Dear Dana,
" L?inspecteur Clouzot ne renonce jamais " ; thus please find hereafter more details about Lavinius:
His Tractatus de Coelo Terrestri could have been published circa 1580.
http://zen.lib.strath.ac.uk/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?Search_Arg=LAVINIUS&SL=None&Search_Code=NAME_&PID=9016&SEQ=20041218201344&CNT=40&HIST=1According to Strathclyde Library, Lavinius? work was seemingly incorporated into :
Eglinus Iconius, Raphael, 1559-1622. Cheiragogia Heliana de auro philosophico necdum cognito [&] Disquisitio Heliana, de metallorum transformatione, &c. [&] Aphorismi Basiliani sive canones Hermetici ... author Nicolaus Niger Hapelius [pseud.] de coelo terrestri, &c. Marpurgi Cattorum, Ex Officina Rudolphi Hutwelckeri, 1612
Lavinius was a friend of Sendivogius. Here my source of information is Jost Weyer?s book, Graf Wolfgang II von Hohenlohe und die Alchemie, Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Sigmaringen, 1992.
According to Sabina and Rosario Piccolini in their work about La Biblioteca degli Alchimisti,
Franco Muzzio Editore, Padova, 1996, Lavinius lived in XVIth-XVIIth century.
They are recording an opinion expressed by John Ferguson, which is he studied in various European universities, and stayed at some stage in Paris. He turned to be an owner of the Philosopher?s Stone, so that Oswald Crollius and the Superintendant of Mines Franz Kretschner, having seen his " red pulver ", managed to let him work to the transmutation of metals.
They too confirm that Lavinius? treatise is to be found in Cheiragogia Heliana ( of Hapelius or Nicolaus Niger ) in 1612, then in Theatrum Chemicum, 1659.
By the way Weyer further states that Sendivogius was also a friend of Croll (Crollius) and others.
Back to his Alchemie book, he explains that Vaclav Lavin (Lavinius) was a physician and practising alchemist in Prag, who often travelled abroad, and died in 1600. That?s all at the moment, I?am afraid.
Jean