Background
Adam of Bodenstein was born in 1528 in Kemberg near Wittenberg in Germany. His father, Andreas Rudolph Bodenstein von Karlstadt, was a prominent theologian and early Protestant opponent of Martin Luther.
From a famous alchemical work called the Rosary of the Philosopher’s, or Rosarium Philosophorum, which features 20 woodcut illustrations. A green lion eating the sun, which could be taken as meaning it is a substance which absorbs gold, indeed the translation says as “Of Our Mercury which is the Green Lion Devouring the Sun”. There is also the text: “I am the true green and Golden Lion without cares, In me all the secrets of the Philosophers are hidden.”
Johannes Oporinus - Image: Johannes Oporinus mark 3 BEIC.
Old University Basel.
Inauguration ceremony of the University of Basel, 1460.
The University of Ferrara has been founded in 1391.
The University of Ferrara has been founded in 1391, and it represents the City of Ferrara itsel.
Metamorphosis: Doctoris Theophrasti von Hohenheim, 1572.
Paracelsus
medicine alchemy natural history
Adam of Bodenstein was born in 1528 in Kemberg near Wittenberg in Germany. His father, Andreas Rudolph Bodenstein von Karlstadt, was a prominent theologian and early Protestant opponent of Martin Luther.
Adam obtained his baccalaureate at the local university in Basel in 1546 and MA degree in 1548, then continued his studies in Freiburg, Leipzig, Mainz, and Ferrara, Italy, where he received his doctorate in medicine in 1550.
After taking his medical degree in Italy, Adam von Bodenstein stayed in Vienna (1551), where he remained at least until 1559, in the service of Count Palatinate Ottheinrich (1502–1559; elector since 1556), a sovereign favorably disposed toward alchemical Paracelsianism. He appointed Bodenstein in 1553 to the position of “servant by order of the house” (not to the position of “court physician” or “personal physician” and “colleague” of Thomas Erastus), and “admonished” him several times around 1556 to read Paracelsus.
In part because of certain successful therapies with Paracelsian medicine in Basel (1556), Bodenstein became, about this time, receptive to the medicina nova of Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim (Paracelsus). Whether he was already disseminating “Paracelsian thinking and writings” in the “1550s” remains uncertain; there are no testimonies or proofs of documents. However, undoubtedly Bodenstein’s “Paracelsian turn” combined with an orientation toward alchemia transmutatoria metallorum(transmutational alchemy).
Encouraged by an itinerant alchemist (possibly Denis Zecaire) and two friends from Basel, the councillor of the margrave Ludwig Wolfgang of Habsburg and the university mathematician Johannes Acronius. Bodenstein made himself out to be an expert on the philosopher’s stone (1559–1560) and published Paracelsian writings from 1560 until his death.
Bodenstein was a professed follower of John Calvin and Théodore de Bèze (Geneva); he participated in religious-confessional controversies in Basel and accused Sebastian Castellio (1515–1563) of heresy (“Pelagianism”) and of a “libertinism” dangerous to youth (1563). At about the same time, Bodenstein’s editions of Paracelsus brought him into serious conflict with the Basel-based Consilium Facultatis Medicae (Council of the Faculty of Medicine), to which he had belonged since November 1558. Because he was apparently adhering to Hohenheim’s “false doctrines,” on 27 January 1564 Bodenstein was excluded from the university faculty and the consilium owing to the decisive influence exerted by Theodor Zwinger (1533–1588). The claim that Bodenstein had been teaching “iatrochemistry at the University of Basel” lacks any firm basis.
By the 1560s many members of the res publica medica viewed Bodenstein as a leading figure of the Theophrastians that were gradually forming at the time. He combined his medical practice with the preparation of iatrochemical medications and spent time on the laboratory-based production of gold (around 1570 in collaboration with Pierre de Grantrye, the French royal envoy in Rhaetia), but he first devoted himself to an extensive publishing effort relating to Paracelsian writings.
Bodenstein was among the well-known personalities of early modern Basel. The number of his dedications to secular grandees (including Emperor Maximilian II, Arch-duke Ferdinand II, and Cosimo de’ Medici) and members of the urban elites - though not to the representatives of the humanistic educational elites at postsecondary schools - testify to Bodenstein’s wide-ranging network of connections extending beyond the German-speaking cultural area as far as Italy and France.
In the course of both his pro-Paracelsian publishing offensive and his latro-chemical practice, Bodenstein supported such famous Paracelsians as Michael Toxites, Gerhard Dorn, and Georg Forberger, as well as Samuel Schlegel, the personal physician of Georg Friedrich, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ans-bach, and other medical practitioners.
Adam von Bodenstein died in 1577 of the plague in Basel.
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Bodenstein was a professed follower of John Calvin and Théodore de Bèze (Geneva); he participated in religious-confessional controversies in Basel.
Adam participated with other scholars of his time, among whom were Michael Toxites, Adam Schröter, George Forberger, Balthasar Fliiter, and Gerard Dorn, in the translation, editing and publication of works by Paracelsus still in manuscript. He preceded these editions with prefatory remarks of his own. His chief contemporary rival in the interpretation of Paracelsus was Leo Suavus (Jacques Gohory).
In close association with Paracelsus’ special predilection for the use of metallic compounds, Adam developed an interest in minerals, particularly in the traditional alchemical process of transmuting baser metals into gold. In the Epistola addressed to the Fuggers, he related the circumstances of the change in his opinion of alchemy from one of scorn and contempt for it as a suspect art and for those who wrote on it as evil men, to a belief in the verity of alchemy and of the philosophers’ stone. This change he attributed to his discovery of the famous alchemical tract, the Rosarium, of Arnald of Villanova. On reading that work and taking cognizance of the author’s orderly procedure and the presentation of the variety of theories, persons, and scientific paraphernalia involved in the art of alchemy, Adam was convinced that the contentions of the alchemists were valid and that the transmutation of baser metals into gold was possible.
He strongly affirmed this conviction in the Isagoge, or introduction to Arnald of Villanova’s Rosarium, which he paraphrased or edited. Adam of Bodenstein went on to expound the traditional views set forth by Arnald that mercury (quicksilver) is the primary matter of metallic bodies and that sulfur and mercury, the constituents of gold, are found in the viscera of the earth. Hence, since art follows nature, one may learn to discern the causes of the transmutation of sulfur and mercury into gold by a close observation of the process in nature.
Besides the editions of Paracelsus’ works and the introduction to the paraphrase or edition of Arnald of Villanova’s Rosarium, Adam is credited with the composition of other tracts. His chief biographer, Melchior Adam, ascribed to him further tracts entitled De podagra (“On Gout”) and De herbis duodecim zodiaci signis dicatis (“On the Relation of Herbs to the Twelve Signs of the Zodiac”). Furthermore, the noted Swiss naturalist Conrad Gesner, who was Adam of Bodenstein’s contemporary, reported that he had learned about salmon from Adam.
On the whole, Adam of Bodenstein’s works contain little that is novel. Rather, as Lynn Thorndike pointed out, they demonstrate the strength of tradition in both medicine and alchemy in the sixteenth century. They do, however, exemplify the proclivity of the scholars of the time to carry on an active correspondence by means of which they exchanged views and the results of their scientific activities and discoveries.
Quotes from others about the person
After Bodenstein’s death, Theodor Zwinger (then no longer an opponent but a sponsor of the Paracelsians) formulated a highly appreciative epitaph for his fellow traveler: “Adamus a Bodenstein, Theophrasti Paracelsi ut primus sic fidus scitusque et opere et ore interpres, palmam victoriae suae regi triumphanti oblaturus” (Adam of Bodenstein, about to offer the palm of his victory to the triumphant king, as the first and so faithful and wise interpreter of Theophrastus Paracelsus, both in deed and in speech.)
In 1547 Bodenstein married Esther Wyss, who died in Basel in 1564. One year later he married Maria Jakobea Schenck zu Schweinsberg, who died in 1618 at Sinnershausen near Meiningen.