Michael Sendivogius (; ; 2 February 1566 – 1636) was a Polish

alchemist Alchemy (from the Arabic word , ) is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practised in China, India, the Muslim world, and Europe. In its Western form, alchemy is first ...

philosopher Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

, and physician. A pioneer of chemistry, he developed ways of purifying and creating various

acid An acid is a molecule or ion capable of either donating a proton (i.e. Hydron, hydrogen cation, H+), known as a Brønsted–Lowry acid–base theory, Brønsted–Lowry acid, or forming a covalent bond with an electron pair, known as a Lewis ...

metal A metal () is a material that, when polished or fractured, shows a lustrous appearance, and conducts electrical resistivity and conductivity, electricity and thermal conductivity, heat relatively well. These properties are all associated wit ...

s, and other chemicals. He discovered that air is not a single substance and contains a life-giving substance – later called

oxygen Oxygen is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol O and atomic number 8. It is a member of the chalcogen group (periodic table), group in the periodic table, a highly reactivity (chemistry), reactive nonmetal (chemistry), non ...

– 170 years before Scheele's discovery of the element. He correctly identified this "food of life" with the gas (also oxygen) given off by heating nitre (

saltpetre Potassium nitrate is a chemical compound with a sharp, salty, bitter taste and the chemical formula . It is a potassium salt of nitric acid. This salt consists of potassium cations and nitrate anions , and is therefore an alkali metal nitrate ...

). This substance, the "central nitre", had a central position in Sendivogius' schema of the universe.

Biography

Little is known of his early life: he was born into a noble family that was part of the

Clan of Ostoja The Clan Ostoja (Moscics), Clan of Ostoja (old Polish: ''Ostoya'') was a powerful group of knights and lords in late-medieval Europe. The clan encompassed families in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (including present-day Belarus and Ukraine ...

. His father sent him to study in university of

Kraków , officially the Royal Capital City of Kraków, is the List of cities and towns in Poland, second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city has a population of 804,237 ...

but Sendivogius visited also most of the

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

an countries and universities; he studied at

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

, Altdorf,

Leipzig Leipzig (, ; ; Upper Saxon: ; ) is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...

and

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

. His acquaintances included

John Dee John Dee (13 July 1527 – 1608 or 1609) was an English mathematician, astronomer, teacher, astrologer, occultist, and alchemist. He was the court astronomer for, and advisor to, Elizabeth I, and spent much of his time on alchemy, divination, ...

and Edward Kelley. It was thanks to him that King

Stephen Báthory Stephen Báthory (; ; ; 27 September 1533 – 12 December 1586) was King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania (1576–1586) as well as Prince of Transylvania, earlier Voivode of Transylvania (1571–1576). The son of Stephen VIII Báthory ...

agreed to finance their experiments. In the 1590s, he was active in

Prague Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...

, at the famously open-minded court of Emperor

Rudolf II Rudolf II (18 July 1552 – 20 January 1612) was Holy Roman Emperor (1576–1612), King of Hungary and Croatia (as Rudolf I, 1572–1608), King of Bohemia (1575–1608/1611) and Archduke of Austria (1576–1608). He was a member of the H ...

. In Poland, he appeared at the court of King

Sigismund III Vasa Sigismund III Vasa (, ; 20 June 1566 – 30 April 1632 N.S.) was King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1587 to 1632 and, as Sigismund, King of Sweden from 1592 to 1599. He was the first Polish sovereign from the House of Vasa. Re ...

around 1600, and quickly achieved great fame, as the Polish king was himself an alchemy enthusiast and even conducted experiments with Sendivogius. In

Wawel The Wawel Royal Castle (; ''Zamek Królewski na Wawelu'') and the Wawel Hill on which it sits constitute the most historically and culturally significant site in Poland. A fortified residency on the Vistula River in Kraków, it was established o ...

castle, the chamber where his experiments were performed is still intact. The more conservative Polish nobles soon came to dislike him for encouraging the king to expend vast sums of money on chemical experimentation. The more practical aspects of his work in Poland involved the design of mines and metal foundries. His widespread international contacts led to his employment as a diplomat from about 1600. In his later years, Sendivogius spent more time in Bohemia and Moravia (now in the

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, and historically known as Bohemia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the south ...

), where he had been granted lands by the Habsburg emperor. Near the end of his life, he settled in

, in the court of Rudolf II, where he gained even more fame as a designer of metal mines and foundries. However the

Thirty Years' War The Thirty Years' War, fought primarily in Central Europe between 1618 and 1648, was one of the most destructive conflicts in History of Europe, European history. An estimated 4.5 to 8 million soldiers and civilians died from battle, famine ...

of 1618-48 had effectively ended the golden age of alchemy: the rich patrons now spent their money on financing war rather than chemical speculation, and he died in relative obscurity.

Works

Daniel Stolcius in his ''Viridarium Chymicum'' (1624) praises Sendivogius as the author of twelve books. The most famous of these was his "New Chemical Light", published in 1604. Besides a relatively clear exposition of his theory on the existence of a "food of life" in air, his books contain various scientific, pseudo-scientific and philosophical theories, and were repeatedly translated and widely read among such worthies as

Isaac Newton Sir Isaac Newton () was an English polymath active as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author. Newton was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment that followed ...

into the 18th century.

Sendivogius in fiction

The first appearance of this character in fiction was in the 1845 book ''Sędziwoj'' by , a writer during the times of

romanticism in Poland Romanticism in Poland, a literary, artistic and intellectual period in the evolution of Polish culture, began around 1820, coinciding with the publication of Adam Mickiewicz's first poems in 1822. It ended with the suppression of the January 1863 ...

. In early 2000s he appeared in several books by the Polish writer Andrzej Pilipiuk (''Kuzynki'' 2003, ''Księżniczka'' 2004, ''Dziedziczki'' 2005). Sendivogius is also a character in the novel of

Gustav Meyrink Gustav Meyrink (19 January 1868 – 4 December 1932) was the pseudonym of Gustav Meyer, an Austrian author, novelist, dramatist, translator, and banker, most famous for his novel ''The Golem (Meyrink novel), The Golem''. He has been described as ...

(part of ''Goldmachergeschichten, August Scherl Verlag, Berlin 1925''), a German author from Prague, Bohemia, who often wrote about alchemy and alchemists. The Polish 19th-century realist painter

Jan Matejko Jan Alojzy Matejko (; also known as Jan Mateyko; 24 June 1838 – 1 November 1893) was a Polish painter, a leading 19th-century exponent of history painting, known for depicting nodal events from Polish history. His works include large scale ...

depicted Sendivogius demonstrating a transmutation of a base metal into gold before King

. He was also shown (thinly disguised) as the Alchemist Sendivogius in a Polish TV series ''Alchemik Sendivius'' in the 1980s.

Writings

*''De Lapide Philosophorum Tractatus duodecim e naturae fonte et manuali experientia deprompti''. 1604. ** Also known as ''Novum Lumen Chymicum'' (New Chemical Light), the first Latin editions were published simultaneously in Prague and Frankfurt. *''Dialogus Mercuriii, Alchemistae et Naturae''. Cologne, 1607. *''Tractatus de sulphure altero naturae principio''. Cologne, 1616.

References

* Prinke, Rafał T. �
Beyond Patronage: Michael Sendivogius and the Meanings of Success in Alchemy
�� In Chymia: Science and Nature in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, edited by Miguel López Pérez, Didier Kahn, and Mar Rey Bueno. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010. * Prinke, Rafal T

''The Hermetic Journal'' (1990), 72-98. * Prinke, Rafał T. “Nolite Me Inquirere (Nechtějte se po mně ptáti): Michael Sendivogius.” In ''Alchymie a Rudolf II: Hledání Tajemství Přírody ve Střední Evropě v 16. a 17. Století'', edited by Ivo Purš and Vladimír Karpenko, 317–35. Praha: Artefactum, 2011. * Sendivogius, Michael.''The Alchemical Letters of Michael Sendivogius to the Rosicrucian Society''. Holmes Pub Group Llc. * Szydło, Zbigniew. ''Water which does not wet hands. The alchemy of Michael Sendivogius''. London-Warsaw, 1994. ** Polish edition: ''Woda, która nie moczy rąk. Alchemia Michała Sędziwoja.''. Wydawnictwa Naukowo-Techniczne: Warszawa, 1997. * Malgouyres, Philippe La Science de l’émerveillement. Artistes et intellectuels à la cour de Rodolphe II (1552-1612), Paris, Mare & Martin, 2025, 978-2-36222-125-5, p. 127-137

External links

Sendivogius.pl
website about the life and works of MIchal Sedziwoj

* ttp://www.levity.com/alchemy/send10.html LETTERS OF MICHAEL SENDIVOGIUS TO THE ROSEYCRUSIAN SOCIETY FOUND IN AN OLD MANUSCRIPT BY EBENEZER SIBLY M.D. 1791
A letter from Michael Sendivogius to Vincenzo II Gonzaga, duke of Mantua (1562-1612)

The 16th Century Alchemist Who Discovered Oxygen

TRANSMUTATION
an episode of the podcast Stories From The Eastern West all about Sendivogius and alchemy in the Middle Ages
Works by Michael Sendivogius
in digital library

Polona Polona is a Polish digital library, which provides digitized books, magazines, graphics, maps, music, fliers and manuscripts from collections of the National Library of Poland and co-operating institutions. It began its operation in 2006. Colle ...