Medieval Academy of America

Les dbuts de l'imagerie alchimique (XIVe-XVe sicles) by Barbara Obrist

Review by: William Newman
Speculum, Vol. 60, No. 1 (Jan., 1985), pp. 188-190
Published by: Medieval Academy of America
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2852170 .
Accessed: 04/10/2012 15:19
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Medieval Academy of America is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Speculum.

http://www.jstor.org

188

Reviews

monolithicgeneralizationsabout the medieval literaryArthur that continue to appear, even in the most recent scholarship.
DONALD MADDOX

Universityof Connecticut,Storrs
BARBARA
OBRIST,Les debutsde l'imageriealchimique(XIVe-XVe siecles).Paris: Le Sycomore, 1982. Paper. Pp. 328; 102 black-and-whiteillustrations.F 150.
de l'imagerie
BARBARA OBRIST'S Les debuts
alchimiquerepresentsthe firstserious attempt
to writea syntheticstudyof alchemical iconographyduring its gestationand birthin
the late Middle Ages. "Gestation"seems to be the proper word: although the imagery
of alchemy was conceived in Greek writingsof the Roman imperial period and
developed in ovo by the Persian and Arabic schools of medieval Islam, the translation
of verbal conceits into picturesdid not undergo its explosive development until the
Renaissance and the baroque. Hence the period dealt with by Obrist, the fourteenthand earlyfifteenth
centuries,can be seen as the finalact leading to the birthof
a pictorial genre which in turn had considerable impact on medieval and early
modern society,namely, the alchemicallyinspiredfigura.
The firsttwo texts that Obrist takes to represent "les premieres illustrationsalchimiques [in the medieval West]" (p. 247) are the Dutch treatises respectively
van
ascribed to "Constantinus"and "Gratheus,"the firstentitledBouc derheimelicheden
mirevroowenalkemenen,the second without title; both texts occur in an undated
Austriancodex (ONB 2372) apparentlywrittenin the second half of the fourteenth
century.If this dating is correct,then the said codex would arguably contain the
oldest alchemical illustrationsoccurringin a westernvernacular or Latin text.These
two tractsrepresentan original discoveryby Obrist; although theywere described in
und mythologischer
illustrierter
des lateiniF. Saxl's Verzeichnis
Handschriften
astrologischer
schenMittelalters
(cf. Obrist, p. 258, n. 1) and in the ONB's catalogues, their importance had been largely passed over.
Hence Obrist should be praised for drawing attentionto the treatisesof Constantinus and Gratheus; at the same time I must express my own wariness of the claim
that they contain the occidental Middle Ages' "premieres illustrationsalchimiques."
Such caution may be partlyjustified by the fact that another cycle of alchemical
iconographyfrom the late fourteenthor early fifteenthcentury,which was recently
analyzed and edited in Joachim Telle's Sol und Luna (Hiirtgenwald, 1980) passes
unnoticed in Les debuts.An equally serious problem with Obrist's thesis lies in her
ignorance of an importantLatin manuscriptof the Constantinustextwhich I recently
of Geber. Glasgow UniversityMS
encountered while editing the Summaperfectionis
by "Magister Constantinus"
Ferguson 104 (fols. 32r-49v) contains a Libersecretorum
whichis clearlythe Latin originalof the Dutch Bouc derheimelicheden.
AlthoughObrist
is aware of two incomplete Latin versions of the Constantinus text (Paris, BN lat.
14006 and Hannover Niedersachsische Landesbibliothek IV 339, both of the
fifteenthcentury),these manuscriptsare neither illustratednor contemporarywith
theirDutch counterpart.The Ferguson manuscript,to the contrary,containsillustrations and was copied in the 1360s. At the same time,the illustrationsof the Ferguson
manuscriptare remarkablydifferentfrom those of the Bouc der heimelicheden;
they
seem to be of a simple cosmological nature, intended merely to illustratethe well-

Reviews

189

known correspondences between the heavens and minerals which are described at
length in the text (see especially fols. 47r-48v). One must surely question whether
these rather pedestrian diagrams can support the lengthyinterpretation- drawn
from Arnaldian, Lullian, and Platonic sources - that Obrist devotes to their counIt remains for Obrist to determinewhetherthe
terpartsin the Bouc derheimelicheden.
figurae of the Dutch text have been embellished by an overzealous illustratoror
whether they represent diagrams drawn from an archetype which the Ferguson
manuscripthas in turn simplified.
The two other works which Obrist treatsare Das Buch derheiligenDreifaltigkeit,
an
anonymous German production of 1410-19 (by its own internaladmission), and the
Auroraconsurgens
sometimesattributedto Thomas Aquinas, though apparentlywritten in Austria around the beginningof the fifteenthcentury.In her analysisof these
textsObrist draws upon the imagistictheoriesof the twelfth-century
Latin poets, the
alchemical epistemologyof Petrus Bonus (c. 1330-39), the mnemotechnicalwriters
analyzed by Frances Yates in her Art of Memory(London, 1966), and finallythe
Joachitetraditionas expounded in the diverse worksof Marjorie Reeves. This allows
her to distinguish in an interestingand useful manner between the function of
emblem as religious symbol,magical seal, mnemonic device, explanatory tool, and
propagandisticcartoon, all of which uses occur in the textsunder her scrutiny.It is
perhaps the last employment,however,which best indicates what one could call the
"medial role" that alchemy sometimes played between the theoretical university
sciences and the quotidian social life of the late Middle Ages. Das Buch der heiligen
writtenat the Council of Constance by a (probably Franciscan) cleric
Dreifaltigkeit,
in the entourage of its dedicatee, Margrave Frederick of Nuremberg, clearly illustrates this fact. This work, which shows surprising affinitieswith the Reformatio
Sigismundiand the political propaganda of the Joachite school, was also meant to
functionas an alchemical theoricaand practica.Often the same emblem can be read
eitheras pro-imperialprophecyor as alchemical recipe,a factwhichObristpointsout
in her assiduous commentary.Her furthermention of Roger Bacon, Petrus Bonus,
and John of Rupescissa in the context of alchemical/politicalprophecy is also
praiseworthy,and indicativeof the extent to which late medieval alchemy was associated with social and economic concerns.
Finally,it is incorrectto say, as Obrist does (p. 41), that pseudo-Farabi's De ortu
"ne mentionnepas specialementl'alchimie"and to contrastit withthe view
scientiarum
of Gundissalinus that alchemy occupies the eighth division of natural science. Both
pseudo-Farabi and Gundissalinus,after grouping alchemy among the eight parts of
natural science, describe it in the same words, as "sciencia de alquimia, que est
derPhilosophie
sciencia de conversione rerum in alias species" (Beitrdgezur Geschichte
des Mittelalters,
19/3 [Munster, 1916], p. 20, and 4/2-3 [1903], p. 20).
The foregoing errors and other minor ones which the reader may detect in Les
debutsde l'imageriealchimiquedetractonly a littlefromthe value of this book as a first
attemptto explain the development of alchemical emblems and their raison d'etre.
The author was perhaps somewhat too ambitious in her attempt to locate and
interpretthe earliest alchemical illustrationsin the medieval West. Our present
knowledge of the sources used by late medieval alchemists,in particularthe Arabic
translationsavailable to them, is so poor that any attemptat determiningthe fountainheads of this traditionmust necessarilybe tentative.Nonetheless, the progress
made by Obrist over other synopsesin this field- especiallyin her abilityto convey

190

Reviews

this topic in an interestingand explanatory styleaudience.

should give Les debutsa large

WILLIAM

NEWMAN

Harvard University

and Social
JOY HAMBUECHEN
POTTER,Five Framesfor the"Decameron":Communication
in
the
Princeton:
Princeton
"Cornice."
1982.
UniversityPress,
Systems
Pp. ix, 230.
$20.
PART OF THE PROBLEM under which thisbook labors is reflectedin the titleitself.The
preposition"for" is revealing: ProfessorPotter'sreading is not "in," "of," or "from"
the work, but a series of impositionsupon the text rather than an inquiry into its
creationor an elucidationby extrapolationfromthe words of the author. There is no
primaryresearch here. The critic has taken readings in various twentieth-century
fields- history,anthropology,historicalliterarycriticism,structuralism,semiotics,
deconstructionism,and so on - and has tried to read them into the Decameron.
Seldom does she allow Boccaccio's words to speak for themselves.The book appears
hasty and diffuseand has (intentionally,as she states in the conclusion) no central
message. Enthusiasm over new ideas gleaned from reading in other fields overwhelms her enthusiasm for her chosen topic, a fact which leads Potter to view the
Decameronas merely"ambiguous" and, far too often, to point out the obvious with
embarrassingoblivion: "Indeed, withoutcommunication,no societyof any kind can
survive,and the more complex the societyis, the more complex its communications
systemswill be" (p. 6).
Five Framesis divided into fivechapterswithan introductionand briefconclusion.
In chapter 1, "Societyand Ritual in the Cornice,"PotterfindsthattheDecameron"was
deliberatelywrittenin order to preserve those older values that Boccaccio found to
be valid" (p. 7). The work's raison d'etre is a "profoundlysocial one"; the tales are
exempla, she claims, for "Boccaccio wanted to transmita definiteset of values and a
body of knowledge about his society"(p. 7). Withoutever outliningwhat this set of
values and body of knowledge are, the author then sets about applying Victor
Turner's distinctionsof "liminal" and "liminoid" to the text and concludes that the
of the brigatais actuallysupportiveof and not subversiveto society.Their
storytelling
decorous act of recountingis thus liminal and not criticalor "liminoid." The taletellingrepresents"a carefuleducation forthe protagonists'role in society"(p. 17; the
idea is reiterated on p. 27). On page 19, however, Potter claims that Boccaccio
withholdsthe names of the "ten ... actual livingcitizensof Florence ... so thattheir
reputationswill not be blemished for telling and listeningto stories that mightbe
considered too risque in the somewhat more puritan climate that followed the
plague." If the tales are so "liminal" as to help preserve values and create this new
society,why, one might reasonably ask, should reputations be damaged by telling
them?The Decameron'sstorytelling
has, in a remarkablevolte-face,clearly(and more
accurately) become "liminoid" in the space of two pages.
Chapter 2, "God, Church and Society in the Decameron,"is similarlymarked by
contradictions.Although in her own view the church should be seen as a social
institution(p. 155), Potter finds that "The tone of the Decameron'scommentaryon
organized religionis bitterratherthan funny;thejokes are extremelysubversiveand