ABSTRACT
By the mid-sixteenth century, alchemy was of widespread interest in the Holy Roman Empire. No longer the preserve of learned natural philosophers and initiates alone, the alchemical arts engaged princes, pastors, and craftspeople, both male and female. This diverse group of enthusiasts devoured alchemical literature as publishers ushered ancient and modern authors into print; they also traded techniques with fellow students of nature and bought recipes from peddlers of alchemical secrets. Not surprisingly, given alchemy’s wide purview of the theoretical and the practical as well as the mystical and the material, alchemical practitioners differed about how precisely to define their art, how to master it, and what to do with it. By the end of the century, practitioners increasingly disagreed: what exactly was alchemy, and, as it gained publicity and the support of political leaders, what were its goals to be?
