Paracelso e la tradizione paracelsiana

This book is an Italian translation of a series of lectures given by Allen G. Debus in 1990 at the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici in Naples. It presents a concise summary of Debus’s views concerning the diffusion and influence of Paracelsianism in early modern Europe. Introductory in nature and containing little that cannot be accessed from Debus’s well-known English works, it will be of interest principally to Italian readers. For those whose facility with the Italian language is limited, the book will not be missed.

In the first chapter, Debus traces the emergence of Paracelsianism against the background of the humanist revival of Galenism. In addition to offering a concise description of Paracelsus’s medical and philosophical views, he treats the rise and significance of the “chemical philosophy” in the Renaissance. Of particular interest to medical historians is his treatment of the introduction of alchemically prepared drugs in the Renaissance.

In chapter 2, Debus discusses the diffusion of Paracelsian ideas in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and shows that these doctrines led to rancorous dissension in the scientific community. A brief section on France summarizes the findings of his recent book The French Paracelsians (1991). Somewhat less satisfactory is Debus’s discussion of Paracelsianism in Spain and Italy. His assertion, for example, that Spain remained “closed to foreign influences” as a result of religious orthodoxy (p. 37) repeats a well-worn formula that ignores recent findings of David Goodman and a host of Spanish historians to the contrary. In fact, a lively discussion of alchemy took place in Philip II’s court—only it was not Paracelsianism that interested the Spanish; rather, it was the medieval alchemical tradition stemming from Arnald of Villanova and pseudo-Ramon Lull. But this can hardly be attributed to Spanish closed-mindedness; indeed, a perusal of the vast library of Juan de Herrera, Philip II’s architect and designer of the Escorial, would make it abundantly clear that the Spanish were anything but “closed to foreign influences.” ¹ Similarly, in his brief treatment of the Italian context, Debus attributes (erroneously, I believe) to Paracelsian influences what was in fact the diffusion of the Arnaldian and pseudo-Lullist alchemical tradition.

In the last two chapters, Debus discusses the wider significance of Paracelsianism for the development of early modern science. The “chemical philosophy,” he asserts, emerged in the seventeenth century as a viable alternative to the mechanical philosophy. In particular, Jean Baptiste van Helmont appears in this analysis as the representative of a new, reformed chemical philosophy that competed, for a time, on nearly equal terms with the mechanical philosophies of Descartes and Newton. In his concluding chapter, Debus calls for a reevaluation of the scientific revolution that would take into account the chemical philosophy and, specifically, the Paracelsian tradition. As an example to illustrate the fruitfulness of such an approach, he offers a comparison of the scientific work of Hermann Boerhaave and Georg Ernst Stahl—two chemists profoundly influenced by Paracelsianism—with that of Robert Boyle. Without diminishing the seminal importance of Boyle, Debus asserts that Boerhaave developed an alternative, highly sophisticated mechanistic approach to matter, while Stahl’s vitalistic matter theory dominated chemistry through much of the eighteenth century.

A reevaluation of the scientific revolution is certainly long overdue. In fact, such a reevaluation is presently being undertaken, and Debus has contributed in important ways to this endeavor. However, in this book, as in much of his previous work, there is a tendency to fold virtually all alchemical influences into the all-encompassing envelope of “Paracelsianism,” thus blurring important distinctions between Paracelsianism and other, specifically medieval alchemical traditions. A more balanced view of the significance of alchemy for...