Title, attribution and the dates 1620, 1621 and 1657

Meaning

Sal Lumen is a convenient identifying title, but the governing French title is Traittez de l’harmonie et constitution generalle du vray sel. Its Paris title page bears MDCXXI, 1621, and names the sieur de Nuisement. Wellcome’s description of its 1657 English copy expressly corrects the older attribution to Jacques de Nuisement in favour of Clovis Hesteau de Nuysement. The historical spelling Nuisement and the modern catalogue identification should therefore be distinguished, not silently treated as two different authors.

The privilege dated 6 November 1620 records permission to print, not a competing title-page date. The separately issued, eighty-page Poeme philosophic also bears 1620; it is not an additional book of this treatise. Robert Turner’s Sal, Lumen, & Spiritus Mundi Philosophici belongs to the English printing of 1657, whose title describes transmission from French through Latin into English. The supplied Diotimos English is a new 2026 translation from French, not Turner’s wording modernised.

Extent is part of the identification. The French body contains three books, whereas the checked 1657 printed English contents and ending contain two. Combach’s Latin printing of 1651 has a third book, beginning on page 190, and Penn’s catalogue describes a separate seventeenth-century English manuscript with three books. These checks establish the fuller transmission without proving complete line-by-line equivalence, identifying the manuscript translator, or assigning responsibility for the printed English omissions.

BnF reproduction of the 1621 French printing, hosted by the Warburg Institute

Wellcome: 1657 English copy and corrected author attribution

Wellcome: the separate Poeme philosophic, Paris, 1620

e-rara: contents of the 1657 English printing

Combach, Tractatus de vero sale (1651), Book III at page 190

Penn Libraries, Ms. Codex 501: English translation containing three books