The Rosicrucian Enlightenment by Frances A. Yates

The Rosicrucian Enlightenment by Frances A. Yates

Chapter 3

John Dee and the Rise of 'Christian Rosenkreuz'

The word ‘Rosicrucian’ is derived from the name ‘Christian Rosencreutz’ or ‘Rose Cross’. The so-called ‘Rosicrucian manifestos’ are two short pamphlets or tracts, first published at Cassel in 1614 and 1615, the long titles of which can be abbreviated as the Fama and the Confessio.1

The hero of the manifestos is a certain ‘Father C.R.C.’ or ‘Christian Rosencreutz’ wh is said to have been the founder of an Order or Fraternity, now revived, and which the manifestos invite others to join. These manifestos aroused immense excitement, and a third  publication,  in  1616,  increased  the  mystery.  This  was  a  strange  alchemical romance, the German title of which translates as The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosencreutz.  The  hero  of The Chemical Wedding seems also connected with some Order which uses a red cross and red roses as symbols.

The  author  of The Chemical Wedding was certainly Johann Valentin Andreae. The manifestos are undoubtedly related to The Chemical Wedding, though they are probably not by Andreae but by some other person or persons unknown.

Who was this ‘Christian Rose Cross’ who first appears in these publications? Endless are the mystifications and legends which have been woven around this character and his Order. We are going to try to cut a way through to him by quite a new path. But let us begin this chapter with the easier question, ‘Who was Johann Valentin Andreae?’

Johann Valentin Andreae, born in 1586, was a native of Württemberg, the Lutheran state which closely adjoined the Palatinate. His grandfather was a distinguished Lutheran theologian sometimes called ‘the Luther of Württemberg’. Intense interest in the contemporary religious  situation was  the  main inspiration of his  grandson,  Johann Valentin, who also became a Lutheran pastor, but with a liberal interest in Calvinism. In spite of endless disasters, Johann Valentin was supported all his life by hopes of some far-reaching solution of the religious situation. All his activities, whether as a devout Lutheran pastor with socialist interests, or as the propagator of ‘Rosicrucian’ fantasies, were  directed  towards  such  a  hope.  Andreae  was  a  writer  of  promise,  whose imagination was influenced by the travelling English players. Concerning his early life and the influences on him we have authentic information, since he wrote an autobiography.2

From this we learn that in 1601, when he was fifteen, his widowed mother took him to Tübingen so that he might pursue his studies at that famous university of Württemberg. Whilst a student at Tübingen, so he tells us, he made his first juvenile efforts as an author, in about the years 1602 and 1603. 

These efforts included two comedies on the themes of ‘Esther ’ and ‘Hyacinth’, which he states that he wrote ‘in emulation of the English   actors’,   and   a   work   called Chemical   Wedding,   which  he   describes deprecatingly as a ludibrium, or a fiction, or a jest, of little worth.3

Judging by the Chemical Wedding by Andreae which is extant, the work published in 1616 with Christian Rosencreutz as its hero, this early version of the subject would have been a work of alchemical symbolism, using the marriage theme as a symbol of alchemical  processes.  It  cannot  have  been  identical  with  the  published Chemical Wedding of 1616 which contains references to the Rosicrucian manifestos of 1614 and 1615, to the Elector Palatine and his court at Heidelberg, to his wedding to the daughter of James I. The early version of the Chemical Wedding, which is not extant, must have been brought up to date for the publication of 1616. Nevertheless, the lost early version may have provided the core of the work.

We can make a very good guess as to what were the influences and events at Tübingen when Andreae was a student there which inspired these early works. The  reigning  Duke  of  Württemberg  was  Frederick  I,  alchemist,  occultist,  an enthusiastic Anglophil, the ruling passion of whose life had been to establish an alliance with Queen Elizabeth and to obtain the Order of the Garter. He had several times visited England with these aims in view and seems to have been a conspicuous figure.4  The Queen called him ‘cousin Mumpellgart’, which was his family name, and much discussion has centred round the problem of whether the cryptic references in Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor to ‘cosen garmombles’ and to horses hired at the Garter Inn by retainers of a German duke, might have some reference to Frederick o Württemberg.5 The Queen allowed his election to the Order of the Garter in 1597 bu the actual ceremony of his investiture did not take place until November, 1603, when the Garter was conferred on him in his own capital city of Stuttgart by a special embassy from James I.

Thus  James by this act in the very first year of his reign made a gesture towards continuing the Elizabethan alliance with the German Protestant powers, though in after years he was to deny the hopes thus raised. But in Württemberg in 1603 the reign of the new ruler of England seemed opening most auspiciously for German hopes and there was an outpouring of enthusiasm around the embassy come to confer the Garter on the Duke, and on the English actors who accompanied the embassy.

The Garter ceremony at Stuttgart and the festivities which accompanied it are described by E. Cellius in a Latin account published at Stuttgart in 1605, part of which is quoted i English translation by Elias Ashmole in his history of the Order of the Garter.6

The processions in which the English Garter officials, bearing the insignia of the Order took solemn part with the German dignitaries, made a brilliant impression. The Duke’s appearance was most splendid, so covered with jewels that they cast forth ‘a radiant mixture of divers colours’.7  

One of the English Garter officials was Robert Spenser who is stated by Cellius to have been a relative of the poet.8 The interesting point of this remark is that they had heard of Spenser, and perhaps of his Faerie Queene, at Stuttgart.

Thus magnificently clad, the Duke entered the church where, to the sound of solemn music,  he  was  invested  with the  Order. After  a  sermon,  the  music  was  renewed, consisting of ‘the Voices of two Youths clad in white garments, with wings like Angels, and standing opposite to one another’.9

When the company returned to the hall they partook of the Garter Feast, a banquet which lasted until early the next day. Cellius has some details about the Feast which are not quoted by Ashmole, including mentions of the part in the entertainment provided by

‘English musicians, comedians, tragedians, and most skilful actors’. The English musicians gave a combined concert with the Württemberg musicians, and the English actors added to the hilarity of the banquet by presenting dramas. One of these was the

‘History of Susanna’, which they played ‘with such art of histrionic action and with such dexterity’ that they were greatly applauded and rewarded.10

On later days, the English were conducted to see some of the principal places in the Dukedom, including the  University of Tübingen ‘where they were entertained with Comedies, Musick and other delights’.

Surely the visit of the  Garter  embassy and its  attendant actors  must have been an immensely stimulating and exciting event for the imaginative young student at Tübingen, Johann   Valentin  Andreae?   His Chemical  Wedding  of  1616  is  full  of  brilliant impressions of rich ceremonial and feasts, of some Order, or Orders, and contains fascinating insets of dramatic performances. It becomes more understandable as an artistic product when seen as the result of early English influences on Andreae, both of drama and ceremonial, combining to inspire a new and original imaginative work of art.

The year after the Garter ceremony, in 1604, a very curious work was dedicated to the Duke  of Württemberg.  This  was  the Naometria by Simon Studion, the unpublished manuscript of which is  in the  Landesbibliothek at Stuttgart.11  It is  an apocalyptic-

prophetic work of immense length, using involved numerology based on Biblical descriptions of the measurements of the Temple of Solomon and involved arguments about significant dates in Biblical and European history, leading up to prophecies about dates of future events. The writer is particularly interested in the dates in the life of Henry of Navarre, and the whole composition seems to reflect a secret alliance between Henry, now King of France, James I of Great Britain, and Frederick, Duke o Württemberg. This supposed alliance (of which I have not found evidence elsewhere) is very circumstantially described, and the manuscript even includes several pages of music which are to be sung to verses about the eternal friendship of the Lily (the King of France), the Lion (James of Great Britain), and the Nymph (the Duke of Württemberg).

According to the evidence of Simon Studion, it would therefore seem that there was a secret alliance in 1604 between James, Württemberg, and the King of France, perhaps a following up  of the rapprochement with James through the Garter ceremony of the preceding year. We are still in the early part of James’s reign during which he was still continuing the alliances of the previous reign and working in concert with Navarre, now King of France.

The Naometria is a curious specimen of that mania for prophecy, based on chronology, which was  a  characteristic  obsession of those  times.  It contains, however, a  very interesting and apparently factual account of something which is said to have taken place in 1586.

According to the author of Naometria, there was a meeting at Luneburg on 17 July 1586, between ‘some evangelical Princes and Electors’ and representatives of the King of Navarre, the King of Denmark, and the Queen of England. The object of this meeting i said to have been to form an ‘evangelical’ league of defence against the Catholic League (then working up in France to prevent the accession of Henry of Navarre to the throne o France). This league was called a ‘Confederatio Militiae Evangelicae’.12

Now, according to some early students of the Rosicrucian mystery, Simon Studion’s Naometria and the ‘Militia Evangelica’ which it describes, is a basic source for the Rosicrucian movement.13 A. E. Waite, who had examined the manuscript, believed that a crudely shaped rose design, with a cross in the centre, contained in the Naometria, is the first example of Rosicrucian rose and cross symbolism.14  I cannot say that I am altogether convinced of the importance of this so-called rose, but the idea that the Rosicrucian movement was rooted in some kind of alliance of Protestant sympathizers, formed to counteract the Catholic League, is one which would accord well with the interpretations to be advanced in this book. The date 1586 for the formation of this ‘Militia Evangelica’ would take one back to the reign of Queen Elizabeth, to the year o Leicester ’s intervention in the Netherlands, to the year of Philip Sidney’s death, to the idea of the formation of a Protestant League which was so dear to Sidney and to Joh Casimir of the Palatinate.

The problems raised by Simon Studion and his Naometria are too complicated to be entered  upon  in  detail  here,  but  I  would  be  inclined  to  agree  that  this  Stuttgart manuscript certainly is of importance to students of the Rosicrucian mystery. What encourages one in this view is the fact that Johann Valentin Andreae undoubtedly knew t h e Naometria  for  he  mentions  it  in his  work Turris  Babel,15  published  in 1619. Andreae is here interested, not in any past dates mentioned in the Naometria, but in its dates for future events, its prophecies. Simon Studion is very emphatic, in his repetitive way, that the year 1620 (remember that he is writing in 1604) will be highly significant for it will  see the end of the reign of Antichrist in the downfall  of the  Pope and Mahomet. This collapse will be continued in following years and about the year 1623 the  millennium  will  begin.  Andreae  is  very  obscure  in  what  he  says  about  the prophecies of Naometria, which he links with those of the Abbot Joachim, St Brigid Lichtenberg,  Paracelsus,  Postel,  and  other illuminati.  It  is  however  possible  that prophecies of this type may actually have influenced historical events, may have helped to decide the Elector Palatine and the enthusiasts behind him to make that rash decision to accept the Bohemian crown in the belief that the millennium was at hand.

The obscure movements glimpsed through the study of the Duke of Württemberg and the Garter and the mysteries of Naometria belong to the early years of the century when the Protestant Union was being formed in Germany and the Kings of France and Englan were hoped for as its supporters. In those earlier years, James I appeared sympathetic to these movements. The assassination of the King of France in 1610, on the eve of making some important intervention in Germany, shattered the hopes of the activists for a while and altered the balance of European affairs.  James, however, appeared to be still continuing the old policies. In 1612 he joined the Union of Protestant Princes, the head of which was now the young Elector Palatine; in the same year he engaged his daughter Elizabeth to Frederick, and in 1613 the famous wedding took place, with its apparent promise of support by Great Britain for the head of the German Protestant Union, th Elector Palatine.

Now at the time of the height of the alliance, before James I had begun his backing-ou process from it, the energetic Christian of Anhalt began to work towards building up the Elector Palatine as the ideal head of the anti-Hapsburg forces in Europe. Earlier hoped for leaders had disappeared; Henry of France had been assassinated; Henry, Prince o Wales, had died. The lot fell upon the young Elector Palatine.

Anhalt was generally held responsible for Frederick’s unfortunate Bohemian adventure, and  it was  against Anhalt that propaganda  after  its  disastrous  failure  was  largely addressed.16 He had many contacts in Bohemia and it would seem that it may have been through  his  persuasive  efforts  that  the  Bohemian  rebels  were  influenced  towards offering the crown to Frederick. The figure of Anhalt was an important, a dominating influence, in the years when the Bohemian adventure was working towards its climax and it is therefore essential to take into account the nature of this man’s interests, and the nature of his connections in Bohemia.

Theologically speaking, Christian of Anhalt was an enthusiastic Calvinist, but like so many other German Protestant princes at this time he was deeply involved in mystical and Paracelsist movements. He was the patron of Oswald Croll, Cabalist, Paracelsist and alchemist. And his Bohemian connections were of a similar character. He was a close friend of Peter Wok of Rosenberg,17  or Rozmberk, a wealthy Bohemian noble with vast estates around Trebona in southern Bohemia, a liberal of the old Rudolphine school, and a patron of alchemy and the occult.

Anhalt’s Bohemian contacts were of a kind to bring him within the sphere of a very remarkable current of influences from England which arose out of the visit to Bohemia of John Dee, and his associate, Edward Kelley. As is well known, Dee and Kelley were in Prague in 1583, when Dee tried to interest the Emperor Rudolph II in his farreachin imperialist mysticism and his vast range of studies. The nature of Dee’s work is now better known through the recent book by Peter French. Dee, whose influence in England had been so profoundly important, who had been the teacher of Philip Sidney and his friends, had had the opportunity of forming a following in Bohemia, though we have, as yet, little means of studying this. The main centre for the Dee influences in Bohemia would have been Trebona, which he and Kelley had made their headquarters after the first visit to Prague.18  Dee lived at Trebona, as the guest of Villem Rozmberk, until 1589, when he returned to England. Villem Rozmberk was the elder brother of the Peter who was Anhalt’s friend and who inherited the Trebona estates on his brother ’s death.19

Given the bent of Anhalt’s mind and the nature of his interests, it is certain that the Dee influences would have reached him. Moreover, it is probable that the ideas and outlook originally emanating from Dee, the English and Elizabethan philosopher, were used by Anhalt  in building up  the  Elector  Palatine  in  Bohemia  as  one  having marvellous resources of English influence behind him.

An influence from Dee had been spreading into Germany from Bohemia much earlier According  to  the  notes  about  Dee  by  Elias  Ashmole  in  his Theatrum  Chemicum Britannicum  (1652),  Dee’s  journey through Germany in 1589,  on his  return from Bohemia  to  England,  was  somewhat  sensational.  He  passed  near  those  territories which, twenty-five years later, were to be the scene of the outbreak of the Rosicrucian movement. The Landgrave of Hesse presented his compliments to Dee, who, in return ‘presented  him with  Twelve  Hungarian  Horses,  that  he  bought  at  Prague  for  his journey’.20 Dee also made contact at this stage of his journey home with his disciple, Edward Dyer (who had been Philip Sidney’s closest friend) who was going to Denmar as ambassador and who ‘the yeare before had been at Trebona, and carried back letters from the Doctor (Dee) to Queen Elizabeth’.21 Dee must have made a great impression in those parts, both as an immensely learned man and as someone at the centre of great affairs.

Ashmole states that on 27 June 1589, when at Bremen, Dee was visited by ‘that famous Hermetique Philosopher, Dr Henricus Khunrath of Hamburgh’2. 2 The influence of Dee is in fact apparent in Khunrath’s extraordinary work, ‘The Amphitheater of Eternal Wisdom’  (Pl.  10b),  published  at  Hanover  in  1609.23   Dee’s  ‘monas’  symbol,  the complex sign which he expounded in his Monas hieroglyphica (Pl. 10a) (published in 1564 with a dedication to the Emperor Maximilian II) as expressive of his peculia form  of  alchemical  philosophy,  can  be  seen  in  one  of  the  illustrations  in  the ‘Amphitheatre’, and both Dee’s Monas and his Aphorisms are mentioned in Khunrath’s text.24 Khunrath’s ‘Amphitheatre’ forms a link between a philosophy influenced by Dee and the philosophy of the Rosicrucian manifestos. In Khunrath’s work we meet with the characteristic phraseology of the manifestos, the everlasting emphasis on macrocosm and microcosm, the stress on Magia, Cabala, and Alchymia as in some way combining to form a religious philosophy which promises a new dawn for mankind.