Today, the Flemish physician, alchemist and philosopher Jan Baptista Van Helmont (1579-1644) is mostly remembered as one of the founders of modern chemistry and medicine. However, Van Helmont saw himself rather differently: he firmly believed he had been called to articulate a ‘Christian Philosophy’ that would bring together Christian thought and natural philosophy in a harmonious synthesis. His ‘Christian Philosophy’ would be purged of the Aristotelian ‘heathenism’ he felt Scholasticism had been tainted with. Instead, it would convey a unitary view of God, Nature and Man that was in accord with Christian doctrine. The main purpose of this thesis is to understand how Van Helmont attempted to construct this new Christian Philosophy. The thesis will argue that the inspiration for this project lay in the medical alchemy developed by Theophrastus Paracelsus (1493-1541) following medieval precedents. Paracelsus and many of his followers expressed the view that alchemy can act as the Christian key to Nature, and therefore an alliance of alchemical philosophy and Christianity was not only possible, but natural. Van Helmont concurred with this perspective, seeking to ground his Christian Philosophy in both orthodox Christian thought and medical alchemy. His religious ideas drew chiefly upon Biblical and Patristic sources as well as on German medieval mysticism. Van Helmont sought to complement this approach with an alchemical view that emphasised the hidden presence of God in Nature, as well as the role of the alchemist in unveiling this presence in the form of powerful medicine. Indeed, in Van Helmont’s thought Christianity and alchemy were dynamically entwined to such an extent that their discourses were not clearly separate. Van Helmont firmly believed the source of all things was God, and hence both the Book of Grace and the Book of Nature had their common origin in the light of the Holy Spirit.

<p>Jean d’Espagnet (c. 1564–1637?) was a magistrate and presiding judge at the<em> parlement </em>of  Bordeaux  in  the  late  sixteenth  and  early  seventeenth  centuries.    He  served  on  the  court  from 1590 until retiring in 1615, from 1600 as a <em>président</em>, a venal office of significant power and social standing. After retirement he wrote three books which comprise his literary and intellectual legacy.Together they speak to the fertile philosophical ground of the late Renaissance and present a vision of order and God’s cosmos deeply influenced by Neoplatonism,  Hermetism,  Paracelsianism, Neostoicism,  and  medieval  alchemy,  as  well  as  d’Espagnet’s  judicial  education  and  social experience as a magistrate.  This dissertation explores the foundations of d’Espagnet’s philosophy of nature, tracing the development of certain philosophical ideas from ancient sources such as the Platonic and Hermetic traditions through medieval and Renaissance philosophers like Ramon Lull, Pseudo-Geber, and Marsilio Ficino to d’Espagnet and his contemporaries.  Paracelsian chemical medicine found some  acceptance during d’Espagnet’s lifetime, though not without struggle and dangers to its adherents.  This project also examines the context of d’Espagnet’s life and experience as a judicial elite in a kingdom and community beset by religious strife and political uncertainty.It argues that d’Espagnet and his fellow magistrates desperately sought order in the midst of these troubles,  and  that d’Espagnet echoed across all his writings this  concern  for  order  alongside a particular set of ideas about gender, shared by his fellow magistrates, according to which feminine passions  were  the  root  of  disorder  and masculine  reason was  the  antidote.    This gendered understanding of order was fundamental to d’Espagnet’s thought and reinforced by his syncretic reading of ancient and modern philosophical textsalongside his own experience, leading him to produce a unique and consistent syncretic philosophy that sought to answer definitively some of humanity’s oldest questions about the nature of matter, man, and the cosmos.</p>