VI. There is nothing conclusive in the statement of Pro-

fessor Besoldt ; it may "have been simply an expression of
personal opinion ; those who interpret it otherwise in sup-
port of the claim of Andreas, to some extent base their in-
pretation on the very point which is in question, for unless
Andreas were the author of the manifestoes, it is clear that
Professor Besoldt is a person of no authority.

These difficulties are of themselves sufficient to cast grave
doubt upon the Andrean theory, but when we pass to the
consideration of the motives which are attributed to the

236 HISTORY OF THE ROS1CRUCIANS.

reputed author by the chief supporter of his claims, we
find them indefinitely multiplied. Buhle represents him
as a young man without experience who imagined that the
evils of his country, enormous as they confessedly were,
could be eradicated easily. But if, by courtesy, we allow
that the " Fama Fraternitatis " was published so early as
1612, then Andreas was twenty-six years of age, when a
man of education and travel would be neither inexperienced
nor Utopian.

What, however, is by implication assumed in this hypo-
thesis is that the Rosicrucian manifestoes were written at
the same age as the " Nuptise Chymicae," for which there is
not a particle of evidence, and that the object of Andreas'
travels was to find " coadjutors and instruments for his
designs," which is also wholly unsupported. The scheme
which is fathered upon Andreas is a monstrous and in-
credible absurdity ; it involves, moreover, a pious fraud
which is wholly at variance with the known character of the
supposed author. No sane person, much less a man who
" looked through the follies of his age with a penetrating
eye," could expect anything but failure to result from a
gross imposition practised on the members of a projected
association, who being assured of the possession of the
Philosophical Stone, the life-elixir, and initiation into the
secret mysteries of nature, were destined to receive, instead
of these prizes, a barren and impossible commission to re-
form the age. What moral reformation could result from
any scheme at once so odious and impracticable "?

Let us accept however, for a moment, the repulsive hypo-
thesis of Buhle. Suppose the Rosicrucian manifestoes to have
been written in 1602. Suppose Andreas to have scoured Ger-
many and also to have visited other countries in search of ap-

THE CASE OF J OH ANN VALENTIN ANDREAS. 237

propriate members for his society. It would then be naturally
concluded that the publication of the "Fama Fraternitatis "
signified that his designs were matured. The subsequent
conduct of Andreas is, nevertheless, so completely in the face
of this conclusion, that Buhle is obliged to assume that the
manifestoes were printed without the author's consent, than
which nothing could be more gratuitous, and that the up-
roar of hostility which followed their publication made it
necessary for Andreas to disavow them if he would succeed
in his ultimate designs. The hostility provoked by the
manifestoes bears no comparison with the welcome they
received among all those classes to whom they were indi-
rectly addressed, namely, the alchemists, theosophists, etc.
Had Andreas projected a society upon the lines laid down
by Buhle, nothing remained but to communicate with the
innumerable pamphleteers who wrote in defence of the
order during the years immediately succeeding the publica-
tion of the " Fama Fraternitatis," as well as with those other
persons who in various printed letters offered themselves
for admission therein, after which he could have proceeded
in the accomplishment of his heartless design. That he did
not do so when the circumstances were so favourable is
proof positive that he had no such intention. In fact, at
this very period, namely, in the year 1614, we find Andreas
immersed in no dark and mysterious designs for the refor-
mation of the age by means of a planned imposture, but
simply celebrating his nuptials, and settling down into
a tranquil domestic life.

One more gross and ineradicable blemish upon this hypo-
thesis remains to be noticed. Not only is Andreas repre-
sented relinquishing his design at the very moment when it
was possible to put it in force, but diverted at the uni-

238 HISTORY OF THE ROSJCRUCIANS.

versal delusion he had succeeded in creating, he is repre-
sented as endeavouring to foster it, " to gratify his satirical
propensities," and when even in after life he becomes
" shocked to find that the delusion had taken firm root in
the public mind," he adopts no adequate measures to dispel it.
Thus not only does Andreas wilfully turn the long-planned
purpose of his life into a wretched fiasco, but to complete
the libel on the character of a great and good man, he is
supposed to delude his fellow creatures no longer for a lofty
purpose, but from the lowest motive which it is possible to
attribute to anyone, — a motive indefinitely meaner than
any of personal gain.

The facts of the case untortured by any theory are these.
The "Fama Fraternitatis " was published, say, in 1612.
In 1613 a brief Latin epistle addressed to the venerable
Fraternity E. C. is supposed to have appeared at Francfurt,
supplemented the following year by an " Assertio Fraterni-
tatis R. C. a quodam Fraterni ejus Socio carmine expressa."
These two publications I have been unable to trace, though
both are mentioned by Buhle, and are included by Langlet
du Fresnoy in the Rosicrucian bibliography which is to be
found in the third volume of his " Histoire de la Philoso-
phic Herm^tique." In 1615, the Latin original of the
" Confessio Fraternitatis " appeared, as we have seen, in
the alchemical quarto of Philip a Gabella. All these works
are attributed to Andreas, and the year 1616 saw the pub-
lication of the " Chymical Nuptials of Christian Rosen-
creutz," which work is undoubtedly his. Taking this view,
and comparing these persistent and successive attempts to
draw attention to the secret society with the known
character and the known ambitions of Andreas, we are
evidently face to face with an earnest and determined pur-

THE CASE OF JOHANN VALENTIN ANDREAS. 239

pose, not to be arrested by a little hostility and not likely
to degenerate into a matter for jest and satire. We must
therefore reject the Buhlean hypothesis, because it fails all
along the line, " and betrays itself in every circumstance."
We must reject also that view which attributes the mani-
festo to Andreas, but considers them an ingenious jest. It
is universally admitted that this jest had a seriously evil
effect, and Andreas, on this hypothesis, lived to see some of
the best and acutest minds of his time, to say nothing of an
incalculable number of honest and earnest seekers, misled
by the vicious and wanton joke which had been hatched by
the perverted talents of his youth. The wickedness and
cruelty of persisting in concealment of the true nature of
the case through all his maturer life, through all his
age, and not even making a posthumous explanation in the
" Vita ab ipso Conscripta," is enough to raise indignation
in every breast, and is altogether, and too utterly, vile and
mean to ascribe to any right-minded and honourable per-
son, much less to a man of the known intellectual nobility of
Johann Valentin Andreas. Buhle says that to have avowed
the three books as his own composition would have defeated
his scheme, and that " afterwards he had still better reasons
for disavowing them." He had no such reasons. The
bluntest sense of duty and the feeblest voice of manliness
must have provided him with urgent and unanswerable
reasons for acknowledging them — a course to which no
serious penalties could possibly attach.

To dispose of the Andrean claim, a third hypothesis must
be briefly considered. If Andreas was a follower of Para-
celsus, a believer in alchemy, an aspirant towards the
spiritual side of the magnum opus, or an adept therein, he
would naturally behold with sorrow and disgust the trickery

240 HISTORY OF THE ROSICRUCIANS.

and imposture with which alchemy was then surrounded,
and by which it has been indelibly disgraced, and it is not
unreasonable to suppose that he may have attempted to
reform the science by means of a secret society, whose
manifestoes are directed against those very abuses. But in
spite of the statement of Louis Figuier, I can find no
warrant in the life or writings of Andreas for supposing
that he was a profound, student, much less a fanatical
partisan of Paracelsus, and it is clear from his "Tunis
Babel," " Mythologia Christiana," and other works, that he
considered the Eosicrucian manifestoes a reprehensible hoax.
In the twenty-fifth chapter of the first of these books, the
author proposes to supply the place of the fabulous Eosi-
crucian Society by his own Christian Fraternity. Indeed,
wherever he speaks of it in his known writings, it is either
with contempt or condemnation. Niliil cum hac Fraternitatt
commune habeo, says Truth in the " Mythologia Christiana."
" Listen, ye mortals," cries Fama in the " Turris Babel,"
" you need not wait any longer for any brotherhood ; the
comedy is played out ; Fama has put it up, and now
destroys it. Fama has said Yes, and now utters No."

My readers are now in possession of the facts of the
case, and must draw their own iConclusions. If in spite of
the difficulties which I have impartially stated, Andreas
has any claim upon the authorship of the Eosicrucian
manifestoes, it must be viewed in a different light. Accord-
ing to Herder, his purpose was to make the secret societies
of his time reconsider their position, and to shew them
how much of their aims and movements was ridiculous, but
not to found any society himself. According to Figuier, he
really founded the Eosicrucian Society, but ended by entire
disapproval of its methods, and therefore started his

THE CASE OF JOHANN VALENTIN ANDREAS. 241

Christian Fraternity. But the facts of the case are against
this hypothesis, for the " Invitatio Fraternitatis Christi ad
Sacri amoris Candidates" was published as early as 1617,
long before the Eosicrucian Order could have degenerated
from the principles of its master. It is impossible that
Andreas should have projected two associations at the same
time.

But in the face of the failure of all these hypotheses, one
fact in the life of their subject remains unexplained. If
Andreas did not write the " Fama " and " Confessio
Fraternitatis," if he had no connection with the secret
society from which they may be supposed to have
emanated, if he did not study Paracelsus, and did not take
interest in alchemy, how are we to account for the exist-
ence of the " Chymical Marriage," for its publication in the
centre and heart of the Rosicrucian controversy, and for its
apparently earnest purpose when he describes it as a jest
or ludibrium ? Without elaborating a new hypothesis, can
we suggest a possible reason for this misnomer 1 Supposing
Andreas to have been actually connected in his younger
days with a certain secret society, which may have published
the more or less misleading Rosicrucian manifestoes, the oath
which all such societies impose upon their members, would
for ever prevent him from divulging anything concerning
it, though he may have withdrawn from its ranks at an
early period. This society may have been identical, or
affiliated, with the Militia Crucifera Evangelica, which, from
the known character of its founder was probably saturated
with alchemical ideas, in which case it offers at the end of
the sixteenth century a complete parallel in its opinions
with the Rosicrucian Fraternity. Both associations were
ultra-Protestant, both were " heated with Apocalyptic

242 HISTORY OF THE ROSICRUCIANS.

dreams," both sought the magnum opus in its transfigured
or spiritual sense, both abhorred the Pope, both called him
Antichrist, both coupled him with the detested name
of Mahomet, both expected the speedy consummation of
the age, both studied the secret . characters of nature, both
believed in the significance of celestial signs, both adopted
as their characteristic symbols the mystic Rose and Cross,
and the reason which prompted this choice in the one
probably guided it in the other. This reason is not to be
sought in the typology of a remote period, nor even in the
alchemical enigmas of mediaeval times. It is not to be
sought in the armorial bearings of Johann Valentin
Andreas. They bore the Rose and Cross as their badge, not
because they were Brethren of the Concocted and Exalted
Dew, not because they had studied the book called Zohar,
not because they were successors and initiates of the ancient
Wisdom-Eeligion and the sublime hierarchies of Eld, but
because they were a narrow sect of theosophical dissidents,
because the monk Martin Luther was their idol, prophet,
and master, because they were rabidly and extravagantly
Protestant, with an ultra-legitimate violence of abusive
Protestantism, because, in a single word, the device on the
seal of Martin Luther was a Cross-crowned heart rising
from the centre of a Kose, thus —

I am in a position to maintain that this was the true and
esoteric symbol of the Society, as the Crucified Rose was

THE CASE OF JOHANN VALENTIN ANDREAS. 243

the avowed, exoteric emblem, because in a professedly
authoritative work on the secret figuren of the Order —
" Geheime Figuren der Rosenkreuzer ans dem 16ten und
17ten Jahrhundert" — I find the following remarkable
elaboration of the Lutheran seal, which practically decides
the question.

Taking into consideration that the " Naometria " of Simon
Studion and the original draft of the " Nuptise Chymicse "
both belong to nearly the same period, and that Andreas
was undoubtedly acquainted with the work of the mystical
teacher of Marbach, as a passage in the " Turris Babel"
makes evident, it is not an impossible supposition that the
young student of Tubingen came into personal communi-
cation with Studion, who was only some fifty miles distant
in the cheapest days of travelling, and having a natural in-
clination to secret societies, became associated with the
Militia Crucifera Evangelica. Out of this connection the
" Nuptise Chymicse " might naturally spring, and the subse-
quent Rosicrucian society was the Militia transfigured after
the death of Studion,1 and after the travels and experience

1 There is one fact which is too remarkable to be a mere coinci-
dence, and which seems to have been unnoticed Jay previous investi-
gators, namely, that Sigmund Richter, who claims to speak

244 HISTORY OF THE ROSICRUCIANS.

of Andreas had divested him of his boyish delusions.
Having proved the hollowness of their pretensions, but still
bound by his pledge, he speaks of them henceforth as a
deception and a mockery, and attempts to replace them by
a practical Christian association without mysticism and
symbols, making no pretension to occult knowledge, or to
transcendant powers.

This view is not altogether a new one, and undoubtedly
has its difficulties. It cannot account for the publication
of the " Nuptiae Chymicse" in 1616, nor for the revision
which it apparently underwent at the very period when
Andreas was projecting the unalchemical Christian Frater-
nity ; but so far as it extends, it does not torture the facts
with which it professes to deal. I present it not in my
character as a historian, but simply as a hypothesis which
may be tolerated. To my own mind it is far from satisfac-
tory, and, from a careful consideration of all the available
materials, I consider that no definite conclusion can be
arrived at. There is nothing in the internal character of
the " Fama " and " Confessio Fraternitatis " to shew that
they are a jest. On the other hand, they embody a fabulous
story. There is no proof that they did or did not emanate
from a secret society.1 The popular argument that the
manifestoes were addressed to " the learned of Europe," but

authoritatively, declares in the year 1710 that one of the Rosi-
crucian headquarters is at Nurenberg ; that is, at the very place
where the Militia Crucifera Evangdica originally met in 1586.

1 For the sake of perspicuity, and to avoid forestalling arguments,
I have spoken throughout of the Rosicrucians-as of a secret society.
In the universal uncertainty, this view is as good as another, but it
does not necessarily represent my personal opinion. By the term
" Rosicrucian Fraternity " I simply mean to indicate the unknown
source of the " Fama " and " Confessio Fraternitatis."

THE CASE OF JOHANN VALENTIN ANDREAS. 245

the earnest entreaties of the flower of theosophical literati
for admission into the ranks of the Fraternity remained
unanswered, is no proof that the Society itself did not exist,
for the statement is vicious in the extreme. We have
absolutely no means of ascertaining with whom it may have
come into communication, or what letters and applications
were answered, because inviolable secrecy would cover the
whole of the proceedings, and those who might have the
best reason to know that the Society existed would be most
obliged to hold their peace. Thus "the meritorious Order
of the R. C." still remains shrouded in mystery, but this
mystery is destitute of romance and almost of interest. The
avowed opinions of the Fraternity for ever prevent us from
supposing that they were in possession of any secrets which
would be worth disentombing. To have accomplished the
magnum opus of the veritable adept, is to be master of the
Absolute and the heir of Eternity, is to be above all pre-
judices, all fears, and all sectarian bitterness. By the aid
of an ultra-Horatian philosophy we may conceive that such
men have been, and still are, but they have passed above
" material forms " and the clouded atmosphere of terrestrial
ideas; they inhabit the ideal "city of intelligence and love."
They have left the brawling gutter of religious squabbling,
the identification of Antichrist, the destruction of the Pope
by means of nails, and the number of the beast, to Baxter
and Guinness, Gumming and Brothers the prophet, who
may share its squalors and wretchedness with — the Eosi-
crucian Fraternity.