I am afraid that this review is 18 months late, due to running out of spoons in 2021 after moving house whilst also work being very busy and the ongoing pandemic running as a stressful backdrop.
I have been waiting for this book for a number of years and I am glad to see it in print at the end of 2021. It is an important new book for the field of alchemical studies, covering as it does around 400 years and following individuals and ideas across Europe. (So important that I pre-ordered it 3 or 4 months before it came out) It is also the kind of book we have been needing for a while, because it ties together individual alchemists, their written and practical works and the theories they read, thought about, argued, tested and the wider medieval society and culture. The series of University of Chicago Press books that this is one of, is called “Synthesis” which is entirely appropriate.
Having said that, I personally do not think it is the kind of book for a complete novice. The terms, concepts and individuals introduced are not given the kind of explanation required if this was aimed at total newbies to alchemy, or rather what I mean is that there are so many people, terms and concepts that the book is quite bewildering even for someone like me who knows a lot about the field.
So it would be best read after reading Principe’s book on alchemy or if you have become interested in the works of George Ripley and read various things about him in the past. It has clearly been written to encourage people who are fairly new to alchemy to learn more but without compromising on the information given. At times the information comes thick and fast; although explained clearly, there is a lot to take in.
George Ripley and his pseudo-Lullian inspired alchemy is the central plank of this book, starting with the various sources of alchemy in medieval England, moving onto Ripley and his works, their sources of alchemy and following what became of theseworks after his death. Anyone hoping to find confirmation of any of the legends about him in this book will be mistaken. Rampling clearly lays out what we do and do not know about him, which is not a lot. There is then the matter of where he got his ideas from and this is explained in detail.
To be honest, the ins and outs of pseudo-Lullian alchemy can be a bit dull, but Rampling does lay things out clearly in my opinion, with copious references to original manuscripts.
From Ripley, we get the Sericonian alchemy, written about by Rampling in several previous papers and for many alchemists based on lead oxide but as is shown in later chapters, some 17th century ones thought it might mean antimony. This is one of the important take home concepts from the book, that alchemists read the same texts but argued that previous alchemists had misunderstood things thinking that the same name meant a different substance. Decknamen galore, causing confusion, which Rampling navigates carefully between to the benefit of the reader. I found a lot of this be easier to read than Principe’s “The Secrets of Alchemy”.
This is one of the most important points in the book, that the meanings were changed over the years. I had come to that conclusion myself after a lot of studying, but to see it laid out clearly is great.
Rampling has unearthed more information about the existence of alchemists in Henrician England, which has heretofore been something of a blank spot with almost no alchemy known about (I had noted this in my own researches in 2013 but Rampling has the knowledge and skills to fill in this blank area). For instance, more is revealed about Blomfild and his blossoms, with his imprisonment and decades long interest in alchemy. It seems though that the only warrant to practise alchemy which has been associated with Henry VIII has been misdated and probably dates from Henry VI. It seems at least one man petitioned Henry VIII to be allowed to practise alchemy, but unfortunately little information survives.
Another example of alchemy being around at the time is that of Richard Jones, arrested in 1532, for magical practises, but he was also into alchemy and attempted to use his knowledge as a get out of jail free card, by writing to Cromwell, hoping to influence him. There was also a man called Giles du Wes who was keeper of Henry VIII’s library who was interested in alchemical books and collected copies. Rampling goes into some detail about what we know about Du Wes and the others he knew such as Robert Greene, who were also actively collecting alchemical manuscripts but doing so outside the older structure of monasteries. Her investigation into these men and their works opens up a new avenue to greater understanding of alchemy in early 16th century England.
On the continent things were somewhat different, with the Ripleyan works of the Compound of Alchemy, the Marrow of Alchemy, etc, moving from the Tudor dynasty to eastern European alchemists. This came about in part because John Dee and Edward Kelley took the works of George Ripley with them when they went to Eastern Europe, especially Bohemia. Edward Kelley found his own patron, Vilem of Rozmberk, a Bohemian nobleman, followed by interactions with Rudolph II, the king of Bohemia. In this book we see Kelley as an alchemist in his own right, not just Dee’s scryer, with his own complete understanding of alchemy and it’s sources. It is clear how English alchemical works and their authors became known to central and eastern Europe through Dee and Kelley.
Near the end of the book, our old acquaintances Ashmole and Starkey are introduced, as each interacted with the Ripleyan corpus in their own way before the book ends with a couple of pages titled “The ends of English alchemy” which summarise how alchemy was used by people and are worth reading in their own right.
I was hoping there would be more practical re-creations in this book than the now 10 years old sericon one, but it seems Rampling has been working on some in the USA which will be published in due course. These have been held up by covid, but there will be more in her next book on alchemical imagery.
An important point is made at least once, and I think implied throughout much of the book, on page 243, about alchemical practitioners of the 1540’s to 1570’s or so:
“It is important to note that, while acknowledging the divine origin of alchemical “cunning”, none of our petitioners treats the actual practise of alchemy as involving anything other than material processes. The religious dimension of their work relates explicitly to the superior level of insight required to construe philosophical texts, and the care and skill needed to reconstruct their contents successfully. These practitioners do not claim that the stone itself possesses any kind of supernatural power; in fact, Blomfild’s most religiously imbued work, the Regimen, does not even describe the tone, but offers a set of medicinal recipes based on the quintessence”
What I always do when reading and reviewing a book is check the references. In this case there is a satisfying variety of references but they are also comprehensive, in the form of footnotes so easily checkable. So many are to primary sources that it is hard to check them, but some manuscripts are available online to check and of the secondary sources I have many of them. However, unlike other books, I can’t see any errors or choice of unusual reference work which would cause me to disbelieve what is written so really I think this book is fine.
One of the other useful things is that it has been priced low enough that fairly normal people can buy it, not just libraries. This has necessitated the lack of colour plates within; a couple would have been good but it is also a good thing that it is more affordable and many colour illustrations are available freely online with the improvements in digitisation.
In terms of it’s place in the genre, I recently stumbled on an old essay by Tara Nummedal
Words and Works in the History of Alchemy
Author(s): Tara E. Nummedal
Source: Isis, Vol. 102, No. 2 (June 2011), pp. 330-337
In which the abstract says:
This essay considers the implications of a shift in focus from ideas to practices in the history of alchemy. On the one hand, it is argued, this new attention to practice highlights the diversity of ways that early modern Europeans engaged alchemy, ranging from the literary to the entrepreneurial and artisanal, as well as the broad range of social and cultural spaces that alchemists inhabited. At the same time, however, recent work has demonstrated what most alchemists shared—namely, a penchant for reading, writing, making, and doing, all at the same time. Any history of early modern alchemy, therefore, must attend to all of these practices, as well as the interplay among them. In this sense, alchemy offers a model for thinking and writing about early modern science more generally, particularly in light of recent work that has explored the intersection of scholarly, artisanal, and entrepreneurial forms of knowledge in the early modern period.
I consider that this book has indeed attended to the reading, writing, textual interpretation, communications as well as the social and cultural spaces and the practise of alchemy, indeed just about everything that is relevant has been addressed in a huge sweep of intellectual endeavour. Rampling, who had finished her PhD not long before Nummedal was writing, knows well the state of research of alchemy and the various strands of thought and action that make it all up and this is seen clearly here.
So in summary, if you have any interest in alchemy you should buy this book.
Other reviews are:
The Experimental Fire
distillatio 
I’m writing a book, which includes some history on metallurgy and alchemy. From what I’ve mananged to study, it seems that, at some point, metallurgy continued to develop and become more sophisticated in centers but remained more primitive or stagnant in small, farm villages, with just one blacksmith and one small furnace. At what time, if my observation is correct, were there bigger, hotter furnaces with teams of smiths in cities or centers, and the lone rural blacksmith continued what he was taught from his father who was taught from his grandfather who…..? Any thoughts or references would be appreciated.