Johannes Valentinus Andreae (August 17, 1586 – June 27, 1654), 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 Rosicrucianism.
Contents |
Andreae was born at Herrenberg, Württemberg, 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 initiated 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 advocated a fundamental church reform. Among other things, he operated for the conservation and promotion 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 assumed direction of the monasterial school Bebenhausen; in 1654, he became abbot of the evangelical monasterial school of Adelberg. He died in Stuttgart.
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.
During the 1960s, as part of a hoax claiming the existence of a medieval secret society, a set of documents of dubious authenticity, the Dossiers Secrets, was discovered in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF). One of the documents included an alleged list of "Grand Masters of the Priory of Sion", and Andreae was listed as the seventeenth Grand Master.