What happened when alchemists came across something that they did not understand or that did not correlate with alchemy as they envisioned it, a phenomenon experienced by novice and adept alike? ‘Practical exegesis’, a term coined by Jennifer Rampling, describes the process by which laboratory-based alchemists reinterpreted earlier textual material to fit the reactions and results witnessed in their laboratories, even as alchemical trends changed and developed. When confronted with a contradiction or a seeming fallacy, these alchemists rarely dismissed the authority of their forebears, but rather turned to interpretation. What seemed to be a literal statement, they argued, was to be read metaphorically. In broad terms, this practice, which saw chymical truth as an atemporal constant, unchanged by technical development, required the same interpretative manipulation as it did to unify the Old and the New Testament, or the Bible and Aristotelian philosophy, or Christian virtues and classical tales. It is a hermeneutic that works incredibly hard to reconcile seemingly incompatible systems of thought. This chapter explores the exegetical outputs of those who read Middle English alchemical texts without recourse to laboratories or alchemical materials, scholars, aristocrats, courtiers, physicians, goldsmiths, mercers and haberdashers, most of whom lived in a post-Reformation world looking backwards at this secret knowledge.

Augustine and Medieval Hermeneutics

The influence of Augustine of Hippo’s De doctrina christiana on medieval hermeneutics cannot be overstated. An extensive treatise on how a Christian is expected to interpret not only Scripture, but also the physical universe, this work was the authority on interpretation and understanding throughout the Middle Ages and beyond. In order to explain how alchemical readers understood what they were reading, we must first appreciate some of Augustine’s key theories of understanding. According to Augustine, there are ‘praecepta quaedam’ (certain rules) for interpretation. These rules, if followed correctly, liberate a reader from the need to access divine truth through intermediary exegesis: