Wahrhaftes Laudanum metallicum
Laudanum metallicum für Königin Maria von Ungarn
Printing History, Manuscripts. Printed in a heavily abridged version. Four manuscripts. Another manuscript was for sale in 1793.
Editions. Not edited by Huser or Sudhoff.
Relationship between different versions. Further study required.
Structure, genre/form, perspective, style. The full title in the Kassel manuscript is “Das warhafftige Laudanum Metallicum Theophrasti, Dardurch Die Königin auß Oësterreich Maria, Von Theophrasti Selbsten Curiert worden.”
Relationship to other texts.
Authenticity, authorship. Allegedly written by Paracelsus for Queen Mary of Hungary (1505–1558). No direct judgement by Sudhoff, but he held all the recipes in this collection to be spurious. According to Szathmáry authentic “without doubt.”
Time of writing. Further study required.
Manuscripts:
- Kassel, Landesbibliothek: 4° Ms. chem. 58, f. 43v–44r
- Dresden, Sächsische Landesbibliothek: Mscr.Dresd.J.454, f. 22v–25r
- Cambridge/MA, Harvard Library – Houghton Library: MS Lat 221, circa f. 134r
- Budapest, Országos Széchényi Könyvtár [National Library]: shelfmark unknown
First printed: Printed only in a heavily abridged version (1676) (see above, section 1)
Essential bibliography: Sudhoff, Paracelsus-Handschriften, 725, 778 n° I/15; CP 2: 480.
Further bibliographical references:
Johann Heinrich Zedler, Grosses vollständiges Universal-Lexicon aller Wissenschaften und Künste, vol. 20 (Halle-Leipzig, 1739), col. 961.
László Szathmáry, “Mária királyné és Paracelsus,” A Magyar Gyógyszerésztudományi Társaság Értesítője, 8 (1932), n° 2, 274–282 (non vidi).
László Szathmáry, “Die Königin Maria und Paracelsus,” Berichte der Ungarischen Pharmazeutischen Gesellschaft, 8 (1932), n° 4, 302–303 [German abstract].
William Jerome Wilson, “Catalogue of Latin and Vernacular Alchemical Manuscripts in the United States and Canada,” Osiris, 6 (1939), 1–836, on 246.
Friedrich Back, “Zur Wirkungsgeschichte des Paracelsus und seiner Persönlichkeit in Ungarn,” in Paracelsus. Salzburger Vorträge 1997 (Vienna, 1998) (Salzburger Beiträge zur Paracelsusforschung, 31), 68–86, on 72.
Dóra Bobory, The Sword and the Crucible: Count Boldizsár Batthyány and Natural Philosophy in Sixteenth-Century Hungary (Newcastle upon Tyne, 2009), 55, 167.
Dóra Bobory, “Paracelsus in Pannonia: Alchemy and Medicine in Count Boldizsár Batthyány’s Circle,” in Miguel López Pérez, Didier Kahn and Mar Rey Bueno, eds., Chymia: Science and Nature in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Newcastle upon Tyne, 2010), 115–137, on 116 and 131 n. 10.
Broszinski, Manuscripta chemica in quarto (2011), 192.
