Splendor Solis by Dr. Stephen Skinner

Author:Dr. Stephen Skinner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Watkins Media

From Trismosin to Splendor solis

Having published the first and defining volume of Aureum vellus, Straub proceeded to publish two more volumes. The intention was to further ground Paracelsus in a larger alchemical tradition that included other philosophers like Bartholomaeus Korndorffer, Trithemius, Ulrich Poyssel and, as an afterthought, Basil Valentine.7 Perhaps it was not a coincidence that the third volume ended with the foundational Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, the “father of philosophers”. The later Basel editors added other lesser-known alchemists like Caspar Hartung von Hoff, Johannes of Padua and Everarius to the list.

However, it was an anonymous treatise that made the greatest impact on contemporaries and later generations: Splendor solis. This illustrated work on the Philosophers’ Stone impressed certain French readers so much that they published it under the overall title of The Golden Fleece (La Toyson d’or, 1612), as if the other parts of Aureum vellus had never existed. The editor of the French version of Splendor solis was sufficiently invested in the legend of Trismosin and Paracelsus to associate this work directly with Trismosin. Thus, he claimed that Splendor solis had essentially been composed by “that Great Philosopher Salomon Trismosin, Preceptor of Paracelsus” from “the weightiest monuments of antiquity, not only of the Chaldeans, Hebrews, Arabs, Greeks, but also of Latins, and of other approved authors” (La Toyson d’or 1612, frontispiece). Thus the claim made on the cover of the first volume of Aureum vellus was lifted, changed and transferred to Splendor solis. This alteration of the original text accredited Salomon Trismosin with the work, a claim that was never made in the German Aureum vellus.8

Of course, Straub himself had encouraged an indirect connection between the anonymous treatise and Trismosin. This, again, may not have been his intention: it may well have been the case that the unknown Trismosin manuscript Straub used included Splendor solis. Indeed, if the manuscript of the Ars magna is any indication, the editor’s manuscript could have contained accretions of treatises that were in some sense, but not directly, associated with Trismosin.9 Moreover, the strange and unexplained presence of Hieronymus Crinot and Abbot Georg Biltdorff in the central part of the first Aureum vellus volume suggests that the “Trismosin” label was wide and flexible enough to include works by other authors. It is perhaps a wiser scholarly move to refer to such treatises as belonging to a loose “Trismosinian” sphere rather than being directly associated with Trismosin.

But how to characterize such a Trismosinian sphere, since we can see by the five volumes of Aureum vellus that it could include almost any alchemical treatise? It seems to me that such a sphere encompassed works that would in some sense fit the overall theme followed in this article: the thesis of a lineage of prisca sapientia originating primarily in Egypt, which reached Paracelsus mainly via the teachings and manuscripts of Trismosin, but perhaps through others as well, such as Trithemius and Korndorffer. In its more flexible form, the lineage could embrace medieval alchemists that were in their own way linked to this prisca sapientia line.

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