Alchemical Miscellany

Alchemical Miscellany is a medieval manuscript believed to have been published in the early 15th century in England. It is housed in the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania, where it was acquired in 1922. The manuscript is a collection of earlier texts on alchemy that were combined and written in Latin.

Historical Context

Medieval Manuscripts

Medieval manuscripts such as this one were handwritten by scribes, usually monks in monasteries. This highly demanding labor required the scribe to copy texts onto a new substrate using narrow ruling lines to ensure the greatest quality. Most manuscripts were produced in monasteries because monks committed much of their life to this monotonous, yet difficult task. Because of this, Alchemical Miscellany is believed to have been made in this way, compiled by an unknown scribe.

Manuscripts in the medieval period were seen as something beyond the material content they contained, but rather as vehicles for ideas and thought. Reading during this time period was very intensive: texts were studied with immense detail so every piece of knowledge was extracted from them.

Authorship

Because manuscripts during this time period were seen as platforms for the knowledge they contained, authorship did not exist in the way it does today. The title of this manuscript, Alchemical Miscellany, has significant meaning. ‘Miscellany’ refers to a specific category of medieval manuscript: a multi-textual manuscript - that is to say a collection of several works by various authors compiled by a single scribe.

Alchemical Miscellany is one of these. It is a collection of four works on alchemy written by Roger Bacon, an experimental scientist who lived in the 13th century; Morienus, a 12th century alchemist; Geber, an unknown alchemist and scientist who lived in the 14th century; and Avicenna, an 11th century polymath who was regarded to be one of the smartest men of his time. The writers of the many sections of this miscellany span centuries and continents, and yet a scribe in England took their separate works and combined them to form a sort of journal that could be used to help advance scholarship in the field of alchemy.

The knowledge contained within these various component texts was seen as something worth compiling, yet seemingly no note was made on the authors in the original text. This speaks to how manuscripts were defined by their content, not their context or authors during this time period. To the scribe combining these texts, it was not relevant who wrote them, or when they were written, what mattered was the information they contained.

Medieval Scholarship

Scholarship was expanding dramatically during the medieval period. During this time, earlier works on science, such as alchemy, were copied and reworked. This allowed for research done over the course of the previous centuries to be distributed broadly, helping catalyze an acceleration in the development of science.

That is the context in which Alchemical Miscellany fits: a collection of previous texts intended to be used by scholars. The high density of marginalia and various asemic marks speak to this use as an academic research: annotating difficult parts of text is a cornerstone of learning, especially in the sciences. This also is critical to understanding why many of these markings and notes are concentrated in specific areas of the text: the academics using this text found a few choice sections to have the most important knowledge. This makes a lot of sense as well: often only some aspects of previous research have the most essential information from the entire text.

This manuscript was likely used to help scholars learn about the history of alchemy and to help guide their own studies in the topic. Because this text contained a summary of some of the most important research done by many of the most well known scholars of the previous centuries, it was a powerful resource for this new generation of scholars that were emerging in medieval Europe.