Franciscans and the Elixir of Life. Zachary A. Matus

of creation, asking whether or not the sequence of the six-day creation was a mystery or whether there was some other reason behind it. While admitting that there were many mysteries, he first put forth a rational and philosophical justification for how creation unfolds. The first three days, he argued, dealt with distinguishing undifferentiated confusion (via the lux fiat), and then fixing distinct bodies into place (dividing the waters and separating the land). This was also the period during which the terrestrial elements became distinguished from one another and heaven became incorruptible as a means of distinguishing it from the terrestrial world. The next three days dealt with “adornment,” that is, the populating of the cosmos, with celestial bodies, birds and fish, and finally animals and human beings. Human beings came last, Olivi says, because they were the most important part of creation, and relied on everything created before.⁷²

      Olivi also weighed in on a number of additional issues that would have been critical to alchemists. For instance, Olivi frequently makes reference to the protean stuff of creation (moles). Olivi discusses it as an intermediate step (intermedio modo) in creation, but not necessarily as prime matter. Rather, Olivi seems to understand it as a confused mix of elements, all tangled up with one another.⁷³ They must have existed by the third day in some form, he argues, since Genesis does not say they were created (rather that they were separated or passed over). Yet, if they were fully formed, then Olivi believed Genesis would be talking only about accidents or particularities, rather than about creation. Instead, some kind of confused or indistinct matter existed.⁷⁴ It would be wonderful to know if Olivi thought this indistinct matter might be made by art, but Olivi does not oblige. What his text does show is that the Hexaemeron was a ripe source for speculation on questions of natural philosophy. While Olivi himself does not take up alchemical questions, it is clear that he is quite interested in in dissecting the composition of the world. His concentration on these questions, often to the exclusion of more spiritual readings, is very much in line with the kind of speculation recommended by Bonaventure.

      The Franciscan exegete Nicholas of Lyra, writing a generation later, reflects Olivi’s concern for the literal interpretation.⁷⁵ Nicholas’s principal concern is to demonstrate the appropriateness and the order of the account of creation in Genesis. For instance, the mixtures of inanimate elements were made for the benefit of animate creatures, which likewise were made for the benefit of human beings. However majestic the act of creation, Nicholas wants his readers to see the obvious logic embedded in the creative act itself. Unsurprisingly, then, Nicholas relies heavily on Aristotelian terminology.⁷⁶ Following Averroës, he describes the work of creation as subdivided into discrete acts of creating new specific forms (forma seu distinctio), such as light. Light generally then, after its creation, is subdivided into specific lights, such as the various heavenly bodies. Nicholas describes this as the act of adornment and disposition in which specific qualities are attached to created forms.⁷⁷ It is important to note that the philosophical description of creation is Aristotelian rather than Platonic. The notion of form Aristotle uses in the description of light is not ideal. Nor is there a sense that the distinction of light (lumen) into lights (luminaria) diminishes their “lightness.” Nicholas relies on other aspects of Aristotelian philosophy more specifically later in the text.

      There are two points, however, that need to be emphasized in Nicholas’s description of creation. First, not only is creation described in Aristotelian terms, but God works like a philosopher, carrying out creation according to a logic that is knowable to human beings. To Nicholas, this is the clear meaning of the text of Genesis, not an approximation. His literal reading of the six days is designed to tell his readers not just what to think about Genesis, but what really happened. And, in this case, God creates the universe according to an Aristotelian logic. By extension, then, Aristotelian accounts of matter, its mutability, and properties are also true. A second key point to emphasize is that this Aristotelian creation account is not a separate explanation from the sacral account of creation. Rather, the sacrality of creation is expressed within the frame of Aristotelian logic, and vice versa. For example, take the differentiation of the creation of form from that of adornment. According to Nicholas, this leaves us with three (rather than two) modes of creation expressed in the six days: creation, generally speaking, and the subdivision described above. General creation, he says, is described “in advance of each day (ante omnem diem).” Creation of form is described in the first three days, ornamentation in the following. Thus, what Nicholas has done is to overlay a pattern of two, three, and seven, neatly encapsulating the three most important numerical patterns of biblical exegesis. Nicholas was not a Joachite, but he interpreted the narrative of creation as an integrated Aristotelian account of the material world as well as an expression of fundamental Christian truths.⁷⁸

      Throughout the works surveyed here, there has been no mention of alchemy. Nevertheless, it is clear that Franciscan alchemists worked in an environment where discussion of natural philosophy was not only widespread, but curious, inventive, and appreciative. Not only did the inherently good created world lend itself to the revelation of the divine, but plumbing natural philosophy served religious, even devotional ends. In the sense that alchemy as theoretical knowledge explicated the building blocks of the natural universe, there is nothing about theoretical alchemy that is inherently at odds with the kind of discussions of nature seen here.⁷⁹ As a scientia of the physical world, alchemical concepts and ideas are wholly consistent with the kind of trends being discussed in the various natural theologies of Bonaventure, Olivi, and Nicholas. Beginning with their founder, Franciscans as a group revered the natural world. Moreover, scriptural accounts of creation could be fully in harmony with what natural philosophy could say about the cosmos. Pagan philosophers might have wandered into error due to natural philosophy, but that was not the fault of natural philosophy exclusively. Instead, what these accounts of the created world suggest is that pagan natural philosophers wandered into error because they were not armed with Genesis. The fact that theology faculties and clerical authorities condemned Aristotelian natural philosophy repeatedly in the thirteenth century should not obscure the popular notion that harmonious accord between philosophy and scripture was possible. The condemnations of Aristotle’s libri naturales were, after all, aimed principally at wrong conclusions (either real or imagined), rather than expressing a disdain for knowledge of the natural world.⁸⁰

      If, as seems to be the case, Franciscans were reading Genesis as a critical text in natural philosophy, it seems unlikely that alchemical speculation could have been free from religious overtones. While other scholars have argued that we should take seriously the introduction of religious language during and after alchemy’s religious turn—an idea with which I wholly agree—we should push somewhat further.⁸¹ The religious turn was not solely or simply an irruption in the alchemical tradition. When viewed through the lens of hexaemeral commentaries and Franciscan concern for “the book of world,” the religious turn emerges as a logical consequence of broader, even normative, intellectual trends. The explicative function of religious metaphor laid out in the introduction tells only part of the story. Alchemy in the fourteenth century was also catching up with, and innovating within, a discourse on the created universe where the divine was written into the physical fabric of the world.

      CHAPTER 2

      Three Elixirs

      This chapter is about genealogies. What I hope to show is the importance of the intellectual components of the elixir—the alchemy of the making of alchemy, if you will forgive the expression. My chief concern is with the religious elements that make up the genealogies of the three elixirs under discussion, but these intellectual components mix and aggregate with natural philosophic components as well. The descriptions of the elixirs involve a number of overlapping discourses, traditions, and very personal ideological commitments. While religion need not figure into any conception of the elixir, the nuances of theological or philosophical speculation have serious implications for how the various authors envisioned their alchemies. Roger Bacon relies on the Christian model of the perfect, resurrected body. Vitalis of Furno draws on the tradition of the theriac, but studiously avoids mention of alchemy, and John of Rupescissa ruminates on the physical nature