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Middle Ages Alchemist?, sites the help..
Lightner
post May 20 2005, 08:03 PM
Post #1


Im Gavin HI!!
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ok i have a project on Anything from the Middle Ages. So i chose Middle Ages Alchemist. Everytime i put stuff in the search engiine full metal alchemist comes up lol.. i need help on finding some history or research on alchemy from the middle ages... this project is due this Tuesday so i got time to do everything. I'll have to do my bibliography over... but i got that covered.. if you dont know anything about it plz dont spam in here saying "sorry ur outa luck" or "go do (so and so) search engine" thx lol
 
 
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Spirited Away
post May 22 2005, 09:35 PM
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Quand j'étais jeune...
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QUOTE
"Augustinian ideas were decidedly anti-experimental, yet when Aristotelian experimental techniques were made available to the West they were not shunned. Still, Augustinian thought was well ingrained in medieval society[?] and was used to show alchemy as being un-Godly. Ultimately, by the high middle ages, this line of thought created a permanent rift separating alchemy from the very religion that had fostered its birth."
http://www.kids.net.au/encyclopedia-wiki/al/Alchemy

It seems to say by the high middle ages (1200-1350), Alchemy begins to lose its popularity.

QUOTE
"In the fourteenth century, these views underwent a major change. William of Ockham, an Oxford Franciscan who died in 1349, attacked the Thomist view of compatibility between faith and reason. His view, widely accepted today, was that God must be accepted on faith alone; He could not be limited by human reason. Of course this view was not incorrect if one accepted the postulate of a limitless God versus limited human reasoning capability, but it virtually erased alchemy from practice in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. (Hollister p. 335) Pope John XXII in the early 1300s issued an edict against alchemy, which effectively removed all church personnel from the practice of the Art. (Edwards, p.49) The climate changes, Black plague, and increase in warfare and famine that characterized this century no doubt also served to hamper philosophical pursuits in general."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy#Alche...Medieval_Europe

Again, there is enough evidence to say that Alchemy was losing credibility because of religion. However, if you read through the wikipedia source, it continues to say that European Alchemy "continues its way through the dawning of the Reneissance". So really, Alchemy didn't end in the Middle Ages at all.
 

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