THE PLACE OF MS SLOANE 3703 AMONG EARLY-MODERN ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF THE FRENCH PARAPHRASE OF SPLENDOR SOUS

摘要

The purpose of this note is to identify MS Sloane 3703 in the British Library in London-currently catalogued as an anonymous alchemical treatise-as yet another (though incomplete) early seventeenth-century English translation of La Toyson d'or ou Fleur des tresors, translated by an 'L.I.' and published in Paris by Charles Sevestre in i6iz, and to place it amongst other known early-modern English translations of the same work. La Toyson d'or is based on Splendor solis, an alchemical text attributed to Salomon Trismosin, first published in the third volume of Aureum vellus in 1599, but extant in many illuminated manuscripts dating from c. 15 30. Splendor solis is best known for its ravishing images describing various stages of the alchemical process conveying arcane knowledge of the old philosophers. The most famous manuscript is BL MS Harley 3469 (dated 1582), a very well-preserved copy, with text and twenty-two coloured illustrations which were reproduced in the 1920 English edition prepared by 'J.K.' (most probably Julius Kohn). The French i6iz edition was illustrated with woodblock images which were printed separately and later pasted into the book (often in the wrong order), but none of these images was copied in any of the early-modern English manuscript translations of the text.