Images of Paracelsus in Paracelsian Pseudepigraphies

• In Event: Alchemy and Forgery around Paracelsus I

Abstract

Was Paracelsus a heroic founder of a new medicine? Or was he a suspicious adept boasting about the secrets of gold-making? Modern historians and even Paracelsus’s followers in the early modern period have already addressed these questions. Focusing on Ps.-Paracelsian works that appeared in the 16th and early 17th centuries, this paper traces the emerging and changing images of Paracelsus. From the early phase of the Paracelsian Movement starting in the 1560s, he was transformed into a defender of the ars transmutatoria promising successful gold-making. In later forgeries of the turn of the century, Paracelsus appeared as a religious authority advocating a radical natural theology and preaching anti-confessional piety. This kind of religiously tinged forgery was produced as a reaction to the intensifying confessionalization of the time.

Author

• Amadeo Murase, Seigakuin University