Alchemical Symbolism in the VMS

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While researching when translations from Greek into Latin were verifiably (re)produced during the Late Middle Ages / the Early Renaissance, I came across Manuel Chrysoloras, a Byzantine scholar. Chrysoloras was born in 1353, presumably in Constantinople, and died on April 15, 1415, in Constance during the Council.

His [ Chrysoloras ] most direct contribution to the Revival of Learning was made in the years 1397-1400, during which he taught Greek to a small number of humanists in Florence.  These men not only set the cultural tone of their own city but were able eventually to make their influence felt all over Italy.

Ian Thomson, "Manuel Chrysoloras and the Early Italian Renaissance", in: Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies, Bd. 7, Nr. 1, p. 64
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Wkipedia:

In 1396, Coluccio Salutati, the chancellor of Florence, appointed him as the first lecturer in Greek at the university. He remained there from 1397 to 1400 and promoted the development of collections of Greek manuscripts in Italy.

As far as the time frame is concerned, this was immediately prior to the compilation of the VMS. One might therefore speculate that Zosimus’s texts, through Chrysoloras, reached northern Italy from Constantinople late, but not too late (see Bessarion’s donation to the Marciana Library several decades later). It is also possible that Greek texts rediscovered in Italy were available. As mentioned, this is pure speculation. It cannot be proven.