Descartes Page 9
Elector Frederick's chancellor, Christian of Anhalt, was also an enthusiast for occult, Paracelsist and alchemical studies. He was a patron of a master in these arts, Oswald Crollius—who was Christian's physician, and had dedicated a book to him—and friend to another, Peter Wok of Rosenberg.3 Because of his position in the Palatinate court, Christian was able to encourage a climate of thought friendly to these interests, thereby propagating further the influence of John Dee who, with Edward Kelley, had visited the German states in the 1580s. Dee lived for a time in Bohemia under the patronage of the eccentric Emperor Rudolph II, and then visited the Palatinate and other German states during his return journey to England in 1589. As advisor to (and spy for) Elizabeth I, and author of widely celebrated and admired works, Dee's journey through the German states caused a sensation, with savants and aristocrats alike flocking to meet him. Most of the cabalistic, hermetic, alchemical and mystical works published in subsequent decades bore the mark of his influence, especially of his Monas Hieroglyphica which set out his eclectic mystical brand of alchemy and philosophy.
Two Dee-inspired works which, in their turn, influenced the Rosicrucian documents were Henricus Khunrath's Amphitheatre of Eternal Wisdom, and Simon Studion's strange vatic work entitled Naometria, published in 1604. This latter bore the symbol of a rose with a cross at its centre, which some enquirers see as prefiguring the Rosicrucian documents of a decade later. Studion's Naometria predicted that 1620 was to be an apocalyptic year in which the Antichrists of Pope and Mahomet would finally be defeated—a prophecy that doubtless had its part to play in encouraging Christian of Anhalt to lead Elector Frederick into his fateful errors.
Khunrath's Amphitheatre was published in 1609, and Dee's influence on it is palpable. In turn, its own influence on the Rosicrucian documents is direct. "In Khunrath's work we meet with the characteristic phraseology of the manifestos," wrote Yates, "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."4
When the Confessio appeared in 1615 it was accompanied by a pamphlet entitled "A Brief Consideration of More Secret Philosophy," intended as an explication of some of the Confessio's themes. It was drawn almost entirely from Dee's Monas Hieroglyphica, which it frequently quoted at great length. Andreae's Chemical Wedding had, both on its title-page and in the text itself, Dee's then instantly recognisable "Monas" symbol. So, as all these indications imply, the thread linking Dee, his influence in the German Protestant states, and the documents of the Rosy Cross, is a tight one; and Bohemia and the Palatinate were where enquiry into mystical routes to knowledge connected with politics, religious controversy, and international relations. In Yates's words, "[The] Rosicrucian publications belong to the movements around the Elector Palatine, the movements building him up towards the Bohemian adventure. The chief stirring spirit behind these movements was Christian of Anhalt, whose connections in Bohemia belonged right in the circles where the Dee influence would have been known and fostered."5
The long title of the Fama Fraternitatis reads: "Universal and General Reformation of the whole wide world; together with the Fama Fraternitatis of the Laudable Fraternity of the Rosy Cross, written to all the Learned and Rulers of Europe; also a short reply sent by Herr Haselmayer, for which he was seized by the Jesuits and put in irons on a galley. Now put forth and communicated to all true hearts." It began with a heady declaration that "in these latter days" a great promise was being fulfilled: the revelation of the secrets of nature. We may, said the Fama, "boast of the happy time, wherein there is discovered unto us the half part of the world, which was heretofore unknown and hidden, but [God] hath also made manifest unto us many wonderful and never heretofore seen works and creatures of Nature, and moreover hath raised men, imbued with great wisdom, who might partly renew and reduce all arts (in this our age spotted and imperfect) to perfection; so that man might finally understand his own nobleness and worth, and why he is called Microcosmus, and how far his knowledge extendeth into Nature."6
In telling the story of Brother Rosencreutz s journey to the East gathering knowledge, the Fama stressed that the East's epistemological superiority resulted from the fact that its wise men communicated with one another and shared their findings, whereas although many "magicians, Cabalists, physicians and philosophers" were in Germany, they did not collaborate, thus inhibiting the growth of knowledge.
Rosencreutz's journey was dated by the Fama to the fifteenth century. On his return to Europe his teachings were laughed at, so he started a secret society to preserve and propagate what he had learned. This select group of Illuminati devoted themselves to healing the sick for free, and to study. For a time the vault where Brother Rosencreutz was buried was kept secret; its recent discovery, with all the treasures and secret books it contained, heralded the moment for Europe to awake and enjoy a "general reformation." The vault, said the Fama, was reopened in 1604.
The Fama and the Confessio generated immense excitement and controversy throughout Europe. They were variously quoted, defended, attacked, believed in, and rejected as spurious; but widely read, whether by friend or foe. Significantly, the foes included those who were alert to the dangerous implications of the Fama's talk of imminent "alterations" to the Holy Roman Empire, which (it said) the brotherhood of the Rosy Cross would help to bring about "with secret aid." It was widely understood that references to such changes alluded to the Elector Frederick as head of the Protestant Union; references to the "Lion"—Frederick's emblem—as the agent of that prospective change made the allusion explicit. When Frederick was defeated at the Battle of the White Mountain any number of bitter attacks on him and Christian of Anhalt followed, together with caricatures, cartoons and lampoons explicitly mocking their association with Rosicrucianism.7
But although the Rosicrucian idea had many enemies, among them serious scholars like Andreas Libavius and formidable critics like the pseudonymous "Menapius" and "Irenaeus Agnostus," it also had a wildly enthusiastic would-be following, and scores of publications appeared in the wake of the Fama and Confessio by people hoping to be noticed by the secret brethren and therefore invited to join them. There were even straightforward appeals from people anxious to learn more and to be admitted to the Rosicrucian secrets. In addition many publications appeared by people who seemed to be Rosicrucians themselves, or at least to know a lot about their ideas—for example Theophilus Schweighardt, "Joseph Stellatus" (a pseudonym),"Julianus de Campis" (another pseudonym), and others. One apparent Illuminatus singled out by Yates as having a profound insider's grasp of Rosicrucian ideas was "Florentinus de Valentia" who, in a studied reply to an anti-Rosicrucian publication by "Menapius," showed excellent knowledge of architecture, music, navigation, geometry, fine arts, mathematics and astronomy. In describing the sciences as being in need of reformation—and in the process displaying the influence of Francis Bacon (apparent in other Rosicrucian documents too)—"Florentinus" said that astronomy was highly imperfect, astrology uncertain, physics lacked experimental support, and ethics needed re-examination.8
These comments by "Florentinus" were astute, and remind one that for all the admixture of Cabala and Hermeticism and the like there was a deeply serious streak in Rosicrucian thinking. Nor was it impious, by standards other than those applied by orthodox Christians of all denominations. "Florentinus" insisted—and appeared sincere, even earnest, in doing so—that the Rosicrucian aim was to understand nature as "God's book," containing everything man needed in order to recover knowledge lost because of the Fall. (The idea of studying nature as reading God's book was iterated a century later by George Berkeley.9)
Indeed, two positives are obvious to anyone now looking at the spate of Rosicrucian literature with an unprejudiced eye. One was the encouragement it gave to scientific enquiry into nature. The other was its rejection of Aristotelian physics and metaphysics. Both of these features were anathema to the Roman Catholic chu
rch, which feared the new sciences and fiercely defended Aristotelian thought. The intimate connection between Catholic orthodoxy and Imperial power meant that critics were quick to condemn Rosicrucian ideas as subversive, and they meant subversive equally of the religious and temporal orders.
The maelstrom of literature for and against Rosicrucianism abruptly ceased in 1620, for the reasons amply given by Yates in her study: namely, the connection of Rosicrucian hopes with Palatinate ambitions and their failure at the Battle of the White Mountain. In 1621 a pamphlet appeared entitled "A Warning Against the Rosicrucian Vermin." Its message was not, in the light of the previous years' controversies, new; but it was an especially significant document for another reason: its place of publication. The "Warning" was published at Heidelberg, the erstwhile capital of Frederick, Elector Palatine, but a city then firmly under occupation by the Habsburg armies. In the same year appeared a work called Palma Triumphalis, a paean to the miracles of the Catholic church, published in the major Jesuit centre of Ingoldstadt and dedicated to the Emperor Ferdinand II. Among other things, the Palma attacked the Rosicrucians, ridiculing their pretension to "restore all sciences, transmute metals, and prolong human life."10
After the Battle of the White Mountain the political hopes associated with Rosicrucianism were dead, but apart from its invisible lingering down the centuries to follow, the "movement" had one major final spasm in it. In 1623 posters suddenly appeared in Paris announcing that the Brothers of the Rose Cross were in town, "making a visible and invisible stay . . . We show and teach without books or marks how to speak all languages of the countries where we wish to be, and to draw men from error and death." The result was panic, together with a "hurricane of rumour" as Gabriel Naude phrased it in his "Instruction to France about the truth of the Rose Cross Brothers," published as a response to the excitements of 1623 in that same year. Reaction to the supposed presence of Rosicrucians in France involved attempts to demonise them thoroughly; they were said to have abjured Christianity and the Church, and to prostrate themselves before Satan, who appeared to them in splendour.
Naude's attack on Rosicrucianism is interesting because it was moderate and well-informed. He placed it firmly in the Hermetic tradition of the Renaissance, and described it as promising the imminence of an age of discoveries involving a great "instauration" or renewal of knowledge. Use of the term "instauration" reflects acquaintance with Francis Bacon's works, two of the most important of which had only recently been published.11 Naude's intention was of course to oppose Rosicrucianism; after recounting what it stood for he remarked, "Behold, gentlemen, the huntress Diana whom Actaeon presents to you naked." In this myth the goddess Diana, supremely chaste and loth to be seen naked by a male, whether god or man, was bathing when the unfortunate hunter Actaeon stumbled upon her. To punish him Diana turned him into a stag and set his own hounds to tear him to pieces. The meaning of the reference was thus plain: Rosicrucians were false savants pretending to reveal the truth. Naude ended by agreeing with the Jesuit condemnation of the Rosicrucians, and applauding Libavius for having conclusively refuted them.
The chief hammer of Rosicrucianism, and indeed of all the tendencies of thought like it or linked with it, such as Hermeticism, Cabala, magic, alchemy, and the like, was Marin Mersenne. Mersenne's emphatic opposition to Rosicrucianism is an important matter because of his association with Descartes, who maintained an intriguingly ambiguous association with the "movement."
According to Baillet, who is almost but not quite the only guide in these matters, Descartes heard about the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross during the winter of 1619-20, shortly after his day of inspiration and night of dreams. (The notion that he heard of the Rosicrucians only then is completely implausible: they had been a major topic of general conversation since his schooldays.) Accordingly, says Baillet, he decided to try to find them, because they offered a new wisdom and true science, which is exactly what he himself was after. So he went to Germany in search of them, settling at Ulm for the summer. There he met one Johann Faulhaber, author of a work called Mysterium Mathematicum sive Cabalistica et Philosophica Inventio, dedicated to the Brothers of the Rosy Cross and published at Ulm in 1615. (Baillet failed to see, or to mention, that this might have been one main reason why Descartes chose to visit Ulm specifically. The other reason was that in June 1620 negotiations between the Protestant and Catholic leagues were taking place there, and the city was full of diplomats and spies.) Then Baillet reported that Descartes went to Bohemia with Duke Maximilian's army, "observed" the fateful Battle of the White Mountain, accompanied the army on its work of suppression in Moravia and Hungary (which included—a fact significant enough to repeat—being present at the capture and destruction of Hradisch in Moravia, effected by the Imperial army under the savage comte du Bucquoy), and then afterwards set off on two years of travels through various parts of central Europe, northern Germany, and the Catholic Netherlands. What he was doing during these travels, who he was visiting, and why, Baillet left wholly unexplained.
All we next know is that Descartes visited his family home in Poitou two years later, in 1622, to deal with some family business— among other things, to sell the small farm at Perron inherited from his mother—and that another year later, again his intervening whereabouts unknown, he appeared in Paris—just as the Rosicrucian scare of 1623 was breaking out there. The innocence of Baillet's account, masterly or otherwise, is worth quoting. When Descartes arrived in Paris, Baillet recounted,
. . . the affairs of the luckless Count Palatine, who had been elected King of Bohemia . . . and the transfer of the Electorate from Count Palatine to the Duke of Bavaria, which had been made at Ratisbon on the previous 15th of February [1623], were obsessing public discussion.12 Descartes could tell his friends a great deal about these matters, but in return they told him news of something that was giving them much anxiety, for all that it seemed incredible. It was that for several days there had been talk all round Paris about the Brothers of the Rose Cross, and it was beginning to be said that he [Descartes] was one of their number. Descartes was surprised at this news because such a thing was not conformable with his character, nor with his inclination to think of the Rosicrucians as impostors and dreamers. In Paris people called them the Invisibles . . . six of them had come to Paris and lodged at the Marais, but they could not communicate with people, or be communicated with, except by joining thought to will in a way undetectable by the senses.
The accident of their arrival in Paris at the same time as Descartes could have had an unfortunate effect on his reputation if he had kept himself closeted or lived solitarily, as he was wont to do on his travels. But he refuted those who wished to calumniate him through this conjunction of events, by making himself visible to everyone, and particularly to his friends, who needed no other argument to convince them that he was not one of the Rosicrucians or Invisibles. He used the same argument about invisibility to explain why he had been unable to find any of them in Germany.13
Baillet then added that Descartes' visibility and untroubled dismissal of allegations that he was a Rosicrucian "served to calm the agitation of his friend Father Mersenne," who had been especially upset by the rumour because, unlike those who thought the Rosicrucians a mere myth, he was convinced of their reality and the danger they posed, having read "what several Germans, and Robert Fludd, the Englishman, had written in their favour."14
That the Rosicrucian scare in Paris erupted just as news of the fate of Frederick of the Palatinate was being discussed might indeed have been pure coincidence, as might the fact that Descartes arrived in Paris at the same time as the Rosicrucian scare began, after some years of travelling around Europe looking for Rosicrucians; and, yet more of a coincidence, that his name was associated with Rosicrucianism. But a good deal of additional, though circumstantial, evidence strengthens the thought that he was not so uninvolved as he was keen to make his Paris friends think. That evidence suggests either that he was—as hypothesised— an agent, mo
st probably for the Jesuits, investigating or keeping an eye on actual or alleged Rosicrucians, or that he was indeed one of them (or for a time wished to be). That additional evidence is as follows.
First is the testimony of Descartes' notebook, the Olympica, known to Baillet and Leibniz but since lost, in which his portentous dreams of 10 November 1619 were recorded. The vicissitudes of the text of that notebook are extraordinary; the original was lost after Leibniz's use of it, then Leibniz's transcriptions of parts of it were lost after a French scholar of the nineteenth century had published an edition of them. What we now have is a version prepared by Adam in the early twentieth century. Assuming therefore that we have reliable versions of the following passages, they cannot but intrigue, so enigmatic and suggestive are they:
Polybius Cosmopolitanus's Thesaurus Mathematicus teaches the true ways of resolving all difficulties of this science and demonstrates that the human mind can go no further in this respect. This calls forth hesitation and rejects the recklessness of those who promise to perform miracles in all sciences. It also supports the agonising work of many who (F. Rosi Cruc), entangled night and day in some Gordian knots of that discipline, exhaust their minds in vain. This work is offered again to the savants of all the world, and especially to the most celebrated E R. C. in G [Fraternity of the Rosi-Crucians in Germany].