Petrus Bonus

Petrus Bonus (Latin for "Peter the Good"; Italian: Pietro Antonio Boni) was a late medieval alchemist. He is best known for his Precious Pearl (Latin: Margarita Preciosa) or Precious New Pearl (Margarita Preciosa Novella), an influential alchemical text composed sometime between 1330 and 1339. He was said to have been a physician at Ferrara in Italy, causing him to sometimes be known as Petrus Bonus of Ferrara or as Petrus Bonus the Lombard (Petrus Bonus Lombardus). An Introduction to the Divine Art (Introductio in Divinam Chemicae Artem) is also attributed to him but was printed much later, in 1572.

The text is primarily a theoretical one. The author admits to having little practical expertise and rather tries to establish alchemy on authentically philosophical grounds and to integrate it into the medieval scientific canon. In contrast to other alchemical texts of the same period, like the Pseudo-Geber's Summa Perfectionnis or pseudo-Lull's Testamentum, which promote a natural and rational vision of alchemy, for Petrus Bonus, alchemy is an art "in part natural and in part divine or super natural." ».

A fifteenth-century manuscript copy survives in the Biblioteca Estense in Modena.

The text was first printed in Venice in 1546 by Giovanni Lacinio under the title Pretiosa margarita novella. This edition included commentary by Janus Lacinius, a Franciscan from Calabria, who added extracts from other alchemical authorities, including Raymond Lull, al-Rasi, Albertus Magnus, Michael Scot, Arnaldus de Villanova.

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