The catalogue of the Ripley Corpus: alchemical writings attributed to George Ripley (d. ca. 1490)

Ambix. 2010 Jul;57(2):125-201. doi: 10.1179/174582310X12719003720322.

Abstract

The period 1471 to 1700 saw the accretion of a large corpus of alchemical works associated with the famous English alchemist George Ripley, Canon of Bridlington (d. ca. 1490). Evaluation of Ripley's alchemy is hampered by uncertainty over the composition of the corpus, the dating and provenance of individual texts, and the difficulty of separating genuine from spurious attributions. The Catalogue of the Ripley Corpus (CRC) provides a first step in ordering these diverse materials: a descriptive catalogue of approximately forty-five alchemical treatises, recipes and poems attributed to Ripley, with an index of all known manuscript copies.

Publication types

  • Historical Article
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Alchemy*
  • England
  • History, 15th Century
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Manuscripts as Topic / history