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.

Book Use

Marginalia and Asemic Marks

One of the most fascinating features of this manuscript is the incredible amounts of markings made in the text by readers. The medieval period was a time of intensive reading, not extensive reading like today. This meant books were treasured for their content: instead of being read once and then moving on to another, books and manuscripts were gone over countless times and the information they contained was understood completely and exhaustively.

Some pages in this manuscript are covered in various marginalia - notes in the margins - as well as asemic markings - flags, underlinings, manicules - that serve to identify important parts of the text. These markings seem to be ‘clustered’ around certain areas of the text. Due to the scientific nature of this text, that might be because those areas are the most confusing and important to understand. This speaks to the use of this book as a scholarly resource.

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.