Abstract

The article presents an investigation of pseudo-Paracelsian letters, forgeries written by unidentified sixteenth-century Paracelsists. It comprises information about extant texts as well as authors and addressees like Bartholomaeus Korndorfer, Salomon Trismosin and Wilhelm von Hohenheim. The separation of fact and fiction reveals Paracelsus' life and work to be misrepresented or even distorted in these letters. Paracelsus appears as a theological ‘fanaticus’, moreover as a stylised hero of the alchemia transmutatoria metallorum. A multifaceted opposition and reform movement, ‘Paracelsianism’, revolved around Paracelsus as an idolised, almost apotheosised leader and inspirational figure. Its followers are known to demand a revision of some areas of knowledge in the Aristotelian-Galenic medical and pharmaceutical traditions; they furthermore fermented the aspirations of certain anti-confessionalistic religious dissidents. The pseudo-Paracelsian letters, which has hitherto been generally neglected, reinforces this