#Alchemical medieval manuscripts archive
#Alchemical medieval manuscripts series

Parergon Australian & New Zealand Association of Medieval & Early Modern Studies, Inc. The manuscript is a composite of six fifteenth-century booklets containing alchemical texts and recipes in Latin, German, Italian, and Polish. pictorial, is interesting for what it says about horses within medieval and early. But these play a minor role in the text, and are usually THE SIXTEENTH-CENTURY MANUSCRIPT SPLENDOR SOLIs is an alchemical work. This is not to say that the book ignores entirely the personal experiences of individual combatants, or the suffering and destruction which are the inevitable accompaniment of war. T h e very design of the book tends to convey its o w n underlying message that war is colourful, interesting and exciting.

There is something curious, though, in producing such an attractive book on such an unattractive subject. Today, chemistry deepens our knowledge about paint colors, their identification, and potential continued transformations. Some of the most vivid pigments in medieval manuscripts were manufactured through alchemy, an experimental practice that predates modern chemistry.

#Alchemical medieval manuscripts archive

The archive of the site alone numbers nearly 1,000 sold items. The Alchemy of Color and Chemical Change in Medieval Manuscripts.

#Alchemical medieval manuscripts series

There are the little graphic signs for alchemical substances and processes, the images of alchemical apparatus and laboratory equipment, and the beautiful and enigmatic emblems and series of emblems that adorn many alchemical books and manuscripts. Les Enluminures offers the largest and most wide-ranging inventory of text manuscripts currently on the market. Imagery and symbolism are important facets of alchemy. The unified design of the volume is rounded off with a good chronology and glossary, well-chosen introductory lists of further reading, and a detailed index. The number of medieval manuscripts remaining in private hands gets fewer and fewer every year, and those that remain become more valuable and more keenly sought after. The technique of imparting additional information through sidebars, lengthy captions and inserted panels, while conventional enough, is well done and carefully balanced against the main text. Houghton Library's collection of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts represents a significant resource for the study of the literature, art, history, music, philosophy, and theology of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in Western Europe. M a p s are somewhat fewer but judiciously used and well-presented. The pages are attractively designed, with good use of paintings and photographs, m a n y in colour. A s an 'illustrated history', this book is an undoubted success. The Mirror of Alchemy: Alchemical Ideas and Images in Manuscripts and Books from Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century (review) The Mirror of Alchemy: Alchemical Ideas and Images in Manuscripts and Books from Antiquity to the.Īnd b o w s in the warfare of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and Parker examines the developing importance of gunpowder in the same period.