United States or Togo ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
John de Rupecissa, a French monk of the order of St. Francis, flourished in 1357, and pretended to be a prophet as well as an alchymist. Some of his prophecies were so disagreeable to Pope Innocent VI, that the Pontiff determined to put a stop to them, by locking up the prophet in the dungeons of the Vatican. It is generally believed that he died there, though there is no evidence of the fact.
Some obscure treatises of Rupecissa and Sacrobosco having fallen into their hands, they were persuaded, from reading them, that highly rectified spirits of wine was the universal alkahest, or dissolvent, which would aid them greatly in the process of transmutation. They rectified the alcohol thirty times, till they made it so strong as to burst the vessels which contained it.
Be not deluded; some of the Philosophers which have wrote of such things, as Geber, Albertus Magnus, Rasis, Rupecissa, Aristotle, and many others: But observe this: Some say, that if Antimony be made to a Vitrum or Glass, the bad volatile Sulphur is gone, and the Oil which may be prepared out of that Glass, will be a very fixt Oil, and will really give an ingress and Medicine of perfection to the imperfect Metals.
Word Of The Day