Nicolas Flamel's Paris: the scribe who became an alchemist

Few names in the history of alchemy are as familiar to the general public as that of Nicolas Flamel. Novels, films and guidebooks present him as the man who found the philosopher's stone and won immortality. The archival documents, however, tell another story, that of a fourteenth-century Parisian burgher, devout and well-off, whose fame as an alchemist arose almost two centuries after his death. Following his traces in Paris lets us see how an ordinary biography turns into legend.

The scribe of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie

Flamel was probably born around 1330 and worked as a scribe and sworn bookseller, that is, as a copyist and book trader licensed by the University. His shop stood near the church of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie, on the right bank of the Seine. He married Pernelle, a wealthy widow, and together they accumulated a considerable fortune, invested in houses and land in Paris.

The couple financed pious works and improvements to churches, including decorations at the Cemetery of the Innocents and at Saint-Jacques itself. Pernelle died in 1397 and Nicolas in 1418. He was buried in Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie, a church demolished after the Revolution, of which only the sixteenth-century bell tower, the Tour Saint-Jacques, survives. His tombstone, bearing the image of Christ and of Saints Peter and Paul, is now kept in the Cluny Museum.

The house in rue de Montmorency

At number 51 rue de Montmorency stands a house of 1407 that tradition identifies as one of Flamel's properties. It was built to provide lodging for the poor, who were asked in return to pray for their benefactors. Along the façade still runs an inscription in Old French inviting passers-by to say an Our Father and a Hail Mary for the dead, together with carved letters and figures.

It is one of the oldest houses in Paris and bears witness to a form of charity typical of the late Middle Ages, linked to concern for the salvation of the soul. Nothing in this inscription points to alchemy: it is the language of popular devotion, common to many foundations of the period. Today the ground floor of the house is occupied by a restaurant, but the beams and stones of the façade preserve the appearance of a medieval dwelling.

How the myth of the alchemist was born

In 1612 the Livre des figures hiéroglyphiques, attributed to Flamel, was published in Paris. The text tells how he bought a mysterious book of Abraham the Jew and, after a journey to Spain, understood its secret and achieved the transmutation of metals. Scholars consider the work a seventeenth-century forgery, and its real author is still debated.

From then on the legend grew without pause. In the eighteenth century the traveller Paul Lucas reported having heard that Flamel and Pernelle were still alive in the East, and the couple's wealth was explained by alchemical gold rather than by inheritance and investment. The figures of their religious donations were reread as symbols of the Great Work.

The story of Flamel is a perfect example of how seventeenth-century alchemy looked for illustrious fathers in the past. Today, walking between the Tour Saint-Jacques and rue de Montmorency, one can pay homage both to the real man, scribe and benefactor, and to the imaginary character that later centuries built around his name.