Collaboration, Counterfeit, and Calumny in Amsterdam

Abstract This chapter proves that Friedrich Breckling considerably adulterated a text originally composed in the late sixteenth century and embedded aspects of spiritual alchemy within it. Accusations raised among religious dissenters, notably by prophet and poet Quirinus Kuhlmann, and within the republic of letters at large led some of those who owned exemplars of the resulting book, Bartholomaeus Sclei’s Theosophische-Schrifften of 1686, to annotate their copies with information on Breckling’s interventions. Based on three such copies and other sources, several other collaborators and heavily edited passages can be identified. Yet there is reason to believe that even such annotated exemplars considerably underestimated Breckling’s contribution. In particular, the book’s index draws attention to several passages in which spiritual alchemy figures prominently and its bodily consequences are discussed.