Z achary A. M atus . Franciscans and the Elixir of Life

Most historians of high- and late-medieval intellectual currents in Western Europe realize that some Christian scholars from that period promoted forms of knowledge and practice that would generally have been seen as magical. Few, even among those who focus on magic as their subject matter, have asked how these medieval intellectuals reconciled their magical interests with their Christianity. But that is just what Zachary A. Matus does in Franciscans and the Elixir of Life: Religion and Science in the Later Middle Ages. Advertised in the title as a study of religion and science, it is really an investigation into the relationship between religion and magic—alchemy most specifically—in the thought of three Franciscan Scholastics from the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Since alchemy came into Europe at the time as a branch of science, Matus feels (I think justifiably) that the results of his work can be loosely applied to science as well.

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