Arnold of Villanova

Arnold of Villanova. rhtto // www.crvstalinks.com/villanova.htmll. 

FIGURE 13. Arnold of Villanova The Stone Is Obtained from the Marriage of Gabritius and Beia, from Michael Maier, Symbola aureae mensae duodecim na-tionum, 1617. Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA. 

Carbon monoxide is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, flammable, toxic gas. It was first identified by the Spanish alchemist Arnold of Villanova (1235-1313), who noted the production of a poisonous gas when wood was burned. The formal discovery of carbon monoxide is credited to the French chemist Joseph Marie Francois de Lassone (1717-1788) and the British chemist Joseph Priestley (1733-1804). The former prepared carbon monoxide by heating carbon in the presence of zinc, and for a time the compound was incorrectly identified as hydrogen. William Cumberland Cruikshank (1745—1800) correctly determined that carbon monoxide was an oxide of carbon in 1800. 

This style of presentation, with multiple emblematic personages or scenes, is quite common in this period among the best known examples is the frontispiece of Robert Burton s Anatomy of Melancholy (Oxford, 1628). A simplified version of the pattern (Plate 31) appears in the treatise of Rhumelius, Medicina Spagyrica (Frankfurt, 1648), with Hermes Trismegistus standing opposite Arnold of Villanova. Beneath Hermes is a sick room beneath Arnold, an apothecary s shop. At bottom center is a kind of athanor at top center, a dove descends from heaven to earth, where two serpents arise. 

As with Raymund Lull, Arnold of Villanova, Roger Bacon, and others, Popp defined alchemy as the separation of the gross from the subtle and spiritual parts of nature, and he viewed a body s spiritual, fifth essence (the part derived from the stars) as the source of... 

Alchemy in more mystic vein is to be found in works attributed to the Spanish scholars Arnold of Villanova (c. 1235-c. 1311) and Raymond Lully (1235-1315), though it is doubtful that fliey really were the authors. These writings lean heavily on transmutation, and Lully was even supposed (by tradition) to have manufactured gold for the wastrel Edward II of England. 

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