George Ripley (Canon)

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Illustration by George Ripley

George Ripley (* around 1415 , † 1490 ) was one of the most important English alchemists .

Life

Little is known about his life. Presumably he lived in the second half of the 15th century as a canon in the Augustinian Order in Bridlington Priory in Yorkshire. In addition to his church work, he also devoted himself to natural research and alchemy. To expand his knowledge, he made trips to France, Germany and Italy. For some time he lived in Rome, where he was appointed chamberlain by Pope Innocent VIII in 1477 and was able to continue his studies even more intensively. When he returned to England in 1478, he claimed to be in possession of the recipe for the manufacture of the Philosopher's Stone , which, among other things, should also enable gold making. He claims to have found out the secret in Leuven , from where he wrote to the English King Edward IV . Two hundred years later, Elias Ashmole recalled the ancient tradition that Ripley allegedly donated £ 100,000 a year to the Knights of St. John for their fight to defend their seat on Rhodes against the besieging Ottomans, which for Ashmole was clear evidence of his mastery of gold making. The parts of the biography seem to imitate fictional parts of the biography of Ramon Llull (Lawrence Principe).

With the growth of scientific knowledge, from the middle of the 15th century, the time of George Ripley, alchemy more and more crossed the border into fraud. The church gradually distanced itself from speculative alchemy, which also contained many pagan elements. Ripley was cast out by the Augustinians and joined the Carmelite Order in Boston (Lincolnshire) , where he died in 1490.

In his work The Compound of Alchemy (1471) Ripley describes the 12 stages ( The Twelve Gates ) of the alchemical path to the preparation of the philosopher's stone in richly pictorial and completely incomprehensible verses . Some of the writings ascribed to him are the signature of later authors.

Irenaeus Philalethes refers to him in his Ripley revived and Marrow of Alchemy .

Works

  • Opera omnia chemica, Frankfurt 1614
  • Chemical writings Georgi Riplaei, Erfurt 1624
  • The Compound of Alchymy (1471)
  • The Alchemical Scrolls
  • The Mistery of Alchymists
  • The Bosome Book
  • Liber Secretisimus
  • Five Preparations of the Philosopher's Mercury
  • A Treatise of Mercury and the Philosophers Stone
  • Cantilena
  • Medulla Alchemiae, manuscript in British Library, Sloane Collection (from 1476 dedicated to the Archbishop of York)

His writings are reprinted in the Theatrum Chemicum , Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum and the Bibliotheca Chemica Curiosa .

literature

  • Hans Biedermann: Lexicon of the Magical Arts , VMA-Verlag, Wiesbaden 1998, ISBN 3-928127-59-4
  • Lawrence M. Principe: George Ripley, in Claus Priesner, Karin Figala: Alchemie, Lexikon einer Hermetic Science, Beck 1998

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Meyers Konversations-Lexikon. Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig and Vienna 1894, Vol. 1, p. 324
  2. ↑ Michaelis Sendivogius (1566–1636), An extremely delicious philosopher. Tract of Denn's errors of the alchemists
personal data
SURNAME Ripley, George
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English canon and alchemist
DATE OF BIRTH around 1415
PLACE OF BIRTH England
DATE OF DEATH 1490
Place of death Boston (Lincolnshire)