Lives of alchemystical philosophers: To which is added a bibliography of alchemy and hermetic philosophyWaite, Arthur Edward
Philosophy
Lives of alchemystical philosophers: To which is added a bibliography of alchemy and hermetic philosophy
Waite, Arthur Edward
Alchemists -- Biography; Alchemy -- Bibliography; Alchemy -- History
The life of Denis Zachaire has been made the subject of an interesting
and well-written novel--“A Professor of Alchemy”--by “Percy Ross,”
recently published by Mr George Redway. The life of the great adept,
after his accomplishment of the Magnum Opus, is detailed at some
length, M. Louis Figuier being apparently the authority for the bare
facts of the case. The alchemist is represented by the French writer
as having travelled to Lausanne, where he became enamoured of a young
and beautiful lady, whom he carried from Switzerland into Germany, and
then abandoned himself completely to a life of dissipation and folly,
which closed tragically at Cologne in the year 1556. He was strangled
in the middle of a drunken sleep by the cousin who had accompanied
him in his travels, and who coveted his wealth and his mistress. The
murderer effected his escape with the lady, who appears to have been
his accomplice. The sole authority for this narrative appears to be a
poem by Mardoché de Delle, who was attached, as a sort of laureate, to
the court of Rodolph II. It is not improbably a mere invention of the
versifier; there is nothing in the sober treatise of Denis Zachaire,
written at the period in question, to give colour to the account of his
extravagance.
II.
The manuscript volume entitled “Egyptian Freemasonry” fell, with
the other papers of Cagliostro, into the hands of the Inquisition,
and was solemnly condemned in the judgment as containing rites,
propositions, a doctrine and a system which opened a broad road to
sedition and were calculated to destroy the Christian religion. The
book was characterised as superstitious, blasphemous, impious, and
heretical. It was publicly burnt by the hands of the executioner, with
the instruments belonging to the sect. Some valuable particulars
concerning it are, however, preserved in the Italian life; they are
reproduced from the original proceedings published at Rome by order of
the Apostolic Chamber.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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