Fiery Bodies: Flame in Early Modern Culture
Sophie Emma Battell
Image 1: Johannes Baptista Masculus, De Incendio Vesuvii excitato XVII, Kal. Januar. anno trigesimo primo sæculi decimi-septimi ibri X (Naples, 1633), foldout plate.
This exhibition brings together six books held at the Edward Worth Library in Dublin and which date from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. All of these works engage with themes of flame and ash, combustion and burning. Considered as a group, they illuminate the different cultural meanings of fire in the early modern period, showing how this unruly and contradictory element appeared in scientific, political, and religious writing.
Image 2: Robert Boyle, Essays of the strange subtilty determinate nature great efficacy of effluviums. To which are annext New experiments to make fire and flame ponderable (London, 1673), title page.
One of the Worth Library’s most important early works on chemistry is Robert Boyle’s Essays of the strange subtilty determinate nature great efficacy of effluviums. To which are annext New experiments to make fire and flame ponderable (London, 1673). Born in Ireland, Boyle (1627-91) was a natural philosopher and one of the founding members of the Royal Society of London (1660). Basing his work on empirical observations, Boyle conducted influential experiments in chemistry and alchemy, improving our scientific understanding of the natural world. By the time his Essays of the strange subtilty determinate nature great efficacy of effluviums appeared in print in 1673, Boyle had already published on such varied topics as Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (London, 1664), New Experiments and Observations Touching Cold (London, 1665), and perhaps his best-known work, The Sceptical Chymist (London, 1661). Along with other members of the Royal Society, Boyle was fascinated by the material properties and composition of flame. Earlier in 1665, the Royal Society had produced Micrographia by Robert Hooke (1635-1703) containing detailed drawings based on the author’s observations using a microscope. Although Micrographia is most famous for its infinitesimal investigations of biology (it introduced the term ‘cell’ into our scientific vocabulary) and its accompanying large foldout illustrations, including the familiar flea, the book also advanced our knowledge of fire in significant ways. As Andrew C. Scott explains, ‘Hooke was able to determine that the removal of air caused a flame to be extinguished’.[1]
Image 3: Robert Boyle, Essays of the strange subtilty determinate nature great efficacy of effluviums. To which are annext New experiments to make fire and flame ponderable (London, 1673), pp 20-21.
When Boyle’s Essays of the strange subtilty determinate nature great efficacy of effluviums was printed in London eight years later, early chemistry took another leap forwards. By conducting various experiments on minerals, metals—even on coral—Boyle determined that substances became heavier after exposure to the effects of flame. The puzzling contradiction of why ‘such a light and subtile Body as Flame should be able to give an augmentation of weight to such ponderous Bodies as Minerals and Metals’ is only one of many paradoxes surrounding the element of fire.[2] Specifically, its liveliness and transformative capacity posed a problem to early modern taxonomers. Jonathan Charteris-Black puts it nicely:
‘Fire is the only element that is generative in the sense that, like living creatures, it reproduces itself when supplied with fuel and oxygen. The mystery of fire is partly because humans have not always been sure as to whether to think of it as something that is alive or dead: while fire is not alive in a biological sense because it is not an organism, it still has some of the common defining characteristics of living organisms. Living organisms require nutrition; move of their own accord; grow; feed; are able to reproduce themselves; to respire; and to be sensitive to their environment and excrete. Fire satisfies each of these criteria: it requires fuel; it appears to move of its own volition – although in reality it is external influences such as wind that govern this; it can grow when it has access to fuel and oxygen. Fire can appear to reproduce itself when sparks fly from a forest fire to reignite elsewhere; like organisms, it requires oxygen to survive and will only do so in favourable conditions; just as organisms produce excreta, so fire produces cinders and ashes. In this respect fire can be viewed as having a cycle of existence: of being born, growing and dying’.[3]
Image 4: Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, Historia et meteorologia incendii Aetnaei anni 1669… (Reggio di Calabria, 1670), foldout plate of the eruption of Mount Etna, Sicily, in 1669.
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, ongoing debates about the ontological classification of fire were accompanied by wider philosophical questions. Early modern intellectuals contemplated, amongst other concerns, what caused volcanic eruptions, whether there was a network of linked subterranean fires underneath the earth’s crust, and where exactly the everlasting fires of Christian hell were situated geographically (with some thinkers even proposing the sun as a possible location). And yet, alongside these serious subjects, there are moments of levity in Boyle’s writing which allow us glimpses into the everyday life of the laboratory. For example, there is an amusing moment in the chapter on ‘A Discovery Of the Perviousness Of Glass To Ponderable Parts of Flame’, when Boyle confesses to his displeasure at the unpleasant smells produced by some of his chemical experiments. In this case he writes that he was forced to leave the laboratory and to rely on his assistant to continue the observations in his absence because he found ‘the smell of Brimstone’ to be ‘peculiarly offensive to me, forbidding me to be present’.[4] Worth had a keen interest in experiments such as these and owned a number of works which discussed the role of furnaces in chemical experiment.
Across early modern Europe, a number of blazes broke out in densely populated urban centres including London, Glasgow, and Amsterdam, as well as in smaller country towns.[5] With the exception of crimes of arson, the vast majority of uncontrollable fires were started accidentally—such as the Great Fire of London (1666) which allegedly began in a bakery on Pudding Lane. But since classical antiquity fire has been wielded intentionally as a weapon of warfare. Both the Byzantine and Roman Empires, for instance, used the highly combustible ‘Greek fire’ against their enemies to devastating effect.
Image 5: John Foxe, Acts and monuments of matters most special and memorable, happening in the Church, 3 vols (London, 1684), iii, p. 729: Burning of William Nichol in 1558.
The Elizabethan and Jacobean states deployed fire strategically as a spectacular instrument of political power. One of the most popular books of its day was Actes and Monuments (London, 1563) written by John Foxe (1516/17-87). The book is a monumental work of martyrology that depicts in vivid detail the grisly fate of Protestants burnt at the stake as heretics during this period. A bestseller that was reprinted multiple times, the Worth Library copy of Actes and Monuments is a ninth edition which was published in 1684. In many of the woodcut illustrations, such as the one above, the scene is overshadowed by its iconography of fire, evocative of the horrors of torture as well as the flames of hell where all unbelievers would end up after death. As well as its associations with Protestant martyrology, fire in seventeenth-century England had a strong connection to Catholicism. Discussing the Gunpowder Plot—a failed Catholic conspiracy which sought to blow up the Houses of Parliament in London in 1605—Frances E. Dolan traces ‘a long-standing association of Catholicism with arson’.[6] Thus, from Guy Fawkes to 9/11, and more recent acts of political and religious extremism, fire has become encoded in the communicative model of terror.
Image 6: George Sinclair, Natural philosophy improven by new experiments … (Edinburgh, 1683), pp 240-241: a ‘devilish’ fire at Glenluce in 1654.
An intriguing twist on the weaponization of combustion in the early modern period can be found in the Worth Library collections. George Sinclair (d. 1696?) was a Scottish natural philosopher and professor, first of philosophy and later of mathematics, at Glasgow University. Alongside works on mathematics, navigation and theoretical physics, Sinclair published on the topic of witchcraft and the occult, arguably becoming best known for his book on demonology, Satan’s Invisible World Discovered (Edinburgh, 1685). Catalogued in the Worth Library is his Natural philosophy improven by new experiments. Touching the mercurial weather-glass, the hygroscope, eclipsis, conjunctions of Saturn and Jupiter. By new experiments, touching the pressure of fluids, the diving-bell, and all the curiosities thereof. To which is added, som new observations, and experiments, lately made of several kinds. Together with a true relation of an evil spirit, which troubled a mans family for many days. Lastly, there is a large discourse anent coal, coal-sinks, dipps, risings, and streeks of coal, levels, running of mines, gaes, dykes, damps and wild-fire (Edinburgh, 1683). As is clear from the title, Sinclair bookends his astronomical, meteorological, and geological experiments with a supernatural interlude.
In 1654 Glenluce, a small village in southwest Scotland, was apparently troubled by a poltergeist which continually attacked the Campbell family. What is notable about Sinclair’s account of these events is the prominence accorded to fire as a preferred weapon of the Devil:
‘Then did the Devil begin afresh; for upon the Lords Day following, in the afternoon, the house was set on fire, but by his providence, and the help of some people, going home from Sermon, the fire was extinguished, and the house saved, not much loss being done. And the Monday after, being spent in private Prayer and Fasting, the house was again set on fire upon the Tuesday about nine a Clock in the morning, yet by providence, and the help of Neighbours, it was saved, before any harm was done’.[7]
Soon afterwards, the Devil promises to reveal himself to a Minister, first instructing the latter: ‘Would you see me? Put out the candle then, and I shall come butt the house among you like fire-balls’, then threatening another domestic fire catastrophe: ‘Let not the Minister go home, I shall burn the house if he go’ (italics in the original).[8]
Image 7: John Rushworth, Historical collections of private passages of state. Weighty matters in law. Remarkable proceedings in five parliaments. Beginning the sixteenth year of King James, anno 1618. And ending the fifth year of King Charles, anno 1629. Digested … (London, 1659), frontispiece portrait of James I.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it was a commonly held belief that buildings as well as people could be persecuted by supernatural forces. James VI and I (1566-1625) published a treatise on witchcraft entitled Daemonologie (1597) in which he claimed of witches that they ‘can make spirites either to follow and trouble persones, or haunt certaine houses, and affraie oftentimes the inhabitants’.[9] Such superstitions are substantiated by Sinclair’s narrative, as he goes on to provide further examples of what we might call ‘demonic pyromania’ specifically directed against the Campbell residence. During one of these attacks on the house and its furnishings, he notes, ‘upon the 18 of September, about midnight, he [the Devil] cried out with a loud voice, I shall burn the house; and about three of four nights after, he [Campbell] felt one of the beds on fire, which was soon extinguished, without any prejudice, except the bed it self: and so he continued to vex them’.[10]
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
Robert Frost
Image 8: John Ray, Miscellaneous Discourses Concerning the Dissolution and Changes of the World (London, 1692), title page.
Another author represented in the Worth Library collections, whose treatment of fire combines science and theology, is John Ray (1627-1705). An English naturalist, Ray wrote about botany and zoology and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1667. He preached at Cambridge and ensured his writings on the natural sciences were compatible with the Bible. ‘Basing himself on sermons he had delivered in the chapel of Trinity College’, Scott Mandelbrote suggests, ‘Ray produced a coherent natural theology in which the evidence of the heavens, geology, botany, zoology, and human anatomy suggested the providential action of a benevolent deity who was responsible for the creation of all things’.[11] Miscellaneous Discourses Concerning the Dissolution and Changes of the World (London, 1692) demonstrates the alignment of science and religion which was so characteristic of Ray’s writing. Commenting on the theoretical debates concerning the existence of subterranean fires, he concludes: ‘But tho I do reject the Hypothesis; yet the being of a Central Fire in the Earth is not, so far as I understand, any way repugnant to Reason or Scripture. For first of all, the Scripture represents Hell as a Lake of Fire, Mark 9. 43, 44, &c. Revel. 20. 10, 14, 15. and likewise as a low place beneath the Earth’.[12] In this way, scientific developments are presented as consistent with biblical scripture.
One of the key questions which is raised in the Miscellaneous Discourses Concerning the Dissolution and Changes of the World is whether the conflagration predicted to accompany the end of days (referenced in the epigraph to this section) will destroy the heavens and the earth, or whether this will be no more than a purifying fire that cleanses and rejuvenates all planetary bodies. Following ‘the general and received Opinion of the Ancient Christians’, Ray reaches the conclusion that ‘this World shall not be annihilated or destroyed, but only renewed and purified’.[13] Of course, fire’s formidable efficacy as a purifying agent is well known. Throughout human history it has traditionally been used to disinfect and fumigate any spaces and objects which might be considered unclean. Closely related to its associations with purity and cleanliness, fire occupies a symbolic role in many world religions. At least in part, the reason why flames lend themselves to religious imagery is because they are vertical, always drifting upwards towards the spiritual realm.
Image 9: Thomas Hyde, Historia religionis veterum Persarum, eorumque magorum… (Oxford, 1700), Tab. IX.
Thomas Hyde (1636-1703) was an English linguist and a Librarian at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. He was passionate about languages and specialised in Arabic, Syriac, Persian, and Hebrew. The Worth Library owns a copy of his Historia religionis veterum Persarum, eorumque magorum … Zoroastris vita, ejusque et aliorum vaticinia de Messiah è Persarum aliorumque monumentis eruuntur: … Dantur veterum Persarum scripturæ & linguæ (ut hæ jam primò Europæ producantur & literato orbi postliminiò reddantur,) specimina. De Persiæ ejusdemque linguæ nominibus; déque hujus dialectis & à modernâ differentiis, strictim agitur (Oxford, 1700). In this book, Hyde offers to a presumed European readership a comprehensive survey of Zoroastrianism. Although, as mentioned above, fire is an important emblem in many faiths, often associated with divine wrath or, conversely, with miraculous instances of theophany (encounters with a divine presence), it has a special significance to the ancient Iranian religion. ‘Most observers’, Arash Zeini contends, ‘modern or ancient, would state that fire plays a pivotal role in Zoroastrianism. It appears to dominate the ritual performed by the priests in fire temples (ātaškade in Persian) or in private by the Zoroastrian laity, a practice for which Zoroastrians have come to be known as fire worshippers’.[14] Indeed, the centrality of fire to Zoroastrianism can be seen in the woodcut illustrations accompanying Hyde’s text.
Image 10: Thomas Hyde, Historia religionis veterum Persarum, eorumque magorum… (Oxford, 1700), Tab. IV: Vestales ministrantes.
The Historia contains sixteen accompanying plates, several of which are Chinese and Tartar alphabets. P. J. Marshall notes that the author ‘spent a great deal of time and money personally cutting plates of characters for printing in Asian languages, including the “old Persian” for the Historia and Chinese’.[15] Other illustrations are clearly intended to shed light on Zoroastrianism and its customs, particularly those surrounding fire worship. Zoroastrianism requires its followers to adhere to elaborate ceremonies surrounding the lighting and preservation of the sacred fires, which were conventionally watched over by vestal virgins. Discussing the visual representation of worship at the fire altars in Iran, A. D. H. Bivar notes that usually we notice that ‘the fire burns in a bowl, standing upon a pillar of varying profile, resting on a base of either stepped, or indented, form, with in the latter case the edge forming feet on which the pedestal rests’.[16] A comparable ceremonial fire stand is shown in the image above, which depicts, too, vestal virgins tending to the flames.
Image 11: Thomas Hyde, Historia religionis veterum Persarum, eorumque magorum… (Oxford, 1700), Tab. VI: Fire worship in Persia.
Another plate from the Historia is fascinating for what it reveals about the connectedness of different fires in the Zoroastrian imagination. In the second image, a sacred fire again burns on the altar, but this time a blazing sun can simultaneously be seen in the sky overhead. Zoroastrianism teaches that the same cosmic or celestial fire is present in the sun, on the altar stand and even in the fireplace at home. According to Charteris-Black, ‘for Zoroastrians, fire is the predominant expression of the sacred in daily life–present in the ever-burning hearth fire in the home, the temple and in the sun’ and, furthermore, ‘the value placed on fire originated in the connection between the sun and fire as conjunct symbols of purity’.[17]
Image 12: Michael Maier, Secretioris naturae secretorum scrutinium chymicum, per oculis et intellectui accuratè accommodata, figuris cupro appositissimè incisa … emblemata, hisque confines … sententias, doctissimaque item epigrammata, illustratum (Frankfurt, 1687), p. 52.
Michael Maier (1568-1622) was a German epigramist and alchemist best known for Atalanta Fugiens (Oppenheim, 1617) — an emblem book with a sustained focus on alchemy. At the Worth Library, there is a copy of his Secretioris naturae secretorum scrutinium chymicum … (Frankfurt, 1687). Fashionable throughout the early modern period, collections of emblems were popularised through volumes including Geffrey Whitney’s A Choice of Emblems (Leiden, 1586), and George Wither’s A Collection of Emblemes (London, 1635). Emblem books comprised allegorical pictures, along with epigrams, and thus required some interpretation on the part of the reader.
Image 13: Michael Maier, Secretioris naturae secretorum scrutinium chymicum, per oculis et intellectui accuratè accommodata, figuris cupro appositissimè incisa … emblemata, hisque confines … sententias, doctissimaque item epigrammata, illustratum (Frankfurt, 1687), p. 85, a salamander.
As shown in the image above, the twenty-ninth emblem in the Secretioris naturae secretorum scrutinium chymicum portrays a salamander. Salamanders were reptiles thought to be able to live in the fire and, in some accounts, even douse other flames. Often used allegorically, the salamander connoted rejuvenation and invulnerability. It was incorporated into the royal iconography of the period and, together with the motto Nutrisco et extinguo (‘I nourish and extinguish’) was the favoured symbol of Francis I (1494-1547). Its inclusion in this exhibition speaks to a different engagement with fire, one that is mythic and more abstract. You can find more examples of fanciful early modern creatures in the digital exhibition on Mythical Creatures at the Edward Worth Library.
Image 14: Michael Maier, Secretioris naturae secretorum scrutinium chymicum, per oculis et intellectui accuratè accommodata, figuris cupro appositissimè incisa … emblemata, hisque confines … sententias, doctissimaque item epigrammata, illustratum (Frankfurt, 1687), p. 29.
Text: Dr Sophie Battell, University of Zurich, Edward Worth Library Research Fellow 2022.
Works cited
Bivar, A. D. H., ‘“Fire-altar” Subjects in the Art of Gandhāra’, East and West, 55:1/4 (2009), 35-39
Boyle, Robert, Essays of the strange subtilty determinate nature great efficacy of effluviums. To which are annext New experiments to make fire and flame ponderable (London, 1673).
Charteris-Black, Jonathan, Fire Metaphors: Discourses of Awe and Authority (London, 2017).
Dolan, Frances E., ‘Ashes and “the Archive”: The London Fire of 1666, Partisanship, and Proof’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 31:2 (2001), 379-408
Foxe, John, Actes and Monuments (London, 1684).
Garrioch, David, ‘Why Didn’t Paris Burn in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries?’, French Historical Studies, 42:1 (2019), 35-66.
Hyde, Thomas, Historia religionis veterum Persarum, eorumque magorum … Zoroastris vita, ejusque et aliorum vaticinia de Messiah è Persarum aliorumque monumentis eruuntur: … Dantur veterum Persarum scripturæ & linguæ (ut hæ jam primò Europæ producantur & literato orbi postliminiò reddantur,) specimina. De Persiæ ejusdemque linguæ nominibus; déque hujus dialectis & à modernâ differentiis, strictim agitur (Oxford, 1700).
James I, Daemonologie, in King James VI and I: Selected Writings, ed. Neil Rhodes, Jennifer Richards and Joseph Marshall (London and New York, 2016).
Maier, Michael, Scrutinium chymicum per emblamata & epigrammata illustratum (Frankfurt, 1687).
Morgan, John, E., ‘The Representation and Experience of English Urban Fire Disasters, c.1580–1640’, Historical Research, 89:244 (2016), 268-93.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Ray, John, Miscellaneous Discourses Concerning the Dissolution and Changes of the World (London, 1692).
Scott, Andrew C., Fire: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2020).
Sinclair, George, Natural philosophy improven by new experiments. Touching the mercurial weather-glass, the hygroscope, eclipsis, conjunctions of Saturn and Jupiter. By new experiments, touching the pressure of fluids, the diving-bell, and all the curiosities thereof. To which is added, som new observations, and experiments, lately made of several kinds. Together with a true relation of an evil spirit, which troubled a mans family for many days. Lastly, there is a large discourse anent coal, coal-sinks, dipps, risings, and streeks of coal, levels, running of mines, gaes, dykes, damps and wild-fire (Edinburgh, 1683).
Zeini, Arash, Zoroastrian Scholasticism in Late Antiquity: The Pahlavi Version of the Yasna Haptaŋhāiti (Edinburgh, 2020).
[1] Andrew C. Scott, Fire: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), p. 3.
[2] Robert Boyle, Essays of the strange subtilty determinate nature great efficacy of effluviums. To which are annext New experiments to make fire and flame ponderable (London, 1673), p. 6.
[3] Jonathan Charteris-Black, Fire Metaphors: Discourses of Awe and Authority (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), pp 7-8.
[4] Boyle, Essays of the strange subtilty, p. 59.
[5] See, for instance: David Garrioch, ‘Why Didn’t Paris Burn in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries?’, French Historical Studies, 42:1 (2019), 35-66; John E. Morgan, ‘The Representation and Experience of English Urban Fire Disasters, c.1580–1640’, Historical Research, 89:244 (2016), 268-93.
[6] Frances E. Dolan, ‘Ashes and “the Archive”: The London Fire of 1666, Partisanship, and Proof’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 31:2 (2001), 379-408, p. 385.
[7] George Sinclair, Natural philosophy improven by new experiments. Touching the mercurial weather-glass, the hygroscope, eclipsis, conjunctions of Saturn and Jupiter. By new experiments, touching the pressure of fluids, the diving-bell, and all the curiosities thereof. To which is added, som new observations, and experiments, lately made of several kinds. Together with a true relation of an evil spirit, which troubled a mans family for many days. Lastly, there is a large discourse anent coal, coal-sinks, dipps, risings, and streeks of coal, levels, running of mines, gaes, dykes, damps and wild-fire (Edinburgh, 1683), pp 240-241.
[8] Ibid. p. 245.
[9] James I, Daemonologie, in King James VI and I: Selected Writings, ed. Neil Rhodes, Jennifer Richards and Joseph Marshall (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), Book 2, Chapter 5, p. 178.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
[12] John Ray, Miscellaneous Discourses Concerning the Dissolution and Changes of the World (London, 1692), p. 137.
[13] Ibid., p. 26.
[14] Arash Zeini, Zoroastrian Scholasticism in Late Antiquity: The Pahlavi Version of the Yasna Haptaŋhāiti (Edinburgh, 2020), p. 63.
[15] Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
[16] A. D. H. Bivar, ‘“Fire-altar” Subjects in the Art of Gandhāra’, East and West, 55:1/4 (2009), 35-39, p. 35.
[17] Jonathan Charteris-Black, Fire Metaphors: Discourses of Awe and Authority (London, 2017), pp 91-95.