The Professor of Secrets by William Eamon

Author:William Eamon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: National Geographic Society
Published: 2010-05-27T16:00:00+00:00

23

THE SEARCH FOR THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE

Besides being a wizard at making magical mirrors, Ettore Ausonio was an avid alchemist. As a follower of the alchemical doctrine of the mythical Ramon Lull, he wrote voluminously on the subject and struggled to develop a comprehensive cosmology based on alchemical theory. Ausonio came up with a sort of 16th-century Grand Unified Theory that strove to unite matter and all the forces of nature into a single universal whole.

No one doubted that the recondite alchemical doctrine attributed to the 13th-century philosopher and mystic Ramon Lull was genuine. Lull, a Franciscan friar from Majorca, was famous for having devised a system for acquiring universal knowledge that he claimed was infallible because it was based on the actual structure of reality. He used his complex “Art” in debates with Muslim clerics during a bizarre mission to convert the infidels of Tunis in 1293. The local sultan, having gotten wind of Lull’s audacious act, ordered the friar expelled.

Emboldened, Lull returned to Africa in 1307, landing in the town of Bougie, or Béjaïa, in present-day northern Algeria. There Lull appeared in the central square and cried out, “The Christian religion is true, holy, and acceptable to God; but the Saracen religion is false, and this I’m prepared to prove.” The town mufdi saved Lull from a mob threatening to stone him to death. Jailed and then expelled from the country, Lull nevertheless returned to Tunis in 1314. After that he disappears from history. Most scholars agree that he died in 1316 at the age of 84, either in Tunis or on a ship back to Majorca.

The first of the many alchemical works attributed to the Majorcan friar appeared in 1332. By the end of the century, a full-blown legend about Lull the alchemist had taken shape. According to Ausonio’s version of the myth, Lull learned the art of alchemy from Arnald of Villanova, a native of Valencia and one of the most famous physicians of his age. In reality, like so much of the medieval alchemical corpus, the alchemical writings ascribed to Lull—more than a hundred books in all—were forged, as were those attributed to Arnald.

Fioravanti probably encountered Lull’s works for the first time in Naples, a thriving center of Lullist alchemy, but it was Ausonio who awakened him to the search for the philosopher’s stone.

Lull’s doctrine was the alchemical expression of the age-old dream of prolonging human life. The theory had first been elaborated by the 14th-century Franciscan friar John of Rupescissa. Born around 1310 near Aurillac in southern France, Friar John was also a prophet who had visions that came to him recurrently in dreams. The visions convinced him that the end of the world was at hand—and that an army of “evangelical men” would be needed to combat the forces of the Antichrist. John believed these spiritual soldiers could be fortified in their battle by a “heavenly” medicine, or alchemical quintessence, that would give them the strength necessary to withstand apocalyptic tribulations.

In elaborating his theory

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