Kristi Viiding in Novaator: In medieval Tartu, alchemy was favoured at the highest level of the church

The research professor of the Under and Tuglas Literature Centre, Kristi Viiding was interviewed by Andres Reimann in ERR Novaator on 19 January 2024.

The article Alchemy explored at the highest level of church in medieval Tartu introduces a mid-16th century manuscript on alchemy recently found from the Central Library of Zurich. The manuscript’s dedication to Tartu’s first Lutheran superintendent Hermann Marsow confirms for the first time that the ideas of alchemy were favoured at the highest level of the Lutheran Church in Tartu in the middle of the 16th century. Written in both German and Latin, the manuscript consists of 15 short, rhymed poems, with a coloured emblem added to each poem as an explanation. The author of these texts is probably the European alchemist Johannes Lam(b)spring who was well-known in the 15th–16th centuries. His texts influenced the hermetic approach to alchemy that reached the Academia Gustaviana later, in the 17th century. According to the manuscript, Marsow was primarily interested in the spiritual side of the field, i.e. religious alchemy.

The article can be found here.