A New Light of Alchemy

Selected Annotated Bibliography

The 1606 Latin Core

Michael Sendivogius, anonymous Tractatus alter de lapide philosophico, in Martin Ruland, Lapidis philosophici vera conficiendi ratio, 1606, printed pages 86–165. Herzog August Bibliothek, 385.2.1 Quod. This is the governing witness for the twelve chapters, Epilogue, Enigma, Parable and concluding Job excerpt. Its title page and complete sequence were checked; the text’s location within another compilation is preserved in the source note. Title image: https://diglib.hab.de/drucke/385-2-1-quod/00415.jpg First text image: https://diglib.hab.de/drucke/385-2-1-quod/00500.jpg Final image: https://diglib.hab.de/drucke/385-2-1-quod/00579.jpg

The 1607 Dialogue

Dialogus Mercurii, Alchymistae et Naturae, scriptus in gratiam amici Coroades. Cologne: Servatius Erffens, 1607. Austrian National Library copy digitised by Google Books, wVVWAAAAcAAJ. Governing witness for the complete dialogue and its original title and friend’s address. Modern scan identifiers are used where the printed numbering is irregular. https://books.google.com/books?id=wVVWAAAAcAAJ

The 1611 Preface and Epigram

De lapide philosophorum tractatus duodecim. Frankfurt, 1611. British Library copy digitised by Google Books, XJVmAAAAcAAJ, printed pages 3–8. Supplies the author’s preface and Johann Heinrich Alsted’s commendatory epigram, with its Easter 1611 subscription. The date identifies this witness, not a demonstrated first appearance of every prefatory sentence. https://books.google.com/books?id=XJVmAAAAcAAJ

Sulphur in the Munich Copy

Tractatus de sulphure, altero naturae principio. Cologne: Johann Crithius at the sign of the cock, 1616. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Path.544#Beibd.4, digital identifier bsb10191243. Governing copy for the title, author’s preface and the first 82 physical body pages. Original printed page labels and sequence are distinguished in the edition’s provenance. https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/en/view/bsb10191243

Sulphur in the Rome Copy

Tractatus de sulphure, altero naturae principio, 1616. Rome copy digitised by Google Books, 6_qSMmO2Kh4C, also available through Internet Archive. Supplies the final body pages 83–84 where the Munich digitisation ends earlier. Its independent defects are not imported as gaps in the composite reading text. https://books.google.com/books?id=6_qSMmO2Kh4C https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_6_qSMmO2Kh4C

French and the 1650 English Compilation

A New Light of Alchymie. London: printed by Richard Cotes for Thomas Williams, 1650. English translation by J.F.M.D., John French. Getty Research Institute copy, Internet Archive newlightofalchym00sedz. Governing witness for French’s unnumbered To the Reader, facsimile PDF pages 17–22, and a historical comparison for the Latin corpus. The volume also contains separately titled Paracelsian books and a dictionary based on Dorn. https://archive.org/details/newlightofalchym00sedz Catalogue: https://wellcomecollection.org/works/nxy235ys

The English Transcription Aid

Project Gutenberg, ebook 61112, A New Light of Alchymie. Useful electronic transcription of French’s 1650 compilation. Used as an aid and checked against the facsimile for the historical English appendix. Its modern contents arrangement, transcriber’s notes and packaging are not treated as original 1650 matter. No modern English translation from this source serves as the basis of the fresh Latin translation. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/61112

The EMLAP Research Corpus

EMLAP, Early Modern Latin Alchemical Prints. Georgiana Hedesan and collaborators, data curation; Vojtěch Kaše and collaborators, machine-readable processing. The 1614 Sendivogius transcription and metadata assisted the reading of the 1606 core. The source scans, not the later aid’s differing readings, govern this edition. The research data are offered under CC BY-SA 4.0; this assistance is acknowledged separately from the public-domain historical words. https://github.com/CCS-ZCU/EMLAP_ETL

Publication History and Attribution

Rafał T. Prinke, New light on Michael Sendivogius’s writings: The treatises written in Prague and maybe in Olomouc, in Latin Alchemical Literature of Czech Provenance, Olomouc, 2015, pages 131–147. Specialist research used for the publication chronology and the relationship of the core, Dialogue and Sulphur. Its bibliographical conclusions are distinguished from this edition’s own page-level verification of the selected witnesses. https://www.renesancni-texty.upol.cz/soubory/publikace/Latin_Alchemical_Literature_of_Czech_Provenance.pdf

The Separate Historical Dictionary

A Chymicall Dictionary, London 1650, based on Gerhard Dorn’s Dictionarium Theophrasti Paracelsi and translated or adapted in John French’s compilation. Useful for comparison with period vocabulary, while remaining a different work with context-dependent definitions. Its 706 definition paragraphs are the basis of the separate expanded Diotimos dictionary. The present volume’s lexicon is newly written around Sendivogius’s passages. Dictionary title in the same Getty facsimile: https://archive.org/download/newlightofalchym00sedz/newlightofalchym00sedz.pdf#page=327