again for religious reasons due to the difficulty of integration with the views developed in Islam, the studies of alchemy were banned by the Christian church and the alchemists persecuted and condemned by the holy inquisition.
Only during the late Middle Ages in Europe, in some cases remained famous alchemical studies were investigated by powerful people both among the nobility in the ecclesiastical sphere, among them Albertus Magnus (1193-1280), Roger Bacon (1214-1294), and the same Thomas Aquinas (1226-1274). Cecco d'Ascoli alchemical author of the book "the bitter", not being a powerful, was burned at the stake in Florence on 17 July 1327. Ramon Llull (Ramon Llull Palma de Majorca 1232-1315) descendant of an old aristocratic family and therefore close to the levers of power, was one of the most famous alchemists of Europe, he tried an interesting justification of alchemy in relation to the concept of 'free will' of the man, so to have it accepted as part of the theology of the Christian church. In the "Liber de SECRET naturae seu de Quinta Essentia" Llull's reasoning in favor of Alchemy was roughly as follows:
"God can do what he wants .. . because he can exercise only the good "But man can run into bad because has available only the warmth of the fire, to bring purity earthly things, but with the help of the essential principles and faith may in the future design and implementation of the "transmutation" natural as already able to accomplish useful artificial transformations of natural elements.
Therefore Alchemy, which is the true art in promoting the knowledge, can not be condemned by the Church, as the choice between good and evil belongs to the free will of man; the latter is the result of his ignorance, but ignorance of humans has been wanted by the justice of God and therefore is a good point of view of God the Father Almighty.
Therefore man can make mistakes by trial and error in the quest for purity, while God could not have done absolutely no error and no injustice. Based on this reasoning and belief
Raimoldo Llull became known for the revision of many mistakes, which he attributed to misconceptions alchemy of some of his contemporaries and predecessors, both for his tenacity in defend and disseminate the alchemical studies.
Then, slowly but studies on the alchemical transmutation "of the elements, they also got to work on defense and clearly set first by Ramon Llull, a profound conceptual transformation that allowed him to achieve the development of alchemy in the West in science chemistry .
Florence was one of the centers of development of the Renaissance alchemists just as Cosimo I de 'Medici (1517-1574) had translated and disseminated the first in Latin and then in the vernacular "Alchemical Corpus" Hermes Trismegistus. Cosimo de 'Medici in Florence wanted it to import a new culture in order to make it free from the influences of the Tuscany temporal power of the Popes and he was patron of a new flowering of Renaissance culture that originated from a process of integration of the ancient alchemical culture with the emerging capacity Florentine craftsmanship in the fusion of metals, preparation and fixation of dyes for textiles and tapestries and preparation of medicines in pharmacies by the powerful guild of Florence "spice". The chemistry was seen by the Medici family as a global culture and therefore more suitable to save the world perfecting his nature, including human, with an aim not limited to the salvation of man, as required by the traditional cultural setting of ' mystical alchemy of nature, in this sense, the rediscovery of hermetic alchemy was considered in Florence a useful component of a process of cultural renewal capable of overcoming the Middle Ages.
The most obvious result of this process of cultural integration between alchemy and hermetic "arts and crafts of the Renaissance, it was to begin to question the usefulness of the Aristotelian , who had been the dominant scientific culture in the Middle Ages, which was perfectly integrated in the Christian tradition officially accepted by the Church of Rome.
The Florentine Renaissance begins a very pragmatic reflection on the concept of transmutation into gold, "that all evidence so far found it impossible to experience. Rather than feel guilty knowledge achieved, minds the likes of Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519), began to think not, the fact that the weak forces put into play by the fire, as an agent of transformation, could lead to the achievement of a pure status of "blackness," any substance capable of dissolving and reach the stage of "raw material", as only such a state of completion of the initial phase of transformation, allowed to recombine the material and actually reached the "transmutation" qualitative elements gold.
Rather than explore these criticisms, which later led to new forms of thought and the recovery of the atomistic theory to begin the book by Robert Boyle (published in 1661), was successful in Medici Florence the practice of the Arts and Crafts, by Vannoccio Biringuccio - (author of the book "De La Pirotechnia"-Siena 1540), Benvenuto Cellini and many others, promoted the growth in Tuscany the Italian Renaissance, creating a school of famous artists and craftsmen in the know use the art of fire to make glass, melt metals, to produce new colors, experiment with new medication .. developing the teachings of the ancient Alchemy.
Milady
Source: ( www.edscuola.it / archives / LRE / alchimia.html )
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