ROSICRUCIANISM. — A Protestant sect, which originated from a historical novel, invented, it seems, by the Lutheran theologian Johann Valentin Andreae (1586-1654).
In 1614 there appeared anonymously: Professione di fede della Confraternita della R. In 1615: La Rivelazione della Confraternita del S.mo Ordine di R. Finally in 1616: Die Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosenkreutz. The first of these books contained violent attacks against the papacy; it recounted the adventures of a certain Christian Rosenkreutz (Rose-Cross), born in 1388, who, during travels in Palestine and Egypt, was said to have been initiated into the occult sciences. Having returned to his homeland, he was said to have chosen seven companions and founded with them the Confraternity of the R., whose members were to make great journeys, then assemble once a year. The league was to remain secret for 100 years. Its purpose was the general reform of the world, and it drew its inspiration from the seven sages of Greece and from certain Roman philosophers.
It seems that the author of these novels intended only to ridicule the mania of the time for the marvelous. But such books were taken seriously; mystics and alchemists set out in search of the Order of R., which proved impossible to find. In the face of such credulity, Andreae himself declared that the aforementioned memoirs of Rosenkreutz were nothing but fables; but in vain. The Lutherans accused the Calvinists of having attempted a maneuver against Lutheranism.
Despite all opposition, Germany was flooded with supposed manuscripts of Rosenkreutz; the movement spread to France as well: in 1623, a manifesto was posted in Paris announcing the arrival of the R., "saviors of the world." The French bibliographer Gabriel Naudé (1600-53) wrote against them: Instruction à la France sur la vérité de l'histoire de la Rose-Croix, but he did not succeed in halting the movement.
The order of the R. developed above all by adopting the methods of Paracelsus. Remembered as Paracelsians and fervent R. are Henning Scheunemann, physician of Bamberg; the Protestant preacher Johann Grabmann, who sold a mixture of cucumber and crushed roses as a remedy for all ills; Julius Sperber, physician of Anhalt; Heinrich Kunrath, physician of Hamburg; Michael Maier, physician to Emperor Rudolf II and to Landgrave Maurice of Hesse-Kassel. The 18th century was thus flooded with charlatans, alchemist R., astrologers, "wonder doctors" of every kind. The internal organization of the sect of the R. remained secret. It is believed that the brethren occupied themselves with cabalistic lore and alchemy, in order to seek the art of transmuting metals and of prolonging human life. The R. said that the end of the world was near, but that the world would be renewed under their direction.
In the 18th century the name of R. was given to all the illuminati who claimed to have secret dealings with the invisible world. It was sometimes sought to include in this category the illuminati of the time: Saint-Germain, Cagliostro, Mesmer, Saint-Martin; it is not proved, however, that they were members of the R., which by then, moreover, had declined. Freemasonry, on the other hand, had usurped the title of R., making of it a degree of Masonic initiation, which is the seventh in the French rite and the eighteenth in the Scottish one.
In the 19th century the title of R. was reserved for the dignitaries of Freemasonry, when a group of young writers, Stanislas de Guaita, Barlet, Paul Adam, Papus, Péladan, announced in 1888 their intention to renew the cabalistic order of the R. Shortly afterward, Joséphin Péladan separated from his friends because of their anticlericalism and founded the "Salon catholique de la Rose-Croix." He had himself called the sâr Péladan: born at Lyon in 1858, died at Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1918. Besides several highly sensual novels and aesthetic works, he published, as R.: Comment on devient un mage (1892); Comment on devient fée (1893); L'occulte catholique (1898); La règle de l'Ordre de Rose-Croix (1903). These are chiefly aesthetic, idealist, often bizarre investigations.
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Leone Cristiani