by Umberto Eco
Was it not you I sought all along? I am here, always waiting for you. Did I lose you, each time, because I didn't recognize you? Did I lose you, each time, because I did recognize you but was afraid? Lose you because each time, recognizing you, I knew I had to lose you?
But where did you end up last night? I woke this morning with a headache.
70
Let us remember well, however, the secret references to a period of 120 years that brother A..., the successor of D and last of the second line of succession—who lived among many of us—addressed to us, we of the third line of succession....
—Fama Fraternitatis, in Allgemeine unci general Reformation, Cassel, Wessel, 1614
First thing, I read through the two manifestoes of the Rosicrucians, the Fama and the Confessio. I also took a look at the Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosencreutz by Johann Valentin Andreae, because Andreae was the presumed author of the manifestoes.
The two manifestoes appeared in Germany between 1614 and 1615, thus about thirty years after the 1584 meeting between the French and English Templars and almost a century before the French were to meet with the Germans.
I read, not to believe what the manifestoes said, but to look beyond them, as if the words meant something else. To help them mean something else, I knew I should skip some passages and attach more importance to some statements than to others. But this was exactly what the Diabolicals and their masters were teaching us. If you move in the refined time of revelation, do not follow the fussy, philistine chains of logic and their monotonous sequentiality.
Taken literally, these two texts were a pile of absurdities, riddles, contradictions. Therefore they could not be saying what they seemed to be saying, and were neither a call to profound spiritual reformation nor the story of poor Christian Rosencreutz. They were a coded message to be read by superimposing them on a grid, a grid that left certain spaces free while covering others. Like the coded message of Provins, where only the initial letters counted. Having no grid, I had to assume the existence of one. I had to read with mistrust.
The manifestoes spoke of the Plan of Provins—there could be no doubt about that. In the grave of C. R. (allegory of the Grange-aux-Dimes, the night of June 23, 1344) a treasure had been placed for posterity to discover, a treasure "hidden ... for one hundred and twenty years." It was not money; that much was clear. Not only was there a polemic against the unrestrained greed of the alchemists, but the text said openly that what had been promised was a great historical change. And if the reader failed to understand that, the second manifesto said that there could be no ignoring an offer that concerned the miranda sextae aetatis (the wonders of the sixth and final appointment!), and it repeated: "If only it had pleased God to bring down to us the light of his sixth Candelabrum ... if only we could read everything in a single book and, reading it, understand and remember ... How pleasant it would be if through song (the message read aloud!) we could transform rocks (lapis exillis!) into pearls and precious stones...." And there was further talk of arcane secrets, and of a government that was to be established in Europe, and of a "great work" to be achieved....
It was said that C. R. had gone to Spain (or Portugal?) and had shown the learned there "whence to draw the true indicia of future centuries," but in vain. Why in vain? Was it because a group of German Templars at the beginning of the seventeenth century made public a very closely guarded secret, forced to come out into the open on account of a halt in the process of the transmission of the message?
The manifestoes undeniably tried to reconstruct the phases of the Plan as Diotallevi had summarized them. The first brother whose death was mentioned was Brother I. O., who had "come to the end" in England. So someone had arrived triumphantly at the first appointment. And a second line of succession was mentioned, and a third. Thus far all was apparently in order: the second line, the English one, met the third line, the French one, in 1584. Those writing at the beginning of the seventeenth century spoke only of what had happened to the first three groups. In the Chemical Wedding, written by Andreae in his youth, hence before the manifestoes (even if they appeared as early as 1614), three majestic temples were mentioned, the three places that must already have been known.
Yet, reading, I realized that while the two manifestoes did indeed speak later in the same terms as the Chemical Wedding, it was as if something upsetting had happened meanwhile.
For example, why such insistence on the fact that the time had come, the moment had come, though the enemy had employed all his tricks to keep the occasion from materializing? What occasion? It was said that C. R.'s final goal was Jerusalem, but he hadn't been able to reach Jerusalem. Why not? The Arabs were praised because they exchanged messages, but in Germany the learned didn't know how to assist one another. What did that mean? And there was a reference to "a larger group that wants the pasture all for itself." Evidently some party, pursuing its private interests, was trying to upset the Plan, and evidently there had in fact been a serious setback.
The Fama said that at the beginning someone had worked out a magic writing (why of course, the message of Provins), but that the Clock of God struck every minute "whereas ours is unable to strike even the hours." Who had missed the strokes of the divine clock, who had failed to arrive at a certain place at the right moment? There was a reference to an original group of brothers who could have revealed a secret philosophy but had decided, instead, to disperse throughout the world.
The manifestoes breathed uneasiness, uncertainty, bewilderment. The brothers of the first lines of succession had each arranged to be replaced "by a worthy successor," but "they decided to keep secret ... the place of their burial and even today we do not know where they are buried."
What did this really refer to? What sepulcher was without an address? It was becoming obvious to me that the manifestoes were written because some information had been lost. An appeal was being made to anyone who happened to possess that information: He should come forward.
The end of the Fama was unequivocal: "Again we ask all the learned of Europe ... to consider with kindly disposition our offer ... to let us know their reflections.... Because even if for the present we have not revealed our names ... anyone who sends us his name will be able to confer with us personally, or—if some impediment exists—in writing."
This was exactly what the colonel had intended to do by publishing his story: force someone to emerge from his silence.
There had been a gap, a hiatus, an unraveling. In the tomb of C. R., there was written not only post 120 annos patebo, to recall the schedule of the appointments, but also Nequaquam vacuum; not "The void does not exist," but "The void should not exist." A void had been created, and it had to be filled!
***
Once again I asked myself: Why were these things being said in Germany, where, if anything, the fourth line should simply wait with saintly patience for its own turn to come? The Germans couldn't complain—in 1614—of a failed appointment in Marienburg, because the Marienburg appointment would not take place until 1704.
Only one conclusion was possible: the Germans were complaining because the preceding appointment had not taken place.
This was the key! The Germans (the fourth line) were lamenting the fact that the English (the second line) had failed to reach the French (the third line). Of course. In the text you could find allegories that were almost childishly transparent: the tomb of C. R. is opened and in it are found the signatures of the brothers of the first and second circles, but not of the third. The Portuguese and the English are there, but where are the French?
In other words, the English had missed the French. Yet the English, according to what we had established, were the only ones who had any idea where to find the French, just as the French were the only ones who had any idea where to find the Germans. So, even if the French found the Germans in 1704, they would have shown up minus two-thirds of what they were supposed to deliver.
The Rosicrucians came out into the open, accepting the
known risks, because that was the only way to save the Plan.
71
We do not even know with certainty if the Brothers of the second line possessed the same knowledge as those of the first, or if they were given all the secrets.
—Fama Fraternitatis, in Allgemeine und general Reformation, Cassel, Wessel, 1614
I told Belbo and Diotallevi. They agreed that the secret meaning of the manifestoes should be clear even to a Diabolical.
"Now it's all clear," Diotallevi said. "We were stuck on the notion that the Plan had been blocked at the passage from the Germans to the Paulicians, while in fact it had been blocked in 1584, at the passage from England to France."
"But why?" Belbo asked. "What reason can there be that the English were unable to keep their appointment with the French in 1584? The English knew where the Refuge was."
Seeking truth, he turned to Abulafia. As a test, he asked for two random entries. The output was:
Minnie Mouse is Mickey's fiancée
Thirty days hath September April June and November
"Now, let's see," Belbo said. "Minnie has an appointment with Mickey, but by mistake she makes it for the thirty-first of September, and Mickey..."
"Hold it, everybody!" I said. "Minnie could have made a mistake only if her date with Mickey was for October 5, 1582!"
"Why?"
"The Gregorian reform of the calendar! Why, it's obvious. In 1582 the Gregorian reform went into effect, correcting the Julian calendar; and to make things come out even, ten days in the month of October were abolished, the fifth to the fourteenth!"
"But the appointment in France is for 1584, Saint John's Eve, June 23."
"That's right. But as I recall, the reform didn't go into effect immediately everywhere." I consulted the perpetual calendar we had on the shelf. "Here we are. The reform was promulgated in 1582, and the days between October 5 and October 14 were abolished, but this applied only to the pope. France adopted the new calendar in 1583 and abolished the tenth to the nineteenth of December. In Germany there was a schism: the Catholic regions adopted the reform in 1584, with Bohemia, but the Protestant regions adopted it in 1775, almost two hundred years later, and Bulgaria—and this is a fact to bear in mind—adopted it only in 1917! Now, let's look at England....It adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752. That's to be expected: in their hatred of the papists, the Anglicans also held out for two centuries. So you see what happened. France abolished ten days at the end of 1583, and by June 1584 the French were all accustomed to it. But when it was June 23, 1584, in France, in England it was still June 13, and ask yourself whether a good Englishman, Templar though he may have been, would have taken this into account. They drive on the left even today, and ignored the decimal system for ages.... So, then, the English show up at the Refuge on what for them is June 23, except that for the French it's already July 3. We can assume the appointment wasn't to take place with fanfares; it would be a furtive meeting at a certain corner at a certain hour. The French go to the place on June 23; they wait a day, two days, three, seven, and then they leave, thinking that something has happened. Maybe they give up in despair on the very eve of July 3. The English arrive on the third and find nobody there. Maybe they also wait a week, and nobody shows. The two grand masters have missed each other."
"Sublime," Belbo said. "That's what happened. But why is it the German Rosicrucians who go public, and not the English?"
I asked for another day, searched my card files, and came back to the office glowing with pride. I had found a clue, an almost invisible clue, but that's how Sam Spade works. Nothing is trivial or insignificant to his eagle eye. Toward 1584, John Dec, mage and cabalist, astrologer to the queen of England, was assigned to study the reform of the Julian calendar.
"The English Templars meet the Portuguese in 1464. After that date, the British Isles seem to be struck by a cabalistic fervor. Anyway, the Templars work on what they have learned, preparing for the next encounter. John Dee is the leader of this magic and hermetic renaissance. He collects a personal library of four thousand volumes, a library in the spirit of the Templars of Provins. His Manas Hieroglyphica seems directly inspired by the Tabula smaragdina, the bible of the alchemists. And what does John Dee do from 1584 on? He reads the Sleganugraphia of Trithemius! He reads it in manuscript, of course, because it appeared in print for the first time only in the early seventeenth century. Dee, the grand master of the English group that suffered the failure of the missed appointment, wants to discover what happened, where the error lay. Since he is also a good astronomer, he slaps himself on the brow and says, 'What an idiot I was!' He starts studying the Gregorian reform, after he obtains an appanage from Elizabeth, to see how to rectify the mistake. But he realizes it's too late. He doesn't know whom to get in touch with in France. He has contacts, however, in the Mitteleuropäische area. The Prague of Rudolf II is one big alchemist laboratory; so Dee goes to Prague and meets Khunrath, the author of Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae, whose allegorical plates later influenced both Andreae and the Rosicrucian manifestoes. What sort of relationships does Dee establish? I don't know. Shattered by remorse at having committed an irreparable error, he dies in 1608. Not to worry, though, because in London someone else is at work—a man who, everybody now agrees, was a Rosicrucian and who spoke of the Rosicrucians in his New Atlantis. I mean Francis Bacon."
"Did Bacon really talk about them?" Belbo asked.
"Strictly speaking, no, but a certain John Heydon rewrote the New Atlantis under the title The Holy Land, and he put the Rosicrucians in it. But for us that makes no difference. Bacon didn't mention them by name for obvious reasons of discretion, but it's as if he did."
"And a pox on doubters."
"Right. It's because of Bacon that attempts are made to strengthen relations between the English and German circles. In 1613 Elizabeth, daughter of James I, now reigning, marries Frederick V, Elector Palatine of the Rhine. After the death of Rudolf II, Prague is no longer the ideal location; Heidelberg is. The wedding of the elector and the princess is a triumph of Templar allegories. In the course of the London festivities, Bacon himself is the impresario, and an allegory of mystical knighthood is performed, with an appearance of the knights on the top of a hill. It is obvious that Bacon is now Dee's successor, grand master of the English Templar group...."
"And since he is clearly the author of the plays of Shakespeare, we should also reread the complete works of the Bard, which certainly talk about nothing else but the Plan," Bclbo said. "Saint John's Eve, a midsummer night's dream."
"June 23 is not midsummer."
"Poetic license. I wonder why everybody overlooked these clues, these clear indications. It's all so unbearably obvious."
"We've been led astray by rationalist thought," Diotallevi said. "I keep telling you."
"Let Casaubon go on; it seems to me he's done an excellent job."
"Not much more to say. After the London festivities, the festivities begin in Heidelberg, where Salomon de Caus has built for the elector the hanging gardens of which we saw a dim reflection that night in Piedmont, as you'll recall. And in the course of these festivities, an allegorical float appears, celebrating the bridegroom as Jason, and from the two masts of the ship re-created on the float hang the symbols of the Golden Fleece and the Garter. I hope you haven't forgotten that the Golden Flecce and the Garter are also found on the columns of Tomar.... Everything fits. In the space of a year, the Rosicrucian manifestoes come out: the appeal that the English Templars, with the help of their German friends, are making to all Europe, to reunite the lines of the interrupted Plan."
"But what exactly arc they after?"
72
Nos inuisibles pretendus sont (à ce que l'on dit) au nombre de 36, séparez en six bandes.
—Effroyables pactions faictes entre le diable & les prétendus Inuisibles, Paris, 1623, p. 6
"Maybe the manifestoes have a double purpose: to send an appeal to the French, and at the same time to collect the scatter
ed pieces of the German group in the aftermath of the Lutheran Reformation. Germany, in fact, is where the biggest mess occurs. From the appcarance of the manifestoes until about 1621, the Rosicrucians receive too many replies...."
I mentioned a few of the countless pamphlets that had appeared on the subject, the ones that had entertained me that night in Salvador with Amparo. "Possibly among all these there is one person who knows something, but he is lost in a sea of fanatics, enthusiasts, who take the manifestoes literally, perhaps also provocateurs, who want to block the operation, and impostors.... The English try to take part in the debate, to channel it. It's no accident that Robert Fludd, another English Templar, in the space of a single year writes three works that point to the correct interpretation of the manifestoes.... But the response is by now out of control, the Thirty Years' War has begun, the Elector Palatine has been defeated by the Spanish, the Palatinate and Heidelberg are sacked, Bohemia is in flames.... The English decide to return to France and try there. This is why in 1623 the Rosicrucians appear in Paris, giving the French more or less the same invitation they gave the Germans. And what do you read in one of the libels against the Rosicrucians in Paris, written by someone who distrusts them or wants to confuse things? That they are worshipers of the Devil, obviously, but since even in slander you can't entirely erase the truth, it is hinted that they hold their meetings in the Marais."