ABSTRACT
Only one work, the Opuscule Tres-Excellent de la vraye Philosophic naturelle des Metaux, is associated with the pseudonym Denis Zachaire, or Dionysius Zacharias. This treatise received at least three printings in its original French (Antwerp, 1567, 1568; Lyons, 1574) before being translated into Latin and German in the early years of the seventeenth century, and it appears in several major collecrions, including those of Zetzner and Manget. The present verse translation, though partial, is the only one known in English. Whether the author was an alchemist or a satirist of alchemy has been questioned, given the humor of the work and what one scholar calls its presentation of “faulty reasoning so plausibly that it appears preposterous.” 1 But the Opuscule was valued as an authentic expression of alchemical theory and practice from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Initiates in the art could easily explain away humor and even ridicule as being aimed not at true alchemy, but at charlatanry; in fact, satirical diatribes against false practitioners are common in alchemical writings. 2 As for the “faulty reasoning” so annoying to modern readers, that was simply the veil needed to obscure the sacred truth from the unworthy. As Michael Sendivogius (q.v., below) was to say, if alchemical texts are obscure and even contradictory, it “must be so.”
