Valentine, Basil

This German adept in alchemical philosophy is commonly supposed to have been born at Mayence toward the close of the fourteenth century. As a young man he became a Roman Catholic priest and entered the Abbey of St. Peter, at Erfurt. He eventually became its prior, but otherwise very little is known concerning him, and even the date of his death is not known. His very existence is believed to be mythical by some authorities.

He appears to have been a very modest person, for according to Olaus Borrichius, the author of De Ortu et Progressu Chemioe, Valentine hid all the manuscripts of his writings inside one of the pillars of the Abbey Church where they might have remained for an indefinite period, but they were discovered during a thunderstorm, when a flash of lightning dislodged them from their curious hiding place. Valentine's reluctance for his work to be known may have been prompted by fear of the Inquisition discovering his researches in alchemy.

Valentine's works in alchemy certainly mark him as a very shrewd man and a capable scientist. Unlike much other medieval literature, his treatises were not all in Latin, some of them being in high Dutch and others in German. Prominent among those in his own language is The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony, first published at Leipzig in 1624. In this work, Valentine extolled antimony as an excellent medicine. The volume also embodies a lengthy metrical treatise on the philosophers' stone, the writer contending that whoever should discover and use this must do charitable deeds, mortify the flesh, and pray without ceasing. Among the alchemist's further writings are Apocalypsis Chymica, De Microcosmo degue Magno Mundi Mysterio et Medecina Hominis and Practica unà cum duodecim Clavibus et Appendice. All these were originally published in Germany at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and various passages in them demonstrate that the author understood the distillation of brandy and was acquainted with the method of obtaining hydrochloric acid from saltwater. Reverting to his faith in antimony, he has been credited with having been the first to extract this from sulphuret.