Ripley, George

An Encyclopaedia of Occultism (1920)

This alchemist was born about the middle of the fifteenth century at Ripley, in Yorkshire, in which county his kinsfolk appear to have been alike powerful and numerous. Espousing holy orders, he became an Augustinian, while subsequently he was appointed Canon of Bridlington in his native Yorkshire, a priory which had been founded in the time of Henry I. by Walter de Ghent. Ripley's sacerdotal office did not prevent him travelling, and he prosecuted empirical studies at various places on the continent, while he even penetrated so far afield as the island of Rhodes, where he is said to have made a large quantity of gold for the knights of St. John of Jerusalem. Going afterwards to Rome he was dignified by the Pope, the result being that, when he got back to Bridlington, he found his brethren there intensely jealous of him. It is reported, indeed, that he even resigned his position and retired to a priory at Boston, but this story is probably unfounded, the likelihood being that Ripley the alchemist has been confounded with George Ripley, a Carmelite friar who lived at Boston in the thirteenth century, and wrote a biography of St. Botolph. Ripley died in England in 1490, but his fame did not die with him, and in fact his name continued to be familiar for many years after his decease. He had been among the first to popularise the chymical writings attributed to Raymond Lully, which first became known in England about 1445, at which time an interest in alchemy was increasing steadily among English scholars the more so because the law against multiplying gold had lately been repealed; while Ripley wrote a number of learned treatises himself, notably Medulla Alchimice, The Treatise of Mercury and The Compound of Alchemie, the last-named being dedicated to King Edward IV. A collected edition of his writings was issued at Cassel in Germany in 1649, while in 1678 an anonymous English writer published a strange volume in London, Ripley Revived, or an Exposition upon George Ripley's Hermetico-Poetical Works.