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Through the centuries, Alchemy has become associated with sorcery, a fate that historical practitioners of that hermetic art would have found absolutely horrifying. Of course, such a link between Alchemy and sorcery seems intuitively obvious to us, given the virtually miraculous goal of metallic transmutation, the creation of life itself through ART in the form of something like the homunculus, the radically life-extending medicines, or a solvent which decomposes all substances, of course, aside from the container that that they're in.
But historical Alchemists labored diligently to avoid any association of their art with that of the sorcerers and necromancers of their day. And this should be for relatively obvious reasons. Alchemy maintained a barely legal status in most of the medieval and early modern world, while sorcery, especially associated with the conjuration of humans, was a practice subject to the death penalty, to capital punishment of being burned alive. Most Alchemists wanted to avoid that.
So, if the Alchemists sought to distance themselves from Sorcerers, how did they become linked in the medieval mind? Well, you, you guessed it, it was the Inquisition. But what were the actual Arguments for linking Alchemy and sorcery? And were the efforts of the, the inquisitors ultimately successful in extending their jurisdiction over the lives and deaths of the Alchemists? Let's explore the demonization of alchemy as linked with sorcery by the Inquisition.
Make sure to subscribe here to Esoterica for weekly explorations of topics in esoteric history. And if you'd like to support the work of providing evidence-backed, free, and accessible content like this episode, I hope you would consider supporting my channel by checking out my Patreon and looking at some of the cool merch we have available here on the channel. If you're new to the study of asterism, make sure to check out my study guide with vast resources on situating yourself in the academic study of Western asterorism. And if you're really hardcore and you're interested in actual historical books on topics in the esoteric and the occult, make sure to check out my bookstore, Esoterica Rare Books. You can find all of those links in the description and in the pin comment below.
But now, let's turn to the unhappy marriage of alchemy and necromancy by the Inquisition. I'm Dr. Justin Sledge, and welcome to Esoterica, where we explore the Arcane in history, philosophy, and religion.
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By the late 14th century, the medieval Inquisition faced something of an existential crisis. The institution had been founded to root out heresy, specifically in the regions of Southern France, where the so-called Cathar heresy had flourished in the 13th century. However, following a genocidal war and a near century of sustained Inquisition in the region, well, the Waldensians had retreated up into the mountains. The last Cathar proti was actually burned in the Autumn of 1321, and other such heretical movements, such as the movement of the Free Spirit and the radical spiritual Franciscans, were frankly tiny in number and very much on the retreat.
In a sense, the Inquisition had become a victim, victim of its own success. It had undermined the need for its existence by actually eradicating heresy in many respects. So that the actual inquisitors of that period were complaining in literature that they just couldn't keep the institution functioning because there simply weren't any wealthy heretics to prosecute and thereby expropriate them once they found them guilty. It's sort of a grim thing to complain about.
But by the mid-14th century, the Inquisition was institutionally powerful on paper, but largely bankrupt, kind of listless, and a bit moribund. So, if you can't find any actual heresy, you, you, you have a couple of options. You can make up some heretics to prosecute. The later witch trials with the early modern period would be a horrifyingly successful venture on this front. Or you could extend the jurisdiction of the Inquisition by expanding, by extending the very concept of heresy itself. In a word, you just make more stuff heretical.
And that's exactly what the Inquisitor General of Aragon, the Catalan Nicholas Eymerich, actually set out to do in his vast and monumental *Directorium Inquisitorum*, written in the 1370s. Eymerich set out to extend the concept of heresy, but also to expand and the judicial reach of the Inquisition itself. Most famously, he radically extended the scope of heresy to include the practice of magic, especially as it involved the conjuration of demons. This is a landmark moment in the history of magic persecutions in the Western World. Of course, prior to Eymerich, demonic conjuration was considered sinful, of course, and was forbidden, but it wasn't thought of as heretical. That would change following the promulgation of the *Directorium Inquisitorum*, and that would set the stage for the rise of the witch trials, with witchcraft, or specifically maleficium, rising from the position of just regular old sin to heretical depravity in the century following Eymerich's work.
But I've done a whole hour-plus deep dive on Nicholas Eymerich and his horrible, terrifying inquisitorial textbook, the *Directorium Inquisitorum*. If you want to check that out, I mean, it was the worst possible book Edgar Allan Poe could imagine. It was sort of like the most dreadful book before Malleus Maleficarum became the most dreadful book. If you want to check those, that episode out, you can check it out here. And also, I have numerous episodes on the early modern witch trials.
But Eymerich also pushed his agenda well beyond the demonization of magical practice. He would actually argue that the Inquisition could prosecute some non-Christians, which is pretty absurd on the face of it, if you think about it. I mean, you have to be a Christian first in order to be a heretic. Heretics are always variant, heterodox versions of Christianity, at least by, by Christianity. But he was actually successful in persecuting at least one Jewish person for sorcery.
Further, and on the topic of this episode, he would also argue that astrology and Alchemy also fell within the jurisdiction of the Inquisition as well. Now, it turns out the King of Aragon wasn't falling for any of this. Alchemy, astrology, and magic were extensively practiced in that region, as pointed out in Michael Ryan's fantastic book, *A Kingdom of Stargazers*. If you want more of a glimpse onto this time period, so much so that The Inquisitor Eymerich was actually exiled. He was exiled by the Crown of Aragon, basically kicked out of the region for being overly zealous and kind of a psycho in some ways. The same thing would happen with the authors of the *Malleus Maleficarum*.
And in his exile at Avignon, Eymerich did what most powerless zealots do. He raved in impotent frustration, turning sustained attention to formulating arguments for extending the category of heresy to include both astrologers and Alchemists. In the last years of his life, though, as early as 1376, Eymerich had already begun to link Alchemy and astrology with the very sorcerers that he had been persecuting as part of his inquisitorial duties, noting a kind of comorbidity of the three. However, he did not argue for a logical connection at that point. Necromancers, he saw, tended to be astrologers and Alchemists, but being an Alchemist or an astrologer didn't necessarily mean that you were a necromancer.
And aside from prohibitions on using Alchemy to commit forgery, which was just illegal already, forgery was already illegal, but specifically alchemical forgery was condemned by Pope John XXII. Alchemy wasn't especially targeted by the Inquisition or condemned in any certain terms by the Church. But that's not to say that Alchemy had a positive ecclesiastical reputation by any means. As much as official Church documents had commented on Alchemy, and they really hadn't done so in any unified way until the end of the 14th century, Alchemy had basically three strikes against it out of the gate.
The first was moral. The transmutation of metals into gold was linked with greed, and of course, that's one of the seven deadly sins. And this tinged the Alchemist, sorry, this tinged the Alchemist as an ethically compromised person. Now, the medieval Church complaining about people being greedy for gold and silver is, is pretty rich, but, um, they, they apparently didn't, they didn't see the irony in that.
Secondly, Alchemy was associated with fraud. And frankly, there just were a lot of cases, many cases of alchemical fraud, especially in producing false gold and silver. This was a widespread condemnation of alchemy, seen throughout the entire history of alchemy, and as I mentioned a moment ago, this was widespread enough for John XXII to issue a papal proclamation about it.
So, there were problems with alchemical fraud. Finally, though, and perhaps most importantly, they were principled, philosophical, and even theological problems with Alchemy in the context of Scholastic philosophy. Now, these philosophical and theological problems with Alchemy were actually just as old as European alchemical practice, which reached back to the importation of Arabic alchemical manuscripts in the 12th century, specifically the importation of Aristotle's *Meteorology*. The final book of which detailed how metals were formed deep within the Earth through the conation, or the congealing, of what he termed the exhalations. I've actually done a whole episode on that incredibly crucial text of Aristotle in the history of alchemy, if you want to check it out.
But the point was that Aristotle had held that certain forces act upon those exhalations, specifically the facing of the Earth toward the Sun, and those exhalations deep within the Earth, depending on those kinds of forces, gave rise to the specific metals that we find in the Earth. Thus, the metals were of one fundamental stuff in various forms, such that if you could reduce the metals back to that fundamental stuff and subject them to the same forces that they undergo typically within the Earth, but within a lab, by art rather than by mere natural forces, then there's no reason to think that we couldn't just transform any metal into any other metal, specifically, of course, something like lead into gold or lead into silver. As you can see, given the absolute authority of Aristotle in the Middle Ages, and this theory for the origin of the origin of the metals, this text would underwrite alchemical practice until it was basically only dethroned in the 16th century with the publication of *De Re Metallica* by Agricola.
But there was a small problem with the text, at least for the practice of alchemy. Attached to the Arabic manuscript of Aristotle's text was a short commentary by the scientist Ibn Sina, or Avicenna. Which in Latin would read: *Scant artifex alchemiae species metallorum mutare nequit*. "Let the alchemist know that the species of metals cannot be changed." A damning indictment of the whole process of doing alchemy.
But you might ask yourself, why would a bunch of Christian Alchemists care at all what a Muslim scientist said about Aristotle? Who cares? It's because they didn't know that it was Ibn Sina writing that. When the text was translated from Arabic to Latin, the translator just ran everything together, making Avicenna's comment look like it actually flowed from the pen of the venerable Aristotle. And this one line basically launched a debate about the ability of alchemy to be successful at all that actually wasn't even settled until Alchemy itself had basically gone extinct in Europe. That is to say, was substantial transmutation, specifically of one metal into another, even possible? And this debate raged until basically the answer was no, and Alchemy went extinct in general.
The emergent Scholastic position, ultimately represented by people like Thomas Aquinas, was also no. It wasn't possible for philosophical reasons and physical reasons to convert a species of metal into another, anymore than it was possible to turn a horse into a dog or a sunflower into a tulip. This position is known as fixism, and stated that God had created the world with certain fixed physical and metaphysical categories, which no one, aside from God using the power of miracles, could alter in any form. Hence, no transmutation of metals, and no such of alchemy.
I should also point out that despite the fact that Thomas Aquinas was a no on alchemy, that several alchemical texts would actually become ultimately attributed to him, because irony, of course. The Alchemists, including a great many monks and priests and pious Catholics, did not bow down before the pen of Thomas Aquinas and happily practice Alchemy all through this time period. And they also had various counterarguments to this whole business of you can't change species of metals. Some just rejected that the various metals were actually fixed categories, developing a kind of vitalist position where the kind of prime metallic matter acted as a seed from which the various metals grew, and that all metals grew from that primal seed. It should be possible, according to this theory, to recover that seed from the metals and grow the metals through art. This is a bit of an agricultural understanding of how the metals develop and how to do alchemy. It's a vitalist conception, really. For the Alchemist, this was born out again of basic agricultural experience, but also from actually seeing veins of gold and silver in the mines, which if you've ever been down in a mine and seen veins of gold and silver, they do have a tree-like appearance, a kind of root-like appearance. Again, this is a totally reasonable position taken here by the Alchemists.
Other positions rejected the whole fixed species arguments on a lot of other lines, such as the sulfur-mercury theory of the metals, that metals were just a combination of sulfur and mercury, and you could manipulate that any way that you wanted, sulfur and mercury being the prime matter. Other forms just rejected fixism in general for a kind of metallic dynamism or even metallic vitalism, as I mentioned. Of course, many priests were also practicing Alchemists, and so this fixed disposition of Thomas Aquinas wasn't universally held by any means.
But fixism was going to prove to be the linchpin for Eymerich's argument that Alchemy did savor of heretical depravity, which is just wonderful. That's the technical language, by the way, for diagnosing heresy in the Middle Ages. Nearing the end of his life in exile, and following upon a case of alchemical fraud committed against a fellow priest buddy of his, Eymerich would pen his *Contra Alchemistas* in March of 1396, and it would be there that he combined his accusation of greedy, sinful immorality against the Alchemists with the fixist rejection, such that transmutation is impossible, all to the end that that sinful greed and the very impossibility of transmutation would inevitably press the Alchemists into the hands of Satan and demonic packs.
But how the first part of this treatise sets out to defend fixism, specifically arguing that angelic, human, and terrestrial natures are in fact fixed. Unsurprising. And while he admits that it isn't exactly obviously stated in the Bible that the specific metals are all fixed in their categories, he leans really heavily on the Vulgate, that is to say, the Latin version of the Bible, at Genesis chapter 2, verses 10 through 12, where that text read: *Fluvium terrae ubi nititur aurum*, describing the rivers flowing out of Eden. The Vulgate tells us that the Pishon river, which surrounds the land of Havilah, is where gold is born, where gold is born. That specific language, which by the way, doesn't actually occur in the original Hebrew.
Or the Inquisition persecuting Alchemists. But he does admit that gold doesn't seem to appear in certain epochs of primeval world, that is to say, from Adam to Noah, to Noah to Abraham. But gold and silver do show up, of course, in the epoch of Abraham to Moses, and obviously gold and silver and precious gems exist down to our day. He notes, though, while he does maintain his fixed disposition, he doesn't take the more radical position that God has actually just placed all of the world's gold and silver within the Earth at creation. Rather, it seems that Eymerich takes a position that the species, in some sense, were planted in the Earth, again, like seeds, and all over the Earth, they were nourished by the powers of the Sun to become the various metals as we know them: gold and silver, and tin and lead. Again, this all flows directly from him, following somewhat slavishly from Aristotle's *Meteorology*.
Further, he admits that metallurgists and assayers are able to separate and purify metals found deep within the Earth. They're totally capable of doing that. They do this all the time. But that's akin to separating wheat from chaff and involves no fundamental change of the primary substances of the metals themselves. Again, it's changing them, not transmuting them.
Further, human beings can also and do imitate nature as far as they are able. Very core idea. We can imitate nature. We can paint the likenesses of human beings or sculpt the likenesses of creatures. But try as we might, for Eymerich, it's impossible for us to perfectly emulate nature because, in effect, that would require us either to transmute something from one species into another, something like a stone into flesh for the sculpture. We would have to know the inner workings of the Divine mind and how that thing was created, and we don't know God's thought. Or we have to create something from nothing. And, uh, again, all three of those are of the Divine prerogative alone. We can't do any of those. Thus, while art can radically transform nature, it cannot replace it, nor precisely do what nature is able to do. Art cannot create what is natural, and the species of gold, silver, and the precious gems are just such a natural, fixed species. Of course, we can make things that are gem-like, like glass, for instance, or stannic lime, but he points out those are made through art from more fundamental substances, still substances we can't create or transmute, for that matter, and certainly we can't call them forth from nothing.
But, well, what about Moses's wooden staff turning into a snake that time? That's transmutation, right? A wooden staff turning into a snake. Sure, it was transmutation, but it was also a miracle directly performed by God, and not by Moses. In fact, the one time Moses pretended he was able to do a miracle, that he made the water gush from the stone, actually rather than acknowledging the fact that it was the work of the Divine, well, Moses was punished by not being able to enter into the promised land. So you shouldn't take credit for God's miracles.
Of course, Eymerich admits that crafts people can create gold-like and silver-like and gem-like stuff, indeed, very near imitations, but they're just imitations, just the same. That they can be revealed as such through things like a displacement test or other forms of metallic assay, including also the health-producing effects of precious metals and gems, an idea that gold and silver in various gems had medicinal value in the Middle Ages. Making such imitation medals or gems into cutlery or jewelry is fine for Eymerich, as long as you just admit they're not really gold or silver, or they're plated or something. Obviously, mint and coins are passing such medals off as authentic is, well, that's just fraud and merits the usual punishments, which at the time were things like having your ears and nose cut off, if you just weren't subject to the death, the death penalty. That's fine.
But now we come to the real questions. Well, if people can't transmute base metals into gold, can demons do it? Well, no. No, demons can't transmute metals for the same reason that people can't, nor can they tell anyone how to do it. But they will surely pretend to such abilities and knowledge, if, of course, they can get someone damned in the process. But people have made pacts, of course, with demons and have been given vast sums of treasure, as Eymerich points out. Where in the world are the demons getting such wealth if they aren't somehow producing it? Well, demons know where lots and lots of buried treasure is, notes Eymerich. So they can go obtain said buried treasure and then trick people into believing that they know all kinds of things about how to transmute metals like gold and silver and create jewels. They're just getting the, the treasure from, from the earth because it's buried there.
And of course, this is Esoterica, after all. And think about how many times on this channel you've heard me talk about grimoires from the Middle Ages using demonic power to find buried treasure. And so many of those books we've encountered, the answer is all of them. Almost all medieval grimoires contain some ability to summon demons to find you buried treasure. And Eymerich just points out that fact. He was an Inquisitor, after all, and books of necromancy were just part of his day job. We, we share that odd fact in common. But, uh, here we are. The link of alchemy to heresy, and, and you knew it had something to do with demons and treasure, because why else would I even, why else would I even have this channel?
Eymerich argues that people are so driven by greed that many will do just anything to obtain gold and silver. And sure enough, I mean, think about it for a second. People do all kinds of horrible things in the world just to obtain a, a little, a little treasure. Just imagine what they would do if they could get a never-ending supply of gold and silver and gems. They would do terrible things.
Further, the practice of alchemy seems to bring one so close, so close to actual transmutation. You can perform all these manipulations and distillations and sublimations, and one is always just right on the edge of transmutation. It's just right there. Eymerich argues that driven by such constant near success, but not quite real success, and the horrible reality and power of greed, Alchemists will all ultimately make the same horrible decision. They will fall for the pretenses of demons who will promise them the secrets of transmutation. They will make a pact with those demons. They will worship the forces of darkness in a way reserved only for God. They will give them dulia and latria, to use the specific inquisitorial categories here, thus rendering them, thus rendering all Alchemists as ultimately doomed to become depraved heretics. It's the Alchemy to Satanism pipeline, folks. The slippery slope from transmutation to a pact with the forces of Satan himself.
Eymerich concludes that at best, Alchemists are just greedy frauds, and at worst, they are satanic heretics. And thus, Alchemy itself should be snuffed out by the forces of the Inquisition. Alchemy had been officially deemed heretical by one of the most powerful inquisitors of the Middle Ages, and then nothing happened. Eymerich's argument fell flat for pretty simple reasons. It's a bad, reaching, slippery slope argument. And recall, the Scholastics, for all what you might think about the Scholastics, they were really, really good at logic. And by the late 14th century, this argument, as much as it was one, was probably just laughed off the stage of history by the very Catholic scholars that Eymerich probably thought were on his team.
Now, that's not to say that the Church's position on Alchemy was ever totally friendly. It wasn't, for all the reasons that we mentioned earlier. But Eymerich's attempt to subject the Hermetic art to the jurisdiction of the Inquisition was soundly rejected, and Alchemists continued to labor in their labs. Thank the heavens. This was among the last documents penned by Eymerich, the exiled Inquisitor, and he would die himself two years later. And the Alchemists kept on keeping on. Good job, Alchemists. The Alchemists carried the day, and they would continue through the history of their labors to reject their being associated with sorcery and necromancy. And as I pointed out earlier, the fact that we link Alchemy and magic of any kind would have horrified the historical Alchemists. In fact, when we make that link between Alchemy and sorcery, we're closer to Nicholas Eymerich, we're closer to the inquisitorial line of thinking than actually listening to the Alchemists of old. So let's stop that. Let's listen to the Alchemists, and let's disentangle them from the practice of necromancy.
William Newman has a nice short discussion of the *Contra Alchemistas* in the context of the art versus nature debate in his fantastic book, *Promethean Ambitions*. You can also read the text of the *Contra Alchemistas* in a critical edition by Mattei, though that edition is pretty difficult to find here in the States. But I'll link it in the description, as, as always. But more Alchemy, more necromancy, more Inquisition, more ology, and definitely more buried treasure to come. Until then, I'm Dr. Justin Sledge, and thank you for watching Esoterica, where we explore the Arcane in history, philosophy, and religion.
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