Mining Matters: An Annotated First Edition of Georgius Agricola’s De re metallica

• In Event: Annotated Books I: New Work in Deciphering Early Modern Reading Practices

Abstract

This paper examines the early modern reception of Georgius Agricola’s De re metallica (1556) by focussing on a copiously annotated copy currently in the New York Society Library. The notes in this first edition both foreground the treatise’s rich content and demonstrate the reader’s comprehensive interests in these matters. Whether it concerns the ethical, judicial, technical or linguistic aspects of the industry, our anonymous sixteenth-century reader highlighted them all, showing himself to be in may ways Agricola’s ideal reader. However, he also considered the work both a book of secrets and a valuable recipe book. This allows us to redirect attention to some of the treatise’s lesser known content and position it —and its readers— within a much broader tradition of early modern alchemy, science and humanism. Ultimately, this case study forms a point of departure for a comparative foray into the readership of this famous treatise, a surprisingly neglected area of research.

Author

• Richard Calis, Princeton University