Frances Yates and the Writing of History Author(s): Brian Vickers Source: The Journal of Modern History, Vol.

51, No. 2, Technology and War (Jun., 1979), pp. 287-316 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1879218 . Accessed: 14/08/2011 01:28
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Review Article Frances Yates and the Writingof History

Brian Vickers
Harvard University The publication of Frances Yates's study, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, 1 has raised a number of important issues concerning the writing of Renaissance history, the history of ideas, the history of science, and the history of politics and monarchies. With the last of these-her accounts of Frederick V of the Palatinate, the court of Rudolph II, the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War-I shall have nothing to do and await the findings of the historians.2 Setting aside these matters still leaves much to discuss: the
1 Frances Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972), pp. 269. All numbers in parentheses referto this book. 2 The roll call of British historians who welcomed the original publication is remarkable: Christopher Hill (New York Review of Books [October 4, 19731, pp. 23-24: ' Its excitement is gloriously infectious, its scope is breath-taking"); John Kenyon (Observer [January 28, 1973]); Sir Isaiah Berlin (Observer [December work of imagination and learningby a great scholar"); Joel 16, 1973]: "A magnificent Hurstfield(Times [February 1, 1973]: "so eminent a scholar, . . . the truth, so skillfullyunravelled"); Asa Briggs (New Scientist [November 23, 1972]: "brilliant analysis . . . compulsive reading"); J. H. Elliott (New Statesman [January26, 1973]: "A brilliant book, writtenwith an intellectualpower and a verve which are likely to leave a deep impression on all those who are fortunateenough to fall under its spell"). Hugh Trevor-Roper went to the unusual lengthof reviewingit twice: in the Sunday Times (December 17, 1972): "A brilliantand exciting book . . . delicate scholarshipand a profoundstudy of symbolism," and in Listener (January18, 1973): "A major work . . . exact scholarshipaddressed to historicaldetail." Other favorable reviews came fromFrederick Coplestone (Spectator [January 20, 1973]), Lisa Jardine (Tablet [February 24, 19731), Anthony Powell (Daily Telegraph [December 21, 1972]), and Colin Wilson (Books and Bookmen [January 1973]: "A really scholarly book . . . a model of how such a book should be written,' and BritishBook News [May 19731: 'learned, original and exciting"). Among the historiansof science and philosophy there was less unanimity:Charles G. Nauert noted that much of the evidence was vague or nonexistentbut found it "a significant contributionto the world of learning" (Renaissance Quarterlv 28 [1975]: 366-67); C. A. Ronan, while pointingout that the new experimentalscience of the Royal Society was "something fromthe mystical-magical Rosicrucian approach," declared it "another quite different importantcontributionto our understandingof Renaissance thinking" (Annals of Science 31 [1974]: 85-86). Less impressed were P. F. Corbin in Modern Language 69 (January 1974): 149-51: "Though there is much in her thesis which is ReviewR stimulatingit cannot be accepted as proven," the evidence is "circumstantialor speculative," "inconclusive," and "a sense of context" is often lacking; and the anonymous reviewerin the Times LiterarySupplement of April 20, 1973 who pointed out some crucial weaknesses in the historical sections: "A major disappointment, lacking the solid basis of research normallyassociated with its author . . . in some

[Journal of Modern Historyv 51 (June 1979): 287-3161 1979 by The Universityof Chicago. 0022-2801/79/5102-0033$02.28

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genesisof the Rosicrucian its significance "movement,"' its influence, for and the development the Renaissancein general, of science in particular. of Yates's book are themethods Almost as important as theconclusions by in orderto producethese conclusions. whichevidenceis treated is an extraordinary The Rosicrucianmovement episode in the troubled history of the earlyseventeenth We do not knowwhether such a century. "fraternity" ever existed,and Yates is carefulto say thatshe does not know either(pp. xiv, 206-7). Our only evidencefor its composition is first being containedin two anonymous literary, pamphlets publishedat Cassel in 1614 and 1615. These are rather brief the first productions, (or Fama, to use Yates's short to fourteen title)amounting pages in a modern translation to ninepages (pp. 238-51),thesecond(or Confessio) amiounting (pp. 251-60). They describethe foundation and constitution of a groupof initiates who devotetheir lives to the studyof the occultand to the twin ends of praisingGod and helpingmankind. They practicealchemybut denouncefalse alchemists who are greedyand fraudulent. bitterly They practicemedicine and criticize those doctorswho accept moneyfortheir work.Theirfraternity is idealistic, Theirdoctrine philanthropic. belongsto the broad stream of Renaissance occultism, acknowledging Eastern influences in Paracelsus).Their (and, nearer at hand,finding a kindred spirit founder is said to have "constructed in all a microcosm corresponding motions to the macrocosm"(whatever thatmeans) (p. 248), theyuse the in confidence themillennium thattheir doctrine willbe justified. Everypoint in theirmanifestos could be illustrated many times over fromseveral No one familiar centuries of the occulttradition. withthisliterature could otherthana fairly describetheirdoctrine as anything ordinary, harmless, of familiar unobjectionable adaptation materials. Yet in Yates's handsthey of a dynamic become the exemplars intellectual movement whichtypifies "the Renaissancemind" and has incalculable on such men as influence
differences between Andreae and Dee and between Comenius and theRosicrucians a pointmadeagainby the Dee scholar,C. H. Josten, who declaredthat"thereis no traceofanyfiliation ofthecontents ofthetwoworks"(Andreae's Chyinical Wedding and Dee's Monas Hieroglyphica, "whichas yetdefies complete and certain interpretation'), concluding with thehopethat"nobodywilltake Dr. Yates's conjectures for facts" (Ambix 20 [1973]:132-33).CharlesWebster briefly notedthat"the evidence remains totally unconvincing," theconnections argued are "contestable ... questionable," while the work of Andreae Comenius,and Bacon is quite remotefrom Rosicrucianism, which "itself never occupied more than the extremefringe of Europeanthought," and in England"was nevermorethanan eccentric and peripheral phenomenon' (English Historical Review89 [April1974]:434-35).A. J. Turner (British Journa lfor the History of Science 6 [1972-73]: 442-44)found thebook "not since despitemuchspeculation "the evidencefails too often" veryconvincing," especiallyfor the claims of influence by Dee on Khunrath and on the whole ",movement." Turnerremains"unconvinced thatthe Rosicrucian manifestos were morethana literary anything exercisein a mystical genre,"drawing on the occult tradition, 'which gave expression to an idealistic and fantastic programme of political wish-fulfillment, entirely lacking a basis in political reality." mysticalgeometryof the Cabbalist traditions,are adept in magic, and await

respects seriously misleading' (pp. 445-46). He also insistedon the fundamental

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Francis Bacon, Comenius, Descartes, Kepler, Newton, and the whole of the Royal Society. It becomes "a whole culture," whose ruthless suppression by the forces of orthodoxymarks a tragicclosure of a movementwhose How is potentialcan only be described as the equal of the Enlightenment. this imposing picture built up? whether In part it is a triumphof rhetoric. Yates invests all her writing, historical description or philosophical analysis, with an excitement which will take many readers along with it. Prague under Rudolph II was "a for new develexcitingin its potentiality meltingpot of ideas, mysteriously opments" (p. 17); Bohemia is a world "seething with strangeexcitements"' (p. 28); "The strangelyexciting suggestion" is that John Dee inspired "the Rosicrucian movement" (p. 40); intense excitement" was "aroused by the Fama" (p. 45); the mechanical statues at Heidelberg were "enough to excite amazement" (p. 59). Around Frederick "deep currentswere swirling," while "all the mysterious movements of former years . . . were gathered to a head" in the propaganda for him (p. 90). John Dee had a ''strange, explosive, religious mission" in Bohemia, perhaps affected by "the new Lurianic Cabala which was capable of exciting remarkable phenomena of a religious nature" (p. 228). And so on. The rhetoric of excitement,though, will not affect the reader if he is unsatisfiedby the argumentand its serious claims for the importance and significanceof all these phenomena. Here we must record a defeat of logic, demonstratedin a numberof ways. Yates states that her book attempts "to provide a historiand it is as a historicalwork that I for this line of thinking, cal framework would wish it to be judged" (p. 221; cf. pp. xiii, 201). As such, then, it must be judged. If the historianhas a prime concern it must be with the meaning ot his documents. In addition to the normal respect for semantics he must faithfully reconstructthe context in which a particular judgment is made. A of Johann Valentin simple example of both processes is Yates's treatment Andreae and his use of the word ludibriurn. Andreae (born 1586) was a who published anonymouslyin 1616 a Lutheran pastor from Wuirttemberg work called ChymischeHochzeit ChristianiRosencreutz. Anno 1459 (Strasburg). Yates shows that it is based on the age-old alchemical use of mariiage as a symbolfor the chemical process and alludes to the Rosicrucians insofar as the name of its chiefcharacter is ChristianRosencreutz, who experiences a religiousvision involvinga banquet, a castle presided over by a King and read her Queen, with various mysticalexperiences (pp. 60-64). When I first book I was skeptical of Yates's claim that this work "ranks almost as a thirdRosicrucian manifesto" (p. 50). By page 65 this claim has become that it is but another version of the allegories of the Fama and the Confessio." (based on the allegorical structure To me it seemed to have a quite different six days of Creation) and to be a form of glamorous rhapsody about alchemy (in a chivalric setting)which makes opportunisticuse of the recent Rosicrucian publications. The publication shortlyafterwardof an authoritative two-volume study of Andreae by J. W. Montgomeryconfirmedthat skepticism was the right response.3 Montgomery adds to his previous
3 JohnWarwickMontgomery, Cross and Crucible.Johann ValentinAntdreae 2 vols. (The Hague, 1973),vol. 1. An(1586-1654).Phoenixof the Theologians, vol. 2, and Alchemy, and RelationswithRosicrucianism dreae's Life, World-View,

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studiesof sixteenthand seventeenth-century Lutheranism a detailedbiogand manuscript raphyof Andreaefrompublished sources, a studyof his scientific and religiousattitudes, a commented editionof the Chvmische of Andreae, primary and Hochzeit, and a fullyannotatedbibliography secondary.The rangeand accuracyof his scholarship is impressive, not of the French and confusions least in the way he exposes the inaccuracies historian of Rosicrucianism, Paul Arnold, on whomYates reliesso heavily and uncritically. The significance of Montgomery's book, briefly, is its demonstration that of the Rosicrucian Andreae was "thechief orthodox opponent ideology (not a supporter of it,pace mostinterpreters)" (p. ix). Montgomery showsthat of the two Rosicrucian there is no evidence for Andreae's authorship evidenceof his lifelong to cabalism, and overwhelming pamphlets antipathy of the occult. Andreaewas an orthodox astrology, magic,and otherforms Lutheran pastorand theologian who triedto puthis ideals intopractice by organizing Christian societies,notedfortheirseriousdiscussionand their practical spirit of mutual variouspamphlets aid, and by writing a advocating of society. His Christianopolis Christian reform (1619) is a utopia which bent and his completeaccepperfectly expressesAndreae's humanitarian tance of the "fundamental theological approach of confessional Lutheranism" is centralto Andreae; (p. 127). The religiousframework work" (p. 55). Although some indeed,he "never wrotea non-theological friends of Andreaehad occultleanings, the Montgomery easilydemolishes "Guilt by Association"techniqueused to align Andreaewiththe occult through them. Yet Andreaedid publishin 1616 the ChvmicalWedding, in whichthe main characteris ChristianRosencreutz, the supposed founderof the Rosicrucian sect. The workitselfhas veryslenderparallelswiththe Rosicrucianliterature (pp. 171-72) and substantial divergences (pp. 225-30)differences so fundamental thatone criticconcludedthatits purposewas "to ridiculethe Rosicrucian himself notes that myth,"and Montgomery some aspects of it "seem in partto be a directslap" at the Rosicrucian
"The Chvmische a barelylegible Hochzeit,"withNotes and Commentary," giving facsimile of the 1690English translation with detailed commenby Ezechiel Foxcroft tary.Cross-reference between Montgomery's bookand Yates's can be veryilluminating. Thus Yates attempts to link Andreaewithanother occultist, Simon Studion, author of a complex thatAndreae astrologico-chiliastic work,Naometria.She writes it in his workTurris forhe mentions "undoubtedly knewtheNaometria Babel," but reports onlythat"Andreaeis veryobscurein whathe says aboutthe prophecies of whichhe linkswiththoseofthe AbbotJoachim, Naometria, St. Brigid, Lichtenberg, Paracelsus, illuminati" Postel,and other (p. 50). This of courseimplies thatAndreae is perhapssympathetic, perhapsaffected by the same mentality, but is certainly not hostile.If one turns to Montgomery's one finds a clear accountof book, however, whichis shown to belongto the same occult tradition as RosiNaometrianism, of Andreae's written crucianism (Montgomery, pp. 202-6), but also a summary judgment on this system,which is "unqualifiedly negative"in his drama Turbo in whichitsfollowers (1616-the yearof his Chymical are lampooned. As Wedding), for Turris to beingobscure,the fifth dialogueis devotedexpressly Babel, farfrom Naometrianism, whoseastrological and cabalistic are dismissed: "I would pretensions to heaven,but I am enraged denynothing at you who reads lies intothe heavens" (Montgomery, pp. 206-7). Yates seems reluctant to give herreaders the truth about criticism of the occult.

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manifestos (p. 227). Why,then,did Andreaetake over the name Rosenhisputative creutz and eveninclude dateof birth, 1378,in a cryptogram (pp. answeris thathe was attempting to supplant 171-72)? Montgomery's the of the Rosicrucian occultnature withtheir"anti-papal, cabalismanifestos, chiliasm"(p. 169),by a Christian allegory. Rosencreutz is tic, astrological no longer a Mage who abandonshis pilgrimage to the birthplace of Chrisacquiressecretknowledge from the East withwhichhe establishes tianity, an esotericfraternity in the West whichawaitsthe apocalyptic end of the world. Now he is a 'Christian Everyman' who receives God's grace of Christand the "through the invitation to attendthe spiritual marriage that"'Andreae Church"(p. 228). Montgomery madeRosencreutz concludes the hero of the HoIchzeit not simply to satirizethe Rosicrucian but myth, If thatwas his goal it has to be recorded thatAndreaefailed creating confusion forcenturies. his workis recognizably different from Although the Rosicrucian manifestosits firstreaderssoon assimilated it to them,it becamethesourceof further and as earlyas 1699 Rosicrucian speculations, Andreaewas thought to be theauthor of all three.Realization thathis plan had backfired came bitterly to Andreae,who in his autobiographical vita (written at the end of his lifebut not published until1799)expressedhis of a brood of monstrosities: disgustthat it had proved "productive a which you maywonder was evaluated ludibrium, and interpreted with subtle ingenuity by somepeople,foolishly in demonstration of theinanity enough, of the curious' (p. 37). Montgomery translates the word Iadibrium as A. E. Waite.4It is a wordwhichrecursin Andreae's ""fantasy," following in his references to the Rosicruciansall of whichare scornful and writings, In 1617 Andreaepublished dismissive. a satirical dialogue,Menippus(enthesocial reforms promised by the Rosicrucians have notmaterialized. One of the speakers asks, "Do you believe that there really are some members-or is the whole thinga Iudibriam on the part of curiositymongers?"The otherrepliesthathe does not know,but regrets thatso But many peoplehave suffered "through unrealized hopes of membership."" perhapstheydeservedto, says the first some speaker, 'fortheypreferred artificial and strange thanthesimple wayrather wayof Christ,' whocan be reached "by prayers,tears, fasting, exercises" (pp. zeal, and spiritual 181-82). Againstthis spuriousand corrupt proposalAndreaewrotean Invitatio Fraternatis in 1617-18whichhe described in his autobiography Christi as being expressly "ludibrio illi RosencruIcianoopposita,' and whichoffers insteada Christian brotherhood whichincludescare of the neighbor, the and other humanitarian of wealth, sharing practical suggestions (pp. 184-85). The following year AndreaepublishedTirrisBabel (1619) whichhas the "'siveJudiciorum stibtitle de Fraternitate Rosacae CrucisChaos." Whereas theRosicrucians had claimed thatthe"generalreformation' wouldcometo all menregardless of language Andreaesays thatthe effect of theirwork has been to increasechaos. At theend ' Fama' is made to admitthatall her wondrousclaims are worthless (p. 186). Only a year later, in De
4 See A. E. Waite, The Brotherhood (f the Rosy Cross (London, 1924) and comments (p. 552). Montgomery's

to christiatize the mvth' (p. 228). primarily

that larged in 1618), which recorded a widespread feelingof disappointment

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occultism in general, syntagma (1620), Andreaeattacked curiositas pernicie of the Rosicrucian the ludibrium concluding that "unless I am mistaken, is the heart and scandal of occultismin our time" (p. 186). fraternity (ca. 1623),recordto theattackin a dialogue,Theophilus Andreaereturned millennium did not take feltwhenthe Rosicrucian ing the disappointment place (ibid.). is the productof a serious Andreae's polemicagainst Rosicrucianism that"the idea of a Christian sense of outrage Society" had been Christian's thattheyexisted. assuming by a groupof charlatans-always appropriated concretemodels of what such a He attackedtheirscheme and offered Societatisimago, discovered by G. H. societyshouldbe. The Christianae time in 1954,5describesa in 1944 and publishedfor the first Turnbull whichhas some simireformed religion learnedsocietybased on Lutheran some to the Royal Society,and belongsto to Bacon's New Atlantis, larities in learnedacademieswhichwas widespread-evenJohnEvelyn an interest and study.6Andreaenot forretirement wishedto founda lay monastery in only drew the model but actuallyestablisheda Societas Christiana measureto Rosicrucianism. as a counteractive 1618-19,again explicitly a society in 1642he described his efforts to found Writing to Duke Augustus "'quam fictitiae ludibrio Rosicruciae (p. indigno opponeremus" Fraternitatis to Comeniusin 1629he recordshow "post famaevanae 213), and writing ante in hoc coivimus, Fraternitatis Roseae] ludibrium [Comeniusspecifies: . . . Scopus fuit, CHRISTUM loco suo restituere circiter. octennium (p. 214). and of theory One of thestriking qualitiesof Andreae'slifeis thefusion He not only of beliefsand theirrealization. practice, the interconnection in his dimensions societybut he gave it lasting realizedan ideal Christian enough,is closed to ""imwhich,again explicitly utopia,Christianopolis, Brothers ofthe Rose Cross" butis open call themselves postors whofalsely (p. 240). In the to the true Rosicrucians, Christians namely,practicing Wilhelm Wense,who had to thatworkAndreaepraisedhis friend preface and deceivedby theFama and had asked, "'If these seen people confused reforms seem proper,whydo we not trythemourselves?"In his funeral sermonfor Wense in 1642 Andreae recordedthat he had strivenfor fraterdeceitful (fictitia) in society"at a timewhena certain improvement nity" had imposeditselfupon gullibleminds(pp. 214-15). history thata man of seventeenth-century It is one of thegreatparadoxes fableand throughout his life,"laughedat the Rosicrucian who consistently, (p. thelittle as he putit in his autobiography combated curiosity-brothers," withtheir brush.As we have seen, Andreae 179),shouldhave been tarred of a twice dismissesthemas fictitiaand four times as the proponents the second the first wordas "deceitful," ludibrium. Montgomery translates as "fantasy," and arguesthatAndreaeregarded Rosicrucianism as "fantasa tic," not as a "jest." Yet why did he call his own ChvmicalWedding ludibrium? Montgomery argues that Andreae "can use the termeither
5 See G. H. Turnbull, Valentin Andreaes SocietasChristiana," "Johann ZeitschriUt Philologie73 (1954): 407-32; 74 (1955): 151-85. fur deutsche 6 See JohnEvelyn, letterto RobertBoyle, dated September 3, 1659, in The of the RightHonourableRobertBovle, 5 vols. (London. 1744), CompleteWorks 5:397-99.

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positivelyor negatively-positively in relationto the Hochzeit, negativelyin referenceto the Rosicrucians" (p. 37, n.). This, I feel, stretchescredibility. All of Andreae's uses of the word seem to me pejorative: his account of the Hochzeit, which had survived even thoughother works of his had perished (as if to say that this of all should have survived!) and had spawned a brood of monstrous and bizarre interpretations,is not, I think, "positive": "Superfuerunt e contra Nuptiae Chymicae, cum monstrorumfoecundo foetu, ludibrium,quod mireris a nonnullis aestimatum et subtili indagine explicatum, plane futile et quod inanitatemcuriosorum prodat" (p. 37). It may be possible to read this as modesty,or self-deprecation, ratherthan as a thoroughgoing recantation,but I find it hard to overlook a rather rueful tone, as if in recognitionof the responsibilityof this work, and his own misguidedattemptto out-trump the Rosicrucians by appropriating the name of theirhero, forgivingfurther life to a movementwhich he had spent much of his life tryingto stamp out. Given that the word ludibrium has unusual importance in Andreae's attitude to Rosicrucianism, it is surprisingthat neither Montgomery nor Yates should give the reader any wider linguisticcontext. Looking it up in Lewis and Short's Latin dictionary we find it glossed as "a mockery, derision, wantonness" (cf. Lucr. 2.47; Livy 24.4.2; 30.30; Suet. Vit. 17). By transferenceit means "A: A laughing-stock,butt, jest, sport" (cf. Livy 1.56.9; Hor. 1.14.15; Quint. 6.1.45) and "B: A scoff, jest, sport . . . standingjest." A standard Renaissance dictionary(Thesaurus . . . post Ro. Stephani et aliorum . . . a Io. Mathia Gesnero . . . Lipsiae MDCCXLIX) definesIlidibriu,n as "Res vana et deridenda,certa talis, qua alius ludit," and gives some interestingreferences from Virgil (Aen. 6.75: r-apidisludibria i,entis,"the sport of rushingwinds") and Quintilian(1.6.32:foedissima . . . ludibria, "the most hideous absurdities" as the Loeb translationrendersit). At whatever level, then, the word had pejorative connotations,and Yates's firstreference to Andreae's ludibrium, in his judgment of his Chy mical Wedding, glosses it as "a fiction,or a jest, of littleworth" (p. 31). But in other places in her book the word's clearly pejorative meaning is ignored. On page 84 it is identified with a "serious game," on page 95 it is a "joke," and on pages 125 and 177 it is equated with "fiction,parable"; on page 129 it glosses the word "merrily," on page 140 it is a "play scene," on page 142 a "comedy," on page 144 it is glossed as "mystical joke," and a "myth." Evidentlyit has become for Yates a flexibleconcept which can be attached to the Rosy Cross fraternity at any convenientpoint-indeed in the index it is even described as "word used of the Rosicrucian movement" (p. 265). Both the contexts in Andreae's writingsand the dictionaryevidence would lead one to agree with Charles Webster that the phrases involvingludibrium are "derisive terms."'7 The importance of determiningthe meaning of this word is that it expresses Andreae's attitudeto Rosicrucianism. For Yates it would clearly not do if what she presents as a major movementin European historywere dismissed as a joke or laughingstock.In order to rehabilitatethe word, and justifyher thesis, she is forced to distort Andreae's actual relation to this "furore." By a series of rhetoricalmaneuvers she gives the impressionthat

Comeniana 26 (1970): 149; quotedby Yates, p. 50.

CharlesWebster, and the Great Reformation," Acta 'Macaria: Samuel Hartlib

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calls the "movement" he was closelyconnected withwhatshe repeatedly (since thereis no evidence of any singleauthor,let alone two, one can hardlygive it the cohesive and organizedstatusof a 'movement'). To the Chvmical Weddingto the Rosicrucian begin with she appropriates 'manifestos": "It is the thirditem in the series which launched the forthreeyears,theFama furore. The seriescame out annually Rosicrucian in 1616" (p. 60). The factthat in 1614,the Confessioin 1615,the Wedding Andreae's work followedthe othertwo does not make it a series, the productof conscious planning. But at least this gets the sequence right, relatedto whichshe elsewhere inverts: "The manifestoes are undoubtedly notby Andreae"(p. 30). the ChemicalWedding, though theyare probably alludes to the No, the relationship is the otherway round,the Wedding not not theyto it; and theyare not "probably,"but certainly, manifestos, as the "propagator of by Andreae.On the nextpage Andreaeis described between theWedding 'Rosicrucian' fantasies" (p. 31); thepatent differences and the manifestos are ignored, Andreaeis said to have given "romantic ofthemanifestos" to thethemes (p. 39), and his work allegorical expression is finally "the totally assimilated to the othertwo (pp. 50, 65), representing climaxof the Rosencreutz myth"(p. 69). As Yates returns to Andreae duringthe course of her wide-ranging evidenceforhis narrative, any doubtsor reservations about the historical behindthe scenes of participation are sweptaway. "Andreae was certainly in his numerous works" thewholemovement to whichhe frequently refers the (p. 50; note that nothing is said of the tone of these references); and "its 'Rosicrucianmovement" was connected withthe ElectorPalatine, theFama and Confessio "may moving spirit"was Andreae(p. 54). Though not be written by the same hand as the Wedding''-thelaws of historical the following veracity compel that qualification but seem also to permit in all threeworksbears groundless supposition-'the plan of theallegories in concert, out intothe world the stampof mindsworking benton sending of Christian theirmyth Rosencreutz"(p. 65). The pictureis beingbuilt expressing a let us remind ourselves-ofa groupof occultists up-a fantasy, is multiple, notsingle, can now sharedprogram. The factthattheauthorship The responseto Rosito suggestcollaborative activity. be subtlyrestated "was chiefly in reply to theFama and theConfesYates writes, crucianism, to the school of sio, the authorsof which,thoughobviouslybelonging Rosencreutz mythology propagated by Andreaein the Chemical Wedding theseworkshas been invertedj, between may [noteagain how the relation I do not put forward any theories have been otherthanAndreaehimself. withAndreae of thewriters who mayhave co-operated abouttheidentities over the Rosencreutz propaganda"(p. 91). But that does not stop her or JanusGruter such as Jungius (who, recording otherpeople's candidates, she suggests."mightbe watchedforclues"), howevertenuousor linsubstantiatable are. So we read thatAndreaeis "the person these suggestions who knew mostabout the Rosicrucian he "and his circle" manifestoes," of Europe(p. beingin contact, open or secret,withmostof theilluininati 137). This whole account of Andreae as the movingspiritbehind Rosiis based on no historical crucianism evidenceof any kindotherthan his for a persona in the unhappyuse of the name ChristianRosencreutz Not onlyis thereno evidenceforit, but againstit we Chmnzical Wedding.

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How by Andreaehimself. of Rosicrucianism criticisms have manyexplicit it: thewordludibrium, She reinterprets does Yates deal withthisevidence? whichincludes Mythology) is used in a work(the Christian forinstance, so thatthisevidence 'mustbe taken to the theater, references favorable but a mustthenbe not derogatory intoaccount" and the wordludibrium speciousmisuseof term of praise(pp. 140ff.).That seemsa self-evidently context.The fact is that Andreae here dismissedthe R. C. linguistic and foolishpeople" and frivolous as "mere players,comedians, Brothers throughout comedies as one that"plays, fraternity their Europe,"references also takestheform Yates's reinterpretation whichcan onlybe denigratory. excerptfromAndreae and then in commenting, of givinga substantial aspect.Thus tonebutto someother attention notto thederogatory drawing noon the ' new-fangled the attackby Truthin the Christian Mythology stage" the "literary thathad been occupying tions' of the Rosicrucians . . vague hintsand malicious conjecproducing "altercations, recently, thatI maynot be "utterly, herself whichshe has withdrawn tures" from condema concern-an unequivocally in so dubiousand slippery involved how muchAndreae showing passage-is takenby Yates as merely natory "as good and morally of the theater valuable,"and thathe only approved play scene (p. 143). Rosicrucian withthe original tampering disliked others to say the least. That seems to me a disingenuous comment, of the AndreaeevidenceconThe mostdrasticof her reinterpretations thatAndreaehad earlierapYates suggests chronology. cernsa putative around ofheart a suddenchange butexperienced oftheRosicrucians proved welcomed"now "seems to be whichhe had first ardently 1617."The myth In its place, he now urgedthe by him as a vain 'ludibrium.' disparaged Societies' . . . to be inspired formation of 'Christian Unions, or 'Christian in the Rosicrucian manifestoes" (p. to thoseexpressed by aimsverysimilar here. First,thereis no evidence converge 140). Several misinterpretations second, welcomed" the Rosicrucians; that Andreae had ever "ardently in was published Wedding Yates does notremind us thatsincetheChymical did hea yearlaterthathe is rejecting third, Rosicrucianism; 1616it is barely to Rosicrucianism-as societies as an alternative not turn to Christian humanitarianism Christian has shown,therewas a consistent Montgomery socithe purposesof Andreae'sChristian his life; and fourth, throughout It is deceptive, to those of the Rosicrucians. eties were not at all similar anxiousaboutthe "extremely then,to speak of Andreaein 1617beconming (p. 143),and it is whichhe had earliersupported course" of a movement ones. intolaudatory his peJorative references to turn even moredeceptive of instance of thistacticoccursin Yates's treatment The mostextreme scientific that Christian utopia in the prefaceto which Christianopolis, as "a joke" thathad nevertheless the R. C. Fraternity Andreaedismissed amongthe learned"and 'an amongmen . . . conflict produced 'confusion and swindlers,"createdby "some of impostors unrestand commotion onlyin theeyes of society (if therereallyis such a one), hazy,omniscient who put theirown "foolish ceremonies"above its own boastfulness," and theLife" (pp. 145-46).From "Him whois himself theWay theTruth, concluYates extracts a singleand positive thisunambiguous denunciation has had at least thisgood sion, that "accordingto Andreae,the furore (p. and realizethe need forreform" thatit has made people think result, he fliesin thefaceoftheevidence, thinks thatconclusion 146). If thereader

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will be moreamazed when Yates, havingclaimedthatAndreae'sworkis inspired by "Hermetic-Cabalist, magico-scientific" trends initiated by Dee, Fludd,and Campanella, concludesthat"Andreae is, then,repeating in a disguisedformin Christianopolis the secret themesof the Rosicrucian manifestos and of his own Chemical Wedding.He disguises it by his apparent of Rosicrucians, rejection not onlyin the preface [thepassagejust quoted]butalso in thetextof thatwork." She is referring to the sequence wheretheguardat the easterngate refuses to certain low classes of entry people, including and "impostors "stage-players" who falselycall themselvesthebrothers of the Rosicrucians." Again,an unequivocal of rejection this fantasy, in line with Andreae's lifelong pronouncements. But Miss Yates can cope: "We have to move carefully here because this is an Andreaenjoke. It is the false R. C. Brothers who are excluded from Christianopolis, notthetrueones" (p. 150). Quite so . . . and by the same token,the putative changeof attitude was also illusory.It transpires that Andreaewas working for Rosicrucianism all the time,as a kindof double agent. II The sequencediscussing Andreaeis typical of a rather disturbing aspectof Yates's work-hertreatment of critics of Rosicrucianism (or the occult,or magic generally). Either she dismissesthese criticsby castingthem as violentenemiesor terrified neuroticsor, as here, she firstignoresthe thengivesa "neutral"summary criticism, of theattack,and finally takesit merely as proofthata seriousdiscussionwas goingon. Thus a series of rathercaustic satires on Frederickof the Palatinatefor his presumed associationswiththe Rosicrucians (pp. 55 ff.) are takenin a completely solemn manner, as an actual account of the Fraternity's doctrines.To thismaneuver perform she has had to empty the satiresof theirmockery and almostinvert them intopanegyrics. As she putsit herself, the "satirical and contemptuous account" of the movement in these documents, "if divestedof the satirical tone and read in a positive sense, gives an impression of Frederick as a religious and reforming leaderwhich fitsin well with thevisionary and reforming toneof the Rosicrucian manifestos" (p. 58; myitalics).One does nothave to be a literary critic to perceive thatthisis an illicit maneuver: "A parodies B's extravagant claims:remove theparody and you have an accurateaccountof B." But if you "remove" the satire froma satire,what is left?Later in the century, this time in England, another satiric attackon the Rosicrucians appeared, a pamphlet dated 1676, fromwhich Yates quotes this announcement: "To give notice,that the ModernGreen-ribbon'd Caball, together withthe Ancient Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross; the Hermetick Adepti and the companyof Accepted Masons intend all to dine together on the 31 of November next. . . . [A comicmenuis thendescribed and thosewho think of goingare advisedto wear spectacles]'For otherwise'tis thought the Said Societies will (as hitherto) maketheirAppearanceInvisible'" (p. 211). The jest in grouping all theseinvisible secretsocietiestogether is plain,but perhapsonly Yates could takeit as seriousevidencethat"a wholegroupof esotericsocieties" were regarded as havingsomething in common. The issue is notas trivial as thatlast examplemight suggest.It has long

Review Article 297 beenknown thatSir Isaac Newtonwas extremely in alchemy, interested but the significance of thisinterest has-of course-been interpreted variously. To understand it we wouldneed to knowfarmorethanhas yetbeen made clearof Newton'sattitude toward thatactivity. Happily,Newtonhas leftus his opinionof the Rosicrucians in his copy of Vaughan'stranslation of The Fame and Confessionof the Fraternity R.C. (1652), now in the Yale Library. Newtonhas copiedintothisbook someother information aboutthe Fraternity and ends his notewiththefollowing brusqueremark: "This was the history of thatimposture," on which,however, Miss Yates comments: "This, however, need notnecessarily imply it couldmerely contempt; mean thatNewtonknewthatthe Rosencreutz was a myth, story a ludibrium" (p. 200). Thereis a curiouscombination of qualities in Yates. She is sufficiently widelyread as a scholarto know of this note; she has the integrity to publish, and notto suppressit; yet she finally interprets it in thisperverse manner, to the oppositeof its declaredmeaning, and goes on to a further rash of speculation (pp. 201-2). The dangerof thisapproachto history is thatall thepositions and polarities can be reversed: blackbecomeswhiteif we divestit of the satire,wordsdo not meanwhattheyappearto mean. If cardied out withsufficient thiswouldproducea massivefalsification energy of the evidence;and Yates's book is not without tracesof thiseffect. As a final exampleofthisinversion of negative criticism intotheclaimfor theexistence of positive "recognition" we might consider thestated opinion of Comenius.As we have seen withAndreae,one reaction to the Rosicrucians was of seriousdisappointment: despitetheadmirable Christian philanthropy of themanifestos themillennium had notarrived, indeednothing had changed.The R. C. Brothers had failedto appear. In The Labyrinth of the World and theParadise of theHeart (written 1623,printed 1631)Comenius records theappearance of a manin a marketplace calling thepeopletogether and describing theaccomplishments ofa newgroupof sevenmenwhoknow all thesecrets of nature and can overcome all human limitations. The people are delighted to think thattheycould now "without error, knoweverything . . . liveforseveralhundred yearswithout sickness and grey hair, ifthey only wished it" (p. 163). Hopes grow enormously and each man desires to partake,each writeshis petition to be receivedinto the group,but each petition "was returned without an answer;and their joyful hope was turned to grief"(ibid.). The disappointment was so greatthatmen"ran from one region of theearth to another, lamenting their misfortune thatthey couldnot findthese happymen" (p. 164). But thenanother trumpet called,another manappeared,selling his wares from the Rosicrucians: "Now everything thatwas sold was wrappedup in boxes thatwerepainted and had variouspretty inscriptions, such as Portae Sapientiae; Fortalitium; Gymnasium Bonum Macro-microUniversitatis; cosmicon;Harmonia utriusque Cosmi; Christiano-Cabalisticum" (ibid.), and so on. All who purchasedwere forbidden to open theirboxes because otherwise the "secret wisdom" in it "would evaporateand vanish." But some mendid, and "finding themquiteempty, showedthisto others."All, incensed, cried "Fraud!" to the salesman,who managedto calm themby saying that the magic objects were really there but that "they were invisible to all but 'Filiae scientiae'(thatis, the sons of science)" . . . (p. 164).The fussdied down,thesalesmanwentaway,and thepeoplewho had soughtthese mysteries were "sittingin cornerswith locked mouths."

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"Eitherthey all this,drawstwo conclusions: narrating Comenius'spilgrim, (as some believedof them),and were to the mysteries had been admitted obligedto carryout theiroath of silence,or (as it seemed to me, looking any spectacles) they were ashamed of theirhopes and ot their without asks his guide whether uselesslyexpendedlabour" (p. 165). The pilgrim answer will come of all theirhopes and receivesthe unsatisfying nothing thesemenknow willcome ifone waits,forperhaps something thatperhaps refuses to "continuegaping the timewhenit will happen.But the pilgrim here" since he does not know "of a singleexampleof one [man] who succeeded": "Let us proceedhence." thispassage of millenarian movements To thereaderwho knowsanything ring.Those who have faiththatthe timewill come can be has a familiar all difficulties; thosewho do not believeare alwaystorn accepting patient, held up by by the suspicionthat it is all a hoax, a case of "imposture has been phrase-thatthe whole operation credulity''-inBacon's striking Yates But whatis Comenius'sown attitude? by a mountebank. performed textsshowthat"the young allusionsto Rosicrucian arguesthatthe specific and had hoped in all thisliterature, had evidently steepedhimself Comenius (pp. 165-66).Yet it seemsto formuchfrom it," but was thendisappointed any sense that fromthe outside,without me thatthe passage is written of the had ever been a would-bemember "Comenius" (or the Narrator) group.Whatwe are givenis a view of othermen's hopes and credulities, but-it seems to the Pilgrim--ashamedof theirhopes possiblysatisfied, and of theiruselesslyexpendedlabour." I see no groundsfor Yates's that establishing of this passage as autobiography, interpretation literalist Comeniuswas a "follower" of Andreae; nor, even less, do I see that to do the chosen has anything Comenius'sfinalvisionof angelsprotecting angelology"(p. 169). What I do find Christian with "Hermetic-Cabalist is notso muchthe of Rosicrucianism in a number of thesecritiques striking at all as thedeep was such a fraternity there aboutwhether totalskepticism The composers had been fulfilled. thatnoneof its promises disappointment who occultists of the manifesto, then,coulldbe seen as genuineChristian who hopedforwhattheycouldnotachieve;or theycouldbe seen as frauds joke, perhapsforgain, perhapsforfun. Either a practical had perpetrated aboutthe and could onlyarouse suspicion was disillusioning way the result whole process. III Yates observesthatin due course the Roscrucian"furore"died out, and concernsEur-opean forit. Part of her explanation she has an explanation to and the ThirtyYears' War, on which I am not competent history oftheoccultin this nature thegeneral butanother partconcerns pronounce, in againstit. In her earlieressay on hermeticism periodand the reactions mania.''8 "tendsto have persecution thatthe Rosicrucian scienceshe wrote Here she drops that objective account and claims, in effect,that the shortage of draimatis (whoeverhe was-there seems a distinct Rosicrucian
I F. Yates, "The Hennetic Science," inArt.Scienceand Tradition in Renaissance 1967),pp. 255-74: quote (Baltimore, Historv in the Renaissance,ed. C. Singleton from p. 263.

Review Article 299 personae)had everyreasonto feelpersecuted sincehe was in facthunted. We have heardof the conspiracy of history; theory thisis its first cousin, the persecution theory.Here again Yates's rhetoric can be seen. She is continually a situation, polarizing rendering it as a violent imputing conflict, anger, She uses metaphors derived malice,to theparticipants. from warsto accountfor-dareone say, create?-an animus against theseforces of what she calls enlightenment. In two successive sentencesshe uses the word "enemies"("of themovement"') three times-a mansuchas Libaviusis not just a criticbut an enemy(p. 51). and thereare other"enemies" (e.g., p. 57). Mersennemakesan "onslaught' on the Rosicrucians, writesvarious "attacks" in which Casaubon's redatingof the Hermeticato a postChristian periodbecomes"a weapon" (p. 111). The Rosicrucian movement suffered a "-total collapse . . . withthe defeatat Praguein 1620" which "usheredin a greatsatiricalcampaign"againstit, "the campaign of the conquerors" (112). Such metaphors mayseemmerely signsof stalewriting, butthey have someseriousconsequences. One is thattheemotions of stress and combatare nourished by beingindulged and resultin a falsification of particular reactions.Thus the sustainedchallegeto the pseudo-sciences made by Mersenne is presented in violentterms, as if Mersenne were a totalitarian concerned withextermination policies. He is supposedto have said thatthe occult sciences 'must be eliminated, root and branch. . . . . . severely destroyed repressed" (p. 112).To see howfalsethatpicture is it is necessary to read Mersenne. This giving-in to violenceis dangerous. In a number of places Yates puts and "witch-scares," accordmovement side by side theRosicrucian which, ing to her (usingTrevor-Roper as an authority) in size and weregrowing ferocity during the seventeenth As historians will say (have said), century. that interpretation ofthewitch-scare is extremely and likeso much doubtful, else in Yates's book it deals withthe contrary arguments by the simple device of neverconsidering them.But it is the connection of all thiswith Rosicrucianism that is especiallydisturbing. Chapter8 is called "The Rosicrucian in Francein 1623we Scare in France." In twoworks published find thedevil(pp. 103ff.) allegations thattheRosicrucians are in leaguewith and are themselves accusation witches.This is a familiar theoccult against and magic and has been heard in sciences,notablyastrology, alchemy, But Yates arguesthatthisis peculiarly everyperiodsinceSaintAugustine. to the mood of the 1620sand thatboththese pamphlets fitting "are really theRosicrucians. Thisclaimis madefour working up a witch-craze" against on page 105;on thenextpage it is repeated times and is linked just as often up to a German witch-craze withthe suggestion thatthiswas all perhaps to stampout "the Palatinate-Bohemian partof a conspiracy with movement its connections withthe Rosicrucian manifestos." Yates thenamplifies this claim by examining the polemicsof Naude, and by the timeshe reaches of a country she has createda picture Mersenne paralysed by fear.Meris said to be "'influenced senne'sreaction 'The by fear' (pp. 112). Further: of the Rosicrucian in Germany, failure movement its suppression byfirce and by savagelyadversepropaganda,affected the tone of thought in the intoit an atmosphere earlyseventeenth century, injecting offear' (p. 113; I have italicized thegrossly overstated emotive gestures). The R. C. Brothers "4could into sorcerers easily be turned by witch-hunters' (p. 124). In the and moreterrible ".earlier times' of theearlyseventeenth relations century

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betweensecret societies "would have been deadly serious and full of danger"(p. 217). The philosophers aboutto foundthe Royal Society'had to be very careful. Religious passions were still high, and a dreaded witch-scare might startat any moment to stop their efforts" (pp. 188-89). One can onlydeplorethiskindof writing. It worksin muchthesame way as the witch-craze itself:imputeviolence,oppressionand persecution to those who disagreewith you and you more or less give yourself carte blanchefordealingwiththemas you will. Yates is alwaysreadyto attack witch-hunters, but in the process she runs the same danger:where the witch-hunters created witchesto fulfill the needed role, she is creating witch-hunters. If we actuallycompare her account of Mersenneor the Royal Societywithher dark hints("the Societyhad manyenemiesin its earlieryears; its religious positionseemed unclear;witch-scares were not a thing altogether of the past," p. 189) thenwe soon see wherethe truth lies-the phantoms fadeaway, daylight returns. But thispersecution theory has another and perhaps even more serious consequence in that it psychologises all critics of themovement. In thisclimate offearno one can be allowed to criticizean occult group because he has substantial and seriousintellectual objections to its ideology or its methods. He criticizes it because he is afraid ofit; or because he is afraidthatother people willthlink he is a nmember of it; or becauisehe is secretly attracted to it. JamesI published a book attacking magic.In Yates's world thishas to be understood as follows:"Jameswas desperately afraid of anything savouring of magic;thiswas his mostdeep-seated neurosis.. . . Mersenne, too, was afraid.He had to protect his own interest in mathematics and mechanics from any taintof conjuring. This gave an asperity to his anti-Renaissance . . ." (p. 113). This typeof historiography movement is pernicious because it implies thatthecritic'sresponsewas notobjective butpersonal, inspired by irrational so thathis judgments motives, can be takenless seriously-in fact,he maynotreallvbe opposedto the movement at all. . . . Yates even uses thiscritical modelto accountforthemakeup of the RoyalSociety.The "Oxfordgroup," a numberof scientists who were among the founding members of the Royal Society,are said to have been actingto dissociate themselves'as completely as possible fromimputation of magic,still a dangerforscientific groups" (p. 187). For thisreason,she suggests, they intensify their praiseof Bacon's experimental method, and "carefully" dlraw away from the occultmathematics of Dee and Fludd (ibid.). The evidence for theirassociation with this tradition is too superficial to be worth discussing.9 Now comes the proof:"The way was now prepared forthe of a witch-scare" unleashing (ibid.). This witch-scare-atermimplying, I take it, theactivehunting downand brutal examination of personsthought to be witches-consisted in no moreviolenteventthanthe publication in 1659 by Meric Casaubon of Dee's own SpiritualDiary, recording his "supposedconversations withangels." (Yates gives us no detailsof this work,but it wouldseem thatDee was the pathetic victim of an unscrupulous imposture.) Casaubon's act in publishing this book is now giventhe crudestpersonalinterpretation: 'It appears that Casaubon had personal
9 Wilkins is supposed to have been "drawingquite openlyon the Dee-Fludd tradition forhis work on 'mathematical magic'" (187): Yates cannotsee that one can borrow one idea from a man without taking all the otherstoo.

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reasons for the publication, throughwhich he hoped to establish his own way of writinghistory? Surely not. exploit it. Is this a fruitful The dramatizationand polarization of all the parties concerned creates an image which does not correspond to reality. This is a technique which defendersof the occult have used before. An example close at hand is the controversy between John Webster and Seth Ward which Miss Yates discusses (pp. 185 ff.). In his attack on the Universities, Academiarimn Exvamiieni (1654), which includes an apologia for the hermetic tradition, Webster denounces the "Schools" (i.e., Universities) for their attitude to the occult: "that noble, and almost divine Science of naturalMagick, is by them not only repudiated,abominated, and prosecuted with fireand sword, but also the very name seems nauseous and execrable unto them. .10 Webster was refuted, point by point, by Seth Ward (in his Vindicae Academiariun [1654], who on this point simplycalled his opponent's bluff: with Magickshouldnotonlybe prosecuted It is surely thing, thatnatural a wonderful this fire and sword, but that it should be execrable also. Yet notwithstanding my life,That M[r.] W. may passe safely I dare adventure lamentable persecution, it eitherin hispocket,or in his hand,or in his mouth withthisExamen,carrying of this Nation, the severall Colledges of Eaton, through both the Universities at London,and all the rest,(provided he Winchester &c. the Collegeof Physicians without any dangerof Bell, have a care how he passes by the Collegeat Bethlem) Booke, or Candle, Fire, Swordor Execration." Ward states that Webster's great authoritiesin magic are disregarded not "because of the name of Magick, much less for any conjuringthey teach, but for the cheat and imposturewhich they put upon us," unlike the true "natural magic' of science. He is willingto give Webster the benefitof the doubt as to whetherhe wrote maliciously,to whip up feeling,or just out of ignorance: "But M. Webster knew not this, 'tis plaine thereforehe is no freefrompersecution.''12 That is a clear and relaxed Witch, and is therefore of the tolerance to be expected in the 1650s: Miss Yates seems to statement me to have seriously misjudged the intellectual climate in France and England in the seventeenth century.
orthodoxy . . ." (p. 188). First create a witch-scare, then find someone to

IV
Given the paucity of the evidence, it will by now be clear that Yates has set task indeed: we only have two documents produced herselfa very difficult by or forthe Rosicrucians (whoever they were) and, as we have seen, much contemporarycomment expressed disappointmentat the nonmaterialization of either acts or persons. Yates does not seem daunted by the slenderness of the evidence. But the reader who approaches her book as a serious historicalstudywill be botheredby the amount of sheer speculation in it, by the uncriticalways in which the Rosicrucian movementis defined,and by " JohnWebster, Academiaruin E.xamen, p. 68. This and Seth Ward's replyare in facsimileby Allen G. Debus in his Science and Education in the reprinted
" Seth Ward, Vindicae Academiaruni, p. 34; SES, p. 228.

Seventeentlh Centurv. The Webster-WardDebate (London, 1970), hereaftercited as

is on p. 150. SES. This quotation

12

Ibid.. p. 35; SES, p. 229.

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claims for its influence. In many places argumentdisapthe indiscriminate words are "if," "may," "perhaps," pears altogether.Some of the recurrent "would have," "surely," "must have," a sequence which oftenculminates in the positive form "was." Of very many examples-the process is cumulative, as speculations at first tentative gradually harden and then speculations-I select but a few: "Inigo Jones, become the base for further if he came to Heidelberg . . . would surely have been interestedin . . . Salomon de Caus" (p. 12). "Surely the visit of the Garterembassy . . . must and exciting event for . . . Andreae?" have been an immenselystimulating (p. 33). (There is no evidence that either of these contacts took place.) Newton, in reading Ashmole's collection of alchemical tracts, "would have observed" a quotation fromthe Fama, "would have realized" this, "would have read" that piece of occult lore, and so on (p. 201), so it "'mightbe of use"' to approach Newton's alchemy from Rosicrucianism. Newton was interestedin God-evidently mathematics "had not entirelysatisfied him. [a telling qualification],a hope Perhaps he entertained,or half-entertained that the 'Rosicrucian' alchemical way throughnature mightlead him even higher." "At any rate," Newton drew on Ashmole, who drew on Maier, to entertain who drew on Dee, so that it would "not be historicallyfantastic as a hypothesisbasis for futurestudy, the possibility that a 'Rosicrucian' element, in some revised or changed form no doubt, might enter into Newton's interest in alchemy" (p. 202). Note that despite the tentative expressions, which I have italicized, all the suppositions and speculations are allowed to stand, oftenin the formof a rhetoricalquestion. Yates has a great penchant for the unanswered (and unanswerable) question-as she says herself at one point, "I am glad to leave this in the form of a question!" (p. 87). But it is not enough to ask questions that neitheryou nor anyone else can answer, and the cumulativeeffectof these speculations is to create a structurewhich has a charm and excitementof its own but which has lost contact withthe realm of the knowable or visible. In a passage such as the followingwe seem to be hoveringon the verge of the ineffable:'"We cannot reconstructthe vanished glories of Heidelberg, but the Chemical Wedding may give us some idea of what their aim may have been. to present the encyclopedia [of all knowledge] in symbolic form, and also, perhaps, to induce an atmosphere throughwhich occult relationshipsmight be perceived, and the hidden harmoniesof the universe mightbe heard" (p. which beset 68). As she writes in the preface, "The doubt and uncertainty the seeker afterthe invisible Red Cross Brothers are themselves the inevitable accompaniment of the search for the Invisible" (p. xiv). To returnto the question of evidence, we note at times the argumentex silentio. Libavius attacked Dee's monas hieroglyphicain 1594 and "would thus certainlyhave been able to recognize the influenceof Dee's Monas in him in his disapproval of the Rosicrucian manifestoes,which would confirm them" (p. 52). By the same token, then, we mighthave expected Libavius to say so. Elias Ashmole's commentthat Maier was not properlyrewarded for his scholarlylabors in England (slightthoughthey were) reveals a whole stratumof history(it begins, as do so many of these dangerous passages, with the words "the impression is gained"), in which Maier is the intermediarybetween England and Germany to establish an alchemical-political alliance." Unknown to him, Elias axis for "an Anglo-Palatinate-Bohemian to "restore, or to contine" a huge international Ashmole is thus attempting

Review Article 303 movement (p. 196). I find no evidenceforany of thesespeculations. Where evidenceactuallyexists it can be interpreted in oppositeways: take for instance the significance of dedicating a book to JamesI. Fludd dedicated his History of the Macrocosmto JamesI in 1617,and this is seen as a sinister attempt to involveJamesin Hermetic philosophy, "attempting by that dedication to drawhimintothatpoint ofview,or to givetheimpression thathe is favourable to it" (p. 78). Yet six pages laterCasaubon's dedicationof his attackon thepre-Christian date of the Hermetica, also dedicated to James, thusseemed"to putJamesintotheanti-Hermetic camp . . ." (p. 84). Kepler,too, "like Fludd''-but unlikeCasaubon,it seems-also dedicateda book to James (p. 223). Such evidenceis of almostno value. Where the evidenceis patently insufficient Yates sometimes in the takes refuge phrase"I believe" (e.g., pp. 51, 205), although in some cases it is joinedat once to the less certain"may" form(e.g., p. 83). Equally unsatisfactory are her attempts to claim that certainideas or attitudes are peculiarto the Rosicrucian In these passages no movement. is madeto survey attempt thefieldin other directions; thereis no independentevaluation of thetopic,merely theassertion of one's own case and the ignoring of everyone else's. In an alchemical workby Khunrath (1609)there is an illustration of a cave through which"adepts" are moving toward light: "This maywell have suggested imagery in the Rosicrucian Fama" (p. 38). But the metaphors of darknessand light, and indeedcaves, as imagesof knowledge and ignorance, are extremely old and extremely widelydisseminated.The Farna's call fora new scienceto breaktheinfluence of Aristotle and Galen in the universities is describedby Yates as "a thrilling call to attention, thattrumpet call whichwas to echo throughout Germany, reverberating thencethrough Europe" (p. 42); it is in fact one of the stock in thecriticism of the Universities positions whichhad been madetimeand had been blownsince theFama. Thattrumpet againin the centuries before Petrarch at least. The emblemsusingChristian imagesof dew descending of protection from heaven(p. 46) and of Jehovah's wingsas a symbol (pp. at an without 55 ff.)are statedto be specifically Rosicrucian, any attempt in emblem and indeed literature intotheir tremendous dissemination inquiry in Christian beforehand. art and literature forseveralcenturies We are not in traditional natureof the symbolism givenany accountof the completely the Christian Wedding (p. 60), nor are we told thatthe "emphasison the practicalutility"of knowledge(p. 150) does not exist as a unique and butgoes linkbetween and theChristianopolis Bacon's New Atlantis specific the Bible, and the Stoics and was propagated back to SaintAugustine, by Humanists the Renaissance, throughout especiallyin the shape of the vita activa. A final, to appropriate and particularly striking, exampleof thistendency their and familiar general imagesto herspecific argument, cutting prehistory on the is rebornfrom 1613 on), occurs in her comment away (history to Sprat's Historvof the Royal Society.This plate "familiar frontispiece" withFrancisBacon on his showsa 'bust of CharlesII, the royalfounder, on his right."The engraving thefirst and William left, Brouncker, president, was made by WenceslausHollar, "a Bohemianartistwho leftBohemia, and whatYates calls presumably forreligious reasons,in 1627" (myitalics), "One now "this history"makes her look morecloselyat the engraving: and noticesthe prominent wingedangel, blowinga blast on a trumpet,

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of thisfamous crowning Charles II witha wreathof fameas the founder this Society. Bacon is underthe angel's wing. One cannothelp noticing it couldbe an allusion to 'undertheshadowof now,and wondering whether Jehova'swings,'and whether the trumpeting angelwas meantto recallthe Fama, and those hopes of long ago, so long deferred and now, at last, doubts close is impressive, butcertain realized"(pp. 191-92).The rhetorical remain.Greatsignificance is attached to thetrumpet and to theangel,both of whichfeature in the Rosicrucian manifestos. The ordinary reader,withthelogicbehind the in front of him,can at once perceive out theengraving "All angelsare winged;manyangelsblow trumpets; connection: ergo,any must winged angelwith a trumpet be a Rosicrucian one." Yet ifwe go on to as Yates putsit-and she reprints lookat theplate"withrenewed interest," it (pl. 30) thatwe maycheck herinterpretation-we noticetwo odd things. it is holding it over its right The angelis not blowing its trumpet; shoulder withitsright handwhileplacing thewreath withits left hand.And Bacon is forperspective to four feetin notunder itswings;allowing he is aboutthree front of the angel's leftarm. These are, I know literal-minded objections, in the spirit butafter of ludibrium, all Yates has fewpeers in sadlylacking and the visual arts in the Renaissance.One her knowledge of philosophy thanthe senses, or can onlyconcludethatthe driveforproofis stronger that this is a fieldin which the historian can (must?)be satisfied with evidenceat a farlower level thanusuallyavailable. It does seem, indeed,that Yates has suppressed her criticalfaculties. she is dealingwiththe occult. and not everyaspect of that Admittedly is susceptible to rational But even aftermaking such activity explanation. there are passagesin whichtheentire absenceof any skepticism allowances abouttheoccult'smethods and aims must thaton raisethereader'sconcern this level, too, normalprocesses of evaluating evidence have been temporarily suspended.Thus in the prefacewe are told that in his Mollas fora JohnDee "believed thathe had discovered a formula hieroglvphica and mathematical science whichwould encombined cabalist,alchemical, thelowest able its possessorto move up and downthe scale of beingfrom to the highest spheres.And in the supercelestial sphere,Dee believedthat in he had foundthe secretof conjuring angels by numerical computations of the Renaissance the Cabalisttradition" (p. xii, myitalics).The student occultwillbe prepared of Dee. to grant thatmuchindulgence to thebeliefs ifhe has readthatstrange theMonas.1' But whatare we to especially work, make of the laterdiscussionof the Moniasas a "mysterious epitome"of withmathematical combined where all qualifications have alchemy formulae, disappeared'? "The adeptwho had mastered theseformulae could move up and down the ladder of creation,fromterrestrial the matter,through heavens, to theangelsand God" (p. 198;myitalics).Whatnow'?Has Yates with Dee's beliefs'? identified Does she simplyaccept them,and has she deliberately converted themfromthe possible-but as yet untried-tothe actual'?It seemsas ifshe has, fora fewpages latershe writes, without any thatin Rosicrucianism qualifications or reservations, "magicwas a dominating factor,working as a mathematics-mechanics in the lower world,as in thecelestial celestialmathematics in the world, and as angelicconjuration
13 For a translation of the Monas by C. H. Josten, see thatstimulating journal Ambix 12, nos. 2 and 3 (June-October devotedto earlychemistry, 1964):84-221.

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word "working" supercelestial world" (p. 223). There the matter-of-fact leaves no doubt as to her acceptance of the actual existence of magical operation, with perhaps even a suggestion of its efficacy. Later on in that page Dee is described as a "bold operator," attempting''supercelestial mathematicalmagic," who believed that he had '"gained contact with good angels." Of course, Yates continues his claims to be in contact with the angels were bound to arouse suspicion as to his modes of action, but she does not allow that suspicion to diminish the status of his "technology,"' which was "practical and successful and entirelyrational in its new underAgain the inferencethat somestandingof mathematicaltechniques. thing(whatever it was) worked, was "practical, successful, rational"; again we miss the absence of any caveat to the unwary or innocent reader. The absence of such qualifications is to be noted at every level in this book. The suspension of disbelief occurs so often that it begins to suggest an absence of disbelief, an uncritical indulgence of the occultists' claims. She writeswithglowingapproval of John Dee (e.g., pp. 37 ff.)and approves of Oswald Croll for having cited the Hermetic texts "with reverence" and forbeing "imbued withrespect forthe great Renaissance Neoplatonists" (p. 52). The Christian Wedding is said to be "the work of a deeply religious genius, transcendingall political and sectarian labels to become an allegory of progressive spiritualexperience comparable in its intensityto Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress" (p. 69). To be able to make such a judgmentmeans that produced by this all sense of perspective has been lost. But then everything "movement" is given the same indiscriminate enthusiastic praise: the "'movement" has "a body of serious literaturebehind it," their emblems reach "a high point of artisticexpression" (p. 70). The "movement" may have failed but it "created a culture" (p. 90) and is, as such, eminently worth "serious study" (p. 92). No longer just a "movement" it now becomes "the Rosicrucian age" (p. 177)-perhaps this is the motivation behind her remark,"We know that the later sixteenthcenturyand the early
seventeenth century was an age of secret societies

John Buchan, and societies" evokes the world of the old-fashionedthriller, Edgar Wallace). Finally, Yates claims that her book has "uncovered a lost period of European history. Like archaeologists digging down through layers, we have found under the superficialhistoryof the early seventeenth century,just before the outbreak of the ThirtyYears War, a whole culture, because of such a whole civilization,lost to view, and not the less important
short duration. We may call it a Rosicrucian culture . . ." (p. 231). It seems

. . .

(p. 217) ("secret

hardly worth engaging in detailed argumentwith such a claim. Yates must know what a culture or civilization looks like and mightsome day concede that the purely verbal references to the existence of the Rosicrucian "'movement"-whether hopeful, naive, disappointed, credulous, or skeptical-cannot possibly constitutemore than a patch of foam or a single wave of European culture. It is astonishingthat such a judgment could be arrived at. Looking back it seems that one of the main factors encouragingit was her indiscriminate claims forinfluence,eitheron the R. C. movementor of it on the rest of the world. Extremelyslender evidence is presentedfor these influences-that of John Dee, for instance, seems to rest mainlyon his Monas hieroglyph.It is of Yates's whole approach that claims are advanced and then characteristic at each subsequent reappearance. There is never-not even in the magnified

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firstinstance-any trulycritical, independentweighing up of the evidence. Dee is said in the preface to have "importance . . as an influencebehind the Elizabethan Renaissance," and she announces that a book on Dee by her pupil Peter French has substantiated those claims (p. xii). French's to later, and Dee's "influence in England" is said to have book is referred been "so profoundlyimportant" that "it is certain that the Dee influences would have reached" Anhalt in Bohemia (p. 37). Dee actually 'passed years later, were to in Germany "which, twenty-five near" those territories be the scene of the outbreak of the Rosicrucian movement" (ibid.; my italics), a remarkableinstance of delayed combustion. French is quoted as testimonythat on this European trip Dee was "in an 'incandescent' state" (p. 221). Dee "must have made a great impression in those parts" (p. 38), and his influenceis to be found in the Rosicrucian manifestos"without a shadow of doubt" (p. 39). In the final chapter Yates records how she has "'plunged into the daunting morass of the Rosicrucian literature,there to make a discovery that the major influencebehind the German Rosicrucian movementwas undoubtedlyJohn Dee. One can hardly as yet realize what this means. John Dee now becomes a towering figure in the European scene" (p. 221). Such claims have yet to be justifiedat any level. Nor, might I add, have her claims that Dee's "esoteric and mystical" thought "'inspiredSidney and his circle and the Elizabethan poetic movementwhich they led" (ibid.). Sir Philip Sidney's name keeps popping up as a kind of magic has not worked. Despite all the culturaltalisman,but the sympathetic simultaneous exposures none of Dee has rubbed off.
V

One might expect by now that Yates would show rather less of the historian's true judgment when dealing with her occult figures. This is of course, but we mightstill hope that when she movediout of regrettable, that area into general cultural historyjudgment and discriminationwould return. But we would be disappointed. The case of Francis Bacon is
instructive.

Chapter 9 is called "Francis Bacon 'Under the Shadow of Jehova's Wings' " (pp. 118-29) and attemptsto prove that Bacon's Nevt Atlantis is a Rosicrucian work. But Bacon enters her story well before that. In the opening chapter Yates describes the marriagein February 1613 of I'rincess Elizabeth, daughterof James I, with Frederick V, Elector Palatinate of the Rhine, duringthe festivitiesof which the membersof the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn put on a masque by John Beaumont. Yates tells us that Beaumont dedicated the masque to Bacon in these words: "You that spared of this no time nor travail in the setting forth, ordering, and furnishing edition,14 masque" (p. 6). Yates quotes from an early nineteenth-century and this may simplybe a case of reproducinga textual error; but she could have been expected to at least turn up the appropriate volume of James Spedding's Letters and Life of Francis Bacon. There on page 343 in volume 4 we findthat the text, and the inferenceshe draws fromit, are both wrong. Beaumont's dedication actually reads: "To THE WORTHY SIR FRANCIS
BACON HIs MAJESTY'S SOLICITOR-GENERAL, AND THE GRAVE AND

1'4

of James I (London, 1826),vol. 2. JohnNichols, The Progresses

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LEARNED BENCH OF THE ANCIENTLY ALLIED HOUSES OF GRAY'S INN AND THE INNER TEMPLE, THE INNER TEMPLE AND GRAY'S INN. Ye that spared

no pain nor travail in the setting forth, ordering, and furnishing of this Masque, (being the first fruits of honour in this kind which these two societies have offered to his Majesty). At once we see thatthe work is not dedicated to Bacon alone but also, most properly,to the "Bench''-the teachers, officers-of the two societies jointly:it is "ye" not "you." Bacon is singled out, because he was one of the most distinguished lawyers in the land with a lifelong connection with Gray's Inn. Further, the dedication goes on, "and you, Sir Francis Bacon, especially as you did then by your countenance and loving affections advance it, so let your good word grace it and defend it....' There is no evidence that Bacon did any more than encourage the venture, for as Spedding notes, "we have no means of knowing" what Bacon said or did on this occasion since he has left no record of it (ibid.). Yates was perhaps unfortunate to use a bad text, but the full dedication oughtto have correctedher first impression. However, she goes on to make a mountainof inferenceout of it: "If [sic] Francis Bacon devised [sic] the whole [sic] of this entertainment, he must have [sic] taken the marriageof Frederick and Elizabeth very seriously [sic] and have been profoundlvin sympathy[sic] with the alliance which it represented. That the author of The Advancement of Learning, which had been published eight years previously,in 1605, took time off from his other studies [sic] to work for [sic] this wedding" (p. 6) makes it an even more significant event. The references to the Advancement and his 'studies" are fine examples of irrelevant association used to build up a sense of Bacon's supposed serious intellectualinvolvementwiththis whole political situation. A few pages later this utterly unsubstantiated inferencesets more firmly: "Francis Bacon had shown himselfvery well disposed towards the Princess and her husband in his enthusiasticinterestin a productionfor theirwedding" (pp. 13-14). No longerthe tentativeinference,"must have"; now the definite "had." Indeed the second-stage speculation has hardened so quickly that any qualification about whether Bacon had "devised" this entertainment or was merely interestedin it can be shruggedoff altogether. Francis Bacon "composed one of the entertainments for her wedding" (pp. 121-22; my italics). Equally indiscriminate are her claims for Bacon's wholesale influenceon the occultist groups (e.g., pp. 86, 97, 181)-clearly Bacon's European reputationwas very high, but it was very high with everybody. That the occultists mav have been influencedby him (the evidence cited includes a numberof ideas that Bacon shared with many others) does not prove that there was anything specifically meaningfulabout his doctrine for them. Yates practices a formof influenceby contamination:by citingan author's name sufficiently often in the same context there is a chance that the inattentive reader will thinkthat there was indeed a substantialconnection. Thus in the main discussion of Bacon she seizes on two points made in The Advancement of Learning, firstthat there ought to be "a fraternitv in learning and illumination," second that this intellectual unificationwould duplicate the generation of knowledge made by God, "who is called the father of illumination or lights."15Both, of course, are commonplace ideas in
's Bacon, Works, ed. JamesSpedding et al., 14 vols. (London, 1857-74),3:327. Futurereferences to thisedition will be included in the textas FB.

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the Christian Humanist tradition. Yet Yates immediately themin interprets the narrowest specific in the contextof Rosiway as being"significant" whichwas to have "a fratemity crucianism, of illumination" (pp. 118-19). Here a significant distinction is lost: Bacon always arguedthat learning shouldbe available to all,16but the Rosicrucian magicians restricted communication "to one another." In Miss Yates's own words, they were "illuminati" in a specifically esotericsense, not in the termsof Bacon's moregeneral and traditional metaphor forknowledge as light. In any case it is difficult to see what the supposed "parallel" is meantto do, unless perhaps to insinuate thatthesetwo ideas of Bacon inspired the "outbreak" of "the Rosicrucian movement," "nine yearslater." If thisis an attempt at tarring withthe Rosicrucian brushit is oblique, to say the least. Subsequently we are reminded of thechronology of Bacon's laterworks(Novum Organum, 1620;De Augmentis, 1623),and whatI have called"influence by contamination" appearsagain: "It is important to realizethatthe Rosicrucian movement is contemporary withthe Baconian philosophy, that the strange Rosicrucian excitements weregoingon in Europeduring the years in which theworksof Bacon wereappearing in England"(p. 121).Well,we mustreply, it might be important to realizethatpointif you were able to show any tracesof influence of the one on the other.Otherwise it is no morerelevant thanit wouldbe to suggest parallels between any twogroups of workspublished on the same continent in a twenty-year period-with JohnTaylorthe WaterPoet, say, or Cervantes'sDon Quixote. The actualdetailof thewriting in the paragraph beginning theattempt to linkthese two "movements"is a morassof hints,insinuations, and halfinferences: "We mayspeculateon how [Bacon's] influence mav have been imported. Both Frederick and Elizabethwerereaders."We knowthatthey owned Raleigh'sHistory of the World, ergo, theyare 'likelvto halvehad worksby Bacon withthemat Heidelberg" (p. 121). Elizabeth"wouldhave known Bacon in England"(ibid.). "Perhaps another transmitter of Baconian influence might have been MichaelMaier" who "maywellhave also carried books by Bacon to Germany," forBacon's Wisdom of'theAncientis "may wellhave had a fascination forMaierand his school" (p. 122). To support these unprovable speculations Yates claimsthat"Bacon, too [like Maier], had sought forhis own natural in mythology." This is to get the philosophy structure of The Wisdomof'the Ancients, in whichBacon uses myth to illustrate his philosophical ideas, not to create them,quite wrong.In the absence of any evidence Yates dismissesthe whole conceptof evidence: "However we need not particularize too muchas to what the pointsof contact mayhave been" (p. 122).We can simply takeit forgranted thatthe Palatinate's intellectual climate "would have included an interest" in Bacon. So muchforthe facts. To attempt to strengthen this linkbetweenBacon and the occult Yates now faces the difficulty that Bacon deliveredsome violentattacks on and otheroccultsciences,whilehe "nowherementions alchemy Dee, and nowhere cites his famous Monas hieroglvphica" (p. 122).I To answerthis
16

Science, trans.S. Rabinovitch (London, 1968),chap. 1. 17 Incidentally, "famous"seemsan extravagant claim. Dee's Monas is possibly the mostobscureworkever written even its modern by an Englishman: editorC. H. wellversedin alchemy Josten, he is, has to confess in places. How though bafflement

See theadmirable account Bacon. FromMagicto by Paolo Rossi,Francis

Review Article 309 objectionshe uses anotherfavorite tactic, claimingthat a criticavoids mentioning the occult because he is afraidof beinglinkedwithit. Yates remindsus that she had used this argument once before,in 1968: "I suggested thatBacon's avoidanceof mathematics and the Copernican theory might have been because he regarded mathematics as too closelyassociated withDee and his 'conjuring,' and Copernicus as too closelyassociatedwith Brunoand his extreme 'Egyptian' and magicalreligion. [By notreferring to] Dee and his mathematics . . . Bacon mayhave been evadingwhatseemed to himdangerous his programme subjectsin orderto protect fromwitch. . ." (p. 123). This is a fantastic hunters suggestion, forwhichthereis no evidenceof any kindin any language at any level. Bacon had no reasonto fearwitch-hunters. All his workexpressesan untrammelled in confidence the creativepowerof the humanmind,indeeda too naive confidence that truth wouldprevailon its own. His lack of interest in mathematics can be seen fromhis earliestwork,long before"Rosicrucianism"(in the 1597 Essay "Of Studies"he wrote"the Mathematickes [makemen]subtle"[FB 6:525]; he had nothing else to say on the topic),and is to be explained by the inferior in the sixteenth-century role givento mathematics universities (Bacon was only briefly at Cambridge) and by its pejorative associations withthe thickthumbs of artisansand navigators. Clearlythe cabala was associatedwithconjuring, but Bacon knew the difference betweencabala and mathematics, even if Yates seems to have forgotten it. This is not the whole of Yates's argument, though.Let us recall that James I, when presented witha copy of the Novum Organumin 1620, dismissedit witha joke: it was a work 'like the peace of God, which passeth all understanding." Let us forget otherpossible explanations of James'sinability to grasp that essay in iconoclasmand induction; let us insteadpress on withthe previous argument: "It has never,I think, been suggested thatJames'sdoubtful attitude towards Baconiansciencemight be connected withhis verydeep interest in, and dread of, magicand witchcraft.These subjectshad a fascination for him whichwas tied up with in his earlylife. . ." (p. 123).This made neuroses aboutsome experiences Jamesan unsuitable criticof the "Renaissance Magia and Cabala," especiallywhenthey"vergedon sorcery"(p. 123). It is notactually stated,but thewholebentof thatpassage is to suggest thatBacon's Nov,um Organiim is a cabalist,hermetic work,the perusalof whichmight raise "the problem of defining the difference between good magicand bad magic" (p. 124). If Yates meansto suggest that, thenwe have one ofthemostbizarre of all the checkered accountsof Baconianscienceyetgiven.But she does notstopto discussthe point,inserting insteada paragraph on JohnDee, who is then associatedwithbothJamesI and Bacon. James refused to have anything to do withhim-veryusefulevidence,of course-so therefore Bacon "must have takengood note of James'sattitude to Dee, and he mustalso have noted" thatmen like,Raleigh,Harriot and Northumberland were also not encouraged by James.Ergo: "Bacon wouldhave been careful to avoid, in works intendedto interest James, anything savouringof Dee and his mathematics. suspicious Even so, Bacon did notsucceedin allaying James's of scientific suspicions however advancement, carefully presented" (p. 124).
could we estimate to it in the sevenits "fame," then?Are there1,000references teenth 100? even ten? century?

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is based on the nonexistent The second of thesetwo sentences of premise in the Novum James's"suspicions"of the concealedmagicand witchcraft the discussion but morepernicious. Not onlydoes it crudify insubstantial, reasonsforBacon's intellectual by suggesting purely psychological personal, to the occult,but it overlooks Bacon's manyfree-spoken attitude critiques it imputes of thattradition. to hima despicable intellectual Further, cowardice in thathe is supposedto have been attracted to thetradition butjudged it better forhis own self-interest to concealhis predilections. Yates putsthis to "the witch-crazes insinuation more clearly later on, referring which in mind Descartesso prudently avoids, whichFrancisBacon has prudently to argueex (p. 224). This seemsto me a pretty desperate maneuver, silentio thata manis secretly attracted to magicbutprudently concealsit. It it is is onlya fantasy, thatproduced butitis a harmful one, and thetradition and morally dubious.The nextthree intellectually bankrupt paragraphs (pp. that Bacon was moving"warily' in a insinuations 124-25) add further was mounting,' whichaccountsforhis climatewhere"witchcraft hysteria So far,Yates tellsus, we "have been moving thatit cautiously," thinking "might"be illuminating to studyBacon side by side withRosicrucianism. she has "evidenceof a moststriking Now, however, kind" forhis debtto thatmovement, the New Atlantis.In thisposthumously namely, published workBacon describes his ideal scientific community, "Salomon's House, or the Collegeof the Six Days' Work,' locatedon a utopian islandwhichhas been discoveredby some sailorsdrivenoffcourseby winds. It is a work devotedto, thenew scienceyetfullof biblicalechoes,likemuchof Bacon's work,appropriately herebecause of thederivation of the scientific communityfromKing Solomon (praisedby Bacon as havingcompiledthe first naturalhistory); typicalof Bacon, too, is its interest in pageantry and sensualsplendor. If we wereto compare it in a freeand open manner with the Rosicrucian manifestos we wouldobservesome generalparallels, such as the notionof philanthropy commonto themboth-and to innumerable otherworksof the Christian Renaissance-and some clear differences. In place of the Rosicrucian hermeticism and mysteries, in Bacon's everything community is designedto be communicated; and whereasthe accountsof sciencein theFama and Confessio are vaguein theextreme, withtheusual alchemists' prevarications (cf. pp. 247, 250, 258) Bacon offers an extremely particularized thumbnail sketchof a high-powered scientific research institute. Yates's technique foraligning thetwo "movements" takesvariousforms. Firstshe summarizes Bacon's workin such a way as to make it appear closer to the Rosicrucians: it is a community withan "evangelicalChrisattention to the scrollof instruction whichone of the officials hands the travelers, described by Bacon as being"signedwitha stampof cherubin's wings,not spread but hanging downwards, and by thema cross' (FB, 3:130). This is hercomment: "So was the Rosicrucian Fama sealed at the end with themotto 'UndertheshadowofJehova'swings,' and thewings, as we have seen, often appearas characteristic emblems in otherRosicrucian literature" (p. 126). It is misleading, first, to describethe Fama as being "sealed" withitsmotto; themotto merely appearsas a quotation at theend
tianity" of "'brotherly love," run by "priest-scientists." Second she draws devious behavior.
Organumr and can be simply dismissed. The first sentence is no less

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of thetext.Bacon's scroll,by contrast, has an actual emblem drawnon it (not statedto be sealingit). The imageof thewingsis common (I suppose) to hundreds of non-Rosicrucian emblems throughout the Christian tradition. The wingsin Bacon are explicitly said to be of a cherubin, notof Jehova. them to be Jehova's These are notthesame. If Bacon had wanted he wings wouldhave said so. The significance of their beingcherubin's wings maybe evidentto those morelearnedin Christian but I would draw symbolism, attention to a passage in Exodus where God describesto Moses the he musttakefrom thechildren of Israelin order sumptuous which offerings to build the Tabernacle.In the midstof the Ark18 theyare to place a or propitiatorie" "Mercy seat of puregold" (a "covering as the marginal gloss informs of beaten us), on top of whichshallbe placed two cherubims gold: "And the Cherubims shal stretch theirwingson hie, covering the . . .' (Exod. Mercyseat withtheirwings,and their faces one to another be relevant thatthe New 25.17 ff.; see also 37.9). It might conceivably Atlantis is one of thebest loci forobserving Bacon's stresson the scientist as an embodiment of mercy towardmankind, a well-known of his feature philosophy (one of the "Fathersof Salomon'sHouse" has "an aspectas if he pitied men" [FB, 3:1541). Other explanations would be possible,of content of evidencethanthe higher course,but theywould need a rather one favored by Yates. As forthephrase"undertheshadowofJehova's wings,' it maybe a text but it had an enormous appropriated by the Rosicrucians in dissemination It could neverhave been seen as distinctively Christianity. Rosicrucian, could never have been theirtrademark. The text is biblical,and many instances of "shadow" as a metaphor forprotection easilycome to mind.19 To be hidden"undertheshadowof thywings"is found in Psalm 17, verse 8; the truebelievers"put theirtrust underthe shadow of thywings" in Psalm36, verse7; in Psalm57, verse1 thepsalmist's soul "trusteth in thee: willI makemyrefuge" yea, in theshadowof thywings Ps. 91:1). (similarly One of the finest sermons by JohnDonne is the second Prebendsermon, preached at St. Paul's on January The textis the seventh 29, 1625/6. verse of Psalm63: "Because thouhastbeen myhelpe,Therefore in theshadowof thywingswillI rejoyce." In his introduction Donne says thatalthough the Psalmsin generalare "the Manna of the Church,"an ointment and balm that heals all wounds, "so are there some certainePsalmes, that are Imperiall Psalmes,thatcommand over all affections, and spreadthemselves over all occasions,Catholique, universall Psalmes,thatapplythemselves to all necessities. This is one of those;for,of those Constitutions whichare called Apostolicall, one is, thatthe Church shouldmeeteveryday, to sing this Psalme. And accordingly, S. Chrysostone testifies, That it was decreed, and ordainedby the Primitive Fathers,thatno day shouldpasse "20 Further, without the publiquesinging of thisPsalme. for Donne himself
18 quotefrom lx the GenevaBible,STC 2202,theEnglish translation whichBacon wouldhave knownin his youth. 19See, e.g., Gen. 19:8;Judg. 9:15; Cant.2:3; Isa. 4:6, 25:4 30:2 32:2,49:2; Ezek. 31:6, 12, 17; Hos. 14:7. 20 Donne's Prebend ed. JanetM. Mueller Sermons, Mass., 1971),p. (Cambridge, 91. Mueller's edition thetextof thestandard and Simpson Potter reproduces edition and adds to it a useful introduction and commentary. See pp. 220-21fortherelevant from thedocuments to by Donne:thelatefourth-century quotations referred Apostol-

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as Dean of St. Paul's, this "is one of those five psalmes, the daily of this whereofis injoyned to me, by the Constitutions rehearsing psalms,as it "21 This must have been, then,one of thebest-known Church. of God: forthe protectiveness is one of the mostwidelyused metaphors is the property of any one sect.22 neither the sick to the factthatin the New Atlantis Yates nextdrawsattention House, and thatone oftheofficials sailorswillbe caredforat theStrangers' forhavingbrought themrefuses to accept payment withmeeting entrusted describesit, newsthattheyare to be allowedto land. As Bacon's narrator said, 'He mustnot be he smiling him some pistolets, "when we offered (as I takeit)thathe had salarysufficient twicepaidforone labour':meaning that learned)theycall an officer of the stateforhis service.For (as I after thisis a and unequivocally paid" (FB, 3:132). Clearly twice rewards, taketh relevantto all men in public politics,extremely moralpoint concerning than Bacon?). Yates, however,comservice(as who should know better lays it downas a ruleforthe R. "The Fama, it willbe remembered, ments: in thattheyare to heal thesickgratis" (p. 126). Unfortunately, C. Brothers First, herdesireto makehercase she has notread Bacon's textattentively. land and not,as she implies, thisincident takes place beforethe travelers to do with after"their sick were cared for." Second, it has nothing of public servants.Third, and corruption but withthe bribery medicine, as "a notary"(FB, concerned identifies the official Bacon twiceexplicitly doctor.This passagehas been notan alchemical 3:132, 133). He is a lawyer, at everypoint. misinterpreted as she calls him,visits official," Yates readson and notesthat"another a white "witha smallredcrosson thetop" (FB, turban wearing later, them had travellers thatBacon's shipwrecked proof 3:135). To herthisis "further come to the land of the R. C. Brothers"(p. 126). Yet he is not simply priest" another official. He tells themthat"by vocationI am a Christian then,thathe shouldweara cross. That it is appropriate, (ibid.). It is rather Rosicrucian a red cross can hardlybe proofthat this is a specifically of thetradition of survey Yates's own wide-ranging notleast after emblem, to Elizabethan chivalry the Red Cross, fromSaint Georgeto the Garter, its disseminaand theFaerie Queene (pp. 3, 66, 69, e.g.)-not to mention Europe in the Crusades,nor its adoptionas a badge by tion throughout as a symbol of active painting other nor,last,its use in Renaissance groups, Christianity.
and which ical Conistitutions, lays downthatthispsalmis to be sungeverymorning, on the authority SaintJohnChrysostom's of Ps. 140, which"commands Exposition and of thispsalmin theearlymorning thedailyrecitation" Fathers oftheAntiochene on the whole of a now-lost commentary goes on (in whatseems to be a fragment of thesoul's desireforGod." expression eloquent psalm)to praiseit for"its intense, 21 Ibid., p. 92. 22 Montgomery in "has argued (n. 3 above), p. 194,n. 122,notesthatF. Lundgreen seal white of two overarching wingsin the Andreae all seriousness thatthepresence alarum tuarum''-which of thecrestwas Ps. 17:8("Sub umbra meansthatthemotto appears at the close of the Fania), and thusthat Andreaewrotethe Rosicrucian notnecessarily werea common, Biblical,heraldic Needlessto say, wings manifestos. evidencethatthe Andreaecresthad Ps. 17:8 as a device,and thereis no historical motto."

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derives Yates's finalpiece of evidence for "Bacon's Rosicrucianism" of how it is thatNew Atlantis givenby the governor the explanation from reproving its secrecyuntilnow. He jokes withthe travelers, has retained that thatthis is a "land of magicians,"and explaining themforimplying of the islandshouldlive in Solomon'sedict laid down thatthe inhabitants by removedfromthe risk of war and destruction happyself-sufficiency, otherlands (FB, 3:144). Their isolationis a moral choice, designedto But everytwelveyears,he laid down, humanrapacity. themfrom preserve fromthe outside was to be sent out to collect knowledge an expedition the passage: "Traveland interprets world.This is how Yates summarizes theydressedin to collectinformation; New Atlantis lersweresentout from theyvisitedand adopted theirhabits,and so the dress of the countries thismeans that manifesto, In termsof a Rosicrucian passed unperceived. to wear no special one of the rules of the R. C. Brothers, theyfollowed in dress and appearancewith markbut to conform habitor distinguishing (p. 127). But here theywere visiting" country the inhabitants of whatever theevidenceof thetextopen againthedesireto proveherpointhas blurred about adoptingthe dress of the in front of Yates. Bacon says nothing thatthosewho "mustbe puton shore simply theyvisit.He writes country underthe names of othernations" (FB, for any time colour themselves to be Dutch or pretend 3:146). That is, if theygo to Englandtheymight but as it is one of the enoughpoint, German.It is, heavenknows,a trivial that "thoughthe name Rose Cross is keystonesin Yates's argument clear it is abundantly by Bacon in the New Atlantis, mentioned nowhere it to hisown parable" and was adapting thathe knewthe Rose Crossfiction There is a fantasy. (ibid.),thenwe mustconcludethatthatwholestructure is no evidencethatBacon knewof the Rosicrucians. repeatthese arguments threepages (pp. 127-29) merely The remaining These are now "undeniably until,once again, theyhardeninto certainty. the and so willanyoneelse who approaches Well,I denythem, influences." that"thisfactwillhave to be topicwithan open mind.WhenYates writes I am afraid of thought," in the future by historians studiedveryseriously in ignoring her discuswill be perfectly justified thathistorians of thought as she assumes willnotbe recognized, sion. I dare say thatRosicrucianism or science," sincewho of thought of history branch it will,"as a legitimate The fact of thesedisciplines? an iota to either can claimthatit contributed with theNew Atlantis (1662)identified thatJohn Heydonin his Holv Guiide the Rosicrucians (a factto whichMiss Yates devotesmostof p. 128) is of rangeof by an appalling of Bacon's transmogrification to students interest concedesthatHeydon'sarguYates magnanimously cranks and eccentrics. or masonic to some Rosicrucian is "not a proofthatBacon belonged ment secret society" (p. 128), but I cannot see that there is any substantial of the "invisibility and he'r own description thatposition between difference andare called Brothers in Neiw Atlantis-whoare nowhere oftheBrothers" to which she adds with great nev er said to be invisible-a description (p. 129). "whom we now knowto have been R. C. Brothers" insistence claims" (whichis how she dismisses Bothseemto me equally"unverifiable which theories Heydonand another"crank" [p. 129]),bothare "fanciful note" of thisphenomfrom taking proper serioushistorians have prevented on the workof a distinenon. That may seem like an unkindcomment

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guished scholar, but I confess I can see no alternative; there is not the slightestshred of evidence that Bacon alluded to the Rosicrucians in this work. He may well have heard about the sect, but if he did he felt sufficiently indifferent to it never to have mentioned it in any of his extensive wntings. Yates may be the most insistent,but she is not the firstwriterto claim that the Neit' Atlanitis is Rosicrucian, nor am I the firstto reject the claim. One of the earlier historiansof Rosicrucianismcited by her is J. G. Buhle, whose account of its origins was freely translated and plagiarized by Thomas De Quincey in 1824.23Yates quotes Buhle-De Quincey on Andreae as the imputed author of the tracts and records De Quincey's theory that English Freemasonry derived from Rosicrucianism via the influence of Fludd (pp. 208-9). What she does not tell the reader, however, is that at the end of his essay De Quincey has two appendices "In Refutationof Certain Speculations." The firstof these24 is 'that the object of the elder Freemiasons was not to build Lord Bacon's imaginary temple of Solonmon,'as proposed by Nicolai in 1806. "Whoever has read the New Atlaintis of Bacon," De Quincey begins, "will discover in this romance a gigantic sketch fromthe hand of a mightyscientific intellect,that . . . indulged in a dream of what mightbe accomplished by a rich state under a wise governor for the advancement of the arts and sciences." The object of Solomon's house in the fable is "the extension of physical science," and r-omance thoughit was, "it led to very beneficialresults; for it occasioned in the end the establishmentof the Royal Society." De Quincey's claim is too simple, but he is right to align Bacon's plan with the establishmentof scientific societies for public 'experiment and research" and not with the closed world of the occult. De Quincey gives a compact summaryof the main differencesbetween the scientific society of the News Atlantis and that of the Freemasons. Whereas the lodges are open to "every decent workman who is sl/i jluris" and differentiate members into higherand lower degrees, Solomon's House is open only to "learned men," who are then "divided into classes according to the different objects of theirstudies": "Only the exoteric knowledge of nature, not the esoteric, is pursued by the House of Solomon. The Book of the Six Days is studied as a book that lies open before every man's eyes; by the Free-masons it was studied as a mystery which was to be illuminated by the lightout of the East" (p. 430). Had the Freemasons really wished to appropriate the Baconian tradition,they mighthave followed his concrete proposals for research. But the "eldest Free-masonrywas indifferent with respect to all profane sciences and all exoteric knowledge of natur-e"and wished to propagate only "a secret wisdom" forthe initiates. De Qtiincey's clear recognitionof the fundamentaldifferencesbetween the Nell Atlantis and the occult traditiondeserved at least a mention in Yates's history.
23 Johann Gottlieb Buhle, Ueber den Ursprunglind die l'ornehnstenSchicksale der Or-dender Rosenkreluzer unld Frevmaurer (Gottingen, 1804); Thomas De Quincey, "Historico-Critical Inquiry into the Origin of the Rosicrucians and the FreeMasons,' LondoonMagazine (January-June1824); reprintedin and cited from The Collected Writings of' Thiomas De Quincev, ed. D. Masson (Edinburgh, 1890; New York, 1968), 13:384-448.

24

De Quincey,pp. 429-30.

Review Article 315 VI pointswe have been able to examineYates's thesiswe have At whatever of "evidence" to accumulation and indiscriminate uncritical found a notably or correction. Two any otherformof qualification make a case, without issueswhich at length, thandiscussed to be notedrather largeissuesremain studyto deal with. it wouldtake a. book-length phenomeThe first of theseconcernsYates's placingof the Rosicrucian All thatI can do hereis to of Renaissance thought. the context non within is the ReRosicrucianism thatsentenceradically: note thatshe simplifies sysnaissance. That pioneerchemistLibavius attackedthe Rosicrucians of occultassumptions it seems,perceiving the interconnection tematically, and within it. As Yates says, he "raises seriousobjections" and authorities 'Magia against of macro-microcosmic against theories "is strongly harmony, . . . , against Agrippaand and Cabala,' against Hermes Trismegistus . . .' (p. 52). shorthe is againstthe Renaissancetradition Trithemius-in is tradition That one exampleshowsherclaimthatthe occultor hermetic fall or literatures the Renaissance-all othergroups,all otherphilosophies element. Main Mersennealso away, this is the one central,defining manifesattendant criticized Cabalism,and all their "animism, Hermetism, tations":he is said to have made an 'attackon the whole Renaissance (p. 111). To on the Renaissancetradition" . . . an onslaught tradition in consequence, a number of mostviolent are ascribed, Mersenne opinions, thatbecause ' Magia and Cabala" have grownthen"the Renaisnamely, . . ." (p. 112),and so on, with mustbe eliminated sance ways of thinking in myth is language.Newton'sinterest and intolerant emotive increasingly at the back of Newton's said to show "the Renaissancetypeof thinking of Hebraic,Egyptian, scientific efforts" Mosaic, (p. 204). The conflation the Renaissance,"a point and Hermetic lore is said to have 'fascinated of Yates correct (p. 219). It is perfectly withsomerepetition thenexpanded (p. 220),butit is tradition" to refer to "the RenaissanceHermetic-Cabalist withthe Renaissance of manyand mustnotbe identified onlyone tradition and pluralism of Renaissance educational, as a whole.Giventheeclecticism of the definition it is clearthatno monist methods, and literary philosophic, Renaissancehas any substance. here,is Yates's wishto largeissue, on whichI can onlyreport The final of science in thisperiod.In GiordanoBrunoand the rewrite the history Magusof thattheso-called Tradition (London,1964),she claimed Hermetic "relithe Renaissance"Hermetic-Cabalist tradition,'withhis essentially a wholly on the world,thuscreating actually".operated" gious attitudes" science. affected towardsthe world," whichfundamentally new "turning and Mary by CharlesTrinkaus questioned had been severely Her argument and Yates mustknowof both Hesse beforeher latestbook appeared,25
25 book, "In Our can be foundin his magisterial Trinkaus's objections Professor 2 vols. in ItalianHumanist and Divinity Thought, Image and Likeness." Humanity in a paperread in were made first (London, 1970),pp. 498-503.Hesse's criticisms of the Historyof Science Seminarin CambridgeUniversity 1970 to a meeting An Apology forthe and Historiography: "Hermeticism by Yates) entitled (attended and Philosophical in Historical of Science," subsequently published History Intemnal

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in theirfields. Now, scholars,who are among the most distinguished acceptedby thather "belief' is "indeed now largely she writes however, the . . ." (p. 226). She reverts to thisthesisthroughout of thought historians of the She speaks slightingly energy. polemical book withincreased present revolution'(pp. xi, 220) and suggeststhat the new "so-called scientific is a peculiarly science emergedout of magic,of which Rosicrucianism the case-indeed a crucialphase,one of "the vitalstepsby which important century" intotheseventeenth mind movedout of the Renaissance European the leadingfrom discovers"a chainof tradition (p. 117); she subsequently of the Royal Society" (p. 83). to the antecedents Rosicrucian movement There would seem to be little,if any, basis for such claims. Yates's builtnoton rocknor is an edifice history of Renaissance rewriting proposed withthehistoriography on sand buton air. All scholarswho are concerned in of the Renaissancemusttake note of her work.She has greatlearning of her and the prestige thought, areas of human someof themostrecondite to ensurethather willcontinue Institute earlyworkand thatoftheWarburg Whileherbook on Bruno,and herFrench receiveeagerattention. writings it seems reading, Century(1947) are necessary Academiesof the Sixteenth Enlightenment used for The Rosicrucian methods to me thatthe historical of that and methodology off, and thatifthefindings a greatfalling represent could the results book came to be acceptedor used as modelsforimitation how the infectious energyof her be disastrous.It is easy to understand couldaccountforpartof the and theneed to meeteditors'deadlines, style, up of the received.But a sober weighing her book initially acclamation It has been, unfortunately, a verydifferent picture. evidencehas produced in was unavoidable, and apologiesare due. But the length rather lengthy, scholar,Joseph Shakespeare As theeighteenth-century of things. thenature to write a editors of recent been movedby theerrors putit, having Ritson, of general of them: "The opposingand refuting refutation book-length muchmoretimeand requlires commonly by proof and circumstance charges '26 of them.' space thanthe making
in Stuldies whichis vol. 5 of Minlntesota of Science,ed. R. H. Struever, Perspectives also includes ofScience (Minneapolis, 1970),pp. 134-60.This volume thePlilosophlx a Herand searching paper,"Was Copernicus (pp. 163-71)EdwardRosen's witty that"the hermetcomputes thatclaimadvancedby Yates, which discussing metist?" ic associationamountsto about 0.00002% of the Revolutionls p. 169). Other The Occult criticisms of the Yates thesisin recentyearsincludeWayneShumaker, Patterns (Berkeley,1972),an Sciences in the Renaissance.A Studvin Intellectual and independent the papersby Paolo Rossi (pp. 247-74)and A. R. survey: original Bonelli and WilliamR. Shea, eds., Reasonl Hall (pp. 275-82) in M. L. Righini olution(New York, 1975); and in the Scientific Rev atndMysticismn Experimenit, andtl the Scientic Revollution (Los Angeles:WilliamAndrewsClark Hernmeticisin which consists oftwopapersread volume, a mostimportant 1977), Memorial Library, and Astronomical S. Westman, in March1974:Robert "Magical Reform at a seminar (pp. 1-91), and J. E. McGuire,"NeoReform: The Yates Thesis Reconsidered" (pp. 93-142). Newtonand the Corpuls Herineticumn and ActivePrinciples: platonism 26 Joseph onithe TextanldNotes of the and Illustrative, Critical Remtiarks Ritson, Last Editionof Slhakespeare (London, 1783),p. 224.