ABSTRACT
At the beginning of the fifteenth century the English King Henry IV had forbidden the practice of alchemy, which had been permitted, and even fostered, by his predecessors since the time of Edward III. The word 'elixir' is used by Albert the Great in his De mineralibus, meaning the 'medicine of metals'; its preparation is detailed in the pages of the Summa perfectionis, by the Latin Geber. In the encyclopedia written by Vincent of Beauvais in the middle of the thirteenth century, the Speculum Naturale, find a thorough, although random exposition of knowledge concerning the elixir. The Testamentum is the work of an alchemist probably of Catalan origin, the colophon, appearing in all the fifteenth-century manuscripts, gives the date 1332, which could as well refer to its composition as to the date of a dedicatory copy to the English king, Edward III.
