Pierre-Jean Fabre

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Pierre-Jean Fabre (* 1588 in Castelnaudary ; † 1658 ibid) was a French doctor and alchemist .

Life

Fabre studied medicine in Montpellier , where he came into contact with the teachings of Paracelsus , which were highly controversial in France at the time. He became a follower of his teachings, for example in the use of antimony as a medicine. From 1615 he practiced as a doctor in Castelnaudary and treated King Louis XIII during a stay . From 1624 he published books on alchemy in Toulouse. He became known as a plague doctor and in 1629 published books about this epidemic, which also struck south-west France in the 17th century. They were reprinted in 1720.

His main work L´Alchemiste chrétien (The Christian Alchemist) from 1632 is dedicated to the Pope and tries to combine Christian doctrine and mysticism with alchemy. He sees correspondences between chemical operations and the sacraments of Christianity: according to Fabre, calcination corresponds to repentance, fire and water to baptism and the philosopher's stone to the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. For him, alchemists like priests, the spirit of mercury like angels, the earth like the Virgin Mary and the life-sustaining properties of salts are connected to Christ. There he also reports on his first transmutation in 1627 and uses the sculptures of the cathedral of Saint-Sernin in Toulouse for interpretation - the stonemasons have shown their esoteric knowledge in them. In 1634 he published a book in which alchemical processes (making the philosopher's stone) about the tasks of Hercules from mythology are interpreted. His works Panchymicus from 1646 and Manuscriptum ad Fridericum from 1653 are alchemical encyclopedias based on the study of classical alchemical works such as those of Geber or Pseudo-Geber , Arnaldus de Villanova and Bernard von Trevisan . His Abrégé des secrets chymiques of 1636 is dedicated to Gaston, the Duke of Orleans and brother of the king, whom he met in Antwerp and Toulouse according to the information in his book. Not only does he seem to have traveled beyond France to Europe, but also received alchemists in his hometown. His Abrégé is also one of his few French works (otherwise he published in Latin) and sees alchemy as a unified, fundamental natural science.

Fonts

  • Palladium Spagyricum , Toulouse, Bosc, 1624,
  • Chirurgica spagyrica , Toulouse, Bosc, 1626,
  • Insignes curationes variorum morborum quos medicamentis chymicis jucundissima methodo curavit , Toulouse, Bosc, 1627.
  • Myrothecium spagyricum , Toulouse, Bosc, 1628
  • Traité de la peste selon la doctrine des médecins spagyriques , Toulouse, 1629, Castres, 1653.
  • Alchymista christianus , Toulouse, Bosc, 1632.
  • Hercules pio-chymicus , Toulouse, Bosc, 1634.
  • L'Abrégé des secrets chymiques, où l'on voit la nature des animaux, végétaux et minéraux entièrement découverts, avec les vertus et propriétés des principes qui composent et conservent leur être; et un traité de la médecine générale , Paris, Pierre Billaine, 1636.
  • Hydrographum spagyricum , Toulouse, Bosc, 1639
  • Propugnaculum alchymiae adversus quosdam misochymicos ... , Toulouse, Bosc, 1645, French translation 1790 by Dernelon: Rempart de l'alchimie .
  • Traduction et notes du Cursus triomphalis Antimonii de Basile Valentin , Toulouse, Bosc, 1646.
  • Panchymicus, seu Anatomia totius Universi Opus , Toulouse, Bosc, 1646.
  • Sapientia Universalis quatuor libris comprehensa. Videlicet 1. Quid sit sapientia, & de modiis ad eam perveniendi, 2. De cognitione hominis, 3. De medentis morbis hominum, 4. De Meliorandis metallis , Toulouse, Bosc, 1654.
  • Remèdes curatifs et préservatifs de la peste donnez au public en 1652 by Pierre-Jean Fabre , Toulouse 1720
  • Manuscriptum ad Serenissimum Fridericum ... res alchymicorum explanans , 1653, published in Miscellanea Curiosa der Leopoldina, 1690 (editor G. Clauder) and in JJ Manget, Bibliotheca Chemica Curiosa , 1702.
  • Opera reliqua volumine hoc posteriore comprehensa , Frankfurt, Beyer, 1652, 1656

literature

  • Auguste Fourès: Les hommes de l'Aude , Narbonne 1891, pp. 140–158
  • Bernard Joly: La réception de la pensée de Van Helmont dans l'œuvre de Pierre-Jean Fabre , in ZRWM by Martels (ed.), Alchemy Revisited, Brill, Leiden, 1990, pp. 206-214.
  • Bernard Joly: Rationalité de l'alchimie au XVIIe siècle , Vrin, 1992
  • Bernard Joly: Fabre, Pierre-Jean , in: Claus Priesner , Karin Figala : Alchemie. Lexicon of a Hermetic Science, Beck 1998
  • René Nelly: Un médecin alchimiste: Pierre-Jean Fabre , La Tour Saint-Jacques, n ° 16, Paris, July / August 1958, s. 36-50
  • Henry Ricalens: Pierre-Jean Fabre, médecin et alchimiste de Castelnaudary (1588-1658) et son traité de la peste selon la méthode des médecins spagyristes , Bulletin de la société d'études scientifiques de l'Aude, 2003, volume CIII, p 113-120.
  • François Secret: Pierre-Jean Fabre, médecin spagirique et alchimiste , Bibliothèque d'humanisme et Renaissance, Geneva, Volume 35, 1973.

Web links

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ In 1603 the Paris Medical Faculty condemned Joseph Duchesne and Théodore Turquet de Mayerne for this deviation from Galen's teaching , but the disputes that began in 1566 continued afterwards.
  2. ↑ Presentation of his teaching based on Allen Debus The French Paracelsians , 1991, p. 75
personal data
SURNAME Fabre, Pierre-Jean
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French alchemist and doctor
DATE OF BIRTH 1588
PLACE OF BIRTH Castelnaudary
DATE OF DEATH 1658
Place of death Castelnaudary