This book studies the Protestant
utopian movement that began in Germany, in large part due to the writings of
Johann Valentin Andreae (1586-1654), and came to England through the circle of
Samuel Hartlib (c. 1600-1662). It contributes significantly to our understand
I: Secret Societies, Natural
Magic & the Historiographers This
introductory chapter examines the reasons why the contributions of such figures
as Andreae and Hartlib--who sought to establish a Protestant millennium with
science as the key to national prosperity--have previously been undervalued
because historians of science have marginalized natural magic and other forms of
occult science. Those like Hartlib who tolerated such practices as alchemy ipso
facto could have played no role in the emergence of "true"
science; in consequence, his involvement with the movement to establish utopian
brotherhoods as instruments of societal amelioration, a movement inspired by the
writings of Andreae, has still not been widely credited. Because Andreae and his
circle were indirectly responsible for launching the so-called Rosicrucian furor--by
publishing the utopian manifestos so clearly associated with "secret"
wisdom in the public imagination--they have been similarly marginalized. Drawing
on the work of Quentin Skinner and Jerome McGann, this chapter adopts a
methodology based on "use in context"--in this case, utopian
manifestos, the proposed laws of actual societies, letters between members, and
so forth--to try to avoid the problems of textualist histories--which, in this
case, have relied only on "literary" utopias.
Chapter II: Andreae's Utopian
Brotherhoods This
chapter examines the life's work of Andreae, whose stigmatization as the
arch-Rosicrucian has occluded his considerable role in sparking a transnational
movement that sought to improve the religious, social and intellectual order in
early modern Europe through elite brotherhoods or secret societies. Most English
readers encounter Andreae either through Frances Yates' seriously flawed The
Rosicrucian Enlightenment (1972)--which claims that the Rosicrucian movement
was intended to foster a Hermetic golden age associated with the court of
Frederick V--or John W. Montgomery's critical biography, Cross and Crucible
(1972), which presents Andreae as a pious, orthodox Lutheran theologian who had
nothing at all to do with the Fama fraternitatis or the Confessio
fraternitatis--the manifestoes of this "secret" society. I
demystify Andreae by contextualizing his writings within his lifelong commitment
to found a utopian brotherhood, a Societas Christiana or spiritual élite
that would foster a second reformation. His writings and efforts provided a
potent stimulus to Protestant intellectuals at the beginning of the seventeenth
century, the history of which deserves wider currency.
Chapter IV: Utopian &
Learned Societies in Seventeenth-Century Germany
This chapter follows the story of Andreae's continuing influence in
Germany, despite the conditions created by the Thirty Years' War and the
anonymous publication of his work. It begins with the Societas Ereunetica
at the University of Rostock. Though inspired by the scientific academies of
Italy, Jungius's collegium, however, illustrates remarkably the affinity
of learned societies in the seventeenth century for religious sectarianism,
utopianism and secrecy. Next the most significant of the German utopian
brotherhoods that followed in the wake of Andreae and the Rosicrucians are
discussed, the Unio Christiana and Antilia. The Unio Christiana
was founded at Nuremberg in 1628 by a few patricians and churchmen under the
impetus of Johannes Saubert; it was later revived about 1660 in Stuttgart. The
utopian brotherhood known as Antilia flourished along the Baltic during
the Thirty Years' War. Its founders were directly inspired by Andreae as well as
by a Baconian belief in experimental science as a key to prosperity. Antilia
was to be a communal society reminiscent of the monastery, as their leges
reveal. They negotiated for a small island in the Gulf of Riga on which to
establish a colony and even considered immigrating to Virginia. Lastly the
efforts of Joachim Morsius to revive the society modeled in Andreae's utopian
tracts with the aid of Andreae and Duke August of Braunschweig-Lüneburg are
summarized.
Chapter V: Samuel Hartlib and
the Utopian Movement Wherever
Hartlib's utopian zeal originated--his early contact with reformers and
utopianists in Germany or at Emmanuel College, Cambridge--he devoted his
considerable energies to utopian enterprises for nearly forty years. He was
responsible for introducing the main impulse of continental utopianism to
England. This chapter begins with his work to establish a scholarly network, the
Societas Reformatorum et Correspondency (after the failure of Antilia).
It then examines Hartlib's efforts on behalf of the Bohemian reformer Jan Amos
Comenius, who was invited to England by the Long Parliament in 1641. While in
England Comenius drew up plans for a collegium lucis, an epistolary
society along the lines proposed by Andreae. Hartlib's efforts to bring out
translations of Andreae's utopian tracts are also discussed.
Chapter VI: Utopian & Learned
Societies in England in the 1650s The
last chapter examines the efforts of individuals affiliated with the Hartlib
circle during the intellectually turbulent 1650s. Thomas Henshaw, later a
founding fellow of the Royal Society, and Thomas Vaughan, the noted alchemist,
established a "Chymical Club," also referred to as a Christian
Learned Society. Their research collegium flourished in Kensington
where they lived communally and dedicated themselves to devotion and study.
Vaughan's publication of the first English edition of the Rosicrucian manifestos
is also discussed. Next, Bengt Skytte's plans for an international residential
college to house scholars and their families are outlined. His model for a Universum
Collegium, introduced in 1659 in London, was indebted to both Andreae and
Comenius. Lastly the attempted revival of Antilia in 1659-1660 is
described.
Afterword: Philosophicall and
Mathematico-Mechanical King: