Heliocentrism

The anticipation generated by the publication of the Rosicrucian manifestos peaked with the “Rosicrucianism furore,” when two mysterious posters appeared on the walls of Paris in 1622, timed with the Great Conjunction expected the following year. Criticism of the Rosicrucians by the French monk Marin Mersenne (1588 – 1648), who made use of Isaac Casaubon’s (1559 – 1614) critique of the Corpus Hermeticum, ignited a controversy “that was watched with interest and excitement by all Europe.”[1] According to Frances Yates, writing in Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, the celebrated expert on the Rosicrucian movement, historians would be able to refer to the “pre-Casaubon era” or the “post-Casaubon era.” Casaubon a friend of Joseph Scaliger, was born in Geneva to Protestant parents, but later moved to England. In 1614, Casaubon published De rebus sacris et ecclesiasticis exercitationes XVI, dedicated to his patron King James, which consisted of a philological analysis of Ficino’s Latin translation of the Corpus Hermeticum, which he proved were the original writings of a very ancient Egyptian priest, Hermes Trismegistus, but post-Christian forgeries of the third or fourth century AD. According to Yates, Casaubon’s discovery must “be reckoned as one of the factors, and an important one, in releasing seventeenth-century thinkers from magic.”[2]

Casaubon had become involved in dispute that broke out in 1606 between Venice and Rome, mainly concerning Venice’s jurisdiction over ecclesiastical property held within its territories and its right to imprison and try members of the clergy, and it turned into a fully-blown crisis when Pope Paul V placed an interdict on the kingdom of Venice.[3] The reason for Casaubon’s involvement in the controversy was his admiration for Venetian statesman Paolo Sarpi (1552 – 1623). At 27, Sarpi was appointed provincial of the Servite Order for the Venetian Republic, one of the five original Catholic mendicant orders. Its objectives are the sanctification of its members, preaching the Gospel, and the propagation of devotion to the Mother of God, with special reference to her sorrows. Sarpi’s extensive network of correspondents included Francis Bacon and William Harvey. Prince Christian of Anhalt, the advisor-in-chief of Frederick V of the Palatinate, was also in touch with Sarpi, and the chief representative of the Palatinate, Baron Christian Von Dohna, was a frequent visitor to Venice in those years.  The resistance in Venice against the Papacy led by Sarpi was perceived as significant for those in Germany who hoped for new Protestant leadership under Frederick V, with the expected support of King James of England.

Among Sarpi’s many friends was Galileo Galilei (1564 – 1642), who was sponsored by Cosimo II de Medici (1590 – 1621). Cosimo II’s father was Cardinal Ferdinando, the son of Cosimo I de Medici, a knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece, and Eleonora of Toledo, who was brought up in Naples at the household of Jacob Abarbanel’s son Don Samuel Abarbanel and daughter-in-law Benvenida.[4] Cosimo II’s mother was Christina, the daughter of Charles III of Lorraine (1543 – 1608) and the favorite granddaughter of Catherine de Medici, a sponsor of Nostradamus and involved in the Black Mass. Catherine’s husband was Henry II of France, the son of Francis I, a knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece, who supported Guillaume Postel and Leonardo da Vinci. Henry II’s sister was Margaret of Valois who together with their husband Emanuele Filiberto of Savoy had called upon Nostradamus to help them produce an heir, Charles Emmanuel I of Savoy, titular King of Cyprus and Jerusalem.[5]

Charles III’s dynasty of Lorraine also claimed the Kingdom of Jerusalem and used also the title of Duke of Calabria as symbol of their claims to the Kingdom of Naples. Charles III was the great-grandson of René II of Lorraine, Grand Master of the Order of the Fleur de Lys, founded by his grandfather, René of Anjou, a purported Grand Master of the Priory of Sion. René II was also the grandfather of Marie of Guise, who married James V, King of Scotland, also a knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece, who became grandparents of King James I of England. Christina’s brother, Henry II, Duke of Lorraine, married Margherita Gonzaga, daughter of Vincenzo I Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, a knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece, and nephew of Louis Gonzaga, another purported Grand Master of the Priory of Sion.

Vincenzo I Gonzaga married Eleonora de Medici, the sister of Marie de Medici, who was married to Henry IV of France. After Henry IV was assassinated in 1610, Marie was confirmed as Regent on behalf of her son and new King, eight-year-old Louis XIII (1601 – 1643). Marie’s father was Francesco I de Medici, the son of Cosimo I and Eleanor of Toledo. Francesco I’s sister Lucrezia married Alfonso II d’Este, an ally of Rudolf II, who according to France Yates, headed the occult-influence court in Prague that attracted of John Dee and Robert Fludd and gave rise to the Rosicrucian movement. Marie’s mother was a Habsburg archduchess, Joanna of Austria, who was the daughter of Ferdinand I and Anna Jagellonica, and an aunt of Rudolf II. As Queen-Regent, Marie formed an alliance with Habsburg Spain which culminated in 1615 with the double marriage of her daughter Elisabeth and her son Louis XIII with the two children of King Philip III of Spain, Philip IV and Anne of Austria, respectively. Philip III and Philip IV were Grand Masters of the Order of the Golden Fleece. Louis XIII’ sister, Henrietta Maria married Charles I of England, the son of King James. Louis XIII’s other sister, Christine Marie, married Victor Amadeus I of Savoy, the son of Charles Emmanuel I of Savoy. Christine Marie rebuilt Palazzo Madama in Turin following the advice of master alchemists.[6]

During and after the regency, Marie de Médicis played a major role in the development of Parisian artistic life by focusing on the construction and furnishing of the Luxembourg Palace, which she referred to as her “Palais Médicis.” Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens (1577 – 1640), then court painter to the Duchy of Mantua under Vincenzo I Gonzaga, had first met Marie at her proxy wedding in Florence in 1600. She commissioned Rubens to create a 21-piece series glorifying her life and reign to be part of her art collection in the palace. This series is now known as the “Marie de' Medici cycle,” currently housed in the Louvre Museum, and employs iconography throughout to depict Henry IV and Marie as Jupiter and Juno and the French state as a female warrior.

Cosimo Ruggeri, who had been the trusted sorcerer of Catherine de Medici, was a personal friend of Marie de Medici’s favorites, Concino Concini (1569 – 1617) and his wife Leonora Dori.[7]  Leonora Dori suffered from debilitating depressions and paralyzing spasms, which the queen and her courtiers believed to be due to demonic possession. Dori was arrested, imprisoned in Blois and accused of sorcery and subsequently burned at the stake. She had been treated by the court Marie’s court physician, a Marrano named Elijah Montalto (1567 – 1616), who had been raised as a Christian in Portugal and openly returned to Judaism on settling in Venice.[8]

Montalto was one of the teachers of Rabbi Joseph Solomon Delmedigo (1591 – 1655). After graduating in 1613 he moved to Venice and spent a year in the company of Leon de Modena (1571 – 1648) and Simone Luzzatto (1583 – 1663). Delmedigo’s only known works are Sepher Elim (Palms), published in 1629 by Menasseh ben Israel, dealing with mathematics, astronomy, the natural sciences, and metaphysics, as well as some letters and essays. As Delmedigo writes in his book, he followed the lectures by Galilei, during the academic year 1609–1610, and was accorded the rare privilege of using Galileo’s own telescope. In subsequent years, Delmedigo often referred to Galilei as “rabbi Galileo.” Delmedigo declared in Sepher Elim, that the proofs of Copernicus’ theory are convincing, and that “anyone who refuses to accept them can only be classed among perfect imbeciles.”[9]

Galileo was also a friend of Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte, a member of the court of Christina’s husband, Cardinal Ferdinando. Del Monte, who was reputed to be a homosexual, was a sponsor of Caravaggio, and his interests also included alchemy.[10] Together with his brother, del Monte helped Galileo win a lectureship in mathematics in Pisa in 1589 and in Padua in 1592. Ferdinando also supported the education of his niece, Marie de Medici.

In 1605, Christina invited Galileo to tutor her son Cosimo II de Medici (1590 – 1621), who would eventually become his most important patron. The four moons of Jupiter he had discovered were named Medicean Stars in reference to Cosimo II and his three brothers. Galileo used the Medici court to advance his claims and the theories of Copernicus. Pointing to the fact that Guillaume Postel read and annotated advanced Arabic astronomical texts, recent historians have made the case that Copernicus himself may have borrowed his revolutionary theories championed by Galileo from a famous Arabic astronomer from Damascus, Ibn al Shatir (ca. 1305 – 1375), who had proposed a similar system.[11]

In 1615, Galileo sent the “Letter to The Grand Duchess Christina,” written for Christina, to accommodate the had Copernican model with the doctrines of the Catholic Church. Galileo’s letter was a revised version of the “Letter to Castelli,” which was denounced by the Roman Inquisition, leading to Galileo being found “vehemently suspect of heresy,” and forced to recant, spending the rest of his life under house arrest.[12] When Galileo went to Rome in 1611, Cosimo II recommended him to the Cardinal Del Monte’s council so that he could be helped during his sojourn at the Vatican.[13]

Venetian Interdict

Galileo thought no one in Europe could surpass Sarpi in mathematics, while Sarpi said of Galileo’s condemnation by Rome, “The day will come, I am almost sure, when men, better versed in these matters, will deplore the disgrace of Galileo and the injustice dealt so great a man.”[14] Sarpi is widely seen as an early advocate of the separation of church and state. Venice, with its culturally diverse population, had long followed a liberal religious policy, resisting the intrusion of the Church into its political affairs. In 1606, Pope Paul V demanded that Venice repeal a law restricting church building and hand over to him two priests, one charged with murder, which the government of Venice had intended to try in their civil courts. When Venice refused, the Pope excommunicated the Senate and the Doge, Venice’s head of state, and placed the republic under an interdict, meaning that all priests were barred from their functions. The Venetian clergy largely disregarded the interdict and performed their functions as usual, the major exception being the Jesuits, who left and were simultaneously officially expelled.[15] Sarpi, having been appointed consulter to the government, wrote in strong in support of the Venetian case. Between 1610 and 1618 he wrote his History of the Council of Trent, an important work decrying papal absolutism.

Among Sarpi’s friends were Sir Henry Wotton (1568 – 1639), the British ambassador who had hoped to induce Venice to adopt a reform similar to Anglicanism. Wotton travelled by way of Vienna and Venice to Rome, and in 1593 spent some time at Geneva with Isaac Casaubon. In 1595, Wotton was admitted to the Middle Temple. Wotton spent most of his career in Venice, where he helped the Doge in his resistance to the Interdict in close association with Sarpi. Wotton sent a copy of Sarpi’s History of the Council of Trent to King James in England as soon as it was written, where it was first published. It was Antonio de Dominis, Archbishop of Spalato, who converted to Anglicanism in 1616, who first published Sarpi’s book in Italian, in England in 1619, with a dedication to James I appealing to him as one in whom the Italian reformers had confidence.[16] In 1620, Wotton had been sent on a special embassy to Ferdinand II at Vienna, to do what he could on behalf of Elizabeth of Bohemia. Wotton’s famous poem “on his Mistress the Queen of Bohemia,” comparing her to the rose, queen of flowers, was written in Greenwich Park in June 1620, just before the defeat.

In 1609-1610, Wotton, Sarpi and Johann Baptist Lenk, acting in Venice for Christian of Anhalt, were was involved in discussions with Fulgenzio Micanzio (1570 – 1654), another supporter of Galileo.[17] A Servite friar, Micanzio was a close associate of Sarpi and became his biographer. Through his efforts at the court of James I of England, Micanzio worked to have Francis Bacon’s Essays published in Italian.[18] Sarpi corresponded with Casaubon who along with Micanzio supported his efforts in “attending to Baronius.”[19] Micanzio took extensive notes on the Annales Ecclesiastici of Baronius (1538 – 1607), that appeared between 1588 and 1607. The Annales were an official Counter Reformation reply to the Lutheran Historia Ecclesiae Christi (History of the Church of Christ), which sought to demonstrate how the Catholic Church represented the Antichrist and had deviated from the beliefs and practices of the early church. In turn, the Annales fully supported the claims of the papacy to lead the unique true church. The first volume dealt with Gentile prophets, among whom were Hermes Trismegistus and the Sibylline Oracles of Rome. Some, it was claimed, had foreseen Christ’s birth, which was disputed by Casaubon in his De rebus sacris et ecclesiasticis exercitationes, XVI, a work which King James had requested him to write.

At this period Micanzio was also in touch with Dudley Carleton, 1st Viscount Dorchester (1573 – 1632) was an English Secretary of State, who in 1610 was knighted and sent as ambassador to Venice. Much of Carleton’s work was tied up with protecting religious heresy. While in Venice, he arranged for the ex-Carmelite Giulio Cesare Vanini to be sent to England, and also helped Giacomo Castelvetro out the Inquisition’s prison in 1611.[20] Carleton commissioned in 1613 a report from Paolo Sarpi on the theology of German-Dutch heretic Conrad Vorstius.[21] On Carleton’s staff were Isaac Wake, and Nathaniel Brent who would later smuggle Sarpi's History of the Council of Trent out for publication in London.[22]

As in other parts of Protestant Europe, the Venetian government was eager to obtain information as to whether James intended to support Frederick. A Venetian ambassador, reporting to the Doge in November 1619, pointed out that action against the Holy Roman Empire in Bohemia would weaken the imperial ambitions of the Spanish-Hapsburg powers for the subjugation of Italy, and that a weakening of those powers is “what your Serenity has every reason to wish.” Therefore “the common prosperity depends on the success of the Palatine.”[23]

John Donne, another poet close and mutual friend to Sarpi and Wotton, urged Elizabeth Stuart from the time of her wedding to be a “new star.” The tract on “the general reformation of the whole wide world” which was published with the Fama was a translation into German of a chapter in Traiano Boccalini’s Ragguagli di Parnaso, published at Venice in 1612–13. Boccalini, a friend of Sarpi and of other Italian intellectuals in Sarpi’s circle, which included Galileo, was a vehemently anti-Hapsburg Italian liberal.[24] In his Mythologiae Christianae Libritres (1619), Johannes Valentinus Andreae—the author of the Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz—has a section on “Bocalinus,” whom he said was persecuted by “wicked fools.”

Rosicrucian Furore

Marin Mersenne was the leading figure in the attack on Renaissance Hermeticism and Kabbalah, and all their attendant studies, who through his massive attack on the whole tradition cleared the way for the rise of Cartesian philosophy.[25] In the year 1623, coinciding with the next planetary conjunction, placards are said to have appeared in Paris announcing the presence in the town of the Brethren of the Rose Cross:

We, being deputies of the principle College of the Brothers of the Rose Cross, are making a visible and invisible stay in this city through the Grace of the Most High, towards whom turn the hearts of the Just. We show and teach without books or marks how to speak all languages of the countries where we wish to be, and to draw men from error and death.

Another critic of the Rosicrucians was a friend of Mersenne, Gabriel Naudé (1600 – 1653), a French librarian and scholar, and a prolific writer who produced works on many subjects including politics, religion, history and the supernatural. In his Instruction to France about the truth of the Rose Cross Brothers, published in 1623, in defense of the Rosicrucians, reported another version of the placards was given in an anonymous work, published in 1623, titled “Horrible Pacts made between the Devil and the Pretended Invisible Ones.” Thirty-six “deputies” of the Rosy Cross had convened in the provincial city of Lyons on the very day the posters appeared in Paris, at which time the participants celebrated a grand Sabbath on the eve of St. John’s Day [summer Solstice]. The members at this point prostrated themselves before an emissary of the devil, named Astarte. To the demon they swore they would renounce all the rites and sacraments of the Christian Church. In return, they were bestowed with marvelous powers, including the ability to transport themselves magically wherever they pleased, to speak with such eloquence and apparent wisdom, to disguise themselves so that they would always appear to be natives of whatever place they found themselves, and to be forever supplied with gold. Finally, the manifestos confirmed that six missionaries had instantaneously been posted to Paris, where they went into hiding in a quarter of the city favored by Protestants. No more posters appeared, no applicants for membership made themselves known, and the Rosicrucians apparently vanished from Paris.[26]

Naudé argued that the secret brothers expected a return of Elias Arista, the master alchemist prophesied by Paracelsus to appear in 1603 to restore the arts and sciences. Naudé proposed that Guillaume Postel’s “instruction of all things by the hand of Elijah the Prophet” was identical to Roger Bacon’s idea of a future renovation of all arts. As Postel’s Panthenousia on the new star of 1572 shows, there was a renewed interest in Roger Bacon’s thirteenth century attempt at millenarian reform in the natural sciences. Naudé based this on his reading of Bacon’s letters published in 1618 as Epistola Fratris Rogerii Baconis De Secretis Artis et Naturae et de nullitate Magia with a dedication to the “Classimiris Restitutionis universe Phosphoris, illuminatis, Rosae Crucis Fratribus Unamis.” The text included John Dee’s notes on Bacon and material from Robert Fludd. Naudé pointed to the statement in the preface stating that the new age would bring about a return to the original justice, beginning with a conversion of the Jews and the Ismailis of Islam.[27]

Mersenne’s first attack on the Renaissance tradition, his Quaestiones in Genesim, was a polemic against magic, divination and Kabbalah.[28] He criticizes Ficino for claiming power for images and characters. He condemns astral magic and astrology popular amongst Ficino and the Renaissance neoplatonists. While allowing for a mystical interpretation of the Kabbalah, he condemned its magical application, particularly angelology. Mersenne devoted a whole work, published in 1623, to refuting Francesco Giorgi’s Problemata, and he strongly attacks the De harmonia mundi many times in the Quaestiones in Genesim.[29] He also criticizes Pico della Mirandola, Cornelius Agrippa, Francesco Giorgio and Robert Fludd, his main target. Fludd responded with Sophia cum moria certamen (1626), wherein he admits his involvement with the Rosicrucians.

The Kabbalist Jacques Gaffarel joined Fludd’s side, while Mersenne was defended by Naudé’s friend Pierre Gassendi (1592 – 1655), an admirer of Galileo. Naudé and Gassendi were part of a group of free-thinking intellectuals known as libertins érudit (“erudite libertines”).[30] Richard Popkin indicates that Gassendi was one of the first thinkers to formulate the modern “scientific outlook,” of moderated skepticism and empiricism.[31] The seventeenth century was a key period in the development of modern science, and Mersenne, a friend of Naudé and Gassendi, played an important part in encouraging the new movement, by putting enquirers into touch with others working on similar lines through his vast correspondence with all the savants of Europe.[32]Mersenne and Gassendi claimed that Fludd wanted to demonstrate that the Spiritus mundi (“World Soul”) was identical to Christ and that he intended to turn alchemy into a religion by explaining the creation alchemically.[33]

Roi Soleil

Mersenne said that Tommaso Campanella (1568 – 1639). “can teach us nothing in the sciences… but still he has a good memory and a fertile imagination.”[34] The interest of Andreae and Tübingen Circle with the contemporary situation in Italy is also evident from their interest in the works of Tommaso Campanella (1568 – 1639). Campanella was, like Giordano Bruno, a revolutionary ex-Dominican friar. In 1600, he led a revolt in southern Italy against the Spanish occupying powers. Campanella was however captured, tortured, and imprisoned for most of the rest of his life in the castle at Naples, where he was visited by Tobias Adami and Wilhelm Wense, both close friends of Andreae. While in prison, he wrote his City of the Sun, which profoundly influenced Andreae. The work was influenced by the Asclepius and the Picatrix.[35] Campanella’s aim was to establish a society based on the community of goods and wives, for on the basis of the prophecies of Joachim of Fiore and his own astrological observations, he foresaw the advent of the Age of the Spirit in the year 1600.[36] He defended Galileo in his first trial with The Defense of Galileo which he wrote in 1616.

At the same time as the onslaughts of Mersenne against Hermeticism and Rosicrucianism, Campanella was prophesying at court that the infant Louis XIV of France (1638 – 1715), le Roi Soleil (“the Sun King”), would build the Egyptian “City of the Sun.”[37] Louis XIV’s was the son of Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, the daughter of Philip III of Spain, Grand Master of the Order of the Golden Fleece. Mismanagement of the kingdom and ceaseless political intrigues by Marie and her Italian favorites led the young king to take power in 1617 by exiling his mother and executing her followers, including Concino Concini. The King surrounded himself with a variety of significant political, military, and cultural figures, such as the Jesuit-educated Cardinal Mazarin (1602 – 1661), Grand Condé (1621 – 1686) and his Chief minister, Cardinal Richelieu (1585 – 1642), Abbot of Cluny.

Campanella was finally released from prison in 1626, through the personal intercession of the Jesuit-supporting Pope Urban VIII with Philip IV of Spain. Campanella was restored to full liberty in 1629, when he was taken to Rome and became Urban’s advisor in astrological matters. In 1634, a new conspiracy in Calabria, led by one of his followers, forced him to flee to France, where he was received at the court of Louis XIII, where he was protected by Cardinal Richelieu, and granted a liberal pension by the king. His last work was a poem celebrating the birth of the future Louis XIV, Ecloga in portentosam Delphini nativitatem. The third version of Campanella’s Civitas Solis, published in France in 1637, adapted the Sun City with Richelieu’s ambitions for the French Monarchy in mind. In the dedication to Richelieu of his De sensu rerum et magia, Campanella appeals to the cardinal to build the City of the Sun. Richelieu did not receive the Rosicrucians, but when eleven years later Campanella came to Paris he had the powerful cardinal’s support.[38]

Richelieu, also known by the sobriquet l'Éminence rouge (“the Red Eminence”), advanced politically by faithfully serving the most powerful minister in the kingdom, Concino Concini, favorite of Marie de Médici, and husband of the witch Leonora Dori. Like Concini, Richelieu was one of Marie’s closest advisors. In 1616, Richelieu was made Secretary of State, and was given responsibility for foreign affairs. Cardinal Richelieu sought to consolidate royal power and crush domestic factions. By restraining the power of the nobility, he transformed France into a strong, centralized state. His chief foreign policy objective was to check the power of the Austro-Spanish Habsburg dynasty, and to ensure French dominance in the Thirty Years’ War that engulfed Europe. Although he was a cardinal, he did not hesitate to make alliances with Protestant rulers in an attempt to achieve his goals.

Richelieu’s main ally was Père Joseph (1577 – 1638), a Capuchin friar, who would later become a close confidant. Joseph was the original éminence grise—the French term (“grey eminence”) for a powerful advisor or decision-maker who operates secretly or unofficially. As Richelieu’s ally against the Habsburgs, Joseph maneuvered at the Diet of Regensburg (1630) to thwart the aggression of the Habsburg emperor, and then recommended the intervention of Gustavus Adolphus, and the Protestant armies, thereby maintaining a balance of power. Théophraste Renaudot (1586 – 1653), who became the physician of Louis XIII of France, was supported by Richelieu and Père Joseph. Renaudot, born a Protestant, converted to Catholicism. After the deaths of his benefactors, Richelieu and Louis XIII, Renaudot lost his permission to practice medicine in Paris, due to the opposition of Guy Patin and other academic physicians.

Cardinal Mazarin (1602 – 1661) succeeded his mentor, Cardinal Richelieu made Renaudot Historiographer Royal to the new king, Louis XIV. Mazarin’s father, Pietro Mazzarino (1576 – 1654), had moved to Rome from Sicily in 1590 to become a chamberlain in the family of Filippo I Colonna (1578 – 1639), the Grand Constable of Naples, a nephew of Carlo Borromeo and grand-nephew of Gian Giacomo Medici. The Colonna, along with the Sforza, were sponsors of the artist Caravaggio, including Costanza Colonna, the widow of Francesco I Sforza di Caravaggio. Filippo I offered Caravaggio asylum as well.[39] Mazarin served as the chief minister to the kings of France Louis XIII and Louis XIV from 1642 until his death in 1661. Richelieu also intended to make Naudé his librarian, and on his death Naudé accepted a similar offer from Cardinal Mazarin, who served as the chief minister of France from 1642 until his death. Scholars from many countries, such as Hugo Grotius, came to pursue their research at Naudé’s unique library.[40]

Following Richelieu’s death in 1642, Mazarin took his place as first minister, and after the death of Louis XIII in 1643, he acted as the head of the government for Anne of Austria, the regent for the young Louis XIV, and was also made responsible for the king’s education. Louis XIV reigned over a period of unprecedented prosperity in which France became the dominant power in Europe and a leader in the arts and sciences. An adherent of the concept of the divine right of kings, Louis continued his predecessors’ work of creating a centralized state governed from Paris, the capital. His most famous quote is arguably L’Etat, c’est moi (“I am the State”). In 1682, he moved the royal Court to the Palace of Versailles, the defining symbol of his power and influence in Europe. At the start of his reign, before turning to more political allegories, Louis XIV chose the sun as his royal insignia. The sun is the symbol of Apollo, god of peace and the arts. The Palace of Versailles is replete with representations and allegorical allusions to the sun god, and there was a famous ballet where he performed as Apollo.

Fay çe que vouldras

Naudé also connects the Rosicrucians to Thomas More (1478 – 1535), the author of Utopia, and to Francois Rabelais (c. 1483 – 1553), who is considered by Western literary critics as one of the great writers of world literature and among the creators of modern European writing. Rabelais was first a novice of the Franciscan order and then entered the Benedictine order. Rabelais received the protection of Charles de Lorraine (1524 – 1574), Duke of Chevreuse, a member of the powerful House of Guise. He was the grandson of René II of Lorraine, Grand Master of the Order of the Fleur de Lys founded by his grandfather, René of Anjou, purported Grand Master of the Prioy of Sion. Charles was known at first as the Cardinal of Guise, and then as the second Cardinal of Lorraine, after the death of his uncle, Jean, Cardinal of Lorraine (1498 – 1550). In 1528, Jean was named Abbot Commendatory of the Abbey of Cluny by his friend Francis I of France, knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece. In addition to Rabelais, Jean was also a friend of Erasmus of Rotterdam, who was admired by Rabelais.

It has been argued that the character of Panurge in Rebelais’s most famous work, Gargantua and Pantagruel, is based on Jean de Lorraine, and his residence at Cluny.[41] The text, which tells of the adventures of two giants, Gargantua and his son Pantagruel, is written in an off-color satirical vein, and features much crude and obscene humor and violence. It is in the first book that Rabelais writes of the Abbey of Thélème, built by the giant Gargantua, where the only rule is “fay çe que vouldras” (“Fais ce que tu veux,” or “Do what thou wilt”). The word “thelema” is rare in classical Greek, where it “signifies the appetitive will: desire, sometimes even sexual,”[42] but it is frequent in the original Greek translations of the Bible. Early Christian writings occasionally use the word to refer to the human will, and though it usually refers to the will of God, it could also refer to the will of God’s opponent, the Devil.

The basis of Rabelais’ nihilistic outlook was that, “it is agreeable with the nature of man to long after things forbidden and to desire what is denied us.” Early editors of Shakespeare also saw echoes of Rabelais in As You Like It.[43] Despite the popularity of his book, it was condemned by the academics at the Sorbonne for its obscenity and unorthodox ideas and by the Roman Catholic Church for its derision of certain religious practices. While Rabelais received the approval from King François I to continue to publish his collection, after the king’s death, he was frowned upon by the academic elite, and the French Parliament suspended the sale of his fourth book.

Cogito, Ergo Sum

Mersenne had many contacts in the scientific world, including French philosopher René Descartes (1596 – 1650), and has been called “the center of the world of science and mathematics during the first half of the 1600s.”[44] Descartes and Mersenne, despite his condemnations of the order, were widely rumored to be secret Rosicrucians.[45] Mersenne, like Descartes, was educated at the Jesuit college of La Flèche and would have been influenced in his early years by the Jesuit outlook.[46] Descartes entered the college in 1607, where he was introduced to mathematics and physics, including Galileo’s work.[47] Descartes was one of the first and most illustrious students of the college, and introduced the school in his Discourse on Method under the phrase “I was in one of the most famous schools of Europe.” The College continued to expand, and, upon the death of Henry IV, a vast church was built, in which his heart and that of his wife Marie de Medicis were enshrined.

Descartes’ biographer, Adrien Baillet (1649 – 1706), reported that Descartes had heard of the Rosicrucians in Germany during the winter of 1619-20, the news having reached him “at a time when he was in the greatest perplexity concerning the way that he should follow in the investigation of the truth.” Descartes immediately attempted to contact members of the Fraternity. Though he failed to so, he was long rumored to have become one of the order’s members when he returned to Paris in 1623, the year of the great Rosicrucian Furor.

In Descartes: An Intellectual Biography, Stephen Gaukroger maintains that Descartes’ search for a general theory of “method” was partly influenced by the contact he had with the Rosicrucians while in Germany. In June 1620 Descartes met a certain Johann Faulhaber.[48] Descartes says that he studied Faulhaber’s “table resembling the German Cabala.”[49] Leibniz found in Descartes’ notebook the description of a work called The mathematical treasure trove of Polybius, citizen of the world, of which he explained: “The work is offered afresh to learned men throughout the world and especially to the distinguished brothers of the Rose Croix in Germany.”[50] In his satire, Nouveaux memoires pour servir d l'histoire du cartesianisme published at the end of the seventeenth century, Daniel Huet described Descartes as the perfect example of a Rosicrucian. “I renounced marriage,” he had him say, “I led a wandering life, I sought obscurity and isolation, I abandoned the study of geometry and of the other sciences to apply myself exclusively to philosophy, medicine, chemistry, the cabala and other secret sciences.”[51]

William R. Shae noted in “Descartes and the Rosicrucian Enlightenment,” that Descartes followed several of the rules of the Rosicrucians. He followed the first and second by offering medical advice to his friends freely.[52] The third rule enjoined following the dress of the local community. When he heard of Galileo’s condemnation in 1633, he wrote to Mersenne that he had decided not to publish his cosmological treatise Le Monde, keeping to his motto bene vixit, bene qui latuit (“he lives well who hides well”).[53] Though the third and fourth rule did not apply, the fifth required that they use the initials R.C. as their seal, and the Latinized version of his name was Renatus Cartesius. The Sixth and final Rule prescribed secrecy and Descartes wrote in an early notebook:

Actors, taught not to let any embarrassment show on their faces, put on a mask. I will do the same. So far, I have been a spectator in this theatre which is the world, but I am now about to mount the stage, and I come forward masked.[54]

While in the service of the Catholic Duke Maximilian of Bavaria since 1619, Descartes was present at the Battle of the White Mountain outside Prague, in November 1620. Many years later, in 1644, Descartes established himself in near Leiden, largely in order to be near the Princess Elizabeth of the Palatinate, eldest daughter of Frederick and his widow, Elizabeth Stuart, the “Winter Queen” of Bohemia, who had continued to live at The Hague with her family. The Princess Elizabeth maintained a great interest in the writings of Descartes, who dedicated his Principia to her in 1644, describing her as daughter of the “King of Bohemia,” granting her father the title he had ultimately been deprived of.[55]

Leviathan

In 1620, Mersenne settled at the convent of L’Annonciade in Paris, where he studied mathematics and music and met with other kindred spirits such as Descartes, Étienne Pascal, Pierre Petit, Gilles de Roberval, Thomas Hobbes, and Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc. He corresponded with Giovanni Doni, Constantijn Huygens, Galileo Galilei, and other scholars in Italy, England and the Dutch Republic. He was a staunch defender of Galileo, assisting him in translations of some of his mechanical works.

Hobbes who is considered one of the founders of modern political philosophy, associated with literary figures like Ben Jonson and around 1620, worked for some time as a secretary to Francis Bacon. Hobbes associated also closely with the Cavendish family. Hobbes corresponded William Cavendish (1593 – 1 674), the first Duke of Newcastle, a member of the Order of the Garter. Cavendish was a courtier of James I and a friend of Charles I and his wife Henrietta Maria, the sister of Louis XIII. Cavendish was the patron of, among others, Ben Jonson, Shirley, Davenant, Dryden, Shadwell and Flecknoe, and of Hobbes, Gassendi and Descartes. He is known to have sent Hobbes on an errand to London to find a book of Galileo’s in the early 1630s. The earl’s younger brother, Charles Cavendish also had contacts among Continental scientists, including Mersenne.[56] Their relative, also William Cavendish (1551 – 1626), who in 1618 was to become the first Earl of Devonshire, hired Hobbes in 1608 to tutor his son, William Cavendish (1590 – 1628), who later became the second Earl of Devonshire. With Cavendish and Hobbes as his secretary, a meeting in Venice led to an extended exchange of letters from 1615 to 1628 with Fulgenzio Micanzio, covering military and religious affairs. Ben Jonson had access to some of this correspondence, and material from Micanzio found its way into his Discoveries.[57]

William Cavendish, the second Earl of Dmievonshire, corresponded with Paolo Sarpi. Hobbes translated the correspondence between William Cavendish and Fulgenzio Micanzio, Sarpi’s friend and personal assistant, when he would have been exposed to Sarpi’s theory of the supremacy of temporal rulers.[58] According to Gregorio Baldin, certain aspects of Hobbes’ analysis of excommunication in Leviathan may suggest that Hobbes drew from Sarpi’s arguments. With regard to Hobbes’ analysis of excommunication used by Popes political weapon, explains Baldin, it is related in De Cive to his treatment of the “interdict,” the most famous example being the “Interdict crisis of Venice.”[59] Hobbes is known for his support of absolutism, founded on a pessimism rooted in Sarpi’s thought. Sarpi claimed that there existed in every individual what he called the libido dominandi, an insatiable appetite that inevitably corrupts humanity:

It happens with everything good and well instituted, that human malice progressively devises methods of operating abusively and of rendering insupportable what was established to a good end and with the highest principles.[60]

Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book Leviathan. Beginning from a mechanistic understanding of human beings and the passions, Hobbes postulated what life would be like without government, a condition which he calls the “state of nature.” In that state, each person would have a right, or license, to do whatever they pleased. This, Hobbes argues, would lead to a “war of all against all” (bellum omnium contra omnes). As such, if humans wish to live peacefully they must give up most of their natural rights and create moral obligations in order to establish political and civil society. This is one of the earliest formulations of the theory of government known as the “social contract.” Hobbes concluded that people will not follow the laws of nature without first being subjected to a sovereign power, without which all ideas of right and wrong are meaningless: “Therefore before the names of Just and Unjust can have place, there must be some coercive Power, to compel men equally to the performance of their Covenants.”[61]

[1] Yates. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, p. 438

[2] Yates. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, p. 399.

[3] Nicholas Hardy. Criticism and Confession: The Bible in the Seventeenth Century Republic of Letters (Oxford University Press, 2017), p. 70.

[4] Stefanie Beth Siegmund. The Medici State and the Ghetto of Florence: The Construction of an Early Modern Jewish Community (Stanford University Press, 2006), p. 446 n. 37.

[5] Samuel Guichenon. Histoire généalogique de la royale Maison de Savoie justifiée par Titres, Fondations de Monastères, Manuscripts, anciens Monuments, Histoires & autres preuves autentiques (Lyon, Guillaume Barbier, 1660), p. 708. Retrieved from http://cura.free.fr/dico3/1101cn135.html 

[6] Diana Zahuranec. “Turin Legends: Royal Alchemy.” (August 23, 2015). Retrieved from https://dianazahuranec.com/2015/08/23/turin-legends-royal-alchemy/

[7] Eugène Defrance. Catherine de Médicis, ses astrologues et ses magiciens envoûteurs : Documents inédits sur la diplomatie et les sciences occultes du xvie siècle (Paris, Mercure de France, 1911), p. 311.

[8] Michael Heyd. Be sober and reasonable: the critique of enthusiasm in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995), p. 58.

[9] Sefer Elim (Amsterdam, 1629), p. 3.

[10] Franca Trinchieri Camiz. “Music and Painting in Cardinal Del Monte's Household.” Metropolitan Museum Journal, Vol. 26 (1991), pp. 214.

[11] Noah J. Efron. “Myth 9: That Christianity Gave Birth to Modern Science.” In Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion, ed. Ronald L. Numbers (Harvard University Press, 2009), p. 84.

[12] Maurice A. Finocchiaro. Galileo on the world systems: a new abridged translation and guide (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1997), p. 47.

[13] Mario Biagioli. Galileo, Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism (University of Chicago Press, 1993).

[14] “Paolo Sarpi.” Encyclopedia Britannica (Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., August 10, 2018).

[15] Eric Cochrane. Italy 1530–1630 (Longman, 1988). p. 262.

[16] Yates. Rosicrucian Enlightenment, p. 172.

[17] Roland Mousnier. The Assassination of Henry IV (Scribner, 1973), p. 181.

[18] A. P. Martinich. Hobbes: A Biography (1999), pp. 37-9.

[19] William J. Bouwsma. Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty (University of California Press, 1968), pp. 600-1.

[20] John Martin. “Castelvetro, Giacomo.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press.

[21] David Wootton. Paolo Sarpi: Between Renaissance and Enlightenment (Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 91.

[22] A. J. Hegarty. “Brent, Sir Nathaniel.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.).

[23] Yates. Rosicrucian Enlightenment, p. 172.

[24] Ibid, p. 173.

[25] Ibid., p. 148.

[26] Yates. Rosicrucian Enlightenment, p. 140.

[27] Åkerman. Rose Cross over the Baltic, p. 174.

[28] Ibid., p. 439.

[29] Ibid., p. 88.

[30] “libertinage.” Dictionnaire mondial des littératures (Larousse)

[31] Richard Popkin. The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza (Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 104.

[32] Yates. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, p. 432.

[33] Åkerman. “Three phases of inventing Rosicrucian tradition in the seventeenth century,” p. 159.

[34] Mersenne, letter to Peiresc of 1635; cited by R. Lenoble, Mersenne et la naissance du mecanisme (Paris, 1943), p. 41.

[35] Yates. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, pp. 232-233, 370; Moshe Idel. Kabbalah in Italy, 1280-1510: A Survey (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011).

[36] Corrado Claverini. “Tommaso Campanella e Gioacchino da Fiore. "Riaprire il conflitto" a partire dal pensiero utopico e apocalittico.” Giornale Critico di Storia delle Idee, 11, 2014 (in Italian).

[37] Lenoble, op. cit., p. 31. On Descartes and the Rosicrucians.

[38] Yates. Rosicrucian Enlightenment, 446

[39] Rodolfo Papa. Caravaggio (Firenze, Giunti, 2002), p. 130.

[40] Antje Bultmann Lemke. “Gabriel Naude and the Ideal Library” (1991). The Courier, p. 40.

[41] Alexandre Du Sommerard & Edmond Du Sommerard. Les arts au moyen âge: en ce qui concerne principalement le Palais romain de Paris, l'Hôtel de Cluny, issu de ses ruines, et les objets d'art de la collection classée dans cet hôtel (Paris: Hôtel de Cluny, 1838), pp. 207–214.

[42] Max Gauna. The Rabelaisian Mythologies, (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996) pp. 90-91.

[43] The Variorum As You Like It, ed. Horace Howard Furness, vol. 8 (Philadelphia, 1890), pp. 39, 161.

[44] Peter L. Bernstein. Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk (John Wiley & Sons, 1996). p. 59.

[45] Yates. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, p. 447

[46] Yates. Rosicrucian Enlightenemnt, p. 150.

[47] Leonard C. Bruno. Math and Mathematicians: The History of Math Discoveries Around the World (Baker, Lawrence W. Detroit, Mich.: U X L., 2003) p. 100.

[48] Yates. Rosicrucian Enlightenemnt, p. 152.

[49] Åkerman. Rose Cross over the Baltic, p. 221.

[50] William R. Shae. “Descartes and the Rosicrucian Enlightenment.” In Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Essays in honour of Gerd Buchdahl, ed. R.S. Woolhouse (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988), p. 84.

[51] M. G. de l’A (initials of Gilles de I'Aunay). Nouveaux memoires pour servir a l’histoire du cartesianisme (No place, 1692),42; cited in William R. Shae. “Descartes and the Rosicrucian Enlightenment.” In Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Essays in honour of Gerd Buchdahl, ed. R.S. Woolhouse (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988), p. 80-81.

[52] William R. Shae. “Descartes and the Rosicrucian Enlightenment.” In Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Essays in honour of Gerd Buchdahl, ed. R.S. Woolhouse (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988), p. 80-81.

[53] Letter to Mersenne, April 1634 ([14]1, 286).

[54] Cogitationesprivatae ([14]10, 213; [13]1, 2).

[55] Yates. Rosicrucian Enlightenment, p. 155.

[56] Tom Sorell. “Hobbes, Thomas (1588–1679).” Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2002).

[57] Ian Donaldson, ed.. Ben Jonson: A Critical Edition of the Major Works (1985), p. xiv.

[58] Ibid.

[59] Gregorio Baldin. “Hobbes, Sarpi and the Interdict of Venice.” Storia del pensiero politico, 2/2016, May-August.

[60] Su le immunità della chese, SG, p. 293; cited in William J Bouwsma. Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty: Renaissance Values in the Age of the Counter Reformation (University of California Press, 1968), p. 518.

[61] Leviathan. 1, XV.

Volume Two

1. The Elizabethan Age

2. The Great Conjunction

3. The Alchemical Wedding

4. The Rosicrucian Furore

5. The Invisible College

6. 1666

7. The Royal Society

8. America

9. Redemption Through Sin

10. Oriental Kabbalah

11. The Grand Lodge

12. The Illuminati

13. The Asiatic Brethren

14. The American Revolution

15. Haskalah

16. The Aryan Myth

17. The Carbonari

18. The American Civil War

19. God is Dead

20. Theosophy

21. Shambhala