Johannes Valentinus Andreae

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Johannes Valentinus Andreae (August 17, 1586, Herrenberg, Württemberg—June 27, 1654, Stuttgart), a.k.a. Johannes Valentinus Andreä or Johann Valentin Andreae, was a German theologian, who claimed to be the author of the Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosencreutz anno 1459 (1616, Strasbourg, the Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz) one of the three founding works of the Rosicrucians.

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[edit] Life

Andreae was the son of Johannes Andreae (1554-1601), the superintendent of Herrenberg and later the abbot of Königsbrunn. His mother Maria Moser went to Tübingen as a widow and was court apothecary 1607–1617. The young Andreae studied theology and natural sciences 1604–1606. He was refused the final examination and church service, probably for attaching a pasquill (offensive, libelous note) to the chancellor Enzlin's door, on the occasion of his marriage. After that, he taught young nobles and hiked with his students through Switzerland, France, Austria and Italy.

In 1612 he resumed his theological studies in Tübingen. After the final examination in 1614, he became deacon in Vaihingen an der Enz, and in 1620 priest in Calw. Here he reformed the school and social institutions, and established institutions for charity and other aids. To this end, he founded the Christliche Gottliebende Gesellschaft ("Christian God-loving Society"). He obtained funds and brought effective help for the reconstruction of Calw, which was destroyed in the Battle of Nördlingen (1634) by the imperial troops and visited by pestilence. In 1639, he became preacher at the court and councilor (Konsistorialrat) in Stuttgart, where he aimed at a fundamental church reform. Among other things, he operated for the conservation and furthering of the Tübinger Stift [1]. In 1646, he was made a member of the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft ("Fruitbearing Society"), where he got the company-nickname der Mürbe ("the soft"). In 1650, he took over the direction of the monasterial school Bebenhausen; in 1654, he became abbot of the evangelical monasterial school of Adelberg.

His role in the origin of the Rosicrucian legend is controversial. In his autobiography he indicated the Chymische Hochzeit ("Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz") as one of his works—as a "ludibrium", possibly meaning "lampoon". In his later works, alchemy is the object of ridicule and is placed with music, art, theatre and astrology in the category of less serious sciences.

[edit] Trivia

In the 1960s, as part of a hoax claiming the existence of a medieval secret society, a set of false documents, the Dossiers Secrets, was planted in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. One of the documents claimed to provide a list of "Grand Masters of the Priory of Sion", and Andreae was listed as the seventeenth Grand Master. It is possible that this was because the list tended to includes names of people who were associated with alchemy, such as Nicolas Flamel.

[edit] See also

[edit] Bibliography

  • Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosencreutz Anno 1459, published anonymously (1616)
  • The chymical Wedding of Christian Rosencreutz Anno 1459
  • Reipublicae Christianopolitanae descriptio (Beschreibung des Staates Christenstadt) (1619)
  • Description of the Republic of Christianopolis
  • Peregrini in patria errores (1618)

[edit] References

  • Donald R. Dickson, "Johann Valentin Andreae's Utopian Brotherhoods," Renaissance Quarterly, 49, 4 (1996): 760-802.
  • Donald R. Dickson, The Tessera of Antilla: Utopian Brotherhoods and Secret Societies in the Early Seventeenth Century, Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 1998. ISBN 9004110321
  • Roland Edighoffer, "Hermeticism in Early Rosicrucianism," in Gnosis and Hermeticism: From Antiquity to Modern Times, edited by Roelof van den Broek and Wouter J. Hanegraaff, State University of New York Press, 1998. ISBN 0-7914-3612-8
  • Christopher McIntosh, The Rosicrucians: The History, Mythology, and Rituals of an Esoteric Order, 3rd revised edition, Samuel Weiser, York Beach, Maine, 1997. ISBN 0-87728-920-4
  • John Warwick Montgomery, Cross and Crucible: Johann Valentin Andreae (1586-1654). Phoenix of the Theologians, 2 Vols. Martinus Nijhoff, the Hague, 1974. ISBN 90 247 5054 7
  • John Warwick Montgomery, "The World-View of Johann Valentin Andreae," in Das Erbe des Christian Rosencreutz. Johann Valentin Andreae 1586-1986 und die Manifeste der Rosenkreuzerbruderschaft 1614-1616, Amsterdam: In de Pelikaan, 1988, pp. 152-169. ISBN 3776202793
  • Edward H. Thompson, "Introduction", in Johannes Valentin Andreae, Christianopolis, translated by Edward H. Thompson, Boston, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999. ISBN 0792357450
  • Frances A. Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972. ISBN 0-415-26769-2
  • Da Vinci Declassified, 2006 TLC documentary

[edit] External links