Gemma Sapientiae et Prudentiae

In German throughout. Illustrated with 5 full-page coloured and illuminated symbolic drawings, and a smaller illustration of the 'Sigillum Sielentium [sic] Artis', showing two double-headed eagles. The title as given above is inscribed on a small slip pasted on to the recto of the first unpaginated leaf. The date can perhaps be approximately given as c. 1735, from the mention on p. 140 of the year 1733 as being recently past. The MS. contains a remarkable mixture of transcendental alchemy, Cabbalistic speculations, and religious controversies. It ends with a chapter on Biblical prophecies and the Apocalypse. Four of the illustrations have considerable likenesses to those in the 'Geheime Figuren der Rosenkreuzer', originally published at Altona in 1785-1788. They have been compared with the lithographed facsimile issued in Berlin 1919 [cf. MS. 4259]. The correspondences are as under: MS., p. 4. Baum der Erkandtnus gutes und böses = Geh. Fig., fol. 9. p. 23. Divina Theosophia = Geh. Fig., fol. 32. p. 52. Jungfrau Sophia = Geh Fig., fol. 46. p. 59. Sigillum = Geh. Fig., fol. 36. No record of this work has been traced in the bibliographies.

c. 1735

1 volume 1 l. + 165 pp. folio. 32 × 20 cm. Original half-vellum binding.

Purchased 1930.

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).