Regni Christi Frater Count Michael Maier and the Fraternity R.C.
By Hereward Tilton Aries 2002
On account of his leading role as apologist for the
elusive Rosicrucian Order, the alchemist Count Michael Maier (1569-1622)
came to be known as a man who not only sacrificed his time and fortune
on the impossible claims of his art, but who also squandered his talents
on the Rosicrucian “imposture”, as Newton would put it when reviewing
the Order ’s manifestos and Maier’s defence of them1. By the 18th
century the “Fraternity of the Rosy Cross” that had inspired the hopes
and fears of early 17th century Europe was widely condemned alongside
alchemy as a malicious fraud, and Maier was depicted as one of its
chief victims, as the Biographie Universelle makes clear:
It is difficult to know if the society of the Brothers of
the Rosy Cross existed elsewhere than in the imagination of some
scoundrels, who used it as a means of extorting money from overly
credulous people. The Brothers were believed to possess the power to
change metals into gold, or to retain their health over many centuries,
and to transport themselves with the rapidity of thought through all the
lands of the world. This society commenced with a great deal of noise
in Germany at the beginning of the 17th century; and Michael Maier was
certainly one of its initiates, or rather one of its dupes, since he
had the inclination to write up their laws and customs, and took up
their defence in his works.........
http://www.brill.com/aries
Δεν υπάρχουν σχόλια:
Δημοσίευση σχολίου