Nicolas Flamel: the alchemist who never made gold

Who Nicolas Flamel really was

Nicolas Flamel was real, and there was nothing mysterious about him. He lived in Paris in the late 14th and early 15th centuries, and he was what was then called an écrivain: not a novelist, but a professional penman. He made copies of documents and books, sold books as a sworn bookseller to the University, and looked after other people's rents. That trade, according to the records, is where his money came from.

He belonged to the parish of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, the church whose bell tower is today's Tour Saint-Jacques. He married Pernelle, and the two of them signed over all their property to each other, so that what belonged to one belonged to both. It sounds like a solicitor's footnote, but it matters. It explains a good part of their wealth and, incidentally, a later court case with Pernelle's relatives about the inheritance.

What the records say

There's a clear paper trail for how they spent their money. From 1406 Flamel bought plots on the Rue de Montmorency, then a half-ruined street "par où petit de gens passent" – where few people pass. The monks of Saint-Martin-des-Champs gave him permission to build almshouses there on one condition: no chapel. The idea was to house the poor free of charge.

He also paid for the small doorway of his parish church, the one on the Rue des Écrivains – Scribes' Street – and was buried in that church. And he funded arches in the galleries round the Cemetery of the Innocents, the old cemetery in the centre of Paris. Remember that cemetery: it's where the legend will be born.

The legend: gold, an elixir and two fake funerals

For many people, a fortune like that had only one possible explanation: Flamel had found the philosopher's stone, the substance alchemists dreamed would turn metals into gold.

And the full version is better still. According to a fable that went round centuries later, Pernelle faked her own death: what was buried in the Cemetery of the Innocents wasn't her body but a bundle of clothes and a lump of wood, while she slipped away to Switzerland. Later Nicolas did the same. Thanks to an elixir, the pair would live at least as long as the first men, which is to say a thousand years. In the 18th century the traveller Paul Lucas told the tale at length in the account of his journey to Greece.

An abbé in the archives

In 1761 an abbé, Étienne-François Villain, went to the archives. He worked through records from the parish of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie and the priory of Saint-Martin-des-Champs, and published a critical history of the couple, the Histoire critique de Nicolas Flamel et de Pernelle sa femme. Its very long title promises to prove, from old deeds, "the origin and the modesty of their fortune" against the claims of the alchemists.

His conclusion has a nice twist. On the one hand, Flamel's fortune was middling, nothing fabulous. On the other, it was far too comfortable for someone who'd spent his life on alchemy, a pursuit in which, the abbé says, you're bound to ruin yourself. As for the faked deaths, he called the story what it was: a fable, and a rather badly stitched one.

And the figures at the Innocents? Flamel had paid for an arch with paintings that the alchemists read as a riddle: the recipe for the stone, in code. To the abbé they were ordinary religious images: the Last Judgement, the Massacre of the Innocents and the symbols of the four evangelists. He summed it up in a line worth quoting: they were "très-mystérieux aux yeux des Alchymistes, et sans mystère à quiconque n'y en cherche point". Deeply mysterious to the alchemists; no mystery at all to anyone not looking for one.

How to make an alchemist

If Flamel never made gold, where does the myth come from? Following the abbé, you can trace its path, and it's a neat little lesson in how legends grow.

First, some devout paintings in a cemetery that somebody decides to read in code. Then comes print: in the 16th century, one Gohorry was among the first to publish a reputation that until then had been only "une tradition incertaine", a shaky tradition, and by the 17th several printed treatises on alchemy attributed to Flamel were in circulation. Among the works put out under his name there's even a book claiming to explain the cemetery figures as a recipe; to the abbé, a novel written after the fact by some alchemist. By the 18th century, Paul Lucas was telling the faked death and the thousand years in full detail.

Not even Villain's book settled it. In 1844, the great dictionary of Paris streets was still repeating that in Flamel's own day people believed he'd found the philosopher's stone. And the city, which named a street after him in 1851, describes him in its official street register as an alchemist. The legend ended up with official status.

Fact or legend?

• Fact: Flamel was real. He was a scribe and bookseller in Paris, married Pernelle and shared all his property with her. He built houses for the poor on the Rue de Montmorency, paid for a doorway at his parish church and for arches at the Cemetery of the Innocents, and was buried in Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie.
• Legend: the philosopher's stone and the gold. Likewise the faked death and the thousand years of life, a fable Paul Lucas was telling in the 18th century.
• Attributed interpretation: that the figures at the Innocents were religious scenes and the alchemical book a later novel. That's Villain's argument (1761), backed by deeds.
• Popular claim, unsupported: that the house on the Rue de Montmorency is "the oldest in Paris". You'll hear it a lot, but the official listing only dates it to the first quarter of the 15th century, and we haven't found the superlative in any source we've read.

What's left of Flamel in Paris

• The Tour Saint-Jacques. It's the bell tower of his parish church, where he was buried. The church was sold off in 1797 for its stone, with one condition: the bell tower had to be spared. That's why the tower stands alone.
• The Rue Nicolas-Flamel and the Rue Pernelle, both named by the same decree in 1851.
• "Nicolas Flamel's house", at 51 Rue de Montmorency. The French state protects it as a historic monument under the name "Maison dite de Nicolas Flamel": that dite, "so-called", warns you the attribution is traditional. It's dated to the first quarter of the 15th century, and only the façade is listed, since 1911.
• The square with the Fountain of the Innocents, where the cemetery with the painted arches stood. The cemetery itself disappeared at the end of the 18th century.

Where to hear it

Podtour tells Flamel's story on the route Mysteries of Old Paris: from the Grève to the Innocents. The question is raised on the Rue Nicolas-Flamel and answered further along, at the very spot where the legend was born. On the way there are gallows, a poisoner, a warrior in gilded boots and a king stabbed in a traffic jam.

And if you'd like to start with something free, The Île de la Cité: from the Pont Neuf to Notre-Dame, our free route.

Further reading

• Étienne-François Villain (abbé), Histoire critique de Nicolas Flamel et de Pernelle sa femme, recueillie d'actes anciens qui justifient l'origine et la médiocrité de leur fortune contre les imputations des alchimistes, Paris, 1761 (in French). https://archive.org/details/histoirecritique00vill
• Félix and Louis Lazare, Dictionnaire administratif et historique des rues de Paris et de ses monuments, Paris, 1844 (in French). https://archive.org/details/dictionnaireadm00lazagoog
• Ministère de la Culture, Mérimée database, "Maison dite de Nicolas Flamel" (PA00086213), in French. https://pop.culture.gouv.fr/notice/merimee/PA00086213
• Ville de Paris, "Six choses à savoir sur la tour Saint-Jacques", paris.fr (in French). https://www.paris.fr/pages/sept-choses-a-savoir-sur-la-tour-saint-jacques-23432
• Ville de Paris, street-name register (entries "rue Nicolas Flamel" and "rue Pernelle"), opendata.paris.fr. https://opendata.paris.fr/explore/dataset/denominations-emprises-voies-actuelles/