Alchemy and authority in the Holy Roman Empire / Tara Nummedal.

9780226608570 (electronic book)
0226608573 (electronic book)
9780226608563
0226608565

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, ©2007.

English

1 online resource (xvii, 260 pages) : illustrations

QD13 .N86 2007eb

540.1/12094

What distinguished the true alchemist from the fraud? This question animated the lives and labors of the common men?and occasionally women?who made a living as alchemists in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Holy Roman Empire. As purveyors of practical techniques, inventions, and cures, these entrepreneurs were prized by princely patrons, who relied upon alchemists to bolster their political fortunes. At the same time, satirists, artists, and other commentators used the figure of the alchemist as a symbol for Europe?s social and economic ills. Drawing on criminal trial records, contracts,

Includes bibliographical references (pages 235-254) and index.

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