Background
Jean D'Espagnet was born in 1564 in Saint-Émilion, France. His father served as an ordinary doctor; his mother was the daughter of the King's secretary. His father is known to have treated Henry IV and the King of Navarre.
A scene of the inquisition of witches.
(Since its first publication in 1623, no alchemic tract ha...)
Since its first publication in 1623, no alchemic tract has been more widely read than The Hermeticum Arcanum, and no other has been so often reprinted, in Latin, German, French and English.
https://www.amazon.com/Hermetic-Arcanum-Jean-DEspagnet/dp/1603866159/?tag=2022091-20
1623
lawyer mathematician politician scientist alchemist antiquarian poet
Jean D'Espagnet was born in 1564 in Saint-Émilion, France. His father served as an ordinary doctor; his mother was the daughter of the King's secretary. His father is known to have treated Henry IV and the King of Navarre.
In 1590, D'Espagnet served as a lawyer in Bordeaux. In 1592, he was advised to the Grand Conseil de Paris.
In 1601 he was a president of the Bordeaux Parliament. In 1608 he left for the Court, when rumors were spread in Bordeaux that he sold his office to the Sieur de Beaumond, for the price of a hundred thousand pounds, and that he was appointed Councilor of State with eight hundred crowns of pension.
In 1609, he became Councilor of State, and participated briefly with Pierre de Lancre with the investigations for witchcraft in the Basque Country.
D'Espagnet presided twice the room of the Edict of Nérac (1605, 1610) but in December 1611, he left his office, sold it to the councilor of Bordeaux, Bavolier.
D'Espagnet also acquired a great reputation as a hermetic philosopher and alchemist. Only two of his alchemic works, which are considered classics of their kind, are extant: the Arcanum Hermeticaephilosophiae and the Enchiridionphysicae restitutae, both published for the first time in Paris in 1623. The Arcanum is also attributed to an unknown author called the Imperial Knight; that attribution was denied in 1664 by Étienne, who, when asked about this by Borrichius, affirmed that his father was the author. In the Enchiridion, which is an introduction to the Arcanum, nature is regarded as a constant expression of divine will, it being understood that the paradisiacal state is the true nature and its attainment is God’s will for humanity.
(Since its first publication in 1623, no alchemic tract ha...)
1623D'Espagnet was married; his son Étienne, who had the same interests as his father, became a councillor of the same parlement in 1617.