Athanasius Rhetor and the Greek Chemistry in the 17 th century Ottoman Empire

Rémi Franckowiak (1)

1 EA S2HEP - Sciences et Société ; Historicité, Éducation et Pratiques

Athanasius the Rhetor (1571-1663) was a Greek priest in the seventeenth-century Paris who devoted all his life to study. Completely forgotten today, he was the author of several books and an advocate of the unification of the Christian churches. When he was 71 Mazarin and Séguier sent him to the Levant for 10 years to bring them rare manuscripts which he sometimes bought by the kilo. Athanasius left two volumes of handwritten chemical papers (private drafts, notes, copies in various forms and languages of recipes) which might have been written at the time of his mission for his French patrons. They are quite unique and show the existence of a Levantine chemistry apart from the Western one.

Mots clés: Athanius the Rhetor; Greek Alchemy; Levantine Chemistry; Ottoman Empire; Séguier; 17th century

Domaines: Histoire, Philosophie et Sociologie des sciences

Rémi Franckowiak. Athanasius Rhetor and the Greek Chemistry in the 17 th century Ottoman Empire. Efthymios Nicolaidis. Greek alchemy: From the late antiquity to the early modernity, Brepols Publishers, pp.129-145, 2018, 978-2-503-58191-0. ⟨halshs-01906581⟩