Georges Pierre Des Clozets, Robert Boyle, the alchemical patriarch of antioch, and the reunion of christendom: Further new sources

Early Science and Medicine

Volumn 9, Issue 4, 2004, Pages 307-320

  Principe, Lawrence M ^a  

^a JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 77952450311     PISSN: 13837427     EISSN: 15733823     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/1573382043004659     Document Type: Article

References (45)

1. Lawrence M. Principe, The Aspiring Adept: Robert Boyle and His Alchemical Quest (Princeton, 1998), 115-33;
2. R. E. W. Maddison remarked on the affair in The Life and Works of the Honorable Robert Boyle F.R.S. (London, 1969), 166-76.
3. On the Mercure and its founder, see Monique Vincent, Donneau de Visé et le Mercure Galant, (Paris/Université de Lille III, 1987) and Pierre Mélèse, Un homme de lettres au temps du grand roi: Donneau de Visé fondateur du Mercure galant (Paris, 1936).
4. Le nouveau mercure galant, (Paris, September 1678), pp. 116-19. The word nouveau was added to the title temporarily upon the resumption of its publication following a hiatus in 1675-76. Note also that the Mercure was reprinted several times (in Paris and Lyons), so that the pagination of the edition used here will not correlate with all editions.
5. Cardinal Alderano Cibo (1613-1700), secretary of state and legate under several Popes, including Innocent XI.
6. St. André can be identified as the Cathedral of Bordeaux because Pierre is given this title, with the city explicitly mentioned, in the mandate Boyle received from the Asterism, see below, note 23.
7. Giuseppe Francesco Borri (1627-1695), alchemist and writer, see below and especially Noel Malcolm's article in this fascicle.
8. No such work by Borri is known.
9. Georges Pierre to Robert Boyle, 7/17 May 1678, in The Correspondence of Robert Boyle, ed. Michael Hunter, Antonio Clericuzio, and Lawrence M. Principe, 6 vols. (London, 2001), 5: 84-9, on 87-88.
10. As is typical with Pierre, his claim about the indulgences nearly checks out, for in fact Pope Innocent XI, whose pontificate was characterized by reform, organized a committee in 1678 to end abuses committed in regard to indulgences, see Recueil des Gazettes de France (Paris, 1679), 190-91 (14 February 1678) and 674 (27 June 1678); dates cited are those of the dispatches, not the issues.
11. Georges du Mesnillet, Patriarch of Antioch, to Georges Pierre, 15/25 July 1677, Correspondence 4: 445-47, on 447. The letter was copied by Pierre and sent to Boyle.
12. Du Mesnillet to Boyle, 14/24 December 1677, Correspondence, 4:475-78, on p. 476.
13. Joseph Georgirenes, Archbishop of Samos, From the Arch-bishop of the Isle of Samos in Greece: An Account of his building the Grecian Church in So-hoe Feilds... (London, 1682);
14. Anthony à Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, 2 vols. (London, 1721), 2: 125 (in the Fasti).
15. Not surprisingly, the Patriarch had ordered Pierre to keep his part in the negotiations in England on behalf of the Greek Church secret, du Mesnillet to Pierre, 15/25 July 1677, Correspondence, 4: 445.
16. Principe, Aspiring Adept, 124;
17. Pierre to Boyle, 20 August 1678, Correspondence, 5: 112-14.
18. See Noel Malcolm's article in the present fascicle.
19. Recueil des Gazettes de France (Paris, 1679), no. 93 (21 August 1678), 806: "Le sieur Fagnani, Doyen des Prelates, est mort âgé de 91 ans." This notice was not published in the Gazette until 17 September, too late to have been the source of the information in the September Mercure. See also New Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v.
20. Paul Rycaut, The Present State of the Greek and Armenian Churches (London, 1678), p. 451.
21. Recueil des Gazettes de France (Paris, 1679), no. 86 (6 August 1678), 754.
22. Recueil des Gazettes de France Ibid., no. 97 (3 September 1678), 835: "Il est arrivé ici quelques Grecs & Arméniens qui viennent travailler à la réunion de leurs Eglises avec la Romaine, ils ont desja eu une Audiance secrette du Cardinal Cibo, & en auront une publique du Pape, apres l'arriveé du sieur de Clozelz Sous-Chantre de l'Eglise de S. André de Padoüe, qui a esté nommé par le Patriarche d'Antioche pour venir traiter de sa part avec Sa Sainteté." The garbling of the title attributed to Pierre seems the result of conflating the two titles which appear in the Mercure and elsewhere by the omission of a line, e.g. "Docteur en Medicine en l'Université.. ."
23. Recueil des Gazettes de France, Ibid., no. 105 (2 October 1678), 881.
24. The account is included in Vauquelin's manuscript Traitté des sels. On Vauquelin, see Gèrard Amourette, "Jean Vauquelin des Yveteaux (1651-1716): Sa vie, son oeuvre, et le milieu des alchimistes normands du XVIIe siècle" (Ph.D. thesis: École des Hautes Études, 1978) and "Le Voiage des Isles occidentalles et orientalles de Jean Vauquelin des Yvetaux (1651-1716)," Dix-septième siècle, no. 120, (1978), 185-97; this latter work does not describe a literal voyage, but rather Vauquelin's quest to make the Philosophers' Stone.
25. Most of Vauquelin's manuscripts are in private hands, but the autobiographical section of Traitté des sels describing his interactions with Georges Pierre was published in part in Bernard Husson, Transmu tations alchimiques (Paris, 1974), 206-45
26. and in full by Sylvain Matton, "Une autobiographie de Jean Vauquelin des Yveteaux: Le traité De la Pierre Philosophale," Chrysopoeia 1 (1987), 31-55. Unfortunately, I was not aware of this publication when writing my Aspiring Adept.
27. Pierre to Boyle, 1/11 April 1678, Correspondence, 5: 62-70, on 67.
28. Matton, "Autobiographie," 37: "Il estoit artificieus, et si grand menteur que par contre-verité on l'appeloit le véritable Georges."
29. Matton, "Autobiographie," Ibid., 38.
30. In Boyle's mandate from the Asterism (published in Correspondence, 5: 38-42, on 42), Pierre is described as "Canon, distinguished cantor of the church in Bordeaux" ("Canonicus, Praecantor Insignis Eclesiae Burdigalensis"), just as he is in the periodical articles.
31. Pierre to Boyle, 1/11 April 1678, Correspondence, 5: 67;
32. on the inventory of letters from Vauquelin, see Correspondence, 4: 435;
33. on losses of Pierre-related materials, and losses to the Boyle archive generally, see Principe, Aspiring Adept, 120, 123-24
34. and Michael Hunter and Lawrence M. Principe, "The Lost Papers of Robert Boyle," Annals of Science 60 (2004), 269-311.
35. Correspondence, 6: 434-40.
36. Matton, "Autobiographie," 46.
37. These will be treated in my new account of the remarkable tales of Georges Pierre now in preparation.
38. Matton, "Autobiographie," 44.
39. Principe, Aspiring Adept, 116.
40. Principe, Aspiring Adept, Ibid., 127.
41. Principe, Aspiring Adept, Ibid., 123. There were letters once from this "Philalette" to Boyle, but they too, like Vauquelin's letters, were discarded by Miles in the 1740s; see note 25.
42. Vauquelin did, however, witness other examples of transmutation after Pierre's; see Matton, "Autobiographie," 51-53.
43. This view of "le véritable Georges" gives a new twist to the recently popular notion of "self-fashioning" presented in some studies of the early modern period.
44. Matton, "Autobiographie," 46. The incident involving a fall from a horse is itself of interest, for Johann Michael Faustius recounts a rumor that Boyle was told by a French alchemist that the elusive adept Eirenaeus Philalethes was living in France, and that the French alchemist agreed to carry Boyle's letters to him, but was killed before he could do so by a fall from a horse.
45. Given Pierre's fall from a horse (which did not, however, kill him immediately) and the involvement of "Philalette" with the Asterism, it is possible that Faustius received a garbled account of Boyle's transactions with Pierre. See Principe, Aspiring Adept, 100.