Everything about Micha S Dziw J totally explained
Michał Sędziwój (
Michael Sendivogius) (1566-1636) was a
Polish alchemist,
philosopher, and medical doctor.
A pioneer of chemistry, he developed ways of purification and creation of various
acids,
metals and other chemical compounds. He discovered that air isn't a single substance and contains a life-giving substance-later called
oxygen-170 years before
Scheele and
Priestley. He correctly identified this 'food of life' with the gas (also oxygen) given off by heating nitre (
saltpetre). This substance, the 'central nitre', had a central position in Sędziwój's schema of the universe.
He was among the few alchemists who supposedly knew the secret of the
philosopher's stone. He is said to have obtained the precious substance upon marriage to the widow of alchemist
Alexander Seton, who had died shortly after Sędziwój assisted in his rescue from imprisonment and torture in
Saxony where Seton refused to reveal it.
Widely referred to as a "black powder" (though his steward claimed it was red), Sędziwój is said to have used this philosopher's stone to convert large amounts of
gold from
quicksilver, including during an exhibition in the presence of the
Emperor Rudolph II. Sędziwój was captured and robbed by a German alchemist named Muhlenfels who had conspired with the German prince, Brodowski, to steal Sędziwój's secret. Sędziwój complained of Muhlenfels' crime to the emperor in
Prague, who ordered Muhlenfels be brought to court. Fearing exposure of his part in the conspiracy should Muhlensfels be brought to justice in Prague, Brodowski captured Muhlensfels first and had him hanged in his court yard. Though the plunder was returned, Sędziwój was careful to keep his secrets much more closely, and no longer performed public transmutations.
Little is known of his early life. He visited most of the
European countries and universities; he studied in
Vienna,
Altdorf,
Leipzig and at
Cambridge. His acquaintance included
John Dee and
Edward Kelly. It was thanks to him that King
Stefan Batory agreed to finance their experiments. In the 1590s he was active in
Prague, at the famously open-minded court of
Rudolf II.
In Poland he appeared at the court of King
Sigismund III Vasa around 1600, and quickly achieved notoriety, as the Polish king was himself an alchemy enthusiast and even conducted experiments with Sędziwój. In
Kraków's
Wawel castle, the chamber where his experiments were performed is still intact. The more conservative Polish nobles soon came to dislike him for encouraging the king to expend vast sums of money on chemical experimentation. The more practical aspects of his work in Poland involved the design of
mines and metal
foundries. His widespread international contacts led to him employment as a diplomat from about 1600.
His works and books, the most famous of which was "A New Light of Alchemy", (Latin original published in 1605), were written in alchemical language, in effect a secret code which was understandable only by other alchemists. Besides a relatively clear exposition of Sędziwój's theory on the existence of a 'food of life' in air (for example
Oxygen), his books contain various scientific, pseudo-scientific and philosophical theories, and were repeatedly translated and widely read among such worthies as
Isaac Newton into the 18th century.
In his later years, Sędziwój spent more time in Bohemia and Moravia (now in the Czech Republic), where he'd been granted lands by the Habsburg emperor. Near the end of his life, Sędziwój settled in
Prague, on court of
Rudolf II, where he gained even more fame as a designer of metal mines and
foundries. However the
Thirty Years' War of 1618-48 had effectively ended the golden age of alchemy: the rich patrons now spent their money on financing war rather than chemical speculation, and Sędziwój died in relative obscurity.
Sędziwój in fiction
First appearance of this character in fiction was in an 1845 book "Sędziwoj" by
Józef Bohdan Dziekoński, a writer during the times of
romanticism in Poland. Nowadays he appears in several books by Polish writer
Andrzej Pilipiuk (
Kuzynki, Księżniczka, Dziedziczki). He was also shown (thinly disguised) as the Alchemist Sendivius in the Polish TV series in the 1980s.
The Polish 19th century realist painter
Jan Matejko depicted Sędziwój demonstrating a transmutation of a base metal into gold before King Zygmunt III Wasa.
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