Nicolas Flamel was a French scribe and manuscript-seller who lived in the 14th century. After his death, Flamel developed a reputation as an Alchemist, believed to have created and discovered the Philosopher's Stone and to have thereby achieved immortality. These legendary accounts first appeared in the 17th century. According to texts ascribed to Flamel almost 200 years after his death, he had learned alchemical secrets from a Jewish converso on the road to Santiago de Compostela.