A Parade of “Puffers”

Many frauds flocked to the imperial court like moths to a light. They were mockingly called “puffers,” from the French souffleurs, blowers. They hoped to exploit Rudolf’s weakness for curiosities and miracles. One day the strange Greek Mamugna, Marco Bragadino, appeared, proclaiming himself an adept (see Most). The conjurer Jeroným Alessandro Scotta, an itinerant alchemist whom the emperor consulted on astrology, also worked here (see Plzeň). In 1591 Filip Jakub Güstenhofer came to Prague and performed several transmutations before the emperor with a tincture supposedly obtained from the adept Sethon. When the tincture ran out, Rudolf II had him imprisoned in the White Tower. He managed to escape back to Strasbourg, but was caught there and brought back to Prague Castle. Only then did he honestly admit to the emperor that he had run out and could not make more. Jan Jindřich Müller of Mühlenfels first worked in Swabia. Later, attracted by the emperor’s fame, he had someone fire a pistol loaded with an amalgam bullet at him at Rudolf’s court. He also transmuted lead before the emperor, earning the title “of Mühlenfels.” He later returned to Germany, where the Duke of Württemberg appointed him court alchemist. There he stole Sethon’s “great elixir” from Sendivogius. When the theft and his other crimes were exposed, the duke had him sentenced to death. Although he claimed noble birth and demanded execution by the sword, he ended on an iron gallows. A year before Rudolf’s death, another imperial alchemist, Hauser, was imprisoned and tortured on King Matthias’s orders after it emerged that he had intended to harm the king through secret arts. He was later expelled from Bohemia.