Giuseppe Francesco Borri
Giuseppe Francesco Borri (born May 4, 1627 in Milan , † August 20, 1695 in Rome ) was an Italian adventurer, prophet, alchemist and doctor.
Life
Borri came from a respected noble Milanese family and attended the Jesuit college in Rome, where Athanasius Kircher was his teacher. As the leader of a student revolt, he was expelled from school in 1649. Then he became a page in the Vatican and studied alchemy and chemistry on the side, where he had contacts to the alchemy promoting nobles such as Massimiliano Palombara and the exiled Queen Christina of Sweden there. After a cholera outbreak, he moved to Milan in 1656. At the time, he probably also cured a syphilis infection with drugs containing mercury, which led to delirium. In Milan he moved in quietist circles, was indicted by the Inquisition and fled to Switzerland in 1659. He was sentenced in absentia and symbolically burned in the Campo di Fiore in Rome in 1661. According to the Inquisition, he was a heretic who proclaimed messianic views and was called Prochristus .
Borri was now forced into exile, lived for a while in Strasbourg and from 1660 in Amsterdam. He practiced as an alchemist and doctor and was particularly successful in treating syphilis. In Amsterdam he became an honorary citizen in 1661 and befriended Ole Borch . In 1654 or 1655 he moved to Copenhagen , where he enjoyed success at the court of Friedrich III. would have. He also received support from Christina of Sweden, whom he met in Hamburg in 1666. After Christian V's accession to the throne in 1670, his star sank and he wanted to go to Turkey via Austria. But he was arrested in Moravia and handed over to the Pope by Emperor Leopold I , who had him locked up in the St. Angelo Castle (Castel Sant'Angelo). He had to publicly revoke his heresies, but at times had quite comfortable conditions of detention, including his own laboratory, thanks to influential patrons like Queen Christina. From 1678 he was allowed to move relatively freely and practiced as a doctor. After Christina's death in 1689, his privileges were revoked and from 1691 he was again imprisoned in Fort St. Angelo, where he died of malaria in 1695 .
Fonts
- Lettere di FB ad un suo amico circa l'attione intitolata: La Virtù coronata . Rome 1643
- Gentis Burrhorum notitia, Strasbourg 1660
- Iudicium .... de lapide in stomacho cervi reperto , Hannover 1662
- Epistolae duae, 1 De cerebri ortu & usu medico. 2 De artificio oculorum Epistolae duae Ad Th. Bartholinum. , Copenhagen 1669
- La chiave del Gabinetto del Cavagliere GF Borri , Cologne, Geneva 1681
- Istruzioni politiche date al re di Danimarca. , Cologne, Geneva 1681
- Hyppocrates Chymicus seu Chymiae Hyppocraticae Specimina quinque a FIB recognita et Olao Borrichio dedicata. Acc. Brevis Quaestio de circulatione sanguinis. , Cologne 1690
- De virtutibus Balsami Catholici secundum artem chymicam a propriis manibus FIB elaborati. , Rome 1694
- De vini degeneratione in acetum et an sit calidum vel frigidum decisio experimentalis in Galleria di Minerva, II, Venice 1697
literature
- G. Cosmacini: Il medico ciarlatano. Vita inimitabile di un europeo del Seicento, Laterza 2001.
- L. Roscioni, La carriera di un alchimista ed eretico del Seicento: Francesco Giuseppe Borri tra mito e nuove fonti, in: Dimensioni e problemi della ricerca storica in età moderna, 2010, Volume 1, pp. 149–186.
- Grete de Francesco : The Power of the Charlatan . Basel: Benno Schwabe, 1937, p. 147ff.
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Borri, Giuseppe Francesco |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Italian alchemist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 4, 1627 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Milan |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 20, 1695 |
| Place of death | Rome |