[MUSIC] As has been said in the previous video, alchemy was born in Egypt or in Greece, and then it came to the Arabic world. However, the Greek world did not forget alchemy after transmitting it to the East. Alchemy was still very much alive in Byzantium for a long time. Nevertheless, it is from the Arabic world that the Latin West discovered the new science of alchemy. We can trace up some rare early translations of Greek alchemical recipes into Latin before alchemy came from the Arabic world; for instance, in the original kernel of the <i>Mappae Clavicula</i>, a text dealing with metallurgy and painting compiled before the 12th century. Along with these Greek recipes, some Arabic recipes were already circulating before the real penetration of alchemy in the West. This is the case, for instance, of a famous recipe for making 'Spanish gold' in the <i>Diversarum artium schedula</i> of the monk Theophilus, a pseudonym of the Saxon Roger of Helmarshausen, who lived in the beginning of the 12th century. But the true large-scale penetration of alchemy in the Latin world came with the large movement of translation from Arabic into Latin of the 12th and 13th centuries in Spain and Italy. Contrary to what is commonly thought today, alchemy seems to have been highly considered by medieval translators. Many treatises were indeed translated. This may come from the fact that, in some classifications of the sciences in the Arabic world, alchemy was considered a discipline in its own right. The <i>Liber de compositione alchimiae</i>, attributed to Morienus, was translated by Robert of Chester in 1144 from the Arabic treatise Risālat Maryānus al-rāhib (Epistle of the monk Maryānūs), which relates the probably legendary talks between Maryānūs and the caliph Khālid ibn Yazīd. This treatise is often considered the first complete alchemical treatise translated into Latin. However, this date is more likely to be taken as a symbolic beginning than as a fixed term, since most translations of alchemical texts cannot be dated with accuracy. The penetration of Arabic alchemy into the Latin West may be divided into three overlapping stages. The first one is the period of translations from Arabic into Latin, and it roughly covers the second half of the 12th century and the 13th century. During this period, new materials became available for Latin scholars through translations. In the second stage, which roughly covers the 13th century, Latin compositions appeared, but they were still considerably indebted to Arabic material. We may observe compilations of recipes gathered from various translations and often modified (as some works attributed to Michael Scot), but also Latin treatises written in the style of translations and often attributed to Arabic or Greek authors. During the third stage of assimilation, from the second half of the 13th century, but more intensely from the beginning of the 14th century, a purely Latin alchemy started to develop, which was no longer based on Arabic translations, but on Latin compositions from the second stage. Among the various alchemical doctrines that penetrated into the West, the Jābirian theories did meet an enthusiastic reception. They penetrated through several texts, but, mainly, directly through the <i>Liber de septuaginta</i>, the Latin translation of the Kitāb al-sab‘īn (the Book of seventy), a series of treatises attributed to Jābir ibn Ḥayyān, and indirectly through the alchemical <i>De anima</i>, a compilation and Latin translation of three Arabic alchemical treatises lost to this day, which was wrongly attributed to Avicenna. Indeed, the genuine Avicenna was opposed to alchemy, as will be mentioned later. This treatise became a fundamental source to alchemists, and helped propagate the elixir theory into the West, notably because it was used as one of the main alchemical sources by Vincent of Beauvais, the famous encyclopaedist of the 13th century. The <i>De anima</i> mainly consists of technical recipes, and it is not the only translation of this kind, quite the contrary. We may indeed observe that medieval translators seem to have been more interested in technical treatises than in theoretical alchemy. However, this presence of practical material may result from the choice of the translators, but also from the availability of the sources at their disposal (it could be that they had no access to more theoretical treatises). One of the most influential technical treatises of the time is the <i>De aluminibus et salibus</i>. the other main alchemical source to Vincent of Beauvais. This treatise, which has sometimes been attributed to Rāzī, probably because of its technical character, is the translation of a partly lost Arabic treatise (fragments of a Hebrew version are also extant), and it consists of a series of short 'discourses' about various materials, each one being followed by practical recipes. Yet the most influential Latin alchemical treatise of the entire Middle Ages remains, without any doubt, the <i>Summa Perfectionis</i>, attributed to Geber. This text is not a translation, but a treatise written in Latin at the end of the 13th century in the style of a translation from Arabic. It is attributed to Geber, which is the Latin name of Jābir ibn Ḥayyān, but this attribution is part of the forgery. The actual author is a Latin speaker, maybe the monk Paul of Taranto. This treatise breaks with the tradition of the <i>De anima</i> and the <i>Liber de septuaginta</i>, since it proposes to make the compound for transmutation (the elixir of the Jābirian treatises) not from a material taken from one of the three reigns (I mean the animal, the mineral or the vegetal reign), as it is the case with Jābirian theories, but only from mercury. Mercury and only mercury is worked, and then projected on lead in order to make gold. This theory, sometimes called the 'mercury alone' theory, overcame the Jābirian elixir theory and became the standard in Latin alchemy for long. The <i>Summa perfectionis</i> also took part in what is called today the 'alchemical debate'. During the 13th and 14th centuries, Western scholars opposed to one another in a lively debate over the possibility of transmutation. The starting point of these intense disputes was a passage called <i>Sciant artifices</i>. In this short Latin extract, the author explains and argues that, according to him, it is not possible to transmute species. This passage comes actually from the Kitāb al-shifā’ (Book of healing)
by Avicenna. However, it came to the Latin West through a crucial transformation. Around the year 1200, Alfred of Sareshill, a translator, did translate the fourth book of Aristotle's <i>Meteorologica</i>, which deals with the celestial and terrestrial phenomena. But when he observed that in Aristotle's treatise there was no description of the creation of metals in earth, he took a part of Avicenna's book, maybe thinking that Avicenna was summarizing Aristotle's idea, and put it at the end of the translation of the book of Aristotle, as if it was part of the text. This slight addition resulted in granting this passage with the most influential authority, namely Aristotle, and this provoked the alchemical debate. Since its appearance in the West in the 12th century, and up until the 17th century, alchemy gained more and more success, but never penetrated universities, even though some of the most famous scholars of the time were interested in it, such as Albert the Great, who lived in the 13th century. This was the last video about Arabic magic. I also encourage you to watch the optional video of this unit, which deals with geomancy. [In this edition of the course the video on Geomancy is now the 5th video of the last module. Enjoy!]
