CHAPTER D:.

Duns Scotus and the Schoolmen — Opinions cl the Stoics — Plotinus — all held the same Doctrine of the Ascent to God — Augustine’s high opinion of Plotinus — Accordant with Christ’s Religion — Hugh, Richard St. Victor — “ Via interna” — Soul, sublimated, ascending to God — Erigena regarded as a Martyr till 1583 — Trithemius, 1483, Abbot of Spanheim — A man of great learning — A great adept — Deplorable state of Monastic Life — Duties of Cellarer — Pupils — Agrippa and Paracelsus — Agrippa — of universal learning — Advised by Trithemius to keep his opinions secret — His Works — Mis- fortunes and Death — Paracelsus — Born 1493 — A Physician — Love of Occultism — Professor at Basle — Death — Works and Opinions — Macrocosm and Microcosm really one.
“ ^HE subtle doctor,” Huns Scotus, the great opponent of Aquinas, was in real relation with the mystic teaching of Erigena. “ The primary matter, which is God,
must be throughout all things. This is accomplished by its
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being divided into three kinds — the universal, which is in all things ; the secondary, which partakes of both the corruptible and incorruptible ; and the tertiary, which is distributed among all things given to change . . . The
platonic idea of a real participation of Deity in the soul of man pervaded the speculations ” of the schoolmen.^ The Stoic taught also that the Deity is an all-pervading spirit, animating the universe, and revealed with especial clearness in the soul of man ; and he concluded that all men are fellow-members of a single body, united by participation in the same Divine spirit.” ^ The conclusion of Plotinus is but the same : — The soul advances in its ascent towards God, until being raised above everything alien, it sees face
^ Hunt, Essay, 161-2. ^ Lecky, History of European Morals, i. 239,
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DOCTOR ROBERT FLUDD,
to face, in His simplicity, and in all His Purity, Him upon whom all hangs, to whom all aspire, from whom all hold existence, life, and thought.” Every man ought to begin by rendering himself divine and beautiful, to obtain a vision of the beautiful and the Deity. Well might S. Augustine say that, “ with the change of a few words, Plotinus became accordant with Christ’s religion.” ^
The mystics “ attained a position of high renown and influence at Paris towards the close of the twelfth century. Here two of the ablest expositors of the learning of the middle ages, Hugh and Richard of St. Victor, initiated crowds of ardent disciples into the mysteries of the ‘ via interna' and of ‘ pure love,’ that marvellous quality by which the soul, sublimated and etherealised, ascends into the very presence chamber .of the King of Kings, which is the bond of ecstatic and indissoluble union between the creature and the Creator.” ^
Seclusion in religious houses undoubtedly contributes to deep mystic thought and expression. Although Erigena was not condemned by the Church, he was blamed for issuing the works of Dionysius without authority. Yet feeling, gratitude, and admiration for his opening of the gates of the mystic gardens of the trees of knowledge were so strong that, “until the year 1583, both the French and English martyrologies celebrated him as a holy martyr.” His great work on “ The Division of Nature ” remained uncensured till the time of Honorius III., in the thirteenth century.
In the middle of the fifteenth century a very remarkable man was born near Treves. This was John Trithemius, who, after having studied in the Universities of Treves and Heidleberg, became a monk in the Abbey of Spanheim of the order of St. Benedict. In 1483 he was chosen abbot of the same house. Subsequently he became abbot of a monastery in the town of Wurtzburg, where he died in 1518. Trithemius was one of the most learned men of his
1 Parker, Dionysius, ii. xiv., xv. - Jervise, Ch. of France, i. 99.
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age, or indeed of any age. In pliilosophy, mathematics, poetry, history, the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin languages, he was excelled by none. He was the author of a great number of works of different kinds, ^ and has been regarded as “ one of the greatest adepts of magic, alchemy, and astrology.” ^ Trithemius found the state of monastic life deplorable. He wrote many volumes relating to the spiritual and sacerdotal life. He endeavoured, to the
utmost of his power, to bring about a reformation of manners amongst those under his charge. In an exhortation delivered to his monks at Spanheim, in the year 1486, he thus refers to the duties of the cellarer of the monastery : — “ Let him look on the vessels of the monastery and all its property as if they were the consecrated vessels of the altar.” ^
Two of the most famous pupils of Trithemius were Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus.
Henry Cornelius Agrippa von Nettisheim was born at Cologne in 1486. His family belonged to the noble class. From a very early age, he tells us, he “ was possessed with a curiosity concerning mysteries.” His learning became of almost universal extent.^ Trithemius became his teacher, friend, and confidant. His three books of occult philosophy were submitted in MS. to the learned abbot. “ There was scarcely a scholar or patron of scholars living in his day whose life could be told without naming Trithemius.” He was the first who told the strange story of Dr Faustus. He had collected a rare library for those days of 2000 volumes. To Trithemius Agrippa sent his work, and in answer, the abbot, while praising his efforts, advised him to speak “ of things lofty and secret only to the loftiest and the most private of your friends. Hay to an ox and sugar to a parrot ; rightly interpret this, lest you, as some others have been, be trampled down by oxen.” This answer is
^ Dupin, 15th Cy., 102.
^ Hartmann’s Life of Paracelsus, 4.
^ Maitland, Dark Ages, 290.
Morley’s Agrippa, i. 22 ; Isis Unveiled, ii. 20.
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DOCTOR ROBERT FLUDD.
dated from Wurtzburg, April 8, 1510.^ Eventually, certain of the private MSS. of Trithemius appear to have come by testament to Agrippa.^ The hint just quoted may be to us, too, a hint that at that time the study of mysticism and occultism had in their deeper recesses become matters for investigation, not merely by individuals but by private associations, which became then, and probably were primarily, secret societies. Agrippa exhausted all occult learning as then accessible. Knowledge bred weariness, and satiety became the parent of uncertainty. When forty years old he produced his ‘‘ De incertitudine et vanitate scientiariurn declamatio invectiva.” At the end of the Capita,” he writes: — “ Nullis hie parcet Agrippa, con- temnit, scit, nescit, flet, ridet, irascitur, insectatur, carpit omnia. Ipse philosophus, daemon, heros, deus et omnia.” ^ The men who brought Agrippa into trouble during his life were “ the meaner classes of the monks.” We need not be surprised at his bitterness. Starting in life with the highest hopes, at the age of forty-eight he seems almost to have lived in vain. His hopes were gone, his home deserted by a faithless wife, and the Emperor affronted by his book on the vanity of the sciences. Penniless and homeless, he eventually died at Grenoble in actual want. Even beyond death he was persecuted by his relentless enemies. The epitaph, well-known, which was his fate, recounts that Alecto collects the ashes, mixes them with aconite, and gives the welcome offering to be devoured by the Stygian Dog.” ^
In Agrippa we find the same thought which is revealed to us by Dionysius, Erigena, and the older mystic writers. “ The Human Soul possesses,” he says, from the fact of its beinQ’ of the same essence as all creation, a marvellous power. One who possesses the secret is enabled to rise as high as his imagination will carry him ; but he does that
1 Morley, i. 213-221. ^ Morley, ii. 78.
3 Edition, “ Apud Eucharium Agrippinatem,” 1531, Svo.
^ Morley’s Life, ii. 312-20.
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only on the condition of becoming closely united to this universal force There is, he says in his first book of occult philosophy, no regular philosophy that is not natural, mathematical, or theological. . . . These three
principal faculties natural magic joins and comprehends ; there is no true magic apart from any one. Therefore this was esteemed by the ancients as the highest and most sacred philosophy. . . . It is well known that Pytha-
goras and Plato went to the prophets of Memphis to learn it, and travelled through almost all Syria, Egypt, India, and the schools of the Chaldeans, that they might not be ignorant of the most sacred memorials and records of
O
magic, as also that they might be embued with Divine things.” ^
The character of Agrippa was badly balanced. Enthu- siastic, learned, noble, generous, brave, determined, full of eager curiosity, like other investigators into mystic and recondite subjects, he failed to realise that the world around was, in many respects, false, sordid, and extremely calculating, and hateful of those who seem by research and labour to cast any, even the slightest, reflection on its hollow pretences and feeble life. Bitterness was not natural to him, but he had not the gift so necessary to those who would live above its poverty of thought. “ He was unable to abase his soul below the level to which God had raised it.” ^
Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombast of Hohen- heim was born near the city of Zurich in the year 1493. Like Agrippa, Paracelsus was a descendent of an old and
celebrated familv. His father was a relation of the Grand
«/
Master of the Order of the Knights of St. John. The father of Paracelsus was a physician, who taught him the rudiments of alchemy, surgery, and medicine. After attendance at the University of Basle, he received instruc-
^ De Occulta Philosophia, quoted, Isis Revealed, i. 280. ^ De Occulta Philosophia, quoted by Morley, i. 116,
3 Morley, ii. 312.
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tion from Trithemius, “and it was under this teacher that his talents for the study of occultism were especially cultivated and brought into practical use. His love for the occult sciences led him into the laboratory of the rich Sigismund Fugger, at Schwartz, in Tyrol, who, like the abbot, was a celebrated alchemist.” ^ Then, like Erigena of old, he travelled a good deal. From Russia, it is said, he went to India, and also visited Constantinople about the year 1521. He was all his life a wanderer, willing to learn from the most unlikely and vulgar sources. In 1525, Paracelsus went to Basle. He was appointed Professor of Medicine and Surgery there, but falling into some disputes with the other medical men and the apothecaries of the city, he had to leave, resuming his former strolling life. Being invited to Salzburg by the Prince Palatine, he died there in 1541, after a short sickness, the event not free from suspicion of murder. Paracelsus was a firm believer in the doctrine of Christianity. “ Faith,” he says, “ is a luminous star that leads the honest seeker into the mysteries of nature. You must seek your point of gravity in God, and put your trust into an honest, divine, sincere, pure and strong faith, and cling to it with your whole heart, soul, sense, and thought, full of love and confidence. If you possess such a faith, God (wisdom) will not withhold his truth from you, but will reveal his works to you, credibly, visibly, and consolingly.” ^
“ A.11 spring from the mysterium magnum, which is eternal life, and therefore the spiritual elements, and all the beings that have been formed of such elements, must be eternal ; just as a flower consists of elements similar to those of the plant on which it grows. Nature, being the universe, is one, and its origin can be only one eternal unity. It is an organism in which all natural things harmonize and sympathise with each other. It is the macrocosm. Everything is the product of one universal
1 Hartmann, Life of Paracelsus, 4.
2 Hartmann’s Paracelsus, 12.
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creative effort ; the macrocosm and man (the microcosm) are one. They are one constellation, one influence, one breath, one harmony, one time, one metal, one fruit.” ^
Such were the two great pupils of Trithemius.
^ Hartmann’s Paracelsus, 43-4.