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Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions

C >> Charles Mackay >> Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions




Other authors besides Delrio relate similar stories of this
philosopher. The world in those days was always willing enough to
believe in tales of magic and sorcery; and when, as in Agrippa's case,
the alleged magician gave himself out for such, and claimed credit for
the wonders he worked, it is not surprising that the age should have
allowed his pretensions. It was dangerous boasting, which sometimes
led to the stake or the gallows, and therefore was thought to be not
without foundation. Paulus Jovius, in his "Eulogia Doctorum Virorum,"
says, that the devil, in the shape of a large black dog, attended
Agrippa wherever he went. Thomas Nash, in his adventures of Jack
Wilton, relates, that at the request of Lord Surrey, Erasmus, and some
other learned men, Agrippa called up from the grave many of the great
philosophers of antiquity; among others, Tully, whom he caused to
re-deliver his celebrated oration for Roscius. He also showed Lord
Surrey, when in Germany, an exact resemblance in a glass of his
mistress the fair Geraldine. She was represented on her couch weeping
for the absence of her lover. Lord Surrey made a note of the exact
time at which he saw this vision, and ascertained afterwards that his
mistress was actually so employed at the very minute. To Thomas Lord
Cromwell, Agrippa represented King Henry VIII. hunting in Windsor
Park, with the principal lords of his court; and to please the Emperor
Charles V. he summoned King David and King Solomon from the tomb.

Naude, in his "Apology for the Great Men who have been falsely
suspected of Magic," takes a great deal of pains to clear Agrippa from
the imputations cast upon him by Delrio, Paulus Jovius, and other such
ignorant and prejudiced scribblers. Such stories demanded refutation
in the days of Naude, but they may now be safely left to decay in
their own absurdity. That they should have attached, however, to the
memory of a man, who claimed the power of making iron obey him when he
told it to become gold, and who wrote such a work as that upon magic,
which goes by his name, is not at all surprising.

PARACELSUS.

This philosopher, called by Naude, "the zenith and rising sun of
all the alchymists," was born at Einsiedeln, near Zurich, in the year
1493. His true name was Hohenheim; to which, as he himself informs us,
were prefixed the baptismal names of Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastes
Paracelsus. The last of these he chose for his common designation
while he was yet a boy; and rendered it, before he died, one of the
most famous in the annals of his time. His father, who was a
physician, educated his son for the same pursuit. The latter was an
apt scholar, and made great progress. By chance the work of Isaac
Hollandus fell into his hands, and from that time he became smitten
with the mania of the philosopher's stone. All his thoughts henceforth
were devoted to metallurgy; and he travelled into Sweden that he might
visit the mines of that country, and examine the ores while they yet
lay in the bowels of the earth. He also visited Trithemius at the
monastery of Spannheim, and obtained instructions from him in the
science of alchymy. Continuing his travels, he proceeded through
Prussia and Austria into Turkey, Egypt, and Tatary, and thence
returning to Constantinople, learned, as he boasted, the art of
transmutation, and became possessed of the elixir vitae. He then
established himself as a physician in his native Switzerland at
Zurich, and commenced writing works upon alchymy and medicine, which
immediately fixed the attention of Europe. Their great obscurity was
no impediment to their fame; for the less the author was understood,
the more the demonologists, fanatics, and philosopher's-stone-hunters
seemed to appreciate him. His fame as a physician kept pace with that
which he enjoyed as an alchymist, owing to his having effected some
happy cures by means of mercury and opium; drugs unceremoniously
condemned by his professional brethren. In the year 1526, he was
chosen Professor of Physics and Natural Philosophy in the University
of Basle, where his lectures attracted vast numbers of students. He
denounced the writings of all former physicians as tending to mislead;
and publicly burned the works of Galen and Avicenna, as quacks and
impostors. He exclaimed, in presence of the admiring and
half-bewildered crowd, who assembled to witness the ceremony, that
there was more knowledge in his shoestrings than in the writings of
these physicians. Continuing in the same strain, he said all the
universities in the world were full of ignorant quacks; but that he,
Paracelsus, over flowed with wisdom. "You will all follow my new
system," said he, with furious gesticulations, "Avicenna, Galen,
Rhazis, Montagnana, Meme -- you will all follow me, ye professors of
Paris, Montpellier, Germany, Cologne, and Vienna! and all ye that
dwell on the Rhine and the Danube -- ye that inhabit the isles of the
sea; and ye also, Italians, Dalmatians, Athenians, Arabians, Jews --
ye will all follow my doctrines, for I am the monarch of medicine!"

But he did not long enjoy the esteem of the good citizens of
Basle. It is said that he indulged in wine so freely, as not
unfrequently to be seen in the streets in a state of intoxication.
This was ruinous for a physician, and his good fame decreased rapidly.
His ill fame increased in still greater proportion, especially when he
assumed the airs of a sorcerer. He boasted of the legions of spirits
at his command; and of one especially, which he kept imprisoned in the
hilt of his sword. Wetterus, who lived twenty-seven months in his
service, relates that he often threatened to invoke a whole army of
demons, and show him the great authority which he could exercise over
them. He let it be believed, that the spirit in his sword had custody
of the elixir of life, by means of which he could make any one live to
be as old as the antediluvians. He also boasted that he had a spirit
at his command, called "Azoth," whom he kept imprisoned in a jewel;
and in many of the old portraits he is represented with a jewel,
inscribed with the word "Azoth," in his hand.

If a sober prophet has little honour in his own country, a drunken
one has still less. Paracelsus found it at last convenient to quit
Basle, and establish himself at Strasbourg. The immediate cause of
this change of residence was as follows: -- A citizen lay at the point
of death, and was given over by all the physicians of the town. As a
last resource Paracelsus was called in, to whom the sick man promised
a magnificent recompence, if by his means he were cured. Paracelsus
gave him two small pills, which the man took and rapidly recovered.
When he was quite well, Paracelsus sent for his fee; but the citizen
had no great opinion of the value of a cure which had been so speedily
effected. He had no notion of paying a handful of gold for two pills,
although they had saved his life, and he refused to pay more than the
usual fee for a single visit. Paracelsus brought an action against
him, and lost it. This result so exasperated him, that he left Basle
in high dudgeon. He resumed his wandering life, and travelled in
Germany and Hungary, supporting himself as he went on the credulity
and infatuation of all classes of society. He cast nativities -- told
fortunes -- aided those who had money to throw away upon the experiment,
to find the philosopher's stone -- prescribed remedies for cows and
pigs, and aided in the recovery of stolen goods. After residing
successively at Nuremburg, Augsburg, Vienna, and Mindelheim, he
retired in the year 1541 to Saltzbourg, and died in a state of abject
poverty in the hospital of that town.

If this strange charlatan found hundreds of admirers during his
life, he found thousands after his death. A sect of Paracelsists
sprang up in France and Germany, to perpetuate the extravagant
doctrines of their founder upon all the sciences, and upon alchymy in
particular. The chief leaders were Bodenstein and Dorneus. The
following is a summary of his doctrine, founded upon supposed
existence of the philosopher's stone; it is worth preserving from its
very absurdity, and altogether unparalleled in the history of
philosophy:-- First of all, he maintained that the contemplation of the
perfection of the Deity sufficed to procure all wisdom and knowledge;
that the Bible was the key to the theory of all diseases, and that it
was necessary to search into the Apocalypse to know the signification
of magic medicine. The man who blindly obeyed the will of God, and who
succeeded in identifying himself with the celestial intelligences,
possessed the philosopher's stone -- he could cure all diseases, and
prolong life to as many centuries as he pleased; it being by the very
same means that Adam and the antediluvian patriarchs prolonged theirs.
Life was an emanation from the stars -- the sun governed the heart,
and the moon the brain. Jupiter governed the liver, Saturn the gall,
Mercury the lungs, Mars the bile, and Venus the loins. In the stomach
of every human being there dwelt a demon, or intelligence, that was a
sort of alchymist in his way, and mixed, in their due proportions, in
his crucible, the various aliments that were sent into that grand
laboratory the belly.[See the article "Paracelsus," by the learned
Renaudin, in the "Biographie Universelle."] He was proud of the title
of magician, and boasted that he kept up a regular correspondence with
Galen from hell; and that he often summoned Avicenna from the same
regions to dispute with him on the false notions he had promulgated
respecting alchymy, and especially regarding potable gold and the
elixir of life. He imagined that gold could cure ossification of the
heart, and, in fact, all diseases, if it were gold which had been
transmuted from an inferior metal by means of the philosopher's stone,
and if it were applied under certain conjunctions of the planets. The
mere list of the works in which he advances these frantic imaginings,
which he called a doctrine, would occupy several pages.

GEORGE AGRICOLA.

This alchymist was born in the province of Misnia, in 1494. His
real name was Bauer, meaning a husbandman, which, in accordance with
the common fashion of his age, he Latinized into Agricola. From his
early youth, he delighted in the visions of the hermetic science. Ere
he was sixteen, he longed for the great elixir which was to make him
live for seven hundred years, and for the stone which was to procure
him wealth to cheer him in his multiplicity of days. He published a
small treatise upon the subject at Cologne, in 1531, which obtained
him the patronage of the celebrated Maurice, Duke of Saxony. After
practising for some years as a physician at Joachimsthal, in Bohemia,
he was employed by Maurice as superintendent of the silver mines of
Chemnitz. He led a happy life among the miners, making various
experiments in alchymy while deep in the bowels of the earth. He
acquired a great knowledge of metals, and gradually got rid of his
extravagant notions about the philosopher's stone. The miners had no
faith in alchymy; and they converted him to their way of thinking, not
only in that but in other respects. From their legends, he became
firmly convinced that the bowels of the earth were inhabited by good
and evil spirits, and that firedamp and other explosions sprang from
no other causes than the mischievous propensities of the latter. He
died in the year 1555, leaving behind him the reputation of a very
able and intelligent man.

DENIS ZACHAIRE.

Autobiography, written by a wise man who was once a fool, is not
only the most instructive, but the most delightful of reading. Denis
Zachaire, an alchymist of the sixteenth century, has performed this
task, and left a record of his folly and infatuation in pursuit of the
philosopher's stone, which well repays perusal. He was born in the
year 1510, of an ancient family in Guienne, and was early sent to the
university of Bordeaux, under the care of a tutor to direct his
studies. Unfortunately, his tutor was a searcher for the grand elixir,
and soon rendered his pupil as mad as himself upon the subject. With
this introduction, we will allow Denis Zachaire to speak for himself,
and continue his narrative in his own words :--" I received from
home," says he, "the sum of two hundred crowns for the expenses of
myself and master; but before the end of the year, all our money went
away in the smoke of our furnaces. My master, at the same time, died
of a fever, brought on by the parching heat of our laboratory, from
which he seldom or never stirred, and which was scarcely less hot than
the arsenal of Venice. His death was the more unfortunate for me, as
my parents took the opportunity of reducing my allowance, and sending
me only sufficient for my board and lodging, instead of the sum I
required to continue my operations in alchymy.

"To meet this difficulty and get out of leading-strings, I
returned home at the age of twenty-five, and mortgaged part of my
property for four hundred crowns. This sum was necessary to perform an
operation of the science, which had been communicated to me by an
Italian at Toulouse, and who, as he said, had proved its efficacy. I
retained this man in my service, that we might see the end of the
experiment. I then, by means of strong distillations, tried to
calcinate gold and silver; but all my labour was in vain. The weight
of the gold I drew out of my furnace was diminished by one-half since
I put it in, and my four hundred crowns were very soon reduced to two
hundred and thirty. I gave twenty of these to my Italian, in order
that he might travel to Milan, where the author of the receipt
resided, and ask him the explanation of some passages which we thought
obscure. I remained at Toulouse all the winter, in the hope of his
return; but I might have remained there till this day if I had waited
for him, for I never saw his face again.

"In the succeeding summer there was a great plague, which forced
me to quit the town. I did not, however, lose sight of my work. I went
to Cahors, where I remained six months, and made the acquaintance of
an old man, who was commonly known to the people as 'the Philosopher;'
a name which, in country places, is often bestowed upon people whose
only merit is, that they are less ignorant than their neighbours. I
showed him my collection of alchymical receipts, and asked his opinion
upon them. He picked out ten or twelve of them, merely saying that
they were better than the others. When the plague ceased, I returned
to Toulouse, and recommenced my experiments in search of the stone. I
worked to such effect that my four hundred crowns were reduced to one
hundred and seventy.

"That I might continue my work on a safer method, I made
acquaintance, in 1537, with a certain Abbe, who resided in the
neighbourhood. He was smitten with the same mania as myself, and told
me that one of his friends, who had followed to Rome in the retinue of
the Cardinal d'Armagnac, had sent him from that city a new receipt,
which could not fail to transmute iron and copper, but which
would cost two hundred crowns. I provided half this money, and the
Abbe the rest; and we began to operate at our joint expense. As we
required spirits of wine for our experiment, I bought a tun of
excellent vin de Gaillac. I extracted the spirit, and rectified it
several times. We took a quantity of this, into which we put four
marks of silver, and one of gold, that had been undergoing the process
of calcination for a month. We put this mixture cleverly into a sort
of horn-shaped vessel, with another to serve as a retort; and placed
the whole apparatus upon our furnace, to produce congelation. This
experiment lasted a year; but, not to remain idle, we amused ourselves
with many other less important operations. We drew quite as much
profit from these as from our great work.

The whole of the year 1537 passed over without producing any
change whatever: in fact, we might have waited till doomsday for the
congelation of our spirits of wine. However, we made a projection with
it upon some heated quicksilver; but all was in vain. Judge of our
chagrin, especially of that of the Abbe, who had already boasted to
all the monks of his monastery, that they had only to bring the large
pump which stood in a corner of the cloister, and he would convert it
into gold; but this ill luck did not prevent us from persevering. I
once more mortgaged my paternal lands for four hundred crowns, the
whole of which I determined to devote to a renewal of my search for
the great secret. The Abbe contributed the same sum; and, with these
eight hundred crowns, I proceeded to Paris, a city more abounding with
alchymists than any other in the world, resolved never to leave it
until I had either found the philosopher's stone, or spent all my
money. This journey gave the greatest offence to all my relations and
friends, who, imagining that I was fitted to be a great lawyer, were
anxious that I should establish myself in that profession. For the
sake of quietness, I pretended, at last, that such was my object.

"After travelling for fifteen days, I arrived in Paris, on the 9th
of January 1539. I remained for a month, almost unknown; but I had no
sooner begun to frequent the amateurs of the science, and visited the
shops of the furnace-makers, than I had the acquaintance of more than
a hundred operative alchymists, each of whom had a different theory
and a different mode of working. Some of them preferred cementation;
others sought the universal alkahest, or dissolvent; and some of them
boasted the great efficacy of the essence of emery. Some of them
endeavoured to extract mercury from other metals to fix it afterwards;
and, in order that each of us should be thoroughly acquainted with the
proceedings of the others, we agreed to meet somewhere every night,
and report progress. We met sometimes at the house of one, and
sometimes in the garret of another; not only on week days, but on
Sundays, and the great festivals of the Church. 'Ah!' one used to say,
'if I had the means of recommencing this experiment, I should do
something.' 'Yes,' said another, 'if my crucible had not cracked, I
should have succeeded before now :' while a third exclaimed, with a
sigh, 'If I had but had a round copper vessel of sufficient strength,
I would have fixed mercury with silver.' There was not one among them
who had not some excuse for his failure; but I was deaf to all their
speeches. I did not want to part with my money to any of them,
remembering how often I had been the dupe of such promises.

"A Greek at last presented himself; and with him I worked a long
time uselessly upon nails, made of cinabar, or vermilion. I was also
acquainted with a foreign gentleman newly arrived in Paris, and often
accompanied him to the shops of the goldsmiths, to sell pieces of gold
and silver, the produce, as he said, of his experiments. I stuck
closely to him for a long time, in the hope that he would impart his
secret. He refused for a long time, but acceded, at last, on my
earnest entreaty, and I found that it was nothing more than an
ingenious trick. I did not fail to inform my friend, the Abbe, whom I
had left at Toulouse, of all my adventures; and sent him, among other
matters, a relation of the trick by which this gentleman pretended to
turn lead into gold. The Abbe still imagined that I should succeed at
last, and advised me to remain another year in Paris, where I had made
so good a beginning. I remained there three years; but,
notwithstanding all my efforts, I had no more success than I had had
elsewhere.

"I had just got to the end of my money, when I received a letter
from the Abbe, telling me to leave everything, and join him
immediately at Toulouse. I went accordingly, and found that he had
received letters from the King of Navarre (grandfather of Henry IV).
This Prince was a great lover of philosophy, full of curiosity, and
had written to the Abbe, that I should visit him at Pau; and that he
would give me three or four thousand crowns, if I would communicate
the secret I had learned from the foreign gentleman. The Abbe's ears
were so tickled with the four thousand crowns, that he let me have no
peace, night or day, until he had fairly seen me on the road to Pau. I
arrived at that place in the month of May 1542. I worked away, and
succeeded, according to the receipt I had obtained. When I had
finished, to the satisfaction of the King, he gave me the reward that
I expected. Although he was willing enough to do me further service,
he was dissuaded from it by the lords of his court; even by many of
those who had been most anxious that I should come. He sent me then
about my business, with many thanks; saying, that if there was
anything in his kingdom which he could give me -- such as the produce
of confiscations, or the like -- he should be most happy. I thought I
might stay long enough for these prospective confiscations, and never
get them at last; and I therefore determined to go back to my friend,
the Abbe.

"I learned, that on the road between Pau and Toulouse, there
resided a monk, who was very skilful in all matters of natural
philosophy. On my return, I paid him a visit. He pitied me very much,
and advised me, with much warmth and kindness of expression, not to
amuse myself any longer with such experiments as these, which were all
false and sophistical; but that I should read the good books of the
old philosophers, where I might not only find the true matter of the
science of alchymy, but learn also the exact order of operations which
ought to be followed. I very much approved of this wise advice; but,
before I acted upon it, I went back to my Abbe, of Toulouse, to give
him an account of the eight hundred crowns, which we had had in
common; and, at the same time, share with him such reward as I had
received from the King of Navarre. If he was little satisfied with the
relation of my adventures since our first separation, he appeared
still less satisfied when I told him I had formed a resolution to
renounce the search for the philosopher's stone. The reason was, that
he thought me a good artist. Of our eight hundred crowns, there
remained but one hundred and seventy-six. When I quitted the Abbe, I
went to my own house, with the intention of remaining there, till I
had read all the old philosophers, and of then proceeding to Paris.

"I arrived in Paris on the day after All Saints, of the year 1546,
and devoted another year to the assiduous study of great authors.
Among others, the 'Turba Philosophorum' of the 'Good Trevisan,' 'The
Remonstance of Nature to the wandering Alchymist,' by Jean de Meung;
and several others of the best books: but, as I had no right'
principles, I did not well know what course to follow.

"At last I left my solitude; not to see my former acquaintances,
the adepts and operators, but to frequent the society of true
philosophers. Among them I fell into still greater uncertainties;
being, in fact, completely bewildered by the variety of operations
which they showed me. Spurred on, nevertheless, by a sort of frenzy or
inspiration, I threw myself into the works of Raymond Lulli and of
Arnold de Villeneuve. The reading of these, and the reflections I made
upon them, occupied me for another year, when I finally determined on
the course I should adopt. I was obliged to wait, however, until I had
mortgaged another very considerable portion of my patrimony. This
business was not settled until the beginning of Lent, 1549, when I
commenced my operations. I laid in a stock of all that was necessary,
and began to work the day after Easter. It was not, however, without
some disquietude and opposition from my friends who came about me; one
asking me what I was going to do, and whether I had not already spent
money enough upon such follies. Another assured me that, if I bought
so much charcoal, I should strengthen the suspicion already existing,
that I was a coiner of base money. Another advised me to purchase some
place in the magistracy, as I was already a Doctor of Laws. My
relations spoke in terms still more annoying to me, and even
threatened that, if I continued to make such a fool of myself, they
would send a posse of police-officers into my house, and break all my
furnaces and crucibles into atoms. I was wearied almost to death by
this continued persecution; but I found comfort in my work and in the
progress of my experiment, to which I was very attentive, and which
went on bravely from day to day. About this time, there was a dreadful
plague in Paris, which interrupted all intercourse between man and
man, and left me as much to myself as I could desire. I soon had the
satisfaction to remark the progress and succession of the three
colours which, according to the philosophers, always prognosticate the
approaching perfection of the work. I observed them distinctly, one
after the other; and next year, being Easter Sunday, 1550, I made the
great trial. Some common quicksilver, which I put into a small
crucible on the fire, was, in less than an hour, converted into very
good gold. You may judge how great was my joy, but I took care not to
boast of it. I returned thanks to God for the favour he had shown me,
and prayed that I might only be permitted to make such use of it as
would redound to his glory.

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