Franciscans and the Elixir of Life. Zachary A. Matus
is the foundation of Bacon’s notion that human body is capable of being perfected.43 What Bacon adds to scripture is a philosophical explanation for this idea. The resurrected dead, according to Bacon, are endowed with an equality of elements, which allows them to exist physically forever.44
This is not wild extrapolation or speculation on Bacon’s part. Augustine ruminated on resurrected bodies, and Peter Lombard included a discussion of the physiology of resurrected bodies in his Sentences, the principal theological textbook of the scholastic era.45 A number of Franciscan masters, including Bonaventure, composed (or dictated) commentaries on the Lombard’s sentences, and any student in theology in the thirteenth century could expect to listen to masters’ lectures on individual questions for years. Bacon’s use of the resurrected body as a model for the effects of the elixir was significant, not only because of the impact of religion on alchemical theory, but also because the discourse was familiar to his confreres and the intellectual elite. Bacon’s theory of the elixir was not particularly influential, but that does not mean it was misunderstood or obscure. Moreover, Bacon was quite careful to maintain that these perfect bodies would die when God wanted them to (though not due to illness or old age).46 This accorded with the kind of perfect (resurrected) bodies found in some contemporary hagiographies.47
The resurrected, and therefore complexionally balanced body was characterized by four specific qualities, called dowries (dotes), so labeled by William of Auxerre and discussed in the Sentences.48 The dowries are claritas, agilitas, subtilitas, and impassibilitas. While Bacon does not refer to these per se, it is clear from his description of the elixir’s effects that the dowries are on his mind. While the dowries are often translated by their English cognates, it is important to remember that scholastics considered each of them to encompass a number of different qualities.49 The gifts are not just infusions. They also speak to the removal of defects. Elixirs are substances that not only purify through the removal of unwanted qualities, but also confer what is missing. Thus Bacon’s belief that an elixir can act to create a perfect body is wholly consistent with both scholastic dialogue on perfect bodies and alchemical theory.
Impassibilitas has a double meaning. On the one hand it is related to the Greek apatheia, an inability to suffer as well as a freedom from base passions. Thomas Aquinas refers to it as quies, freedom from the passions, and Bonaventure calls it a “perfect disposition.”50 Physiologically speaking it meant imperviousness to corruption. The composition of elements within an impassible body could not be changed. Bacon provides an example of this idea by discussing the not so fortunate resurrected bodies in Hell. Their flesh could burn eternally while never being consumed by the flames.51 Claritas describes the luminous quality of perfect bodies—a well-attested aspect of the resurrected dead and of saintly bodies.52 Subtilitas speaks to the refinement of the body’s particles to the point that these fine particles can pass intact through other bodies; the resurrected can walk through walls. Agilitas is the ability to move one’s body according to the wishes of the soul without limitations, to float or levitate. Bacon does not delve much into these latter three dowries, though there are some implications of claritas when he discusses how one concocts the elixir.
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