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| John Dee | |
|---|---|
| A 16th-century portrait by an unknown artist[1] | |
| Born | 13 July 1527[2] Tower Ward, London, England[2] |
| Died | December 1608 or March 1609 (age 81) Mortlake, Surrey, England |
| Nationality | English |
| Alma mater | St John’s College, Cambridge Louvain University |
| Known for | Advisor to Queen Elizabeth I |
| Spouse(s) | Katherine Constable Jane Fromond |
| Children | 8 |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics, alchemy, astrology, Hermeticism, navigation |
| Institutions | Trinity College, Cambridge Christ’s College, Manchester |
| Academic advisors | Gemma Frisius, Gerardus Mercator[3] |
| Notable students | Thomas Digges[4] |
John Dee (13 July 1527 – 1608 or 1609) was an Anglo-Welsh mathematician, astrologer and occultist,[5] and an advisor to Queen Elizabeth I. He spent much time on alchemy, divination and Hermetic philosophy. He advocated turning England’s imperial expansion into a “British Empire“, a term he is credited with coining.[6]
Science and sorcery
To 21st-century eyes, Dee’s activities straddle magic and modern science, but the distinction would have meant nothing to him. He was invited to lecture on Euclidean geometry at the University of Paris while still in his early twenties. He was an ardent promoter of mathematics, a respected astronomer and a leading expert in navigation, who trained many who would conduct England’s voyages of discovery.
Meanwhile, he immersed himself in sorcery, astrology and Hermetic philosophy. Much effort in his last 30 years went into trying to commune with angels, so as to learn the universal language of creation and achieve a pre-apocalyptic unity of mankind.[7] A student of the Renaissance Neo-Platonism of Marsilio Ficino, he drew no distinctions between his mathematical research and his investigations of Hermetic magic, angel summoning and divination: all his activities were part of his quest for a transcendent understanding of divine forms underlying the visible world: Dee’s “pure verities”.
Dee amassed one of England’s biggest libraries. His scholarly status also took him into Elizabethan politics as an adviser and tutor to Elizabeth I and through relations with her ministers Francis Walsingham and William Cecil. He tutored and patronised Sir Philip Sidney, his uncle Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, Edward Dyer, and Sir Christopher Hatton.
Biography
Early life
Dee was born in Tower Ward, London, to Rowland Dee, of Welsh descent, and Johanna Wild.[8][9][10][11][12] His surname “Dee” reflects the Welsh du (black). His grandfather was Bedo Ddu of Nant-y-groes, Pilleth, Radnorshire; John retained his connection with the locality. His father Roland was a mercer and gentleman courtier to Henry VIII. John Dee claimed descent from Rhodri the Great, Prince of Wales, and constructed a pedigree accordingly. His family had arrived in London with Henry Tudor’s coronation as Henry VII.[9] Jane Dee was the daughter of William Wild.[5]
Dee attended Chelmsford Chantry School (now King Edward VI Grammar School) in 1535–1542.[13] He entered St John’s College, Cambridge in November 1542, aged 15, graduating BA in 1545 or early 1546.[14][15] His abilities recognised, he became an original fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge on its foundation by Henry VIII in 1546.[16] At Trinity, the clever stage effects he produced for a production of Aristophanes‘ Peace earned him lasting repute as a magician. In the late 1540s and early 1550s, he travelled in Europe, studying at Louvain (1548) and Brussels and lecturing in Paris on Euclid. He studied under Gemma Frisius and became friends with the cartographers Gerardus Mercator and Abraham Ortelius. Dee also met, worked and learnt from other continental mathematicians, such as Federico Commandino in Italy.[17] He returned to England with a major collection of mathematical and astronomical instruments. In 1552, he met Gerolamo Cardano in London, with whom he investigated a purported perpetual motion machine and a gem supposed to have magical properties.[18]
Rector at Upton-upon-Severn from 1553, Dee was offered a readership in mathematics at Oxford University in 1554, which he declined, citing as offensive English universities’ emphasis on rhetoric and grammar (which, together with logic, formed the academic trivium) over philosophy and science (the more advanced quadrivium, composed of arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy). He was busy with writing and perhaps hoped for a better position at court.[19] In 1555, Dee joined the Worshipful Company of Mercers, as his father had, through its system of patrimony.[20]
In that year, 1555, Dee was arrested and charged with the crime of “calculating”, because he had cast horoscopes of Queen Mary and Princess Elizabeth. The charges were raised to treason against Mary.[19][21] Dee appeared in the Star Chamber and exonerated himself, but was turned over to the Catholic Bishop Bonner for religious examination. His strong, lifelong penchant for secrecy may have worsened matters. The episode was the most dramatic in a series of attacks and slanders that dogged Dee throughout his life. Clearing his name yet again, he soon became a close associate of Bonner.[19]
Dee presented Queen Mary in 1556 with a visionary plan for preserving old books, manuscripts and records and founding a national library, but it was not taken up.[19] Instead, he expanded his personal library in Mortlake, acquiring books and manuscripts in England and on the Continent. Dee’s library, a centre of learning outside the universities, became the greatest in England and attracted many scholars.[22]Dee’s glyph, whose meaning he explained in Monas Hieroglyphica.
When Elizabeth succeeded to the throne in 1558, Dee became her astrological and scientific advisor, even choosing her coronation date.[23][24] From the 1550s to the 1570s, he served as an advisor to England’s voyages of discovery, providing technical aid in navigation and ideological backing to create a “British Empire”, a term he was the first to use.[25] Dee wrote in October 1574 to William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley seeking patronage. He claimed to have occult knowledge of treasure in the Welsh Marches and of valuable manuscripts kept at Wigmore Castle, knowing that the Lord Treasurer‘s ancestors came from the area.[26]
In 1577, Dee published General and Rare Memorials pertayning to the Perfect Arte of Navigation, a work setting out his vision of a maritime empire and asserting English territorial claims on the New World. Dee was acquainted with Humphrey Gilbert and close to Sir Philip Sidney and his circle.[25]
In 1564, Dee wrote the Hermetic work Monas Hieroglyphica (“The Hieroglyphic Monad“), an exhaustive Cabalistic interpretation of a glyph of his own design, meant to express the mystical unity of all creation. Having dedicated it to Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor in an effort to gain patronage, Dee attempted to present it to him at the time of his ascension to the throne of Hungary. The work was esteemed by many of Dee’s contemporaries, but cannot be interpreted today in the absence of the secret oral tradition of that era.[27]
His 1570 “Mathematical Preface” to Henry Billingsley‘s English translation of Euclid’s Elements argued for the importance of mathematics as an influence on the other arts and sciences.[28] Intended for an audience outside the universities, it proved to be Dee’s most widely influential and frequently reprinted work.[29]
Later life
The “Seal of God”, British Museum
By the early 1580s, Dee was discontented with his progress in learning the secrets of nature and his diminishing influence and recognition in court circles. Failure of his proposed calendar revision, imperial recommendations and ambivalent results from exploration of North America had nearly brought his hopes of political patronage to an end. As a result, he began a more energetic turn towards the supernatural as a means to acquire knowledge. He sought to contact spirits through the use of a “scryer” or crystal-gazer, which would act as an intermediary between Dee and the angels.[30]
Dee’s first attempts with several scryers were unsatisfactory, but in 1582 he met Edward Kelley (then calling himself Edward Talbot to disguise his conviction for “coining” or forgery), who impressed him greatly with his abilities.[31] Dee took Kelley into his service and began to devote all his energies to his supernatural pursuits.[31] These “spiritual conferences” or “actions” were conducted with intense Christian piety, always after periods of purification, prayer and fasting.[31] Dee was convinced of the benefits they could bring to mankind. (The character of Kelley is harder to assess: some conclude that he acted with cynicism, but delusion or self-deception cannot be ruled out.[32] Kelley’s “output” is remarkable for its volume, intricacy and vividness. Dee claimed that angels laboriously dictated several books to him this way, through Kelley, some in a special angelic or Enochian language.[33][34]Edward Kelley
In 1583, Dee met the impoverished yet popular Polish nobleman Albert Łaski, who, after overstaying his welcome at court, invited Dee to accompany him back to Poland.[21] With some prompting by the “angels” (again through Kelley) and by dint of his worsening status at court, Dee decided to do so. He, Kelley, and their families left in September 1583, but Łaski proved to be bankrupt and out of favour in his own country.[35] Dee and Kelley began a nomadic life in Central Europe, meanwhile continuing their spiritual conferences, which Dee detailed in his diaries and almanacs.[33][34] They had audiences with Emperor Rudolf II in Prague Castle and King Stephen Bathory of Poland, whom they attempted to convince of the importance of angelic communication. The Bathory meeting took place at the Niepołomice Castle (near Kraków, then capital of Poland) and was later analysed by Polish historians (Ryszard Zieliński, Roman Żelewski, Roman Bugaj) and writers (Waldemar Łysiak).[citation needed] While Dee was generally seen as a man of deep knowledge, he was mistrusted for his connection with the English monarch, Elizabeth I, for whom some thought (and still do) that Dee was a spy. The Polish king, a devout Catholic and cautious of supernatural media, began their meeting(s) by affirming that prophetic revelations must match the teachings of Christ, the mission of the Holy Catholic Church, and the approval of the Pope.
In 1587, at a spiritual conference in Bohemia, Kelley told Dee that the angel Uriel had ordered the men to share all their possessions, including their wives. By this time, Kelley had gained some renown as an alchemist and was more sought-after than Dee in this regard: it was a line of work that had prospects for serious and long-term financial gain, especially among the royal families of central Europe. Dee, however, was more interested in communicating with angels, whom he believed would help him solve the mysteries of the heavens through mathematics, optics, astrology, science and navigation. Perhaps Kelley in fact wished to end Dee’s dependence on him as a diviner at their increasingly lengthy, frequent spiritual conferences.[35] The order for wife-sharing caused Dee anguish, but he apparently did not doubt it was genuine and they apparently shared wives. However, Dee broke off the conferences immediately afterwards. He returned to England in 1589, while Kelley went on to be the alchemist to Emperor Rudolf II.[35][36] Nine months later, on 28 February 1588, a son was born to Dee’s wife, whom Dee baptised Theodorus Trebonianus Dee and raised as his own, though he may have been Kelley’s, as Dee was 60 at the time and Kelley 32.