Talk:Basil Valentine

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[edit] VALENTINUS & FRIAR LAWRENCE

There seems to be a link between Valentinus & Shakespeare's character Friar Lawrence in Romeo & Juliet. Compare these two extracts:

Valentinus:

All herbs, trees, and roots, an all metals and minerals, receive their growth and nutriment from the spirit of the earth, which is the spirit of life. This spirit is itself fed by the stars, and is thereby rendered capable of imparting nutriment to all things that grow and of nursing them as a mother does her child while it is yet in her womb. The minerals are hidden in the womb of the earth and nourished by her with the spirit that she receives from above

Friar Lawrence:

Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye/The day to cheer, and night's dank dew to dry,/I must upfill this osier cage of ours/With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers./The earth that's nature's mother is her tomb:/What is her burying grave, that is her womb;/And from her womb children of divers kind/We sucking on her natural bosom find./Many for many virtues excellent,/None but for some, and yet all different./O'mickle is the powerful grace that lies/In plants, herbs, stones, and their true qualities./For naught so vile that on the earth doth live/But to the earth some special good doth give.

There are obvious echoes in Shakespeare's text. Lawrence is a Franciscan, Valentinus was a Benedictine, but Lawrence in R & J talks about his Art and is a maker of potions and medicines. Frances Yates thought Lawrence was based on the Venetian Franciscan Friar Giorgi, Christian Kaballist and author of De Harmonium Mundi. Perhaps Shakespeare was giving a nod to both Valentinus and Giorgi in R & J. ThePeg 21:45, 15 July 2007 (UTC)