PETRUS BONUS,ALSO KNOWN AS BONUS LOMBARDUS OR BUONO LOMBARDO OF FERRARA

also known as Bonus Lombardus or Buono Lombardo of Ferrara (fl. ca. 1323-1330)

alchemy.

Petrus Bonus is known through the extant texts of his alchemical work. He has been differentiated from the Petrus Bonus who was doctor of laws in the University of Ferrara (1396–1402), and from Petrus Bonus Advogarius, who taught astronomy or astrology at Ferrara and issued astrological predictions in the late fifteenth century.¹ According to the explicit of his alchemical treatise, Master Petrus Bonus, phisicus, or doctor of medicine, in 1323 discussed a quaestio on alchemy in Traù, Dalmatia.² In 1330 (1338,1339, or 1350), in Pola, Istria, he composed The Precious New Pearl, ³ a scholastic exposition of the arguments, with the names of appropriate authorities, for and against the validity of the alchemical art.

Since Petrus Bonus approached the problem of the transmutation of baser metals into gold “with a pen in his hand rather than an alembic and with volumes of the past literature...rather than metals and chemicals,”⁴ his accomplishment is significant not for any new chemical or scientific data but, rather, for the light that it sheds on current practices, theories, and authorities in alchemy and in other areas of natural science in the early fourteenth century. Like his earlier contemporaries, principally Arnald of Villanova, Ramón Lull, Roger Bacon, and Albertus Magnus, to whom alchemical writings of about the same era are attributed, but whose names Petrus Bonsus did not mention,⁵ he believed that the adept alchemist could produce gold from baser metals with the use of the philosophers’ stone. He held that the substance and material cause of this stone was quicksilver alone. In this view Petrus Bonus agreed with Arnald of Villanova, whom he probably knew through the Lilium, one of the few works of Latin origin that he cited.⁶

He rejected the alternative view advanced in other writings that both quicksilver and sulfur are essential, that is, that quicksilver is the matter of, and sulfur is the active agent that shapes and forms, the philosophers’ stone. According to Petrus Bonus, gold, the most perfect of metals, had been purified of sulfur. It had thus attained in nature the stage of perfection toward which the baser metals are striving.⁷ Therefore, according to Petrus Bonus, the process of transmutation consists principally in the separation from the baser metals of the sulfur that blackens, corrodes, or discolors the metals. This separation goes on at a slow and protracted rate in nature in the bowels of the earth. The skilled operator, who is conversant with the literature of the past and adept in the use of the philosophers’ stone, can greatly hasten the separation in the laboratory. The form of gold can be introduced in the twinkling of an eye, but only with divine assistance.⁸

Although Petrus Bonus insisted upon an acquaintance with the past literature of alchemy—chiefly that by authors of Greek and Arabic or Muslim origin, such as Aristotle, Hermes, Morienus, Jabir ibn Hayyān (Geber), Rasis (probably al-Razi), Ibn Rushd, Ibn Sīna, and the authors of the Turba philosophorum and also upon the need to check speculative thought by practice and experience,⁹ he nonetheless was finally obliged to admit that he had not been able to penetrate into the secret of the philosophers’ stone and that he had to fall back upon the mystery of the divine will. Petrus Bonus accepted “alchemy as possessing a divine as well as natural character.” He held that“sufficient natural reasons for the philosophers’ stone” could not be given. One must believe it, as one believes in “the miracles of Christianity.” To him the“art is a divine secret transcending both natural reason and experience.”¹⁰ Thus The Precious New Pearl lucidly portrays the direction that alchemists were to take in the fourteenth century and thereafter.

Petrus Bonus shed light not only on the practices and perplexities of the alchemists but also on other items of natural interest in his time. In seeking analogies to the transmutation of metals, he set forth the belief of his contemporaries in the spontaneous generation of frogs, ants, and flies from dust and clouds or refuse. He insisted that animals so generated were the same as those generated in the usual fashion.¹¹ Hence he affirmed that gold, which would stand up to various tests, was the same as gold generated in nature. Further, he revealed that it was current knowledge that in Aristotle ’s time there was opposition to the geocentric theory, with alternative views that, like the planets, the earth moved in circular motion.¹² He mentioned the discovery of gold in the silver mines of Serbia and noted the existence of silver mines in Germany and alum mines in the vicinity of Constantinople.¹³

Although The Precious New Pearl is an extremely detailed and even repetitious work, it is nonetheless very informative. This accounts for the interest in it of its first editor, Janus Lacinius, and the frequency of its publication in the sixteenth century and thereafter.

NOTES

1. Lynn Thorndike, History of Magic and Experimental Science, III (New York, 1934), 147 ff.

2.lbid. Thorndike has quoted the citation by Tiraboschi, Storia della letteratura italiana, V (Milan, 1823), 332, of the Este MS, “Quaestio...per Magistrum Bonum Ferrariensem physicum sub MCCCXXIII anno...tunc temporis salariatum in civitate Traguriae de provincia Dalmatiae.” Other MSS that contain similar citations regarding the quaestio in 1323 are British Museum, Harley 672, XV cent., f. 169; Orleans 289 (243), XV cent., f. 187 and 290 (244) XVI cent., f. 96.

3. MS, British Museum, Harley 672, XV cent., f. 169, “Explicit Preciosa novella margarita edita a magistro Bono Lombardo de Ferraria phisico introducens ad artem alkimie. Composita 1330 in civitate Polle in provincia Istrie” similarly MSS Orleans 289 (243), XV cent., f 187v, with the date 1338; Orleans 290 (244), XVI cent., ff, 1–96, with the date 1350. Of the printed eds., that of Zetzner, Theatrum chemicum, v (1660), has the dates 1330 and 1339, as does Manget, Bibliotheca chemica curiosa. II (1702), 1–80.

4. Thorndike, III, 153.

5. Thorndike, III, 150-151; for these authors see Thorndike, II and III, passim,

6.lbid., III, 160; Zetzner, V, 546, 559, 568. For Arnald of Villanova and the Lilium, see Thorndike, III, 62 ff.

7. Thorndike, III, 160; Zetzner, V,508–509, 546, 567–568, 580.

8. Thorndike, III, 158 ff.; Zetzner, V, 550 ff., 632ff.

9. Zetzner, V, 568 ff.; for the numerous authors cited, see esp. Julius Ruska, “L’alchimie’s l’epoque de Dante,” in Annales Guebhard-Severine,(1934), 410-417, esp. pp. 415-416, where some twenty authors are counted without those of the Turba philosophorum.

10. Thorndike, III, 159; Zetzner, V, 580–588, caps. 6-8.

11. Thorndike, III, 162; Zetzner, V, 647.

12. Thorndike, III, 161–162; Zetzner, V, 642.

13. Thorndike, III, pp. 160-161; Zetzner V, 681, 682, also 549.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. For MS texts, see British Museum, Harley 672, XV cent., ff. 1-169 (D. W. Singer, Catalogue of Latin and Vernacular Alchemical Manuscripts in Great Britain and Ireland Dating From Before the XVI Century, 1 [Brussels, 1928], no. 276); Orleans 289 (243), XV cent., ff. 1–187 (J. Corbett, Catalogue des manuscrits alchimiques latins: II. Manuscrits des bibliothéques publiques des departments francais [Brussels, 1951], no. 39); Orleans 290 (244), XVI cent., ff. 1-96 (Corbett, II, no. 40); Bodleian, Ashmole 1426, XV cent., ff. 103-115, a gloss or commentary on The Precious New Pearl (Singer, I, no. 277); and Paris, Bibliotheque nationale 14006, XV cent., ff 44r-45v, an abridgment of The Precious New Pearl (J. Corbett, Catalogue des manuscrits alchimiques latins: I, Manuscrits des bibliotheques publiques de Paris [Brussels, 1939], no 53).

The earliest printed ed. of The Precious New Pearl is Janus Lacinius, ed., Pretiosa margarita, novella de thesauro, ac pretiosissimo philosophorum lapide (Petro Bono Ferrariensi autore) Artis huius diuinae typus, et methodus: collectanea ex Arnaldo, Phaymundo, Rhasi, Alberto, et Michaele Scoto ... apud Aldi filios (Venice, 1546). For the above and other eds. of the 16th and early 17th centuries see Thorndike, III, 148, 151, notes 8 and 18.

The full text is in Eberhard Zetzner, Theatrum chemicum praecipuos ... tractatus de chemiae et lapidis philosophici antiquitate, veritate jure, praestantia et operationibus continens, V (Strasbourg, 1660), 507–713; and J. J. Manget, Bibliotheca chemica curiosa, I (Geneva, 1702), 1-801–80. The Janus Lacinius ed. was translated into German by W.G. Stollen, Pretiosa margarita, oder Neu-erfundene kostliche Perle, von dem unvergleichlichen Schatz und hochst-kost-bahren Stein der Weisen... (Leipzig, 1714); and into English, in abridged form, by A. E. Waite, The New Pearl of Great Price: A Treatise Concerning the Treasure and Most Precuous Stone of the Philosophers, or the Method and Procedure of This Divine Art (London, 1894; 1963), 49–184.

II. Secondary Literature. The major critical study on Petrus Bonus in Lynn Thorndike, History of Magic and Experimental Science, III (New York, 1934), Ch. 9. Briefer accounts are Robert Multhauf, The Origins of Chemistry (London, 1966), 191–193; Julius Ruska,“L’alchimie a l’epoque du Dante,” in Annales Guebhard Severine, 10 (1934), 410-417 (translated by A. Kuenzi); George Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science, III (Baltimore, 1927–1948), 750–752; and J. M. Stillman,“Petrus Bonus and Supposed Chemical Forgeries,” in Scientific Monthly, 16 (1923), 318–325.

Pearl Kibre