Lascaris

Collection of short alchemical tracts and extracts: in French and Latin, stated to have been written by Lascaris. On the first fly-leaf in a late 19th cent. hand: 'Manuscript par Lascaris philosophe-hermétique', below a small 16th cent. woodcut, pasted down, depicting a priest kneeling before an altar in a church. Fol. 3v contains 3 rough pen-drawings of alchemical symbolic subjects, in red and black. On fol. 37 is a pen-drawing of a tree. The headings to the second work are in red. (1) [Anon.] De la pierre des philosophes (ff. 3-65). (2) [Anon.] Grand Oeuvre (24 ll.). (3) [Anon.] Opus phisicum ex ... Marte et Venere (6 ll.). (4) [Anon.] Aureolae Sapientum philosophorum pro compositione lapidis eorum et metallorum (ff. 1-3). The title to this section is found on fol. 65v of the first work. (5) Fernelius (J.). Joannes Frenellus [sic] Lapis philosophicus (ff. 4-5). [Extract from 'De abditis rerum causis'.] (6) [Anon.] Un philosophe inconnu. Pour venir à la pratique (ff. 5-7). (7) La Chalade ( de). Manière d'ouvrer (ff. 7v-11). (8) [Penotus à Portu (B. G.)]. Regulae seu canones philosophici veri (ff. 11-17). (9) [Anon.] Sentences philosophiques choisies (ff. 17-19). (10) [Grasshof] (J.)]. Le lys entre les épines (ff. 19-21). (11) [Montanor (Guido de)]. Scala philosophorum (fol. 21v). [Beginning only.] (12) [Anon.] Questions sur la pierre philosophale extraites d'un livre transcrit à la main (3 ll.).

1702

1 volume 2 bl. ll. + ff. 3-65 + 3 bl. ll. + 30 ll. + 8 bl. ll. + 1 l. + 21 ff. + 6 ll. (last 3 bl.). 12mo. 131/2 × 91/2 cm. Original calf binding worn. Ff. 1, 2 are wanting. Some leaves have been cut out at the end. Margins slightly cropped in binding.

Purchased 1909.

An account of Lascaris is given in Figuier's 'L'Alchimie' 3me édit. 1860, pp. 320-342.

Database description transcribed from S.A.J. Moorat, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts on Medicine and Science in the Wellcome Historical Medical Library (London: Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1962-1973).