Page 8 - Book of quintessence

And if you will bear them more secretly without any knowing, then
mingle them with melted pitch, or wax, or else gum. For then no
man shall know it what it is. And when you will dissolve any of
these calyxes by themselves put either by themselves in a test, or
else the pitch or the wax in which they be in, and anon shall come
out very gold and silver as they were heretofore.

The calx here is actually an amalgam of gold or silver with mercury, and
does not appear to be gold to the inexperienced. Metallic gold can be
immediately recovered by heating which drives off the mercury.

Many manuscript copies of this work have survived, as it was a
popular work well studied by later alchemists. Consequently, the text of
these manuscripts varies considerably, some being mere summaries of
the work, others adding to and amplifying the core text. Rupescissa’s De
consideratione quintae essentiae, was first published, under his own
name, in French at Lyon in 1549, however, it had already been issued at
Strassburg in Latin in an extended version with the title Coelum
philosophorum under the name of Philip Ulstad as early as 1526, which
proved so popular it went through at least fourteen editions over the
following century. It was also printed in Latin under the name of
Raymund Lull, in a series of at least five editions the first being in 1541.
Some Paracelsist scholars detect a strong influence of Rupescissa’s work
on the Archidoxies, a key alchemical work of Paracelsus, first printed in
1569.

I have here modernised the text from the English translation of the
work contained in MS Sloane 73 in the British Library using the
Frederick Furnivall transcription made in 1866. As the original Middle
English is very difficult to read except by specialists, I have extensively
modernised this. I have included the Furnivall transcription for those
who might want to read it for themselves and not rely on my
modernisation.

Adam McLean

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