An Early Renaissance Hebrew Alchemical Treatise in French Translation (ca. 1540)?

A manuscript, bearing the title Petit traicté de alkimie tourné de langue hebraique en langue francoyse , containing a collection of technical and alchemical recipes allegedly translated from Hebrew, was once donated by the Connétable Anne of Montmorency to his master, the French King François I . Our purpose is to examine whether or not the text indeed goes back to a Hebrew original. We first summarize the manuscript’s history, then examine the modern attribution of the text to Paul Paradis (or Paolo Canossa, 1511–1549), a well-known Hebraist appointed Royal Lecturer in 1530 by King François I . We finally turn to the contents of the Petit traicté de alkimie , and offer our conclusions as to its alleged Hebrew original. In an Appendix we offer a transcription of the entire text of the Petit traicté de alkimie .