Treating Paracelsianism as a set of ideas or as an intellectual tradition in some way linked to the thinking of Paracelsus presupposes a nonexistent conformity of opinion about what those ideas actually are and about the extent to which Paracelsus himself can be considered the legitimate author of them. Recent commentators have observed the frequency with which Paracelsus expropriated notions found in earlier authors and have discerned both medieval and Renaissance traditions represented in "Paracelsian" texts. Moreover, problems abound in identifying later texts that claim to make use of Paracelsus's medical, cosmological, and chemical ideas with what is actually contained in his own writings. Some indeed did invoke Paracelsus as a forerunner, especially in applying chemical principles to medicine and in turning away from ancient humoral pathology, but it was not necessary to do so since traditions of chemical medicine and even reference to the cosmological tria prima of Sulphur, Salt, and Mercury existed as well within other contexts, including traditional alchemy as well as ancient and Arabic medicine. Already at the beginning of the 17th century the German physician, chemist and gymnasium director, Andreas Libavius (c. 1550-1616) was able to make a crucial distinction, distinguishing between the writings of Paracelsus himself and those texts com15osed by a group which he preferred to label "Neoparacelsians".

Discrimination in all the occult disciplines is important for anyone who would wish to grasp the historical meaning of terms. Suitably one historian (Stephen Pumfrey) has taken note of a split in historical tendencies between those who attach the term Paracelsian to a matrix of core doctrines and those who individualize commitments, preferring qualifications such as "moderate" or "semiparacelsian" to designate writers who retain the more practical parts of Paracelsus's medical/chemical philosophy while eliminating traces of n' magic or mysticism. Yet, even here, an increasing number of scholars recognize that to separate theory and practice, or to label all those as Paracelsians who align chemistry with medicine, is to build the foundations of a definition upon historical quicksand. Samuel Johnson noted that the writers of dictionaries were required 'to remove rubbish ... from the paths of learning', and with this in mind it is important to acknowledge that, apart from being a category of historical convenience, Paracelsianism possessed a local meaning that was intended as a term of abuse. According to this meaning, the label "Paracelsian" functioned to describe a category of otherness - one that was forged by antagonists anxious about the loss of control over traditional intellectual and linguistic standards, particularly in medicine and philosophy, and who feared the dismantling of trusted coordinates of knowledge. Paracelsianism, in this sense, represented a subversive natural philosophy and medical cosmology in which the human being, viewed as a condensation of the macrocosmos, could both know and operate upon the natural world by recognizing the signatures and -, correspondences of creation. The result was a view of nature alive with magical forces and a therapeutic system dependent upon their use. Each individual, Paracelsus thought, comprised within him/herself all existence. Each was a synthesis of physical body, immortal soul, and sidereal, or astral spirit. For some "Paracelsians" such an arrangement meant that the powers and virtues operating in the world at large were also at work within the human body. These were vital forces, penetrating each thing in nature and making them part of a universalliving structure. To practice medicine one had, therefore, to comprehend the structure and operations of the greater world in order to understand the vital functions of the body. Paracelsianism, then, stood for a specific type of cognition viewed by some as part of the larger episteme of magic and the occult.

Paracelsus considered nature as Magierin and- also thought of the human being as Magier, or "magus". Thus philosophical experience worked in harmony with nature. On the one hand, nature broadcast her secret messages in signs which the magician/physician could learn to read through the study of human disciplines like astronomy, alchemy, medicine, philosophy, physiognomy, and chiromancy, and which, guided by the light of nature, allowed the doctor to recognize individual illnesses as well as specific cures. In addition, nature also impressed upon things a heavenly power which the magus could pull to himself and even transfer to the benefit of those whose constitutions were weak or who had fallen ill.

Two works of the German physician Oswald Croll (ca. I560-I609), the "admonitory preface" to his Basilica Chymica (I 609) and a sometimes accompanying treatise on the doctrine of signs, reflect especially well aspects of the magical universe linked to Paracelsus. Even though the two tracts no longer escorted later editions of the Basilica, observers like Libavius remained mindful of their magical presence. Indeed, a review of the preface to Croll's book unlocked for Libavius several features of Croll's magical thinking which he considered intertwined with Paracelsian philosophy and epistemologically dangerous. According to Croll, one could not learn medicine simply by reading books since only nature could truly instruct the physician. In that regard, it was necessary for the physician to know the internal, invisible or astral structures of things in the greater world and to understand how these related to the organization of the body. Intellectual discovery followed thus not by interpreting the books of human hands, nor from accumulated experience or structured reasoning, but in reading the "book" of nature and by experiencing the divine. If, however personal inspiration satisfied for cognitive innovation, Libavius wondered, how could one avoid a multitude of opinions being expressed as a result of personal fantasy. 'Take away teachers and books. and allow anyone to philosophize on his own [and; you will have a lovely philosophy indeed'. Paracelsianism, from this point of view, meant something diabolical. 'This very thing moreover is one of the devil's enterprises, so that he may either abolish or pervert every system of learning, and he himself may rule at his own pleasure'. All this was enough for Libavius to place "Paracelsians" into the ranks of 'Pyrrhonists, Sceptics, Heraclitus, Plato and their like', who considered that man was the measure of everything.

Thus Paracelsianism, like early Platonism, and other mystical strategies which coalesced realm, of matter, spirit, and soul into a single divine unity. became yet another magical tradition which reified the figurative and transmuted analogies into expressions of identity. Like them, it blended spirit and matter, mixing the sacred and the profane. For Aristotelians there was certainly much to complain about, not the least being the disarray brought by the medley of spiritual, magical, and empirical conviction to the long standing symmetry of traditional disciplines. Accordingly Paracelsianism commanded a strange place in the intellectual geography of the 16th and 17th centuries. It came into existence as a new, and dangerous continent, reports of which drew attention to native habits which ignored Aristotelian customs and confused theological, natural philosophical, metaphysical, and empirical approaches to knowledge - all of which posed a presumed threat to other knowledge habitats and to their established religious and political hierarchies.

The problem was that, especially upon the globe of medicine, the inhabitants of the land of Paracelsus, i.e. those who were supposed to practice Paracelsianism, were often reported as having been seen in other locations. Libavius, tried to deal with the problem by constructing a new cartography drawing lines around different areas of medical custom and commitment. Boundaries were easy to draw around those who followed the teachings of Hippocrates and Galen. These he called dogmatists. Only slightly less precise were the lines delineating a realm of "chymiatrists", i.e. those who added to ancient method chemical pharmaceuticals prepared by means of alchemy. Here had resided earlier figures like Avicenna, Mesue, Rhases, and Bulcasis, who were followed by more recent inhabitants, among them Albert, Arnold, Llull, and Ulstadius. There were troubles in the land of the chymiatrists, however, that required, out of regard for ethnic sensitivity, new lines to be drawn and new names to be created. For some chymiatrists had accommodated the chemical discipline to ancient teachings in such a way as to disclose Galenic principles in terms of chemistry or by reference to the macrocosm. These were to be called "parabolici" and "hermetici", or even "natural chymiatri". But there were others whom Libavius labeled "sophistici" who had long mixed sophistic opinion with Hippocratic references and who thereby had occasioned much disorder throughout the map. The third empire was that of the Paracelsians. However, this too needed to be divided into two parts. For, he says, when novelty became pleasing it enticed the soul to very strange habits so that some began to embrace impious magic. Some rejected alchemy. All rejected Aristotle and Plato while replacing these with a type of philosophy that Paracelsus called "sagax" and which embraced magic - not the natural sort, but the type linked to the black arts, necromancy, vain ---> astrology, geomancy, and the art of signs.

Native meaning, as far as Paracelsianism was concerned, was largely constructed of contemptuous components. According to Libavius, to want to be a Paracelsian was 1) to want to injure all the arts, 2) to despise all the ancients and moderns, 3) to force upon people promises for a long life and for curing incurable diseases, 4) to cure by chance or, if by art, in no other way than that of Galenic doctors, 5) to recommend magic along with kabbalah [mystical Jewish Influences] and to practice magic through the methods of signs, words, and characters, 6) to attack Galen's medicine with reproach, 7) to declare oneself the monarch of arcana and medicine, and 8) to make oneself an accomplice in shameful deeds. "Paracelsian", like "Anabaptist", was a useful category of condemnation - so useful that even Libavius himself was accused of Paracelsian enthusiasm, in this case because he advocated separating pure from impure in making chemical medicines. But simply commending efficacious essences separated from useless dregs did not, Libavius noted, make one a Paracelsian. If it did, he explained, one would have to include Avicenna, Bulcasis, and even some of the doctors at the arch Galenic school of medicine in Paris within that company.

The continent of chymiatria may have drifted apart from the region of Paracelsianism on Libavius's globe, but at the University of Paris many continued to think that the two were inseparable. Foremost among them was the Galenist physician and censor of the medical faculty, Jean Riolan (the elder) (1539-1606). Riolan's vision countenanced a narrow horizon. For him, even chymiatria was unnecessary to good medicine. Nevertheless, he permitted freedom of choice for those who were curious about chemical remedies and zealous for novelty, just as long as such physicians made use of pharmacists to prepare their new medicines. New remedies, in themselves, did not require an altered medical philosophy. However Riolan saw in Paracelsianism, aside from philosophical chaos, a threat to established social roles. At Paris, surgery and pharmacy were arts subaltern to the "science" of medicine. If a doctor came by an arcane remedy, preparing the medicine at home did not detract from Il1edical decorum. But his house, Riolan noted, should never become a pharmacopolium where remedies were sold. Social and physical distance from prepared medicines was, after all, what protected those who prescribed them. The point is the term Paracelsian to a matrix of core doctrines and those who individualize commitments, preferring qualifications such as "moderate" or "semiparacelsian" to designate writers who retain the more practical parts of Paracelsus's medical/chemical philosophy while eliminating traces of -+ magic or"' mysticism. Yet, even here, an increasing number of scholars recognize that to separate theory and practice, or to label all those as Paracelsians who align chemistry with medicine, is to build the foundations of a definition upon historical quicksand. Samuel Johnson noted that the writers of dictionaries were required 'to remove rubbish ... from the paths of learning', and with this in mind it is important to acknowledge that, apart from being a category of historical convenience, Paracelsianism possessed a local meaning that was intended as a term of abuse. According to this meaning, the label "Paracelsian" functioned to describe a category of otherness - one that was forged by antagonists anxious about the loss of control over traditional intellectual and linguistic standards, particularly in medicine and philosophy, and who feared the dismantling of trusted coordinates of knowledge. Paracelsianism, in this sense, represented a subversive natural philosophy and medical cosmology in which the human being, viewed as a condensation of the macrocosm os, could both know and operate upon the natural world by recognizing the signatures and correspondences of creation. The result was a view of nature alive with magical forces and a therapeutic system dependent upon their use. Each individual, Paracelsus thought, comprised within him/herself all existence. Each was a synthesis of physical body, immortal soul, and sidereal, or astral spirit. For some "Paracelsians" such an arrangement meant that the powers and virtues operating in the world at large were also at work within the human body. These were vital forces, penetrating each thing in nature and making them part of a universalliving structure. To practice medicine one had, therefore, to comprehend the structure and operations of the greater world in order to understand the vital functions of the body. Paracelsianism, then, stood for a specific type of cognition viewed by some as part of the larger episteme of magic and the occult.

Paracelsus considered nature as Magierin and also thought of the human being as Magier, or "magus". Thus philosophical experience worked in harmony with nature. On the one hand, nature broadcast her secret messages in signs which the magician/physician could learn to read through the study of human disciplines like astronomy, alchemy, medicine, philosophy, physiognomy, and chiromancy, and which, guided by the light of nature, allowed the doctor to recognize individual illnesses as well as specific cures. In addition, nature also impressed upon things a heavenly power which the magus could pull to himself and even transfer to the benefit of those whose constitutions were weak or who had fallen ill.

Two works of the German physician Oswald Croll (ca. 1560-1609), the "admonitory preface" to his Basilica Chymica (1609) and a sometimes accompanying treatise on the doctrine of signs, reflect especially well aspects of the magical universe linked to Paracelsus. Even though the two tracts no longer escorted later editions of the Basilica, observers like Libavius remained mindful of their magical presence. Indeed, a review of the preface to Croll's book unlocked for Libavius several features of Croll's magical thinking which he considered intertwined with Paracelsian philosophy and epistemologically dangerous. According to Croll, one could not learn medicine simply by reading books since only nature could truly instruct the physician. In that regard, it was necessary for the physician to know the internal, invisible or astral structures of things in the greater world and to understand how these related to the organization of the body. Intellectual discovery followed thus not by interpreting the books of human hands, nor from accumulated experience or structured reasoning, but in reading the "book" of nature and by experiencing the divine. If, however, personal inspiration satisfied for cognitive innovation, Libavius wondered, how could one avoid a multitude of opinions being expressed as a result of personal fantasy. 'Take away teachers and books, and allow anyone to philosophize on his own [and] you will have a lovely philosophy indeed'. Paracelsianism, from this point of view, meant something diabolical. 'This very thing moreover is one of the devil's enterprises, so that he may either abolish or pervert every system of learning, and he himself may rule at his own pleasure'. All this was enough for Libavius to place "Paracelsians" into the ranks of 'Pyrrhonists, Sceptics, Heraclitus, Plato and their like', who considered that man was the measure of everything.

Thus Paracelsianism, like early Platonism, and other mystical strategies which coalesced realms of matter, spirit, and soul into a single divine unity, became yet another magical tradition which reified the figurative and transmuted analogies into expressions of identity. Like them, it blended spirit and matter, mixing the sacred and the profane. For Aristotelians there was certainly much to complain about, not the least being the disarray brought by the medley of spiritual, magical, and empirical conviction to the long standing symmetry of traditional disciplines. Accordingly Paracelsianism commanded a strange place in the intellectual geography of the 16th and 17th centuries. It came into existence as a new, and dangerous continent, reports of which drew attention to native habits which ignored Aristotelian customs and confused theological, natural philosophical, metaphysical, and empirical approaches to knowledge - all of which posed a presumed threat to other knowledge habitats and to their established religious and political hierarchies.

The problem was that, especially upon the globe of medicine, the inhabitants of the land of Paracelsus, i.e. those who were supposed to practice Paracelsianism, were often reported as having been seen in other locations. Libavius, tried to deal with the problem by constructing a new cartography drawing lines around different areas of medical custom and commitment. Boundaries were easy to draw around those who followed the teachings of Hippocrates and Galen. These he called dogmatists. Only slightly less precise were the lines delineating a realm of "chymiatrists", i.e. those who added to ancient method chemical pharmaceuticals prepared by means of alchemy. Here had resided earlier figures like ... Avicenna, Mesue, Rhases, and Bulcasis, who were followed by more recent inhabitants, among them Albert, Arnold, -+ Llull, and Ulstadius. There were troubles in the land of the chymiatrists, however, that required, out of regard for ethnic sensitivity, new lines to be drawn and new names to be created. For some chymiatrists had accommodated the chemical discipline to ancient teachings in such a way as to disclose Galenic principles in terms of chemistry or by reference to the macrocosm. These were to be called "parabolici" and "hermetici", or even "natural chymiatri". But there were others whom Libavius labeled "sophistici" who had long mixed sophistic opinion with Hippocratic references and who thereby had occasioned much disorder throughout the map. The third empire was that of the Paracelsians. However, this too needed to be divided into two parts. For, he says, when novelty became pleasing it enticed the soul to very strange habits so that some began to embrace impious magic. Some rejected alchemy. All rejected Aristotle and Plato while replacing these with a type of philosophy that Paracelsus called "sagax" and which embraced magic - not the natural sort, but the type linked to the black arts, necromancy, vain > astrology, geomancy, and the art of signs.

Native meaning, as far as Paracelsianism was concerned, was largely constructed of contemptuous components. According to Libavius, to want to be a Paracelsian was 1) to want to injure all the arts, 2) to despise all the ancients and moderns, 3) to force upon people promises for a long life and for curing incurable diseases, 4) to cure by chance or, if by art, in no other way than that of Galenic doctors, 5) to recommend magic along with kabbalah [-+ Jewish Influences] and to practice magic through the methods of signs, words, and characters, 6) to attack Galen's medicine with reproach, 7) to declare oneself the monarch of arcana and medicine, and 8) to make oneself an accomplice in shameful deeds. "Paracelsian", like "Ana ba ptist", was a useful category of condemnation - so useful that even Libavius himself was accused of Paracelsian enthusiasm, in this case because he advocated separating pure from impure in making chemical medicines. But simply commending efficacious essences separated from useless dregs did not, Libavius noted, make one a Paracelsian. If it did, he explained, one would have to include Avicenna, Bulcasis, and even some of the doctors at the arch Galenic school of medicine in Paris within that company.

The continent of chymiatria may have drifted apart from the region of Paracelsianism on Libavius's globe, but at the University of Paris many continued to think that the two were inseparable. Foremost among them was the Galenist physician and censor of the medical faculty, Jean Riolan (the elder) (1539-1606). Riolan's vision countenanced a narrow horizon. For him, even chymiatria was unnecessary to good medicine. Nevertheless, he permitted freedom of choice for those who were curious about chemical remedies and zealous for novelty, just as long as such physicians made use of pharmacists to prepare their new medicines. New remedies, in themselves, did not require an altered medical philosophy. However Riolan saw in Paracelsianism, aside from philosophical chaos, a threat to established social roles. At Paris, surgery and pharmacy were arts subaltern to the "science" of medicine. If a doctor came by an arcane remedy, preparing ,.he medicine at home did not detract from medical decorum. But his house, Riolan noted, should never become a pharmacopolium where remedies were sold. Social and physical distance from prepared medicines was, after all, what protected those who prescribed them. The point is that, for Riolan, one element of the definition of Paracelsianism was social. Reversing professional tradition, Paracelsian physicians, he determined, made medicines themselves and sold these medicaments from their own shops.

Something that might be called Paracelsianism, then, involved the perception of a break with the social, textual, educational and linguistic medical continuum. Libavius himself noted that after claiming for himself the monarchy of chemistry, Paracelsus had decreed that he should found a new alchemy as well as a new medicine. In doing so, however, he opened doors to fashioning cures by all sorts of methods and to proclaiming all manner of chemical and medical arcana. In this case, Paracelsianism became coupled with an enthusiasm for novelty, and once again Libavius observed that it had thus come about that hardly anyone agreed with anyone else, each person wishing to bring forth something new. By this reasoning Paracelsianism meant intellectual fraud since it allowed a person to agree with no one, while, at the same time, granting him license to contradict everyone else and to condemn all the writings, sayings, and deeds of others.

Intellectual novelty, of course, occasioned a wide variety of sometimes contrasting opinions. Those who might willingly have been attracted to a Paracelsian camp comprised a diverse group and attitudes varied not only over the years but also from region to region. Reactions also differed in Germany, England, France, Italy, and other places depending upon local medical traditions, religious histories, institutional authorities, and the professional rights and privileges demanded by doctors and apothecaries. Such diversity produced what has been called paracelsismes particuliers, and paying attention to such particular expressions of Paracelsianism is the most judicious way to gain insight into the local meanings of the term itself. Early editors of Paracelsus's works helped establish particular flavors for Paracelsian ideas. The published collections of Johann Huser (c. 1545c. r600) and Michael Toxites (c. 1SI5-1581) fueled early Paracelsian fervor by combining elements of medical reform with what Joachim Telle has called "transconfessional theo-alchemy". --. Gerard Dorn's (c. 1530-1584) edition of Paracelsian texts went further and more firmly established Parcelsus within the cultural context of medieval· and Renaissance alchemical writers. In France, Paracelsian medical philosophy appeared as a result of new texts and old wars. The texts were those of two institutional figures, the translator of Galen and teacher of Andreas Vesalius, Johannes Guintherius von Andernach (ca. 1497-1574) and the Danish university professor, natural philosopher, and physician, Petrus Severinus (1540-1602). Severinus's text, the Idea Medicinae (1571), sought to place itself within the scholarly tradition of learned medicine by connecting the doctrines of Paracelsus with those of Hippocrates and Galen. There emerged a more systematic and less eccentric presentation of Paracelsian notions which succeeded so well in altering the complexion of Paracelsus that even the well known anti-Paracelsian physician and theologian Thomas Erastus (1524-1583), could commend the text to his readers. In Severinus's hands Paracelsianism became eclectic and more obviously neoplatonic, and it was this sort of interpretation that affected the thinking. of other notable Paracelsians such as the professor of medicine at Basle, Theodore Zwinger, and the English physician, Thomas Moffett (1553-1604).

For his part, Andernach emphasized a more practical approach to Paracelsian therapeutics. As a prominent medical humanist, a translator of Galen, and, with experience as a professor of medicine at Paris, he prepared, in 1571, an enormous text concerning the old and new medicine strongly supportive of chemical medicines. In other places he argued that the chemical principles Sulphur, Salt, and Mercury could be considered to differ only slightly from ancient elements and judged that chemical procedures could transform poisonous matter into wholesome substances. A further impulse toward Paracelsian and chemical medicines came about as a result of a famous commentary on the works of Dioscorides written by Pietro Andrea Matthioli (1500-1577). The text was published in Latin in 1544 and a French translation appeared in 1561. The book included reference to the use of stones, minerals, and metals, and explained how antimony, which had been described by Paracelsus, could be rendered into an effective purgative. At Paris the debate over the internal use of antimony inspired attacks upon suspected followers of Paracelsus, and the fear of clandestine support for Paracelsian ideas within the university there led to the prompt condemnation of an early advocate of antimony, Roch le Baillif (fl. 1578-1580). It also opened up further debate about the rights of physicians who were not educated at Paris to practice in the city.

Just as Paracelsianism represented for some a radical break with medical authority, it stood for others as an attack upon the intellectual jurisdiction of Aristotelian philosophy, and especially Aristotelian logic. The logical reforms of Peter Ramus (15 I 5 - 1572) sometimes coha bited with Paracel sian medical philosophy. In his Basi/ea, an oration addressed to the city of Basel in I570, Ramus exclaimed that 'this man [Paracelsus] has forced his way so deeply into the innermost parts of nature ... that one could say that with Theophrastus medicine has been born for the first time and is perfected'. In Ramus, logic combined with politics and religion and, as the chemical physicians of Henri IV and Louis XIII would later demonstrate, Paracelsianism, in the guise of practical chemical! medical procedures, would find a source of both social legitimation and financial encouragement within the political institutions of Europe, particularly within the patronage systems linked to royal, imperial, and princely courts.

Paracelsus was certainly a leading social, political, and religious dissident. Paracelsianism, however, became in part associated with aristocratic circles. Paracelsian physicians gained court appointments and the publication of Paracelsian texts was made possible in large part by means of court patronage. One of the first publishers of Paracelsus's works, Adam von Bodenstein, was court physician to the German Duke of Neuburg, who later became Elector of the Palatinate, Ottheinrich. The early definitive collection of Paracelsus's medical and natural philosophical texts brought together by Johann Huser and Paul Link began to appear at Basle in 1589 with the financial support of the Archbishop of Cologne. Libavius noticed the court connection and asked at one point, 'If you are real doctors and do not flee from the light [of wisdom], why do you not teach in the academies? You are occupied at courts where I believe you accomplish more by flattery than by speaking the truth, and advance more by begging than by curing'. In France the political success of Huguenot aspirations at the end of a long period of civil war contributed to a more open, and court supported, Paracelsian presence. Le Baillif was himself a physician in ordinary to the French king Henri III, but other chemical physicians admitting various aspects of a Paracelsian medical philosophy appeared in Paris several years later, arriving there in the company, and with the protection, of the Huguenot turned Catholic, Henry of Navarre. Prominent among this new medical entourage were Jean Ribit (ca. I57I-I605), Theodore Turquet de la Mayerne (I573-I655), and Joseph Duchesne (ca. 1544-1609), also called Quercetanus. Although each stirred controversy in his own right, the writings of Duchesne, which expressed a particular variety of Paracelsian thinking, ushered in an intense period of debate.

Duchesne's positions were well known for over a quarter century before the debate about his books began at Paris. In answer to Jacques Aubert in a debate about chemical medicines and the origins of metals, Duchesne admitted that the ignorance and faults of some had caused the "chymici" to fall into disrepute, but that this was no reason to condemn the entire art by which God had revealed so many secrets of nature and so many preparations of herbs, animals and minerals. As concerned Paracelsus, Duchesne did not propose to acknowledge his "patronage of theology" and neither did he agree with him in all other matters. Nevertheless, he confessed, 'I dare to say and uphold that that man teaches many things pertaining to medicine almost divinely, which a grateful posterity can never sufficiently praise and admire'. Much of the dispute with Aubert centered on a defense of Aristotle's explanation of the origins of metals against Aubert's criticisms; but it also involved Duchesne in a defense of alchemy and, more specifically, in an apology for metallic transmutation.

Duchesne's Paracelsianism would be attacked and defended at Paris and a good indication of the confusion surrounding the issue of definition can be found in the fact that Libavius, who wished to defend the place of alchemy in medicine, ultimately joined the debate as a Duchesne supporter. Regardless of how the intervention was seen by others, especially by Riolan who viewed the intrusion as a sign that Libavius had joined the Paracelsian faction, Libavius remained no friend of Paracelsus. He could, however, stand with other chemical physicians at Paris, and commented about another participant in the dispute, the Paracelsian Turquet de la Mayerne, that Mayerne's dignity, like his own, was preserved, not by defending Duchesne, but by the sweat rendered in combining Hippocratic and chemical medicine and in picking out good remedies from Paracelsus's manure.

Medical chemists need not have been Paracelsians, unless, of course, it was convenient for their enemies to label them as such. In the case of another medical doctor named Nicolas Abraham de la Framboisier, the medical faculty at Paris during the reign of Louis XIII seems to have worried about Paracelsian leanings even though the physician himself rejected 'the sect of Paracelsus' and argued that he had derived all his chemical remedies froltt Galen and Hippocrates. Here the multidimensionality of Paracelsian ism gave credence to the barest suspicion. Since Paracelsians were aligned with Protestantism in France, the faculty of medicine was alert to the strategy which officiaIly rejected Paracelsus, no matter what one's private beliefs, while seeking advancement and favor from royal and ecclesiastical patrons. Definition became clouded by uncertainty as intellectual priorities themselves were obscured by the social and political facts of life.

Despite the problems in France, Duchesne and other French Paracelsians continued to play important roles in the interpretation and transmission of Paracelsianism. After leaving France Mayerne became chief physician to the English king, James I. Elsewhere in England, John Hester (died 1593) translated the tracts of Duchesne as well as others, promoting chemical preparations included in works by the Italian physician Leonardo Fioravanti (1518-1588) and the German Philip Herman. Another Englishman, a minister named Thomas Tymme (died 1620) also translated large sections of Duchesne's works, especially his discussions of Paracelsian cosmology, into English. Tymme, like R. Bostock, who defended Paracelsian principles and the macrocosm-microcosm analogy in a work of 1585, drew something spiritual from Paracelsus's works and found there as well an anthropology and natural philosophy removed from, and consequently not indebted to, ancient, heathen texts.

Depending upon one's point of intellectual origin, Paracelsian ism might mean chemical philosophy or even practical chemical medicine. However, another reading of Paracelsus, especially based upon Paracelsus's theological writings, inspired a far more mystical definition. This interpretation was especially convenient to religious radicals like -. Valentin Weigel (1533 - 1588) and his pseudo Weigelian imitators, as well as the early Rosicrucian enthusiast Adam Haslmayr. To Haslmayr, Rosencreutz and Paracelsus both had promised evangelical freedom to a future world and Haslmayr proclaimed accordingly a new religion, the Theophrastia Sancta, viewed as a kind of perennial religion practiced in occult circles until Paracelsus had publically proclaimed its meaning. The basis of the religion was the tria cabalistica prima, the three cabalistic principles of Bitten, Suchen, und Anklopfen [asking, seeking, and appealing] which Paracelsus had designated in the Philosophia Sagax as the means to all natural knowledge. The living word of God sealed within the human being was, on the basis of this theology, far more important that what was written in Scripture. In fact, without the human spirit to enliven them, the Bible itself was merely a collection of dead letters. To the external trappings of Christendom some advocated a renewed "church of the spirit", and it is just such a view of the real church which brokered between Weigel and Paracelsus a theological alliance.

The story of "Weigelian" theology is, in part, a Paracelsian legacy. As early as the 1 570S Weigel, the pastor of Zschopau in east Saxony, had composed treatises and sermons whose content could by no means be considered reflective of either Catholic or main line Protestant opinion. In the early 17th century several publishers busied themselves with the printing of "Weigelian" books. Some, however, were not actually written by Weigel and sorting out the genuine from the possibly apocryphal has become a primary task of Weigelian scholars ever since. Of those texts linked to Weigel, influences stemming from medieval mystical traditions and, after 1578, from Paracelsian natural philosophy predominated. Other "Weigelian" books had a more apocalyptic message, insisted upon inward knowledge, and conflated Paracelsus, kabbalah, and magic. Institutionalized Protestantism needed to make no distinction concerning authorship. It viewed all the writings as depending upon a theol-ogy of the inner word well situated to the subjective epistemologies of religious radicals.

In Paracelsus, Weigel seems to have encountered such notions as the light of nature and the light of grace and to have used them when fashioning his own apprehension of the process of human understanding. He also found in Paracelsus ideas of man as microcosm, produced from limus terrae, and depicted as the quinta essentia of creation. By contrasting a heavenly flesh, which is eternal, to an earthly mortal flesh, Weigel judged that the flesh of Christ was not that of Adam. The flesh of Christ, therefore, was not from the earth, not from the seed of man, but from heaven. Christ had a heavenly body born of Mary, a heavenly Eve. In Paracelsus's text Liber de Sancta Trinitate, which seems to have had an active life in manuscript, Paracelsus described how God was originally alone and without any beginning. Thus the divine separation into three persons was not eternal, and initially there was only one being, one divinity, one person. God remained alone until he wished to multiply and manifest himself, at which point there came into being three persons, three beings, three qualities and forms, all the while remaining, nonetheless, one God, one creator. Paracelsus also described how God separated a female form from himself, represented as a himmlische weib or frau gottes, which was understood not as a separate divinity, but thro~h whom God the Father produced the second person of the trinity. Embedded here, as well as in the Christologies of other religious writers like Melchior Hofmann (died 1543) and Caspar Schwenkfeld (died 1564), was a revolutionary and millennial conception of the church. By distancing Christ's flesh from human flesh, Weigel joined those who cast into doubt the possibility of reforming the old Adam. There had to be a new covenant in which the heart would replace the external Jerusalem as the dwelling place of God. To this end, Weigel recognized three stages of the world ending finally in the age of the Holy Spirit. '[Then] the outer will be brought into the inner. Man himself will be Jerusalem and the temple in which God dwells. Then one will have no need for ordained preachers or other teachers ... ' Such thinking was dangerous. At Marburg, in 1619, two teachers in the city's paedagogium named Homagius and Zimmermann, inspired in part by Weigel and Paracelsus's book concerning the trinity, tossed from their windows shredded copies of Greek and Latin lexica (among other books) claiming that one should also throw out academic degrees, logic, and the arts as well. No one, they contended, should any longer study Latin, but everyone should read the writings of Weigel and Paracelsus (Theophrastus). These authors had provided the key to scripture. And what was this key? It was that all of scripture was to be understood allegorically, and that the word of God was not to be found strictly in the Bible, but was to be derived from an inner spirit, an internal light. The Bible contained only "dead letters" which could only be comprehended through revelation. Thus, they believed, all those were repugnant who attempted to blow into such dead letters a living soul and who therefore only ended up believing what they wanted to believe.

Paracelsianism could be aligned with spiritualists like Schwenckfeld and Weigel, but it also has been shown to have been appealing to some taking part in the more orthodox theological debates surrounding the symbolic interpretation of the Eucharist. Views of Paracelsus in this regard seem linked to the Swiss reformation, especially to the thought of reformers like Bucer, Zwingli, and Oecolampadius. In this variety of Paracelsianism, it has been argued, Paracelsus became a kind of "Christian Magus" developing a knowledge of God through the study of nature, or as a combination of natural philosopher and religious thinker, gaining special revelation through grace. Nevertheless, Paracelsianism was never officially part of any reformation religion, but existed there, as in many other contexts, as a part of the heritage of neoplatonic and mystical Renaissance philosophy.

Aside from making chemistry relevant to medicine, other themes, philosophical, mystical, and religious, connected later writers to the works and thoughts of Paracelsus. One tradition connected Paracelsus not only to an explanation of disease as specific entities with specific etiologies, reject ing thereby the ancient doctrine of humors, but annexed Paracelsian notions to explications of physiological processes in the idiom of chemistry. This aspect of what later became known as iatrochemisty developed especially in the 17th century in the writings of Joan Baptista van Helmont (1579-1644), Franciscus de le Bot Sylvius (16141672), Raymond Vieussens (ca. 1635-1715) and many others. Expressing a natural philosophy in terms of vitalism and macrocosmic influences, and upholding chemical analogies related to the human being inevitably involved reference to Paracelsus, however. Many alchemical texts as well continued to enlist Paracelsus, and the tria prima, as influential antecedents to discussions of transmutation. In large part, however, Paracelsus lent himself to mystical cosmologies as one member of a lineage of magical savants aware of inner relationships and forever maneuvering between matter, spirit, and soul. The religious mystic and Philosophus Teutonicus, Jacob Boehme (1575-1624), combined Neoplatonic and Paracelsian themes in numerous prophetic and mystical writings. Currents of Christian theosophy and Naturphilosophie carried both Paracelsus and Boehme along for years thereafter. Both were influential in shaping the theistic philosophy of -+ Franz von Baader (17651841), who sought to combine realms of matter and spirit in opposition to strictly mechanical explanations of nature, and to post-Romantic writers like the poet-alchemist Alexander von Bernus (1880-1965), who insisted upon a spiritual dimension within the natural sciences, and -+ Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), who continued to describe the threefold nature of the human being in terms of body, soul, and spirit.

Lit.: Hugh Trevor-Roper, "The Paracelsian Movement", in: Renaissance Essays, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985, 149-199 + Allen Debus, The English Paracelsians, New York: F. Watts, J965 + idem, The Chemical Philosophy: Paracelsian Science and Medicine in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, New York: Science History Publications, 1977 + idem, The French Paracelsians: The Chemical Challenge to Medical and Scientific Tradition in Early Modem France, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991 + Giancarlo Zanier, "La Medicina Paracelsiana in ltalia: Aspetti di un'accoglienza particolare", Rivista di storia delia filosofia 4 (1985), 627-653 + Jole Shal¢lford, "Paracelsianism and Patronage in Early Modern Denmark", in: Bruce T. Moran (ed.), Patronage and Institutions, Rochester: Boydell, 1991, 85-110 + Major contributions to the subject by Stephen Pumfrey, Ole Grell, Carlos Gilly, Didier Kahn, Stephen Bamforth, Joachim Telle, Heinz Schott, Gundolf Keil, Wolf-Dieter Muller-Jahncke, Kurt Goldammer, Ute Gause, and Wilhelm Kuhlmann may be found among the individual articles in the following collections: Acta Paracelsica, NlUnchen, 1930-1932 • Brian Vickers (ed.), Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984 • Joachim Telle (ed.), Parerga Paracelsica: Paracelsus in Vergangenheit Imd Gegenwart, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1991 • Roland Edighoffer et al. (eds.), Paracelse et les siens (ARIES 19), Paris: La Table d'Emeraude, 1995 • Volker Zimmermann (ed.), Paracelsus: Das Werk - die Rezeption, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1995 • Ole Peter Grell (ed.), Paracelsus: The Man, his Reputation, His Ideas and Their Transformation, Leiden: E.]. Brill, 1998 • Heinz Schott and Ilana Zinguer (eds.), Paracelsus ulld seine internationale Rezeption in del' friihen Neuzeit: Beitriige zur Geschichte des Paracelsus, Leiden: E.]. Brill, 1998 • Allen Debus and Michael Walton (eds.), Reading the Book of Nature: The Other Side of the Scientific Revolution, Kirksville: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1998 • Wilhelm Klihlmann and Joachim Telle (eds.), Der Friihparacelsisnlus (Corpus Paracelsisticum, I), Tiibingen: Max Niemeyer, 2001.

 

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