Nine Books on the Nature of Things

Selected Annotated Bibliography

The governing witness, comparison texts and modern research have different roles. A source identified for its catalogue or abstract is not represented as a fully collated historical witness or a fully read modern monograph.

The Governing Latin Witness

Attributed to Paracelsus, De Natura Rerum Libri Novem, in Operum Medico-Chimicorum sive Paradoxorum, Tomus Genuinus Sextus. Frankfurt: Collegium Musarum Palthenianarum, 1605, pp. 198–271. SUB Göttingen, 4 MED INST 44/75:2 (2) RARA; PPN578052199; VD17 7:698931L. Complete governing text and original marginal notes. https://resolver.sub.uni-goettingen.de/purl?PPN578052199

The Digital Source and Page Sequence

SUB Göttingen, IIIF presentation manifest for PPN578052199. The historical scans used here are 182–255; page and scan identifiers are distinguished throughout. The manifest marks the digitised source with Public Domain Mark 1.0. https://manifests.sub.uni-goettingen.de/iiif/presentation/PPN578052199/manifest

The Palthenian Collection

Wellcome Collection, catalogue record for Operum medico-chimicorum sive paradoxorum, 1603–1605. Identifies Zacharias Palthenius as editor and describes the collection’s Latin translation as based on Huser’s German edition. This is collection-level evidence, not an individual translator credit for every text. https://wellcomecollection.org/works/aqrh86q5

The Seven Book Latin Printing

Paracelsus, De natura rerum libri septem, edited and translated by Georg Forberger. Basel: Pietro Perna, 1573. Described in Theatrum Paracelsicum, Bibliographia Paracelsica BP145, with links to digitised copies. A separate seven-book witness; not the copytext of this nine-book edition. https://theatrum-paracelsicum.com/Bibliographia_Paracelsica/BP145

The Nine Book German Printing

Paracelsus, De natura rerum IX Bücher, edited by Lucas Bathodius. Strasbourg: Bernhard Jobin, 1584. Theatrum Paracelsicum, Bibliographia Paracelsica BP199. Bibliographical evidence for the nine-book publication history, rather than the language directly translated here. https://theatrum-paracelsicum.com/Bibliographia_Paracelsica/BP199

Research on Composite Authorship

Urs Leo Gantenbein, “Real or Fake? New Light on the Paracelsian De natura rerum,” Ambix 67, no. 1 (2020): 4–29. DOI 10.1080/00026980.2020.1720339. The authorship conclusions used here were checked against the author’s publicly available abstract; no claim of full-paper consultation is made. https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2020.1720339

The Scholarly Work Catalogue

Theatrum Paracelsicum, De natura rerum and related descriptive bibliography. Used to distinguish German and Latin printings and the seven-book and nine-book stages. Its catalogue of a text under an author’s name is read together with its discussions of authenticity. https://theatrum-paracelsicum.com/De_natura_rerum

The Historical English Comparison

John French, translator, Nine Books of the Nature of Things, in A New Light of Alchymie. London: Richard Cotes for Thomas Williams, 1650. The English is a later comparison witness. The Getty copy records missing Nature preliminaries, and its body retains a page-number jump after 104. https://archive.org/details/newlightofalchym00sedz

The English Title and Dedication

Text Creation Partnership, A92903, the 1650 Nature text with title, dedication and nine books. Preserves English preliminaries omitted from the Getty/Gutenberg presentation. A transcription aid compared with the historical printing, not a Latin source or a modern English reading text. https://github.com/textcreationpartnership/A92903

The Readily Available English Collection

Project Gutenberg, A New Light of Alchymie, ebook 61112. A convenient historical-English transcription that must be used with awareness of its rearrangement, missing Nature preliminaries and normalised later pagination. It is not the source of this new English translation. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/61112