Abstract » Prinke
Prague 2009
Apocalypticism, Millenarianism, and Prophecy: Eschatological Expectations between East-Central and Western Europe, 1560-1670
Rafał T. PRINKE
‘Heliocantharus Borealis’: The Alchemist Michael Sendivogius and Fourth Monarchy Millenarianism
Alchemy and prophecy were often closely related in both medieval and early modern periods. The status of an alchemical adept, believed to be the possessor of the Philosophers’ Stone, included a better understanding of the created world and the ability to foresee its future development. Johannes de Rupescissa and Paracelsus are the best known examples of prophets-alchemists, but many other texts, often pseudepigraphic, ascribed to famous alchemists, also contain eschatological and millenarian theories or visions. This tendency found its apogee in the early 17th century and the Rosicrucian furore with its predictions of general reformation and strong alchemical overtones. At the same time (1616) the Polish alchemist Michael Sendivogius published his third work, Tractatus de Sulphure, in the preface to which he described briefly his own millenarian scheme based on the Biblical Prophecy of Daniel, reinterpreting the Four Monarchies as related to the points of the compass and predicting the imminent coming of the last of them, the Northern Monarchy or Monarchia Borealis. He promised to say more in the forthcoming work entitled Harmonia but unfortunately it never appeared nor is any manuscript of it known so the analysis of both the origins and influence of his millenarian ideas can only be based on that short section. The fact that Oswald Croll nicknamed Sendivogius “Heliocantharus Borealis” or Northern Scarab in his posthumously published Basilica chemica (1608) suggests that the Polish alchemist had already been viewed as the harbinger of Monarchia Borealis in the early years of the century or even in 1599 when his contacts with Croll are documented. An influence of John Dee on Sendivogius may be discerned, as well as that of the political situation of Poland with its crown prince Władysław Vasa being elected the tsar of Moscovy in 1610 (in addition to his hereditary rights to the throne of Sweden and Poland, he was also one of the pretenders to the title of the King of Jerusalem). Such notions of the unique role of Poland in the divine scheme began to appear in the 16th century and formed the “Sarmatian” ideology prevailing among Polish nobility from the 17th century well into the 20th century, and formed and interesting offshoot of Polish Messianism in the early 19th century. Its influence on Sendivogius may also be guessed from his choice of the anagrammatic pseudonym “Divi Leschi genus amo” and from the fact that Michael Maier in Symbola aureae mensae (1617) called him “Sarmata anonymus” and placed as the last of the twelve alchemical adepts of twelve nations (which can also be considered as another circle of unfolding history).
The Fourth Monarchy prophecy of Sendivogius was quoted and reprinted separately, outside of its alchemical context, in Germany and England, and was probably also used in Sweden in conjunction with the pseudo-Paracelsian prophecy of the Northern Lion for Gustav Adolf’s political propaganda. Some of its influence flowed through the intermediary of Johann Heinrich Alsted, who adapted it for his own syncretic scheme of prophetic chronology and acknowledged his source. Alsted’s importance for the early modern intellectual world has only been recognized in recent decades, especially through the meticulous research of Howard Hotson, so the place of Michael Sendivogius within that world needs to be reassessed. It can be showed that Alsted must have known Sendivogius personally in the early years of the century and knew more details about his chronological theories, as in his “Circulus iudiciorum dei” (1614) he openly identifies the Northern Monarchy with Poland.
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