Between Early Modern Technology and Moral Agenda: Counterfeiting and Assaying of Silver in 16th-Century Europe

Abstract This essay contextualizes early modern recipes for testing and counterfeiting silver. Throughout sixteenth-century Europe (and beyond), both practices were associated with alchemy. Yet, the boundaries between assayers and alchemists were generally blurred. The first part of this essay outlines the common and enduring ideas and related practices of testing and counterfeiting silver. The second part turns to a case study that reflects the methods and contexts for forging silver outlined in the first part. The printed assayer's manual of Samuel Zimmermann: Probierbuch: Auff all Metall Müntz Ertz- und bergwerck (1573). Drawing on earlier assayers’ books, but introducing his own methods, Zimmermann produced a particularly straightforward and instructive collection of recipes or instructions for testing metals. Yet Zimmermann also published equally instructive recipes for counterfeiting silver, as well as issuing warnings about the promises of fraudulent alchemists. Even so, Zimmermann does not preclude the possibility that an adept alchemist can successfully transform base metals into gold or silver—if only through the grace of God. My essay investigates these ideas; and it is clear that for Zimmermann, as for others, the practice of assaying was fraught with a particularly volatile moral and theological significance.