The Tessera of Antilia. Utopian Brotherhoods and Secret Societies in the Early Seventeenth Century.

Donald R. Dickson. The Tessera of Antilia. Utopian Brotherhoods and Secret Societies in the Early Seventeenth Century

Brill: Leiden and Boston, 1998. x + 293 pp. n.p. ISBN: 90-04-11032-1.

As the seventeenth century sank deeper into crisis, there arose a movement for utopian Christian reform led by a network of like-minded individuals who sought not just to advance intellectual knowledge but to act in a significant way in history in order to improve the physical well-being of mankind. This, they believed, could be achieved through a reformation of science and learning. Chief among these utopian idealists were the German Johann Valentin Andreae (1586-1654), whose writings were one of the major inspirational forces behind the movement, and the Polish/Prussian expatriate Samuel Hartlib (born ca. 1600), who played a fundamental role in transplanting these ideas to England when he first went to study at Cambridge (1621-1626) and then when he settled down permanently in London (1628). Shifting his gaze slowly from Andreae in Germany to Hartlib in England, the author of the current study spins a fascinating tale in which the diverse utopian scientific societies of the seventeenth century form a trans national movement that linked scholars, scientists, and thinkers from across the continent into a virtual brotherhood of science, actively committed to overcoming the obscurantism and dogmaticism of previous intellectual inquiry.

These secret and, to quite a degree, exclusive networks of scientific thinkers sprang up across the European continent and even in the New World. Their avowed aim was to establish a utopian society based on scientific research, demonstrable knowledge, and collegial co-operation. Hence the title of this volume, the tessera of Antilia -- these societies and their members constituted, as it were, the passwords or tokens that gave society as a whole an entry into the idealized world of Antilia, the fabulous lost island laying somewhere in the mid-Atlantic (the name was later applied to today's Antilles). The utopian aspirations of these groups did not, however, limit themselves to imagined worlds, but firmly sought to bring about a reformation of ideas, science, and society that would, in effect, lead to a utopia in the here-and-now.

In the first chapter, the author considers the problematics of and historiography on secret societies and natural magic. In so doing, he proposes the creation of a third category of society: besides the scientific and the literary society already long part of the literature, scholars ought to consider a third category, the esoteric society (10). In the second and third chapters, the author moves to an examination of Johann Valentin Andreae's efforts to establish a Christian utopia. He seeks, especially, to connect the origins of the Rosicrucian manifestos to Andreae and to his circle at Tubingen -- the university faculty, Tobias Hess, Christoph Besold, Johann Arndt. Here the author points out that, more than a fantasy, this utopian dream was, for Andreae, a lifelong commitment to the ideal of utopian brotherhoods established for the purpose of renewing the spiritual life of the Lutheran Church and reforming society as a whole. Having sketched the background of the movement for utopian societies, the author d evotes chapter three to a careful depiction of the relationship between Andreae and the Rosicrucian brotherhood, contextualizing the latter within Andreae's larger, lifelong involvement with Protestant utopianism. In chapter four, the author moves into an examination of the various utopian and epistolary networks active in early-modern Germany -- Joachim Jungius's Societas Ereunetica, Johannes Saubert and the Unio Christiana, Johann Abraham Pomer and Heinrich Hein's Antilia, and Joachim Morsius's dissemination of Andreae's utopianism. At this point the author pointedly seeks to correct the "sensational" account of the utopian movement presented earlier by Frances Yates in her volume on The Rosicrucian Enlightment (1972). In the two final chapters, he follows the movement to England, focusing in particular on the work of Samuel Hartlib and on the flowering of scientific utopian ideas in the 1650s that were to culminate in the enshrinement of the Royal Society as the official forum for the new science.

In its extensive and comprehensive examination of epistolary networks and scientific societies in the seventeenth century, this volume expands our understanding of the nature and functioning of the republic of letters at the time and of the transnational movement towards an official endorsement of Baconian science. At the same time, it narrates a compelling story of utopian aspirations and intellectual ideals firmly grounded in the reality and the needs of contemporary society.