Gothic Immortals (Routledge Revivals)

The Fiction of the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross

Marie Mulvey-Roberts

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317206408
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

First published in 1990, this book represents the first full-length study of into the group of novels designated 'Rosicrucian' and traces the emergence of this distinct fictional genre, revealing a continuous occult tradition running through seemingly diverse literary texts. Taking the Enlightenment as a starting point, the author shows how the physician's secular appropriation of the idea of eternal life, through the study of longevity and physical decay, attracted writers like William Godwin. It focuses on the bodily immortality of the Rosicrucian hero and investigates the novels of five major writers — Godwin, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley, Maturin, and Bulwer-Lytton.

1
The Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross

I suspect that the Brethren of the Rosy Cross are a fiction.

Leibniz¹

The image of the Gothic immortal has been overshadowed by one of its more unsavoury varieties: that of the deathless vampire in the form of Nosferatu or some other Eastern European aristocrat. The notoriety of Dracula helped discredit the idea of bodily immortality through his insatiable thirst for blood which marked him out as the most loathsome of human parasites. Scarcely more inviting than the vampire is the Wandering Jew, another member of the cabal of Gothic immortals. There are occasional sightings of this morose and melancholy figure as he meanders through Gothic literature emerging on close encounter as a melodramatic character, with his mesmeric stare and fiery cross branded on his forehead. The most infamous blasphemer is Faust, who through the diabolic ministrations of Mephistopheles relinquishes his eternal soul for the immortality of the flesh. Similarly the alchemical secret of the elixir vitae (elixir of life) could be passed on like a deadly virus infecting future generations with the pestilence of never-ending life. This is the stigma borne by the unhallowed tribe of Gothic immortals whether they be Medieval satanists, dark magi of the Renaissance or hosts of the undead stirring from some Transylvanian burial ground.

Apart from this roll-call of miscreants, there was a species of immortal who evoked the redemptive powers of myth by using the gift of eternal life for the purposes of benevolence. This was the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross, for whom immortality was a blessing and not a curse. But unlike the vampire, Wandering Jew, or werewolf, the Rosicrucian has proved to be an elusive prey for the historian, since his distinguishing feature is his power of invisibility. The advantages of the vampirologist are not afforded to those in pursuit of members of the brotherhood. For example, mirrors reflect back their image and they are able to tolerate sunlight. Unimpeded by the necessity of having to lug a coffin round with them on their travels, neither are they obliged to take up nocturnal residence in a graveyard or crypt. They are immune to the protective properties of garlic, and the crucifix holds no terror for this Christian brotherhood.

Yet the adepti of the Rosy Cross, along with all the other Gothic immortals, are culpable in having cheated the great leveller, death. Our sense of the moral necessity of death is embodied in myths like the staking of the revenant and the shunning of the Wandering Jew. The Rosicrucians, however benign their aims, risk transgressing this powerful taboo by turning the sacred immortality of the soul into a travesty and snubbing the angel of death. Their only legitimate immortality may be found in literature, where their eternal wanderings are mapped out in the Gothic novel.

The secret organisation of Rosicrucians announced its supposed existence to the world in the form of two manifestos which were published between 1614 and 1615. Scholars still debate whether or not this clandestine brotherhood ever actually existed or if it was merely an elaborate hoax. It may seem curious to embark upon a study of a society reputed to be so secret that it was even believed to be invisible. No one had ever met a Rosicrucian or even been able to contact one. Nonetheless, the idea of such a fraternity inspired the formation of a number of later Rosicrucian societies, while the manifestos themselves expressed an identifiable way of thinking. These currents of thought contributed to a tradition of the Rosy Cross out of which emerged a fictional genre, the ‘Rosicrucian’ novel.

This designation was first employed by Edith Birkhead when she identified William Godwin as the first novelist to ‘embody in a romance the ideas of the Rosicrucians which [so] inspired Bulwer-Lytton’s Zicci, Zanoni and A Strange Story.’² Commencing with Godwin’s St Leon (1799), various novels will be analysed here as examples of Rosicrucian fiction, including P. B. Shelley’s St Irvyne or The Rosicrucian (1810), Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer (1820). These Gothic novels, it will be argued, manifest the influence of the Rosicrucian tradition on English literature, since the ideas planted by the manifestos and the mystical traditions associated with the Rosy Cross germinated in the form of a Rosicrucian novel populated with Gothic immortals.

The term ‘Rosicrucian’ is generally believed to have been derived from the Latin rosa (rose) and crux (cross). Certainly Rosicrucian societies are symbolised by the rose and cross, from which the name of the legendary founder of the original brotherhood, Christian Rosencreutz, had been devised. It is likely, however, that the Rosicrucian idea was started by Johann Valentin Andreae (1586-1654), the Lutheran theologian, whose family arms bore the symbols of the rose and cross.³ These emblems also appear on the seal used by Martin Luther, which signifies the association between the Rosicrucian Enlightenment and the Lutheran Reformation. Their Christian connotation may be found in the Crucifixion imagery of the rose, which is indicative of the dying Christ on the bloodstained cross. The Rose-Cross symbolism was evocative of the Protestant backlash to Hapsburg hegemony preceding the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War in 1620, which has been documented by Frances Yates in The Rosicrucian Enlightenment.

The Rosicrucian manifestos heralded the arrival of the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross. The Fama Fraternitatis or a Discovery of the Fraternity of the Most Noble Order of the Rosy Cross (1614) followed by the Confessio Fraternitatis or The Confession of the Laudable of the Most Honourable Order of the Rosy Cross, written to All the learned of Europe (1615)⁴ both advocated social and political reform, set out the rules of the order and narrated the life-story of Rosencreutz. According to the Fama, he was bom in 1378 to a noble family which had become impoverished. At the age of five he was placed in a monastery and educated in the classics until called upon to accompany one of the monks on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Unfortunately the brother died in Cyprus, so Rosencreutz had to travel to Jerusalem alone. En route he stayed at Damascus, where he heard the teachings of wise men who received him ‘not as a stranger, but as one whom they had long expected.’⁵ From this prophetic beginning, Rosencreutz’s wanderings turned into a search for knowledge. He learned about physics and mathematics, during which time his increased proficiency in Arabic enabled him to translate into Latin the mysterious Book M which contained the secrets of the universe. At Fez, Rosencreutz was introduced to the ‘Elementary Inhabitants, who revealed unto him many of their secrets.’⁶

After spending two years there studying the Cabala and other occult sciences, Rosencreutz sailed to Spain in order to impart his wisdom to the learned of Europe, so that they might ‘rule and order all studies according to those sound and sure foundations.’⁷ But Rosencreutz’s proposals for reform were so ridiculed that he decided to form his own society, which would be devoted to bringing about universal change through a radical epistemology. Starting with eight members, Rosencreutz formed a fraternity of the Rose and Cross whose first task was to invent a magical language and script for the purpose of writing the Book of Nature, a compilation of all knowledge. The rules of the Rose-Cross brethren were laid out as follows:

1. That none of them should profess any other thing than to cure the sick, and that gratis. None of the posterity should be constrained to wear one certain kind of habit, but therein to follow the custom of the country.
2. That every year upon the day C. they should meet together in the house S. Spiritus, or write the cause of his absence.
3. Every brother should look about for a worthy person, who, after his decease, might succeed him.
4. The word C. R. should be their seal, mark, and character.
5. The Fraternity should remain secret one hundred years.⁸

After the death and burial of Rosencreutz, his disciples reopened his tomb ten years prior to the publication of the Fama. 1604 marked the year when the door of his vault was opened to send his message reverberating throughout Europe with the eventual appearance of the manifestos.

Rosencreutz’s life furnishes a prototype for the career of the Rosicrucian hero in the novel, who also bears a family resemblance to the philosophical magi associated with the occult traditions of the Rosy Cross. Yates identifies as key Rosicrucian figures Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535), Paracelsus (1493-1541), and John Dee (1527-1608). Agrippa’s sorcery and alleged necromantic activities influenced Mary and P. B. Shelley’s treatment of the Rosicrucian themes while Paracelsus’s writing on prolongevity provided Godwin with source-material for St Leon. The Paracelsian blend of magic, medicine and science was characteristic of the Rosicrucian elements which Bulwer-Lytton explored in A Strange Story. John Dee, another model for the Rosicrucian hero, even plays a minor role in Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer. Yates’s classification of Agrippa, Paracelsus and Dee as Rosicrucians is based on the following criteria:

I should like to try to persuade sensible people and sensible historians to use the word “Rosicrucian.” This word has bad associations owing to the uncritical assertions of occultists concerning the existence of a sect or secret society calling themselves Rosicrucians the history and membership of which they claim to establish…. The word could, I suggest, be used of a certain style of thinking which is historically recognizable without raising the question of whether a Rosicrucian style of thinker belonged to a secret society.⁹

A number of Rosicrucian societies did emerge from the body of myth and symbolism contained within the Rosicrucian manifestos, such as Andreas’s Christian Union,¹⁰ and the Invisible College which, according to Yates, was the ancestor of the Royal Society. One of its members, Robert Boyle, makes reference in his correspondence to ‘our invisible college’ while in a letter to Francis Tallente in 1646, he describes the college as follows:

The best on’t is, that the corner-stone of the invisible, or (as they call themselves), the philosophical college, do now and then honor me with their company… men of so capacious and searching spirits, that school-philosophy is but the lowest region of their knowledge… persons that endeavor to put narrow-mindedness out of their countenance, by the practice of so extensive a charity, that it reaches into everything called man, and nothing less than universal good-will can content it. And indeed they are so apprehensive of the want of good employment, that they take the whole body of mankind for their care… their chiefest fault… is that there are not enough of them.¹¹

Membership of the Invisible College contained such luminaries as Elias Ashmole, Kenelm Digby, Robert Child, and later Christopher Wren, John Wilkins, and Robert Hooke. Many of these joined the Royal Society when it was seeking the patronage of the newly crowned Charles II in 1660.¹² ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Plates
• Acknowledgements
• 1. The Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross
• 2. William Godwin’s Darkness of Enlightenment
• 3. Percy Bysshe Shelley: A Gothic Immortal
• 4. Mary Shelley and the Mortal Immortal
• 5. Maturin and the Rosicrucian Heresy
• 6. Bulwer-Lytton and the Rose and Cross
• 7. The Problem of Immortality
• Appendix: Sadak The Wanderer
• Bibliography
• Index