the humors (themselves partly determined by the position of the stars at one’s birth) exerted significant force on human behavior. The notion that physiology was somewhat determinative in regard to behavior has a history dating back to Aristotle, but Christian theologians had resisted the idea of deterministic forces compelling behavior. One had to be free if sin was to be a meaningful category. Bacon is careful to maintain that complexion inclines people to action, but does not obviate free choice.34 Rather, Bacon hoped to use astrology and alchemy to mitigate the negative effects of the humors and stars and intensify the positive.
Bacon took a moderately declensionist view of human bodies and their complexion. He agreed that biblical writings demonstrated that humans once had much longer lifespans, which had shortened gradually since the exile from Eden. At the same time, he did not think that this was a necessary condition of human existence. Sinfulness and immoderation had polluted humanity’s ancestors, who passed on these defects to their children, where they were compounded over succeeding generations and shortened the human lifespan. Because this was an “accidental,” not a necessary, condition of the world, human lifespans were subject to expansion as well.35
Bacon recounts a number of tales (hearsay for the most part) to prove the truth of this statement. (As much as Bacon championed observation and reason, he was also prone to rely on the authority of anyone worthy of belief.36) For instance he relates the tale of a peasant who found in a field a golden vessel full of liquid that bestowed on him sixty years of youth.37 He also discusses the benefits of consuming dragon flesh, including both health and mental acuity.38 These medicines might seem miraculous, but Bacon regards their effects as resulting from their composition: “That liquor which the rustic drank is thought to have approached an equality of elements far beyond ordinary food and drinks.”39
This equilibrium is one of two theoretical keys to Bacon’s elixir. As he puts it in the Opus maius, “If the elements should be prepared and purified in some mixture, so that there would be no action of one element on another, but so that they would be reduced to pure simplicity, the wisest have judged that they would make a perfect medicine.”40 Such perfect mixtures are supposedly inaccessible through nature, making the administration of medicine a fraught pursuit. One of the concerns of medieval pharmacy was to ensure that medicines did not further disrupt the bodily imbalance that caused the ailment in the first place, or reverse it in such a way as to cause a different ailment or death. Apart from physical injuries, medieval observers considered illnesses to arise out of a humoral imbalance. Too much blood, for instance, (a hot and wet substance) could produce certain kinds of fevers. Hence pharmaceutical documents engage in a great deal of discussion of the properties of various herbs, stones, foods, and liquids that might go into a medicine. What might be healthy for a feverish woman may not be good for a healthy man. Yet an elementally balanced compound, such as Bacon’s elixir, had the potential to restore humoral equilibrium by purifying the body of the excess substance and conferring upon it what it lacked, regardless of a person’s original complexion.
Perhaps the most powerful example Bacon employs to explain this theory is an example known to all his readers: Adam in the Garden. Adam, writes Bacon, was immortal only so long as he ate from the Tree of Life. Adam’s body was, like all terrestrial bodies and compounds, made up of elements and humors that acted upon one another. It was subject to change, that is, to corruption, and therefore to dissolution. Because the humors acted upon one another, there could be both imbalance and waste. Hence Adam, like all people, needed to eat to rebalance his humors. Regular food, as noted earlier, has particular humoral qualities as well. While a thoughtful diet (that is, one based on food that replenishes lost humors and mitigates excess humors) is vital for health, it never perfectly balanced one’s complexion. The fruit of the Tree of Life, however, had “elements approaching equality,” and could have kept Adam alive indefinitely.41 Just as we have seen in Chapter 1, Bacon is reading Genesis as natural philosophy. Bacon agreed that the interpretation of scripture relied on natural philosophy, but here we get a clear example of Christian doctrine driving alchemical theory. Had the Bible been a text that merited only spiritual reflection, it is hard to conceive of Bacon developing the elixir along the lines he did.
Adam’s body was, of course, superior to postlapsarian ones (Bacon predictably makes no mention of Eve’s body), but in one sense all bodies are the same. Every human body is naturally immortal (naturalis immortalis), meaning it can exist indefinitely provided it has a balanced complexion.42 Bacon is again following scriptural warrant, specifically Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians, where the apostle describes the resurrected dead as uncorrupted (incorrupti) and immortal. (Vulg. 1 Cor 15: 50–54) The fact that the resurrected dead must have perfect, uncorrupted, and incorruptible bodies 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.
