Thomas Norton (alchemist)

Thomas Norton (c.1433-c.1513) was an English poet and alchemist. He is known as the author of the Ordinall of Alchemy (1477), an alchemical poem of around 3000 lines. According to Jonathan Hughes^[1], Norton was born in Colne, Wiltshire. He became an alchemist in the 1450s, and was a courtier at the court of Edward IV of England, to whom the Ordinall was dedicated.

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The Ordinall gained a wide reputation in a Latin verse translation, in the 1618 Tripus Aureus of Michael Maier.^[2] The English original was included in the 1652 Theatrum chemicum Britannicum of Elias Ashmole.^[3]

Notes

1. ^ Arthurian Myths and Alchemy (2002), p.102-3.
2. ^ [1]. The other authors in the collection were Basil Valentine, and the pseudonymous John Cremer, Abbot of Westminster.
3. ^ Fascimile text in Ordinall of Alchemy (1929) editor E. J. Holmyard.

References

• Reidy, John (ed.)(1975), Thomas Norton's Ordinal of Alchemy (ISBN 0197222749)