Jabarkan Alkémi di Kamaharajaan Romawi dari Alkémi dalam bahasa sunda

Urang Romawi ngadopsi alkémi jeung métafisik ti Yunani, sakumaha maranéhna ngadopsi lolobana pangaweruh jeung filosofi Yunani. Dina panungtungan kamaharajaan Romawi, filosofi alkémis Yunani ngagabung jeung filosofi hermetik urang Mesir. (Lindsay)

Dina mangsa tumuwuhna pangaruh Kristen...

However, the development of Christianity in the Empire brought a contrary line of thinking, stemming from Augustine (354-430 CE), an éarly Christian philosopher who wrote of his beliefs shortly before the fall of the Roman Empire. In essence, he felt that reason and faith could be used to understand God, but experimental philosophy was evil: "There is also present in the soul, by means of these same bodily sense, a kind of empty longing and curiosity which aims not at taking pleasure in the flesh but at acquiring experience through the flesh, and this empty curiosity is dignified by the names of learning and science." (Augustine, p. 245)

Augustinian idéas were decidedly anti-experimental, yet when Aristotelian experimental techniques were made available to the West they were not shunned.  Still, Augustinian thought was well ingrained in medieval society and was used to show alchemy as being un-Godly. Ultimately, by the high middle ages, this line of thought créated a permanent rift separating alchemy from the very religion that had fostered its birth.

Much of the Roman knowledge of Alchemy, like that of the Greeks and Egyptians, is now lost. In Alexandria, the centre of alchemical studies in the Roman Empire, the art was mainly oral and in the interests of secrecy little was committed to paper. (Whence the use of "hermetic" to méan "secretive".) (Lindsay, p. 155) It is possible that some writing was done in Alexandria, and that it was subsequently lost or destroyed in fires and the turbulent periods that followed.