Fake news is so ingrained in the culture that yours truly was on the verge of asking for help from his colleagues in the Fake Off department at 20 minutes. And for good reason Nicolas Flamel, the most famous of alchemists, never practiced alchemy. Everything that is told about him and the philosopher’s stone in the first novel of the adventures of Harry Potter is therefore false. It’s hard to take, but rest assured the magic sorting hat does exist.
Now, back to Nicolas Flamel and his legend, thanks to press archives selected by RetroNews, and sometimes contradictory as a legend cannot exist without multiple versions. Our man was probably born in 1330 in Pontoise and settled in Paris as a bookseller-copier. On pagein an article of September 8, 1932, described him as a “humble public writer whose shop was sheltered between the pillars of the church of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie”, of which only the bell tower, known as the Tour Saint-Jacques.
The same newspaper specifies that the stall measured “two and a half feet long by two wide (says Sauval)”. However, Nicolas Flamel and his wife Pernelle, (or Bernelle or even Petrenelle) “endowed Paris with an asylum for widows and orphans, with fourteen hospitals, three chapels, brought in seven churches and the hospice for eighty […], etc. “. And the newspaper wonders: “Given the indisputably honest character of this couple, their fortune has remained an enigma. Unless Nicolas Flamel was actually an alchemist!
The quest for purity
Before continuing, let’s call on Olivier Lafont, former president of the Society for the History of Pharmacy and author of From alchemy to chemistry, to learn more about this discipline. “Alchemy originated in the 2nd and 3rd centuries in Egypt around the temples of Hermes,” says the historian. It is as much a spiritual quest as a material one, in search of perfection. Moreover, the alchemists who call themselves philosophers, hence the philosopher’s stone, are linked to the hermetic philosophy of the god Hermes, who gave the meaning current term.
Fans of perfection, alchemists seek to achieve purity through metals. These “are classified according to their purity, continues the historian. The purest are silver and gold and the less pure, iron, tin, lead. Hence the expression “turning lead into gold”, going from the impure to the pure. However, “each metal is supposed to be composed of sulfur and mercury and the purer a metal is, the less sulfur it has and the more mercury it has”, specifies Olivier Lafont. Why sulfur? Because at the time, metal ores were sulphides and when heated to purify them, sulfur dioxide was released. And nothing looks more like molten metal than mercury.
Increasing the proportion of mercury is what is called the transmutation of metals or “great work”. “When we transform the metal into silver, we obtain the white stone then the red or philosopher’s stone when we manage to obtain gold, specifies the historian. But alchemists do not seek gold for gold, but for purity. »
The Book of Abraham the Jew
But back to our bookseller/alchemist. “One day in the year 1357, Nicolas Flamel, for ten florins, bought a strange book with a copper cover”, relates an article by Comoediaof June 21, 1912. This work is “a book on alchemy by Abraham the Jew, which teaches in simple terms the transmutation of metals”, continues the Chicago Grandstand of June 7, 1931, which specifies however that the book was worth two florins. On the contrary, according to an article by Gringoire of February 22, 1935, before the newspaper turned collaborationist, the work “was written in such a language that he did not succeed in penetrating its hidden meaning”.
Nicolas Flamel therefore undertakes to travel to Spain in search of Jewish sages who could help him, and takes as cover for his esoteric journey a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. He ends up meeting Master Canches who explains to him the meaning of the lines of Abraham. And after more years of hard work, Nicolas Flamel reached the goal, reports Le Petit Marseillais in an article of January 17, 1939:
This happened on April 25, 1582, as he himself recounts in the manuscript he left behind. I made, he says, the projection with the red stone on similar quantity of mercury, in the presence still of Perenelle alone, in the same house, […], on five o’clock in the evening, which I truly transmuted into almost as much pure gold, certainly better than common gold, softer and more bendable. »
In possession of the red or philosopher’s stone, “Nicolas Flamel became colossally rich, so rich that, not knowing what to use his money for, he began to erect monuments to his own glory”, affirms The Illustrated World of July 15, 1899. But the stone also made it possible to achieve immortality. And the newspaper goes on: “He pretended to pass away on March 22, 1417. Pétrenelle, his wife, had, also by simulacrum, preceded him by twenty years in the grave; but the truth is that they both had a thousand years to live. ” Thereby Le Petit Marseillais quotes “Abbé Villain declaring having seen him in 1761 at an evening at the Opera”!
Excavations in the cellars
Obviously, on the death (real or supposed) of the alchemist, the amateurs tried to acquire his various buildings because “they hoped to discover some of the secrets of the famous alchemist”. In Notre Dame of ParisVictor Hugo moreover made Archdeacon Claude Frollo one of these apprentice alchemists:
It is certain that he had often been seen going along the rue des Lombards and stealthily entering a little house at the corner of the rue des Ecrivains and the rue Marivault. It was the house that Nicolas Flamel had built, where he had died around 1417, and which, always deserted since then, was already beginning to fall into ruin. […]. Some neighbors even claimed to have seen once, through a ventilator, the Archdeacon Claude digging, stirring and digging the earth in these two cellars. […]. It was supposed that Flamel had buried the philosopher’s stone in these cellars.
This house was eventually destroyed and should not be confused with Nicolas Flamel’s house on rue de Montmorency. As one of the oldest in Paris, it was built by the bookseller but there is no evidence that he lived there. And Comoedia gives us news of the building at the beginning of the 20th century: “The City has allocated 15,000 francs to ensure that this house by Nicolas Flamel remains as it is. A furnished hotel is located on the upper floors and a wine merchant occupies the ground floor. The 20th century bistro succeeded the alchemist of the Middle Ages. »
But as we are in Paris, when the legend exceeds the reality, we print the reality. And the reality is that Nicolas Flamel has never been an alchemist. And to explain his fortune, which was not that colossal, the Chicago Grandstand assures that his activities as a public scribe were flourishing and adds: “In the end, he acquired great wealth, which he invested in houses and rented them at a minimum rent. » Stone, a safe haven. And Olivier Lafont to drive the point home: “Nicolas Flamel never really wrote anything interesting on alchemy. »