Product Code Database
Nicolas Flamel (; 1330 – 22 March 1418)According to Nigel Wilkins: Nicolas Flamel, des livres et de l'or, Chapter 1: De Paris. was a French écrivain public, a draftsman of public documents such as contracts, letters, agreements and requests. He and his wife also ran a school that taught this trade.
Long after his death, Flamel developed a reputation as an Alchemy believed to have created and discovered the philosopher's stone and to have thereby achieved immortality. These legendary accounts first appeared in the 17th century. According to texts ascribed to Flamel almost 200 years after his death, he had learned alchemical secrets from a Wandering Jew converso on the road to Santiago de Compostela. He has since appeared as a legendary alchemist in various fictional works.
In modern historical publications Flamel is also often referred to as a copyist of manuscripts and a book seller, but research by M. and R. Rouse has demonstrated that this is not correct and that the very few historical documents that refer to him in this capacity do so mistakenly or are later forgeries.
Flamel lived into his 80s, and in 1410 designed his own headstone, which was carved with the images of Jesus Christ, Saint Peter and Saint Paul. The tombstone is preserved at the Musée de Cluny in Paris. Records show that Flamel died in 1418. He was buried in Paris at the end of the nave of the former Church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie. His will, dated 22 November 1416, indicates that he was generous but that he did not have the extraordinary wealth of later alchemical legend. There is no indication that the real Flamel of history was involved in alchemy, pharmacy or medicine.
An alchemical book, published in Paris in 1612 as Livre des figures hiéroglyphiques and in London in 1624 as Exposition of the Hieroglyphical Figures was attributed to Flamel.Laurinda Dixon, ed., Nicolas Flamel, his Exposition of the Hieroglyphical Figures (1624) (New York: Garland) 1994. It is a collection of designs purportedly commissioned by Flamel for a tympanum at the Cimetière des Innocents in Paris, long disappeared at the time the work was published. In the publisher's introduction, Flamel's search for the philosopher's stone was described. According to that introduction, Flamel had made it his life's work to understand the text of a mysterious 21-page book he had purchased in 1357, at the cost of two . The introduction claims that, around 1378, he traveled to Spain for assistance with translation. On the way back, he reported that he met a sage, who identified Flamel's book as being a copy of the original The Book of Abraham the Jew. With this knowledge, over the next few years, Flamel and his wife allegedly decoded enough of the book to successfully replicate its recipe for the philosopher's stone, producing first silver in 1382 and then gold. Also, Flamel is said to have studied some texts in Hebrew language.
The validity of this story was first questioned in 1761 by Etienne Villain. He claimed that the source of the Flamel legend was P. Arnauld de la Chevalerie, publisher of Exposition of the Hieroglyphical Figures, who wrote the book under the pseudonym Eiranaeus Orandus. Other writers have defended the legendary account of Flamel's life, which has been embellished by stories of sightings in the 17th and 18th centuries and expanded in fictitious works ever since.
Flamel had achieved legendary status within the circles of alchemy by the mid 17th century, with references in Isaac Newton's journals to "the Caduceus, the Dragons of Flammel". Interest in Flamel revived in the 19th century: Victor Hugo mentioned him in The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, Erik Satie was intrigued by Flamel,Wilkins 1993. and Albert Pike refers to Nicholas Flamel in his book Morals and Dogma of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry. Flamel's reputation as an alchemist was further bolstered in the late 20th century by his depiction as the creator of the titular alchemical substance in the best-selling novel Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and its film adaptation. He also appears in the 2018 spinoff film , where he is portrayed by Brontis Jodorowsky.
|
|
