A Very “Distilled” Emblem in Baroque Rome: Natural Philosophy, Alchemy, and Atomism in the Academy of the Umoristi

Abstract

Created and published in a printed volume in 1611, the emblem chosen by the literary Academy of the Umoristi is intriguing at multiple levels. At a time when the water cycle was still unknown, the image engaged the thorny question of how the evaporation of salty seawater, condensed into clouds, could subsequently pour down as sweet rain. Additionally, the Lucretian motto “Redit agmine dulci” audaciously evoked the philosophy of atoms. The combination of the image and the motto suggested looking at the meteorological phenomenon on display as a sort of natural distillation process, not different from the circulations taking place in the alembic. This enquiry will document how the Academy of the Umoristi was influenced in the choice of its emblem by the scientific Academy of the Lincei and how, towards the end of the seventeenth century, under the patronage of Christina of Sweden, the interconnection of alchemy and atomism alluded to in the academic emblem was reclaimed as a distinctive philosophical banner.

Acknowledgements

This article has been produced in the frame of a Stimulering Wetenschappelijk Talent Stipendium (2023) awarded by the Faculty of Philosophy, Theology and Religious studies of Radboud University Nijmegen. I am particularly grateful to Bruce Moran and the anonymous referees for their comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Michele Maylender, Storia delle Accademie d’Italia, 5 vols. (Bologna: Cappelli, 1926–1930), vol. 5, 370–81; Francis W. Gravit, “The Accademia degli Umoristi and its French Relationships,” Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters 20 (1935): 505–21; Giuseppe Gabrieli, “Gli Umoristi,” Roma XIII/4 (1935): 173–83, and “Una gara di precedenza accademica nel Seicento tra Umoristi e Lincei,” Rendiconti della classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche della Reale Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, s. VI, vol. XI, fasc. 3–4 (1935): 235–57; Piera Russo, “L’Accademia degli Umoristi. Fondazione, strutture e leggi: il primo decennio di attività,” Esperienze letterarie IV/4 (1979): 47–61; Laura Avellini, “Tra ‘Umoristi’ e ‘Gelati’: l’accademia romana e la cultura emiliana del primo e del pieno Seicento,” Studi secenteschi XXIII (1982): 109–37; Marco Gallo, “Orazio Borgianni, l’Accademia di S. Luca e l’Accademia degli Humoristi: documenti e nuove datazioni,” Storia dell’arte 76 (1992): 296–345; Laura Alemanno, “L’Accademia degli Umoristi,” Roma moderna e contemporanea III/1 (1995): 97–120; Elena Tamburini, “Dietro la scena: comici, cantanti e letterati nell’Accademia romana degli Umoristi,” Studi secenteschi L (2009): 89–112. More recently: Maria Fiammetta Iovine, “Per una storia dell’Accademia degli Umoristi. Studi, problemi e prospettive di una strategia della volatilità,” in Le Accademie a Roma nel Seicento, ed. M. Campanelli, P. Petteruti Pellegrino and E. Russo (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2020), 27–42; and M. F. Iovine, “L’Académie del Humoristes. Savoir et pouvoir dans la Rome baroque” (PhD thesis, Université Jean Jaurès, Toulouse – Radboud University, Nijmegen, 2022).

2 The Latin term agmen admits of different translations such as “stream” or “army,” which cannot be rendered simultaneously in English. “Stream” better suits the purpose of examining the natural philosophy implied by or attached to the Umoristi’s emblem.

3 The hydrologic cycle was established through the efforts, among others, of Bernard Palissy (1510–1590), Pierre Perrault (1608–1680), Edme Mariotte (1620–1684). Perrault proved it experimentally and communicated his results in L’origine des fontaynes published anonymously in Paris in 1674, which he dedicated to Christiaan Huygens. The theory, though, was not accepted until well in the nineteenth century. See F. D. Adams, “The Origins of Springs and Rivers,” in The Birth and Development of the Geological Science (Baltimore, MD: The Williams and Wilkins Company, 1938), 426–60 (on 433–52).

4 The Academy of the Ordinati gathered around cardinal Giovan Battista Deti (Maylender, Storia delle Accademie d’Italia, vol. 4, 140–41), a powerful member of the Aldobrandini family. Their motto “A SOLE” (“from the sun”) gracing the image of a saltshaker was intended to elicit praise for their sapience (the salt) over the wavering sea of the Academy of the Umoristi.

5 Aleandro, Discorso, 8:

[…] scorgendosi sopra ’l mare una Nube piovente col motto REDIT AGMINE DULCI, possiamo venir a far la comparazione dicendo, che sicome la Nuvola è condensata d’umorosi vapori levatisi dall’amarezza del mare, così l’Accademia de gli Umoristi è una raunanza di spiritosi ingegni, che dall’amarezza de’ costumi mondani si sono separati. Et sicome quella, non ostante che da luogo così amaro abbia origine, se ne ritorna con abbondanza d’acque dolci; così questa ancorche porti seco nome, che mostra haver del diffettuoso, nondimanco essendosi spogliata d’ogni vile affetto, d’ogni basso pensiero, manda fuori nobili, et perfette operazioni.

6 According to the Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca (Venice: Giovanni Alberti, 1612), 947: “a fantastic and inconstant man, by ill-tempered and predominant moods, is said to be a Humourist.”

7 To avoid undesirable theological implications Aleandro (Discorso, 12) declares that the analogy between the sun and God concerns only their attractive function (on vapours, on minds), not their substance, since God is the true sun of the universe while the visible sun is merely an emanation of it.

8 Aleandro, Discorso, 9–10: “Li buoni effetti che sotto così bella et proporzionata comparazione pretende l’Accademia di partorire vengono per cagione della separazione, che si è accennata, et per l’unione de gli Accademici.”

9 Aristotle, Meteorologica, II, 2, 354b25–355a, trans. H. D. P. Lee (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952), 133–37:

Water surrounds the earth just as the sphere of air surrounds water […]. As the sun moves in its course – and by its movement causes change, generation and destruction – it draws up the finest and sweetest water each day and makes it dissolve into vapour and rise into the upper region, where it is then condensed by the cold and falls again to the earth. […] The fresh and sweet water, then, as we said, is all drawn up because it is light, while the salt water because it is heavy remains, but not in its own natural place. […] The place which we see the sea occupying is not really its natural place but rather that of water. But it seems to be the sea’s because the salt water gets left behind because it is heavy, and the sweet and fresh drawn up because it is light.

10 Aristotle, Meteorologica, II, 2, 358a 1–35, cit., 153–54:

Something similar happens in combustion. What the heat fails to master becomes residue in living bodies, ash in combustion. So some have maintained that the sea is made of burnt earth. Thus expressed their opinion is absurd: but it is true that something of this sort makes it salt. For we must suppose that something happens in the world as analogous to what happens in the phenomena just described: just as in combustion there is a residue of earth of this kind, so there is in all natural growth and generation, and all exhalation on dry land is such a residue. And it is dry land that provides the great bulk of the exhalation. Now since, as we have said, the moist and vaporous exhalation is mixed with the dry, when it condenses into clouds and rain it must necessarily include a certain amount of this property which will be subsequently carried down in rain. […] This accounts for the presence of salt in sea water.

11 Aristotle, Meteorologica, II, 3, 358b, cit., 155: “I have proved by experiment that salt water evaporated forms fresh and the vapour does not when it condenses condense into sea water again.”

12 Aleandro, Discorso, 15: “Si può dunque dire, che l’acqua marina dolce sia in potenza, il che dallo ‘ntelletto vien conosciuto, et che parimente per accidente sia amara, il che vien compreso dal senso” [Italics mine].

13 Aleandro, Discorso, 15: “Et in questa guisa si può dire che ’l Sole riduca a dolcezza l’acqua che prende dal mare. Il che non avrebbe difficoltà, se si concedesse che l’acqua marina di sua natura salsa od amara fosse, sicome alcuno cerca di provare.” Telesius is only quoted in the bibliographic reference at the margin of the text (namely: “Teles. De mari, c. 4”; De mari, Naples: Giuseppe Cacchio, 1570, 7). It is quite striking that Aleandro should mention an author whose major anti-Aristotelian work, De rerum natura iuxta propria principia (Naples: Orazio Salviani, 1586) had been added to the Index librorum prohibitorum in 1596. On Telesius’s natural philosophy and his attempt to reform Aristotelian physics, see P. D. Omodeo, ed., Bernardino Telesio and the Natural Sciences in the Renaissance (Leiden: Brill, 2019).

14 So runs the testimony of the Umorista Gian Vittorio Rossi, who was then present: Iani Nici Erythraei [Gian Vittorio Rossi], Pinacotheca imaginum illustrium doctrinae vel ingenii laude virorum, 3 vols. (Cologne: Joost Kalchoven, 1645–1648), vol. 3, 194–95. A critical examination of Aleandro’s Discorso, almost line by line, is preserved at the Vatican Apostolic Library, MS Barb. Lat. 4053, fols. 174r–175v. This scrupulous reading, probably conducted by the censors of the Academy, is an indication of the seasoned academic debate between the supporters of Aleandro and his opponents, which makes even more noteworthy that most of the suggested corrections were not adopted in the printed book.

15 Vatican Apostolic Library, MS Barb. Lat. 4053, fol. 141r:

Contra l’impresa deli Signori Academici Humoristi, quale è una nuvola che i vapori dal mare tratti per forza del sole, conversi in acqua dolce, con questo motto, redit agmine dulci, con la quale vogliono significare che nell’Academia come in una nuvola con li esercizi d’ingegno si acquista dolcezza di dottrina e scienze, si oppone da alcuni non esser detta impresa in vera filosofia fondata, con ciò sia cosa che nela nuvola non si fa l’acqua altrimenti dolce, ma nel mare stesso dal sole si separa la parte più dolce e potabile come parlano i filosofi, e quella poi nela nuvola risolvendosi in pioggia ritiene la sua antica dolcezza e potabilità, non l’acquista di nuovo in essa; onde pare che con questa impresa non si ottenghi l’intento. Favorisce questa obiezione il testo del Filosofo nel 2° lib. dele Meteore sum. p.a cap. 3 dove parlando del Sole che tira su i vapori dice: semper appropinquans potabile sursum ducet. [Italics mine]

16 MS Barb. Lat. 4053, fol. 141r-v:

“Si risponde essere detta impresa in bonissima filosofia fondata. Prima perché la dolcezza o potabilità, come vogliamo chiamarla, l’acqua non l’ha mentre sta nel mare come apparisce al senso – e subito che si risolve in vapori non si può chiamare dolce o potabile perché il vapore né è dolce né potabile ma questi sono accidenti di corpo consistente e grosso – ma l’acquista nela nuvola dove si forma in corpo potabile. […] La raggione chiara mostra che l’obiezione fatta non ha forza alcuna, anzi che l’impresa è in verissima filosofia fondata perché a la salsedine del mare oltre le caggioni materiali, che sono l’acqua elementare et il secco terreo adusto et inconcocto, si richiede la caggione effiziente che è quella che mescola bene l’uno con l’altro, il che è l’azione del Sole. Tirandosi dunque i vapori su, è necessario che si tiri su l’una e l’altra caggione materiale, e per il freddo dela regione, supposta l’evaporazione, è necessario che il secco tanto si separi tornando quanto può l’uno e l’altro a la sua natura, onde mancando la conveniente mistione quale è caggione prossima del sapore salso si perde ancora la salsedine; e tutto questo si fa nela nuvola. Onde e per il senso, e per l’autorità de Aristotile, per la raggione chiaramente apparisce quest’impresa esser in buona e vera filosofia fondata.”

For a comparison with the printed text, see Aleandro, Discorso, 16.

17 Strongly influenced by Della Porta, Cesi dealt with heavenly phenomena and miraculous rains (of blood, of frogs, of sulphur, passim) in the Coelispicium (now lost) and in the Taumatombria, dating to 1612–1613. These works suggest Cesi’s belief in the continuity of all natural phenomena, and reveal the air as “the element in which the continuous exchange of substances and influences between the sky and the Earth occurred”; see Paolo Galluzzi, The Lynx and the Telescope: The Parallel Worlds of Cesi and Galileo (Leiden: Brill, 2017; 1st Italian edn, 2014), 120–31 (on 127 and 213–20). Both writings were intended as integral to Cesi’s design of a new encyclopaedia of nature: see Luigi Guerrini, I trattati naturalistici di Federico Cesi (Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 2006). On Della Porta’s multifarious career (as a natural philosopher, a Renaissance magus, and a playwriter), see Maurizio Torrini, ed., Giovan Battista della Porta nell’Europa del suo tempo (Naples: Guida, 1990); Marco Santoro, ed., La “mirabile” natura. Magia e scienza in Giovan Battista Della Porta (1615–2015) (Pisa: Fabrizio Serra, 2016).

18 Some members of the Lincei were deeply involved with Paracelsian alchemy. Johannes van Heeck (1579–ca. 1620), one of the founders, and Johannes Schreck (1576–1630), travelled at different times to the court of Rudolph II in Prague, which was a famous centre for chymical practice, see: P. Galluzzi, “Motivi paracelsiani nella Toscana di Cosimo II e di Don Antonio dei Medici: alchimia, medicina chimica e riforma del sapere,” in Scienze, credenze occulte, livelli di cultura. Convegno internazionale di studi. Firenze, 26–30 giugno 1980 (Florence: Olschki, 1982), 31–62 (on 47–62); Saverio Ricci, “I primi lincei e l’alchimia: Paracelso superstitione nudatus,” Atti della Accademia nazionale dei Lincei. Rendiconti delle adunanze generali a classi riunite 9, no. 30 (1992): 253–73; Antonio Clericuzio, “Science in 17th-Century Rome. Galileo, Cesi and the Accademia dei Lincei,” Nuncius 30 (2015): 709–14; Noël Golvers, Johann Schreck Terrentius, SJ: His European Network and the Origins of the Jesuit Library in Peking (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020).

19 Della Porta, De distillatione, 5:

Distillatio tenuiorem semper, et calidiorem aquam effecit. Aristoteles in Problematibus ait, quod sol suas exercens vires in aquas levissimas simul, et dulcissimas partes trahit, quod ab Hippocrate desumpsit, libro de aere, aquis, et locis. Quod aquae pluviales, laevissimae, tenuissimae, et dulcissimae sunt, quia sol, cit de aquis quod tenuissimum, et levissimum est, et ob id mare salsum, quia remanet quod grave, crassum, et salsum est, cum sol educere non possit. Quod si sol blande calefaciens haec agit, quid sperandum de ignea estuante in alembicis? [Italics mine]

20 According to Galluzi, Cesi was inclined to consider “the cyclical interaction between terrestrial exhalations and celestial matter as an operation of chemical transformation”: Galluzzi, The Lynx and the Telescope, 213.

21 Della Porta, De aeris transmutationibus, 67:

Sed mihi Aristotelem defecisse, cum dixerit vaporem in altum elatum ut frigida regionis imperante illico in aquam converti, sed oportet aerem cum supra incessum fuerit, magis ac magis supra impelli, et cogi, et ibi constipato, et coacto in aquam verti, et in aquam verso infra dilabi. Exemplum habemus in distillatorio, ubi enim rorulentus vapor frigidam pilei vitrei superficiem tetigerit, non illico in aquam vertitur, sed igne urgente, et aqua evaporante, destillatorii corpus repletur, ac successive magis repletur. Sic ex vapore coacto et constipato aqua elicitur.

22 Gabrieli (“Una gara di precedenza accademica”) affirms that the scientific Lincei had nothing to do with the theatrical Umoristi, giving full credit to some angered comments of Federico Cesi triggered by the death of Cesarini (1624), to whom Galileo had addressed The Assayer (1623). But Cesi was then concerned about the competition which the Umoristi represented, especially since the Lincei were struggling to secure the endorsement of the papal court for their agenda in natural philosophy.

23 See the eloquent frontispiece in Alessandro Gottifredi, In funere Virginii Caesarini Oratio (Rome: Alessandro Zannetti, 1624).

24 Aleandro, Discorso, 27–28:

Se i cieli poi generabili sieno, e corruttibili, o pure a corruzione e generazione non soggiacciano, resta non poco da dubitare, militando per una parte le ragioni aristoteliche, per l’altra la sperienza, che anco a’ giorni nostri ci ha fatto veder nuove stelle in cielo […]. Tener possiamo adunque con probabile opennione che la materia de’ cieli convien in spezie con quella delle cose sublunari, le quali, trattane la terra, il lor principio, come detto abbiamo, riferiscono all’acque.

25 Tassoni touches on alchemy in: Parte de’ quisiti (Modena: Giulian Cassiani, 1608) and in Alessandro Tassoni, Varietà di pensieri (Modena: Gio. Maria Verdi, 1612) in reference to the question of the existence of the element of fire. In the tenth book of the Dieci libri di pensieri diversi (Carpi: Girolamo Vaschieri, 1620), 580 Tassoni mentions a nail, whose upper half had been transmuted into pure gold before the Grand Duke of Tuscany by Leonhard Thurneisser zum Thurn (1531–1595/1596): see Didier Kahn, “The Significance of Transmutation in Early Modern Alchemy: The Case of Thurneysser’s Half-Gold Nail,” in Fake!? Hoaxes, Counterfeits and Deception in Early Modern Science, ed. M. Beretta and M. Conforti (Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications 2014), 35–68. In Giovan Battista Marino, Della Lira. Parte terza (Venezia: Gio. Battista Ciotti, 1616), 242–43 Marino exchanges sonnets on alchemy, a deceptive art, with his friend Carlo Sigonio who enthusiastically practiced it. Cesarini devoted himself to alchemical distillations, as it is plainly recalled in the funeral eulogy pronounced at the Academy of the Umoristi on 5 May 1624, see Agostino Mascardi, Prose vulgari (Venice: Bartolomeo Fontana, 1625), 77–78; and, in 1618, he shared the results of his experiments with Dal Pozzo and Maffeo Barberini (later Urban VIII), see Bellini, Umanisti e Lincei, 261–64. Achillini, whose great-uncle Alessandro was a famous physician and professor of philosophy in Padua, sent a healing powder to his correspondent Ghino Ghini along with a letter in which he commended iatrochemistry: Claudio Achillini, Rime e prose (Venice: Zaccaria Conzatti, 1662), 323–27. Moreover, Achillini introduced the French Paracelsian iatro-chemist Pierre de la Poterie to Cesarini, when the latter was ailing in Acquasparta, host of Federico Cesi, and de la Poterie dedicated his Pharmacopea spagyrica (Bologna: Nicola Tebaldini, 1622) to Dal Pozzo: see Antonio Clericuzio, “Chemical Medicines in Rome: Pietro Castelli and the Vitriol Debate (1616–1626),” in Conflicting Duties: Science, Medicine and Religion in Rome, 1550–1750, ed. M. P. Donato and J. Kraye (London: The Warburg Institute, 2010), 281–302. For Dal Pozzo’s alchemical interests: Vittorio Gabrieli, Sir Kenelm Digby. Un inglese italianato nell’età della Controriforma (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1957), 218, 224–25; Oreste Trabucco, “Scienza e comunicazione epistolare: il carteggio fra Marco Aurelio Severino e Cassiano dal Pozzo. Con un’appendice di nuovi documenti,” Giornale critico della filosofia italiana 76 (1997): 204–49 (on 217–19 and 229–30).

26 For chemical distillations as a driver of the experimental method and the epistemological change adopted by early modern science, see Bruce T. Moran, Distilling Knowledge: Alchemy, Chemistry, and the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005).

27 In Rome Dal Pozzo hosted Tommaso Cornelio, who introduced Gassendi’s works in Naples in 1650, and was possibly the source of Ciampoli’s early familiarity with the Canon of Digne’s works, see M. Torrini, Tommaso Cornelio e la ricostruzione della scienza (Naples: Guida 1977) and Favino, La filosofia naturale di Giovanni Ciampoli, 129–40. For an overview on atomism and mechanical philosophy in seventeenth-century Rome, see F. Favino, “Atomismi romani del Seicento. Un panorama,” in L’altro Seicento. Arte a Roma tra ortodossia, libertinismo e scienza. Atti del convegno di studi. Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma, 14–15 maggio 2015, ed. D. Frascarelli (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2016), 89–102.

28 Salvatore Rotta, “L’Accademia fisico-matematica Ciampiniana: un’iniziativa di Cristina?,” in Cristina di Svezia. Scienza e alchimia nella Roma barocca, ed. W. di Palma et al. (Bari: Edizioni Dedalo, 1990), 99–186. On Ciampini’s Academy, still fundamental is William Edgar Knowles Middleton, “Science in Rome, 1675–1700, and the Accademia Fisico-matematica of Giovanni Giustino Ciampini,” British Journal for the History of Science 8 (1975): 138–54. An evaluation of the academy’s commitment to modern science is in F. Favino, “Beyond the ‘Moderns’? The Accademia Fisico-matematica of Rome (1677–1698) and the Vacuum,” in History of Universities, vol. 23, pt2, ed. M. Feingold (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008): 120–58. On the Queen’s Academy, among a wide array of studies, see for example, M. P. Donato, “Idiomi di straniere a Roma: Cristina di Svezia-Minerva e la sua accademia,” in I linguaggi del potere nell’età barocca, ed. F. Cantù, 2 vols. (Rome: Viella, 2009), vol. 2, 229–56. Christina’s esotericism is explored in Jeanne Bignami Odier and Anna Maria Partini, “Cristina di Svezia e le scienze occulte,” Physis 23 (1981): 21–38; Susanna Åkerman, “Hermetic Philosophy,” in Queen Christina of Sweden and her Circle: The Transformation of a Seventeenth-Century Philosophical Libertine (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 85–100, and “Queen Christina’s Esoteric Interests as a Background to Her Platonic Academies,” Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis 20 (2008): 17–37. For the Queen’s alchemical circle in Rome, see A. M. Partini, Cristina di Svezia e il suo cenacolo alchemico (Rome: Edizioni Mediterranee, 2010).

29 See Jean-Michel Gardair, Le “Giornale de’ letterati” de Rome (1668–1681) (Florence: Olschki, 1974). The journal split in two in 1675, maybe as Ciampini’s attitude towards atomism was more cautious than Francesco Nazzari’s, his fellow editor, see Antonella Romano, “I problemi scientifici nel ‘Giornale de’ Letterati’ (1668–1681),” in Dall’erudizione alla politica. Giornali, giornalisti ed editori a Roma tra XVII e XX secolo, ed. M. Caffiero and G. Monsagrati (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1997): 17–38. On 2 December 1673 the Inquisition prohibited any publication dealing with atomism, see M. P. Donato, “Scienza e teologia nelle congregazioni romane. La questione atomista. 1626–1727,” in Rome et la science moderne. Entre Renaissance et Lumières, ed. A. Romano (Rome: École française de Rome, 2009), 595–634 (on 629–30).

30 M. P. Donato, “Late Seventeenth-Century ‘Scientific’ Academies in Rome and the Cimento’s Disputed Legacy,” in The Accademia del Cimento and its European Context, ed. M. Beretta, A. Clericuzio, and L. M. Principe (Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications, 2009), 151–64. On the lively Galilean milieu in Rome, see M. Torrini, “Due galileiani a Roma: Raffaello Magiotti e Antonio Nardi,” in La scuola galileiana: prospettive di ricerca. Atti del convegno di studio di Santa Margherita Ligure (26–28 Ottobre 1978) (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1979), 53–88; F. Favino, “‘In Urbe mathematicus’. Torricelli a Roma,” Galilaeana 6 (2009): 39–70.

31 M. F. Iovine, “La Luce (1698) by Giovanni Michele Milani – A Final Attempt at Reconciling Atomism and Religion in Seventeenth-Century Rome?” Early Science and Medicine 28, no. 2 (2023): 172–217. The poem features an anonymised preface by Francesco Redi.

32 Garuffi, L’Italia accademica (Rimini: Gio. Felice Dandi, 1688), 3–11. Evidence of Garuffi’s likely membership of the academy is in Giuseppe Piselli’s Presagi d’Urania (Todi: Vincenzo Galassi, 1681) which is preceded by five poems from members of the academies of the Umoristi and the Infecondi in praise of the author; among them is Giuseppe Malatesta Garuffi.

33 Garuffi, L’Italia accademica, 6:

Ché se poi sopra questo corpo d’impresa far noi vogliamo una qualche filosofica notomia, ed investigare la cagione perché la pioggia sia dolce, non ostante che le nubi, da cui proviene, s’imbevano de’ vapori salsi del mare, cosa tanto più maravigliosa quanto che lambiccandosi l’acqua marina da professori dell’arte distillatoria, ella non mai del tutto depone la sua naturale salsedine ed amarezza.

34 Margret Schuchard, ed., Bernhard Varenius (1622–1659) (Leiden: Brill, 2007). Varenius’s Geographia generalis, which endorsed Copernicanism and modern experimental philosophy, was reissued by Isaac Newton with significant textual revisions and additions, also in regard to the iconographic apparatus, and printed in Cambridge in 1672 and in 1681 (the passage quoted by Garuffi is on page 112 of these editions); see William Warntz, “Newton, the Newtonians, and the Geographia Generalis Varenii,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 79, no. 2 (1989): 165–91.

35 Jean-Baptiste Du Hamel, Philosophia vetus et nova ad usum scholae accommodata, 5 vols. (Paris: Stephane Michallet, 1678–1681), vol. 5, 165:

Respondet Varenius duplex esse salis genus in aqua marina, ut in aliis corporibus, fixum nimirum, et volatile, illud post distillationem in fundo vasis remanet, hoc una cum vapore ascendit, et ingratum saporem retinet. Sed aqua pluvialis hunc salem exuit, quod levis ea sit evaporatio, et longum iter conficiat antequam in pluviae guttulas concrescat adeo ut in ipso itinere spiritus salini paulatim se evolvant, et cum aliis eiusdem generis consocientur.

36 As an example, in his Geographia (p. 42) Varenius recalls that the Peripatetics laid down four principles of all bodies (Fire, Air, Water, Earth); other philosophers – like Democritus and Leucippus – assumed that bodies are made of tiny solid particles, which differ only in shape and size; whereas chymists adopted three principles (Salt, Sulphur, Mercury), sometimes adding the caput mortuum from which Salt is derived. Summing up these different theories and professing to derogate from the ambiguity of the chemical lexicon, Varenius proposes that the simple bodies forming all things are five: Water, Oil (namely Sulphur), Salt, Earth (i.e. the caput mortuum) and a certain spiritus, which some say acid, identifiable with Mercury. Varenius points out that these five principles, in which everything may be dissolved, are not different in substance but only in shape and size; he thus manages to show how the chymists may agree with the Peripatetics, and even with the atomists, or better yet, the corpuscularians, in whose company he ranks Descartes. For Varenius’s chymical views see W. R. Newman, Newton the Alchemist (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2018), especially 156–58 and 180, and “Isaac Newton’s Atomist Sources: The Case of Bernard Varenius,” in Atoms, Corpuscles and Minima in the Renaissance, ed. C. Lüthy and E. Nicoli (Leiden: Brill, 2022), 268–84.

37 Garuffi, L’Italia accademica, 8–9:

Apportono dunque le scuole e la sperienza de chimici darsi due sorti di sale, l’uno fisso, l’altro volatile. Che perciò quando il sole solleva dall’oceano i vapori, il sal fisso per la sua gravità non s’alza, ma da loro separato, resta mercé del naturale suo peso, dentro del mare. Salendo poi i vapori per lo spacio di cinque miglia sino al fosco seno delle nubi, il sal volatile, comeché sottile, e spiritoso, ha campo d’evaporare, onde quelli purgati sì dall’uno come dall’altro, ricadano in mare convertiti in dolce pioggia. Ciò non può succedere nelle ritorte de’ chimici in fondo alle quali rimane il sal fisso e, per la corta via che fa dentro l’alambicco, il sal volatile, non può logorarsi, onde sempre rimangono l’acque alquanto salmastre.

38 National Central Library of Rome, MS Ges. 243, 149: “[la regina] […] possiede ancora […] l’arduo scettro del filosofar antico moderno”; MS Ges. 243, 164. The manuscript is currently being edited for publication; for a glimpse of its content, see M. F. Iovine, Gli Argonauti a Roma. Alchimia, ermetismo e storia inedita del Seicento (Rome: La Lepre Edizioni, 2014).

39 MS Ges. 243, 163–4:

Regina: […] colà in mezzo alla via Lata sia fatto un arco trionfale ad Apollo con le Muse, con sopra la Nuvola e motto della Romana Accademia Redit agmine dulci, et Apollo mostri questa iscrizione: Tra lo stil de moderni e il sermon prisco. E là in mezzo della via Sacra sia l’arco innalzato alla filosofia del nostro secolo. Si esprimano in quest’arco tutte le sette dei filosofi intorno. E sopra, nel prospetto alto, da una parte stia un putto nero alato, che figuri l’Archeo di Vanelmonte […] e questo putto Archeo sarà fulminato da una pioggia incessante di Atomi, che vuol dire il trionfo della filosofia di Cartesio e di Gassendo sopra Vanelmont. Dall’altra parte del prospetto si dia il luogo a chi va, cioè a Lucrezio. Sia nell’alta parte eminente Lucrezio e di qua e di là abbia Sofia e una Musa che lo sta considerando con questa inscrizione: Funde petens placidam Romanis inclita pacem. E questi due archi alludono ancora alla doppia strada che ebbero i Romani al Campidoglio, Overo per via Sacra o per via Lata.

40 Iovine, “La Luce (1698),” 202–13.

41 Van Helmont acutely noticed that the tria prima seemed to be produced anew by chymical operations on substances; since they were not there initially, they could hardly be called prima or the principles of all things. See J. B. Van Helmont, “Tria prima chymicorum principia, neque eorundem essentias de morborum exercitu esse,” in Ortus medicinae (Amsterdam: Elzevier, 1648), 398–412.

42 For the evolution of Van Helmont’s take on Paracelsian doctrines, see A. Clericuzio, “From van Helmont to Boyle: A Study of the Transmission of Helmontian Chemical and Medical Theories in Seventeenth-Century England,” British Journal for the History of Science 26, no. 3 (1993): 303–34 (on 306–14).

43 Antonio Clericuzio contends that Van Helmont should not be viewed as a corpuscularian: Antonio Clericuzio, Elements, Principles and Corpuscles: A Study of Atomism and Chemistry in the Seventeenth Century (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2000), 56–61. In this contention, Clericuzio is at odds with Kurd Lasswitz and William Newman, see Kurd Lasswitz, Geschichte der Atomistik vom Mittelalter bis Newton, 2 vols. (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1984) and William Newman, Gehennical Fire. The Lives of George Starkey: An American Alchemist in the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994). Marina Paola Banchetti–Robinio argues that Van Helmont held both a vitalistic and a non–vitalistic corpuscularianism, see Marina Paola Banchetti–Robinio, “Van Helmont’s Hybrid Ontology and its Influence on the Chemical Interpretation of Spirit and Ferment,” Foundations of Chemistry 18 (2016): 103–12. At any rate, Van Helmont did not approach empirical phenomena in terms of mechanical philosophy.

44 Walter Pagel, Joan Baptista Van Helmont: Reformer of Science and Medicine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 96–102.

45 That the archeus was seen “as a ‘cosmic force’ related to the generation of everything, or as a kind of spirit acting like a physician or alchemist within bodies” is recalled by Paulo Alves Porto, “Michael Sendivogius on Nitre and the Preparation of the Philosophers’ Stone,” Ambix 48 (2001): 1–16.

46 C. Lüthy and E. Nicoli, “Atoms, Corpuscles, and Minima in the Renaissance: An Overview,” in Lüthy and Nicoli, Atoms, Corpuscles and Minima, 1–32 (on 2).

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Maria Fiammetta Iovine

Maria Fiammetta Iovine is postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for the History of Philosophy and Science of Radboud University Nijmegen (The Netherlands). She holds a Rubicon Grant 2023–2025 from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) to study the Roman academic environment of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, at the intersection of literature, alchemy, and modern science. Email: [email protected]