Alchimie et philosophie a la Renaissance: Actes du Colloque international de Tours (4-7 decembre 1991).

This collection of conference papers on the place of alchemy in Renaissance thought reflects both the substantial scholarly work now being devoted to close study of individual authors and the lack of a comprehensive general framework for interpreting this aspect of the culture. As a group, the essays demonstrate that alchemical studies were numerous and attracted the attention not just of marginal figures but of important thinkers. In his brief introduction, Jean-Claude Margolin rightly emphasizes the need for additional close studies. One hopes that just as studies of other fields of occult learning - astrology, Cabala, Hermetism, magic - have produced synthetic interpretations that give clear direction to future scholarship, study of Renaissance alchemy will progress from narrowly defined works like most of these to a clear general definition of the intellectual significance of alchemy for western culture.

Certain general trends do emerge from this thicket of detailed essays. J. M. Mandosio's contribution probes the relation of alchemy to other, more generally respectable fields of learning. Several articles, especially those by Barbara Obrist and William Newman, demonstrate the tension between views of matter drawn from Arabic alchemy (represented by pseudo-Geber) and views based on Aristotelian physics (represented by Albertus Magnus). Pascale Barthelemy uses the works of Guillaume Sedacer to outline the intellectual issues raised by alchemy. The problem of reconciling two discordant traditions emerges in essays by Antoine Calvet on works attributed to Arnold of Villanova and by Danielle Jacquart on Michele Savonarola. Sylvain Matton probes the reasons why the works of Marsilio Ficino became important authorities for later alchemists even though Ficino did not write directly on the subject. Cesare Vasoli studies the influence of a pupil of Ficino, Francesco Giorgio of Venice, on the idea of transmutation expressed by Giulio Camillo Delminio. Many of the essays deal with the challenge to traditional scientific learning (alchemy included) posed by Paracelsus, most directly the essays by Lucien Braun on Paracelsus himself and Jean-Francois Marquet on Gerhard Dorn. Efforts to reconcile alchemy with Aristotelian science are studied in Amalia Perfetti's analysis of an anonymous sixteenth-century dialogue on transmutation and in Alfredo Perifano's study of the Augustinian monk Evangelista Quattrami. Giles Polizzi demonstrates that the famous Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499) of Francesco Colonna was commonly interpreted in alchemical terms, briefly by Rabelais and in great detail (but in different ways) by Jacques Gohory and Beroalde de Verville. Two essays raise the question of the role of empirical observation in critical evaluation of occultist claims: Frank Lestringant in a study of a critic of alchemy, the cosmographer Jacques Gohory, and Ulrich Neumann on the alchemist Michael Maier. Essays by Jean-Paul Dumont and Bernard Joly analyze the Stoic roots of alchemical theories of matter. Four papers examine alchemical constituents in the thought of prominent late-Renaissance philosophers: Giordano Bruno (by Helene Vedrine), Tycho Brahe (by Alain Philippe Segonds), Tommaso Campanella (by Michel-Pierre Lerner), and even Marin Mersenne (by Armand Beaulieu). Finally, three essays trace the influence of alchemical ideas on later libertine thought: Lorenzo Bianchi, on Gabriel Naude; Francois Secret, on Gregorius Michaelis' Latin translation (1676) of the Curiositez inouies of Jacques Gaffarel; and Alain Mothu, on the role of alchemical ideas of spiritus in the growth of materialistic interpretations of the human soul during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Clearly, the serious study of alchemy is still at an early stage, but this collection hints that general directions are beginning to emerge.

Charles G. Nauert, Jr. UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI, COLUMBIA