Mappae clavicula. The Origins of Alchemy in Western Europe. Edited by Sandro Baroni, Giuseppe Pizzigoni and Paola Travaglio

Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
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English Version

Mappae clavicula
Alle origini dell’alchimia in Occidente
[The Origins of Alchemy in Western Europe]

Testo-Traduzione-Note [Text. Translation, Notes]
Edited by Sandro Baroni, Giuseppe Pizzigoni and Paola Travaglio

Saonara (Pd), Il Prato, 2014

Mappae clavicula is one of those texts that appear difficult to understand in their complexity. You could call it a medieval art recipe book, and therefore a collection of precepts almost exclusively dedicated to metal processing; in this sense it may be compared to the De diversis artibus by Theophilus Presbyter or Montpellier Liber diversarum arcium. However, while the latter are specifically works written in medieval times (while drawing from a previous tradition), here we are faced with a very different case. Mappae clavicula has its direct origins in the tradition of the writings of historical alchemy of the third and fourth centuries AD, initiated by Zosimos of Panopolis.

The difficulty of interpretation is exacerbated by the fact that there is no single Mappae clavicula. Under this name is collected a family of manuscripts from different periods (but always following the so-called Carolingian reform) presenting the work in a more or less extensive form, but it was not possible to ever come to the definition of a prototype that, reasonably, would come as close as possible to the original (or archetype manuscript, if you prefer). The first news of the existence of a work called Mappae clavicula is linked to a catalogue prepared in the Benedictine Abbey of Reichenau in 821-822 (see page 17), which speaks of a manuscript "Mappae clavicula de efficiendo auro" which, unfortunately, is now lost. In 1847 Thomas Phillipps publishes the full transcript of an original in his possession and which is preserved today at the Corning Museum of Glass, NY, with signature ms. Philipps 3715. It is not a publication to be underestimated, because, up to this new edition, it was the only printed transcript of the work. However, as mentioned, it was not a collation of manuscripts for the purpose of establishing a critical edition, but was merely the simple transposition of the specimen of Corning, dating from the twelfth century.

Based on the Corning exemplary and a second (major) specimen found in Sélestat in 1878, John Hawthorne and Cyril Stanley Smith (which we already met as curators of an edition of Theophilus’ De diversis artibus) produce the first complete English translation of the work in 1974, providing, if nothing else, the facsimile reproduction of both codes.

One understands, therefore, that the editors’ main goal is to set up a text, according to the criteria illustrated at pp. 50-51, starting from the collation of twelve among the whole twenty-five pieces that are now recognized as witnesses of the tradition of the Mappae clavicula (exclusions concern undoubtedly less important copies, where citations are fragmentary); from this text, they then proceeded to provide the Italian translation, an invaluable technical comment and a series of appendices that help to better understand the complex work.

The web-page of the Corning Museum of Glass dedicated to the manuscript of Mappae clavicula
Source: http://www.cmog.org/library/manuscript-mappae-clavicula

A work on metallurgy

The recipes or, rather, the procedures are presented in the work relate to the world of metalworking, according to a narration that starts from the most precious one (gold), and then proceeds with silver, copper, iron, lead and tin. It closes with glass, as a means to imitate gemstones. The number of recipes (total 180) also reflects the importance that is attributed to materials: in fact, the requirements relating to gold are seventy, and diminish more and more in the sections on other metals. It may seem strange, but one of the aspects which is most often dealt with is related to methods to mimic the metal, i.e. to create less noble alloys: in fact, we encounter here the issue of the scarcity of raw materials and we are faced with methods to simulate their appearance. Thus, are taken into account the procedures related to the colouring and the surface decoration of materials. Particular attention is paid to chrysography, i.e. those procedures through which one can get powders from the metals which are used for writing or decorating; it is, in substance, about the necessary technology to be able to "write with gold."

The beginning of Corning Manuscript
Source: http://www.cmog.org/library/manuscript-mappae-clavicula

The roots of alchemy and the spread of the practice of alchemy in Europe

As the subtitle of the book suggests, Mappae clavicula is interpreted as a witness of the ancient alchemical practices used in the East between the third and fourth centuries AD. This is not something that was always taken for granted. Faced with such an intuition, already proposed by Berthelot at the end of 1800, Hawthorne and Smith for example, to the contrary believe that the treaty witnesses the mere interest of the post-Carolingian world toward classical antiquity and that the recipes were handed over because they were seen as a valuable evidence of a glorious but lost world.

However, this is not the most relevant issue. When it comes to alchemy, one immediately thinks of the philosopher's stone or things like that. Today the recipes that one may read are therefore denied any practical value. Here we will have, albeit briefly, to remember that the historic alchemy to which the curators make reference indeed has a philosophical meaning which is expressed through the study of disciplines such as chemistry, metallurgy and astrology, but that it is also closely linked to knowledge of material practices. The purification of metals, in the Greek-Hellenistic and Alexandrian alchemical circles, finds its counterpart in the theoretical purification of the spirit. But the allegory is based on material and real facts, and as such is particularly valuable for the study of artistic techniques.

The thesis of Baroni, Pizzigoni and Travaglio is very simple: once the Roman Empire is dissolved, the material know-how related to alchemical works reaches (or had already reached) Western Europe through texts translated from the Greek original into Latin. We have no precise knowledge of how this happens. The fact is that, suddenly, after the Carolingian reform, writings just like the Mappae clavicula re-emerge in libraries, reproducing verbatim documents and prescriptions belonging to the ancient alchemical tradition.

In short, we are witnessing the shift of a tradition from the East to the West as regards technical aspects; as to the theoretical side of alchemy, we will need instead to wait until "their transmission through Syriac and Arabic text in the late twelfth century: only then operational practices for the processing of metals, who had never ceased to be practiced and handed down, will be complemented by the most purely theoretical framework within which they were originally developed" (p. 18). To be challenged is the idea itself that alchemy came to the West only with the Arabs: it is a much more complicated and multifaceted mechanism which, at least, materialised in two phases.

However, to make sure that this argument can stand, one needs to connect Mappae clavicula to the world of historical alchemy.

The Mappae clavicula in the version edited by Hawthorne and Smith
Source: http://ganoksin.com/blog/primitive/files/2015/04/mappae-cover.jpg

Zosimos of Panopolis and a translation error from Greek into Latin

One of the pivotal figures in history of alchemy is Zosimos of Panopolis. Zosimos lived between the third and fourth centuries A.D. and was the author of a Greek work entitled τά χειρόκμητα ("hand made things"). Of this work we know that it had an alchemical nature and that it was ordered alphabetically, either in Greek or Coptic. There are fragments in Greek and in Syriac. It appears sufficiently certain that an anthology was produced from Zosimos’ entire opera. Also in Greek, it was entitled Κλειδίον χειροκμήτών ("little key of the hand made things" or, more simply "small key to understanding the τά χειρόκμητα" - a bit like if we were faced with an introduction to Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy). To produce it may have been Zosimos himself. The thesis of the curators is that Mappae clavicula is the Latin translation of Κλειδίον χειροκμήτών. And this leads us immediately to a problem, linked precisely with the Latin title of the work; a problem that has plagued scientists for centuries: while it is clear that "clavicula" stands for Key, much less immediate is the meaning of mappae. Generally, it was thought to mean the genitive of "design" (‘the key of design’, a little forcing the translation), but the fact remains that in reality we are faced with a text of metallurgy; it has therefore been suggested (Bernhard Bischoff, see pp. 19-20) that the "mappa" was a "cloth", meaning that as a "cloth which hides the puzzle", referring then to the alchemical origins of the manuscript (‘the key of a hiding cloth’). Finally, two scholars (Robert Halleux and Paul Meyvaert) have pointed out in 1987 that in the Greek word "cloth" is indifferently termed with χειρόμακτον or χειρεκμαγεϊον. The hypothesis of Halleux and Meyvaert is trivial: the translator did not master very well Greek; the genitive plural "χειροκμήτών" ("of hand made things") becomes the genitive singular of ‘cloth’ (χειρόμακτον) and the mistake is done. For completeness, it must be said that on this occasion the editors prefer to think of a title that sounded like "Small key to χειρόκμητα", i.e. the work composed by Zosimos of Panopolis. The fact is (and here is the most interesting aspect) that, if we compare the recipes of the Mappae clavicula with the fragments of Zosimos’ work, the coincidence is, in many respects, literal.

Finally, we cannot ignore that some of the testimonies of the Mappae (especially the manuscript of Sélestat) have a prologue that is absent elsewhere. These lines, written in the first person, were certainly already included in Zosimos’ Greek anthology (and at this point one has to really think that also the smaller version was written by Zosimus himself) since the Latin version betrays a tiring syntax that reflects its previous Greek grammatical constructions. Below we report the prologue in full (translated from the Italian version), because this passage makes the original nature of the work indisputable (p. 59):

"Of the many and wonderful things written in my books it was our care to propose a commentary, not because it would seem useful to touch the sacred texts and therefore to work hard to no avail, but because, explaining point by point this doctrine, granted as a gift of the fate, as well as every image and every work that are in these same actions, we help those who want to understand these things. In this way, we propose the name "Mappae clavicula" [Note of the editor: We just explained the error] for this composition, because those who have touched many of these arguments but were nevertheless not able to interpret them, may consider that they have been kept out because they lacked the key. So, in fact, like in a house which has been properly locked, one cannot easily get hold of what is inside, in the same way, without this commentary, all the writing that is included in the sacred books shows an inaccessible and mysterious sense to the one who will read it. For God’s sake, I beseech those who will find [these texts] not to hand them over to anyone else except their sons, having at first judged by their character whether they can have a pious and appropriate intelligence to keep these things. Although I could properly add much more about the virtues of what will be discussed, starting from these same chapters, now I will start from here."

Index and changes in the Mappae clavicula

The manuscript of Sélestat, older than the Phillipps one, also contains an index which was regarded by most as the original one of the Mappae clavicula. The index of Sélestat contains 197 titles. Unfortunately, however, the scribe of the exemplary stops his copying after thirty recipes. We learn from the index, for example, the existence of two end sections respectively entitled "Prayer to say each time you make these preparations, or when you melt metals, so that you can prepare a good product as a result" and "Interpretation of speeches and images." These are sections that have been definitively lost; in the case of Sélestat, because the copyist stops precisely with the thirty-ninth recipe and does not complete the work; in other situations (most likely) because the interest of those who are copying new specimens is no longer on the alchemic aspects, but solely on the metallurgical techniques. Moreover, in an attempt to establish an original critical text, the curators identified rubrics within the same index of Sélestat, which clearly identify entries added after the drafting of the original translation (pp. 28-32) and therefore they eliminate them. In essence, the index of Sélestat does not testify the structure of the so-called archetype manuscript, but a later stage of the same (the so-called “stemma codicum", i.e. chart of the codices, reconstructed by the authors, with the division of the surviving examples in two large families, is located on p. 39). The Phillipps manuscript (or Corning manuscript, if you prefer) testifies a much later time, dating roughly from the twelfth century. There appear interpolations and additions "with entries in English and transliterations of Arabic [...], as well as tables of runes [...] that, in the opinion of scholars, ‘correspond to the English system’. Just this intervention on the text [...] gave rise to the hypothesis of a revision made by Adelard of Bath, whose name was included in the MS. Royal 15.C.IV of the British Library (f. 2v, Liber Magistri Adalardi Bathoniensis qui dicitur Mappae clavicula)"(p. 44).

Since the archetype manuscript it is therefore clear (and this is the main work done by the editors) that the recipes of Mappae claviculae are integrated with others or, in turn, are fragmented and stored in other families of manuscripts that testify to different traditions. The most striking case is that of the so-called Compositiones ad tingenda musiva of the Biblioteca Capitolare of Lucca [1] reporting verbatim four recipes of the Mappae clavicula relating to so-called chrysography, or the way in which you can write with gold. The exegete is therefore called to a long work of analysis, inclusion and exclusion that, in the specific case, has led to this critical text proposed for the first time to the attention of the readers.

NOTES

[1] The text of the Compositiones was published in Adriano Caffaro, Scrivere in oro. Ricettari medievali d’arte e d’artigianato (secoli IX-XI): Codici di Lucca e Ivrea (Writing with gold. Medieval recipes of art and crafts (IX-XI centuries): Codes of Lucca and Ivrea), Napoli, Liguori Publishers, 2003.