Bastions of Light

I am researching a lot of old alchemists for my next little book and the stunning parallel in all of their lives was their sheer brilliance. University at 13 or 16 already full of alchemical knowledge, books published or completed at around 20 including Agrippa’s three huge volumes on magic. Traveling around Europe and the Middle East, writing a ton of books and manuscripts. The question is how? Just exactly how can a boy of 16 in the 14th Century possibly have accumulated so much  knowledge? How can they have learned to write, read, speak multiple different languages, know the philosophers and so on? It’s just utterly amazing. I realize that there was no TV or internet and so time could be spent on contemplation and so on but back

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