Alchemy and Authority in the Holy Roman Empire (review)

The figure of the swindling alchemist, deceiving unwary patrons with fraudulent processes, is a stock character in early modern European satirical texts and engravings. Yet how did the image reflect the realities of alchemical practice? As Tara Nummedal's important study shows, this "alchemical persona" was highly constructed, first by humanist writers critical of an increasingly mercantile society, but later by alchemists themselves.

In recent years, alchemy has received increasing attention from historians of science, medicine, and technology. It has become clear from the resulting studies that alchemy was no monolithic entity; rather, it makes sense to think in terms of many "alchemies" with different aims and conceptual frameworks. While scholarship often focuses on particular alchemical ideas, or the activities of well-known individual practitioners, Nummedal's contribution is to present a history of alchemy "from below," tracing the host of lesser-known figures who attempted to earn a living from alchemy in sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century Europe.

The book focuses on the principalities of the Holy Roman Empire as sites of extensive mining and metallurgical activity and the location of many of the princely courts where alchemists sought preferment. Nummedal shows that the programs outlined by alchemists were both attractive and relevant to princes anxious to exploit mineral resources and support local economies. Although alchemical transmutation was distinguished from mining processes such as smelting, she suggests that patrons viewed these as "related technologies" (p. 75), capable of increasing the profitability of the mining industry. This perception was instrumental in shaping both the expectations of patrons and the strategies employed by alchemical practitioners, who frequently framed their proposals in terms of yields and profit margins, "adopting economic models of productivity as a measure of alchemy's success" (p. 91). In return for sharing and implementing their specialist craft knowledge, alchemists were equipped with workspaces and materials, and stood to gain substantial rewards on successful completion. Such mutually beneficial arrangements provide the basis of "entrepreneurial alchemy," the term Nummedal coins to describe an early modern world of commerce, contract, penalty, and exchange.

Throughout the book, Nummedal populates this entrepreneurial world with rich case studies of individual enterprises, excavated from an array of archival sources, including trial records and court correspondence. From introduction strategies and preliminary assays to the drawing up of contracts, outfitting of workshops, and management of day-to-day activities, these histories are charted from cradle to grave—sometimes literally. The arrangements between patron and practitioner often broke down, ending in well-documented disputes, disillusionment, and accusations of Betrug, or intention to defraud. Reneging on contractual obligations could be fatal, as demonstrated by the successive executions of four alchemists employed by Duke Friedrich I of Württemberg—not all the characters encountered in the book's early chapters will survive to the conclusion. Yet, as Nummedal fascinatingly shows, disenchantment was not inevitable, and the prosecuting princes often retained their faith in alchemical transmutation as a means of improving the productivity of their mines.

Archival sources reveal that this confidence was supported by the occasional blurring of boundaries between metallurgical and alchemical technologies, an ambiguity not always apparent in printed books on mining, whose authors usually distanced their craft from alchemy. Such ambiguity served alchemists well, however: as Nummedal observes, patron-practitioner relationships were often most satisfactory where their outcomes remained unspecified in formal contracts. Breach of contract, aggravated by accusations of Betrug, provides the basis for documented trials, leaving unclear the question of whether alchemists ever resorted in practice to the double-bottomed crucibles and other tricks which alchemical treatises often warn of. In reality, Nummedal argues, "trials were about contracts, not about cons" (p. 174). Yet the persona of Betrüger also enabled alchemists to define themselves in opposition to it, recasting themselves as helpful advisors, capable of distinguishing between true alchemical gold and the dross of fraudulent practice. The well-publicized failures of the Betrüger therefore provided fuel for new generations of alchemical entrepreneurs.

In addition to...