Johannes Valentinus Andreae

His role in the origin of the Rosicrucian legend is controversial. In his autobiography he
indicated the Chymische Hochzeit ("Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz") as one of
his worksas a "ludibrium", possibly meaning "lampoon". In his later works, alchemy is the
object of ridicule and is placed with music, art, theatre and astrology in the category of less
serious sciences.
In the 1960s, as part of a hoax claiming the existence of a medieval secret society, a set of
false documents, the Dossiers Secrets, was planted in the Bibliothque nationale de France.
One of the documents claimed to provide a list of "Grand Masters of the Priory of Sion", and
Andreae was listed as the seventeenth Grand Master . It is possible that this was because
the list tended to includes names of people who were associated with alchemy, such as
Nicolas Flamel.