Disentangling Alchemy
What was alchemy in Byzantium and the Islamic World, in a time before the terms “alchemy” and “chemistry” were divided from each other for polemical purposes in the seventeenth century? Building on a rich and growing body of work on ancient, medieval, and early-modern alchemy, this lecture will consider premodern Greek and Arabic texts of the sort that we typically call alchemical, and artisanal and intellectual practices that we typically call alchemy. The aim will be to disentangle the various threads running through these premodern texts and practices, which we can then begin to reintegrate into their original social, cultural, and intellectual contexts. Liberating chemical theory, metal-planet correspondences, divine revelations, and metallurgical techniques from the umbrella term “alchemy” that at once gathers and isolates them in the modern historian’s imagination will allow us to situate them within the larger world of intellectual and artisanal activity of western Afro-Eurasia, and to explore what they meant — and why they mattered — then and now.
Sponsored by the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture and Harvard University Standing Committee on Medieval Studies.
This lecture will take place live on Zoom, followed by a question and answer period. Please register to receive the Zoom link.
