Seeking Sources for a Recipe for Aqua Caelestis in the Catchmay Manuscript (1629), Part 2

by Annabel Cords, St. Olaf College

In Part 1 of this exploration, Cords recounts the questions she faced when first encountering Catchmay’s recipe for Aqua Caelistis. She asked: Could this recipe have come from a larger, more popular foreign work? Could it, with its utilization of alembics and diverse ingredients, even have come from an alchemical tome? Most importantly, she wanted to find out what it all meant. What was Aqua Selestie? How did one make it? And how did this recipe find a place in the middle of an English manuscript? The posting shows how she explored these questions.

About 150 years before Frances Catchmay put pen to paper, an Italian noblewoman named Caterina Sforza received a letter from her friend Frate Bernardino di Gariboldi. Dated January 21, 1504, the letter described a miraculous medicine that could cure a number of diseases. Enclosed in the letter were three small vials. The first, instructed Frate Bernardino, would treat headaches and stomachaches. The second would strengthen the liver. The third would protect against the plague. In order to bring about the solution’s strongest liver-protecting properties, Frate Bernardino reminded Caterina, one must mix an ounce of “diarodon abbatis” (a kind of rosewater) into the second flask [L’altra si e per el figato ma el go bisogna metere dentro onze je de diarodon abbatis]. This powerful concoction was called “Acqua Celeste” – heavenly water (Pasolini 607).

Caterina Sforza, an accomplished and influential noblewoman, military strategist, and alchemist, needed no encouragement before she added Bernardino’s recipe for Acqua Celeste to her compilation of alchemical recipes, Gli Experimenti (“The Experiments”). Acqua Celeste, wrote Caterina, was a mixture “of such virtue that makes the old young again…the dead alive…and the sick well…within the space of 3 pater nosters” (Coulson). The recipe’s full title, Aqua celeste che fa regiovanire la persona, et de morta fa vivio, can be translated as “Celestial water which makes a person younger and turns the dead into living.” It contains an impressive array of herbs, fruits, and other plants, including (but certainly not limited to):

  • Nutmeg [Moscate]
  • Ginger [Zenzebero]
  • Orange peel [Scorza de centrangoli]
  • Basil leaves [Foglie de basilico]
  • Rosemary [Rosamarino]
  • Mint [Menta]
  • Elderflower [Flor de sambuco]
  • Cardamom [Cardamomo]
  • Sweet flag [Calamo]

The lengthy entry in Experimenti details the steps that one should take to distill Acqua Celeste, as well as Caterina’s own commentary: according to her, the process should result in a liquid the color of blood […per fino che tu vederai una acqua che venira in Colore de Sangue…]. She advises readers to seal their Acqua Celeste in an ampoule using wax, as it is “dear treasure” [caro tresoro] and “greater than…the stone of Philosophy” [magior secreto che…la pietra Della Philosophia] (Pasolini 610).

Figure 4: A diagram of an alembic, placed in a furnace during the distillation process. In her recipe for Acqua Celeste, Caterina Sforza tells readers to “put [the vessel] in the stove” [poi mettilo nel suo fornello] and let it rest on a fire until the mixture changes color [continua…lo foco per fin tanto che lacqua mutera colore]. In John French, The Art of Distillation…or A treatise of the choicest spagiricall preparations performed by way of distillation, Book I (London: E. Cotes, 1653), 20. Accessed through EEBO.

Interestingly enough, variations on Sforza’s original recipe for Acqua Celeste surfaces in several other manuscripts, indicating that it was being spread around Early Modern Europe in the centuries after her death. In the Receipt Book of Catherine Bacon (1680-1739), a recipe for “Aqua Maria” requires the maker to infuse the ingredients “in a quart of Aqua Celestis” for 24 hours. Since no indication of how to make Aqua Celestis is given, one could assume that it was available from others who had the recipe. A shortened recipe for Aqua Celeste can also be found in John French’s The Art of Distillation, under the title “Aqua Celestis is made thus.” French advertises it as “good against faintings and infections.”

Figure 5: John French’s “Aqua Celestis.” In John French, The Art of Distillation…or A treatise of the choicest spagiricall preparations performed by way of distillation, Book I (London: E. Cotes, 1653), 46. Accessed through EEBO.

Yet in Thomas Jones’s 1668 dictionary of the English and Welsh languages, Aqua Celestis is not mentioned in Jones’s list of special medicinal waters:

Figure 6: A list of common abbreviations for medicinal waters. Aqua Vitæ and Aqua Fortis both show up in John French’s The Art of Distillation and are listed here, but Aqua Celestis is notably missing. In Thomas Jones, The British Language in its Lustre (London: L. Baskerville and J. Marsh, 1668), u.7v. Accessed through EEBO.

Why does Thomas’s dictionary, purported to “contain many more words” than previous compilations of the English language, lack any reference to Aqua Celestis? If it was well-known enough to be included in French’s tomes on distillation and referenced casually by women like Catherine Bacon, then why doesn’t it have a place next to other famed medicines like Aqua Vitæ? And how did Caterina Sforza’s recipe come to find a home in a receipt book compiled by Lady Frances Catchmay of West Gloucestershire, England, as early as the 1610s-20s?

We can’t know the answers to any of these questions for sure, but Meredith Ray’s Daughters of Alchemy offers some clues. Caterina passed on her Experimenti to her son, Giovanni de’ Medici, who “prized it” (43). Ray argues that “it is likely that Caterina’s manuscript was handed down, in turn, to Giovanni’s son – the first Medici Grand Duke – and even to Francesco I and Don Antonio de’ Medici after him.” Caterina Sforza’s descendents were cited when the recipe was published in later texts. For instance, “a manuscript compilation by the apothecary Stefano Rosselli carefully notes the origins of its most valuable alchemical-medical secrets, singling out some as personal gifts from the Grand Dukes Cosimo and Francesco and attributing others to Cosimo’s daughter, Isabella de’ Medici.”

From here, Acqua Celeste likely spread around Europe in the form of “books of secrets.” These books, explains Ray, often contained “remedies and prescriptions relating to health, beauty, alchemy, and household management” – many of which were either implicitly or directly targeted at a female readership (48). “Such texts,” she continues, “reflected the reality of an increasing female readership by the middle of the sixteenth century.” Many of the era’s most popular books of secrets made explicit reference to that female audience: for example, Della summa de’ secreti universali in ogni materia (Timoteo Rosello 1561) addressed itself to “men and women of great intelligence” [huomini & donne di alto ingegno]. Books of secrets also shared “a pervasive reliance on procedures and ingredients associated with alchemy, an arena of scientific experimentation that was intricately linked with the practice of medicine in the early modern period” (49). Furthermore, if the recipe for Acqua Celeste was being transmitted among a female public through books of secrets and word of mouth, perhaps it escaped the attention of Thomas Jones in his compilation of the English language.

Could it be that Frances Catchmay found the recipe for “Aqua Selestie” in one of these books of secrets? There’s no doubt that the receipt in her manuscript descends from Caterina’s original recipe; she lists the same ingredients (“cardamo.;” “muscat.;” “ment.”) and even includes Frate Bernardino’s reminder to add diarodon abbatis, which Catchmay lists as “diarrhod. Abbatis.” The symbol that begins Catchmay’s receipt could be a kind of shorthand symbol indicating an alchemical recipe.

Figure 7: An excerpt from Frate Bernardino di Gariboldi’s letter to Caterina Sforza, reminding her to combine Acqua Celeste with an ounce of diarodon abbatis (a kind of rosewater). In Pier Desiderio Pasolini, Caterina Sforza, vol. III. (Italy: Ermanno Loescher, 1893), 607. Accessed through HathiTrust.

Figure 8: An excerpt from Lady Frances Catchmay’s recipe for “Aqua Selestie.” The text reads, “diarrhod. Abbatis.” In Lady Frances Catchmay, A booke of medicins (1625), 46. Accessed through From The Page.

Perhaps a book of secrets caught Frances Catchmay’s eye; maybe it belonged to a friend, who lent it to her to copy down its recipes. Sadly, so little is known about Frances Catchmay that we can hardly confirm more than her residence and date of death, let alone whether or not she was interested in libri di segreti. Still, considering the clues left behind by “Aqua Selestie,” it is not beyond reason that she, like so many other women during the early modern period, found herself involved in the transnational literary world of medicine, cosmetics, science, and alchemy.

References

Abraham, Lyndy. A Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Coulson, Gigi. “Caterina Sforza – The Alchemist & Her Translated Recipes.” La Bella Donna (blog). 18 September, 2015. https://fleurtyherald.wordpress.com/2015/09/18/caterina-sforza-the-alchemist-her-translated-recipes/.

French, John. The Art of Distillation…Or, A Treatise of the Choicest Spagiricall Preparations Performed by Way of Distillation. London: E. Cotes, 1653. https://www.proquest.com/books/art-distillation-treatise-choicest-spagiricall/docview/2240955119/se-2.

Jones, Thomas. The British Language in its Lustre…Or, A Copious Dictionary of Welsh and English Containing Many More British Words than are in Mr. Davies’s Antiquae Lingue Britannicae Dictionarium Duplex. London: L. Baskerville and J. Marsh, 1668. https://www.proquest.com/books/british-language-lustre-copious-dictionary-welsh/docview/2240851935/se-2.

Linden, Stanton J., ed. Mystical Metal of Gold: Essays on Alchemy and Renaissance Culture. New York, NY: AMS Press, 2007.

Pasolini, Pier Desiderio. Caterina Sforza. Vol. 3. Rome, Italy: Ermanno Loescher, 1893.

Ray, Meredith K. Daughters of Alchemy: Women and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015.

Wolfe, Heather. The Alphabet Book: A guide to early modern English secretary hand. Washington, D.C.: Folger Shakespeare Library, 2020.

Special thanks to:

Dr. Naomi Miller, for recommending many valuable sources on alchemy in the Early Modern period, without which I would not have been able to discover the connection between Lady Frances Catchmay and Caterina Sforza.

Dr. Nancy Simpson-Younger, from whom I learned how to read and transcribe Early Modern manuscripts, and many of the research techniques I used in completing this project.

Audrey Gunn, for helping me find some of my most important sources, including a transcription of Caterina Sforza’s original recipe for Acqua Celeste.

Arsema Bejiga, Lizzie Gray, and Paige Anselmo, my co-transcribers on the St. Olaf CURI transcription project.

Annabel Cords is a student at St. Olaf College, where she undertook this research with the guidance of Dr. Nancy Simpson-Younger.


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
hillarynunn (March 4, 2025). Seeking Sources for a Recipe for Aqua Caelestis in the Catchmay Manuscript (1629), Part 2. emroc. Retrieved May 17, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/13f1v


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