Abstract
In 1724/5, Isaac Newton explained to John Conduitt the key role he believed the comet of 1680 would play in the catastrophic end of the world.2 Newton’s understanding of the comet was informed not only by his natural philosophical views, but also his faith in a providential deity as described in holy scripture. While alchemical literature explained the vital role putrefaction played in generation, Newton believed that the ultimate restitution of nature and mankind foretold in the Bible could only come about after a cataclysmic event such as the one he expected when the comet of 1680 hit the sun. Until that time of spiritual and material regeneration, Newton aspired to increase human understanding of God’s plan for the cosmos through what Betty Jo Dobbs described as “the knowledge of God’s activity in the world.”3 Like many of his contemporaries, Newton believed that such knowledge could be increased by consulting ancient authorities who lived and worked when human understanding had been less corrupted by the consequences of Adam’s Fall. Newton hoped that his search through ancient texts would yield a true religion and a true natural philosophy, both of which would help to increase human understanding of the natural world as well as the divine.4
I am indebted to the participants in the Clark Library conference on “Newton and Religion” whose provocative and insightful comments greatly enriched this paper. This paper is dedicated to the memory of Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, mentor and scholar, to whom I owe all my insights into the complicated figure of Newton and who helped me to see the complexity of John Dee.
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References
B. J. T. Dobbs, The Janus Faces of Genius (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 234; Simon Schaffer, `Newton’s Comets and the Transformation of Astrology’, in Astrology, Science and Society, Historical Essays, ed. Patrick Cuny, ( Wolfeboro, NH: Boydell Press, 1987 ), pp. 219–43.
Dobbs, Janus Faces,pp. 73–4 and 87.
Dobbs, Janus Faces,p. 151.
Deborah E. Harkness, “The Scientific Reformation: John Dee and the Restitution of Nature,” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Davis, 1994; John Dee’s Conversations with Angels: Learning, Revelation and the End of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
The holograph transcripts of Dee’s angel conversations are contained in a number of scattered and imperfect manuscripts at the British Library, London, and the Bodleian Library, Oxford: British Library, Sloane MS 3188–3189; British Library, Sloane MS 3191; British Library, Cotton Appendix MS XLVI, 2 vols.; British Library, Add. MS 36674; and Bodleian Library, Ashmole MS 1790. Printed editions of selections from the manuscripts are available and their reliability varies. Meric Casaubon was the first to print excerpts from the angel diaries under the title A True and Faithful Relation (London, 1659), but the work includes only conversations dated after 1583 and is not without textual inaccuracies. The seventeenth-century collector, Elias Ashmole, attempted to make corrections in the Casaubon edition. His corrections appear in his copy of the work, now Bodleian Library, Ashmole MS 580. The early spirit diaries, which date from 1581 to April 1583, have received much less attention. The earlier diaries were available only in manuscript until Christopher Whitby’s careful transcript of John Dee’s Actions with Spirits made them available to a wider audience. Whenever possible, I will refer to John Dee, A True and Faithful Relation ed. Meric Casaubon (London, 1659) and John Dee, John Dee’s Actions with Spirits, 2 vols., ed. and trans. Christopher Whitby ( New York: Garland, 1988 ).
’7 Dee, Actions with Spirits 2:5–6.
Harkness, “The Scientific Reformation,” pp. 312–21.
Harkness, “The Scientific Reformation,” pp. 62–209.
Newton’s library and its important place in the development of his ideas has been studied by John Harrison. See John Harrison, The Library of Isaac Newton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978). Newton did not own any of Dee’s books, but Newton’s active reading practices—most notably dog-earing-are similar. Harrison, especially pp. 1–27.
See Julian Roberts and Andrew G. Watson, John Dee’s Library Catalogue (London: The Bibliographical Society, 1990), passim; Harkness, “The Scientific Reformation,” passim; and William Sherman, John Dee: the Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance ( Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995 ), pp. 29–100.
Pompilius Azalus, De omnibus rebus naturalibus (Venice, 1544). Roberts and Watson, #134, now Emmanuel College, Cambridge 304.1.54.
Dee’s recovered copies are Dionysius, De Mystica Theologica (Rome, 1525), Roberts and Watson, #271, now Cambridge University Library H*8.22(c); Dionysius, Opera,comm. Jacques Léfèvre d’Étaples (Venice, 1556), Roberts and Watson, #975, now Magdalene College, Cambridge D.7.10; Marsilio Ficino, Index eorum, quae hoc in libro habentur. lamblichus, de mysterils Aegyptiorum... (Venice, 1516), Roberts and Watson #256, now Folger Shakespeare Library BF 1501 J2 Copy 2 Cage; Johann Tritheim, De Septem Secundeis (Frankfurt, 1545), Roberts and Watson, #678, now Cambridge University Library Dd*4.5; Johann Trithemius, Liber Octo Quaestionum, Quas 1111 Dissolvendas Proposuit Maximilianus Ceasar (Cologne, 1534), Roberts and Watson, #897, now Cambridge University Library H*15.9(f).
See, for example, Dee, Actions with Spirits 2:71–8, and 94.
Dionysius, Opera,p. 48v-54v.
Dee’s annotations in his copy of Dionysius, Opera,p. 146r: “Ac veluti ab omni eum divini nominis cognitione ab duce[n]tem dixisse cur de nomine me interrogas quod est mirabile. An vero istud non est mirabile nomen: quod est super omne nomen, quod est sine nomen, quod omne exsuperat nomen...” Against this passage, Dee noted “Pele.”
Dee, Actions with Spirits 2:31–3.
Dee, Actions with Spirits 2:32. Unfortunately, Dee’s powers of exact recall were faulty; the name does not appear in De verbo mirifico.
Dee, Actions with Spirits 2:8–12.
The literature on early modern apocalypticism and its antecedents is extensive. They include: Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970); Bryan W. Ball, A Great Expectation: Eschatalogical Thought in English Protestantism to 1660 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1975); Richard Bauckham, ed., Tudor Apocalypse: Sixteenth-Century Apocalypticism, Millenarianism, and the English Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978); Ernest L. Tuveson, Millenium and Utopia: A Study in the Background of the Idea of Progress (New York: Harper and Row, 1964); Richard Foster Jones, Ancients and Moderns: A Study of the Rise of the Scientific Movement in Seventeenth-Century England (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1965); Katharine R. Firth, The Apocalyptic Tradition in Reformation Britain 1530–1645 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979); C. A. Patrides and Joseph A. Wittreich, Jr., eds., The Apocalypse in English Renaissance Thought and Literature (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984).
Shakelton, A blazyng Starre (London, 1580), sig. Aiiiv-Avr, quoted in Jones, Ancients and Moderns,p. 24.
Golding, quoted in Tuveson, Millenium and Utopia,p. 32.
Sheltco à Geveren, Of the Ende of this Worlde, and the Second Commyng of Christ (London, 1577), sig. Diiir; quoted in Tuveson, Millenium and Utopia,p. 45. Dee owned a copy of this work; for more information see Roberts and Watson, John Dee’s Library Catalogue, #1727.
For a detailed discussion of the grand conjunction, see Carroll Camden, “The Wonderful Yeere,” in Studies in Honor of De Witt T. Starnes, ed. By Thomas P. Harrison ( Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967 ), pp. 163–79.
Dee’s Library books concerning the new star were: Marcus Manilius, Astronomica (Basel, 1533), Roberts and Watson, #251, which contains his annotation on the new star; a work by Dee’s landlord while he was in Prague conversing the angels and Rudolphine alchemists, Tadeas Hajek, Dialexis de nova stella (Frankfort, 1574) Roberts and Watson, #438; Theodorus Graminaei, Erklerung oder Auszlegung eines Cometen (Cologne, 1573) Roberts and Watson, #703; Jeronimo Munoz, Du nouveau comete de l’an 1572 (Paris, 1574), Roberts and Watson, #842; Georg Busch, Die andere Beschreibung vondem Cometen welcher in 1572 Jar erschienen (Willemberg?, 1573), Roberts and Watson, #1291; two copies of Cornelius Gemma and Guillaume Postel, De peregrina stella 1572 (Venice, 1573) Roberts and Watson, #2137; Augustus, Elector of Saxony et al., De publica poenitentia.. exorta peregrina stella 1572 (Wittemberg?, 1578) Roberts and Watson, #2217; Joannes Sommerus, Refutatio scripti Petri Carolii editi Wittebergae (Cracow, 1582) Roberts and Watson, #D20. More information on titles with Roberts and Watson numbers can be found in Roberts and Watson, John Dee’s Library Catalogue.
Dee, Personal Diary, p. 21. For an interpretation of this event, see Robert William Barone, “The Reputation of John Dee: A Critical Appraisal,” Ph.D. diss., The Ohio State University, 1989, p. 51.
Dee, Personal Diary,p. 22–3.
Edmund Spenser and Gabriel Harvey, Letters Touching the Earthquake (London, 1580). For information on Dee’s copy see Roberts and Watson, John Dee’s Library Catalogue, #1720.
Harkness, The Scientific Reformation,“ pp. 394–488.
Dee, Actions with Spirits,2:237; Dee, True and Faithful Relation,p. 61.
See Brian P. Copenhaver, “Léfèvre d’Étaples, Symphorien Champier, and the Secret Names of God,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 40 (1977), pp. 189–211; Charles Zika, “Reuchlin’s De verbo mirifico and the Magic Debate of the Late Fifteenth Century,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 39 (1976), pp. 104–38.
Dee, True and Faithful Relation,p. 92.
Dee, Actions with Spirits,2:333.
Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, Alchemical Death and Resurrection: The Signfìcance of Alchemy in the Age of Newton (Smithsonian Institution, 1990), p. 15.
Vannoccio Biringuccio, The Pirotechnia of Vannoccio Biringuccio, ed. and trans. Cyril Stanley Smith and Martha Teach Gnudi ( New York: Dover, 1990 ), p. 35.
See, for example, Dee, True and Faitlrlul Relation,pp. 387–8.
Dee, Actions with Spirits,2:147–57.
Dee, True and Faithful Relation,p. 251.
Robin Bruce Bames, Prophecy and Gnosis: Apocalypticism in the Wake of the Lutheran Reformation ( Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988 ), p. 176.
For additional interpretation of these messages, see Deborah E. Harkness, “Shows in the Showstone: A Theater of Alchemy and Apocalypse in the Angel Conversations of John Dee,” Renaissance Quarterly 49 (1996).
Dee, Actions with Spirits,2:224.
Dee, “A Translation of John Dee’s Monas hieroglyphica’ (Antwerp, 1564), with an Introduction and Annotations,” ed. and trans. C. H. Josten, Ambix 12 (1964), pp. 84–111, esp. p. 209; Dee, Actions with Spirits,2:351.
Dee, Actions with Spriits I1: 351; Dee, True and Faithful Relation,pp. 92–3.
Dee, Actions with Spirits,2:124.
Dee, Actions With Spirits,2:124–5.
Dee, True and Faithful Relation,p. 92.
Dee, True and Faithful Relation,pp. 59–60.
Casaubon, “Preface,” in Dee, True and Faithful Relation,sigs. [Hlr-v].
See British Library, Sloane MSS 3624–3628, passim. The group included a scryer “E. R[orbon],” and two other regular participants: “R. O” who appears to be the figure occupying Dee’s role in the conversations, and another referred to “t times as ”E. C.“ and occasionally as ”Brother Collings.“
Ashmole obtained the diaries from “Widow Jones,” who purchased a wooden chest from a “parcell of the Good of Mr. John Woodall Chirurgeon.” The chest contained Dee’s earliest angel diaries in a secret compartment. The Jones’ kitchen maid destroyed some of the manuscripts when she used the pages to line pie-plates. See Ashmole’s introduction to the manuscript in Dee, Actions with Spirits,2:2–4. Finally, the diaries passed from Ashmole’s hands into the collections of the British Library through Sir Hans Sloane, although the exact delineation of this transfer is not clear. Christopher Whitby discusses the murky chain of events that might have led from Ashmole to Sloane. See Whitby, Action with Spirits,2:37.
Elias Ashmole, “Prolegomena,” Theatrum Chenticum Britannicum (London, 1652), sig. A4v.
Ashmole, “Prolegomena,” sig. By.
Ashmole, “Prolegomena”, sig. B2r. I was unable to find any mention of this stone in the texts of the Hermetic corpus; see the translation by Brian P. Copenhaver, Hermetica: The Greek “Corpus Hermetica” and the Latin “Asclepius” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), passim.
Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World and Other Writings ed, Kate Lilley (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992 ), p. 166.
Cavendish, Blazing World,pp. 166–87.
Michael Hunter, “Alchemy, Magic, and Moralism in the Thought of Robert Boyle,” British Journal /òr the History of Science 23 (1990), pp. 387–410. 1 am indebted to Margaret G. Cook of the University of Calgary for bringing this incident to my attention.
Hunter, “Alchemy, Magic, and Moralism,” p. 390.
Hunter, “Alchemy, Magic, and Moralism,” p. 391.
Hunter, “Alchemy, Magic, and Moralism,” pp. 391 and 396–7.
Robert Hooke, The Posthumous Works (London, 1705), p.205. For a discussion of Hooke’s interest in and aversion to Dee see John Henry, “Robert Hooke, the Incongruous Mechanist,” in Robert Hooke: New Studies, ed. Michael Hunter and Simon Schaffer, ( Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 1989 ), pp. 149–80.
Hooke, Posthumous Works,pp. 203–4.
Hooke, Posthumous Works, pp. 206–7. Though subsequent scholars have attempted to support Hooke’s contention that Dee was a spy and cryptographer in Elizabeth’s service, adequate proof has not been uncovered. A similar line of argumentation has been levelled against Trithemius’s Steganographia, in which Dee was interested. See Nicholas Clulee, John Dee’s Natural Philosophy: Between Science and Religion ( New York: Routledge, 1988 ), pp. 136–7.
Dobbs, Janus Faces,p. 39.
Dobbs, Janus Faces,p. 80 and Chap. 6.
Newton, quoted in Dobbs, Janus Faces,p. 151.
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Harkness, D.E. (1999). Alchemy and Eschatology: Exploring the Connections between John Dee and Isaac Newton. In: Force, J.E., Popkin, R.H. (eds) Newton and Religion. International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives Internationales D’Histoire des Idées, vol 161. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2426-5_1
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