Paracelsus (Theophrastus Bombastus von
Hohenheim, 1493–1541)
Aries Book Series
Texts and Studies in Western Esotericism
Editor
Wouter J. Hanegraaff
Editorial Board
Jean-Pierre Brach
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke
Advisory Board
Roland Edighoffer – Antoine Faivre
Olav Hammer – Andreas Kilcher
Arthur McCalla – Monika Neugebauer-Wölk
Marco Pasi – Mark Sedgwick – Jan Snoek
Michael Stausberg – Kocku von Stuckrad
György Sz,/onyi – Garry Trompf
VOLUME 5
Paracelsus (Theophrastus
Bombastus von Hohenheim,
1493–1541)
Essential Theoretical Writings
Edited and translated with a Commentary and Introduction by
Andrew Weeks
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2008
The cover design is a detail from the oldest image of the city of St. Gall, a woodcut by
Heinrich Vogtherr (ca. 1545) printed in the Grosse Schweizerchronik of Johann Stumpf,
Zurich 1547–48, reproduced with the permission of the Vadianische Sammlung, St.
Gall.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
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ISSN 1871-1405
ISBN 978 90 04 15756 9
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Rudolph (Director, Leibniz Edition, Potsdam), friends and mentors in
a time-honored tradition of textual scholarship
PARACELSUS
ESSENTIAL THEORETICAL WRITINGS
Introduction: ......................................................................................... 1
Background and Summary of the Translated Writings.................... 6
Das Buch Paragranum .................................................................... 8
The First Pillar, Philosophy ........................................................ 10
The Second Pillar, Astronomy.................................................... 11
The Third Pillar, Alchemy .......................................................... 13
The Fourth Pillar, Proprietas or Virtue ...................................... 13
Opus Paramirum ........................................................................... 14
On the Origin and Cause of Diseases............................................ 19
On the Matrix................................................................................. 20
On the Invisible Diseases............................................................... 21
The Significance of Ambiguity ..................................................... 24
Unique and Commonplace Elements............................................. 29
The Objectives of Translation and Commentary ........................... 34
The Procedures for Editing and Translating .................................. 39
Bibliography of Works Consulted in Translating.......................... 47
I. Paragranum: German/ English ....................................................... 61
Preface ...................................................................................... 62/63
The First Foundation of Medicine: Philosophia................... 106/107
The Second Foundation of Medicine: Astronomia ............... 162/163
The Third Foundation of Medicine: Alchimia ...................... 210/211
The Fourth Foundation of Medicine: Proprietas.................. 258/259
II. Opus Paramirum: German/ English ............................................ 297
Book One........................................................................... 298/299
[Caput Primum] .............................................................. 300/301
Caput Secundum ............................................................. 316/317
Caput Tertium................................................................. 330/331
Caput Quartum ............................................................... 342/343
Caput Quintum................................................................ 356/357
Caput Sextum .................................................................. 370/371
Caput Septimum.............................................................. 382/383
Caput Octavum ............................................................... 396/397
viii
ANDREW WEEKS
Liber Secundus
Caput Primum................................................................. 410/411
Caput Secundum ............................................................. 424/425
Caput Tertium................................................................. 446/447
Caput Quartum ............................................................... 456/457
Caput Quintum................................................................ 466/467
Caput Sextum .................................................................. 474/475
Caput Septimum.............................................................. 484/485
Caput Octavum ............................................................... 494/495
Conclusion to Dr. Joachim Watt........................................ 500/501
III. On the Origin and Cause of Diseases of Both Kinds
(De Morborum Utriusque Professionis Origine et Causa.
Liber Tertius Paramiri): German/ English
Preface .................................................................................. 502/503
Tractatus Primus .................................................................. 506/507
Tractatus Secundus............................................................... 528/529
Tractatus Tertius................................................................... 544/545
Tractatus Quartus................................................................. 558/559
Tractatus Quintus ................................................................. 584/585
Tractatus Sextus.................................................................... 604/605
IV. On the Matrix (Paramiri Liber Quartus de Matrice):
German/ English..................................................................... 616/617
V. On the Invisible Diseases (De Causis Morborum Invisibilium):
German/ English
Preface .................................................................................. 720/721
Argumentum.......................................................................... 736/737
Beginning of the First Book on those Things That Befall the
Human Being Because of Faith ......................................... 738/739
How Faith Makes the Body Ill........................................... 748/749
Discernment of faith .......................................................... 754/755
On Saint Valentine’s Day Disease..................................... 772/773
On the Diseases that Result in Open Wounds, St. Cyril’s
Penance, St. John’s Revenge ....................................... 774/775
On the Natural Burning, Saint Anthony’s Fire .................. 776/777
On Saint Vitus’ Dance ....................................................... 778/780
The Second Book. De Impressionibus Coeli Occulti [missing]
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ix
The Third Book on the Invisible Works ............................... 794/795
Beginning of the Third Book ............................................. 796/797
The Fourth Book on the Invisible Works
Preface ............................................................................... 840/841
Beginning of the Fourth Book ........................................... 844/845
The Fifth Book on the Invisible Works
Preface ............................................................................... 884/885
Beginning of the [Fifth] Book ........................................... 886/887
General Index ................................................................................... 939
Index of Names ................................................................................ 964
Index of Paracelsus’ Life and Work................................................. 969
Index of Citations from the Bible..................................................... 973
Introduction
Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, known as Paracelsus
(1493-1541), was one of the most original and prolific authors of sixteenth-century Europe. Commonly remembered as an itinerate physician-surgeon, medical innovator, philosopher of nature, and alchemist,
he was also a lay theologian, theorist of the supernatural, and rebel
against institutions and traditions. In the course of the 1520s, he challenged academic and urban authorities in Switzerland and South Germany by demanding medical reforms. Rebuffed by his opponents, he
continued wandering for the remainder of his life, disseminating as an
author, polemicist, and physician his understanding of medicine and
nature. He died an obscure death in Salzburg, but before the end of the
century his influence had spread, resulting in posthumous partisan
controversies between advocates and detractors.
Paracelsus wrote prolifically on medicine, philosophy, theology,
and a variety of related topics. The modern fourteen-volume Sudhoff
edition, based on the Huser edition of 1589, comprises those writings
which were not understood as mainly theological: the medical, philosophical, or alchemical writings. The Goldammer edition of theological and social-ethical writings, which is only about half complete,
can be expected to surpass the Sudhoff edition in size. The scholarly
reception of these works has always faced serious obstacles due to
intrinsic ambiguities and unresolved editorial issues, with the result
that among the influential authors of his century Paracelsus is perhaps
the most difficult to interpret and integrate into an overall understanding of his time. Of all the editions, only Goldammer’s provides firstrate scholarly commentary and notes. The Sudhoff edition is bewildering in its riches, confronting readers with numerous textual variants
and fragments without clarifying their relation to the more finished
2
ANDREW WEEKS
versions.1 Despite Sudhoff’s splendid achievements, errors such as his
misidentification of writings as seminal as of “around 1520,” though
later rescinded, cast a long shadow in Paracelsus studies.
The few English translations from his work are inadequate and
outmoded. Arthur Edward Waite worked from early Latin translations
of the original German to produce a potpourri of inauthentic and authentic works.2 Henry Sigerist, a medical historian and student of
Sudhoff, oversaw and assisted in translating Four Treatises from the
German (Seven Defensiones, On the Miner’s Sickness, The Diseases
that Deprive Man of His Reason, and The Book of Nymphs, Sylphs,
Pygmies, and Salamanders).3 Though each item is skillfully rendered,
the four are no more than a colorful fistful from the puzzle of the entire corpus. The most readily available translations are florilegia or
assortments of excerpts. An influential collection appeared in the
Princeton Bollingen Series in 1951. A translation of the Jungian Jolande Jacobi’s Paracelsus. Lebendiges Erbe,4 it consists of memorable
1
The difficulties have been summarized by Joachim Telle. There are persistent
problems of authenticity; Sudhoff’s edition does not approach the standards of a modern historical-critical edition; some theological writings still await their first edition;
and research into the sources of Paracelsus’s inspiration is inadequate. See Telle,
“Aufgaben der Paracelsusforschung,” in Medizinische Ausbildung und Versorgung
zur Zeit des Paracelsus (Salzburg, Internationale Paracelsusgesellschaft, 2006), 9-28.
2
Paracelsus, The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Paracelsus, ed. Arthur Edward Waite (Berkeley: Shambhala, 1976). Based on a reprint of an earlier edition
(London: J. Elliot, 1894), the translation from German via Latin lends the writings a
facile surface clarity. The selection is dubious. Other translations have promoted the
association of Paracelsus with the occult and the mystical: The Archidoxes of Magic;
of the Supreme Mysteries of Nature; of the Spirits of the Planets; of the Secrets of
Alchemy; of the Occult Philosophy; the Mysteries of the Twelve Signs of the Zodiac;
the Magical Cure of Diseases; of Celestial Medicines, trans. from the Latin by Robert
Turner (New York: Samuel Weiser, 1975; a reprint of a 1656 translation of De Spiritus Metallorum and De occulta Philosophia and Archidoxis Magica); and The
Prophecies of Paracelsus, ed. Franz Hartmann (New York: Rudolf Steiner Publications, 1973).
3
Four Treatises of Theophrastus von Hohenheim, called Paracelsus, translated
from the original German by C. Lilian Temkin (Seven Defensiones), George Rosen
(On the Miners’ Sickness), Gregory Zilboorg (The Diseases that Deprive Man of His
Reason), Henry E. Sigerist (A Book on Nymphs, Sylphs, Pygmies, and Salamanders),
ed. with a preface by Henry E. Sigerist (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1941). The
notes are minimal but helpful.
4
Jolande Jacobi, Paracelsus: Lebendiges Erbe (Bollingen Series, 28), trans. Norbert Guterman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951).
INTRODUCTION
3
passages arranged with almost no attention to their sources. A more
attentive and substantial anthology of selections was recently translated by Goodrick-Clarke.5
It is not surprising that Paracelsus has been studied in excerpts in
English. More remarkable is the fact that his German-language reception rests to a considerable extent on de-contextualized passages.
Rarely are his writings studied as organic literary wholes in relation to
their specific historical or literary contexts. Since even the most intelligent and influential studies of Paracelsus in English have been reticent in citing directly from his writings, the primary and secondary
literature are disparate reservoirs of information with too few connecting channels. Scholarship takes the form of isolated monologues.
Notwithstanding the obstacles, Paracelsus has proven to be of enduring interest to scholars of the Renaissance and Reformation and to
historians of science, medicine, and literature. Scholarly access to the
thinker is the primary purpose of this volume. There is no better introduction than the writings composed between 1529 and 1532. Many if
not all the themes of his earlier and later production are recapitulated
or anticipated in these works of mid career. With their exalted tone,
trademark Para-titles, and relentless laying of foundations and projecting of exhaustive surveys, these treatises represent themselves as
the zenith of his authorial production. They have come down to us in
versions that are largely completed, though often unrefined. This
places them in a special category for an author who wrote under unpropitious circumstances and left behind many fragments and incomplete drafts. Das Buch Paragranum and the writings of 1531 which
are associated with the Paramirum title, including his treatise on the
“Invisible Diseases,” are relatively comprehensible when read on their
own. We can therefore adapt his term in regarding these writings as a
microcosm of the Paracelsian universe. As such, they can tell us a
great deal about the material and intellectual culture of his era.
To translate and provide commentary for the large corpus of
Paracelsus might require more than the career of an individual scholar.
5
Paracelsus, Essential Readings, selected and translated by Nicholas GoodrickClark (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1999). Goodrick-Clark attempts to provide a
balanced selection of passages ranging from a few sentences to several pages in length
arranged by date following Sudhoff and by theme with few notes but an introduction
to the life and writings.
4
ANDREW WEEKS
But if contextualized in their time, tradition, and corpus, the writings
of the years 1530-31 can offer an essential access both to his work as a
whole, and through it, to the source of a major current of early modern
thought which is too often subordinated to abstractions or reduced to a
few overworked quotations and concepts. The edited and unedited
writings are fraught with uncertainties of dating and authenticity and
burdened with preconceptions. By translating the writings of this key
period, it should be possible to provide future scholarship with coordinates for orientation: laterally with regard to the concurrent developments of Paracelsus’ life and times, retrospectively with regard to
his previous writings, prospectively with regard to those that follow,
and thematically with regard to the entirety of his writings, including
the many that cannot be dated with certainty.
Context can clarify obscure terms and account for the urgency and
expectation in Paracelsus’ writings. The year 1530 saw the publication of Girolamo Fracastoro’s Syphilis, Georg Agricola’s medicalmetallurgical Bermannus, sive de Re Metallica Dialogus, and Otto
Brunfels’ Herbarum Vivae Eicones with its prefatory “Encomium
Medicinae.” The pursuits of these contemporaries offer a measure of
the erudition and curiosity of his age and a clue to the tensions he
sensed and rendered extreme. In the study of nature, Paracelsus’ polemically proclaimed turn from classical learning to fresh experience
is anticipated in the subtle tensions between ancient sources with their
Mediterranean flora and fresh observations of native regions in the
work of the Humanists. For example, Brunfels’ Latin compendium of
1530 extols Aristotle, Pliny, Dioscorides, Theophrastus, Galen, Celsus, and the mythical “Chiron Centaureus” as a name linked to the
“herba centaurea” (Brun.-Lat. 6). However, without abandoning ancient authority in writing of native plants, Brunfels’ German Kreüterbuch of 1532 accords thoughtful consideration to the practitioner of
surgery and distillation who died in 1512, Hieronymus Brunschwig,
and exalts the virtues of the lowly nettle, favored allegorically by God,
above the hyacinth of classical legend (Brunfels 1532 cxxiii). If not
the sources, the themes of Paracelsus can be traced.
In context, Paracelsus’ work reveals unnoticed patterns of allusion
and affinity. He was responding to current issues in his discussions of
mining, metallurgy, medical herbs, syphilis, medical education, and
the reform of apothecaries, as well as in his Bible commentaries and
doctrinal writings on the Eucharist and the Trinity. He reacted, albeit
INTRODUCTION
5
idiosyncratically, to the prestige of astronomy and anatomy. The dual
impact of theological and humanistic controversies is ingrained in the
complexities of his writings in the form of extended complex allusions.
The translation and commentary should bring the interrelations of
these contexts to light. Paracelsus’ absorption of influences was neither systematic nor accidental. The writings translated here must be
approached as products of a many-facetted dispute. The years and locations of his most intense authorial activity coincided with challenges
in medicine and the study of nature, even as it fell within an epoch
bounded by the Peasant Wars of the mid 1520s and the death of
Zwingli in October 1531. During this period, Paracelsus witnessed a
violent religious-social revolt in Salzburg, the consolidation of doctrinal-political independence in the Southwest in a rift catalyzed by the
Eucharistic controversy, the bitter disputes between the Humanism of
Erasmus and the theology of Luther’s Wittenberg and between the
magisterial reformers in the cities and Anabaptist radicals in the countryside, and the brutal repression of radicals. As the climactic two-year
interval drew to a close, even nature seemed to converge in the world
crisis. When Halley’s Comet appeared in August 1531, Paracelsus
addressed it in his Uslegung des Cometen (S 9:373-91),6 a pamphlet
printed at once by the Zwinglian reformer Leo Jud in Zurich. After
Zwingli fell in battle at Kappel in October, 1531, and Paracelsus’ host
and patient Christian Studer succumbed to illness in the last month of
that year, the two-year cycle of long anticipated, mysteriously entitled
“paramiran” writings came to a close.7
6
See Paracelsus, Der Komet im Hochgebirge von 1531, ed. Urs Leo Gantenbein
and Pia Holenstein Weidmann (Zurich: Chronos, 2006), a facsimile of the 1531 edition and commentary, as well as Rudolf Gamper’s “Paracelsus und Vadian” (117ff.).
7
To the extent the works of an author prone to drafts and revisions can be periodized, there are fair reasons for this dating. The furtively printed work Von der französischen Krankheit drei Bücher Para is dedicated full of hope to the Nuremberg city
scribe Lazarus Spengler. Its preface is dated in that city as of November 23rd, 1529
(S 7:13, 67, 71). The trademark syllable Para, never explained but suggestively included in the title (cf. H 2:5), anticipates the works of 1530-31. Only draft prefaces of
Paragranum originated in 1529 (S 8:31). A conflict with the Nuremberg city council
early in 1530 may have redirected P. from his interest in syphilis and confirmed him
in his “Para” theory projects. P. pursued these first in Beratzhausen and then in St.
Gall. Though the conclusion of the period cannot be dated with complete certainty,
textual evidence suggests that the “paramiran” writings followed one another without
hiatus. As Huser himself remarks regarding the textual indications that the works
6
ANDREW WEEKS
Background and Summary of the Translated Writings
The traceable authorial build-up to the works of 1530-31 is as abrupt
as their tone. Prior to Strasbourg and Basel, only Paracelsus’ involvements in religious disputes and his theological writings dated in Salzburg are clearly documented as of mid decade. There is no evidence
that he wrote academic medical treatises prior to his brief involvement
at the University of Basel in 1527-28, and none that he was in search
of an academic status before he came to Basel. Nor are there grounds
to assume that whatever ambitions or reforming intentions he may
have harbored before Basel were predicated on a university position.
Outside Luther’s Wittenberg, few of the German authors who were
obtaining fame by means of publication were in need of an academic
office in order to do so. In contrast to other countries or centuries, sixteenth-century German intellectual ferment did not look to the university as its obvious and preeminent place of residence.
The general theoretical cast of the works of 1530-31 and the specific development which led to Paracelsus’ Paragranum as a treatise
on the fourfold foundation of medicine can be traced back to his well
documented quarrel with established medical authority. It resulted in
his vocal and lasting resentment of the perceived injustice of his
treatment by the academic and urban authorities in Basel, where his
terminologies had met with public ridicule. Drafts and texts of writings after 1528 including those contained here refer back to this dispute (see H 2:11). A second source of contention was the more recent
rejection for publication of his writings on syphilis (“Franzosen”)8 and
beginning with Opus Paramirum belong together in the order in which he has placed
them: “so gibt doch der anfang eines jeden Buchs genugsam zuerkennen/ das gemelte
Bücher zu disem Paramiro gehörig/ wie sie dann in der ordnung jetzt nacheinander
folgen” (H 1:66). The final work, on the “Invisible Diseases,” is tense with references
to divisive religious issues. Its termination is abrupt. It is unlikely that the “paramiran” works were still in progress much after the closing months of 1531, when
P.’s circumstances were altered radically by the death of Zwingli in October and of
the St. Gall mayor Christian Studer in December, under whose protection P. had
stood. His whereabouts after the period encompassed in these writings is a matter of
speculation. See Edwin Rosner, “Hohenheims Weg in den Jahren 1532-1534. Eine
Hypothesenüberprüfung,” in Salzburger Beiträge zur Paracelsusforschung 28 (1995):
63-68.
8
I follow common usage in referring to the “French disease” as syphilis; but to
historians, disease entities are not identical with the diseases themselves but rather
conditioned by a social and physical environment. We are thus speaking of a disease
INTRODUCTION
7
the medical-ethical Spital-Buch by the Nuremberg city government
acting upon the advice of the medical faculty at Leipzig. Paracelsus
learned of the unfavorable decision while at work on Paragranum in
Beratzhausen, a nearby Protestant German town to which he had relocated for unknown reasons after leaving Nuremberg. The frustration
expressed in his response merges with his renewed anger toward his
Basel opponents. The fulminations of his various prefaces refer both
to Basel and to the rejection of his treatment of syphilis.
Since there is no mention of the pivotal Basel dispute in certain undated writings (notably those on alchemy, which are also less multifacetted in their theories than works that do recall his dispute),9 it is
possible that without the Basel quarrel Hohenheim might have pursued less comprehensive objectives and indeed never become
“Paracelsus.” His pseudonym only begins to appear in the post-Basel
period. He might have concentrated on asserting a place for alchemy
among the established medical schools, or on achieving renown with a
treatise on the prolongation of life, or on finding a revolutionary cure
for a specific disease such as gout or syphilis. Projects of the sort engaged him actively. Their viability was attested to by the universal
acclaim they garnered for Ficino and Fracastoro. What Hohenheim
might have been without Basel remains a matter for speculation. What
is certain and decisive is that the Paragranum of 1530 is firmly rooted
in a ground he had broken and cultivated furiously in that city, though
with frustratingly ambivalent results.
related to but not identical with the syphilis known today (see CWHHD, 1029-30; cf.
Allan M. Brandt, “Sexually Transmitted Diseases,” CEHM, 562ff.).
9
Some undated writings are thematically preliminary to the works of 1530. Paragranum presupposes a preoccupation with practical and theoretical alchemy. Incorporating this preoccupation, his alchemical writings could have originated before Basel.
Conversely, the academic cast and context of an undated writing offers the most defensible criterion for dating it after the decisive turn of events in 1527-28. It is certain
that before Basel P. wrote works of “lay theology” as early as 1524 (G 3). For an argument that alchemical or natural-philosophical works such as Archidoxis were preBasel, see Udo Benzenhöfer, “Zur Archidoxis-Schrift des P.,” in Nova Acta Paracelsica N.F. 19 (2005): 105-124; cf. Benzenhöfer, Studien zum Frühwerk des Paracelsus
im Bereich Medizin und Naturkunde [Münster: Klemm & Oelschläger, 2005], 205f.
For a critique of Benzenhöfer’s monograph, see my forthcoming review in the Bulletin of the History of Medicine (summer 2007).
8
ANDREW WEEKS
Das Buch Paragranum
The plan for a four-pillared foundation of medicine precedes our
Paragranum. A key anticipatory reference is found in his Deutsche
Kommentare zu den Aphorismen des Hippokrates (German Commentaries of Hohenheim on the Aphorisms of Hippocrates). Here the
fourth pillar is still given as “physica” or “medical science.” The
commentary on the words “experimentum fallax” in the first Aphorism10 elicits this observation:
Also ist die arznei im anfang gestanden, das kein theorica gewesen ist, alein ein erfarenheit: das laxirt, das constipirt; was aber,
wie aber, ist verborgen gewesen. darumb ist einer verderbt, der
ander gesunt worden. so aber iez theorica da ist, so ist es nimer
also. scientia get für und ist nimer experimentum fallax. das
macht die theorica medica, die in vier seulen stehet: philosophia,
astronomia, alchimia und physica. (S 4:497)
This is how medicine was in the beginning, when there was not
yet any theory, but only experience: this acts as a laxative; that
acts to constipate; but what it was and how it acted thus remained
hidden. This is why one patient was ruined and the other returned
to health. However, now that theory is present, this is no longer
so. Science advances and is no longer experimentum fallax. This
results from medical theory, which rests upon four columns: philosophy, astronomy, alchemy and physica.
Though this echoes the ad fontes of Humanism, Paracelsus is not
concerned with recovering texts or documenting the sources of ancient
10
The Aphorism reads in full: “Life is short, and Art long; the crisis fleeting; experience perilous, and decision difficult. The physician must not only be prepared to
do what is right himself, but also to make the patient, the attendants, and externals
cooperate” (HW 131). For a discussion of P.’s commentary on Hippocrates and the
scholarship devoted to it, see Udo Benzenhöfer and Michaela Triebs, “Zu Theophrast
von Hohenheims Auslegungen der ‘Aphorismen’ des Hippokrates,” in Parerga
Paracelsica: Paracelsus in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, ed. Joachim Telle (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1992), 27-37. The authors take note that, though P. was relatively beholden to the authority of Hippocrates, “Gänzlich im eigenen Horizont legt Hohenheim die ‘Experimentum-fallax’-Stelle aus” (36).
INTRODUCTION
9
medicine.11 His reading of Hippocrates rationalizes his own elaboration of a new medical theory in the spirit of his reforming age and in
conformity with his Basel teaching plan of June 1527. In it, he had
promised to restore medicine “ad pristinam suae autoritatis laudem,”
cleansing it of its barbaric sediments and grave errors (S 4:3).
In Basel the Galenists won out. They mocked the would-be reformer with a satirical salutation addressed by the shade of Galenus to
“Cacophrastus.” The spurned reformer fared no better in Nuremberg
in 1529. The failure of his efforts to put his new teachings into practice resulted in his gravitation to an ever more sweeping theory of
medicine. In the drafts and writings anticipating the “pillars” of Paragranum, the abused teacher girds himself for a publicistic counterassault on the established medical theories of Galen and Avicenna and
their Aristotelian underpinnings.12 His concerted response requires a
far-reaching re-conception of medicine and its related disciplines.
Everything acquired in his university studies, Basel university preparations, alchemical experiments, or theological and exegetic speculations is pressed into the service of this general reform. The genesis of
11
Other assertions in his writings contradict this assessment of ancient classical
medicine by postulating an even more pristine Adamic healing art (see S 7:370).
12
There is substantial evidence that Paragranum and Opus Paramirum had been in
planning. Paramirum is anticipated by references to coming “paramiran” works;
Paragranum by references to the “pillars” (“seulen”) of medicine as part of an emerging synthesis of ideas. Andere Ausarbeitung über Terpentin, samt Abhandlung über
den Honig (S 2:177ff.), a work partially parallel to Von den natürlichen Dingen
(S 2:59ff.), mixes celestial with herbal virtues and astronomical forces with alchemical arcana. Moreover, it contains prototypes for P.’s understanding of mumia and
manna (“terpentin” 183; “honig” 196). A related draft ends by announcing a project
called “lumen apothecariorum” (203), ascribing the true medicine and wisdom to
Christ, and asserting that God created “die vier natürliche seulen, als in philosophiam,
astronomiam, physicam und alchimiam” (S 2:203). This hint of a transitional development in which the “pillars” emerged from another project that was perhaps never
realized suggests that this could be one of the earliest references to the plan of Paragranum. The fragment of a work Von hinfallenden Siechtagen der Mutter, which anticipates the theme of the work on the matrix reproduced here, looks back at P.’s
Basel opponents and repeatedly promises an introduction to “philosophei und astronomei … dan dieselbigen zwei sind die theorik und die ganz verstendnus” (S 8:320,
339, 340, etc.). Here medical authority is attributed to a “theoric von got bekant,”
“theory known from God” (341). Alchemy is integral to medicine, though it is not
designated here as a “pillar.” These and other references suggest that the plan to renovate medicine on the basis of P.’s teaching of the “pillars” was at this stage both
paramount and in flux.
10
ANDREW WEEKS
his response can be traced by way of allusions and diatribes recalling
the conflicts of Basel and Nuremberg. From the beginning of 1530 to
the conclusion of the cycle of “paramiran” works, Paracelsus attempts
to set forth the theoretical foundations of his new medicine in the writings translated here.
In rejecting Avicenna and Galen, Paracelsus crossed a Rubicon.
The first book and section of Avicenna’s Canon was foundational for
academic medicine, situating it in the hierarchy of the arts and sciences and expounding the received medical understanding of philosophy, physiology, and regimen.13 His disavowal threatened to undermine the medical curriculum which he had begun to conceive in Basel
and still aspired to disseminate. His new “theorica medica, die in vier
seulen stehet” had to be comprehensive. The project of elaborating a
new theory became ever more focal, nurtured by the spirit of the age.
Luther had challenged the entrenched authority of the Roman Church
by returning to the true font of all theological authority. Paracelsus
attempted to do the same within his sphere.
The First Pillar, Philosophy
His new medical theory could only rest on the authority of nature itself: “Who is a better teacher in this than nature itself?” “Now that we
have concluded that the physician must be educated by nature, we
must ask, what is nature but philosophy? What is philosophy other
than the invisible nature?” (H 2:23) Nature is an embodiment of truth,
authored like Scripture by God. In a sense peculiar to Paracelsus,
natural philosophy leads to human self-recognition: “That is what phi13
Siraisi depicts the abiding foundational importance of Avicenna’s Canon from
the Middle Ages until after this time: “The brief text of Canon 1.1 occupies a position
of considerable significance in the history of ways of thinking about the philosophy of
medicine and physiology. For several hundred years, this section provided medical
students and others with a coherent and well-crafted survey of the fundamentals of a
largely Galenic physiology set in the context of Aristotelian natural philosophy, and
with a concise expression of some of the key concepts of scholastic medical thought.
In university medical curricula, the first book of the Canon, and especially the first
section of that book, was early adopted as a textbook of theoria, the branch of medicine that acquainted the neophyte with the nature of medical science, the position of
medicine in the hierarchy of arts and sciences, and the proper relationship of medicine
and philosophy, as well as with the basic principles of physiology, pathology, and
regimen” (ARI 10).
INTRODUCTION
11
losophy is: [things] are in the human being in the same way that they
are outside, intangibly, as if one were looking at oneself in a mirror”
(H 2:24). Powerful claims are made for the theory of microcosm and
macrocosm: it will resolve the questions of specific cures in a way that
the theories of the degrees or of the humors cannot (H 2:28). In construing the relationship of microcosm to macrocosm as that of parent
to child, the author incorporates the font of human life and medical
wisdom into his argument: “it is a wisdom given by the parentes microcosmi [in order for them] to recognize the microcosmus as their
son” (H 2:25-26).
Following this same reasoning, he rejects a medicine based on
treatment by contraries. In medicine like should heal like. This is
grounded in the author’s Christian understanding of a merciful God.
The same relation is extended to the nomenclature of diseases. These
are to be known by a macrocosmic designation based on their cure:
“In this way the natural physician understands how it is that in the
great world anatomy can be discerned as in the small [world]. You
should say that morbus is [of] pulegium” [an aromatic herb, penny
royal] (H 2:27), which is to say, the disease should be known by its
effective herbal remedy.
The Second Pillar, Astronomy
This bold beginning soon forces Paracelsus to undertake adjustments
that modify the sense of his terms. Already in defining philosophy as
nature invisible, he assigns astronomy to the upper part of the natural
cosmos. This compels him to reassign philosophy to the lower part of
the cosmos, thus reconfiguring it from the whole to the part. Astronomy is concerned with the upper elements of air and fire, philosophy
with the lower elements of earth and water. This also causes the notion of parentes microcosmi to evolve. The stars are the “father” of the
human being. The elements are frequently characterized as maternal:
“mütter” or matres. Since the paternal astra (the stars or the firmament) and the matres (the elements) are both present in the upper as
well as the lower sphere of the cosmos, the sense of the hierarchical
paradigm devolves from space to generative power. The astra are
higher in that they perform the active role in generation and transformation, as compared to the passive role of the elements. The contrived
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ANDREW WEEKS
and evolving scheme of macrocosm and microcosm reveals the generative paradigm at its root.
For medical theory, this state of affairs implicates the cosmic reciprocality and invisibility of processes. Galenic medicine knew a foundation which was in a sense solidly empirical in the humors and their
corresponding elements. All of this was restrictive to the proponent of
alchemical medicine. Paracelsus counters by positing arcane cosmic
operations that are manifest in the suspended condition of the firmament or in its exertions of influence. These make it plausible to infer
comparably subtle operations in the field of medicine and its human
subject. The presence of these operations is evidenced by otherwise
inexplicable phenomena such as the translucence of crystal or the
structured suspension of the yolk within the egg. The latter is his favored model for the structural suspension of the inner spheres of the
cosmos (H 2:45).
Moreover, that which we recognize in penetrating the external,
elemental-humoral appearances of things is the same as that which
effects our recognition: the astrum or arcane power of the stars
(H 2:46). In the same way that like heals like, like recognizes like.
Since the firmament stands in a paternal relationship to the human
being, mental regression to the parentless Adam transforms metaphor
into literal kinship. Adam’s parental origin lay in the limbus out of
which the first man was made. A finer substance than a mere clump of
earth, it incorporated the very stuff of the stars. Though it is sometimes cited as the source of that which is noblest in the human creature, here the limbus also appears to be the seed of all diseases that
afflict human beings (H 2:49).
An understanding of nature in the light of revealed truth is the root
of self-recognition (H 2:53). The purpose of philosophy, astronomy,
and cosmography lies within the human being. Without the contextualizing understanding supplied by these disciplines to all medical applications, remedies, and procedures, they are in vain. Processes take
place through time, and the heavens are the embodiment of time. To
ignore this or reject the new medicine is to court disaster.
INTRODUCTION
13
The Third Pillar, Alchemy
Alchemy is an art. As such, it partakes of the growing prestige of all
the arts. These have acquired a remarkable skill at finishing and refining the things nature yields in an unfinished state or crude form.
Without alchemy, medicine would have to remain in its ludicrously
primitive condition. Alchemy is able to refine materials because it has
an understanding of the astronomical dimension of medicine. Alchemy directs or guides the astral powers. It is an art that resides in
nature itself, in the digestive powers of the stomach or in the external
“stomach,” elsewhere called the archeus, that transforms things, and
in the immanent scientia which guides such processes. Implicitly redemptive, alchemy holds sway over the arcana. They transcend the
destructible corpora as the soul transcends the body (H 2:66, cf. 5355). As a master over time and process, the alchemist knows about
mumia. It is a curing or preserving, mummified or mummifying, material. It need not be sought abroad among the heathens. It can be found
close to home in nature (H 2:68). The alchemist puts the ignorant
apothecary to shame.
What has been written by such traditional authors as Pliny or Dioscorides is subject to verification by the alchemist (H 2:70). His transforming role contrasts with the mixing and covering up undertaken by
the apothecaries. Alchemy can render poison salubrious (H 2:76).
The Fourth Pillar, Proprietas or Virtue
Paracelsus’ discussion of proprietas is the fourth foundation of medicine, missing from the earlier references to the pillars. Here he emphasizes the Christ-like role of the physician implicit in his preceding remarks. The false physicians are Pharisees, hypocrites, and false
prophets. The faithful physician exercises an apostolic office. In accordance with the pattern of like healing like and like knowing like,
the healing virtues utilized in medicine require the ethical virtue of the
physician (H 2:86). The author’s extended allusion to the seed that
must die in the ground in order to bring forth fruit here evokes the
moribund state of affairs in medicine and its imminent resurrection
(H 2:89). The true physician excels in knowledge of all the wonders of
nature, whether manifest in alchemical processes or in monsters of the
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ANDREW WEEKS
deep (H 2:92). In conclusion, the author declaims that the true physician commands a lore and learning of breath-taking universality
(H 2:92). By virtue of this cosmic mastery, the true physician awakens
a faith and trust in the miraculous powers of God—the ultimate agent
of healing (H 2:95).
Das Buch Paragranum is a theory of the disciplines, comparable in
this regard to the presumably earlier Volumen Paramirum (EntienSchrift), a draft in which the five substances of disease (entia) were
explicated.14 Paragranum also anticipates the more elaborate organization of disciplines in Astronomia Magna. Moreover, both in affiliating philosophy, astronomy, and alchemy, and in treating the alchemical and herbal powers as if both were on the same plane, Paragranum
parallels the category-mixing tendency in the Basel-era drafts, De
Gradibus and De Modo Pharmacandi (S 4), the similar confabulation
in Herbarius and Von den natürlichen Dingen (S 2), or in his critical
commentary on the herbalist poems of pseudo-Macer (S 3). Paracelsus
had attempted to combine alchemical and herbal medicine at a more
practical level in Basel. Paragranum resumes the task with a theoretical meditation on the relation of the disciplines. The “paramiran”
works that follow pursue the nexus of disciplines by contemplating the
core nature of process, birth, transformation, and the relationship of
the visible world of the body to the invisible world of animate spirit.
Opus Paramirum
The importance of support or patronage for the wandering physician
and author and his effusive dedications to the “Doctor and Mayor
Joachim von Watt” (Vadianus) suggest that the writings from St. Gall
might have been crafted to appeal to a potential sponsor and medical
14
Since the causes of disease are multifarious, so are the medical “faculties” that
address them. There is a partial correspondence between the substance-causes (entia)
of diseases in the Volumen and the disciplines expounded in Paragranum: ens astrale
and ens venale in the earlier work correspond to medical astronomy and alchemy,
respectively. The naturales in medicine are the followers of Galen and Avicenna
(S 1:167), whose humoral medicine is to be overcome by the new philosophy which
takes nature in its entirety as its teacher. The ens spiritale anticipates the treatise on
the “Invisible Diseaes” (see below), a supernaturalism that is not divine. The divine
ens deale points toward all the writings of Paracelsus concerned either with theology
or the divine sources of healing and the corresponding apostolic office of the physician.
INTRODUCTION
15
colleague, renowned among Humanists and Protestant reformers.15
This thesis should neither be excluded nor exaggerated. In certain respects, the St. Gall writings are unreservedly iconoclastic and therefore a poor gambit for gaining the favor of such a staid object of veneration. There are even firmer grounds for recognizing the Opus Paramirum and accompanying works as the long awaited and repeatedly
heralded “paramiran” keystone of his corpus. This refers to a designation that advertises coming writings said to be essential to all sorts of
salient questions (see note on H 1:67). The writings which bear that
title offer a justification for medical alchemy that discretely but unmistakably anchors it in theology and Scripture.
The exposition begins by exalting fire. It is the tool and medium of
the alchemist, but also the essence of nature as process, the means for
validating truth, and the modality of divine revelation: “fire is that
which makes visible what is obscure” (H 1:69). By way of fire, a “science” concealed in nature becomes manifest. The exposition is particularly rich in allusions to the Gospel. The tria prima or three substances dominate the first few chapters. That the pattern of nature embodied in the three is trinitarian remains implicit. It is spelled out in
another writing of the period (G 3:63).
Though fire pertains to the praxis of the alchemist, the author is
keenly aware of the dangers of generalizing from particular to universal. Chapter Two avers that it is not hit-or-miss experimentation but
15
Pirmin Meier’s Paracelsus. Arzt und Prophet (Zurich: Pendo, 1998) discusses P.
in St. Gall. Neither P.’s arrival nor departure date is certain. On acquaintances P.
shared with Vadianus and the lack of evidence that the two met, see Conradin
Bonorad, Joachim Vadian und der Humanismus im Bereich des Erzbistums Salzburg
(St. Gall: Fehr, 1980), 175-76. The incompatability of P.’s new medicine with the
humanistic medicine of Vadianus can be inferred from Werner Näf, Vadian und seine
Stadt St. Gallen (St. Gall: Fehr, 1944), “Doctor medicinae” (146-59), and Bernard
Milt’s Vadian als Arzt (St. Gall: Fehr, 1959). On the role of Vadianus in the reformation of St. Gall, see Gordon Rupp, Patterns of Reformation (Philadelphia: Fortress
Press, 1969), “Vadianus and Johannes Kessler of St. Gall” (357ff.). P. was in the city
during a critical period between the decisive battles for secularization and the removal
of images in the abbey and the death of Zwingli in battle and the return of the abbot in
1531. Background is found in Bruce Gordon, The Swiss Reformation (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 2002), 89-92 (on the St. Gall and Basel Anabaptists, see
202-05). P. was perhaps drawn to the reformer whose early zeal against relic-worship
matched the views P. expressed in St. Gall. See Ernst Götzinger, Joachim Vadian, der
Reformator und Geschichtsschreiber von St. Gallen, Schriften für Reformationsgeschichte 13 (Halle: Verein für Reformationsgeschichte, 1895), 16.
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ANDREW WEEKS
rather contemplation of the macrocosm that discloses the secrets of
nature: “above all, the physician must know the three substances and
all their properties in the great world, for then the physician has ascertained it in the human being as well” (H 1:73-74). The author adopts
the philosophical terminologies of the prima and ultima materia, but
he also avers that the prima materia mundi coincides with the “fiat” of
Genesis, the “let there be” of the Creator. Hence, at the root of nature
as process lies the mystery of the divine will. As the subject of medicine, the human being consists of the three substances sulphur, mercurius, and salt, which are primordially aggregated in the substance
called limbus. Again, the elements are matres. At the close of Chapter
Two, the author projects a non-humoral reconfiguration of disease as
organic and “male” in its derivation from the limbus: “It must rather
be stated that every male property is found in disease, and that it is
properly called a man: as it is with him who is born from the perfect
limbus, so [it is] also with disease” (H 1:77-78).
Since the basic tendency of Paracelsus’ speculation is toward recognition of the natural multiplicity of things, he refers in Chapter
Three to the varieties of sulphur and undertakes a corresponding reconfiguration of his model of nature as process. The fire which ignites
the sulphur is astral and therefore male. The multiplicity within nature
is intelligible as the very divisibility that constitutes its destructibility:
“Yet the cause that these things are so errant and multifarious is the
following. It is that Christ says: any realm that is divided in itself
passes away: for only the kingdom in Christ remains; it is not temporal. For this reason, the body is not eternal but mortal, temporal; and
since it is temporal, it must pass away” (H 1:80-81).
Chapter Four rejects the traditional understanding of disease as
composite and humoral. Opposed to this is the concept of the astral
impression. Chapter Five applies the concept of the image. In effect, it
implies that likeness is the key to the nature and properties of things,
to the human being, to diseases, and to herbs or flowers: “whoever has
a disease with the anatomy of the rose should rejoice to see before his
eyes that God has provided him medicine of a kind that confronts him
merrily and that helps joyously [and] and with consolation. The same
is true of the lily, of the lavender, and indeed of all things” (H 1:89).
Citations from the Gospels again confirm that the healing power of
like acting upon like is rooted in the divine mercy.
INTRODUCTION
17
Chapter Six alters and adapts the concept of anatomy to the medicine of likeness and alchemy. The healing powers in things are not
accessible to the sort of anatomy that is based on physical dissection.
“The rose is magnificent in its first life; and it is adorned by its
taste…. It must rot, and die as such, and be reborn: Only then can you
speak of administering its medicinal powers” (H 1:92). Anatomy
based on dissection pertains only to the microcosmus localis (H 1:93).
However, the essential transforming powers lie in the three substances. There are three “anatomies”: the two aforementioned and a
third, the anatomy of death. Recognizing their forms and meanings is
reminiscent of the wonders revealed in Christ (H 1:95-96).
Chapter Seven applies the notion of likeness counter-intuitively.
Even where the likeness is not evident, its seed is still present. Natural
processes carve it out and fashion things through digestion and by virtue of the power of the Creator into their appropriate forms (H 1:9889). The wondrousness of life-sustaining processes inspire the author
to postulate the theologically conditioned paradox of two human bodies which are one: “we have two bodies in a sense, and yet are only a
single body, yet again created in a twofold manner: in the seed and in
the nourishment” (H 1:100). The two bodies are functions of justice
and mercy: the first is congenital, the second perpetually renewed
(H 1:101).
Chapter Eight expands on the theme of the two bodies and adds to
it that of the rules-based medicine of the regimen sanitatis or diet.
This is contrasted with a medicine embodying the mercy of Christ, the
medicine administered by the Paracelsian physician. In opposition to
the false medicine which is now being practiced, the new medicine
will allow the divine mysteria and magnalia to become manifest. The
author contextualizes the new medicine within a progressive revelation that encompasses the wonders of Old Testament longevity and of
the giants.
Chapter One of Book Two transfers the conceptual dynamics of the
tria prima from the three aspects of combustion to those of organic
growth with implications for the understanding of disease as process.
This supports the intended shift from a medicine of elemental humors
or quantitative degrees to a new medicine based on organic individuals and transformations effected by arcane powers. Chapter Two expands the new concepts of illness and remedy by incorporating references to herbs and alchemical-astral powers. He has recourse to the
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ANDREW WEEKS
cosmic dimensions of all processes and to the poles of redemptive rebirth, on the one hand (H 1:111-12), and of Lucifer’s rebellion, on the
other (H 1:113). The simultaneity of references complicates the exposition but also augments its authority. Chapter Three evokes a medication which encompasses all things: “Thus is the great compositum.
That is to say that the true medicine proceeds…from the heavens and
the earth and from all the elements and from their powers” (H 1:119).
The spagyric art of the alchemist evokes the work of separation effected by the Creator in Genesis. The chapter concludes with a vivid
presentation of the multifarious workings of death personified as a
stealthy thief.
Chapters Four through Six return to the project of a predominantly
alchemical description of disease as natural process. These chapters
may be thought of as a bridge to the following treatise on the diseases
of tartarus. Chapter Seven takes up the subject of congenital diseases,
thereby anticipating the coming work devoted to female medicine. For
Paracelsus, conception and procreation are the very essence of
woman. Chapter Eight begins by evoking the “invisible body,”
thereby anticipating the explicit theme of the last treatise from
St. Gall, that on the so-called “invisible diseases.”
The interrelatedness of the writings of 1531 beginning with the two
books of the Opus Paramirum appears attenuated with respect to the
medical content of these works. Their affiliation is more significant in
terms of the author’s Christian humanism and his frequent extended
allusions to the Bible. All sciences and arts culminate in the human
being. To study the human being is to study human origins. As Genesis recounts, human origins lie in the creation of the world and of
Adam and in the procreative role assigned to woman. To study macrocosmic nature or the human constitution in the light of truth is to look
beyond phenomenal things to the invisible order of the soul and to the
wondrous powers of God. From start to finish, the St. Gall writings
rely heavily on the assumption that higher—invisible, celestial, and
divine—powers can be inferred from visible things, whether the finite
human microcosm or the external nature of the macrcocosm.
The tria prima which are central to the Opus Paramirum were anticipated in the medical and alchemical writings at least since Basel.
Important additional treatments of the three are found in Von den
natürlichen Dingen (S 2), Von den ersten drei Principiis, De Natura
Rerum (S 3), De Generationibus…Elementorum, the Meteorum
INTRODUCTION
19
(S 13), and other writings. Their theological significance was also elucidated in De Genealogia Christi (G 3:63), a roughly contemporaneous work in which the light of nature and the eternal light are ascribed
to the same source in the Holy Spirit (73). The authority granted to the
tria prima lays a groundwork for analyzing disease as process, with
the tartarus as the pathogenic embodiment of a failed or aborted process. But despite a few inconclusive efforts by the author, a comprehensive system of disease classification is never developed on the basis of the tria prima and their relationships.
De Morborum Origine et Causa (On the Tartarus Diseases)
The transforming and digesting art of alchemy is the signature art of
the medical author who understands nature itself as the bearer of a
macrocosmic stomach or archeus, an organ of digestion and transformation. Therefore, it is not surprising that the diseases associated with
tartarus figure so prominently that their discussion approximates a
major objective announced for the coming “paramiran” work: that of a
description of the origin of all diseases (cf. S 8:105). To understand
the present work on tartarus, it is essential to bear in mind that it infers the processes of digestion from those of alchemical laboratory
processes. Such processes and a non-tartaric stone are interpreted in
the Sixth Treatise on the basis of macrocosmic processes in nature.
Microcosm and macrocosm, constituted by the association of like with
like and by the analysis of nature in accordance with the tria prima—
nature’s likeness with its Creator—are implicit in the present discussion as well, but here they are less prominent. Observable processes
guide the exposition.
With relatively few digressions, the treatise on tartarus follows a
clear outline. The first treatise introduces the problem of the elimination of waste matter as specific to food types. The second discusses
the tartarus with reference to the expulsion of solid waste; the third
with reference to urine; the fourth with reference to other organs that
maintain their own digestion and elimination; and the fifth with reference to the same processes as they occur in the blood, flesh, and marrow. The sixth treatise transfers attention from the human body to the
macrocosmic or meteorological equivalents of the processes associated with the generation of tartarus and other stones.
20
ANDREW WEEKS
This treatise on the origin of diseases from the tartarus looks back
to many previous discussions—Von den podagrischen Krankheiten
(S 1), Brüchstück vom Wein (S 2), Das 6. Buch in der Arznei: von tartarischen Krankheiten (S 2), the Basel Vorlesung über tartarische
Krankheiten and related materials (S 5)—as well as forward to Das
Buch von den tartarischen Krankheiten an Pfarrer von Brant in Eferdingen (S 11) of 1537-38. In the present work, theological allusions
are largely subliminal, confined to the fact that the term tartarus may
allude to Hell and that arcane spirits guide the process of digestion as
does divine spirit the processes of creation.
On the Matrix
The relationship of observation to theory is virtually the opposite in
the treatise on the matrix. Woman is understood as a birth-giving “matrix” of offspring, as the “smallest world,” ranking after the natural
macrocosm and the male microcosm. The paradigm of an hermetically
segregated maternal essence of woman draws on Genesis. Woman is a
field into which seed is sown (H 1:195). The mystery of the generative
matrix in woman is tantamount to the mystery of human origin itself
(H 1:201). Moreover, the matrix is like the nebulous waters over
which the spirit of God hovered in Genesis 1:2 (H 1:202). The male
counterpart of the matrix is the limbus or prima materia of the human
being (H 1:204). Likeness, microcosm and macrocosm, are the organizing principle of Paracelsus’ thought. The birth-giving matrix as a
likeness of the world’s creation in Genesis extends this reasoning so
that human conception and birth appear as a microcosm of cosmogony. Moreover, since the elements are also understood as matrices or
“mothers,” the work in effect extends and fleshes out Paracelsus’
cosmology.
The biblical and macrocosmic paradigms dominate the discussion.
Menstruation is rendered mythic by its comparison with seas and tides
(H 1:207) or with a fruit-bearing tree (H 210). Suffocatio matricis and
caducus are cited as paradigmatic examples of female afflictions
(H 1:226ff.). Their presentation in his writings has been characterized
as Paracelsus’ contribution to the ancient and controversial diagnosis
of female hysteria. Here it is a matter of justifying his medical theory
as a whole. As the treatise shifts its center of gravity to metaphysical
argumentation, the author uses the special and distinct character ascribed to gynecology as a cudgel for smiting the universalizing or
gender-free tendencies of established medicine. Not only are all dis-
INTRODUCTION
21
eases or healing virtues of plants and substances varied and unique.
The female well-spring of generation is also distinct from the male
standard of human existence.
The work recasts three themes found elsewhere: 1. the writings on
the generation of the human being elaborated in Das Buch von der
Gebärung der empflindlichen Dinge in der Vernunft and in the similar
or parallel fragment of Ein Büchlein (Philosophia) de Generatione
Hominis (S 1:241ff., 287ff.); 2. the theme of Von hinfallenden Siechtagen der Mutter (S 8) and the other writings devoted to caducus or
“fallend,” to the extent that they refer to a female malady; and 3. the
theme of the third and fourth chapters (St. Vitus’ dance and suffocatio
intellectus respectively) in Das siebente Buch in der Arznei, Von den
Krankheiten, die der Vernunft berauben (S 2:407-19). Significantly,
the third chapter of Das siebente Buch can be read as a prototype for
the final work translated in this volume.
On the Invisible Diseases
Though a separate work, the treatise on the “Invisible Diseases” refers
back to the immediately preceding writings. The author begins by announcing that, after completing the previous “three books in the light
of nature” (H 1:238), he has said enough about the ailments of the
visible and physical portion of the microcosm. He will therefore proceed to a new objective concerned with that which is invisible (“unsichtbar”) and yet palpable or tangible (“greiflich”) (H 1:239). With
regard to this objective, we are all comparable to the blind who touch
and grasp things that are not visible to them (H 1:239).
This peculiar opening assertion suggests that what is to come implicates a spirit realm in which the authority of the light of nature is to
be extended from the visible to an invisible reality. The author states
that, “we should be aware that every [sort of] practica should flow out
of theorica” (H 1:244). Theological considerations predominate with
the “invisible diseases.” Though he refers to them as “Geisteskrankheiten” (H 1:244), they are maladies of the spirit or spirits rather than
internal psychic disorders. Like all other facts and works of creation,
the invisible diseases also reveal the miraculous powers of God
(H 1:242-43). When the author pronounces that we who are confined
to the visible light of nature find it unbelievable that human beings
could be possessed by the devil and yet redeemed by Christ (H 1:243),
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ANDREW WEEKS
his words resonate with the many instances of spirit possession and
exorcism in the New Testament. By combining medical with religious
issues in each of its books, On the Invisible Diseases offers a medicalspiritual diagnosis of the religious troubles of a critical phase of the
Reformation.
Book One treats of those things that befall human beings through
faith. Faith or belief (“der Glaube”) possesses a supernatural power
distinct from the true faith in God or Christ. This power should not be
abused to test or tempt God (H 1:246ff.). Faith can cause illness
(H 1:250ff.). The abuse of faith leads to the superstition of the saints
as the agents of health and sickness (H 1:255). The author discusses
several diseases that bear saints’ names. He describes the supernatural
investment of faith which actually causes them (H 1:260ff.) and concludes with a remarkable explanation of St. Vitus’ dance (H 1:263ff.).
Dreams are manifestations of faith exercised in a pathogenic way
(H 1:268).
Book Two (De Impressionibus Coeli Occulti) is missing. Book
Three turns to a subject that intrigued the philosophy of the Renaissance and shadowed the Reformation emphasis on the redeeming
power of faith: the imagination as a supernatural force that somehow
leaps the chasm between spirit and body so that the former acts supernaturally upon the latter (H 1:269ff.). Imagination has a special bearing on conception, pregnancy, and procreation. It is a mental intention
or plan which can acquire real physical force (H 1:272ff.). The materially inexplicable action of imagination is comparable to agencies in
the astronomical, meteorological, magnetic, or alchemical spheres,
which also challenge explanations based on common sense (274ff.).
Moreover, sexual desire and its attendant imagination are susceptible
to an unwholesome lasciviousness, conducive to the incubus, succubus, and other unnatural agencies of conception (H 1:282ff.). Against
this twilight spirit realm, marriage is a serious precaution whenever
chastity is unattainable (H 1:286).
Book Four (H 1:288ff.) responds in an ambivalent fashion to prevalent notions of image magic, the healing powers of pilgrimage sites,
and the relics of saints. Paracelsus would remain faithfully Christian
while opposing hagiolatry. Though reform-minded, he propounds his
own supernaturalism of mumia. In his abstruse and tangled reasoning,
his application of the principle of similia à similibus to the Creation
INTRODUCTION
23
reclaims for his project a peculiar measure of consistency (cf.
H 1:290, note).
Book Five (306ff.) undertakes an ambiguous reclamation of magic
“characters.” “Therefore, it is my purpose to describe the powers of
names and words, whether spoken or written, and how [these powers]
come into being” (H 1:307). He argues on scriptural grounds for an
appropriation of the magical powers of the satanic enemy to serve
human purposes. Though his discussion does little to satisfy our curiosity about magic practices in his time, his warnings and insinuations
offer an evocative reprise of the no man’s land between God and Satan in the age of Martin Luther and Dr. Faustus.
Writings thematically related to the work on The Invisible Diseases
include the Fourth Book (“ens spiritale”) of the Volumen Paramirum
(S 1:215ff.) which discusses the use of images and characters; The
Seventh Book on Medicine (Das 7. Buch in der Arznei—S 2), Book
Eight of Von Ursprung und Herkommen der Franzosen (S 7), the
“Munich Mantischer Entwurf” (S 10), De Imaginibus and De Meteorum (S 13); and, of special relevance, several treatises in Philosophia Magna (S 14): De Virtute Imaginativa; De Sagis; Liber Sanctorum; De Gigantibus; De Superstitionibus; and De Characteribus, as
well as the presumably concurrent theological works, De Potentia et
Potentia Gratia Dei (G 1), De Secretis Secretorum Theologiae, and
Liber de Imaginibus Idolatriae (G 3).
The sources, cross-references, and themes of the writings encompassed in this volume include nearly all thematic categories from
Paracelsus’ work: his writings on medical theory; his alchemical
works; his treatises on specific diseases such as syphilis, gout, and
plague; his instructional notes and lectures from the Basel and immediate post-Basel periods; his writings on natural, meteorological, astronomical, and astrological matters; those on supernatural, theological or “social-ethical” themes; and the surgical works. The crossreferences from the writings of 1530-31 extend backward—from the
“pillars” of Paragranum to Paracelsus’ Salzburg and Basel disputes
and his discussions of herbal powers and alchemical processes in Von
den natürlichen Dingen (S 2:88-89), in which the arcanum or the signatur (111-14) are ascribed to God. Moreover, the writings of this
middle period suggest the beginnings of a transition from his practical
concerns to the more celestial and obsessively theocentric world of
Astronomia Magna.
24
ANDREW WEEKS
The Significance of Ambiguity
In my monograph, Paracelsus: Speculative Theory and the Crisis of
the Early Reformation, I called for a work-centered approach to
Paracelsus and for attention to the hybrid of naturalism and theology
which he referred to as theorica. The commentary and crossreferences in this volume should provide an introduction to the work
as a whole by offering a facilitated access to several of his key theoretical writings. The approach taken here obviously cannot exhaust the
objects of research. These will require the expertise of many different
disciplines. One can only hope that historians of science, medicine,
and religion, as well as students of German literature, the Reformation, and the Renaissance, will continue with this project, revising,
correcting, and amending where necessary.
However, there is a research track which is confined to no discipline, though vital to the understanding of Paracelsus’ writings in relation to both the culture of their period and the most far-reaching trajectory of their influence.16 I am referring to the ambiguities and
anomalies of his writing. Scholars have often tended to acknowledge
his ambiguities only in qualification, as a subtraction from their positive interpretations of his work. The perspective should be inverted.
To attend to the anomalies of Paracelsus is to concentrate on the
ragged or shadowy fringes of a graphic puzzle. What initially appears
random and inconsistent gives evidence of a deliberate course traversing the contending principles of authority of the Reformation and
Renaissance, navigating between theology, Humanism, and naturalism. Intentional ambiguities show up in stylistic figures, word play,
rhetorical riddles, in the counterintuitive assertion or paradox, the
16
The most far-reaching trajectory of influence leads from Paracelsus by way of
Jacob Boehme to German Idealism and Romanticism including Schelling, Hegel, and
Schopenhauer. The continuity of development has been obscured by exaggerating the
naturalism of Paracelsus and the mysticism of Boehme. Proof that Boehme followed
Paracelsus in endeavoring to reconcile “philosophy” with astronomy (“astrology”),
and “theology” can be found already in the subtitle of Boehme’s first work, Aurora:
“das ist: Die Wurtzel oder Mutter der Philosophiae, Astrologiae und Theologiae, aus
rechtem Grund; oder Beschreibung der Natur/ Wie alles gewesen/ und im Anfang
worden ist/ auch von beiden Qualitatäten, Bösen und Guten….” Nowhere else are
more of the concepts and notions of Paracelsus absorbed and made the object of continuing speculation with such original and far-ranging consequences.
INTRODUCTION
25
willful omission of premises of syllogistic argumentation (enthymeme),17 and, as we will see, in complex allusions which are essential
to the context and meaning of his theoretical writings. Moreover, ambiguity asserts itself in Paracelsus’ polemical and often programmatic
misuse of medical and philosophical terms in pursuit of a strategy of
redefining disciplines.
This applies first of all to his critique of the disciplines of philosophy, astronomy, anatomy, or scientia. His inconsistent use of the term
philosophia should be examined in conjunction with Paracelsus’ fierce
rejection of Aristotle, whose name had been virtually synonymous
with philosophy. This changed abruptly during Paracelsus’ formative
years. Controversies centered on received and Aristotelian doctrines
of the soul, reason versus revelation, and the creation of the world
erupted first in the Italy of Paracelsus’ Ferraran student days and after
1517 in the German, Austrian, and Swiss lands that the returning doctor found shaken by Luther’s break with established church doctrines
and scholastic and Aristotelian teachings.18 Justly or not, Aristotle
came to embody for Paracelsus the blind refusal to recognize the obvious diversity and mutability of substances. Discussing the marvelous possibilities of vitriol, he proclaims: “dorumb meld ich die transmutation, das der blau philosophus Aristoteles in seiner philosophei
nicht wol ergrünt sei gewesen” (“Therefore I proclaim transformation,
about which the drunken philosopher Aristotle in his philosophy had
no thorough knowledge”—S 2:163). What speaks to us here is a new
sense of possibility. Nature is immensely heterogeneous. Substances
as well as diseases are subject to change. Unfortunately, this new sensibility does not clarify the relation of philosophy to logic or tradition,
nor does it explain the relation of philosophical questions to medical
practices. Paracelsus does implicate his philosophy in contemporary
17
Characteristic for P.’s frequent word play is his use of the word “Zirk” that can
mean either dung or stars in order to equivocate between the two (H 2:43). A rhetorical riddle (H 1:91) asks what the outcome might be if the medications of Christ are
applied. (“The wound is the field, the oil and wine the seed—now guess what the fruit
should be!”) Characteristic of his use of paradox is his assertion: “Thus we eat ourselves” (H 1:98). As observed by Hartmut Rudolph, enthymeme is a truncated syllogism. For example, omitting the premise that, just as things have incidental properties
of hot or cold, so they also have incidental colors, results in this logical leap: “It is
true that a disease must be hot or cold. For what is there that has no color?” (H 1:85).
18
See my discussion of the relevance of this dispute, Weeks2.
26
ANDREW WEEKS
questions concerning the origin of the soul or the natural world understood in the light of Scripture.
The term astronomia is equally ambiguous. What is notable is not
the mixture of astronomy with astrology, which is less evident in his
thinking than in that of some of his contemporaries. What is noteworthy about the “astronomy” of Paracelsus is that it entails neither distance nor mathematics. The astra or “gestirn” are pervasive: in herbs,
metals, medications, and the human being. His exegesis (“Uslegung”)
of the comet of August 1531 is informed by a sense of grave portent
and apocalyptic catastrophe. In reading the celestial signs, Ptolemy
counts for nothing and Holy Scripture for everything.
Paracelsus’ use of the term anatomia flies in the face of its conventional meaning, which was well known to him. What he calls the anatomy of a body, thing, or process is an intuited configuration relating it
to the correspondences of microcosm and macrocosm. The great and
small worlds are correlative concepts which owe as much to Christianity and the Middle Ages as to ancient philosophy or the Renaissance
(see note on H 2:24). Science for Paracelsus is virtually the opposite
of systematic observation. Immanent in nature, scientia reveals itself
to inspired intuition.
Distinct from Paracelsus’ a-logical philosophy, non-mathematical
astronomy, and non-physical anatomy, his alchimia is an art: part
craft, part lore, part inspired intuition, with many practical components. Yet it is not transparent in its handling of substances. It knows
nothing of the relatively modern respect accorded a century earlier by
Nicholas of Cusa to the significance of weight and measurement in
medicine. The imponderable variety and mutability of nature are
paramount. Weight is insignificant since minerals and metals grow
and increase organically. Their true essences are not elemental. The
alchemist is an “artist” whose experience, intuition, and skill elicit
new things from the raw material of the old, analogous to the God
who is both Creator and Redeemer.
Everywhere ambiguity and mystery reign supreme. The essences of
things are called by a great variety of names: virtues (“tugend”),
forces (“kreft”), tinctures, quintae essentiae, arcana, magnalia, mysteria, to recall only the most common. These concepts are not clearly
distinguished. Even when a differentiation is undertaken, as in the
early Archidoxis, the distinctions are not maintained in his other writ-
INTRODUCTION
27
ings. The theological as well as the medical or nature-oriented writings confirm that these forces or essences are rooted in a nature which
continues to increase and develop in order to benefit the human creature and reveal the mercy of the Creator:
das seindt groß heimlich gedanken und dief betrachtung an got,
daß er solche zukunftige merung geordnet und furgesetzt hat;
darzu groß heimlich ding und magnalia bei solchen deinen werken, groß arcana geben, groß misteria, groß dugent, kraft und eigenschaft. und die ding alle hastu in dein geschepf gemacht und
gelegt dem menschen zu nutz und zu gutem, aus deiner barmherzigkeit wachsen und kumen on sein hinzutun in seim schlaf.
Those are great mysterious thoughts and profound reflections
upon God: that he should have ordered and preordained such future increase, as well as great mysterious things and magnalia in
your [i.e., all human] works of this kind, imparting [to them]
great arcana, great mysteria, great virtues, forces, and qualities.
And you [God] have introduced all these things into your creation and placed it at the disposal and for the benefit of the human
being, from your mercy [allowing] them to grow and come about
without [human] doing, in his very sleep. (G 4:244, on Vulgate
Ps. 91 (92):6: Quam magnificata sunt opera tua, domine! nimis
profundae factae sunt cogitatione tuae.)
This is the voice of the psalm commentator and lay theologian. Similarly, the voice of the alchemist in De Mineralibus recognizes in
God the “great artist”: “er ists alein, alles in allem, er ist rerum prima
materia, er ist rerum ultima materia, er ist der alles ist.” (“it is he
alone, all in all, he is rerum prima materia, he is rerum ultima materia, he is who is all” (S 3:34). The alchemical physician discussing the
arcane virtues of herbs in Von den natürlichen Dingen recognizes that,
“der selbige wil gottes ist das arcanum, das in den natürlichen dingen
ist. … und so vil arcana, so vil auch wiln gottes” (“the very will of
God is the arcanum in the things of nature. … for as many arcana as
there are, there is a corresponding multiplicity of [manifestations of]
the divine will” (S 2:111). The natural and theological work (cf.
G 1:310) both insist that nature is inherently diverse, as are the terms
for describing it.
How are we to sort out his colorful spectrum of terms? Can an underlying system be found to account for his terminologies? Do his
28
ANDREW WEEKS
terms name the same divine forces by their respective aspect? Did the
terminological variety in naming the arcane virtues serve to stimulate
the intuition of the alchemist-artist? Were they invoked simply to bolster his authority? Might his terms be equivalent to the mystical synonyms in Pseudo-Dionysius’ treatise On the Divine Names? Are they
best understood with reference to Gnostic and Esoteric tradition?
These are all valid questions and worthwhile points of departure for
further research. The evidence of the writings reproduced here suggests that Paracelsus’ terms indeed refer to multiple and diverse qualities in nature, yet they are less indicative of a discriminating natural
observation than of the wonder inspired by the innumerable mysteries
imparted by the Creator to the natural creation. Similarly, the “signatures” or natural signs imparted to created things by God both “prefigure” their applications in the human realm and reaffirm their mysterious divine source (S 1:78-80).
To call Paracelsus’ material and terminological concepts ambiguous is to say that research and debate should continue. The format of
this volume is intended to present the work itself as the criterion for
forming judgments. If his terms are studied in this context, their ambiguities point to a discontinuity in his worldview. The alchemical philosopher and physician was confronted in his practical endeavors with
an unbridgeable chasm in the Great Chain of Being between inanimate
elements on one side and the posited impact of the elemental forces
upon the human subject of health on the other. How could lifeless materiae medicae or the base substances of the alchemist act upon and
within the animate creature? What is the kinship of elements or body
to the living spirit or soul?
Whatever the sources of Paracelsus’ terms—alchemical, Gnostic,
Hermetic, or mystical—his terminological ambiguities sustain the underlying current of his thought. Any x may be transformed into a y
because x latently contains y and y latently contains x. Viewed latently—i.e. as arcane—all is in all. In accordance with the same microcosmic reasoning which finds appropriate expression in Paracelsus’ elaborate extended allusions, the mystery surrounding the sublimation of elemental forces from the inanimate into the animate sphere
is surmounted by elevating chemical process itself into a dynamic
unity of substances that is physical as well as metaphysical. Transformation is compatible with permanence because change is embodied in
a dynamic unity of substances constituting all things as they are. The
INTRODUCTION
29
virtues or arcana are eternal and akin to the human soul inasmuch as
“got die selbigen kreft und tugent in die natur gossen hat, wie die sêl
in menschen, und das die kreft der sêl nicht ungleich sind, alein das
sie on anfang bei got gewesen sind” (“God poured those powers and
virtues into nature, the way he [infused] the soul into the body, and the
powers are not unlike the soul, except that they were in God without
any beginning”—S 14:221). The multiplicity of divine forces is subsumed in the Paracelsian trichotomy of sulphur, mercury, and salt.
These three constitute nature as a process of self-transforming combustion. In external nature, as well as in human procreation and
pathogenic infection, there are “seeds” that bear a potential for directed transformation. Processes and forces are thus reified:
dan alle ding, die got beschafen hat, die hat er in der corporalitet
gleicher proceß ausgefürt. aber anders den menschen gemacht,
anders den baum, anders den stein, und den menschen sovil mer
gemacht, darumb, das er nach seiner biltnus gemacht ist, das
auch in im ist das ewig, das dan in den andern creatis nicht ist.
For all things that God created he executed in the corporeality of
like process. But differently [was] the human being made, differently the tree, differently the stone, and the human being [was]
made so much more, in that he is made after [God’s] image, for
in [man] is the eternal too, which is not in the other created
things. (S 3:39)
It appears that all natural things are created as distinct entities, fundamentally so in the case of the human image of the Creator. Yet all
are alike in the processes of their corporeality. Transformation
amounts to a successive emergence of distinct entities or beings from
the realm of invisibility into the light of nature. In the profound recesses of invisible reality, the human imagination has its hidden passageways to the visible via the occult action of spirit upon physical
matter. This is not our world.
Unique and Commonplace Elements
Clearly neither Paracelsus nor his contemporaries shared our sense of
occupying a homogeneous universe where action at a distance follows
immutable laws and the earthly elements pervade even the remotest
galaxies. He had no access to realms invisibly small or inaccessibly
30
ANDREW WEEKS
remote. This does not mean that he can be dissolved into some uniform brew of pre-modern strangeness. His worldview differs markedly from contemporaneous metaphysicians with whom he is too
blithely categorized. His sense of the natural world contrasts with the
hierarchically ordered universe of Reuchlin’s De Arte Caballistica19
or of Agrippa von Nettesheim’s De Occulta Philosophia.20 The metaphysical constructs of Reuchlin or Agrippa are ascending, multi-tiered
structures, in which access to the higher spheres is reserved for the
elite disciplines of mathematics, astronomy, learned magic, and theology. There is an engraving of Nettesheim’s cosmic-metaphysical architecture which represents his ascending worlds as a stacked tower or
monument crowned by the radiant godhead of the Archetype.21 For
Paracelsus there can be no such depiction. What he conceived of cannot be pictured. He compressed all the spheres and disciplines of
Agrippa into one: that of medicine and its attendant knowledge. “The
occult powers of the earthly firmament are disclosed by the physician.
To him alone the occult powers of nature are made manifest. All other
scholars are [to be] informed about these matters by the physician”
(H 2:29). The quintessences and arcane or astral powers of the superior realms abide in his single conflated world. Since the astra are present without distance, everything appears to hover in a state of unsta19
See Johann Reuchlin, On the Art of the Kabbalah [1517], trans. Martin and
Sarah Goodman (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), 117: “There are three
kinds of world. The first is material, the second formal, the third formless. Or, if you
prefer, the first is the lowest world, that of the senses; the second is the highest, that of
the mind and the understanding; the third is above the highest—indescribable, divine.”
20
Composed under the influence of Trithemius in 1509-10, a printed version appeared in Paris/Lyon in 1531, before the Cologne edition of 1533. Henricus Cornelius
Agrippa von Netteseheym, De Occulta Philosophia, ed. and comment. Karl Anton
Nowotny (Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1967 [facsimile of the oldest printed edition from Cologne, 1533]), Book 1, chapter 1, sets the tone: “Cum triplex sit mundus, elementalis, cœlestis, & intellectualis, & quisque inferior à superiori
regatur…” (13). The hierarchy of Agrippa represents both the cosmos and the disciplines required for gaining knowledge of its respective spheres. In rejecting and
thereby appropriating the hierarchy of disciplines, P. conflates, though without equating, the spheres accessed respectively by natural philosophy, astronomy, and theology.
21
See Christoph Geissmar, Das Auge Gottes. Bilder zu Jakob Böhme (Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz, 1993), 252. The vogue of metaphysical diagrams began prior to
Paracelsus and gave rise to bold representations of the counterintuitive worldviews of
Boehme, yet found little graphic inspiration in his writings.
INTRODUCTION
31
ble suspension and animation. This results in a worldview rife with
ambiguities and what modern logicians call category errors. We
should be as wary of stamping his oddities with labels of NeoPlatonism or Gnosticism as of disregarding the overtones and resonances of his ideas which were clearly vibrant with hopes of practical,
physical, and spiritual improvement for his contemporaries.
The ambiguity of Paracelsus’ thought between theology and nature
theory echoes the unstable ensemble of sixteenth-century Europe, as a
world in which the spirits of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Reformation, Humanism, and Esotericism clashed with and complemented one
another in countless harmonies and discords. Modern reception and
academic specialization exaggerate the disparity of what were simultaneous tendencies among contemporaries. Another comparison may
suffice to make this point. Rabelais and Paracelsus appear to be polar
opposites of the sixteenth-century intellectual universe: the French
fabulist, wildly imaginative and outrageously satirical; the German
physician, lacking irony and grimly obsessed with a sense of mission.
In 1531, without knowledge of one another, the two wrote simultaneously on their chefs d’oeuvre as inspired outsiders of their respective
societies.
Reading them together indicates how much they had in common as
denizens of the same historical culture. They were both trained in the
medicine of their time. Both wrote commentaries on the Aphorisms of
Hippocrates and invoked the same cornucopia of beautiful, bizarre, or
grotesque remedies.22 Their common stock of terms extends from the
repulsive (stinking assa fetida and macabre “momie,” “mummy oil,”
or mumia) to the sacred or beautiful (verbena as “la sacre herbe vervaine,” water-lily as “nénuphar”) to the magical and phantasmagoric
(the use of divination, the legend of Mélusine, or the interest in giants
shared by Paracelsus). Both had ideas about the transformation of the
vile into the salubrious. We may recognize only grotesque humor in
Rabelais’s assertion that the “alchemists make the best salpetre in the
world from their urine. With their turds … the physicians of our country cure seventy-eight kinds of complaints” (GP 464). But such a
22
Only a few of the shared terms are cited here. It remains for Rabelais scholars to
compare Müller’s index of Paracelsian terms with the Concordance des Œuvres de
François Rabelais, which were my main sources for this cursory juxtaposition. The
immediate gain for the non-specialist lies in recognizing that what might be mistaken
for mere random verbiage in fact reflected a widespread medical culture.
32
ANDREW WEEKS
claim would have made good sense to the German physician who was
preoccupied with the transformations of saltpeter and the separation of
the pure from the impure. Whether in jest or earnest, the two displayed
the same boldness in re-imagining the inner workings of the body.
Before their time, their radical imaginations might have been inhibited
since too much was still believed, after their time because too much
was already known.
Both professed to admire the natural marvels of their native soil.
Rabelais’ myth-mongering allusion to “celestial manna” (as comparable to, though less potent than, “the herb pantagruelion”) would have
been more than casual rhetoric to the German. For both could sing the
praises of a fabled native mountain tree:23 Rabelais, relating how its
roots nourish “the good agaric,” how its trunk yields a resin so excellent that Galen compared it to “turpentine” (“la térébenthine”), and
“On its delicate leaves it catches for us that sweet honey of heaven,
which is called manna” (GP 431; cf. COFR, “manne”); and Paracelsus, no less eager to cite his alchemical knowledge of “agaric” and
“manna” and no less enthusiastic that the turpentine tree in the high
mountains of his native German lands extracts influences from the
heavens (S 2:63) and that his alchemical art, striving for the higher
regions, distills the resin of this wondrous tree into a healing balsam
(S 2:71). For either author, what is base or vile is inextricably, if ambiguously, linked to the sublime.
In chapter 20 of the disputed Fifth Book of Gargantua and Pantagruel, Panurge and Pantagruel visit the palace of Lady Quintessence.
The ill and suffering are brought before her in cohorts by disease type:
the lepers, the poisoned, the blind, deaf, dumb, or apoplectic. On a
23
It seems evident that both authors were echoing in jest or earnest the Humanists’
longing to find a native vegetation which was equal to the natural wonders reported in
classical literature. P. writes this about the terpentine tree: “wie der balsambaum ubertrift in seinen landen alle andere beum, also der terpentinbaum all andere beum in
teutschen landen” (“Just as the balsam tree surpasses all other trees in its lands, so the
turpentine tree in German lands”—S 2:61); and the ironic Rabelais: “Do not offer me
the comparison [for the herb pantagruelion] of that sort of tree—however wonderful it
may be—that you find in the mountains of Briançon and Ambrun, which…gives us a
resin so excellent that Galen dares to proclaim it the equal of turpentine.” (G 431). P.
makes it a point of pride that the alchemist knows about precisely such matters, unlike
the academic doctors who cannot tell agaric from manna: “dan die doctores der hohen
schul seind dermaßen so gelert, das sie nicht wissen agaricum oder mannam von
einander zu erkennen” (S 2:156-57).
INTRODUCTION
33
strange musical instrument constructed of the commonplace materiae
medicae, the turbith, scammony, cassia, or rhubarb prescribed also by
Paracelsus, Lady Quintessence plays melodies which correspond to
each genus of disease. The “virtues” that emanate like music of the
spheres from her person and instrument heal the patients without
physical contact. This is a far cry from the application of these same
materials, scammony, rhubarb, or cassia, in chapter 33 of Pantagruel.
Prescribed and guzzled by the cartload or wagon-train, these materials
were capable of inducing diuretic, purgative, or laxative reactions familiar to contemporary readers and no doubt appalling to imagine.
Since they prove ineffective for the giant Pantagruel, an amusingly
invasive procedure is carried out. Physicians are swallowed to inspect
and remove the offending “ordure” and “corrupted humors” on site. In
contrast to the disgusting physical and olfactory aspects of Pantagruel’s procedure, the references in chapter 19 of Book Five to alchemy and the other arts are in the spirit of Paracelsus’ dream of a
new magical and alchemical healing art, which soon proved to be as
appealing in France as elsewhere.24 At the court of Lady Quintessence, the celestial “virtues” are summoned without the brutal intrusiveness of the traditional or humoral treatments, without the bloodletting or the poison-induced retching and defecation. Our awareness of
the background of these details—the sublime promise of the herbal or
alchemical medications listed by the Rabelaisian author of Book Five,
or the sufferings described in the earthy German of Paracelsus, and no
doubt also painfully familiar to Rabelais—lend depth and intensity to
our picture of sixteenth-century life.25
24
Knowledge of alchemical medicine spread rapidly in France. See Allen Debus,
The French Paracelsians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Although
the context of the Lady Quintessence episode speaks directly of alchemy, of equal
relevance to her strange musical therapy is the medieval tradition of astonomy in healing, reinforced by the Renaissance revival of interest in the therapeutic possibilities of
the music of the spheres, spread by the well-known work of the physician Ficino. See
Angela Voss, “Orpheus Redivivus: The Musical Magic of Marsilio Ficino,” in Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy, ed. Michael J. B. Allen and
Valery Rees with Martin Davies (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 227-41.
25
I am indebted to my colleague, Rabelais scholar Alice Berry, for drawing my attention to finer points of these episodes and to the controversy over the authenticity of
the Fifth Book. The present discussion does not take sides on the issue of authenticity
but rests on the safe premise that the Fifth Book was written in sixteenth-century
France under the influence of Pantagruel.
34
ANDREW WEEKS
We can regard literary luminaries either as beacons shining through
the ages or as lanterns gleaming in the rank and shadowy thickets of
past historical worlds, illuminating them from within. The writings of
Paracelsus offer detailed and personal glimpses from within a world
remote from our own. If we expect his pronouncements to cast a beacon light from afar for our convenience and instruction, then the
vague, arcane, and irregular figures of his thought are a nuisance. The
unique strangeness of his mental and material world is an obstruction,
when it should be an object of intrinsic interest. For historians of early
modern life and thought, his writings contain what Stephen Greenblatt
and the New Historicism have referred to as “luminous details,” clues
that help clarify the boundaries of health and disease, substance and
process, time and world, madness and sanity, life and death, female
and male, knowledge and faith, and natural and supernatural.
Paracelsus rails at his enemies, invokes disasters, draws us into his
confidences, recalls formative experiences, and confides of dictating
his writings to “secretaries” who can attest to his originality. When
one considers his itinerant life-style and contemporary accounts of the
tumultuous, curiosity-seeking, and disease-ridden ambience of sixteenth-century inns and taverns, one can imagine him surrounded by
listeners who stimulate his paeans or tirades with their snorts of disbelief and murmurs of indignation, their peals of laughter or gasps of
longing and wonder.26 Yet for all his evident spontaneity, we can be
reasonably certain that he was not simply making it all up as he went.
The Objectives of Translation and Commentary
The intentions of this volume are to allow Paracelsus to speak in his
own terms while facilitating our understanding of what he was speaking of and how his terms might have been understood by his intended
audience. The German original is juxtaposed with a translation and
contextualizing notes. The notes and commentary should orient readers in the entire corpus while rendering its material and intellectual
contexts as intelligible as possible. These purposes are served by a
facing-page translation with its two distinct sets of footnotes and
26
Two vivid sixteenth-century accounts of the public life in inns in Switzerland
and South Germany are by Montaigne (cited in Weeks, 59, 209, n. 102) and Erasmus
(paraphrased by Bernhard Milt, “P. und Zürich,” Vierteljahresschrift der naturforschenden Gesellschaft in Zürich 86 (1941): 321-54.
INTRODUCTION
35
commentary. On the left are the versions from the 1589 Huser edition
and on the right my translations. The footnotes under the German
original provide cross-references to the entire corpus. Those beneath
the translation are based on the external sources and interspersed with
commentary. The notes refer to their sources not only for verification
but also to allow interested readers to delve further in the scholarly
literature. In confronting selections of scholarship with the original
text, the intention is to stimulate critical dialogue of a kind that can
render isolated scholarly monologues obsolete.
The components are conceived as a set of concentric circles that focus and expand upon one another around the core of the original German Paracelsus text. The translation inevitably interprets the original
which in turn anchors the translation. There are obscure and ambiguous passages in Paracelsus that cannot properly be finessed with an
indecisive or murky rendering. Where the original demands an interpretive leap, the juxtaposition maintains the reader’s option to return
to the contested terms of the source. By following a few simple guidelines readers with even a modest command of German can approach
the original with assistance from the translation.27 The distinct facing
sets of footnotes should provide contextualizing circles essential for
any interpretation. Since far less is encapsulated in the brief notes than
can be learned from the rich reference sources of the Grimm...
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