A tragic romance, a lost kingdom, an audacious hoax, the history of Elizabeth Stuart, The Bohemian Spring and The Rosicrucian Enlightenment may sound like a fairy tale but it set forces in motion that still shape our world today.

In November 1572 in the constellation Cassiopeia a supernova glowed for sixteen months. Five years later the Great Comet was visible throughout Europe and enthusiasts speculated that it foretold the end of the world, or the beginning of a new era. In 1596 and 1602 less spectacular comets appeared in the night sky. In 1603 Saturn conjunct Jupiter and a nova in the constellation Serpentario added to the excitement of star watchers. 1606 brought a double comet. Astrologers interpreted these celestial events as signs of a worldwide reformation. While Jesuits schemed to regain control of Germany, the Netherlands, and England, dreams of a world without a pope preoccupied Protestant visionaries.

Elizabeth Stuart was born during an unseasonably severe storm in the summer of 1596. Her mother was Anne of Denmark, infamous for her self-indulgence, a vivacious blonde who liked to laugh and dance. Anne loved theater and occasionally caused scandals, for example, when she played Athena costumed in a tunic that showed too much leg, or her stage performance while sporting a six-month baby bump, or the time she painted her face and body black for her role in a masque. But Anne also commissioned artists, and art collectors, enriching the Royal Collection. Among those she supported were the great lutenist and composer John Dowland, playwright Ben Johnson, and numerous inventors and musicians. Most historians dismissed her as so frivolous and extravagant she helped create the cultural conditions that caused the English Civil War, yet she navigated her husband’s infidelities, with both genders, and despite her Catholic upbringing she accepted the Protestant faith and politics of England.

Elizabeth Stuart’s father was King James. James never really knew his parents. He never saw them again after he reached thirteen months of age. His infamous father, according to rumor, had been murdered with the help of his mother Mary Queen of Scots. He was silent when Queen Elizabeth I ordered his mother’s execution some twenty years later. Good Queen Bess was in her sixties when she agreed to become godmother of the firstborn son of James. To make it easier for her James had named the boy Henry after the English queen’s father the notorious Henry VIII. The daughter that followed was named Elizabeth in honor of her godmother. Elizabeth sent her ambassador to represent her at the christening on a cold November day but she sent no gift. The town of Edinburgh pledged in gold letters on parchment a large sum of money to be paid on her wedding day.

The five year old Scottish princess enjoyed dolls, embroidered gloves, and gowns of yellow satin, black and red velvet brocade, white satin on carnation velvet, Spanish taffetas, orange and popinjay crepe with a neckline of gold and silver fringe. In winter a warm dress of purple serge and brown frieze from Spain, scarlet hose from France, and a linsey woolsey dyed red kept her warm. A small satin mask was made for her to wear outdoors to protect her delicate rosy-cheeked face from the sun and wind.

When the Elizabethan age ended with the Virgin Queen’s death, James must have been elated. At first he didn’t believe the news. Then the messenger gave him Elizabeth’s blue sapphire ring. No more struggles with the Scottish nobles! Now he would rule a rich land, or so James thought. But the court he inherited had been broke for years. James did his best to ignore that. He found ways to raise money, or at least credit, to support the lavish lifestyle befitting an English monarch. But he was no fool. The translation of the Bible he commissioned still bears his name. He wrote respectable poetry. He published a book attacking tobacco smoking. He kept up on the latest sciences from alchemy to astronomy. He consulted astrologers and religious leaders but never blindly followed any. And no war was fought during his reign. But the price he paid for that last accolade included a lifetime of suffering for his daughter.

The people of England had been mortified seventeen months earlier when Good Queen Bess at age seventy staggered under the weight of her royal robes and had to be helped to her throne at the opening of Parliament. But her health seemed to return to her. She even attended a ball and went hunting. But then the monarch that most Britons had cherished all their lives died. Though grief stricken, many English subjects were relieved that her successor James had already fathered two potential heirs. Catholics hoped that this king with a Catholic background would treat them better than Elizabeth had. Protestants were reassured by his avowed commitment to business as usual. The people didn’t know much about this son of Mary, Queen of Scots, but they were hopeful. The festivities and hospitality of his new subjects James enjoyed to the fullest as he spent an entire month journeying from his old throne to his new one. Anne and Elizabeth followed at an even more leisurely pace, staying in the finest homes in England.

The world of the English countryside the queen and princess journeyed through was in some ways socially comparable to ours, if not economically and technologically. The super rich royals and nobles bent laws to their favor to enrich themselves. Like neighbors on Facebook villagers kept a careful eye on each other. A cuckolded husband or wife beater would wake up one morning to find his fellows making “rough music” outside his front door, often pantomiming the transgression, and otherwise ridiculing the transgressor. We still see this ganging up to ridicule behavior anywhere a strong opinion is registered on the Internet. But in the villages if ridicule failed, the church court was the next resort, where spying on adulterers was not only admissible but mandatory. The village culture resembled tribal community more than the privacy and anonymity offered by London where one could disappear in the crowd.

The English found James neither handsome nor charming. Never comfortable around his subjects he surprised them with his dry wit and clowning more suited to a jester than the king of England. Onlookers were astonished when during the Coronation ceremony the new queen refused to partake of the Episcopalian sacrament and the new king joked around during the payment of homage.

THE PRINCESS AND GUY FAWKES



Having survived the tender mercies of both his mother Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth Rex the new king wasn’t keen on continuing Henry VIII’s tradition of an excellent education for his daughters. “…to make women learned and foxes tame had the same effect,” he wrote, “to make them more cunning.” Perhaps intending that his daughter avoid becoming too much like her namesake, James limited her education, but he saw to it that she was provided with everything else a seven year old princess could need or desire, including a Scottish nurse, a physician, a French maid, two liveried footmen, a laundress, a seamstress, three women of the bedchamber, grooms of the chamber and stable, a dog, pet monkeys, several colorful parrots and twenty horses for her favorite activities riding and hunting. Her musical tutor was Dr. John Bull, said to be the composer of the British national anthem. She had a talent for playing harpsichord, or rather a virginal, as the early form of the instrument was known.

The family charged with raising Elizabeth, the Haringtons, received a monthly stipend from the court that didn’t begin to pay their expenses. They hoped to be paid back in the future, not only in cash but with favor and influence. The princess spent most of her childhood in their converted Catholic monastery complete with cloisters but the inside was as modern and luxurious as any Jacobean English castle. Fluent in French, and skilled at Italian, the princess wrote lonely letters to her brother Henry, tying them in strands of floss silk of gold, rose, royal blue, amethyst, lemon, and grass green, brightened by twisted tinsel threads. Henry reminded her he had responsibilities as eldest son that he could not ignore, though he looked forward to their time together as much as she did. The sentiment was sincere, the young prince cherished the time he spent with his little sister. Lord Harington’s son, wrote to Henry, his friend, about the quaint way Elizabeth sent letters to the king and received his responses. A trusted dog delivered the mail between princess and monarch running from one castle to the other.

Comparisons between the Princess and her famous namesake began early. The History of Coventry includes in its registers an account of her first visit: “…though scarcely eight years old, she was sufficiently expert in horsemanship to have headed an equestrian’s train in the old manner of the maiden queen.” The gilt silver cup they presented her with was so heavy her guardian Lord Harrington had to help her hold it up.

It’s an odd twist of fate that Guy Fawkes was made a hero by V for Vendetta and the anonymous movement since his revolution was intended to bring England back under the dominion of the Catholic church. Fawkes had high hopes when King James and his Catholic Queen Anne took the throne of England. Elizabeth I never forgot the armada that the king of Spain and the pope had sent against her. But now many Catholics hoped they would find favor again. James did favor Catholic nobles but he also realized that the pope would settle for nothing less than England under the watchful eye and iron fist of the Vatican. When reports about Catholic power grabs reached his ears the monarch clamped down on his Catholic subjects, restricting them even further. Guy and his fellow conspirators decided to take matters into their own hands.

The famous plan to blow up King James, Prince Henry and Parliament is often told without its most important detail. Guy and the conspirators planned to kidnap nine-year-old Princess Elizabeth. She would be raised Catholic by a Catholic regent. Lord Harington hearing the first news and rumors of treason though he received no warning of any imminent threat to Elizabeth decided to take her somewhere less conspicuous while awaiting instructions. Her kidnappers arrived two hours after she had been rushed away to safety. Her once happy life was haunted ever after by her rather narrow escape and the realization that no one is safe from assassination. Harington recorded her precocious comment: “What a Queen should I have been by this means! I had rather have been my with Royal Father in the Parliament House, then wear his Crown on such condition.” Visitors reported the depressed expressions and long silences of everyone around her months later. Their beautiful little princess was afraid, sleepless, and sad. The nine-year-old Frederick Count Palatine’s letter after the event provides a vivid illustration of the more fanatic religious climate of Germany. He was convinced the antichrist himself was behind the plot. He probably meant the pope.

BONNIE PRINCE HENRY

Henry Frederick Stuart, Prince of Wales

Among Elizabeth’s visitors were ambassadors and agents of the royal families of Europe making first inspections of a princess who would soon become the most eligible female royal in the world. Most savvy insiders felt certain she would grow up to be the wife of Louis XIII and therefore queen of France. Her brother Henry would wed a French princess.

Visits to the court where her father doted on her cheered up Elizabeth; he surprised her with lavish gifts of jewelry, dresses, and dazzling toys. Elizabeth and Henry were known for their good sense and gracious ways. At age thirteen she was invited to watch her brother joust and then to attend his banquet. Before the guests arrived Henry took his little sister by the hand and walked her twice around the wondrous feast laid out on a 120 foot table: sweetmeats arranged to resemble windmills and flower gardens, creatures crafted from food, rose water fountains, and pastries patterned in imitation of the constellations.

Ben Johnson wrote speeches for the event, which included generic prophetic lines delivered by a Merlin to Henry, Elizabeth, and Charles. Merlin missed completely on his prediction for Henry. He was right about Charles when he said he would “shake a sword and lance against the foes” but he did not mention that the enemy would be English Puritans. But Merlin’s prophecy for Elizabeth came true. “That most princely maid, whose form might call the world to war, she shall be mother of nations.”

The charismatic crown prince Henry jousted with such skill that day that the court and countryside buzzed with comparisons to young Henry the Eighth and Henry Plantagenet. His father had given him a set of golf clubs and tennis rackets, which he began using when only six years old so he excelled at both sports, the one beloved by the Scots and the other by the English. At age fourteen Henry kept a charity jar; any of his servants who used blue language were forced to donate. As he grew older, but still a teen, Henry commissioned a garden to showcase the wonders of ancient engineering recovered by the French Huguenot engineer Salomon de Caus, one of Princess Elizabeth’s tutors.

In 1603 King James had sentenced Raleigh to death and imprisoned him in the Tower of London as a conspirator who had schemed against the throne. At first Raleigh was suicidal but he soon made the best possible use of his predicament by writing books and turning his cell into a center for intellectual discussion and alchemical experimentation. Henry himself encouraged Raleigh to write his audacious classic History of the World, and Raleigh dedicated the book to the prince who defied his father’s wishes to show him favor. Henry’s witty comment about James condemning an Elizabethan era hero like Sir Walter Raleigh: “only my father would keep such a bird in a cage” became well known; so did his intention to join Henry IV in a war to rid Europe of the Vatican and the Habsburgs. Henry sponsored the exploration of the Northwest Passage. He had libraries built and a gallery for his collection of paintings by Hilliard and Holbein.

At age fifteen Elizabeth had her own barge as all of London took to the river Thames to celebrate Henry’s status as the new Prince of Wales. Two mechanical wonders delighted everyone: a whale and a dolphin, both bearing on their broad backs costumed deities of classical antiquity. Many barges were decorated with flags, banners, and streamers. Musicians on board filled the air with music. A month later Elizabeth was invited to participate in one of her mother’s famous masques. This one was about Tethys the wife of Neptune, queen of the ocean. Elizabeth would play the Nymph of the Stately Thames. She wore a sky blue taffeta bodice decorated with symbols of the sea. Her little brother Charles, a frail child who most expected would not survive long, had grown into a fine ten-year-old boy. He played Zephyrus, god of the west wind, “in a short robe of green satin embroidered with golden flowers.” Silver wings and a multi-colored flower garland in his hair completed the costume.

Phineas Pett was a ship-maker who took to heart a friend’s advice that he should build Prince Henry a pleasure yacht. Henry was pleased, even more so by the plans for another ship Pett presented. Pett found himself chatting over his plans with the King of England. The royal shipbuilders alarmed by the sudden rise of this newcomer schemed against him, accusing him of using bad lumber, and otherwise endangering his own projects because of his ignorance. A grueling examination followed where only Henry offered any moral support, and only in the most subtle ways. But James decided the accusations were false. By way of consolation for so much trouble Henry and his little sister visited Pett at his home. Elizabeth’s kindness impressed Mrs. Pett. Elizabeth and Charles journeyed with their mother and father to watch Prince Henry christen Pett’s war ship that would be the pride of the English fleet. But the dock gates had been badly built and the ship got stuck between them. So the royal family had to go home. Prince Henry returned later that night at high tide. He personally supervised the launch, and christened the ship, giving it the name The Prince Royal. On that ship Elizabeth would leave England to begin her ill-fated life in Europe.

In 1611 when Elizabeth was fourteen James received a document from the influential Duke of Bouillon, the ruler of a semi-sovereign small state located between Luxembourg and Champagne. Bouillon sang the praises of his nephew. Frederick V, Palsgrave, Count Palatine of the Rhine, Duke of Bavaria, Imperial knight, High Elector, and ruler of the Palatinate, born three days before Princess Elizabeth. Dark haired with large dark eyes, athletic and an excellent horseman, he wasn’t exactly a king, but he was the most powerful of the seven electors who elected the Holy Roman Emperor, and James thought there was a good chance that the boy would be chosen King of Bohemia by the Bohemian people who were searching for allies in their fight against the strict Catholic rule that had devastated the alchemical paradise of tolerance that had been Rudolfine Prague. As King of Bohemia, and Elector Palatine, there was even a slim chance that the boy might be elected Holy Roman Emperor one day, though it did seem unlikely that a German Protestant prince could ever sit on that Catholic throne, Frederick’s bloodline was among the oldest and most royal in Europe. His family had ruled Bavaria since Charlemagne. Palatine was derived from the Latin word for imperial. Empress Elizabeth, King James must have thought that a delightful if improbable possibility when, as he claimed, a plan for electing Frederick Emperor was first proposed to him in October 1610, but he doesn’t say by whom.

Rumors reported by Sir Walter Scott in his gossipy Secret History of the Court of James the First suggested that Henry had strongly encouraged Frederick as the right choice for his sister, for the most part because by then marrying a German princess, Henry would have a German army of his own. He could begin his war against the Vatican without having to wait for his father’s death. Scott portrays Henry’s cruel side, as the crown prince teases his little brother Charles telling him he should join the priesthood to hide his crooked skinny legs under a gown, making the boy cry. But Scott confirms Henry’s affection for his sister.

THE MOST ELIGIBLE PRINCESS IN EUROPE FINDS TRUE LOVE

By age fifteen the ambassadors from the royal courts of Europe were describing Elizabeth as beautiful, intelligent, dignified and gracious. While the English were none too pleased with their new king and queen they stayed in love with the royal children, especially Henry, whose athletic prowess, natural dignity, and wit were obvious even as a child. Henry did not share his father’s aversion to war or his commitment to neutrality. He made no secret of his intent to someday lead England alongside France in a war against the pope’s domination of Europe. But then a Catholic assassin in the streets of Paris stabbed to death Henry IV the King of France, champion of the Protestant cause. His wife Marie de’ Medici would not allow a Protestant princess to inherit the throne of France. She married her sons to Catholic royals.

Among Elizabeth’s remaining suitors were the Duke of Savoy and the King of Sweden, even the recently widowed King of Spain made a last minute appeal, but her options were limited. James was not willing to send her to a Catholic court, and there just weren’t many good prospects among eligible Protestant princes and kings. But James nominated a candidate, even against Queen Anne’s considerable protests. She asked the princess how she would like the title “Goody Palsgrave” a bit like asking a princess today how she’d like being called Mrs. Princess. But Elizabeth defended her father’s choice. When her mother insisted she marry for a king’s crown, Elizabeth said she would “rather marry a Protestant Count than a Catholic Emperor.”

Frederick’s father was the first director and a founding member of the Protestant Union, a defensive pact between nine princes and seventeen imperial cities. His chief minister, and general of the war council of the Protestant Union, Christian of Anhalt, was now Frederick’s mentor and minister. Frederick’s father helped make Heidelberg University one of Europe’s centers of learning but he enjoyed the wonderful wines of the Rhine produced by his nation of vineyards so much he drank himself to death at age 36. Frederick was only fourteen when his father died.

On May 16, 1612 the Duke de Bouillon represented Frederick V as documents were drawn up in London promising him a wedding to Elizabeth. When the Spanish ambassador wondered if Frederick was, after all, an inferior match for such a fine princess, King James was indiscrete enough to bring up the possibility that his soon to be son in law would no doubt be elected King of Bohemia. Yet by the time the predicted election occurred, James did not want Frederick to take the throne of Bohemia, and he refused to formerly recognize him as king.

Charles Stuart

After a difficult voyage through stormy October seas Frederick arrived in England with a retinue of 420, including twelve royals, and thirty nobles. The people came out in crowds to watch his barge float up the Thames to the tune of an eighty-gun salute. Prince Charles met his future brother in law at Whitehall Stairs, then led the way to the lofty ceiling and pillars of the Banqueting House built by architect and mechanical inventor Inigo Jones. Frederick bowed deeply to James. Anne refused to look at him while he kissed her hand. Prince Henry and Frederick exchanged smiles and greetings. Prince Henry looked pale and ill but he was in great spirits. When he came to Elizabeth, Frederick stooped to kiss the hem of her gown, but Elizabeth curtsied so low she was able to reach out and stop him. He kissed her hand.

Frederick refused invitations to play tennis or ride with Prince Henry. He never joined in the activities his entourage enjoyed. He wanted only to be in the presence of Elizabeth to talk with her and to take their meals together. Then commenced a series of interviews, ceremonies and celebrations. Even the Queen had to admit while a bit homely, and certainly not dashing, neither heroic nor exceptional, Frederick was at least intelligent and charming. His large dark eyes were sensitive and expressive. Henry and Frederick agreed on so many matters they became friends. Henry enthusiastically endorsed his mother’s bane. Sir Walter Raleigh in the Tower wrote that Frederick was the only choice. Frederick might not be a king but his royal line did go back to the time of Charlemagne, James must have reminded Anne. The first Count Palatine had been the right hand man of another emperor. And the boy had kingly prospects, thanks to the trouble in Bohemia, where the populace who having grown accustomed to religious tolerance under the alchemist Emperor Rudolf II now struggled against the Catholic effort to restrain their rights and liberties.

Though he became a favorite of the King, the British nobles mistook Frederick’s dignity for arrogance and his retinue instead of impressing them caused derision because of their foreign ways. But imagine for a moment this heady atmosphere. The beautiful princess about to wed the leader of the Protestant Union would empower her older brother Henry eager to join the other Protestant powers of Europe in what amounted to a holy war against the power of the Vatican and the Habsburg monarchs of Austria and Spain. Henry told Elizabeth he would travel with her to pick out a German princess to be his bride. The marriage became a symbol in the imaginations of reformers and poets of a sacred marriage dedicated to reforming the world.

But then tragedy struck. Even before Frederick had arrived, in the beginning of October Prince Henry had suffered two bouts with fever then diarrhea. Prince Henry became very ill. On October 24 faced the cold weather in a shirt to play a game of tennis. By the next day he was bedridden with a severe fever. Rumors that he had been poisoned by agents of the Pope spread as fast as the news that he was bedridden. Henry refused to ruin the festive atmosphere of his beloved little sister’s nuptials, so he forced himself out of bed to play cards the next two days. The doctors bled him. November 1 he seemed to be improving and was well enough to get a visit from Elizabeth, Charles, Anne, James but in his accustomed place now walked Frederick. The next day he was delirious, crying out for his sword, declaring he must be gone. The quacks shaved off his dark blonde locks. Cupping glasses reddened his skin. The halves of a rooster cut down the back were lashed to the soles of his feet. The Archbishop of Canterbury prayed for him.

So desperate was the search for a cure that of all the alchemical and cunning remedies sent to save his first-born son King James allowed Sir Walter Raleigh’s elixir to be administered. Raleigh, with perhaps more shrewdness than sincerity, confidently announced that his concoction would restore Henry’s health, unless the prince had been poisoned. The elixir caused Henry to break into a sweat that was at first considered a good sign, but the fever raged on. The eighteen-year-old prince probably had typhoid fever, caught when he went swimming in the sewage-polluted Thames, where he was busy with his latest project, building the first bridge to cross the river at Westminster.

Elizabeth tried to sneak in to see her brother, even disguising herself, but she never saw him again. On November 5, the eighth anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, the King learned that his son would not survive. Mortified, James retreated from the court to his sanctuary in the country. Soon the news spread everywhere. The day before his death, the rumor of his death had already reached the countryside and towns where people mourned openly and cried out in the streets. Phineas Pett found at St. James “a house turned to the very map of true sorrow, every man with the character of grief written in his dejected countenance, all places flowing with tears and bitter lamentations.” Twelve year old Prince Charles gave his older brother a poignant gift: a small bronze toy of the equestrian statue of Cosimo de’ Medici in Florence. Cosimo was not only a great ruler, but also a renowned patron of the arts, and of philosophy. Cosimo commissioned Ficino’s translations of Plato and the Hermetica that helped to spark the renaissance. But Henry died not long after, surrounded by trembling physicians. The last coherent thing the crown prince said was: “where is my dear sister?’

No matter how terrible the grief, no one as yet understood how grave the loss of Henry would be for his sister, for the Protestants of Europe, and for England, but the ambassador from Venice reflected the measure of what promised to have been a great king when he wrote of Henry: “His authority was great… His designs were vast; his temper was grave, severe, reserved, and brief in speech. All the hopes of these kingdoms were built on his high qualities.” Thousands mourned in the streets of London: “weeping, crying, howling and wringing their hands.” The great writers and composers eulogized and lamented.

Elizabeth was heartbroken. Her little brother Charles fell ill; he had always been sickly. At Henry’s funeral procession, led by his brother Charles, the crowd responded most to the bereaved little sister and her husband to be. James and Anne were too grief stricken to attend. Months later, in a meeting with diplomats, James broke down and wept, crying: “Henry is dead, Henry is dead.”

THE ROYAL WEDDING OF THE ALCHEMICAL OPPOSITES

After Henry’s death Frederick was so genuine James was moved to announce that his future son in law was a gift from god in consolation for the loss of his son. The love of Frederick for Elizabeth, obvious from the start in his tenderness and delight in her presence, became an important emotional support for her as their mutual grief deepened their relationship. With her help Frederick hurried to learn enough English so that he could speak the necessary lines for their wedding ceremony.

On Dec 18, Frederick became a knight of the Order of the Garter, though the king, suffering gout, performed the ceremony from his bed, and forgot to dub Frederick knight. The ribbon and diamond star had belonged to Prince Henry. On Dec. 27 at the betrothal ceremony Frederick and Elizabeth nearly giggled at the atrocious French of the presiding noble. After a boring sermon James presided over the dinner, which could not be a celebration since the court was in mourning. Yet James told jokes. Elizabeth wore black satin with touches of silver lace “to make an even mixture of joy and mourning.” A small plume of white feathers in her hair started a fad among the young hipsters of London that caused a bubble in the price of white feathers. Queen Anne did not attend, she complained of gout. But Frederick’s name was added when prayers for the royal family were said.

On New Year’s Day an old tradition was revived and gifts were exchanged: diamond encrusted swords, an agate bowl Frederick gave to James, and Elizabeth received her engagement ring. As the pageantry of masques and dances presented by the court, the mayors of cities, and the students of Gray’s Inn, occupied her attention, the Queen warmed up to Frederick enough to promise she would help plan the wedding ceremony. Some at court were surprised that the parents of Prince Henry were occupied in frivolous entertainments so soon after his death. But James and Anne took solace not only in habit but also in their duty to support the marriage of their daughter, and the alliance with the Protestant Union.

The betrothed royal teenagers rode horses, hunted and took boat trips. Painters attempted to commit their charm to canvas in officially commissioned portraits. The King’s Men, Shakespeare’s company, were paid for “presenting before the Princess Highness the Lady Elizabeth and the Prince Palatine Elector fourteen several plays,” which included Much Ado About Nothing and The Tempest. Some scholars believe Shakespeare rewrote the masque scene of The Tempest in honor of Frederick and Elizabeth, others that he was inspired to author or co-author Henry VIII. It seems perfectly natural that a “new Elizabethan cult” would spring up around Princess Elizabeth. Shakespeare understood the lineage of the Hermetic Platonic mystery tradition that was informing so many of the reformers. He includes in Henry VIII not a Hymn of Orpheus but a hymn to Orpheus, the favorite of Ficino, magus of the renaissance, and first translator of Plato. Ficino’s singing of the hymns was widely credited as helping to magically inspire the renaissance. In Love’s Labour’s Lost Shakespeare mentions Balf’s Academy of Poetry and Music in France. There Protestant and Catholic musicians joined together to practice Orphic singing, with the intention of creating a sympathetic magical harmony to heal the religious wars causing so much suffering in France.

The plays climax, the birth of Queen Elizabeth I, is celebrated by a beautiful prophecy:

“In her days every man shall eat in safety

Under his own vine what he plants, and sing

The merry songs of peace to all his neighbors.

God shall be truly known….”

The is not only a eulogy for the wonderful world of the short lived Elizabethan golden age, but also a hopeful prayer for Princess Elizabeth. The prophecy of the rebirth of the phoenix is addressed to James. Perhaps Shakespeare believed, as did many others, that by marrying his only daughter to the head of the Protestant Union the King of England was committing to the Protestant policies of Henry and Elizabeth. But Princess Elizabeth is Donne’s intended phoenix.

Frederick V, Elector Palatine

On February 7 in a public ceremony Frederick was made a member of the Order of the Garter. Again, he received the insignia that had so recently belonged to Prince Henry.

On Feb. 11 a grand exhibition of fireworks lit up Whitehall. The thunder of nearby cannon St. George and a dragon battled it out in fireworks. Next a pack of firework hounds chased a rabbit through the sky. Finally a fleet of ships rigged with flags and streamers sailed into view for a naval battle in the stars. Feb. 13 the entertainment provided by a pretend naval battle between a Venetian man-of-war and seventeen Turkish damsels told a tale of a damsel in distress. But injuries caused one sailor to remark that the entertainment was more dangerous than actual battle.

The morning of St. Valentine’s Day bells rang in the church towers. Cannon and musket fired. At dawn her retainers began the work of preparing Elizabeth for her wedding. They wrapped her in a diamond studded white gown heavily embroidered with silver thread. They carefully detangled her waist length amber hair letting it flow free. Gold spangles, rubies, emeralds, pearls and diamonds woven in her hair sparkled. Thirteen young ladies with their hair flowing free all in white carried her long train. A crown of refined gold adorned with pearls and diamonds completed her costume. Frederick wore a suit of silver and the glittering diamond insignia of St. George that had belonged to Henry. James wore a black Spanish suit and cape, with long stockings, and a single big diamond in his hat. Queen Anne wore white satin spangled with diamonds. For the official ceremony in the chapel James wore jewels valued at six hundred thousand pounds, while the Queen’s jewelry clocked in at four hundred thousand pounds. The wealth of the nation was on display.

James had built a special building for the event. Tapestries of the English victory against the Spanish armada decorated the room. Frederick dressed simply, and handled his English lines awkwardly but without error. Nobles from across Europe filled the hall, but none from Spain, even the Spanish ambassador refused to attend, excusing himself with a polite lie about his health. A boring sermon followed a tedious service, but the ceremony was short notable only for the choice Frederick and Elizabeth made to leave out obedience in the list of marital pledges, vowing to love, cherish, and honor, but not to obey. Elizabeth’s face was said to have been glowing with sparkling lights of joy that the common folk considered a bad omen. Perhaps they believed that such radiance would invite retribution from god or devil.

Having said their vows, their titles proclaimed by the herald, the guests quickly left the chapel. Elizabeth changed out of her weighty robe into a more comfortable and becoming dress. Trumpets summoned the guests to dinner. 52 sat at the table for a three-hour feast. In the evening a ballet on the theme of Orpheus received the damning criticism that it was “several hours too long.”

The next morning James embarrassed Frederick with his questions about the wedding night. Any doubts he may have had about the consummation of the marriage would be dismissed when Elizabeth became pregnant before leaving England in April.

On Feb. 15 The Memorable Masque of the Middle Temple and Lincoln’s Inn written by George Chapman, and with costumes, sets, and stage effects by Inigo Jones was performed. Chapman, a follower of the late Prince of Wales, and therefore an enthusiastic supporter of the Virginia colonization project, based his masque on the theme of Native American sun worshippers arriving in London to honor the newlyweds by converting to Christianity. The festivities commenced with a torch lit parade down Chancery Lane: fifty gentlemen on horseback, followed by boys dressed as baboons in Neapolitan suits with exaggerated ruffs, and then musicians and masquers in chariots. Jones’s stage set featured a golden mountain with a silver octagonal and domed temple on one side, and a hollow tree on the other. The mountain moved toward the spectators then split open to release the baboons. Then the mountaintop opened revealing fire dancers whose torches were lit at both ends. The elite of the court played (highly stylized) native chiefs. In the dedication when Chapman refers to the “thrice gracious Princess Elizabeth” it’s impossible not to suspect a pun on “thrice greatest Hermes”.

More masques followed, including “Marriage of Thames and Rine” organized by Sir Francis Bacon, and productions of theatrical masterpieces, including Beaumont and Fletcher’s Philaster or Love Lies A-Bleeding, a tragicomedy about love, lies, and revenge, complete with a Spanish villain, and a rebellion by good citizens to save their princess and her true love. As one exhausting entertainment followed another the king began to droop and yawn openly and the queen became downright bitchy, referring to the bride only as Goody Palsgrave. Two days after Bacon’s masque James left the court, retreating to his country house. He now considered it urgent that he marry his younger son Charles to a Catholic princess. Thereafter, knowing that the Spanish despised him, James nevertheless did whatever he could to appease them, including beheading the great Sir Walter Raleigh, last living symbol of the Elizabethan golden age.

PROPHECIES, POETRY, AND OMENS

The poet John Donne

England resounded with fatuous prophecies of the glories to be born from this marriage of the Thames and the Rhine. How hollow these prognostications of happiness and dominion would seem in a few short years; though from the long view perhaps they came true, as we shall see. Poets composed solemn declarations. Neoplatonic and alchemical themes of the union of opposites appeared in art, writing, and theater as the fair-haired princess and dark prince were recast as the hermetic marriage. The great poet John Donne wrote a poem especially for the occasion that exemplified the trend.

AN EPITHALAMION, OR MARRIAGE SONG ON THE LADY ELIZABETH AND COUNT PALATINE BEING MARRIED ON ST. VALENTINE’S DAY.

by John Donne

HAIL Bishop Valentine, whose day this is;

All the air is thy diocese,

And all the chirping choristers

And other birds are thy parishioners;

Thou marriest every year

The lyric lark, and the grave whispering dove,

The sparrow that neglects his life for love,

The household bird with the red stomacher;

Thou makest the blackbird speed as soon,

As doth the goldfinch, or the halcyon;

The husband cock looks out, and straight is sped,

And meets his wife, which brings her feather-bed.

This day more cheerfully than ever shine;

This day, which might enflame thyself, old Valentine.

II.

Till now, thou warmd’st with multiplying loves

Two larks, two sparrows, or two doves;

All that is nothing unto this;

For thou this day couplest two phoenixes;

Thou makst a taper see

What the sun never saw, and what the ark

—Which was of fouls and beasts the cage and park—

Did not contain, one bed contains, through thee;

Two phoenixes, whose joined breasts

Are unto one another mutual nests,

Where motion kindles such fires as shall give

Young phoenixes, and yet the old shall live;

Whose love and courage never shall decline

But make the whole year through, thy day, O Valentine.

III.

Up then, fair phoenix bride, frustrate the sun;

Thyself from thine affection

Takest warmth enough, and from thine eye

All lesser birds will take their jollity.

Up, up, fair bride, and call

Thy stars from out their several boxes, take

Thy rubies, pearls, and diamonds forth, and make

Thyself a constellation of them all;

And by their blazing signify

That a great princess falls, but doth not die.

Be thou a new star, that to us portends

Ends of much wonder; and be thou those ends.

Since thou dost this day in new glory shine,

May all men date records from this day, Valentine.

IV.

Come forth, come forth, and as one glorious flame

Meeting another grows the same,

So meet thy Frederick, and so

To an inseparable union go,

Since separation

Falls not on such things as are infinite,

Nor things, which are but one, can disunite.

You’re twice inseparable, great, and one;

Go then to where the bishop stays,

To make you one, his way, which divers ways

Must be effected ; and when all is past,

And that you’re one, by hearts and hands made fast,

You two have one way left, yourselves to entwine,

Besides this bishop’s knot, of Bishop Valentine.

V.

But O, what ails the sun, that here he stays,

Longer to-day than other days?

Stays he new light from these to get?

And finding here such stars is loth to set?

And why do you two walk,

So slowly paced in this procession?

Is all your care but to be look’d upon,

And be to others spectacle, and talk?

The feast with gluttonous delays

Is eaten, and too long their meat they praise;

The masquers come late, and I think, will stay,

Like fairies, till the cock crow them away.

Alas ! did not antiquity assign

A night as well as day, to thee, old Valentine?

VI.

They did, and night is come; and yet we see

Formalities retarding thee.

What mean these ladies, which—as though

They were to take a clock in pieces—go

So nicely about the bride?

A bride, before a “ Good-night” could be said,

Should vanish from her clothes into her bed,

As souls from bodies steal, and are not spied.

But now she’s laid; what though she be?

Yet there are more delays, for where is he?

He comes and passeth through sphere after sphere;

First her sheets, then her arms, then anywhere.

Let not this day, then, but this night be thine;

Thy day was but the eve to this, O Valentine.

VII.

Here lies a she sun, and a he moon there;

She gives the best light to his sphere;

Or each is both, and all, and so

They unto one another nothing owe;

And yet they do, but are

So just and rich in that coin which they pay,

That neither would, nor needs forbear, nor stay;

Neither desires to be spared nor to spare.

They quickly pay their debt, and then

Take no acquittances, but pay again;

They pay, they give, they lend, and so let fall

No such occasion to be liberal.

More truth, more courage in these two do shine,

Than all thy turtles have and sparrows, Valentine.

VIII.

And by this act these two phoenixes

Nature again restorèd is;

For since these two are two no more,

There’s but one phoenix still, as was before.

Rest now at last, and we—

As satyrs watch the sun’s uprise—will stay

Waiting when your eyes opened let out day,

Only desired because your face we see.

Others near you shall whispering speak,

And wagers lay, at which side day will break,

And win by observing, then, whose hand it is

That opens first a curtain, hers or his:

This will be tried to-morrow after nine,

Till which hour, we thy day enlarge, O Valentine.

But by the end of March the royal mood chilled further. James had spent more than fifty thousand pounds on the wedding, an enormous fortune in those days. Now with everyone clamoring for their money he suddenly dismissed without warning two thirds of Frederick’s retinue. Elizabeth was mortified by her father’s rude action. James tried to make it up to Frederick with a jousting exhibition in the rain. The next day the newlyweds visited the Tower where Elizabeth charmed everyone by insisting on lighting the ceremonial cannon and then, instead of flinching, beamed with excitement at the powerful explosion. Comparisons between her and her namesake the brave Elizabeth Tudor made the rounds again. Elizabeth identified with her namesake. She had portraits painted in imitation of her godmother, and made her own signature a replica of the Virgin Queen’s regal scrawl.

But James wasn’t done cutting costs or mortifying his daughter. When the Haringtons asked to have their generous expenditures reimbursed, repayment for wedding preparations, and for having raised the princess, James rejected them. However he did grant Harrington the right to mint brass farthings, pocket change nicknamed Haringtons.

The royal cold shoulder left Frederick complaining that his father in law treated him more like a page than a son. History proves that James tended to sour when he ran out of money. The happy couple he had enjoyed so much mere weeks earlier were now a burdensome expense. The king and queen accompanied the newlyweds only part way to their port of departure. Locals flocked to see the royals. On their last night together Anne excused herself from dinner. Gossips wondered if she was truly too emotional at the departure of her daughter, or just disappointed and bored. James dined with Elizabeth and Frederick. As they said goodbye Elizabeth wept uncontrollably. Her new husband, a mere boy himself, and her younger brother Charles tried to comfort her. A sixteen-year-old girl who had never been to the continent, no matter how frightening the unknowns of Elizabeth’s new life, the reality that unfolded was far worse.

When the weather forced them to postpone their departure the superstitious whispered that it was a bad omen. Nobles and commoners alike tried to warn Elizabeth not to sail on her brother’s ship The Prince Royal. They feared his ill fate would somehow become contagious and infect her. But Elizabeth presumably felt comfortable on board the ship championed by and named after her late brother. Perhaps she thought in some way it represented his continued presence and protection. When the ships finally embarked a storm forced them back to port. The king and queen showed no concern for these delays that must have increased their daughter’s distress. They behaved as if she had already set sail. Anne got back to organizing her amusements, and James returned to his favorite country house to enjoy his everyday pleasures with the extra enthusiasm of a monarch who faced mortality.

COUNT MAIER: THE DOVE AND THE PHOENIX

One of the favorite candidates for an actual Rosicrucian has been Michael Maier. His publication of a book called The Laws of the Fraternity of the Rosy Cross led many to believing he was publishing in the name of the Rosicrucian order itself. But the book is a meditation on the implications of the rules for Rosicrucians presented in the manifestos.

Alchemists never knew when they might be chased out of town, not only because their pursuits were usually considered diabolical, but also because foul stenches often wafted from their labs. In 1596, in his late twenties, Maier had severely wounded a fellow medical student in Padua. Arrested, he was fined, but the victim refused to take the money, so facing imprisonment the ruffian fled. His early alchemical experiments in his hometown attracted more gossip, but his success was limited. While he failed to achieve the great work he did create a potent medicine he tried on himself and his family.

Michael Maier, melancholy about what he considered the autumn of life, had no idea that exciting times were just around the corner. He wasn’t exactly chased out of town, but he believed the stress of dealing with nosy disapproving neighbors was ruining his alchemy, so he headed for the court of the Wizard Emperor, Rudolf II, arriving in Prague in 1608. To get the Emperor’s attention Maier composed an open letter that was both an outline of his alchemical theory and a résumé which included a story about a dove landing in Maier’s mother’s lap as she sat in a field three days before his birth. Since the dove is a common alchemical symbol of divine power in the purification process of distillation, of the Holy Spirit in action, Maier, who humbly confessed indifference to the omen, clearly hoped the Emperor would be impressed. Maier seems to have believed that he was born to explore and articulate the most profound mysteries.

It took a year but then Maier learned that Rudolf was impressed by his alchemical knowledge and also by his struggle. To his relief Maier was appointed the Emperor’s doctor. Two months later he was given the title Imperial Count Palatine, but no lands. While working for the Emperor in Prague, Maier wrote a book about Hermes Trismegistus, and another in which he claimed to reveal the alchemical meaning, the divine language of symbols, behind Egyptian hieroglyphics and ancient Greek myths.

When his twenty year old niece Lucy fell off her horse and borke her arm, Rudolf called for Maier who first set her bone, then six times, for several minutes each time, he directed healing energy into her arm. Lucy later said she felt as if a miraculous doctor had awakened her from a nightmare. Maier wrote many books, discussing them with the Emperor as they progressed, but all were published after Rudolf’s death.

In Prague in 1609, approaching forty, Maier wrote an autobiographical piece, the rediscovery of which has revolutionized scholarship concerning his life. The piece was published in a book of which he had only a few copies printed. Only one copy is known today.

The Emperor’s support only lasted two more years. When Rudolf’s brother removed him Maier left Prague for Hessen-Kassel and the court of Moritz the Learned, patron of the Rosicrucian manifestos. Maier sent Moritz three manuscripts and two letters but he received no response, probably because the pleasure of alchemy had to be sacrificed to the demands of navigating the political crisis that split Germany into the Catholic League and the Protestant Union. So Maier went to England to study and translate important alchemical texts. In London Maier was confronted with English theatrical depictions of Germans as drunken rubes.

Christmas 1611 Maier sent clever intricate greeting cards featuring pattern poems with melodies in musical notation to Prince Henry, and to King James whose card featured an engraving of a rose atop a scepter which together make a cross. Less than two years later Maier was included among the gentlemen who attended Prince Henry’s funeral with Frederick and Elizabeth. Among Maier’s friends were the physicians to King James, Moritz the Learned, and Frederick and Elizabeth.

Rumors spread that a red haired doctor had poisoned Prince Henry. Apparently, red bearded Michael Maier was the only ginger physician anywhere near the prince, but were these suspicions disinformation? Since Maier shared many of Henry’s goals, and wished to cultivate his patronage, it’s hard to imagine him poisoning the future monarch, at least deliberately; but we have no evidence that Maier treated Henry.

While his Paracelsus and cabala loving alchemist astrologer colleagues back home viewed the marriage through the prism of their imaginations, and then through the books published in England, Germany and France describing the wedding, Maier was in London at the time of the festivities. He observed or heard about details of the withdrawal of royal favor so soon after the ceremony. He understood that in the aftermath of Henry’s death James was beginning to have doubts about the strong position he had taken under his son’s influence. Soon the Queen’s advice would prevail and James would become conciliatory toward the Spanish. Maier alone among the writers associated with Rosicrucianism advocated continued secrecy, patience, and forbearance, while the rest beat the drums of war while denouncing the Pope, in anticipation of a grand Protestant alliance.

The other most popular candidate for Rosicrucian has been Robert Fludd. Many enthusiasts have argued that Fludd and Maier were friends who met when Maier was in England. We have no historical evidence that Fludd and Maier were acquainted or corresponded, though they shared many friends. Maier admitted to Moritz that he had read a manuscript of Fludd’s but he said nothing about knowing him. He does not appear to be the one who introduced Fludd to the publisher de Bry, nor do we have any evidence that one initiated the other into the Rosicrucian order. Yet, writing in 1617 Maier says he first heard of the Rosicrucians while he was in England.

Frederick and Elizabeth enjoyed several quiet years of happy marriage while Maier wrote three Latin long form poems about alchemy and in 1617 a beautiful multimedia approach to alchemy titled Atalanta fugiens, which included fifty allegorical engravings, explanatory tracts, and musical fugues. Maier refused to write about any of the practical details of alchemy, those secrets could only be shared personally. Several of Maier’s books earned a place in the history of science representing a time when careful observation of nature by the light of alchemy and astrology was believed reveal the sacred patterns of creation. Isaac Newton studied his Maier, leaving 88 pages of notes. For Maier the great work of alchemy was the task of manifesting divine power in the mundane world. (Listen to a live performance with original instruments by Fairy Consort Early Music Ensemble of one of Dr. Maier’s alchemical ditties here):

Carl Jung was fascinated by Maier’s Allegoria Bella, a blend of solar mysticism, Christian piety, and vitalism (the belief that life and consciousness are more than biology. An imaginary travelogue of a journey to find the legendary phoenix the narrative proceeds according to the stages of the alchemical process by which metals evolve. Maier searches all over Europe but finds out nothing. In the Canary Islands he witnesses a royal wedding like an echo of the royal wedding in the Chemical Wedding and perhaps of the nuptials of Frederick and Elizabeth. He sails to America where he hears of sages who have taught the natives to breed mules from horses and donkeys, where he plants the seed of a fruit and when the sapling grows he grafts it to another tree. Among the many interesting details, factual and imaginary in the book is his claim that in Peru could be found aqua Americana, which makes gold soft, and yet doesn’t burn.

Along the way Maier argued that the phoenix arising from the ashes of the dead is not pagan, but a precursor of Christ and proof of resurrection. At the Nile the traveler finds the locals have lost their wisdom and prosperity. He searches the mouths of the Nile unsuccessfully, until he almost gives up hope, believing he may have been deceived since to the Egyptians he is a stranger and therefore not to be trusted, but at last he finds the god Mercury where the locals said he couldn’t be found. With instructions from Mercury the traveler at long last arrives at the nest of the phoenix, only to find that the bird has “gone abroad.” The traveler returns to Europe with “nothing in his hands.” Maier says the phoenix can’t be seen with physical eyes, only with what he calls the “little eye of the soul.” But this sad ending had a witty touch as he wrote that the phoenix had flown away on a mission “as appointed arbiter between the owl and the other birds attacking her,” a reference to his book Jocus Severus, where he compared the Rosicrucians to an owl attacked by lesser fowl. Jung thought the story tragic

Maier identifies the alchemical nigredo, the burned stage, or phase of putrefaction, with worldly suffering. The heart, gold, the sun, and deity are linked together like octaves of the same note in something like Homer’s Golden Chain that unites all beings in hierarchy from the simplest and least powerful to the omnipotent and omniscient. Gold points to God, Maier learned from the Neoplatonists. The soul, like gold in the fire, survives earthly trials. But Maier had a sense of humor about his mystical philosophy. He mentioned that he heard a toad wearing a golden chain had recently been found in England, but then, he remarks, perhaps the toad wanted to be properly attired in case he met a sexy beetle in the twilight. Maier was not a solemn metaphysical writer. He was always ready to crack a joke.

Maier had a vision for America, a vision of utopia that inspired four of the principles behind the plan for the newly founded Virginia Colony, including the treasurer, the future treasurer, a legal adviser, and a committee member.

In spring of 1618 Maier gave all eleven of his printed books as a present to Moritz. That did the trick. Later that year Maier was appointed doctor to Moritz and his family, court chemist, and compiler of news and intelligence reports. He must have thought that was sitting in the sweet spot of a wave of reform that was about to sweep the world.

THE EIGHTH WONDER OF THE WORLD

Seven ships sailed across the sea, commanded by the last surviving hero of the victory against the Armada; this was the Earl of Nottingham’s last service as Lord Admiral. Arriving in the Netherlands, Elizabeth found that her enjoyment of military spectacle had been noticed. Trumpets welcomed her. Elizabeth, unveiled, smiling enthusiastically, walked through the streets, ignoring all court etiquette, the very picture of the liberated young English noblewoman. For eighty years the Dutch, revolting against their Habsburg ruler and the heavy taxes of the Holy Roman Empire, had fought the Spanish, and relied on help from English monarchs, especially her namesake. The navy, the musketeers, and the city garrison argued over which would honor her first. They were charmed when she preferred to see the sites of the famous battles where they had preserved their liberty.

Elizabeth progressed slowly toward the Palatinate, from one celebration and feast to the next. During a hunting expedition she inspired more gossip when she shot three deer stags herself. One could almost believe that this Elizabeth had somehow issued from the line of Henry VIII and not James of Scotland. Triumphant arches depicted her as a Greek Goddess. Pantomime comics performed in a hastily built theater on a bridge. She loved to listen to stories of local mythology and the lore of battles. One noble provided her with a picturesque picnic on an open field near a quaint village. Frederick provided her with a boat to sail up the Rhine featuring a crowned lion on the bow. He also warned her about which towns to sail past because plague had reached them.

In every town and village Elizabeth presented gifts as a new monarch introducing herself to her people. But soon she had no more gifts to give so she pawned some of her jewels to get the money for more, the first of many times she found herself facing that indignity. At last Frederick sailed to meet her and scooped up his bride, but as they glided down the Rhine people lined the banks offering their hospitality, slowing down their progress.

As Elizabeth entered the Palatine, in a six-horse coach with a red velvet interior, musicians played and Latin orations filled the air with rhetorical splendor carefully prepared to honor her. The Palatine was a cosmopolitan culture of villages surrounding 26 walled towns. To celebrate her arrival the locals dressed up in their traditional costumes: German, Swiss, Turkish and Polish. Women and children tossed flowers in the street. Musketeers dressed as Romans and as Turks marched in opposite directions. Archers dressed all in green saluted her. The goldsmith’s guild decorated a theater on one side of the palace and provided music. The decorations personified faith, constancy, fortitude, generosity, showing Solomon and his bride, and Elizabeth herself, hair flowing free, with the star of Britain on her left and Frederick on her right.

An entourage of four thousand on 34 lavishly decorated barges traveled up the Rhine; on June 7 they reached Heidelberg. What an ironic choice for that night’s fireworks spectacle: the tower of Troy. June was beautiful in the Palatine. Elizabeth feasted on nectarines. On their way to their castle in Heidelberg the army provided a spectacle of guns fired in the air and cannon booming in a sham fight. The love between them was obvious, one observer, a military leader commented approvingly of their reunion, after Frederick went ahead to prepare for her arrival, when she “threw herself into her husband’s arms.” Just outside the gates of the city boats engaged in another sham fight. The English marveled at the beauty of the banks of the brooks and rivers here. Over the gate hovered an angel with spread wings and the motto God Unites. The streets were strews with green grassy turf and the roofs of the houses were decorated with boughs of May. Festoons of flowers hung from the walls. Elizabeth must have felt like she was entering a faerie kingdom. Inside the town Elizabeth passed through another triumphal arch but here progress halted while a crown was dropped on and then lifted off her head. This too was considered a bad omen of her short reign.

At the town hall the four colleges of the university displayed their globes, mathematical instruments and medical grotesqueries. A boy in a long cloak offered a basket of fruit, adding in French “Behold, Madame, the tribute of the goddesses Flora and Pomona.” Later the hungry teenage princess devoured the fruit in her coach. The last and most magnificent triumphal arch waited for them just outside the palace. It showed Frederick’s ancient lineage, with special emphasis on his ancestors who had married English princesses. As Elizabeth arrived in her new home Frederick’s mother, the dowager queen, Juliana, daughter of William of Orange, met her. All etiquette went out the window when they saw each other. They embraced with tears in their eyes.

On June 7 Elizabeth took her new throne in Heidelberg. Heidelberg Castle, built of red brown stone, ornamented with many fine statues, looked out over two rivers: in the distance the winding Rhine and nearby the Nekar. The most ancient part was a tower raised on a cliff in which a prophetess had lived named Jetha Behel. To her cell people came daily asking for advice about future events and receiving oracular responses, though she never let them see her. The tower had been converted into a library that contained some of the rarest books and manuscripts in Europe. With floors of porphyry and golden pillars, cornices studded with jewels, beautiful tapestries and paintings al fresco, and a silver chamber, the palace in summer must have been an amazing sight.

The next morning in the garden a romantic pageant delighted Elizabeth: Jason and the Golden Fleece, with Frederick himself in the role of Jason. From Pallas in a chariot drawn by dragons to Orpheus riding a unicorn. Jason and his two companions appeared in the contrivance of a slow moving boat. Each spoke a poem praising Elizabeth. But something about the Golden Fleece itself aroused the superstitions of the onlookers who one after the other lost their smiles of joy. The celebrations included a tournament. Frederick dressing as Jason the Argonaut could not have made a stronger statement about his intentions. Jason stole the Golden Fleece. The Order of the Golden Fleece was the highest honor bestowed by the Spanish Habsburgs. Frederick also dressed as Scipio, the great Roman general who defeated Hannibal and conquered Carthage. In Spain, so influenced by the north African Moors, was the city of Carthagena. So the Scipio costume was another veiled threat against the Habsburg dynasties. But Frederick’s boldest statement was dressing as Arminus, the Liberator of Germania, who destroyed three Roman legions in 9 AD. In his choice of roles Frederick clearly cast himself as an enemy of the Holy Roman Emperor.

One pageant followed another. Anyone with an interest in Rosicrucian and alchemical history may find this description of a pageant from Miss Benger’s Queen of Bohemia fascinating: “Masculine personifications of the sun and moon came upon Mount Parnassus…the representative of the sun was in gilt trappings, whilst the moon’s squire was clad in a suit of grey armor: presently Mount Parnassus itself appeared in motion with living animals springing through its cliffs–the eagles, the wolf, the bear, all dwelling in concord. Apollo entered in a long white gown, the Muses in green quilted vests, played on various instruments; Pan piped; Diana hunted; the old German hero Arminus, passed over the stage.” Songs sung for Elizabeth were said to have been composed by Orpheus and Venus.

What did Elizabeth think when she heard the news that 22 days after she took the throne of Bohemia the Globe Theater burned down in London during a performance of Henry VIII? Did anyone feel a shiver of premonition?

Known for her generosity Elizabeth couldn’t turn down a tearful plea for money, despite her advisor’s attempts to teach her dignified reserve. She was too weak with her servants and so much of the fine linen she brought with her from England was stolen she had to buy more locally. She and her mother in law battled over who should receive the honors and privileges of precedence. Elizabeth complained that Juliana wanted her to adopt German manners and customs; everything had to be done the German way.

Away from the enjoyable entertainments but wearying personal politics of the court Elizabeth delighted in the good hunting to be found close by the castle. In one especially successful hunt she used a crossbow to shoot twelve deer; on horseback, she killed a stag. Her people nicknamed her Diana after the huntress God of the Romans.

The famous gardens at Heidelberg Castle.

Within the year the young royals had their first child: Henry Frederick. He looked like his father so Elizabeth called him her “little black baby.” Germany and England rejoiced, and the celebrations in Scotland were rumored to have inspired jealousy from James and Charles.

Not long after his eighteenth birthday, and his assumption of full power as Elector Palatine, Frederick attended a meeting of the Protestant Union where he caught a fever that almost killed him. With the memory of Henry’s death by fever at the same age haunting him, Frederick became melancholy. Like his father, he gave most of his responsibilities to his chancellor, Christian of Anhalt. In 1591 Christian had once led a successful military expedition in support of the French King Henry IV in his war to break the power of the Vatican in France.

As for the Protestant Union, Calvinists cast a judgmental eye on mere Lutherans, accusing them of drinking too much, and suspecting their women to be of dubious virtue. Lutherans found a hint of extremism, the fanaticism of the Catholic Church itself, in the strict conformity of the Calvinists, who preached against even hunting, fishing, and hawking, especially because the Lutherans seemed to prefer these activities drunk. So severe was the religious discipline that German musicians were rare, and English minstrels the main source of music. The Bible and the writing of Luther may have been known widely but no literature, classical or contemporary, made the reading list. While in England theater and romantic poetry flourished, entertainment and other innovations were frowned upon in the homeland of Luther.

Yet German princes could be as extravagant as their British and French cousins. Pageantry required that the lavish tables of royal feasts include artistic decorations, often edible. A splendid peacock with tail in full display made a centerpiece. At one such celebration Frederick’s table featured a statue of Minerva, to represent his love of learning. Fish were gilded to make their scales glitter more richly. Nobles boasted of six hour eating and drinking contests.

Enamored of his wife, more aware then ever of the fragility of life, Frederick sought ways to please Elizabeth. For all its luxury Heidelberg Castle, due to its position on a rocky cliff, had no garden. Of course, the gardens of England were famous. The late Prince Henry had a small but wonderful garden made, in which mechanical statues moved and made sounds, showing off the technological advancements enjoyed by reason free from the tyranny of the Vatican’s condemnation of what would become science. Soon the scholar who designed Henry’s garden, Elizabeth’s old tutor Simon de Caus, arrived from England.

Frederick leveled a ridge and filled chasms, converting the craggy bleak landscape into a flowering paradise. Full-grown trees were transplanted. A wonderland bordered by trees and hedges appeared so suddenly the enemy whispered it must have been done by black magic. The scent of limes and 36 orange trees filled the air. Statues, fountains, pergolas, pavilions, a maze, and a grotto provided variety of amusement. In summer delicate exotic plants including flowers from the recently discovered tropics bloomed, decorating the garden with not only their beautiful colors and shapes, but also their perfumes. A replica of an English orchard gave Elizabeth the sights and scents of home. At center a magnificent fountain irrigated the soil. Small lawns like green velvet and manicured walkways contrasted with the rocky peaks still visible above the new tall trees, striking a picturesque contrast. An artificial waterfall added excitement and negative ions, while cleverly created silvery streams of fresh water meandered along the lawns like tiny streams. A monkey house, a maze, and a menagerie, a water organ made according to the Roman writer Vitruvius’ design, clockwork-driven automata birds moving and singing like nightingales, mazes, and an animated statue added to the wonderment. Hidden musicians provided symphonic accompaniment in this prototype amusement park. The garden gate boasted an elegant triumphal arch with the Latin inscription:

FREDERICK V

ELIZABETH

BELOVED WIFE

1615

The garden became known as the Eighth Wonder of the World, although Catholic propagandists depicted it as a gate to hell. Watching the tranquil river Nekar flashing light as it flowed below, listening to the astro-theological theories of Abraham Scultetus, Frederick’s chaplain, and a driving force in the project to write down the first one hundred years of the Reformation. As she listened to the mysterious oracles of Jetha Behel she gazed at the old tower where the Sybil had lived. But Elizabeth’s favorite activity was hunting in the surrounding hills where her skills made her the most famous huntress of her time. Generous and kind, she was earnestly religious but also vivacious and light hearted. In her early letters she shows a rude wit, teasing the English ambassador by writing him as “her fat boobie ambassador.” Far from a polite equivocator she was known for her frank and sometimes blunt way with words. The Palatinate cherished their new Electress.

But the political realities underlying this earthly paradise were as ugly as the garden was beautiful. The Twelve Years Truce would expire soon. Spain and the Netherlands were expected to resume the Eighty Years War. A terrible power struggle brewed in Germany. German Catholics though they had failed for a hundred years to stamp out Luther’s Reformation, continued to scheme and make war toward that end. While among the Protestants a movement arose that hoped to crown a ruler of united Calvinist and Lutheran states to stand in opposition against the Holy Roman Emperor, failing that they planned to at least tear their chunk of Europe out of the greedy grasp of the Pope once and for all. More than anyone else Frederick stood to gain or lose the most. An inexperienced boy, but the best choice, given his ancestry and alliances, with astrologers and evangelicals assuring him of God’s assistance in this holy mission to stop the Counter-reformation, Frederick must have believed it possible that he could eventually be crowned as something like the King of Germany. But if the mission failed, Frederick could lose the Palatinate and Heidelberg Castle. His lands bordered Habsburg territory and the most powerful of all royal families eagerly schemed to take the rich agricultural fields of the south Palatinate, and the even richer mines of the north.

THE DAWN OF ROSICRUCIAN FAME

Popular knowledge of Rosicrucianism began with three little books: the Fama, the Confessio, and The Chemical Wedding. The first, the Fama, was probably circulated in manuscript by 1607. It had apparently reached England since Ben Johnson mentioned the Rosy Cross in a masque in 1610 four years before the Fama was actually published as a book. The manuscript was supposed to have been shared only among a few friends; the author or authors couldn’t imagine that many people would show interest in their bizarre concoction of righteous outrage, optimistic prognostications, Paracelsian precepts and satirical asides. To their surprise what had been their creative response to English masque and theater, and Italian satire, a dramatic declaration of an alternate future, became the rage of Europe.

The Fama contains one of the most evocative descriptions of the romance of books to be found anywhere, a passage that foreshadowed the internet: “Would it not be a precious thing if you were able to find in one book everything that has appeared in every book that has ever existed, that does exist, or will exist, everything that has been found out, and may be found out, to read, understand, and have it as your own?” The Rosicrucian ideal of having all the knowledge of the world at your fingertips, their invisible college on wheels so it can be anywhere at any time, has been partially realized in the World Wide Web.

Everett Bleiler in a recent article pointed out that alchemical story telling, especially the Rosicrucian manifestos, are part of the history of science fiction. Paul Bembridge describes Rosicrucianism as “a bursting forth of the age-old esoteric tradition into political and cultural expression….” Although the authors of the manifestos considered themselves exemplary Christians they insisted that Plato and Hermes anticipated Jesus, arguing that Neoplatonic and Hermetic wisdom were agreeable in every way with good Protestant religion. To most of their contemporaries, especially their enemies, their passion for Plato, the Neoplatonists and the Hermetica suggested a dangerous resurgence of paganism in Europe.

Authors with systematic revelations abounded in the days of the comets. Around the time the Fama was passed around in manuscript the Aurora of Jacob Boehme, a classic of visionary mysticism, circulated in manuscript among the same group of intellectuals. Michał Sędziwój (Michael Sendivogius), an acquaintance of John Dee and alchemist at Emperor Rudolf II’s court in Prague, published his classic New Light of Alchemy in 1605. Around the same time Khunrath published his De Igne Magorum in which he argued that the sun is the very fire of God. As an example of how someone can be illuminated by a ray of this divine power he gave Orpheus. Oswald Croll’s famous Chemical Basilica was published in 1608.

For generations of mystical romantics the Fama has been a book that seemed to have fallen from the sky but like any book it had a specific context. The context was the country of Hessen-Kassel ruled by the landgrave Moritz, known as Moritz the Learned, who presided over a center for occult studies, alchemy and the hermetic arts that surpassed even Emperor Rudolf’s Prague.

Moritz the Learned

Moritz, an accomplished composer and musician, founder of Germany’s oldest (and still active) wild animal park, and patron to English theatrical players and strolling musicians found nothing in his devotion to Calvinism that prevented him from keeping a circle of alchemists. He was devoted to hermetic philosophy. The Fama was printed by Moritz’s court printer. Why did Moritz support the printing of such a volatile declaration? He considered his own position precarious. Rivals outside his borders and inside seemed to threaten his reign and his country. Did he hope the trumpet call of the Fama would inspire his own people and transform him from an obscure pawn to a leader of the fervor for reform? A member of Moritz’s court wrote a tract suggesting that the headquarters of the Rosicrucians was near Kassel.

The Rosicrucian manifestos reflected Moritz’s commitment to making his country a Parnassus of inspired art and humanist thought. From this perspective the Fama could be compared (loosely) to an ad for Apple or Silicon Valley, clever cutting edge propaganda about a place where people are ahead of the curve. Moritz, like the Rosicrucian Fama itself, was offered as an answer to Boccalini’s lament at the corruption of society. But by 1619 Moritz’s dream of a golden age, whether as public relations campaign, or sincere enthusiasm, faded as the first tremors of the Thirty Years War disrupted Europe. The war would destroy Moritz’s country and cause his abdication.

The full title of the Fama begins: “Universal and General Reformation of the Whole Wide World….” To fully understand this ambitious first phrase of a long title it’s helpful to keep in mind that Europe was buzzing about Boccalini’s famous satire The General Reformation. The General Reformation includes a scene where the wise men of Olympus compose a manifesto of reform that actually doesn’t reform anything. It fixes the price of cabbage, and delivers lengthy self-congratulatory praise. Packaging that kind of satire with the Rosicrucian manifesto could be perceived as undermining it, unless the Fama was also satirical? But writers like Julianus de Campus suggested that the Rosicrucians deliberately placed a light satire in front of their serious manifesto so as to weed out those who couldn’t discriminate between them. Michael Maier claimed that the General Reformation was bound with the Fama by accident. He pointed out that many publishers made such illogical pairings, and putting a lighthearted work in front of a deeper one was customary. The next edition of the Fama did not include The General Reformation. But the third edition included The General Reformation at the back of the book, with a preface claiming that the Confessio had cleared up the confusion caused by people who did not understand the real message of the Fama. But the last of these earliest printings omitted The General Reformation again, replacing it with the story of a Rosicrucian who cured a woman but was nevertheless arrested for practicing black magic.

The Fama asserts the existence of an ultimate book of total revelation called M, not written in any ordinary language but in the language of being, the language of the very existence of things, the language of the inner workings of the visible and invisible universe. Paracelsus was not a Rosicrucian, the Fama stipulates, but he did derive his wisdom from glimpses of M. Michael Maier called M “the book of the world (liber mundi), or the book of natural magic.” French occultists of the 19th century beginning with Eliphas Levi argued that M was the tarot when understood as a symbolic system derived from the cabala. Levi claimed that all the knowledge in the world could be found in the tarot, but only after devoted study.

The Rosicrucians, according to the Fama, could make gold but they considered it a “trivial matter.” The break with imperial power had not yet occurred in the Fama where the emperor received support but the pope only disdain. The Aristotelian mindset of the Catholic Church was dismissed, to be replaced by the philosophy and practice of Paracelsus. The star of the show is, of course, Christian Rosenkreutz (Christian Rosy Cross or Father CRC) a German monk of noble birth who during a pilgrimage to Jerusalem wound up studying alchemy, communication with nature spirits, and the cabala among Arab mystics. He hoped to share his knowledge back home, and the rare plants and animals he brought with him, but European intellectuals ridiculed him afraid they would be proven ignorant and so lose their prestige. CRC healed the sick and helped the poor, attracting a small group of friends with similar interests in research and charity. He died at age 106 in 1484, but predicted correctly that his tomb would be found in 1604. Inside the tomb, with its Pythagorean and alchemical structure and adornment, the Fama claims, his body was found still fresh, along with an ever-burning lamp, books of powerful secrets, and three tomes by Paracelsus. The Fama ends with the enticing announcement that these secrets would now be shared with the few found worthy to keep them.

What began as a privately circulated work of art within three years produced seven reprints and countless manuscript copies. Over 400 books and pamphlets about the Rosicrucians were published between 1614 and 1623. Readers over reacted. In imitation of the Jesuits, who conform to the habits of the places their missions take them, the Rosicrucians were described as invisible, but people took the metaphor literally, believing that Rosicrucians could disappear at will. The manifestos helped inspire and inform Francis Bacon’s classic New Atlantis. Descartes went to Germany looking for the Rosicrucians but when he came home to France was nearly lynched for being a wizard. Ben Jonson made fun of the people who hoped to be contacted by the secret society of the “brethren of Rosy Cross.” Isaac Newton wrote notes in the margin of his copy of the Fama, dismissing the story of CRC as a fraud. Catholic priests preached against “rosycross wolves.”

THE CONFESSION OF THE FRATERNITY OF THE ROSY CROSS

The Confessio, or Confession of the Rosy Cross, printed one year after the Fama in 1615 in Latin and German, claimed to be an attempt to clarify the misunderstandings inspired by the Fama. Since the end of the world was nigh the time for a general reformation had come. Could the use of “general reformation” in the Confessio be a keyword for satire?

In its second paragraph the Confessio reaffirms Rosicrucian loyalty to the Holy Roman Emperor while making the enemy clear: “we do condemn the East and the West (meaning the Pope and Mahomet) blasphemers against our Lord Jesus Christ, and offer and present with a good will to the chief head of the Roman Empire our prayers, secrets, and great treasures of gold.” In case there’s any doubt the Confessio later adds: “our Trumpet shall publicly sound with a loud sound, and great noise, when namely the same (which at this present is shown by few, and is secretly, as a thing to come, declared in figures and pictures) shall be free and publicly proclaimed, and the whole world shall be filled withal. Even in such manner as heretofore, many godly people have secretly and altogether desperately pushed at the Pope’s tyranny, which afterwards, with great, earnest, and especial zeal in Germany, was thrown from his seat, and trodden underfoot, whose final fall is delayed, and kept for our times, when he also shall be scratched in pieces with nails….”

But the Rosicrucians consider themselves devoted Christians. Anyone who wishes to learn the Rosicrucian secrets, the Confessio says, should carefully study the Bible.

What are we to make of the following passage, which certainly resembles science fiction fantasy? Was it the revelation and promise of superior powers attainable by worthy humans? Was it a joke intended to alarm the superstitious? “Were it not a precious thing, that you could always live so, as if you had lived from the beginning of the world, and, moreover, as you should still live to the end thereof? Were it not excellent you dwell in one place, that neither the people which dwell beyond the River Ganges in the Indies could Hide anything, nor those which in Peru might be able to keep secret their counsels from thee? Were it not a precious thing, that you could so read in one only book, and withal by reading understand and remember, all that which in all other books (which heretofore have been, and are now, and hereafter shall come out) hath been, is, and shall be learned and found out of them? How pleasant were it, that you could so sing, that instead of stony rocks you could draw the pearls and precious stones, instead of wild beasts, spirits, and instead of hellish Pluto, move the might princes of the world.” The Rosicrucians also enjoy divine protection: “yea God hath so compassed us about with his clouds, that unto us his servants no violence or force can be done or committed; wherefore we neither can be seen or known by anybody, except he had the eyes of an eagle.”

The Confessio acknowledges the success of the Fama but points out that its meaning requires superior intelligence to understand. “Although the Fama be set forth in five languages,” the Confessio declares, “and is manifested to everyone, yet we do partly very well know that the unlearned and gross wits will not receive nor regard the same.”

The political agenda appears with a proclamation that seems to look toward the scheme hatching among radical Protestant leaders to place Frederick V, whose heraldic animal was a lion, on the throne of Bohemia as a first step toward making him the first Protestant Holy Roman Emperor, and the leader of the holy war against the Vatican that would at last eradicate the Pope and his powerful Habsburg allies: “…our treasures shall remain untouched and unstirred, until the Lion doth come, who will ask them for his use, and employ them for the confirmation and establishment of his kingdom.”

The idea that the world was ending soon, and that before its end God would restore the lost language of Adam, seems to be sincerely held: “We ought therefore here to observe well, and make it known unto everyone, that God hath certainly and most assuredly concluded to send and grant to the world before her end, which presently thereupon shall ensue, such a truth, light, life, and glory, as the first man Adam had, which he lost in Paradise, after which his successors were put and driven, with him, to misery. Wherefore there shall cease all servitude, falsehood, lies, and darkness, which by little and little, with the great world’s revolution, was crept into all arts, works, and governments of men, and have darkened the most part of them.” Is this a metaphor? Would natural philosophy, officially dismissed as the occult, but viewing itself as science, not only restore the language of Adam, but end the world, that is, inaugurate a radically different society?

“Yea, the Lord God hath already sent before certain messengers, which should testify his will, to wit, some new stars, which do appear and are seen in the firmament in Serpentario and Cygno, which signify and give themselves known to everyone….” The phrase “alteration of government” makes explicit the political dimension of the Rosicrucian agenda.

According to astrologers of the day the fire sign trine of Mercury Jupiter and Saturn of December 23, 1603 signified the beginning of a new age. The configuration, they said, had only occurred twice before, once at the birth of Jesus and then at the birth of Charlemagne. Catholics took these predictions as proof that they would soon defeat and eliminate all heretics including the Protestants of Germany, France, Holland, England and the rest. The Protestants believed the opposite, of course, that they would finally triumph against Rome, Madrid and Vienna. Two novas, which appeared to be new stars, added to the excitement; even Galileo thought a new day was dawning, and it was. Astronomy, geography, physics and mathematics were transforming the intellectual standards of Europe with new data and new theories.

Cabala, Neo-Platonism, Paracelsus or the Hermetic doctrine of signatures and sympathies, what we might describe as the attractions and repulsions of frequencies, which secret language supported the following startling statement about the Rosicrucian ability to predict the future by reading nature, a power reminiscent of Daoist ideas about the use of oracles like the I Ching to predict outcomes by studying patterns anywhere in the present. “These characters and letters, as God hath here and there incorporated them in the Holy Scriptures, the Bible, so hath he imprinted them in all beasts. So that like as the mathematician and astronomer can long before see and know the eclipses which are to come, so we may verily foreknow and foresee the darkness of obscurations of the Church, and how long they shall last. From the which characters or letters we have borrowed our magic writing, and have found out, and made, a new language for ourselves, in the which withal is expressed and declared the nature of all things.”

The Fama and Confessio, whether satirical or sincere, or some combination of both, were taken very seriously by Catholics and Protestants alike. One prominent theologian even warned European royalty to beware the Rosicrucians: “Take heed all you princes, authorities, captains and soldiers, to the regard in which you are held by this fraternity you are but mere tyrants, thieves and robbers!”

THE EDITOR OF THE HERMETIC LAMPOON?

Johann Valentin Andreae

The Christian Rosy Cross of the Fama is quite different from the one in The Chemical Wedding, though the only differences in their names is the umlaut over the u in the latter. Umlaut CRC is an old man as disinterested in the world as young CRC was interested. Old CRC sits in a hut meditating and praying, almost the narrator, certainly a commentator, he’s presented with ambivalence. Is he a holy monk or selfish fool? Andreae claims to have written The Chemical Wedding in the middle of the first decade of the 17th century, in imitation of English drama and masque, although the work as we have it shows far more Italian influence than English.

With its beheadings and royal matrimony, it’s tempting to consider The Chemical Wedding either a muddled prophecy of the Bohemian Spring, or a commentary after the fact. But the wedding of the title is more than simple matrimony, the word in German at the time carried connotations of the alchemical marriage between sun and moon, and therefore the end of transmutation, union with divine consciousness. Much of the plot is drawn from Boccaccio’s Amorous Vision (1343) and Love’s Labor (1336). One of the first great authors and poets of Italy, a friend of the mighty poet, scholar and pioneer humanist Petrarch, Boccaccio was one of the first to collect and publish the biographies of great women.

The Chemical Wedding contains erotic stories, dreams, gory alchemical allegories, number and word puzzles. One of the puzzles reveals that the young woman who takes over his adventure’s real name is Alchimia (Alchemy). Another can be solved two ways, one gives the alleged birth date of CRC, the other the birth date of Andreae, perhaps a claim to ownership of not only The Chemical Wedding but all three Rosy Cross manifestos. The action of The Chemical Wedding starts with a joke. Old CRC sits in his hut, perhaps a satirical nod at his hermetic tomb in the Fama. The Roman goddess of rumor, ancient Greek goddess of fame, Fama herself, her wings covered with eyes (a nod to the Roman poet Virgil’s portrayal of her, enters carrying a large horn and a bundle of messages. She prods the oblivious old man startling him. After she gives him one of the messages as she flies away she blows her horn deafening him. The message is an invitation to a royal wedding with a warning that anyone unworthy who attempts to attend will suffer for it. The letter bears the Hieroglyphic Monad of John Dee but the symbol had other meanings, too. Some took it to represent Paracelsus. Others said it had always represented Hermes Trismegistus, to which astrologers would add that it is a sigil for Mercury in Aries, the planet of Hermes in the sign that commences the zodiac. Alchemists recognized it as the symbol of Mercury, the alchemical symbol for the source of life.

After an ordeal by nightmare CRC sets out the next day sporting an outfit that is the coats of arms of Andreae’s family, no doubt his claim to authorship of the at first anonymous book.

In a castle, in a great hall full of very important people bragging to each other about achievements like seeing Plato’s ideas, counting atoms, and perpetual motion, CRC witnesses more slapstick when a liar says he can actually see the invisible servants managing the feast and so gets a smack in the face from an invisible hand, another satirical nod at the Rosicrucians. The play turned bawdy when a depressed CRC lamented his lost youth and the young woman acting as his Virgil, guiding him through the story, and commenting along the way, laughed at him for his lust and winked at the audience and reader: “What do you think? If I slept with him tonight, he’d be more cheerful tomorrow.” Even CRC laughed. Then followed another mathematical puzzle but this one based on the sexy arrangement of her maidens and the candidates for initiation sitting in a circle while she counted by sevens leaving to chance who will pair off, like some sort of alchemical game of spin the bottle. By the time the narrative reaches the description of a nude female, the goddess Venus sprawled on a bed before CRC, it becomes clear that one of the book’s attractions was the erotic content.

In old CRC’s sad fate, for spying on naked Venus sentenced to become a lowly gatekeeper at the castle instead of a guest of the royal couple, one can perhaps glimpse Andreae’s own story as he retreated from his radical adolescent ideas, which however humorous and satirical, nevertheless contained sincere utopian and hermetic themes, and a political intent clearly revolutionary.

The likely editor and perhaps author of the Fama, the Confessio and The Chemical Wedding was Protestant theologian, Johannes Valentin Andreae. His word for the Rosicrucian legend he claimed to have invented and retired was ludibrium. It comes from the Latin ludus, a trivial toy or fun game, but unworthy of respect. Perhaps the best translation is prank, though plaything, though farce has been offered. The most evocative translation within the context of the Rosicrucian manifestos may be “lampoon.”

Jorge Luis Borges mentioned Johannes Valentin Andreae in his classic short story “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” in which a secret society of the early 17th century, the time of the Rosicrucians’ first appearance, creates one volume of an encyclopedia and a few historical artifacts that so obsess scholars and the public imagination that society recreates all the missing knowledge of this allegedly lost culture, and in so doing reinvents itself in their image. When Borges wrote: “The metaphysicians of Tlön are not looking for truth or even an approximation to it: they are after a kind of amazement. They consider metaphysics a branch of fantastic literature,” was he offering his own definition of ludibrium? This fascination of Borges inspired Umberto Ecco to explore the Rosicrucian mystery in his own writing.

When the anonymous author of the Confessio writes in chapter 12: “For conclusion of our Confession we must earnestly admonish you, that you cast away, if not all yet most of the worthless books of pseudo chymists, to whom it is a jest to apply the Most Holy Trinity to vain things, or to deceive men with monstrous symbols and enigmas, or to profit by the curiosity of the credulous….” after the anonymous author of the Fama condemned “ungodly and accursed gold making” Andreae must come to mind, the nineteen year old whose father wasted his fortune and died early chasing gold.

If Andreae was involved with the Fama and Confessio, and wrote The Chemical Wedding as he claims, he did it as a teen, and there may be more science fiction, teenage rebellion and Harvard Lampoon, in The Chemical Wedding than most scholars have realized. Instead of invisible initiates and malevolent or merciful secret societies perhaps these Rosicrucians were something closer to intelligencers, beats, radical poets, hippies, the sort of people who centuries later got called bohemian by people who had no idea what the word really meant. The Fama then may not be a holy relic of a mystic cult of ascended humans, but the work of a balls out brainy nineteen year old high on Paracelsus and Boccalini at Tubingen University, encouraged and perhaps assisted by friends like the Paracelsian physician and lawyer Tobias Hess and law professor at Tibugen University Christoph Besold, who later authored an important history of the Thirty Years War.

Tobias Hess had been influenced by Simon Studion, who died in 1605, two years before the first known circulation of the Rosicrucian manifestos in manuscript. Naometria, an almost 2000 page unpublished book of predictions circulated around 1604, is attributed to Studion. The predictions, which include the fall of the Papacy with the crucifixion of the pope in 1620, are based on numerology and include numerous references to roses. Hess and his student Andreae were members of a Society Noemetria in Tubingen. Studion was not the only writer in the 1590s using rose, and lion, symbology, and the medium of prophecy, to imagine a world without the Vatican. Tobias Hess corresponded with Simon Studion in 1597. Both men were certain that soon the Papacy would finally fall. This rich underground culture nurtured Andreae’s own radical zeal.

What of the secrecy of the Rosicrucians, an aspect of the story that has especially fed the more sinister perspectives of conspiracy theorists? For early scientists secrecy was essential, as Bruno’s fiery death at the stake in 1600 and the persecution of Galileo had proved. For example, in Rome in 1603, the Academia dei Lincei began, members swore themselves to secrecy, used secret names and wrote everything in cipher, but they were discovered anyway and forced to abandon their research. Secrecy was essential to survival.

In the days before the arrival of the Princess Elizabeth, Andreae used the library at Heidelberg, becoming friendly with one of Frederick’s librarians, himself a book collector. Was he caught up in the fervor of the royal marriage that seemed to bring the dream of a Protestant Holy Roman Emperor one step closer? Then he must have become disillusioned by the overreaction to the Fama and Confessio. Was Andreae trying to destroy the myth he created because it had run away without him, covering his tracks or merely adding to the fun when in 1617 he attacked Rosicrucianism in print, satirizing it in his book Tower of Babel published in his own name, a collection of 75 allegorical characters each with a unique opinion about the Rosicrucians. Emblem books were very popular then, which involved a language of symbols common to all Europe that Andreae used with great fluency. Meanwhile Robert Fludd launched his defense of the Rosicrucians and his masterpiece in which he attempted to encompass all knowledge.

It’s rather extraordinary that this revelation and denial of Rosicrucian occurred in the few shorts years prior to the Bohemian problem that would change the fate of the royal couple to tragedy. From 1613 to 1620 the area around the Palatinate was a hotbed of radical publishing. The encyclopedic works of Robert Fludd and Michael Maier, with the marvelous copperplates of their publisher De Bry, sought to comprehend everything in the world, searching the depths of nature and the soul with complex diagrams, and enigmatic emblems. I was very fortunate to have a friend who owned these works in the original editions. The burst of creativity and enthusiasm for life and knowledge radiated from the illustrations in these books. The sense of hope and confidence seemed to animate the engravings full of hinted at secrets of initiation into a brighter future, not just for the individual but also for society. However inaccurate many of the theories may have been, the emotion of renaissance was palpable in these masterpieces of artistic imagination.

Later in life, in the autobiography he submitted as part of the requirements for what amounted to him becoming a Lutheran bishop, Andreae wrote that he laughed at the Fama and the Confessio, and had nothing but contempt for novelty seekers