Background
Bernard Trevisan was born in 1406, into a noble family in Padua, Republic of Venice (present-day Italy).
(This volume includes the following works: The Secret of t...)
This volume includes the following works: The Secret of the Liquor Alkahest by Eirenaeus Philalethes; The Practice of Lights, or an Excellent and Ancient Treatise on the Philosopher's Stone by an Anonymous Author; The First Metal: Which is the Minera of Mercury by Van-Helmont; Aurum Potabile or the Receit of Dr. Frank Antonie by Dr. Frank Antonie; A Treatise of Bernard Earl of Trevisan of the Philosopher's Stone by Bernard Earl of Trevisan; The Bosome Book of Sir. George Ripley Containing his Philosophical Accurtations in the Making of the Philosophers Mercury and Elixirs by Sir George Ripley; Speculum Alchymiae, the True Glass of Alchemy by Roger Bacon; The Oil of Sulphur Vive per Campanum by George Starkey; and The Tomb of Semiramis by HVD.
https://www.amazon.com/Alchemy-Collection-Collectanea-Chymica/dp/146646948X/?tag=2022091-20
2011
Bernard Trevisan was born in 1406, into a noble family in Padua, Republic of Venice (present-day Italy).
His father was a doctor of medicine, so it is probable that Trevisan received his initial training in science at home.
At the age of fourteen, Trevisan devoted himself to alchemy. He read the works of Eastern philosophers Gerber and Rhasis. Trevisan augmented his learning with the writings of Sacrobosco and Rupecissa. He engaged in a long course of reading and praying.
Trevisan began his career as an alchemist at the age of fourteen. He had his family’s permission, as they also desired to increase their wealth. He first worked with a monk of Cîteaux named Gotfridus Leurier. They attempted for eight years to fashion the Philosopher’s stone out of hen eggshells and egg yolk purified in horse manure.
Again, it could be two or even three people behind the works of Bernard Trevisan, his name first appears in manuscript texts of the fourteenth century; and the contents of all of these works fit well into fourteenth-century alchemical thought and practice, both in the nature of the alchemical doctrines expounded and in the authorities or authors cited.
For example, in a reply to Thomas of Bologna, physician to King Charles V of France, Trevisan maintained against Thomas the dominant fourteenth-century theory that gold is made solely from quicksilver or mercury, although the process might be hastened by the addition of a small amount of gold. Trevisan rejected the sulfur-mercury theory of the preceding century. He asserted that mercury contained within itself the four elements — that is, the air and fire of sulfur in addition to the earth and Water usually associated with mercury. All these elements, he reported, remain when the mercury turns to gold. He also rejected Thomas of Bologna’s association of the planets with the alchemical process.
Trevisan heard that Henry, a German priest, had succeeded in creating the philosophers’ stone. He went to Germany, accompanied by other alchemists. Henry claimed he would disclose all if they would supply a certain sum of money to procure the necessary tools and materials. After Henry proved fraud Trévisan decided to abandon his search. However, he visited Spain, Great Britain, Holland, and France, trying in each of these countries to learn more about creating the philosophers’ stone. Eventually, he went to Egypt, Persia, and Palestine and subsequently travelled in Greece. Baltics, Germany, Spain, France, Vienna, Turkey, and Cyprus, to find hints left by past alchemists
Trevisan then worked with minerals and natural salts using distillation and crystallization methods borrowed from Jābir ibn Hayyānand Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi. When these failed he turned to vegetable and animal material, finally using human blood and urine. He gradually sold his wealth to buy secrets and hints towards the stone, most often from swindlers.
Ultimately Trevisan found himself impoverished and was forced to sell his parental estates. He retired to the Island of Rhodes and met a priest who knew something of science. Trevisan proposed they should start fresh experiments together. The cleric agreed to help, so the pair borrowed a large sum of money to purchase the necessary paraphernalia. The two found some success.
Trevisan retired to the Island of Rhodes, still working on the Philosopher's stone until his death in 1490.
(This volume includes the following works: The Secret of t...)
2011Bernard Trevisan, in common with other alchemists of the fourteenth century, likened the production of the philosophers’ stone to human generation. In this process, he explained, the sun is the male and is hot and dry, the moon is the female and is cold and moist, and both are essential because nothing can be generated and brought to the light of existence without a male and a female. In the philosophers’ stone, however, is to be found everything that is required for the production of the stone. This is demonstrated by the fact that it is composed of both body and spirit or of fixed and volatile elements, which, although they do not appear to be so, are indeed one in substance, i.e., quicksilver.
Furthermore, to demonstrate or explain the alchemical process, Bernard utilized another symbol commonly found in the alchemical literature of the time. He likened the mercury of the philosophers to the philosophers’ egg, which contains in itself two natures in one substance, the white and the yellow, and from itself produces another — the chicken — which has life and the power of generation. Mercury, he held, similarly contains within itself two natures in the one body and from itself produces a whole that has body, soul, and spirit. Moreover, on the authority of Albertus Magnus, whom he had cited for the preceding exposition of the philosophers’ egg as one and many, Bernard likened this oneness of spirit, soul, and body to the Holy Trinity, who are One in God without diversity of substance. In his view, mercury, the egg, contains in itself everything required for the perfection of its own magisterium, without the addition of anything else and without any diminution of its own perfection. It has everything for the production of the chicken.