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This contribution analyses accounts of the refining of mercury in the printed works of Biringuccio, Agricola, and Barba and in archival documents related to mercury production at Almadén. Similarities in printed texts, coupled with the lack of connections of their authors to significant sites of mercury mining in the early modern world, suggest that these authors developed their accounts not through personal experience or knowledge exchanges with practitioners but through the types of textual borrowings associated with period humanist scholarship. Examination of local archival sources produced at Almadén indicates, moreover, the lack of correspondence between these printed accounts and local practices at the foremost site of mercury production in early modern Europe. These findings indicate the continuing importance of textual forms of scholarship in the production of period technical knowledge and the dangers of using such learned treatises as indicators of actual practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]