ON ALCHEMY

...and one is free to imagine whatever suits their mind. As far as I am concerned, whether it is true or not, I hold it as a matter of indifference. It is certain from history, however, and the chronicles of events, that the Emperor Diocletian Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus (r. 284–305 AD). According to the Byzantine Suda, he ordered the burning of Egyptian alchemical texts to prevent them from funding rebellions against the Roman Empire. diligently hunted down and burned all the books of this art, on account of the revolutionary movements of the Egyptians, so that wealth might not accrue to them from such a craft original Greek: διὰ τὰ νεωτερισθέντα Αἰγυπτίοις, πρὸς τὸ μὴ πλοῦτον ἐκείνοις ἐκ τῆς τοιαύτης προσγίνεσθαι τέχνης.

This craft, using a corrupted term, they call Alchemy—or Archymy—as if one were to say the "chemistry of silver" original Greek: ἀργύρου χημείαν; others call it "chemistry" original: χημίαν, or χυμίαν; still others "gold-making" original Greek: χρυσοποιίαν. Those who have written something on this matter are:

Arnold of Villanova. A prominent 13th-century physician and scholar from the Crown of Aragon to whom many later alchemical works were attributed.

Avicenna to the Philosopher Hasen. Ibn Sina (c. 980–1037). This refers to the "Epistola ad Hasen regem," a letter on alchemy attributed to the famous Persian polymath.

Blemmydes, a book On Gold-Making original: περὶ χρυσοποιίας. Nicephorus Blemmydes (1197–1272) was a Byzantine theologian and scientist.,

a Greek manuscript in the Royal Li-

brary of France.

Geber the Arab, whose commentator... Jabir ibn Hayyan (c. 721–815), the foundational figure of Islamic alchemy; his Latin works were the bedrock of Western alchemical theory.