John Dastin and the Pope (Alchemy 38)

John Dastin (or Dastyn or Dastain or Dausten) defended alchemy when it was attacked by Pope John XXII in the 1320's. 

Here is the Pope's decretal:

 

Spondet quas non exhibent
"
Guarantees they do not offer"

Poor themselves, the alchemists promise riches which are not forthcoming; wise also in their own conceit, they fall into the ditch which they themselves have digged. For there is no doubt that the professors of this art of alchemy make fun of each other because, conscious of their own ignorance, they are surprised at those who say anything of this kind about themselves; when the truth sought does not come to them they fix on a day for their experiment and exhaust all their arts; then they dissimulate their failure so that finally, though there is no such thing in nature, they pretend to make genuine gold and silver by a sophistic transmutation; to such an extent does their damned and damnable temerity go that they stamp upon the base metal the characters of public money for believing eyes, and it is only in this way that they deceive the ignorant populace as to the alchemic fire of their furnace. Wishing to banish such practices for all time, we have determined by this formal edict that whoever shall make gold or silver of this kind or shall order it to be made, provided the attempt actually ensues, or whoever shall knowingly assist those actually engaged in such a process, or whoever shall knowingly make use of such gold or silver either by selling it or giving it in payment for debt, shall be compelled as a penalty to pay into the public treasury, to be used for the poor, as much by weight of genuine gold or silver as there may be of alchemical metal, provided it be proved lawfully that they have been guilty in any of the aforesaid ways; as for those who persist in making alchemical gold, or, as has been said, in using it knowingly, let them be branded with the mark of perpetual infamy. But if the means of the delinquents are insufficient for the payment of the amount stated then the good judgement of the justice may commute this penalty for some other (as for example imprisonment or another punishment, according to the nature of the case, the difference of individuals and other circumstances). Those, however, who in their regrettable folly go so far as not only to pass monies thus made but even despise the precepts of the natural law, overstep the limits of their art and violate the laws by deliberately coining or casting or causing others to coin or cast counterfeit money from alchemical gold or silver, we proclaim as coming under this animadversion, and their goods shall be confiscate, and they shall be considered as criminals. And if the delinquents are clerics, besides the aforeside penalties they shall be deprived of any benefices they shall hold and shall be declared incapable of holding any further benefices.

This Pope was also against witchcraft and sorcery.

Dastin answers in a letter to the Pope, calling the philosopher's stone "the most noble matter, which, according to the tradition of all philosophers, transforms any metallic body into very pure gold and silver" which "makes an old man young and drives out all sickness of the body." Dastin implies that the "ferment"  or "sulfur" of mercury is actually pure gold but before the action of the stone will work the mercury must be fixed or made non-volatile:

Gold is more valuable than all other metals, because it contains in itself the essence of any metal. It tinges them and vivifies them, because it is the ferment of the elixir, without which the philosophers’ medicine can by no means be perfected, like as dough cannot be fermented without a ferment. It is indeed as leaven to dough, as curd to milk for cheese, and as the musk in good perfumes.... For those two bodies duly prepared are mercury and very pure sulphur, because if mercury is properly coagulated it transmutes into genuine gold and silver. If the mercury has been pure, the force of white, non-burning sulphur will congeal it. And that sulphur is the best one that those who practise alchemy can find or receive so as to convert it into silver. If however the pure and very good sulphur be of a clear red colour, and if there be in that sulphur the force of a simple non-burning fieriness, it will be the best thing that alchemists can find so as to make gold. And again: The ferment of gold is gold, and the ferment of silver is silver, and there are no other [suitable] ferments on earth.

In letters to Cardinal Orsini, who probably informed the Pope on alchemy,  he says, according to Holmyard:

Dastin indicates that the red sulphur he postulates in gold is sufficient to convert suitably prepared mercury into the Red Elixir. In this operation, the product is first white, and then, after further heating, it assumes a clear red colour. "The process," Dastin assures us, "is quite simple, and may be carried out over a gentle fire in a hermetically sealed glass vessel, through the wall of which the changes of colour may be watched. The fire should be so regulated that the vapours continually ascend and do not solidify at the top of the vessel. The whole operation takes about 100 days."

The power of elixirs is that

one part converts a million parts of any body you may choose into the most genuine gold and silver, according to which of the two elixirs was prepared. The red elixir has effective virtue over all other medicines of the philosophers to cure all infirmity, because, if it were an illness of one month, it cures it within one day; if it were an illness of a year, it cures it in twelve days. But if it were an inveterate illness, it cures it in a month. And therefore this medicine ought to be sought for by all, and before all other medicines of this world. This magistery is for kings and the great of this world, because he who possesses it has a never-failing treasure.

Was Dastin successful? The Pope never changed his mind on alchemy, but he died leaving an enormous fortune said to be of alchemical origin. quite an accomplishment for a man who earlier in his life accepted the vows of poverty. This is the Pope in Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, wherein the Franciscan friar William of Baskerville travels to a Benedictine abbey used as neutral ground in a dispute between Pope John XXII and the Franciscans accused of heresy.

John Dastin's poetry on alchemy appears in Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum by Elias Ashmole starting page 257 as "Dastin's Dreame."

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