Elixir Atque Fermentum. New Investigations About the Link Between Pseudo-Avicenna’s Alchemical De Anima and Roger Bacon: Alchemical and Medical Doctrines

Moureau, Sébastien
(2013) Traditio : studies in ancient and medieval history, thought, and religion — Vol. 68, n° 1, p. 277-323 (2013)

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(en) Since the articles written by William Newman and Michela Pereira about the subject, the link between Pseudo-Avicenna’s alchemical De anima (the so-called De anima in arte alchemiae) and Roger Bacon is clearly established. The aim of the article is to go further in the way opened by William Newman, to investigate deeper the connection between these two major authorities. The article focuses on the physical, alchemical and medical doctrines of the texts, and, by studying acutely both doctrines and stressing the affinities between Roger Bacon and the Jābirian corpus, confirms that Roger Bacon was influenced by the De anima in many points of his doctrine. In addition to this, the system of the prolongatio vitae is studied and compared with the medical alchemy of the Jābirian treatises; this study allows one to put forward the hypothesis that Bacon was inspired by Pseudo-Avicenna’s De anima and Pseudo-Aristotle’s Secretum secretorum in developing this theory. The last important information of the article is a reflexion about the alchemical system of the elixir, in comparison to the ferment system: both use a different way in changing the nature of a thing.
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