The Secrets of Special Collections

Attention, Harry Potter fans: Denison University now holds the recipe for making the real Sorcerer’s Stone. A few years ago, Elizabeth Dodge Sturges ‘54 donated about a dozen books to Denison. Among them was a medieval manuscript dating back to 1459, which contains the holy grail of Potterdom. Turns out the Sorcerer’s Stone (or Philosopher’s Stone) isn’t really a stone at all, but an alchemical substance once thought to turn basic metals to gold and to make humans immortal. Makes sense that the how-to guide was found in a previously unknown manuscript that contains three alchemical texts written by philosophers, and that was copied–meticulously–by a German teenager named Reymbertus Reymberti of Eymbeke. This manuscript, written in Latin, is the oldest in Denison’s collection, and Fred Porcheddu ‘87, associate professor of English, is just on the cusp of discovering all there is to know about it. He spent his recent sabbatical sifting through its pages and documenting the book’s secrets, which until now have never been told. To hear from Porcheddu himself, and to see the manuscript in detail, visit www.denison.edu/theden.