ambix, Vol. 55 No.

3, November 2008, 232–254

Alchemy and Mining: Metallogenesis

and Prospecting in Early Mining Books
Warren Alexander Dym
Department of History, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, USA

Historians have assumed that alchemy had a close association with mining,
but exactly how and why miners were interested in alchemy remains unclear.
This paper argues that alchemical theory began to be synthesised with
classical and Christian theories of the earth in mining books after 1500, and
served an important practical function. The theory of metals that mining
officials addressed spoke of mineral vapours (Witterungen) that left visible
markings on the earth’s surface. The prospector searched for mineral ore in
part by studying these indications. Mineral vapours also explained the
functioning of the dowsing rod, which prospectors applied to the discovery
of ore. Historians of early chemistry and mining have claimed that mining
had a modernising influence by stripping alchemy of its theoretical
component, but this paper shows something quite to the contrary: mining
officials may have been sceptical of the possibility of artificial transmutation,
but they were interested in a theory of the earth that could translate into
prospecting knowledge.

Historians have long recognised that alchemy had a close association with mining.
They have explored the metallurgical foundations of transmutation. The effort to
generate gold from base metals was grounded in real metallurgical processes, many
of which had been known since antiquity: cementation, amalgamation, alloying, and
gilding.1 Miners observed how iron nails in vitriolic mines seemed to transform over
time into copper.2 Others have focused on the metallurgical treatises of late medieval
Arab and Latin scholars, who regularly theorised about minerals and carried a rich

1
Vladimír Karpenko, “The Chemistry and Metallurgy of Transmutation,” Ambix 39 (1992); Rudolf Werner
Soukup, Chemie in Österreich: Bergbau, Alchemie, und frühe Chemie, von den Anfängen bis zum Ende des
18. Jahrhunderts (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2007).
2
For a discussion of this chemical process and its influence on alchemists and the metallurgist, Lazarus Ercker,
see Vladimír Karpenko, “Zur Geschichte der Alchemie und Chemie im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert,” in Lazarus
Ercker: Sein Leben und Seine Zeit. Zur Geschichte des Montan- und Münzwesen im mittleren Europa
(Freiberg: Technische Universität Bergakademie Freiberg, 1994), 55–60.

© W. S. Maney & Son Ltd 2008 DOI: 10.1179/174582308X358105

 METALLOGENESIS AND PROSPECTING IN EARLY MINING BOOKS 233

alchemical tradition into the Christian West.3 Still others have focused on medical
writings, analysing the mineralogical basis of alchemical medicines. Paracelsus was
the son of a physician in the mining town of Villach; he worked in the smelting works
in the boomtown of Schwaz in the Tyrol, and he authored a text on miners’
sicknesses. Paracelsus explained and treated these conditions according to a larger
alchemical worldview, which would certainly suggest that miners worked closely with
alchemists.4 Since at least the 1950s, German historians of mining (H. Wilsdorf,
W. Schneider, K. Ludwig, and L. Suhling) have noted that major theorists and
practitioners of alchemy, such as Paracelsus, had mining backgrounds.
But did miners and mining officials really accept alchemical or Paracelsian ideas?
Did they adopt an alchemical theory of minerals? What was the practical use of such
theory? Did miners believe in the possibility of transmutation? Historians have yet to
adequately answer these questions. The present paper analyses the transmission
of alchemical ideas into European mining. There are various means by which to
locate alchemy at the mines — for example, interrogations of illegal mining or
counterfeiting in mining towns that might expose alchemical interests — but here I
will focus on mining books. The texts of mining officials drew on alchemical theory
to address one specific concern: the origin of metals. Questions concerning the origin
and development of mineral ore, or metallogenesis,5 had immediate relevance to
prospectors, investors, and mining officials. How and why mineral ore appeared in
one spot and not another translated into useful prospecting information. This paper
will argue that manuscript and printed mining books came to incorporate a fairly
robust alchemical theory directed towards this end.
After 1500, as the mining administrations of central Europe expanded, as the
princes took greater control over operations, and as financing became more complex,
investors had a pressing need for printed mining instructions, and knowledge of
earths and minerals. Mining officials and metallurgists met this demand by producing
the first printed mining books, and they devoted important sections to the origin
of metals. They synthesised Christian and classical traditions with more recent
alchemical theory on the generation of metals, resulting in a multifaceted interpre-
tation. The incorporation of alchemical theory began with prefatory remarks and

3
Dorothy Wyckoff, “Albertus Magnus on Ore Deposits,” Isis 49, no. 2 (1958); William Newman, “Technology
and Alchemical Debate in the Late Middle Ages,” Isis 80 (1989), 423–45; Heribert M. Nobis, “Der Ursprung
der Steine: zur Beziehung zwischen Alchemie und Mineralogie im Mittelalter,” Toward a History of
Mineralogy, Petrology, and Geochemistry, ed. B. Fritscher and F. Henderson (Munich: Institut für Geschichte
der Naturwissenschafen, 1998); Wilfried Theisen, “The Attraction of Alchemy for Monks and Friars in the
13th–14th Centuries,” American Benedictine Review 46, no. 3 (1995): 239–53.
4
Paracelsus referred to “Sigmund Füger von Schwaz mit sampt einer anzal seiner gehaltnen laboranten.” Füeger
or Fieger ran smelting works at Falkenstein mine in Schwaz from 1511 to 1529, during which time the mine
reached a high point of silver production. See Karl-Heinz Ludwig, “Der Bergbau zur Zeit des Paracelsus,” in
Paracelsus (1493–1541): Keines andern Knecht . . ., ed. Heinz Dopsch, Kurt Goldammer and Peter F. Kramml
(Salzburg: Verlag Anton Pustet, 1993), 311–17. See also Manfred Koch, “Paracelsus und der Bergbau,” Der
Anschnitt: Zeitschrift für Kunst und Kultur im Bergbau 16, no. 5 (1964).
5
Norris coined the word “metallogenesis” as a useful shorthand for “metallic generation,” or the presumed
organic development of metals in nature. John Norris, “The Mineral Exhalation Theory of Metallogenesis in
Pre-Modern Mineral Science,” Ambix 53, no. 1 (2006).
234 WARREN ALEXANDER DYM

stock phrases drawn from Arabic texts and Latin interpretations, but it expanded
markedly after the publication of Paracelsus’s corpus around 1590, and it culminated
in mining books that integrated classical, Arabic, Christian and Paracelsian ideas
on the origin of minerals. These texts of the seventeenth century explained how
mineral ores exuded vapours in the course of their generation and decay, how these
fumes left visible marks on the earth’s surface, and how the dowsing rod detected the
fumes. Mineral vapour theory, grounded in organic metallogenesis, had immediate
application in prospecting and dowsing practice.
Aside from discovering a link between the theory of metals and prospecting
practice, this paper will also suggest that the authors of mining books tended to
remain sceptical of the possibility of transmutation, believing that it was antithetical
to the goals of mining and a distraction to wise investment. The adoption of
alchemical theory by mining officials did not require belief in transmutation per se.
The authors came to appreciate an academic and Christianised alchemical theory
handed to them by past theologians such as Albertus Magnus, but they saw
alchemists as unworthy rivals to miners, and even as swindlers and counterfeiters
deserving of censure.
These arguments counter a dominant opinion in the literature that holds that
mining and metallurgy served to divest alchemy of its theoretical element. This view
was grounded especially on analyses of high-profile texts that downplayed, rejected
or otherwise ignored alchemical theory and practice, including the works of the
humanist and physician Georg Agricola (especially his De re metallica, 1556), the
metallurgists Lazarus Ercker (Aula subterranean, 1574) and Vannoccio Biringuccio
(Pirotechnia, 1540), a mining book from Schwaz in the Tyrol (Schwazer Bergbuch,
1556), which Erich Egg attributed to a high clerk in mining (Berggerichtsschreiber),
and a number of other often cited examples.6 Such texts might suggest that the
European metals industry, after expanding in the late fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, became hostile to alchemy. One of the earliest statements to this effect
came from the historian of mining and Agricola scholar, Helmut Wilsdorf. In a piece
on alchemy and mining of 1966, he argued that the alchemical doctrines of a primal
substance in nature, and the twin power of sulfur and mercury in the generation of
metals, among other beliefs, made “no impression at all” on miners.7 Such men
were too practice-oriented to waste time on speculative theories. Even the famous
Paracelsus had little effect in the sphere of mining, said Wilsdorf.
Wilsdorf had a great legacy in the historiography of mining, and his arguments
paralleled those of another major name in the field, Hans Baumgärtel.8 The historian

6
These authors did not hold identical views on alchemy and alchemists, although they tended towards
scepticism. On Agricola’s rejection, see 237. Ercker and Biringuccio remained more ambiguous than this, often
citing the practical innovations of misguided alchemical pursuits. On Ercker and transmutation, see Karpenko,
“Zur Geschichte der Alchemie und Chemie.”
7
Helmut Wilsdorf, “Alchemie und Bergwerck: zur Entdeckungsgeschichte einiger Elemente aus bergmännischen
Produkten,” Abhandlungen des Staatlichen Museums für Mineralogie und Geologie zu Dresden 11
(1966): 326.
8
Especially Hans Baumgärtel, Vom Bergbüchlein zur Bergakademie: Zur Entstehung der Bergbauwissenschaften
zwischen 1500 und 1765/1770 (Leipzig: VEB Deutscher Verlag für Grundstoffindustrie, 1965).
 METALLOGENESIS AND PROSPECTING IN EARLY MINING BOOKS 235

of mining, Lothar Suhling, echoed his predecessors by claiming that Georg Agricola
“freed” mining from the corrupting influence of alchemy.9 Others have cited
Agricola as the watershed between a period dominated by alchemical and other
speculative thinking in mining, and one marked by more rational and empirical
thought. More recently, the historian of chemistry, Rudolf Werner Soukup, argued
that the practical demands of mining and assaying compelled alchemists to discard
speculative theories by the eighteenth century. The analytical chemistry to emerge
was “no longer an art, but rather a science.”10
English-speaking historians of science have tied the decline of alchemical secrecy in
published materials to the rise of experimental science. Pamela Long stressed the
critical view held by Agricola, Biringuccio, Ercker, and other high-profile figures. She
was interested in the condemnation of trade secrecy and pursuit of “openness” by
these men.11 William Eamon looked at the decline of alchemical and other forms of
trade secrecy in books of secrets or recipe books of the sixteenth century. He wished
to explain how natural philosophers came to value experiment in the seventeenth
century.12 Yet, both Long’s and Eamon’s focus on publicity and the rise of modern
science obscured the very real presence of alchemical theory in lesser-known mining
books and manuscripts after 1600, and the long-term influence that alchemy had
on theories of the earth through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.13 The
Kunstbüchlein and other sixteenth-century sources that Eamon presented, which
tended to avoid discussions of alchemy, can be set within a larger history.14 They
appeared some decades before the printing of Paracelsus’s corpus, which had
substantial impact on a number of crafts, especially mining and metallurgy. Rather
than a decline of alchemy in mining books after 1600, we detect rather a continuing
and even strengthening tradition of alchemical and Paracelsian thought.
We begin with the intimations of alchemical theory in the Kunstbüchlein and
other mining books of the early sixteenth century, and their rejection of transmuta-
tion as contrary to mining. By pitting these texts against the influential printed
sermons of the mining town preacher, Johann Mathesius, I show that public rejection
of alchemical theory was not the norm in mining. While the Kunstbüchlein touched
only superficially on alchemy, and Agricola expressed great skepticism in De re
metallica (1556), his contemporary, Mathesius, developed a more moderate, and I
believe representative, position that discounted the possibility of transmutation, but

9
Lothar Suhling, “Philosophisches in der frühneuzeitlichen Berg- und Hüttenkunde: Metallogenese und
Transmutation aus der Sicht montanistischen Erfahrungswissens,” in Die Alchemie in der europäischen
Kultur- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte, ed. Christoph Meinel (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1986), 303.
10
Soukup, Chemie in Österreich, 526.
11
Pamela Long, Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts and the Culture of Knowledge from Antiquity to
the Renaissance (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).
12
William Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994).
13
Rachel Lauden, From Mineralogy to Geology: The Foundations of a Science, 1650–1830 (Chicago, Ill.:
University of Chicago Press, 1987); David Oldroyd, Thinking about the Earth: A History of Ideas in Geology
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996).
14
On the Kunstbüchlein, see also Ernst Darmstaedter, Berg-, Probier-, und Kunstbüchlein (Munich: Verlag der
Münchener Drucke, 1926).
236 WARREN ALEXANDER DYM

credited alchemical technologies and synthesised basic alchemical theory with a

Christian version of metallogenesis. Mathesius and Paracelsus had a major influence
in mining after 1600. Arabic and Paracelsian ideas on the generation of metals,
tempered by Mathesius’s Christian worldview, provided mining officials and scholars
with an important theoretical construct to help dignify their work, attract more
investment, and legitimise prospecting techniques such as dowsing.

Alchemy and mining to 1590

The alchemical theory that appeared in the printed mining books before the collected
works of Paracelsus was a basic Arabic theory that had entered the West via Christian
monks and theologians of the late Middle Ages. Every founder, caster, silversmith
and jeweller since antiquity had known that metals were malleable and subject to
change in the furnace, and recipes on how to multiply, alloy or otherwise imitate gold
existed in manuscript. A collection of ancient recipes at Leyden explained how to
“double gold” by mixing it with cadmia (a mixture of metallic oxides). What was
new after the tenth century in the West were Arabic theories of metallogenesis. The
scholars differed markedly among themselves, but Geber (Jabir ibn Hayyan), Rhazes
(Abu Bakr ibn Zakariyya), the Pure Brothers of Basra after 950, Avicenna (Abu Ali
ibn Sina) some decades later, and still others, handed Christian scholars such as
Albertus Magnus highly developed theories of metallic generation. Avicenna had
synthesised Aristotelian and Neo-Platonic theory with a monotheistic belief system to
arrive at a complex theory of metallogenesis that gave a causal role to the planets,
the four classical elements, the principles of mercury and sulfur, and the particular
conditions of the earth in which minerals were generated.15
In his On Minerals of about 1260 (first printed in 1476), the Dominican Albertus
built on his predecessors. Avicenna and others commonly identified the two mineral
vapours that Aristotle had spoken of in his Meteorology (one dry, one moist) with
sulfur and quicksilver, respectively. The Arabic texts also claimed that the two
principles were compositions of the four classical elements, and they more broadly
attributed to planetary bodies a major influence over the vapours and metallogenesis.
The sulfuric and mercurial fumes exuded upwards and congealed into various earthy
materials, including minerals and metals. Albertus, too, explained how mineral
vapours, under the influence of the stars, seethed upwards through the cracks and
fissures to gradually congeal, depending on local conditions. Although he identified
the natural processes involved as the very chemical reactions spoken of by the
alchemists, Albertus denied that a true transmutation in the furnace was possible.
Most practitioners who seemed to produce gold were merely counterfeiters.16
This was an intellectual tradition that educated metallurgists, mining officials
and investors would confront, provided that it found transmission into the sphere of

15
Nobis, “Der Ursprung der Steine,” 40.
16
Dorothy Wyckoff, “Albertus Magnus on Ore Deposits,” Isis 49, no. 2 (1958): 122. Albertus’s position was
subtle: he denied that the “species” of metals could undergo transmutation, although he allowed that they might
be replaced. Avicenna issued a more complete refutation of transmutation. See Newman, “Technology and
Alchemical Debate,” 427–32.
 METALLOGENESIS AND PROSPECTING IN EARLY MINING BOOKS 237

mining. Religious orders, some of which engaged in small-scale mining, may have
created or encouraged that bridge between alchemy and mining practice. We know
that members of the Dominican, Franciscan and Benedictine orders all engaged in
alchemy or otherwise wrote about it before the Church cracked down on the practice
in the fourteenth century.17 Albertus claimed to have spoken with alchemists as well
as visited mining towns in Germany.18 An Arabic influence is already clear in a
ninth-century manuscript housed in a Benedictine monastery entitled Mappae
Clavicula, which compiled centuries-old recipes on how to make paints, cut glass, and
work metals, and on other practical work. There was no mention of transmutation
or other obvious alchemical language, but a number of recipes introduced Arabic
terms for minerals, and it included many techniques for working gold that would
later become distinctly alchemical.19
Manuscript and printed mining books after 1500 continued this tradition and
became a vehicle through which alchemical theory reached the mines. We might begin
with Agricola’s arguments on metallogenesis and rejection of Arabic theory before
seeing how it filtered into more common mining books, notwithstanding his
admonitions. Although he advanced a theory at variance with his Arabic
predecessors, he exposed great familiarity with alchemy, conceding that the origin of
metals was widely discussed and that alchemical theory had found widespread
acceptance in mining. Agricola (1494–1555) worked as physician both in the mining
town of Joachimstal (Bohemia) and in Chemnitz (Saxony). He opened his most
famous text on mining and metallurgy, On Mining and Smelting (De re metallica),
which first appeared in 1556, with a rejection of alchemy and alchemists.20 But
Agricola’s definitive statement on the generation of minerals was On the Origin and
Cause of Subterranean Things (De ortu et causis subterraneorum) of 1546.
Most of Book Five of De ortu was a refutation of theories, especially those of the
tenth-century Gilgil (Abu Daud ibn Juljul) and thirteenth-century Albertus Magnus.
Agricola observed that a majority of miners accepted Albertus’s or some other
alchemical metallogenic theory, even claiming to identify sulfur and mercury in the
mines. “The bulk of miners,” said Agricola, believed that a fatty substance adhering
to mineral rocks was the sulfur of the alchemists.21 Yet, in De ortu, Agricola remained
sceptical of his predecessors and contemporaries, and settled on a tentative
Aristotelianism. “On the origin of metals,” he began, “the authors contradict one
another. The opinion of the philosophers is different from that of chemists and from
that of the astrologers; indeed, the common people are bold enough to submit their

17
See Theisen, “The Attraction of Alchemy for Monks and Friars.”
18
Wyckoff, “Albertus Magnus.”
19
Cyril Stanley Smith and John G. Hawthorne, “Mappae Clavicula: A Little Key to the World of Medieval
Techniques,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 64, no. 4 (1974). See also: Karpenko, “The
Chemistry and Metallurgy of Transmutation”; and Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature, 33–35.
20
He considered transmutation “most doubtful.” Georg Agricola, Zwölf Bücher vom Berg- und Hüttenwesen
(Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1994), XV.
21
Die Entstehung der Stoffe im Erdinnern, in Agricola, Ausgewählte Werke, III, Hans Prescher and Gerhard
Mathé, eds. (Berlin: Hüthig Verlagsgemeinschaft Heidelberg), 167 and 168. We cannot be sure exactly who
Agricola meant by “miners,” although we can assume that he had contact with a broad spectrum of workers
and officials in his capacity as town physician.
238 WARREN ALEXANDER DYM

opinion. I intend to evaluate these opinions each according to its merit.”22 Agricola,
like most scholars well into the eighteenth century, certainly believed that metals grew
like plants underground. One needed only to look at the mines, he said, where the
narrowing of tunnels attested to the growth of stone. But the supposed influence of
the planets in this generation, however widely believed, was a “fairytale” and
“delusion.”23 There were clearly more metals than the six or seven known planets: to
which planet was bismuth assigned?24 Agricola returned rather to Aristotle’s
Meteorology and Theophrastus’s On Stones to explain that all metals were different
combinations of water and earth, with a preponderance of water. The qualities of
heat and cold in the earth accounted for variation in metallogenesis, as subterranean
heat mixed metallic substances, and coldness solidified the mixture. Heat and cold
were the efficient causes in the process, a theory that built directly on Aristotle and
discounted Albertus and other alchemical theory.25
Agricola’s theory would have far less impact in earth science than the more
practice-oriented De re metallica had in mining, and part of the reason was the
very alchemical theory that he sidelined. When we turn to other contemporary
mining books, we begin to set Agricola’s passing remark that the majority of miners
entertained alchemical notions into a larger context. The process of appropriation
of alchemical theory prior to 1600 was slow, and the appeal was highly superficial
and sometimes forced. In the following examples, we find generic statements
on metallogenesis poorly integrated into what were otherwise highly technical
accounts.
The earliest known printed mining book was Ulrich Rülein von Kalbe’s A Useful
Booklet on Mining (Ein nützlich Bergbuchleyn) of 1500. Kalbe was physician and
mayor in the important mining town of Freiberg, which soon housed the Central
Mining Office for Saxony.26 The text consisted of an imaginary dialogue between an
expert miner, Daniel, and his student, Knappius. While the instructions were mostly
technical, Kalbe began with an important theoretical statement that echoed through
subsequent chapters.
Kalbe drew on Albertus and other late medieval predecessors to provide a basic
metallogenetic theory. John Norris considers it a “simplified view” of the then
reigning philosophical opinion on the subject.27 Citing Hermes, the fabled father of
alchemy, Daniel asserted that the process of generation involved active and passive
principles. The active agents were the stars and seven planets, and the passive
substances were sulfur and quicksilver in the earth, the male and female seed. Each
of the seven known metals (gold, silver, iron, tin, lead, copper, and mercury)

22
Agricola, Ausgewählte Werke, III, 161.
23
Agricola, Ausgewählte Werke, III, 175.
24
Agricola, Ausgewählte Werke, III, 176.
25
Agricola, Ausgewählte Werke, III, 179. On Agricola and alchemy, see also Alan J. Rocke, “Agricola, Paracelsus,
and ‘Chymia,’” Ambix 32 (1985).
26
Kalbe matriculated at Leipzig before coming to Freiberg, where he worked from 1497 to 1523. He helped to
draw the city plans for the mining town of Annaberg as well as founding a humanistic school in Freiberg. He
was also regarded as a good mathematician. See Wilhelm Pieper, Ulrich Rülein von Calw und sein Bergbüchlein
(Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1955).
27
Norris, “The Mineral Exhalation Theory,” 53.
 METALLOGENESIS AND PROSPECTING IN EARLY MINING BOOKS 239

originated from the operation of its respective celestial body and a distinct
combination of sulfur and quicksilver, but also according to the special conditions of
the earth in which it lay. As the heavenly bodies worked the mercurial and sulfuric
seeds in the ground, the material released vapours that filled the veins and cracks of
the earth, hardening ultimately into mineral ore. “The common matter of all metals,
is, according to the opinion of the scholars, sulfur and quicksilver.” The “scholars”
to whom Daniel referred were certainly theologians and philosophers such as
Avicenna and Albertus, who drew largely on the alchemical tradition.
The theory had immediate relevance to mining practice, according to Kalbe, since
metallic ore tended to lay along the path of its ascribed planet. Beginning with silver
ore, Daniel explained which planetary body (in this case, the moon) guided each
metal, its unique sulfur/quicksilver composition, and relative position with respect to
the heavens. “If the outcrop of the vein lies north, if its rock outcrop is in the east, if
its hanging wall is in the south and its footwall in the north, such characteristics of
the mountain and the vein lend themselves readily to receive the influence of Heaven
. . . from which silver ore is made.”28
David Connolly detects a dismissive tone in Kalbe’s statements and doubts the
sincerity of his appeal to alchemical theory. He may have been satisfied with any
interpretation that accounted for the observed phenomena.29 He was also sceptical
that alchemists could actually produce noble metals in a furnace, referring the reader
sarcastically to their “squabbling” on the matter.30 This is a good example of how
alchemical theory found only cursory and superficial treatment in early mining books,
and how the authors tended to reject transmutation.
Kalbe’s text went through ten printings by 1540, including important editions in
Augsburg and Frankfurt. His words on alchemy and metallic generation became
stock phrases in subsequent mining books that did little to advance the theories that
they presented. Most notably, the entire Booklet on Mining appeared almost
verbatim in a collection of mining texts and legal documents printed in Reichenau
(near Konstanz) by Johann Haselberg, around 1535, entitled, Origin of Common
Mining Law (Ursprung gemeynner Berckrecht).31 Haselberg’s version was reprinted
in still larger compilations into the eighteenth century, never undergoing substantial
changes.
The 1530s also marked the appearance of the so-called Kunstbüchlein, excellently
studied by William Eamon, of which there were numerous editions within a few years
across Germany. These were four “know-how” manuals consisting of numerous
recipes collected by the printer. The four titles were as follows: “The Proper Use of
Alchemy,” “Pretty Skills,” “How to Remove Various Stains and Spots from

28
Anneliese G. Sisco and Cyril S. Smith, trans., Bergwerk- und Probierbüchlein (New York: American Institute
of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, 1949), 35. This translation was from the 1518 printing.
29
David Connolly, “Problems of Textual Transmission in Early German Books of Mining: Der Ursprung
Gemeynner Berckrecht and the Norwegian Bergkordnung” (unpublished dissertation, Ohio State University,
2005), 66. See also David Connolly, “Ulrich Rülein von Kalbe’s Bergbüchlein in the Context of Sixteenth-
century Mining/metallurgical Literature,” in De re metallica: The Uses of Metal in the Middle Ages, ed. Robert
Bork (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate Publishing, 2005), 347–63.
30
Connolly, “Problems,” 68.
31
See Connolly, “Problems.”
240 WARREN ALEXANDER DYM

Clothing,” and “On Steel and Iron.” While none addressed mining per se, the first is
of interest here, considering that Eamon argues that the printer had rid the original
manuscript of its alchemical content. Eamon shows that the published text derived
from the manuscript of one Petrus Kertzenmacher. The publisher, Christian Egenolff
of Strasbourg, had altered the manuscript significantly, “eliminating its esotericism
and metaphysical content, thereby completely changing the work’s intent.”32
The Kertzenmacher manuscript, which Egenolff’s successor in Strasbourg claimed
to produce in more original form with the suggestive title, Alchemy and Mining
(Alchimi und Bergwerk) in 1534, still contained the metaphysical or alchemical
content that Egenolff had excised (Figure 1). Kertzenmacher had in fact provided a
similar statement on alchemical theory in his preface as that provided by Kalbe,
although Kertzenmacher did not integrate the material as effectively in subsequent
chapters. He praised the ancient Hermes, the tenth-century Islamic physician Rhazes,
and Albertus, before sketching a theory that metals consisted of bodies (corpora) and
a spirit or essence (spiritus). The practice of alchemy was the manipulation of metals
to influence their spirit. The material that followed in the Kertzenmacher was a
standard list of chemical and metallurgical recipes with occasional remarks on
transmutation, healing elixirs, or the Stone of the Philosophers, among other
alchemical subjects. One short chapter was devoted to explaining which metal was
associated with which planet and astrological sign, and resembled certain of Kalbe’s
remarks to that effect, but Kertzenmacher never suggested any practical applications
of the theories that he introduced.33
Egenolff excluded Kerzenmacher’s preface and all procedures of a decidedly
alchemical nature, and even added recipes for jewellers and metallurgists that were
not in the earlier manuscript. Whoever the real author was, the printer of the Proper
Use of Alchemy, Egenolff, was mindful of a middle-class market of jewellers and
goldsmiths who desired only the proper side of alchemy (chemical and metallurgical
recipes of a more everyday nature), rather than instructions on transmutation or
theories of metallic generation.34 This leaves the possibility that other artisans to
whom Egenolff did not intend to sell would have appreciated the alchemical content.
While the reputedly unadulterated version did not include information on mining per
se, it stands to reason that the printer of Alchemy and Mining recognised a strong
interest among miners in particular.
There were other mining books like the Kertzenmacher and Kalbe books that
demonstrate how alchemical practice and theory entered the sphere of mining and
metallurgy. A Cassel assayer, Baltazar Schmoh, devoted two pages to metallic
theory in his manuscript on assaying, smelting, and liquation (dated 1566 at the
Wolfenbüttel Augustina Library). This is a compact account of the latest metalloge-
netic theories that gave a causal role to the stars, to sulfur and mercury, and to

32
Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature, 114.
33
Des berühmten Alchimisten Petri Kertzenmachers Alchimia, das ist Alle Farben, Wasser, Olea, Salia, und
Alumina, damit man alle corpora spiritus und calces praepariret, sublimirt, und fixirt, zu bereiten, und wie man
diese Dinge nutze, auf daß Sol und Luna werden möge (1720).
34
On the Alchimi und Bergwerk, see Suhling, “Philosophisches,” 300. See also: Joseph Benzing, Die Drucke Jacob
Cammerlanders zu Strassburg, 1531–1548 (Vienna: Walter Krieg, 1963); and Denis Duveen, “Notes on Some
Alchemical Books,” The Library, 5th ser., 1 (1946): 56–61.
 METALLOGENESIS AND PROSPECTING IN EARLY MINING BOOKS 241

figure 1 Title page to Petrus Kertzenmacher, Alchimi und Bergwerck (Strasbourg, 1534).
Copyright Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig, Phys. 462, Titlelblatt

conditions in the ground. Schmoh, like Kertzenmacher, never returned to his

rudimentary theory, evidently satisfied with having nodded in the direction of learned
belief.35 But an even richer source for tracking metallogenetic theories in mining is
the Sarepta of Johann Mathesius.
It might seem ill advised to compare a Protestant preacher’s published sermons of
1562 with contemporary mining and metallurgical manuals from the Tyrol, Saxony,

35
Baltzar Schmoh, Vom probierenn schmelzenn und seigernn allen liebhabernn dieser hoch loblichenn künst nicht
wenigern dan nutzlich zu wissen (Wolfenbüttel: Herzog August Bibliothek), 32.2, fol. 50.
242 WARREN ALEXANDER DYM

and elsewhere, but any reading of the important Sarepta oder Bergpostille (Sermons
on the Mount) confirms that Mathesius’s collection amounted to an important
mining book that covered all of the traditional concerns of mining and smelting. The
pastor was a contemporary and colleague of Agricola, and worked in the very same
mining town of Joachimstal on the Bohemian side of the Erzgebirge, and the legacy
of Mathesius in mining was so strong that mining books, scholarly literature and
other published sermons used the Sarepta well into the nineteenth century. The
fourteenth edition was dedicated to the Chief Overseer of Mines (Oberberghaupt-
man) in Saxony in 1676, and his successor over one century later, Friedrich Wilhelm
Heinrich von Trebra (1740–1819), still taught Mathesius at the new Freiberg Mining
Academy.36
The goal of the Sarepta was to promote the moral legitimacy of mining and help
miners and mining officials to become better Christians. The generation of minerals
occupied a central place in this effort. While Mathesius shared a similar audience for
his work as Agricola, the pastor’s language was closer to Kalbe’s, Schmoh’s,
Kertzenmacher’s and that of Mathesius’s true predecessor, Albertus Magnus (who the
Lutheran Mathesius never cited), than to Agricola’s. The sermons incorporated
alchemical theory, but only grudgingly, as Father Mathesius preferred Genesis
and miner experience to alchemy, which he considered to be pagan, and because he
rejected judicial astrology, which was sometimes tied to alchemy. In all, Mathesius
handed mining officials and investors a powerful statement on the legitimacy of
mining that subsumed basic alchemical and classical theories into a larger, Christian
whole.
Mathesius issued short statements on metallogensis throughout the Sarepta, but the
third sermon in particular, “On the Cause of the Rise and Fall of Mines,” contained
more focused treatment. The author developed an organic conception of minerals
that drew on alchemical theory, natural astrology, and Genesis. Mineral veins grew
like branches underground and had a natural life cycle, like other living forms. They
could even regenerate in the mines after years of abandonment. The active agents in
the processes of generation and decay included the elements water and earth, the
principles of sulfur and mercury, the heat of the earth, celestial influences, and
especially God’s intention for mankind. This was always the “final cause” of mineral
generation for Mathesius, superior to any “secondary cause” proposed by the
philosophers and alchemists. When God created the heavens and earth, He also
fashioned the cracks and fissures in the earth within which metals grew. God, a great
metallurgist and alchemist, performed the operations of mixing the elements,
introducing sulfur and mercury, directing the terrestrial and celestial influences, and
seeing the product through to completion. An undifferentiated substance (Guhr)37

36
Walther Herrmann, Goethe und Trebra: Freundschaft und Austausch zwischen Weimar und Freiberg (Berlin,
Akademie Verlag, 1955), 15.
37
In the list of miner terms appended to Ercker’s Aula Subterranea for 1672, Guhr is identified with a
sedimentary deposit (Sinter): “Soll ein flüssige Materia seyn, so auss den Strossen gieret und treufft, welches
die Bergleute Sinteren nennen, und Ertz gleich verkundschafftet” [Lazarus Ercker, Aula Subterranea (Frankfurt
am Main, 1672), “Interpres Phraseologiae Metallurgiae,” 6]. Zedler included an entry in his 1732 dictionary:
“A humidity that flows out of stone, looks almost like buttermilk, and indicates ore.” Johann Heinrich
Zedler, Grosses Universal-Lexicon aller Wissenschaften und Künste, s.v. “Guhr”, 64 vols. (Halle and Leipzig,
1732–1754).
 METALLOGENESIS AND PROSPECTING IN EARLY MINING BOOKS 243

moved upwards through the earth, took on more elemental matter, and released
vapours along the way, as it transmuted slowly from a baser to a nobler form.
God then revealed his mineral harvest to miners according to His plan for mankind
and human history, and mining towns boomed and busted in accordance with
this plan.38
Mathesius never acknowledged the two (more involved) metallogenetic theories
closest to his own: Albertus’s in Book on Minerals and Paracelsus’s in On the Nature
of Things (De natura rerum) and On Minerals (De mineralibus). The latter spoke of
a “mineral tree” rooted in the centre of the earth, and distributed causal influence
among classical elements, sulfur and mercury, celestial bodies, and God’s will. But
Mathesius avoided tricky philosophical and alchemical discussions, remaining true to
his calling. He wished to dignify mining and help his congregation to live a
more Christian life, not showcase the latest in university or alchemical theory. In fact,
mining and metallurgy served foremost to provide Mathesius with analogies and
metaphors for Christian mysteries: the Spirit of the Lord was like purified silver
within you; God’s word was like the opposing forces of a lodestone, drawing the
faithful towards salvation as it expelled the wicked to damnation. The pastor even
suggested that the organic generation and decay of minerals was merely common
sense among miners, rather than learned knowledge: “Experience shows” that
the tunnels underground shrank over time.39 “Credible people” believed that
silver-bearing ore came from Guhr.40 All mines and mining towns “had their time,”
and so the miners said that they “came too early” whenever they struck bismuth. Had
the ore remained undisturbed, it would have eventually become silver.41
Another reason that Mathesius refrained from acknowledging Paracelsus or other
recent alchemical theorists was that the pastor rejected the possibility of artificial
transmutation. Mathesius credited alchemists with numerous (unintended) practical
advances, including the important process of separating silver from copper ore by
means of lead (liquation). In Sermon Thirteen, Mathesius spoke of “proper alchemy,”
a form of legitimate natural magic.42 Earlier, he had sympathised with a local
alchemist — a “great craftsman and alchemist” — who ingested too much mercury

38
The following are representative passages from Sermon Three of the Sarepta: “Seine hand sey auch alleine
allmächtig . . . die wohnung und Bergwerck in der wüsten fett machet, reich und fündig, geheng und gesprenge
mit schönen gängen und geschicklein schmücket und umbgürtet, als mit silbernen und güldenen gürteln, und
seine schätze dem menschen zu gute tieff unter die erden leget, und dieselben nach seinem willen wieder
offenbaret, und giebet sie wem er sie gönnet, als der einige und allmächtige Gott, der allein ertz schaffen und
wachsen lässet” [Mathesius, Sarepta oder Bergpostill (Freiberg, 1679), 104]. “Solche Metall, es sey nun
vollkommen und gediegen oder noch vorm schmeltzen unrein oder unvollkommen, ist ein irrdischer leib . . .
den unser Gott in klüfften, gängen, fletzen und stöcken, schaffet oder wircket aus subtiler oder gedistillirter
erde, und fetten dichten dünsten oder prodemen, die er durch natürliche hitze aus erd und wasser zusammen
zeucht, und temperirt . . . daß ein guhr und schwefelichter und quecksilbereichter same wird” (Mathesius,
Sarepta, 108). See also Mathesius, Sarepta, 118, 119, 122, 127, 133, 135 and 138.
39
Mathesius, Sarepta, 134.
40
Mathesius, Sarepta, 134.
41
Mathesius, Sarepta, 139.
42
Mathesius, Sarepta, 608.
244 WARREN ALEXANDER DYM

and died.43 And yet, the effort to mimic God’s power in the furnace was misguided.
Only God himself possessed the secret of transmutation by working sulfuric and
mercurial seeds in nature. Mathesius would add that the ascription of planets to
metals was a false, Arabic accretion on otherwise legitimate metallurgical practices.
God certainly worked through the sun and stars in generating minerals, Mathesius
(like Kalbe) stressed, but He did not intend any complicated system of associations,
and certainly not a judicial astrology of the mines — “to draw up a nativity of a mine
is ridiculous.”44
In Mathesius’s day, when the origin and composition of mineral ore had become
a pressing state concern, alchemical theory was beginning to influence the statements
of mining officials on metallic generation. Kalbe and Kertzenmacher included
suggestive comments on the twin roles of sulfur and mercury in metallic generation,
with passing references to Hermes or Albertus. Agricola confronted the issue head-on
in De ortu by denouncing alchemical theory in general, and especially the work of
the great Albertus Magnus, but Mathesius preferred a more moderate or subtler
position. Alchemical theory had taken root at the mines despite Agricola’s warnings,
and Mathesius accepted basic theory and acknowledged practical benefits. The
infiltration of alchemical theory into mining books was more comprehensive after the
dissemination of Paracelsus’s corpus.

Alchemy and mining after 1590

During the last decades of the sixteenth century, there was enormous interest in
Paracelsus (1493–1541) throughout Central Europe. His followers printed Paracelsus’s
scattered manuscripts, a trend that culminated in an edition of complete works by
Johann Huser between 1589 and 1591. Trevor-Roper counted seventy of Paracelsus’s
works published in Basel alone between 1570 and 1603. Petrus Severinus’s Ideal of
Philosophical Medicine (Idea medicinae philosophicae) of 1571 was instrumental in
rendering Paracelsian thought more amenable to court life.45 A growing audience at
court in Germany and abroad helps to account for the rapid spread of this new
philosophy, but so does interest among the crafts, and in particular among the
officials and scholars of mining and metallurgy. Paracelsus spent the better part of his
life surrounded by such men.46
Paracelsian metallogenetic theory implied a special relationship between alchemy
and mining. As Paracelsus explained in Book on Minerals (Liber mineralium) and On
Generation (De generationibus), all salts, minerals, gems and stones were the fruits
of a gigantic tree of water. A principle in nature (sometimes called Archeus, and
sometimes Aniadus) performed the natural alchemy of distributing and congealing the

43
Mathesius, Sarepta, 165.
44
Mathesius, Sarepta, 145.
45
Hugh Trevor-Roper, “The Paracelsian Movement,” in Renaissance Essays (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago
Press, 1985), 160–61. On the early reception of Paracelsian ideas and Severinus in particular, see Jole
Shackelford, “Early Reception of Paracelsian Theory: Severinus and Erastus,” Sixteenth Century Journal XXVI,
no. I (1995): 123–35.
46
Ludwig, “Der Bergbau zur Zeit des Paracelsus.”
 METALLOGENESIS AND PROSPECTING IN EARLY MINING BOOKS 245

water at its appointed time into diverse “fruit,” according to the conditions of the
earth. The alchemy of man then completed the work of nature. The fruits of water
reached their final perfection (ultimam materiam) through the work of man.47 Mining
for metallic ore therefore became for Paracelsus a necessary stage in the larger, more
important work of perfecting nature. In On the Nature of Things, for example, he
said that mineral fruits such as zinc, arsenic and bismuth contained undeveloped
silver and gold that could be ripened by the alchemist and made to equal the best
silver- or gold-bearing ores.48 In later chapters, he added that alchemically produced
silver and gold had more medicinal value than precious metals generated by nature
in mines.49 Raw ores were noxious or lacking in medical virtues before the alchemist
distilled the quintessence and prepared the medicine. Fresh from the mine, the ore
was still living, Paracelsus said, and things were weak before undergoing alchemical
death and resurrection: “how little is their strength and virtue.”50 Alchemy continued
and completed the imperfect work of nature. Nature’s “ultimam materiam is
mankind’s prima materia,” by which Paracelsus meant that alchemy and metallurgy,
in the production of metals, metallic objects, and medicines, completed the natural
incubation of mineral ore.51
The pseudo-Paracelsian Sky of the Philosophers (Coelum philosophorum)
developed this relationship between alchemy and mining by praising mining
technology, but also underscoring the great expense and uncertainty of assaying for
rich ores and smelting. Unlike Kalbe, Mathesius, Kertzenmacher, Agricola,
Vannoccio Biringuccio, Lazarus Ercker, and many other authors of mining and
metallurgical works, this text argued that alchemy was a simpler and cheaper method
of producing silver or gold from any metallic ore than mining. It even recommended
that the entrepreneur try his luck with rocks gathered from the mountain surface
before digging.52
Paracelsian ideas made their way into the sphere of mining. The royal assayer at
Annaberg in the Erzgebirge of Saxony, Markus Müller, evaluated a host of
Paracelsus’s manuscripts on alchemy, medicine and metallurgy for Elector August I
in 1581. Recognising that the material was “obscure,” Müller wished nonetheless to
determine whether it offered something useful to the Elector and his subjects.53
Concluding a long report, Müller proposed that Paracelsus be printed out of the
mining town of Annaberg: “Since it is based on furnace work and the knowledge of
how minerals and such in the earth are generated, and then smelted, purified, and
separated in fire, so a better place could not be found for this work than in the
mining towns.”54

47
Karl Sudhoff, Paracelsus: Sämtliche Werke. I Abteilung. Medizinische, naturwissenschaftliche und
philosophische Schriften (Berlin: R. Oldenbourg, 1922–1933), vol. III, 35.
48
Sudhoff, Paracelsus, vol. XI, 321.
49
Sudhoff, Paracelsus, vol. XI, 395.
50
Sudhoff, Paracelsus, vol. II, 333.
51
Sudhoff, Paracelsus, vol. III, 35.
52
Sudhoff, Paracelsus, vol. XIV, 417. Sudhoff includes Coelum philosophorum in the Spuria with which he
completed the fourteen-volume set. He dated it to the sixteenth century.
53
Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Dresden (DHSA), loc. 4416/6, Reel One (no page number).
54
DHSA, loc. 4416/6, Reel One (no page number).
246 WARREN ALEXANDER DYM

Müller’s expectation that metallurgists and mining officials would appreciate

Paracelsus proved true. Selections from Paracelsus’s Book of Minerals in particular
appeared in compilations with other mining-related materials, including Kalbe’s
Booklet on Mining, suggesting a very real presence of Paracelsus’s metallogenetic
theory in the sphere of mining. One example at the Gotha State Library included only
Chapter Nine of the Paracelsus, “On the Signs of Natural Things” (De signatura
rerum naturalium), which gave an alchemical metallogenetic theory, and explained
how to detect the effects of mineral fumes above ground and interpret the colour of
mineral earths, among other prospecting techniques.55 A second such compilation
was a work confiscated from an infamous alchemist in the Tyrol named Abraham
Schnitzer in 1597. He sought to publish a large collection of mining-related materials
that included Kalbe’s Booklet on Mining, the Schwaz Mining Book, Paracelsus’s Book
of Minerals (Chapter Nine again), mining ordinances, and scores of other excerpts
and chapters yet to be determined.56
Schnitzer’s compilation also included the Mirror of Metals (Speculum metallorum),
which historians have dated to about 1575 and attributed to the foreman (Steiger) at
Saint Georgenthal in the Erzgebirge, Martin Schurtz, and a silversmith Chrisoph
Hofer of Schwaz in the Tyrol. The Speculum represents a new genre of mining book
that engaged more substantially with available metallogenetic theory, especially
Albertus, Paracelsus, and Mathesius. It opened with references to Hermes, Aristotle,
Geber the “Arabic master,” and the “most learned Theophrastus Paracelsus.”57 The
appeal to these predecessors was more substantive than rhetorical: “Theophrastus
Paracelsus reasons on metals in his book on stones thus . . .” or “The trustworthy
Mathesius speaks in his Sarepta . . .” The authors believed that mineral fruit had its
origins in a gigantic network of fluids and earthy substance concentrated at the cente
of the earth. God oversaw the generative process, which no man could witness or
recreate. Paracelsus spoke of real transmutation in the furnace, but Schurtz and
Hofer, like Albertus and Mathesius, denied that the alchemist could mimic God’s
creative power.58

Three mining books of the seventeenth century

To fully appreciate the interplay of classical, scriptural, Arabic and Paracelsian
theories that became more common in mining books after 1590, and the prospecting

55
Bergwerck und Probierbuchlein für die Berck und feuerwercker. Gotha Forschungsbibliothek, chap. B.,
no. 373.
56
Bergbuch aus eigener Erfahrenheit zusammengebracht durch Abraham Schnitzer, Gotha Forschungsbibliothek,
chap. A, no. 1023. The Paracelsus chapter is on 254–63b. On Schnitzer, see Wolfgang Irtenkauf, “Abraham
Schnitzer, der ‘gelehrte Scharlatan,’ Leben und Werk eines Bergmeisters im 16. Jahrhundert,” Veröffentlichun-
gen des Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandium 64 (1984). Schnitzer’s library included works by Paracelsus and
the Sarepta of Mathesius. For other contemporary artisans, see Michael Hackenberg, “Books in Artisan Homes
of Sixteenth-Century Germany,” Journal of Library History 21 (1986): 72–91.
57
Gotha Forschungsbibliothek, chap. A, no. 1023, 13b–16.
58
“Ich befürchte auch, wenn ich zehn Pfund Kupferblech die Tage meines Lebens an der Sonne gedeckt sehen
ließe, es trüge mir nicht ein Quint Gold, das würde mir zerfließen, die Mühe nicht belohnen.” Quoted in
Soukup, Chemie in Österreich, 141.
 METALLOGENESIS AND PROSPECTING IN EARLY MINING BOOKS 247

practice grounded in metallogenetic theory, we might return to original works rather

than compilations. One would be the manual of a mining master at Annaberg named
Hans Uttman.59 First printed in 1732 in Dresden, and dated 1601 in the Saxony
Government Archive, Uttman addressed various facets of mining, from the layout of
veins to description of earths and theory of metals. The first chapter that concerns us
is called “On Mineral Power” (“Von Minerischer Krafft”). Uttman drew on a number
of theoretical traditions to explain mineral generation. The chapter began with a
strong statement on Paracelsian alchemical theory, announcing that the power
and virtue of minerals derived from the tria prima: salt, mercury, and sulfur. These
principles, by the power of God, combined and coagulated underground into various
metals. Albertus and the Arabic texts had spoken of two principles (quicksilver and
sulfur) rather than three principles (salt, quicksilver, and sulfur), but they and
Paracelsus all believed that the four classical elements — earth, water, air, and fire
— also contributed to the generation of earths, stones, and minerals. Uttman’s
account moved smoothly between the alchemical and classical ideas: “These things
[mineral substances] are brought to a certain suggestion of solid earth from the four
elements and the influence of Heaven, according to the nature and quality of the
particular metal, which more or less works within it, and well-ground [vielgemahltes]
mercury, salt, and sulfur.”60
Uttman also echoed Kalbe by distinguishing between the active and heavenly
agents, and passive and terrestrial agents, in the process of metallic generation. The
three principles and four elements in nature were the passive or subordinate forces
(Untere Wirkung), and the active or primary agents (Obere Wirkung) were the sun,
moon, and various winds, which penetrated and mixed with the vapours and
miasmas that rose up from the ground. The passive and active forces “agree with one
another” in the generation of mineral earths and metals. The site of their interaction
was the earth’s surface, which was therefore marked by sporadic generation and
decay, such as petrified (“ironed”) wood and abrupt changes in the composition
and quality of mineral ore or of the quantity of gold. All of this was “certainly the
opinion of the old miners.” 61
The Uttman manual is also filled with scriptural analogies and sentiments most
likely drawn from Mathesius. The best example is the chapter “Whether Earths Still
Grow.” Here, Uttman maintained that God had a continuing interest in overseeing
the generation of minerals for the good of mankind, just as He brought forth the
products of agriculture for our wellbeing. On the final page of his Bericht, Uttman
may have drawn directly from the Sarepta: the minerals returned to the ashes from
which they came, he said, just like all things in God’s Creation.
Uttman further believed that mineral fumes left visible effects on the earth’s
surface. In a chapter entitled, “Digging” (“Schürfen”), he discussed both prospecting
and trial-and-error digging. He explained that underground fumes and miasmas
(Dünste and Broden) withered leaves and otherwise dried up vegetation above ground,

59
Hans Uttman, Bericht, von denen Ertz-Gebürgen, Streichenderer Gänge, Stöcke, Flöze, Klüffte, Ertze, Berg
Arthen und allen Metallen, auch von Schürffen, Seiffenwercken und andern Arthen der Bergwercken. Saxony
Government Archive, loc. 36070. Uttman could have been related to the head of the liquation works at
Grünthal, Christoph Uttman of Elterlein.
60
Uttman, Bericht, 11b.
61
Uttman, Bericht, 12.
248 WARREN ALEXANDER DYM

providing the seasoned prospectors with useful knowledge.62 Agricola had similarly
claimed that mineral warmth left “natural indications” on the earth’s surface.63
Other authors prior to Uttman similarly referred to rushing mineral vapours called
Witterungen. Paracelsus, in fact, distinguished three types, known by the colour of
the sparks that they emitted: the vapours of gold-bearing ore sparked yellow; those
of silver-bearing, lead-bearing and tin-bearing ores sparked white; and those of
copper-bearing and iron-bearing ores sparked red. Softer sparks indicated finer,
richer metal, and sharp flashes were a sign of less differentiated forms. According to
Paracelsus, these were all God-given signs of ore.64 Paracelsus, like Agricola and
Uttman, also spoke of steadier mineral heat that dried up vegetable life above ground,
evaporated dews, and melted snow, all of which provided “natural signs.”65 Kalbe
said that Witterungen were sources of confusion to miners, and he depicted them in
his woodcuts (Figure 2).66 Father Mathesius, too, echoed his contemporaries in
mining: the mines gave off steady heats and Witterungen, he said, just as God
once punished the Israelites in the desert with fire.67 Otherwise, “skilled diggers mind
the trees” for the visible effects of mineral heats and vapours.68 Uttman drew
from these predecessors for his statements on mineral fumes and vapours, and their
visible effects.
Our second example extended mineral vapour theory to explain the workings of
the dowsing rod. Klaus Priesner identified the true author behind the pseudonym
“Basil Valentine” as Johann Thölde, the overseer of salt works (Pfannerherr) and
head overseer of mines (Berghauptmann) in Frankenhausen, who died in about
1613.69 He was best known for studies on alchemy and medicine, and especially a
treatise on antimony, which found a European-wide reception in the seventeenth
century. The work in question here is called Last Testament (Letztes Testament), a
five-part treatise on mining, minerals, alchemy, and alchemical medicine. While the
text, first published in 1626, may have been a compilation of earlier works, Part
One on mining, minerals and dowsing was probably by Thölde himself.70 One Elias
Montanus published this part in 1600 as A Report on Mining, and this may be
the original Thölde.71 The subtitle made the correlation between mineral vapours
(Witterungen) and dowsing rods explicit: “How to Mine by Means of Rods and
Vapours.” Montanus (Thölde) also inserted numerous references to Paracelsus,
recognising a great affinity between his ideas and Thölde’s own.

62
Uttman, Bericht, 2b.
63
Agricola, Zwölf Bücher, 33.
64
Sudhoff, Paracelsus, vol. 11, 393.
65
Sudhoff, Paracelsus, vol. 11, 391.
66
Cisco and Smith, Bergwerk- und Probierbüchlein.
67
Mathesius, Sarepta, 142.
68
Mathesius, Sarepta, 143–44.
69
Claus Priesner, “Johann Thoelde und die Schriften des Basilius Valentinus,” in Meinel, Die Alchemie. See also
Hans Gerhard Lenz, “Johann Thölde, Paracelsist und Chymikus und seine Beziehungen zu Landgraf Moritz
von Hessen-Kassel” (dissertation, University of Marburg, 1981).
70
Priesner identifies Part Four (the Haligraphia) with Thölde, and his argument for this authorship applies for
Part One as well. Claus Priesner and Hans-Henning Walter, eds., Johann Thölde: Haligraphia, Beschreibung
aller Saltz-Mineralien und Saltzwercke (Freiberg: Drei Birken Verlag, 2008), 125.
71
Elias Montanus, Bergwerckschatz, das ist, außführlicher und vollkommenener Bericht von Bergwercken, nach
der Ruten und Witterung künstlich zubawen (Frankfurt am Main, 1618).
 METALLOGENESIS AND PROSPECTING IN EARLY MINING BOOKS 249

figure 2 Mineral vapour (labelled with ‘W’) rushes forth from a vein. From the mining
booklet of Ulrich Rülein von Kalbe (1500). Reproduced from Bergwerk- und Probierbuchlein,
a translation by A G Sisco and C S Smith, 1949. Courtesy of The American Institute of Mining
and Metallurgical Engineers

Thölde, although he probably wrote for mining officials and investors, claimed that
his work echoed the language and concepts of miners, or was “proper for a miner.”72
Like Mathesius and Paracelsus, Thölde described a grand unity of celestial and
terrestrial bodies, describing minerals and mineral generation in highly spiritualised
language filled with astrological and alchemical belief. Subterranean creations served
to instruct the faithful in God’s mysteries no less than did creations above ground.
The birth of metals dated to Creation, when God had separated earth from water,
producing all fruit from water, including metalline fruit.73 Metals and mining, like all
things in nature, had a purpose in God’s plan, which was the maintenance of
mankind. This amounted to a mandate for the miner: “So you miners should
diligently and humbly chart out the mines that God and Nature have placed most
exactly.”74
Thölde ascribed to metals a principle of fertility and life (Ferch).75 This was
functionally equivalent to the Archaeus in Paracelsus’s Book of Minerals, Book Nine.
The Ferch was a spirit within the body of a given metal. It was the life principle that
was actualised and eventually died in the process of metallic generation and decay
underground. It brought metallic juices into more perfect, hardened or coagulated
72
Basil Valentine, Geheime Bücher, oder Letztes Testament: Vom grossen Stein der Uralten Weisen und andern
verborgenen Geheimnussen der Natur, auss dem Original, so in dem hohen Altar zu Erffurt unter einem Mar-
morsteinen Täfflein gefunden, nachgeschrieben (Strasbourg, 1645), 12.
73
Valentine, Letztes Testament, 118.
74
Valentine, Letztes Testament, 120.
75
The Grimm Brothers identified “Furche” as a furrow-like formation in the earth. Perhaps Thölde was referring
as much to a watery material that gathered in underground Ferche as to the formation itself. See Jacob Grimm
and Wilhelm Grimm, Deutsches Wörterbuch (Leipzig, 1854–1960), s.v. “Furche.”
250 WARREN ALEXANDER DYM

form, working with the twin powers of mercury and sulfur, the male and female seeds
in metallic generation. When the metal hardened within mineral ore, the Ferch
existed in a perfect state of rest. When passing from this ideal form to progressively
more imperfect, decaying forms, by contrast, it awakened and began to consume its
own metallic body. Thölde found evidence for this sort of decomposition in various
natural phenomena: for example, in treasures turned to dust underground, or in
stones that bore the markings of natural objects (fossils). He also associated the
ongoing life cycle of metals with the movement of planets, with which the metals had
a close affinity. Just as the planets, by contrast to the fixed stars, moved in an
irregular course through the skies, so did the metals, unlike contiguous earthly
material, undergo a cyclical process of growth and decay.76
The true miner understood that he worked with a living substance that underwent
a life cycle: “I only consider one a miner who is informed of this [metallogenesis].”77
Thölde added that many miners lacked proper knowledge of the properties of a
given mineral ore and therefore discarded materials before their time. Miners and
metallurgists also participated with alchemists in the larger effort to harvest God’s
mineral fruit. Appealing more squarely to Paracelsus than other examples had,
Thölde seemed to allow for the possibility of transmutation. Alchemy completed the
work of metallurgists: “If one wants to learn to see the [mineral] seed through
craftwork, the metal must first pass through the hands of the smelter and then though
the hands of the alchemist.”78 The smelter brought metal to malleability and rid it of
impurities, and the alchemist performed further operations to isolate the seed and
stimulate the Ferch. Paracelsus had similarly claimed that the alchemist completed the
work of nature.79
Thölde then turned to the dowsing rod, which became a sophisticated prospecting
practice and study in mineral vapours. As solar beams descended upon the earth, they
met with the exhalation of mineral ore (Auswitterungen), which drew the beams
underground, where they promoted the generation of metals. Thölde described the
push and pull of solar rays and mineral vapours as a sort of mineral “breathing.”
There were various forms of mineral breathing, he added, and so miners fashioned
different kinds of dowsing rods. Thölde warned his readers not to suppose other (less
legitimate) mechanisms behind the operation of these rods: “Whoever deals with rods
must not proceed according to his own fantasy, or bring novelties into mining . . . he
must rather learn it from nature, and concerning rods, heed the Witterung.”80
Thölde specified seven rods. The so-called “fire rod” (Feuerrute) recognised the
inhalation that drew the solar rays below. The practitioner actually lit the rod like a
torch and brought it underground, at which point the flame was extinguished,
supposedly under the influence of mineral inhalation. Thölde does not suggest this,
but perhaps the smoke disappeared into the mines below as if sucked downwards.

76
Montanus, Bericht, 99.
77
Montanus, Bericht, 6.
78
Montanus, Bericht, 7.
79
Sudhoff, Paracelsus, vol. 11, 321.
80
“Der da mit Rutten umbgehet, der muß nicht seiner Fantasey nach gehen, und . . . aus seinem Sinn in das
Bergwerck was newes bringen . . . sondern er muß sie von der Natur lernen, und also was die Rutten belanget,
auff die Witterung achtung geben.” Montanus, Bericht, 78.
 METALLOGENESIS AND PROSPECTING IN EARLY MINING BOOKS 251

The “burning rod” (Brandrute), smeared with an animal or vegetable substance, by

contrast, recognised the exhalation of ore by glowing, a sure sign that a living metal
was at hand.81 This was a hard wood such as oak, about half an “ell” long.82 The
material spread on the rod should not be flammable, but should be more like a wax
that was heated and melted by the torch. According to Thölde, the byproduct
produced was “good for several uses.”83 The miners called it Spath, he said, and it
was also naturally produced in the mines, in particular in Norway and Sweden.84
The third rod recognised the steady breathing of metallic ore in a more perfect state
of rest. The “leaping rod” (Springrute) was fashioned by holding two sticks parallel
with each other. When they recognised the mineral fumes, they separated, no matter
how strong the practitioner’s arms. “If it were a single stick, it would break in two,”
so powerful were subterranean breathings.85 Like the burning rod, these sticks were
smeared on the inside with a substance called marcasite, which Thölde defined simply
as that which increased the attractive power of mineral breathing. The lodestone was
the marcasite of iron, for example, and each metal had its own distinctive marcasite.86
The breathing of a purified metal drew on its marcasite just as the magnet drew on
iron. A proper understanding came only from experience: “Go down into the mines
. . . take these words to heart, and you will come out all the wiser, and thank
me.”87
The fourth rod responded to a swifter and stronger sort of breathing tainted with
the smell of the Ferch and metallic seed. Thölde compared this to the smell of a
person’s breath after swallowing wine. The requisite rod was the “striking rod”
(Schlagrute), which came from hazel smeared with good sap and sweet fruit. The
metallic breathing sucked at the liquid substance, pulling on the rod, and with such
strength that it could hold it on the ground in a fixed upright position, called the “oar
stand.”88 That it was also named Furcilla would suggest a small size.
The last three rods all involved the use of metal. The fifth, the “trembling rod”
(Beberute), was a metallic hollow pole that responded to the meeting of subterranean
and solar fumes when it was embedded in the earth; its hollow space was filled with
a mixture of gold and silver called an electrum.89 Once in the topsoil, these two
metals recognised solar and terrestrial fumes, respectively, causing the pole to shake.
The sixth, the “lower rod” (Unterrute), was a branch partially hollowed for “three
thumbs length,” and then filled with gold that responded to solar rays.90 The gold
was caught in the downward rush of fumes to mineral ore, as if striving to join it.

81
Montanus, Bericht, 82.
82
One English ell = 45 inches.
83
Montanus, Bericht, 82.
84
Considered a sign of mineral ore in Zeidler, s.v. “Spaat.” In Johann Christoph Adelung, Grammatisch-
kritisches Wörterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart, mit beständiger Vergleichung der übrigen Mundarten,
besonders aber der Oberdeutschen (Vienna: B. Ph. Bauer, 1811), s.v “Spath”; the substance was a fine white
crystalline stone, possibly gypsum.
85
Montanus, Bericht, 85.
86
We accordingly cannot identify Thölde’s “marcasite” with “iron pyrite,” the modern-day designation.
87
Montanus, Bericht, 86.
88
“. . . des Erztes Standt.” Montanus, Bericht, 90.
89
Electrum is a gold–silver alloy.
90
Montanus, Bericht, 96.
252 WARREN ALEXANDER DYM

The last rod was called the “upper rod” (Oberrute), and, in exact opposition to the
lower rod, it pulled underground metallic vapours upwards. The upper rod was made
of hazel, also hollowed for “three fingers length,” but filled with the “mercury of
metals” at the weight of “three barley corns or grains.”91 Presumably, Thölde meant
the mercury of the alchemists. The upper rod was especially useful in discerning the
depth of ore and type of mineral: a strong dip indicated lead, a weaker one suggested
tin or bismuth, and a still weaker one indicated copper or iron.
Our third example is a manuscript of 1671 by a mine master (Bergmeister) named
Abraham Löwel, housed at the Government Library in Dresden. It is the carefully
penned and well-bound manuscript of the highest official in one Saxon mining
jurisdiction, clear about his intention to build on the work of his predecessors in
grounding a new field, and steeped in mining lore, Paracelsian theory, and Mathesian
religious sentiments. Historians of earth science and mining historians recognise
Agricola chiefly for his technical De re metallica, and they have mostly forgotten
Johann Mathesius.92 This is in marked contrast to how Löwel understood the
history of his field and distributed credit to sixteenth-century predecessors: Agricola
provided a definitive glossary of mining words and phrases (what Löwel calls “Infor-
matio terminorum”) — he latinized some six hundred German mining terms in 1546
— whereas the Lutheran pastor Mathesius produced an authoritative theory of
metals and description of mining (“Cognito rerum”) with the Sarepta. Löwel
mentioned neither Agricola’s theoretical De ortu nor his most famous De re
metallica, suggesting that these works had less practical value to Löwel. Most of all,
he echoed the Sarepta with praise for the Creator of minerals, mining analogies for
the Christian life, and sayings from the old Joachimstal pastor himself. Complement-
ing these two earlier works, the Memorial was the third branch of Löwel’s proposed
tripartite mining science, instructions on setting up a mine (“Ajudicatio casuum”).93
The manuscript presented a theory of the earth grounded in Albertus and other
early alchemical thinkers (Mathesius, Paracelsus, Kalbe, and Thölde), among more
recent authorities. In a section entitled, “The Origin and Generation of Metals,”
Löwel began by claiming that the inner heat of the earth, together with the influence
of the stars, created a warm metallic liquidity (Dampff or Broden) that travelled
upwards through the tiny veins, cracks, and fissures of rock, like sweat through
“pores” (Schweisslöcher). When it met the coldness of more surface-level rocks, the
warm substance transformed into a mineral fat (Mineralischen Fett), or humidity.94
The still-undifferentiated substance began to release both sulfuric and mercurial
vapours as it condensed into specific mineral forms. Here, Löwel rejected the opinion
of some that mercurial material was rarely found beside mineral ore.95 After coagula-
tion, the veins of mineral substance meshed together, as if crystallising, to resemble,
said Löwel, the earthy material sometimes visible in hardened glass. When veins
91
Montanus, Bericht, 100.
92
On the influence of De re metallica in the history of chemistry, see Marco Beretta, “Humanism and Chemistry:
The Spread of Georgius Agricola’s Metallurgical Writings,” Nuncius: Annali di Storia della Scienza 12
(1997).
93
Abraham Löwel, Memorial betreffend die Bergwissenschaf (1671), Säschische Landes-und Universitätsbiblio-
thek Dresden, B158, 1.
94
Löwel, Memorial, 12b.
95
Löwel, Memorial, 14.
 METALLOGENESIS AND PROSPECTING IN EARLY MINING BOOKS 253

gathered into larger reservoirs, moreover, they became like “stomachs” in which
material incubated still further.96 Löwel summarised his account by referring to
alchemical writings: “All true philosophers know,” he said, that salts, minerals, gems
and stones were the “fruits” of a gigantic tree of water. Water reached its “ultimate
perfection” (ultimam materiam) in the element earth in this way, as Paracelsus had
said in the Book on Minerals.97 At this point, Löwel referenced the thirteenth-
century Italian scholar, Arnald von Villanova, who is commonly ranked among the
most important alchemical thinkers.98
This theory of metallogenesis had practical value for miners, not because it
legitimised the artificial transmutation of metals, which Löwel never discussed, but
rather because mineral vapours left noticeable effects on the trees above ground. His
chapter “Signs of Veins” rehearsed the now-standard prospecting wisdom on
prospecting contained in Agricola, Mathesius, Uttman, and others. The miner looked
for the effects of steady mineral heat — stunted growth, gnarled tree branches, frosts
that seemed to evaporate too soon, and off-coloured leaves — as well as the “blue
fire” of sudden Witterungen.99 Löwel’s theory also had value in prospecting as the
explanation for the dowsing rod. In a chapter entitled “The Dowsing Rod: That it
Dips Naturally,” Löwel rehearsed Valentine’s (Thölde’s) theory of seven rods almost
verbatim. Mineral vapour theory remained the dominant interpretation of dowsing
until electrical science.100

Conclusion
Mining books gave increasing space to an organic and alchemical theory of metallic
generation after 1590. The earliest indications of Arabic theory that appeared in the
Kunstbüchlein and other early printed books were harbingers of a more thorough
appropriation, rather than indications of a fundamental incompatibility between
practice and theory, or mining and alchemical theory. Historians of alchemy and
mining have rightly stressed the widespread scepticism about transmutation among
numerous authors of mining and metallurgical books, including Biringuccio,
Agricola, and Ercker. Later authors, such as Uttman, Thölde, and Löwel, also
rejected transmutation or refrained from speaking about it. But this should not imply
that miners and mining officials had little use for alchemical theory if it helped to
explain the layout of mineral veins, effects of mineral vapours on the earth’s surface,
or action of the dowsing rod. Printed silence on the subject of metallogenesis should
not be confused with actual silence.
The preceding also suggested that Paracelsus and Mathesius had a greater impact
on theories of the earth than did Agricola, whose real legacy was in spreading

96
Löwel, Memorial, 13.
97
Löwel, Memorial, 14b.
98
On Villanova, see Claus Priesner and Karin Figala, eds., Alchemie: Lexikon einer hermetischen Wissenschaft
(Munich: Verlag C.H. Beck, 1998), s.v. “Arnald von Villanova.”
99
Löwel, Memorial, 22.
100
See Warren Alexander Dym, “Miners and Scholars: Dowsing and the Freiberg Mining Academy,” Technology
and Culture 49 (2008).
254 WARREN ALEXANDER DYM

technology. Mining books of the eighteenth century continued to discuss metallogen-

esis, modernising alchemical theory while absorbing the latest in chemical minera-
logy. Future research might approach the Saxon Bergrat and chemist, Johann
Friedrich Henckel, in this respect. One of the first to bring experimental chemistry to
mineralogy, Henckel also represented a German vitalist movement that had deep
roots in the alchemical tradition.101 But this moves beyond the purview of the present
paper, which sought to establish that mining books after 1500 appropriated
alchemical theory into a larger conception of the earth, and found practical
application for this theory in prospecting practice.

Notes on Contributor
Warren Alexander Dym received an MA in social science from the University
of Chicago in 1997, and a Ph.D. in history from the University of California,
Davis, in 2005. He is presently Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of
History, Bucknell University, where he teaches broadly in the history of science
and technology, and pre-modern Europe. Address: Warren Alexander Dym,
202 Carnegie Hall, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA 17837, USA; Email:
wad012@bucknell.edu

101
Johann Friedrich Henckel, Unterricht von der Mineralogie oder Wißenschaft von Waßern, Erdsäfften, Saltzen,
Erden, Steinen und Ertzten, nebst angefügten Unterricht von der Chymia Metallurgica (Dresden, 1747).