Baptista, Frater Joannes

Collection of short alchemical works and extracts in Latin. With a few entries in Italian and Spanish. Vol. I.

c. 1565

1 volume 4 ll. + 299 [301] (last bl.). 4to. 201/2 X 131/2 cm. Original vellum binding. Both leather ties defective. Some leaves badly wormed in margins. In the foliation, ff. 201, 202 have been dropped, ff. 232, 233 doubled, and fol. 268 trebled. On ff. 139v, 140, and pasted inside the upper cover are rough pen-drawings of alchemical apparatus, etc.

The papers are available subject to the usual conditions of access to Archives and Manuscripts material, after the completion of a Reader's Undertaking.

Purchased at Hodgson's 26/10/1934, Lot 794 (part).

Database description transcribed from S.A.J. Moorat, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts on Medicine and Science in the Wellcome Historical Medical Library (London: Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1962-1973).

No. 6 The author of this work is named 'de nani' and 'de narni'. No particulars about him have been ascertained, but it is possible that he may be identical with the 'Joannes Nannius', author of a short alchemical work on Cinnabar, etc., in Miscellanea Alchemica XXXIII (6) [MS. No. 528]. 15 Though ascribed to 'Joannes Damascenus', this work appears to be a version of a tract by John Dastin, and seems to be No. 281 of Mrs Singer's Catalogue. (See also Thorndike 'History of Magic and Experimental Science', Vol. III, ch. 5.) 20 The 'J.B.' whose initials occur here and also among the names in No. 1, appears to stand for 'Joannes Baptista'. In the Index on the verso of the second leaf he is entered as 'Jo: batista', and on the recto of this leaf there is a heading 'Jo. b.tta liber secundus'. 'Jo: b.f.' [frater]. 22 The Explicit of this tract is the same as that recorded in Mrs Singer's Catalogue No. 114 which is the entry for Rhazes. 'Lumen luminum minus et perfecti Magisterii'.

From the Library of Julius Kohn.