Bibliographia Rosicruciana. Das europäische Schrifttum zu den Rosenkreuzern des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts (Arbor Rosae Hermetis)
Carlos Gilly

Robert Fludd, Monochordum Mundi Symphoniacum, Frankfurt 1623 (BPH).

The greater part of the library’s research projects is carried out by Carlos Gilly, who specifically researches the Rosicrucian tradition. His efforts concentrate on library and archival research in order to complete the planned comprehensive bibliography of the Early Rosicrucians. His research has already produced many articles, lectures, monographs, and (exhibition) catalogues (see here), while the work on the Rosicrucian bibliography (six volumes are planned) is in progress. Publication of the first volume is scheduled for 2010.

When Carlos Gilly began his research on behalf of the Rosicrucian bibliography, the basic working material consisted of a number of existing bibliographies, together listing some 230-240 titles (including 20 ghost editions). Since the inception of the project, more than 1,300 titles relevant to the Rosicrucians have been collected, about a third of which is still in manuscript. Gilly’s archival and library research has resulted in a vast archive on microfilm and microfiche, which is housed in Mora (Spain). Another offshoot of his research concerns the description of the libraries of some of the Early Rosicrucians (including Tobias Hess and Christoph Besold), together comprising more than 9,000 titles. For enquiries please contact Carlos Gilly at bph@ritmanlibrary.nl

Codex Rosae Crucis: Geheime Figuren der Rosenkreuzer
Theodor Harmsen

From the Geheime Figuren der Rosenkreuzer, Detail of Manuscript BPH.

This project aims to explore and describe the history and growth of the manuscript tradition of Die Lehren der Rosenkreuzer aus dem 16ten und 17ten Jahrhundert. Oder einfältig ABC Büchlein für junge Schüler also known as the Geheime Figuren der Rosenkreuzer (secret symbols of the Rosicrucians). For a period of at least a hundred years (1730-1830) a series of symbolical plates were designed, copied, studied and distributed in Rosicrucian circles. Different versions of this rare 18th-century Hermetic manuscript have come down to us, and these will now for the first time be studied, collated and annotated for an authoritative critical textual edition. A historical introduction will describe the history of the manuscripts and the Rosicrucian-Masonic movements and individuals involved in their production and finally also in the published edition (Altona, 1785-1788). The new BPH edition will include reproductions of all the symbols in their original manuscript appearance (many in different versions) and discuss their relation to the published versions. Research is well underway and it is clear that this new edition will clarify the order and the meaning of the different plates. Possible connections with the works of the earlier 17th-century Rosicrucians will also be investigated as the project intends to identify and describe the earlier sources underlying the secret symbols. In addition, the plates which did not appear in the 1785-1788 edition but were included in the series to be published around 1766, will be identified and restored to the series. Publication is scheduled for 2011.

Giordano Bruno
Joyce Pijnenburg

Giordano Bruno, De monade, numero et figura, Frankfurt 1591 (BPH).

What do you do when your world is turned inside out and magnified by the factor of infinity?
This PhD project concerns the development of Giordano Bruno’s philosophy of science and imagery. Bruno’s later works from his so-called ‘German period’ (1586-1591) display a renewed metaphysics and epistemology; these are identified in this dissertation as effects of the metaphysical crisis brought about by his acceptance of heliocentrism and the concomitant infinity of the universe. These new foundations of philosophy, which gave room for innovative appropriations of Neoplatonism and Hermeticism, informed Bruno’s ideas about science and nature as well as his system of memory and classification of knowledge. The philosopher’s use of images for both purposes, as well as his theories of images and the imagination, had also changed considerably by the year 1591.
In focusing on such developments, this study attempts to revaluate the question to what extent Bruno’s philosophy may and should be considered ‘scientific’ and ‘modern’. Publication of this PhD project is scheduled for 2012.

Completed Research Projects of the Ritman Institute

Bestandesaufnahme und Geschichte des Jacob-Böhme-Handschriften-Fonds (Inventory and history of the Jacob-Böhme collection of manuscripts) was a research project initiated by the Ritman Institute in cooperation with the Oberlausitzische Bibliothek der Wissenschaften, Görlitz, the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, and the Biblioteka Uniwersytecka, Wroclaw. The project focused on creating an inventory and describing the history of the Böhme collection of manuscripts and early printed books first brought together by the Amsterdam businessman Abraham Willemsz van Beyerland (1586/71648). This collection was added to by later owners and Böhme followers and preserved whole in the Dutch Republic for over a hundred years. It was finally returned to Germany where it disappeared from sight but was guarded over closely by the community of Böhme followers in Linz am Rhein. This situation lasted until the vicissitudes of World War II and after, when the collections were divided and dispersed over different locations. Research results were published in: Jacob Böhmes Weg in die Welt. Zur Geschichte der Handschriftensammlung, Übersetzungen und Editionen von Abraham Willemszoon van Beyerland, Theodor Harmsen (Hg.), Pimander Texts and Studies published by the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica 16, Amsterdam: In de Pelikaan, 2007. See here

Böhmes Weg in die Welt describes the history of the formation and growth of the manuscript collection which includes the Böhme autographs as well as the important manuscript copies that served Beyerland for his publications (one of the long lost Mysterium Magnum manuscript copies is now in the BPH). Beyerland lived and worked in the Dutch Republic in 17th-century, where a culturally tolerant climate allowed religious dissenters, Christian theosophers, pietists and spiritualists to express and publish their views in a free environment. Böhme’s closer friends, working mostly in the Lutheran orthodox environment of Silesia, managed to produce and circulate manuscript copies but only published a few of Böhme’s shorter devotional pieces, amongst them the now extremely rare Weg zu Christo (1624; the BPH owns one of three remaining copies). Significantly, friends such as Abraham von Franckenberg (the first Böhme biography usually attributed to him is here analyzed), Abraham von Sommerfeld, Ehrenfried Hegenicht, and Michael le Blon collaborated with Beyerland in getting the manuscripts and the manuscript copies safely to his house in the Warmoesstraat in Amsterdam. Beyerland began collecting, translating and publishing Böhme’s works from the 1630s. By the late 1640s his remarkable efforts had resulted in the publication of what amounted to the first edition of the collected works of the mystic and theosopher Jacob Böhme (1575-1624). Beyerland’s text editions – mostly in Dutch translation – came out before the English and German collected editions.

Beyerland and his circle of Böhme followers both in the Republic and in the German-speaking countries thus played a crucial role in the history of Böhme scholarship. They collected and preserved the manuscripts, which remained in Dutch collections for a hundred years, published Böhme’s writings, and, through their correspondences, formed their own corpus of primary source materials. Böhme scholarship today would not exist without their continued efforts to safeguard, document and distribute the writings of this influential religious and philosophical thinker from Görlitz. After Beyerland, Dutch and German Böhme followers owned, added to, and/or published from, the Beyerland collection; all owed a considerable debt to Beyerland’s pioneer undertaking.

The contributions in this collection of essays together relate the history of the collection and dissemination of the manuscripts in the 17th century as well as the growth and fate of the collection after Beyerland’s death, through the 17th and 18th centuries. The various printed editions of Böhme’s collected works (1682, 1715 and 1730 – still the standard German edition!) and their relation to the manuscript tradition are also considered. Central is the life and career of Beyerland whose cultural and religious background is highlighted in a number of contributions. Due prominence is given to his private library, his Böhme manuscript collection, and his publishing activities. Finally, the collection’s fate in the eighteenth century through to the Second World War and after is described.

Besides a descriptive history, Böhmes Weg in die Welt also offers a number of significant primary historical sources – letters, catalogues, lists of manuscripts – which, according to Carlos Gilly, have been largely neglected by Böhme scholarship. These sources, as Gilly argues, finally reveal not only who were responsible for the preservation of Böhme’s writings, but also that Böhme worked in a much broader Hermetic tradition than his first German editors – and later commentators –wished to recognize. This to an important extent also explains why up to this day a modern critical edition of Jacob Böhme’s collected works could not be made. Such an edition would require more research of the sources described in this book. Today the Böhme collection of manuscripts and early printed books is housed in different libraries in Europe: the Oberlausitzische Bibliothek der Wissenschaften in Görlitz - webopac2.goerlitz.de - partner of the International Jacob-Böhme Institute, Görlitz - www.jacob-boehme.org -, the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel - www.hab.de -, the Biblioteka Uniwersytecka, wroclaw - www.bu.uni.wroc.pl -, and the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica in Amsterdam.