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Discorso sopra la Chimica is an early seventeenth-century manuscript on alchemy written by the Florentine priest Antonio Neri, best known as the author of the first published treatise on glassmaking – L’Arte Vetraria (1612) – which was widely read for centuries. The Discorso shows a different face of Neri, that of the alchemist with a profound knowledge of Paraselsian doctrine, dedicated to the transmutation of metals, and an advocate of iatrochemistry. This picture is apparently incompatible with that of the technical glassmaker and the champion of knowledge based on experience. However, even in his Discorso the author affirms the value of experimental practice, and the experimentum has the all-important benefit of legitimizing the validity of alchemical doctrines. Knowledge does not come from reading the books of the sages of antiquity, but from the “practice of many experiences.” This emphasis on experimentation constitutes a unique feature of the Discorso. It was perhaps the ‘modernity’ of Neri’s discussion of alchemy that made the manuscript the object of plagiarism. Careful comparison reveals that an entire chapter of Prodromo, written by the Jesuit Francesco Lana Terzi in 1670, was copied from Neri. In the Discorso old and new are intertwined and validate one other, showing how Neri was a quintessential representative of his time, when scientific models that now appear irreconcilable coexisted, often forming a complex web.
In this paper I discuss Antonio Neri and the background to his important work, reflecting on its impact and what it tells us about a fascinating and complex period in the birth of modern science. This is followed by a translation of the complete text of Discorso sopra la Chimica.
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3
Vannoccio Biringuccio, De la Pirotechnia libri X (Venezia: Venturino Roffinello, 1540).
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4
Giorgio Agricola, Opera di Giorgio Agricola de l’arte de metalli, partita in XII libri. Tradotti in lingua toscana da Michelangelo Florio Fiorentino (Basel: per Hieronimo Frobenio et Nicolao Episcopio, 1563).
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6
Pieter Boer and Paul Engle, “Antonio Neri: An Annotated Bibliography of Primary References,” Journal of Glass Studies, 2010, 52:51-67, p. 55.
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14
Paolo Galluzzi, “Motivi paracelsiani nella Toscana di Cosimo II e di Don Antonio dei Medici: alchimia, medicina ‘chimica’ e riforma del sapere,” in Scienze, credenze occulte, livelli di cultura (Firenze: Olschki, 1982), pp. 31-62.
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18
Marco Beretta, The Alchemy of Glass: Counterfeit, Imitation, and Transmutation in Ancient Glassmaking (Sagamore Beach: Watson Publishing, 2009).
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22
See Willemijn Fock, “Francesco I e Ferdinando I mecenati di orefici e intagliatori di pietre dure,” in Le Arti del Principato Mediceo (Firenze: SPES, 1980), pp. 317-363.
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34
Francesco Lana Terzi, Prodromo overo saggio di alcune inventioni nuove premesse all’Arte Maestra (Brescia: per li Rizzardi, 1670), pp. 105-123.
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35
Martha Baldwin, “Alchemy and the Society of Jesus in the Seventeenth Century: Strange Bedfellows?” Ambix, July 1993, 40, part 2, pp. 41-64.
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36
Paolo Rossi, La nascita della scienza moderna in Europa (Bari: Laterza, 2002), pp. 234-237.
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87
Cf. Resianne Fontaine, Averroe’s Commentary on Aristotle’s De Generatione Animalium and Its Use in Two Thirteenth-Century Hebrew Encyclopedias (Leiden: Brill, 2008).
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Search for other papers by Maria Grazia Grazzini in
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Discorso sopra la Chimica is an early seventeenth-century manuscript on alchemy written by the Florentine priest Antonio Neri, best known as the author of the first published treatise on glassmaking – L’Arte Vetraria (1612) – which was widely read for centuries. The Discorso shows a different face of Neri, that of the alchemist with a profound knowledge of Paraselsian doctrine, dedicated to the transmutation of metals, and an advocate of iatrochemistry. This picture is apparently incompatible with that of the technical glassmaker and the champion of knowledge based on experience. However, even in his Discorso the author affirms the value of experimental practice, and the experimentum has the all-important benefit of legitimizing the validity of alchemical doctrines. Knowledge does not come from reading the books of the sages of antiquity, but from the “practice of many experiences.” This emphasis on experimentation constitutes a unique feature of the Discorso. It was perhaps the ‘modernity’ of Neri’s discussion of alchemy that made the manuscript the object of plagiarism. Careful comparison reveals that an entire chapter of Prodromo, written by the Jesuit Francesco Lana Terzi in 1670, was copied from Neri. In the Discorso old and new are intertwined and validate one other, showing how Neri was a quintessential representative of his time, when scientific models that now appear irreconcilable coexisted, often forming a complex web.
In this paper I discuss Antonio Neri and the background to his important work, reflecting on its impact and what it tells us about a fascinating and complex period in the birth of modern science. This is followed by a translation of the complete text of Discorso sopra la Chimica.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 846 | 95 | 5 |
| Full Text Views | 133 | 2 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 43 | 6 | 0 |
