The Development of the Basil Valentine Corpus and Biograph: Pseudepigraphic Corpora and Paracelsian Ideas

Early modern alchemical literature is full of pseudonymous corpora. One of the most famous of these is connected with the name Basil Valentine, a supposed Benedictine monk and master of both medicinal and transmutational chymistry. Accreted over a period of nearly a century, the Valentine corpus is...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Early science and medicine 2019-01, Vol.24 (5/6), p.549-572
Main Author: Principe, Lawrence M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Early modern alchemical literature is full of pseudonymous corpora. One of the most famous of these is connected with the name Basil Valentine, a supposed Benedictine monk and master of both medicinal and transmutational chymistry. Accreted over a period of nearly a century, the Valentine corpus is complex and heterogeneous. This paper endeavors to organize and recount the construction of the corpus by an array of authors, editors, publishers, and bibliographers, to sort out some of its strata, and to trace the origins and modifications of some of its texts. This exercise will be useful not only for further investigations of Basil Valentine and other pseudonymous chymical corpora, but also for broader studies of forgery and book history.
ISSN:1383-7427
1573-3823