Alchemical Treatises, 1590s

Curatorial Notes:

After George Ripley, the leading popularizer of pseudo-Lull was the late 15th-century Italian alchemist Cristoforo Parigino. Although written in Italian, his works were soon translated into Latin and French. The Alfabeto apertoriale, here in a French translation,is heavily influenced by the pseudo-Lullian Book of the Secrets of Nature. This copy begins on the right-hand page with A (God), followed by a detailed account of B (Lunaria), the wine-based solvent central to pseudo-Lullian alchemical medicine — here illustrated by marginal drawings of vessels.

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Manuscripts Division, Department of Special Collections, Princeton University Library

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Alchemical treatises in an anonymous French translation of 1584. Cristoforo Parigino (also known as Christophe de Paris, Christophe Parisien, and Christophorus Parisiensis) was an Italian alchemist who lived in Venice and wrote in Italian. He was much influenced by works then attributed to Ramón Llull (1232?-1316), or "pseudo-Llull." This is one of the known manuscripts of this 1584 French translation (London, Wellcome Library, MS. 192; Leiden, University Library, Vossius. Chym. Q3; and Bibliothèque Nationale de France (see Inventaire général et methodique des manuscrits français de la Bibliothèque Nationale). Marginal notes in at least two 17th-century hands, occasionally quite extensive (e.g. pp. 122, 132, 158, 192).

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Binding, 18th century? Calf over binder's board; ruled in blind, double frame; rebacked.

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