developments in other forms of knowledge, such as Reformation-era theology. This book is well organized, offers readable and engaging prose, and has been carefully edited. The bibliography and index are comprehensive. . . . Highly recommended."
— Choice
"This book has so many novel elements that it is difficult to know where to begin. Rampling presents one amazing archival discovery after another like a magician pulling rabbits from a hat. Forging vivid and compelling narratives with her materials, while remaining keenly aware of the living history behind the documents, she has been able to sketch the outlines of what has previously been entirely unknown to the history of alchemy. This is a fully achieved piece of research that is destined to become the key work in the field."
— Stephen Clucas, Birkbeck, University of London
"Rampling offers a masterful survey of alchemy in England, from its status as the largest scientific genre circa 1400 through the patronage of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. Building on the legacy of George Ripley, English alchemists developed expert skills in textual interpretation and experimental practice—focused on both medicine and transmutation—in order to portray themselves as philosophers rather than artisans. Rampling writes with admirable lucidity about cryptic manuscripts, colorful figures, and complicated archival evidence."
— Ann M. Blair, Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor, Harvard University
"This is an extraordinary and important piece of scholarship. Rampling carries the reader from the first origins of alchemy in Medieval England, through the Reformation, and down to the end of the seventeenth century—a remarkable temporal sweep. There has not previously been a study of the alchemical tradition that so thoroughly follows a coherently framed national context for so long a period. Rampling presents the material in a remarkably clear and concise fashion that does justice to its complexity yet still guides the reader."
— Lawrence M. Principe, author of The Transmutations of Chymistry: Wilhelm Homberg and the Académie Royale des Sciences
"In The Experimental Fire: Inventing English Alchemy, 1300–1700, Jennifer Rampling traces this sericonian branch of alchemy through its highs and lows from the medieval to the early modern periods, emphasizing that alchemy was not a homogenous or static discipline but rather one that underwent a series of subtle yet important changes."
— Journal of British Studies
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction: What Is Mercury?
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226710846.003.0001
[alchemy;English history;experiment;medicine;practice;reading practices;Reformation]
This introduction outlines the main historiographical and practical challenges to studying alchemical ideas and practices over the span of multiple centuries, and in a particular national context—England. The first obstacle lies in knowing where to start: a problem that vexes both modern interpreters and early modern alchemists. Revered treatises insist that the philosophers’ stone has its origin in one thing—often called “mercury”—yet medieval recipes call for a wide range of mineral and organic ingredients. The outcomes of these practices also varied: from the universal transmuting elixir to medicinal waters, recipes for precious stones, and a host of lesser applications. Behind the edifice of unity, men and women from different walks of life pursued other goals: flexibility, utility, and—importantly—an increased range of products to offer to potential patrons, particularly during times of social, economic, and religious strife.
1. Philosophers and Kings
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226710846.003.0002
[patronage;legal status;medieval history;Edward III;John of Rupescissa;pseudo-Lull;Roger Bacon;transmutation;counterfeiting]
This chapter introduces medieval alchemical ideas and practices, emphasizing their diversity and evaluating their influence in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century England. Alchemy held a paradoxical place in English culture: while associations with counterfeiting threatened the integrity of English coin, transmutation offered a potential source of revenue to English kings. Responding to its problematic legal status, practitioners redefined themselves as learned alchemical “philosophers” rather than frauds. They translated and adapted Arabic and Latin texts, supporting different practices with reference to a variety of theoretical positions. While Roger Bacon proposed a medicinal elixir made from blood, texts in the tradition of pseudo-Geber insisted on mineral ingredients. From the 1350s, John of Rupescissa’s claims for a wine-based “quintessence” transformed European alchemical and medical practice. In particular, John’s approach was assimilated into the vast corpus of works attributed to Raymond Lull, where it fused with an earlier tradition focused on gold-making. Pseudo-Lullian works thus came to promote a hybrid, multipurpose alchemy, based on three “stones” made using different waters: animal, vegetable, and mineral. This tradition also gave rise to a new, English “alchemical” history, by reinventing Lull as Edward III’s alchemical philosopher.
2. Medicine and Transmutation
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226710846.003.0003
[patronage;licenses;textual exegesis;experiment;George Ripley;alchemical medicine;poetry;Edward IV;Compound of Alchemy]
This chapter investigates the problems posed by alchemical pseudepigraphy, focusing on the case of England’s most famous pseudo-Lullian popularizer, George Ripley, Canon of Bridlington. The trope of “many stones” was a dominant theme of English alchemy by the 1470s, as revealed in poetry, patronage suits, and royal licenses. While this approach offered both transmutational and medicinal benefits, success depended on reconciling internal contradictions in treatises pseudonymously ascribed to Raymond Lull. For practitioners convinced of the unity and authenticity of the corpus, Raymond’s apparently conflicting instructions presented riddles which they attempted to resolve through textual exegesis and practical experiment. In his Compound of Alchemy and Medulla alchimiae, Ripley reinterpreted diverse Lullian sources to demonstrate both Raymond’s authority and his own exegetical ability, while offering a range of coherent, practical outcomes, tested against his own experience. In particular, he interpreted Raymond’s mysterious “vegetable stone” as a hybrid elixir suitable for healing both metals and human bodies, made by dissolving a metallic compound called “sericon” in distilled vinegar. Yet his influential reading transmuted the sense of Raymond’s original text, in a process of textual and practical innovation that I term “practical exegesis.”
3. Opinion and Experience
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226710846.003.0004
[empiricism;fraud;manuscripts;George Ripley;poetry;recipes;experiment;theoretical speculation]
Once identified, Ripley’s multi-purpose “sericonian” approach turns out to be ubiquitous in fifteenth-century English alchemical recipes. So, too, does his commitment to personal experimentation, as related in his neglected compendium, the Bosome Book. Yet practitioners like Ripley still faced problems when the experience of their authorities appeared to disagree. This chapter identifies a previously unexplored disagreement among fifteenth-century English alchemists, with implications for both the intellectual coherence and the moral status of alchemy. Pseudo-Lullian practice demanded that the stone be fermented using a “mercury” drawn from gold. This expensive ingredient seemed to contradict the widely-cited aphorism that alchemy was attainable by rich and poor alike. An alternative approach argued for the use of the imperfect metal—sericon—in place of more expensive ingredients. Beyond the technicalities of practice, this dispute raised political, economic, and spiritual questions, which alchemists once more sought to resolve with reference to a multiplicity of stones and ingredients, whether animal, vegetable, or mineral. Their enquiries reveal how practitioners attempted to reconcile empirical observation with theoretical speculation: a tension captured in Ripley’s condemnation of frauds and sophisters who elevated “opinion” over proven experience.
4. Dissolution and Reformation
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226710846.003.0005
[monasteries;reading practices;patronage;experiment;manuscripts;Henry VIII;Giles Du Wes;Robert Greene]
The English Reformation brought the dissolution of the monasteries, long-established sites for alchemical practice and the production of texts. This chapter draws together surviving sources to trace the routes by which alchemical knowledge was communicated in early Tudor England. In Richmond Palace, Giles Du Wes—librarian and tutor to King Henry VIII—compiled some of England’s earliest and most important pseudo-Lullian compendia, which he shared with an alchemical colleague, Sir Robert Greene of Welby. Readers like Du Wes and Greene valued medieval works as repositories of practical knowledge, and their reading practices reveal earnest attempts to decipher these sources. While Greene complained of unreliable instructions and unsuccessful experiments, Du Wes reconciled his late medieval sources with new areas of enquiry, including Cabala and Italian Neoplatonism. Meanwhile, in the Essex priory of Little Leighs, the prior Thomas Ellys sought advice on alchemical practice from London-based lay specialists, including the clothworker Thomas Peter. Their collaboration reveals the circulation of pseudo-Lullian writings within artisanal as well as ecclesiastical circles, illustrating the fluidity of alchemical knowledge between religious and secular spheres in the pre-Reformation “mixed economy” of practice.
5. Nature and Magic
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226710846.003.0006
[magic;Reformation;prisons;experiment;patronage;manuscripts;medicine;Henry VIII;William Blomfild;Agrippa von Nettesheim]
The collapse of the alchemical “mixed economy” during the English Reformation created demand for new, secular sites of practice and sources of patronage, as practitioners sought to negotiate their expertise within a dramatically different political and confessional climate. New documentation shows that, during the 1530s and 40s, Henry VIII and his counselors received petitions from a variety of alchemical practitioners. Yet, in an atmosphere of heightened religious and political tension, alchemists faced an additional problem: how to disentangle their art from associations with political prophecy and illicit magic—the latter recently popularized by the writings of Agrippa von Nettesheim. The problem of distinguishing magic from alchemical experiment is exemplified by the case of William Blomfild, a former monk turned radical preacher, whose career encompasses the “before” and “after” of English alchemy. Blomfild was one of several alchemists arrested under suspicion of conjuring who used his knowledge of alchemy—specifically, of pseudo-Lullian and Ripleian alchemical medicine—to petition for his release from prison. Through such endeavors, Blomfild and his peers sought to reinforce the value of alchemical philosophy and practice as a science grounded in the study of nature.
6. Time and Money
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226710846.003.0007
[patronage;vernacularization;medieval history;Protestantism;manuscripts;Elizabeth I;William Cecil;Richard Eden;Thomas Charnock;experiment]
Interest in alchemy reached its height in the second half of the sixteenth century, as English alchemists strove to win the trust and support of powerful patrons for a host of projects: resolving the national bullion shortage through mass production of transmuted gold; preserving the monarch’s health with potent elixirs; and demonstrating alchemy’s providential role in the fortunes of Protestant England. Patronage suits addressed to Elizabeth I and her secretary of state, William Cecil, reveal that alchemy’s diversity of goals was matched by the variety of its practitioners, including London merchants (mercer Robert Freelove and haberdasher Richard Walton), university-educated scholars (cosmographer Richard Eden and mathematician John Dee), and unconventional medical practitioners (William Blomfild and Thomas Charnock). These secular petitioners sought to establish their credentials by invoking the medieval history of English alchemy, while distancing their own experiments from illegal practices. This new view of English alchemical history is captured in Blomfild’s alchemical verses, which praise past adepts like Raymond and Ripley even as they mock the failures of contemporary alchemists like Eden. Yet previously unidentified manuscripts show that Eden, Blomfild, and others participated in the same practical, sericonian enterprise.
7. Recovery and Revision
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226710846.003.0008
[experimental reconstruction;forgery;manuscripts;medicine;George Ripley;Paracelsus;Samuel Norton;Elizabeth I;recipes]
During the 1570s, English alchemists skillfully reworked their medieval sources into patronage suits, interpreting early recipes in light of new, continental trends, such as the chemical medicine of Paracelsus. Yet traditional readings continued to drive practice. For the Somerset gentleman Samuel Norton, the English tradition of alchemical medicine offered a middle way between the extremes of Galenic and chemical physick. In 1573/4 he discovered the Bosome Book, a collection of treatises, poems and recipes reputedly in George Ripley’s own hand. Although the original manuscript has not survived, contemporary audiences accepted its authenticity, and were swift to make copies. This chapter reconstructs the original Book, showing how Ripley reworked his own medieval sources, only for Norton to adapt Ripley in turn. Writing to Elizabeth I, Norton drew heavily on the Book’s contents. He also went beyond his exemplar, testing and amending Ripley’s authoritative practices through experimental reconstruction—and even splicing together recipes from different sources to ensure coherent and replicable results, suggesting a new category of forgery. For reader-practitioners like Norton, the revival of past texts provided an opportunity to set English authority to work in the context of new experimental programs and medical practice.
8. Home and Abroad
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226710846.003.0009
[experimental reconstruction;prisons;patronage;forgery;Edward Kelley;George Ripley;John Dee;Rudolf II;Holy Roman Empire]
This chapter traces how English alchemy, originally derived from continental traditions, returned to Europe, attracting interest and controversy far from England’s shores. In 1583, John Dee and his associate Edward Kelley travelled to the Holy Roman Empire, bearing books from Dee’s vast library. Kelley used English authorities, including Ripley’s Bosome Book and the Work of Saint Dunstan (an ingenious forgery) to further his relationships with peers and patrons at Emperor Rudolf II’s court in Prague. Kelley’s previously unidentified “prison writings,” including sericonian treatises written for Rudolf during his incarceration, reveal the potency of such alchemical novelties not just in winning patronage, but in securing personal rehabilitation. They also show that Kelley continued to experimentally reconstruct medieval practices, even while imprisoned. The influence of English authorities did not end with Kelley’s death, as the writings of Ripley, Dunstan, and Kelley himself were translated and printed in Latin compendia. There, they affirmed the transnational unity and truth of alchemy in defiance of its critics. Such practical and polemical encounters ensured that the flow of alchemical expertise between England and continental Europe was not one way.
9. Antiquity and Experiment
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226710846.003.0010
[antiquarianism;collecting;experiment;Elias Ashmole;George Starkey;Isaac Newton;manuscripts;medieval history;magic;reading practices]
Moving into the 1650s, this chapter follows the fortunes of English alchemy as both experimental program and antiquarian interest. Ripley’s alchemy was reinvented as an antimony-based practice by George Starkey, in treatises later published as Ripley Reviv’d. Such appropriations helped maintain Ripley’s authority even as the sericonian paradigm of multiple stones came under attack by proponents of different practical and theoretical positions. But English alchemy also enjoyed a distinct, historical identity. Elias Ashmole, antiquarian and founding member of the Royal Society, included the poems of Ripley, Thomas Norton, Blomfild, and Charnock in his treasury of alchemical verse, the Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum (1652), as evidence for English preeminence in the science. Many of the practitioners encountered earlier in the book, including Giles Du Wes, Robert Greene, Edward Kelley, and Samuel Norton, were now authorities in their own right, whose works feature among the manuscripts harvested by Ashmole and other collectors. Antiquarian and practical interests remained closely linked as the writings of medieval practitioners continued to be studied by experimentalists like Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton. Even as alchemists aspired to effect changes in the material world, alchemy was itself continually transmuting.
