Alchimie et Paracelsisme en France à la fin de la Renaissance (1567–1625) (review)

Didier Kahn’s numerous articles about the history of alchemy and esoteric philosophy in France are characterized by a very wide knowledge of the relevant texts, meticulous and clearly articulated readings, a phenomenal ability to ferret out pertinent archival material, and a thorough and up-to-the-minute treatment of secondary literature. The book under review is one part of his dissertation, which he finished at Université de Paris IV Sorbonne in 1998. In this first volume of a projected three-part series, he seeks to establish the chronology of the appearance of alchemical books and ideas in France. In the second installment, he will focus on the individuals and their milieu, and in the third, he will provide an overarching synthesis of and conclusions about the history of alchemy in France. Judging from the 806 pages of the first volume, Kahn’s three-volume work is destined to become the definitive account of alchemy in France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—in particular of the reception and dissemination of the works of Paracelsus in France—but it also contains many important insights about European alchemy more broadly.

In Alchimie et Paracelsisme en France, Kahn approaches the history of alchemy as part of the general history of culture, and he seeks to integrate it into the history of books and ideas in Renaissance France. His approach is that of the literary historian, and he keeps his head down in his texts, scanning the landscape, however, for developments in the domains of religious and political history. This perspective has many virtues, one of which is its view from the printing house as books became available and pamphlet wars took fire, which provides a sense of the milieu in which alchemical authors were read and debated. Because alchemy has most often been approached from the history of ideas rather than from the history of the book or of publishing, Kahn’s approach yields fruitful new insights.

His account begins in 1567, the year in which four printing houses simultaneously put out collections of alchemical treatises in French and Latin that included, for the first time in France, the works of Paracelsus. He ends in 1625 because this date represents a crisis in alchemy in France with the publication of the Rosicrucian manifestoes and the denunciations of alchemy by Marin Mersenne and Gabriel Naudé. Kahn laments the lack of a systematic repertory of printed alchemical work but, despite this, he gives a comprehensive and Europe-wide summary of medieval and early Renaissance alchemy, noting that there was a move from practical alchemy to a focus on interpreting alchemy in mythological or religious terms until, by about 1500, there were three main strands of alchemical publishing: medical (including distillation), metallurgical, and transmutational. He notes that alchemical incunables are rare because they were not used for university teaching, and he provides a comprehensive account of the alchemical books available to Paracelsus in his lifetime. Such points become obvious only on their articulation, and it is these kinds of insights that Kahn’s sensitivity to the history of the book yields.

Kahn makes clear that the diffusion of Paracelsus’s ideas began with his death in 1541—rather than, as is commonly thought, when Paracelsus’s texts began to be published in large numbers in the 1560s and 1570s. By following the publishing history of alchemical books, Kahn demonstrates a publishing boom in alchemy in the 1540s, especially focused on medieval alchemical texts, that was impelled by the intense circulation of alchemical manuscripts and the wide dissemination of alchemical ideas in medical publications before this time. Kahn sees this lively interest in medieval alchemy as part of an attempt by Paracelsians to bolster their own authority by publishing and associating themselves with the works of earlier alchemical authors. He demonstrates persuasively that this was the strategy of Lazarus...