The Sacrificial Body and the Day of Doom: Alchemy and Apocalyptic Discourse in the Protestant Reformation (review)

In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, an extraordinary series of printed books appeared in Protestant cities such as Augsburg, Frankfurt, and Strassburg. Illustrated with symbolic engravings, these books constructed a complicated rhetoric out of a blend of alchemy, Paracelsian theosophy, Hermeticism, and Christian Kabbalah. In The Sacrificial Body and the Day of Doom, Urszula Szulakowska examines these images and the texts that accompanied them, arguing that they should be understood in the context of a radical apocalyptic Reformation theology.

Historians of alchemy and early modern philosophy will be familiar with many of the images and authors Szulakowska studies here, including Heinrich Khunrath, Michael Maier, Stefan Michelspacher, Jacob Boehme, and Robert Fludd. Departing from medieval patterns of alchemical imagery, this erudite group of scholars produced some of the most enigmatic texts and images of the early modern period. They have, accordingly, drawn the attention of a number of intellectual historians, including Frances Yates, who have sought to situate these authors within the scientific and philosophical currents of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Europe. Szulakowska, however, emphasizes instead their religious motivations and implications. The authors, she notes, were all Protestant dissenters increasingly alienated from the institutional churches. "To express their Lutheran piety intellectually," Szulakowska suggests, they "employed the terms of Paracelsian theosophy, while they found an emotive outlet in the mystical experience of the power and grace of the Holy Spirit" (2). Medical, alchemical, and Christian images, therefore, were deeply intertwined in these books, each amplifying the others and multiplying meaning. Images of Christ as the philosophers' stone, for example, served as a commentary on the Eucharist, while the alchemist's purification and resurrection of matter resonated with longstanding Christian eschatological concerns about the Resurrection. Because of the "insidious heretical nature" of such Paracelsian theosophical musings and their "seditious implications" (5) for the institutional Lutheran church, Szulakowska claims, Khunrath and the others who put these ideas into print suffered religious persecution.

In alchemy, medicine, theosophy, and Christian eschatology, Szulakowska identifies a fascinating cluster of themes that sparked a fruitful synergy for the particular authors she studies. The connections are important. That the alchemical death and rebirth of matter mirrored the central events of Christianity was not just a neat metaphor, but crucial to alchemy's appeal in early modern Europe. These connections added layers of meaning to alchemical theory and offered a powerful visual vocabulary for alchemical engravings, as is clear in the fifty-four images included in this lavishly illustrated book. Although Szulakowska does not dwell on it, one might add that these broad resonances were important for alchemical practice as well because they suggested that the practitioner could reenact Christian soteriological events in the laboratory.

One cannot think of Khunrath, Maier, and Fludd, in fact, without conjuring up the engravings that accompanied their texts. The images are also notoriously complex, erudite, and nearly impenetrable for the uninitiated. Many readers, therefore, will find useful the way in which Szulakowska unravels their many layers of meaning. The analysis of the book, however, too often lingers on the particular details of images or texts, without fully articulating the significance of specific observations or their connection to one another: as a result, the central thread of the argument is easily lost in the wealth of detail. Moreover, Szulakowska far too often overstates her case, drawing conclusions that the evidence she presents cannot support. Although collectively they published a significant number of beautiful and fascinating books, it is important to remember that the authors Szulakowska studies here were an idiosyncratic group. Their ideas, however interesting, certainly do not warrant generalizations about "Paracelsians" or even "the alchemists." In recent years, historians have created an increasingly precise and differentiated picture of early modern alchemy, recognizing a wide range of practitioners and ideas. Certainly the images and theosophical arguments discussed in this...