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"Probatum est per me": The Heidelberg Electors as Practioners and Patrons of the Medical and Magical Arts Excerpt |
By the time of the Thirty Years' War, when its volumes were carried off by the Austrian commander Tilly and then transported to Rome, the Bibliotheca Palatina contained almost 10,000 works. The works confiscated included not only the volumes of the various libraries of Heidelberg University, founded by Ruprecht I in 1386, but also the personal collections of the Palatine electors. The extensiveness of the collection and the uniqueness of many of its holdings attest to the importance of Heidelberg as a center of learning during the later Middle Ages and the early modern era.
This study focuses on the types of medical manuscripts obtained for the Bibliotheca Palatina and examines the contributions and interests of three generations of electors: Philipp der Aufrichtige (Philip the Upright, d. 1508), Ludwig V (d. 1544), and Otto Heinrich (d. 1559). Their initiatives reflected prevailing contemporary attitudes toward the medical--and what might be considered today as pseudo-medical--sciences and shaped the tradition of medical manuscript collecting and copying in Heidelberg in the sixteenth century. In addition, with electoral impetus and support Heidelberg became a locus for the pursuit of alchemcial remedies and experiments by mid-century. . . .
In addition to his interest in alchemical writings, Otto Heinrich had a long-standing curiosity regarding astrology and other secret sciences; for example, some twenty years before he became elector, he had consulted astrologers concerning favorable days to conduct political meetings. 34 Although the chronology is uncertain, sometime before or during Otto Heinrich's tenure as elector the Bibliotheca Palatina acquired a copy of Johann Hartlieb's Buch aller verbotenen Kunst , written in 1455-56, and hence one of the earliest depictions in German of the seven magical arts. In the work Hartlieb took to task the fascination of the fifteenth-century nobility with the magical arts. In defense of such support by Hartlieb's contemporaries and by their successors like Otto Heinrich, some scholars claim that many of the works dealing specifically with prognostication and the occult, such as the Schicksalsbuch , were merely for amusement purposes. 35
In light of the contemporaneous beliefs such justification of patronage and support seems unnecessary.
Although Otto Heinrich may have possessed natural curiosity about alchemical and astrological medicine, his interest may have been spurred by the politico-religious unrest that gripped the Palatinate, particularly in the mid-sixteenth century. A recent study of patronage at Protestant German courts during the early modern period by Bruce T. Moran suggests that princes turned to alchemy and the occult to realize their own political and economic ambitions. 36 Via a new court philosophy that relied on these arts, they sought to counterbalance the Catholic views of the Habsburg empire. Otto Heinrich's lifestyle as well as the prevailing political situation beset him with health and financial problems not unlike those of the princes of the subsequent century. Hence, the elector probably was captivated by Paracelsus's "Lapis philosophorum," which was thought to restore good health, and the alchemical application of his ideas, namely, the transmutation of base metals into gold, 37 as potential remedies. Otto Heinrich's pursuit of astrological medicine and his circumspect support of Paracelsian medical philosophy serve as a precursor to the overt support that the German nobility of the subsequent century provided to physicians who espoused the medicina hermetica . 34
©1995, Washington State University
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